Undead taxonomy

[NaturalZero]

So what about body+soul?? Who is this fella?!

A guy in a coma?

EDIT: Now that i think about it, if trees have souls they would consist of this combo.

 

[hong]

Animus alone? Not really a thing they touched on. I'd assume it was fairly useless, glue without anything to glue together.

Uh, no. W&M calls out wraiths and shadows as being animus alone.

 

[Dausuul]

Per W&M (pg 50):I'm not seeing any implication that there's such a thing as undead without animus. It is explicitly stated that necro magic and Shadow simply boost the power of the animus to create an undead creature, but do not replace the animus, as suggested earlier in this thread.

I think DreamChaser's list has it right. Trying to break things down into every combination of body/soul/animus I think is making things more complex than they need to be, and is a good example of what the designer's have been referring to as unnecessary symmetry.

Agreed. Or, to put it another way, the animus is what makes a corpse different from any random lump of inanimate matter. Necromancers use the animus because it's a lot easier than creating the entire animating force from scratch. You might be able to use magic to make a corpse move, without engaging the animus, but why would you use a corpse for that instead of something more durable? At that point, what you're doing isn't raising undead but making a golem, and the result is pretty wussy by golem standards.

I'm pretty sure that the 4E definition of "undead" is an animus pumped full of necrotic energy. It may or may not be attached to a body, and it may or may not be attached to a soul, but there's always an animus, even in traditionally "mindless" undead.

 

[shawnsse]

This could be a borrowed idea from the Chinese Myth. All human beings have souls. In Chinese tradition, it was taught that soul has 10 portions. 3 portions of "hun" and 7 "po".
"Hun" is the ego, consciousness and core. The "po" is the accumulation of experience and emotion (desire) during the lifetime of a person.

When a person dies, his "po" will remain in his body indefinitely until it fades away evenutally. His "hun" will be leaves the body either to reincarnate or go to hell or heaven.

Chinese myth handles "po" (aka animus) in this way. If you remember the story about the hopping vampire, they have a very strong "po" that did not fade away but are made strong either by magic rituals or dramatic events (eg. horrid death) that are emotionally disturbing. And thus the birth of an undead.

A broken or unfulfilled vow will also "activiate" the "po". A person who has done great evil are also known to have very strong "po".

The "po" does not have to stay in a corpse. It can attach itself to any objects, an idea that is present in all Asian myth. The Japanese "oni" (conceptually) is one of the example.

So most of the undead in Chinese myth are having only "po" (aminus) with the exception of ghost. Ghosts are souls that are left wondering in this world without a permanent body.

Hopping Vampires only have "po" (aminus); the souls are long gone.

 

[Lackhand]

Uh, no. W&M calls out wraiths and shadows as being animus alone.

Pish, you and your reading comprehension.

Oops. Hong is, as ever, quite right.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

In my Diamond Throne campaign a few years ago, I used 4 "parts" - soul (ability to distinguish right/wrong and making decisions based on that), mind (able to plan activity and understand the world), spirit (will to live, desires) and body (ability to manipulate the world, the host of the other 3).
Undead s and Constructs used to lack one or more or these parts.
Creatures without a soul are amoral - Vampires and stuff like that.
Creatures without a mind are - well, mindless, like Skeletons, Golems, Zombies
Creatures without a spirit don't have their own will - things like Golems or Skeletons
Creatures without a body are obvious incorporeal, so usually Ghosts and Wraiths and stuff.
A Skeleton undead would basically just be body. He has no mind, no soul, and his spirit is replaced by the commands of his creator.

I am not sure how I could "simplify" this approach to get to the 3 parts body, animus and soul. Obviously, spirit fits to animus, but is mind also "in there"? And does this work at all with the W&M/D&D 4 approach?
If it would, Skeletons would be soulless and don't have their own animus, just their body. There is still something "driving" it, but it's not a real animus, it's something created by magic...

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

The whole soul/animus/body thing made me think of the Oscar Wilde fairy tale "The Fisherman and His Soul":

http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/E850003-015/text001.html

If the animus played the role of the "heart" in that story, that might be... interesting.

 

[Sir Brennen]

I am not sure how I could "simplify" this approach to get to the 3 parts body, animus and soul. Obviously, spirit fits to animus, but is mind also "in there"? And does this work at all with the W&M/D&D 4 approach?
If it would, Skeletons would be soulless and don't have their own animus, just their body. There is still something "driving" it, but it's not a real animus, it's something created by magic...

From Worlds & Monsters again, page 50:

Most undead, even those that seem intelligent, are this sort of creature — driven to inhuman behavior by lack of governance of a soul and a hunger for life that can't be sated. Nearly mindless undead have been infused with just enough power to give the remains mobility but little else. Sentient undead have a stronger animus that might even have access to the memories of the deceased, but such monstrosities have few or none of the capabilities they had in life

So, in 4E, "mind" is a result of a stronger animus in undead. I don't think there's any philosophical schools which posit intelligence and self-awareness as merely a stronger degree of life force, but for 4E, the simplification is self-consistent enough. (Odd that I haven't seen anyone mention yet the idea of the Egyptian "ka", the animating force which is one of the seven parts of the soul, since this is what the W&M article author states the concept was drawn from.)

In the case of the mindless skeleton, it does still have an animus, which has been given a small boost with necromantic magic.

Note that the above excerpt implies only undead with souls will have access to class features they had in life.

 

[MaelStorm]

There are words from different languages that are so close that you can get confused and mixed those terms as synonimus!

Animae, animus, etc.

There was a concept of druidism that was using the life energy of a planet and this kind of magical practice was called animism. And they were animist.

But I understand now and accept the animus concept of necromancers to animate undead creatures.

 

[hong]

How people can confuse animae and animus is beyond me. The first is the plural of anima, and the second is the plural of animu. Please, people.