Worldbuilding implications of spontaneous undead

[Dalillama]

Many mythoi hold that a person who dies without receiving appropriate funerary rites is likely to return as a malevolent ghost, vampire, revenant, etc. Suppose a setting where this is absolutely true: If a corpse is not appropriately laid to rest within, say, 48 hours of their death, the corpse will generate a life-draining ghost or flesh-eating ghoul which will then haunt the area until put down by stronger measures. What does society do about it? (This is partially inspired by the Cemetaries of Amalo books, where this is more or less true, but only regionally). Some thoughts: concealing a body might well be considered a worse crime than creating one, because that creates a threat to the general public. Battlefield rites are of vital importance. If the rites are culturally specific, be sure you know those that will lay the other side's dead as well as your own. Hermits are trouble, and people will either be checking up on them constantly or giving anyplace where one is known to have lived a wide berth.

[The Colonel]

With the certainty, you've basically got the Walking Dead setting - anyone who dies for any reason is a menace. I'm more inclined to add uncertainty - it's generally know that not burying people properly can lead to undead, but it doesn't always. I would suggest that those who don't receive funeral rites tend to become hungry ghosts, Asian style - many of those are little more than a nuisance on their own, but given enough personal power, background mana and the like some can become active undead. This would actually mesh with a lot of real world historical cultures in the dislike of unburied dead, the tendency to give funeral rites even to dead strangers and acts of spiritual merit such as funerary offerings left and memorial masses said for those whose bodies are never found.

I also like the idea that hungry ghosts are the necromancer's #1 choice for piloting undead - you have a ready made spirit, eager for some kind of maintenance and a skill set that involves driving a human about. Summon, bind and empower and you have an undead servant. Much easier that the alternatives.

[thrash]

Cremation is probably the preferred method of corpse disposal, since it doesn't leave any useful material remains.

Plagues are a major danger, since you could have whole villages or regions with dead unburied beyond the limit. It may be tempting to isolate a plague center and put the whole population -- living and dead -- to the torch (with suitable rites from a safe distance, of course) rather than risk letting any get away. This creates the perverse incentive to conceal a plague outbreak until it runs out of control.

Corpse snatching may be a thing, especially if newly risen zombies can be controlled by a low-level spell or magic item: slave labor, without the same logistical and managerial overhead.

[Anthony]

It has offensive implications in warfare; 'fight on your enemy's territory' has yet another benefit. If it's based on body location rather than death location, transporting corpses as weapons becomes a thing.

[Varyon]

Death Stranding takes an approach like this, although there's the additional complication that, if the resulting "undead" comes into contact with a living person (which seems to be much more involved than just bumping into them - it's more like they have to eat the person), this triggers an antimatter explosion (the setting is, understandably, post-apocalyptic). In that, bodies are cremated (the primary known way to prevent them from spawning a BT) as soon as possible. There are some terrorist groups who's MO is to send a member into a city, get somewhere nice and hidden, and commit suicide, banking on nobody finding the body in time and the city winding up nuked.

If it's just undead that are generated, that's not nearly as bad. If there's any way to control the undead, you may well have many people denied proper burial in order to be used for slave labor, as janissaries, etc. Even if they can't be properly controlled, you may wind up with an unruly community being punished by those in control via refusal to allow for burials. You might also have them used as tomb guardians - give the exalted dead a proper burial, then kill some rubes and seal them up inside of it; if anyone tries to break into the tomb for a little grave robbery, they'll be in for a surprise.

Outside of all that, I'd imagine warfare would have a large emphasis on giving proper burials to the dead (but inevitably you'll have someone shirk the duty, with disastrous consequences). Although the losing side may be inclined to conceal their dead in hopes they won't be found in time and will rise again to harass the enemy. I know there's a long history of battlefield scavengers going out to pilfer what they can from the dead; I could potentially see such becoming impromptu gravediggers and essentially taking the loot as payment, at least if they're able to give the proper rites (or maybe they just do the digging and some priests come through to handle that bit). You might also have becoming an undead as a punishment for certain crimes; maybe you're executed, and then sealed away inside a structure from which your body won't be able to escape, like the tomb guardian idea above.

You may also have some despondent people who lose loved ones purposefully avoiding giving them a proper burial, desperately hoping that they'll come back as themselves rather than as monsters (and are inevitably disappointed when their former loved ones eat their faces). Failure to give a proper burial to someone you're in some way responsible for the corpse of - you were the one to find them, you killed them, their body was given to you for burial, etc - may result in you being culpable for anything they do after coming back, potentially with a cascade effect (you failed to get Bob to a proper burial site, so you're responsible for him killing Carl and Johnny, and since nobody found Johnny and he would up killing Sue and George, you're responsible for their deaths too). This will probably mean you'll be executed (potentially in a rather painful manner - brazen bull, boiled alive, drawn and quartered, etc), and if the above "no burial" punishment is in use, you'd be a prime candidate for it.

[ericthered]

I don't think improper burial will be quite considered the same as murder. Compare it with arson: there is a similar danger to the public. That said, arson was taken quite seriously back in the day.



I can see sacking a city and not burying the dead as the equivalent of salting the ground a city is on: preventing anyone from building there again.

[The Colonel]

The other option being that every corpse has, as a minimum, it's hands and feet removed as soon as death is pronounced. Might make comas and catatonia "a little awkward" however.
How do you tell if someone is regaining consciousness or reanimating?

[Fred Brackin]

The posibility of non-corporeal dead is significant. as it short circuits "burn 'em all!"

In that situation streamlining the "proper rites" looks important. Straining my memoery something awful I come up with gem from a Priest of Ra I played:

"Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Don't come back now
It's the Afterlife or bust!"

<shrug> It seemed to work at the time.

Cross-fertilizing with the "Official Government Approved Spellist" thread
puts either Shape Earth or Create Fire on the list. The two spells might be about the same in eenrgy costs but the Shape Earth probably faster and smells better.

[jason taylor]

Someone who finds a mass production way to release the dead into the afterlife has a military advantage (like Shaka convincing warriors to open the belly of corpses).

There will be truces to bury the dead (in real life it is partly to avoid disease which is kind of the same concept).

No one camps on a battleground.

Captives lower in the social order are assigned burial duty.

It is a law of war that the true names of the dead be revealed after a battle.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Someone who finds a mass production way to release the dead into the afterlife has a military advantage (like Shaka convincing warriors to open the belly of corpses).

If the Rest In Pieces Perk is available, and if it applies to this situation, warriors with it would likely be in high demand. Same with Covenant of Rest.