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Exxar · 12-06-2009, 06:44 AM

I use a treatment of undead and souls that is mostly based upon different iterations and settings for D&D.

A soul can either be living, undead, demonic or elemental - "powered" by positive, negative, demonic or elemental energy. Souls also come in different complexities (this is actually a specific term in one of my magic systems but I'm using it here because it illustrates the difference in "sophistication" between for example a human and animal soul quite nicely) - bacteria have complexity 2, bugs 6, reptiles 9, birds 10, average mammals 12, monkeys 14, humans 15, elves and dragons 16 or 17, while demons start from 18 and go to 20. 21+ is the province of demigods etc.

Natively, souls come in all four types. They can also change their type, but this doesn't work in all directions. A living soul bound to a dead body will gradually be inverted into an undead soul as it starts drawing nourishment from the ambient life forces since its body doesn't provide any. Undead souls could theoretically become living if bound to a living body, but being already accustomed to drawing nourishment from ambient life forces they have no reason to spontaneously convert. A conversion can be forced by magic, however, but any conversion whether forced or spontaneous will warp the soul so it may no longer resemble its original self. Any soul will slowly be converted into a demonic one when exposed to demonic energies of the lower planes for prolonged durations.

"Mindless" undead are dead organic bodies infused with summoned undead souls of bug to mammal complexity. They can obey simple instructions when commanded or behave with animal-level intelligence when unsupervised but not much more than that. The higher their complexity, the harder they are to create and more suitable they are for serving as minions, of course. But using complexity 14 souls for creation of mindless undead is not practiced by necromancers because such undead can come dangerously close to being "intelligent", and thus independent and dangerous.

"Intelligent" undead are dead organic bodies infused with undead souls of human or up to 17 complexity. They are fully independent - as they were in life. A body can be infused with a random summoned soul, or by its original one.

Undead that spontaneously arise in places of great death, places imbued with negative energy etc. can be of either type. That's mostly determined by the plot :)

A body infused with a demonic soul is simply a vessel for the demon. Demons (and any other complexity 18+ souls) may form their own physical bodies out of ambient energies, and are only truly "dead" when their soul is utterly destroyed.

I'll stop here since you've asked about undead and not the other creatures, but I can continue with the details if you have questions.

12-06-2009, 06:44 AM	#7
Exxar MIB Join Date: Oct 2005	Re: Undead and Souls I use a treatment of undead and souls that is mostly based upon different iterations and settings for D&D. A soul can either be living, undead, demonic or elemental - "powered" by positive, negative, demonic or elemental energy. Souls also come in different complexities (this is actually a specific term in one of my magic systems but I'm using it here because it illustrates the difference in "sophistication" between for example a human and animal soul quite nicely) - bacteria have complexity 2, bugs 6, reptiles 9, birds 10, average mammals 12, monkeys 14, humans 15, elves and dragons 16 or 17, while demons start from 18 and go to 20. 21+ is the province of demigods etc. Natively, souls come in all four types. They can also change their type, but this doesn't work in all directions. A living soul bound to a dead body will gradually be inverted into an undead soul as it starts drawing nourishment from the ambient life forces since its body doesn't provide any. Undead souls could theoretically become living if bound to a living body, but being already accustomed to drawing nourishment from ambient life forces they have no reason to spontaneously convert. A conversion can be forced by magic, however, but any conversion whether forced or spontaneous will warp the soul so it may no longer resemble its original self. Any soul will slowly be converted into a demonic one when exposed to demonic energies of the lower planes for prolonged durations. "Mindless" undead are dead organic bodies infused with summoned undead souls of bug to mammal complexity. They can obey simple instructions when commanded or behave with animal-level intelligence when unsupervised but not much more than that. The higher their complexity, the harder they are to create and more suitable they are for serving as minions, of course. But using complexity 14 souls for creation of mindless undead is not practiced by necromancers because such undead can come dangerously close to being "intelligent", and thus independent and dangerous. "Intelligent" undead are dead organic bodies infused with undead souls of human or up to 17 complexity. They are fully independent - as they were in life. A body can be infused with a random summoned soul, or by its original one. Undead that spontaneously arise in places of great death, places imbued with negative energy etc. can be of either type. That's mostly determined by the plot :) A body infused with a demonic soul is simply a vessel for the demon. Demons (and any other complexity 18+ souls) may form their own physical bodies out of ambient energies, and are only truly "dead" when their soul is utterly destroyed. I'll stop here since you've asked about undead and not the other creatures, but I can continue with the details if you have questions.