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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 7040689" data-attributes="member: 2209">Dragon 173Dragon 1732eThinking Zombie: Thinking zombies are formed when a creature dies while under some powerful compulsion to perform a given task (such as when under the influence of a geas or quest spell). Such a creature's spirit continues striving to complete the task assigned to it.Fael: Faels are formed when a gluttonous person dies and his spirit still hungers for the excesses he knew during life.Raaigs: They are incorporeal spirits sustained by an unwavering and unshakable faith in their ancient gods.Meorty: When a great king of the ancients died, his body was specially preserved with salts and limes; it may or may not have been swathed in cloth. It was then laid to rest in a secret crypt with vast amounts of treasure, so that the king might continue to watch over the welfare of his realm.The spirits of such rulers continue to abide with their bodies, sustained by the duty with which they were charged upon death.Racked Spirit: Racked spirits are the incorporeal, tortured remnants of persons who committed an act that violated the basic nature of their character. Their guilty spirits cannot rest even after death.The most common type of racked spirit, of course, is the dwarven banshee, created when a dwarf forsakes his life purpose.Dhaot: Dhaots are incorporeal undead created when an individual with a powerful love of home or some other special place dies far away. When the body dies, the spirit is overwhelmed by a desire to return home.T'liz: A t'liz is created when an extremely powerful defiler dies before completing his magical studies.Lich: After Darklight had used the wand (and the kender band had “found” all of the things there were to “find”), Waldorf was resurrected. But Waldorf had become a lich! The wand had malfunctioned and just happened to cast a spell that transformed the nuclear man into a mean and nasty undead.Undead: Sometimes, however, when a powerfully motivated person dies, his spirit does not perish. Instead, it either continues to reside in the dead body (most necromancers classify such as “corporeal”), or it separates from the body and does not fade away (in which case it is classified as “incorporeal“).This spirit refuses to accept its destruction. The body dies, but the spirit continues to strive after what it pursued in life. In essence, by an act of willpower, it defies death and enters a state that is neither life nor death.From my experiences on Athas, the type of undead that a person becomes upon his demise depends upon the nature of the compulsion that prevented his spirit from “going to the gray,” not upon what race he is. Of course, it cannot be denied that certain races have tendencies to fall into certain categories of undead, but this is a reflection of normal racial proclivities toward common types of motivations and behaviors. No force, natural or supernatural, determines whether a member of a given race will become a certain type of undead.Skeleton: Skeletons and zombies are what I call “walking dead” rather than true undead. They have no intelligence and no independent will; they are always the servants of some other being and have simply been animated to serve his purposes.Zombie: Skeletons and zombies are what I call “walking dead” rather than true undead. They have no intelligence and no independent will; they are always the servants of some other being and have simply been animated to serve his purposes.Ghast: “He forced me to carry the corpse he had selected to the site of the massacre of the farm's inhabitants and, as I followed him, I was followed by his trio of ghouls, all hoping to somehow get a taste of the body. I was ordered to place the corpse next to the remains of the newly dead. All-Fear-His-Howl then began to perform some ritual over the bodies.“After an interminable period, the exhumed body began to twitch and rock, while the recent kills became flaccid and empty of all contents, now little more than a collection of bones and skin. And then, suddenly, the jerking corpse's eyes opened, and it stood up, the horrible stench of the dead assaulting my senses like never before. The witch doctor had created a more powerful undead servant in the form of a ghast.Some 20% of flind shamans of 4th or higher level know of a special ritual to create a ghast.</blockquote>

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