A couple questions about undead OOTS characters

[chorpler]

Never having played D&D, and having gained all of my D&D-related knowledge from OOTS, Erfworld, and other gamer-related webcomics, along with d20srd.org, I have a couple of questions about undead characters that have appeared in OOTS.

1. The Death Knight, the Heucuva, and the Eye of Fear and Flame that Redcloak created to serve as decoys for Xykon during the War for Azure City. Did Redcloak have to actually kill three humans and do some kind of spell to turn them into the free-willed skeletal undead creatures they became? Or can they just be created out of nothing with a spell?

2. The dragon's head that Vaarsuvius brought back to life by doing "Create Greater Undead" so she could watch Vaarsuvius destroy her entire extended family. Was that the actual dragon's soul embodied in her head there? It seems like it must really have her soul in it, since she said "What--? Where am I? I was with my son and husband..." But I thought you couldn't bring a soul back without its consent.

[Jagos]

Artistic license. ;)

[Kish]

But I thought you couldn't bring a soul back without its consent.
You can't raise the dead without the soul's consent. Creating undead, intelligent or not, is...different.
You can certainly trap the soul of someone who's died; it's one of Xykon's specialties.

[Sanguine]

Never having played D&D, and having gained all of my D&D-related knowledge from OOTS, Erfworld, and other gamer-related webcomics, along with d20srd.org, I have a couple of questions about undead characters that have appeared in OOTS.

1. The Death Knight, the Heucuva, and the Eye of Fear and Flame that Redcloak created to serve as decoys for Xykon during the War for Azure City. Did Redcloak have to actually kill three humans and do some kind of spell to turn them into the free-willed skeletal undead creatures they became? Or can they just be created out of nothing with a spell?

2. The dragon's head that Vaarsuvius brought back to life by doing "Create Greater Undead" so she could watch Vaarsuvius destroy her entire extended family. Was that the actual dragon's soul embodied in her head there? It seems like it must really have her soul in it, since she said "What--? Where am I? I was with my son and husband..." But I thought you couldn't bring a soul back without its consent.

1)All he needs is a body he doesn't neccesarily have to have been the person to kill them.

2)Either creative license or a Homebrewed sentient zombie

[chorpler]

You can't raise the dead without the soul's consent. Creating undead, intelligent or not, is...different.

Well, it's clearly different; this is exactly what I'm curious about. What are the precise ways it is different? If you have a deceased creature and you create a sentient undead creature from it, is the sentience actually provided by the deceased creature's soul? Like, in this strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0474.html), when Haley and Belkar discover that Roy's corpse is missing and Haley frets about what kind of undead creature he might have been turned into, the mummy, shadow, and vampire she imagines all seem to be very much like Roy -- especially the vampire, who is "sorry" for killing the hobgoblin cleric that created him, and is "horribly conflicted about needing to kill sentient beings." If Roy really had been vampirized, would his soul have been in that vampire's body, or would it just be a soulless vampire that looked and acted sorta like Roy used to?

And of course the floating dragon head (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0639.html) seems to indicate that the dragon's soul is animating it, since she says she was just with her son and her husband, and EvilVaarsuvius® tells her she will see her family again soon.

So ... are the souls of the dead guys that get turned into sentient undead safely off in the afterlife, or are they forcibly inserted into the newly-created undead monstrosity and thus required to change their alignment to whatever the undead creature's alignment is? That seems unspeakably horrific.


You can certainly trap the soul of someone who's died; it's one of Xykon's specialties.

Well, yeah ... (I'm spoilering this next line just in case there are people reading who haven't read both of the extra books)

We've seen him do it to two people so far, in Start of Darkness.

But from what I can see from reading on d20srd.org (http://www.d20srd.org), that requires casting either Trap the Soul (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/trapthesoul.htm), which takes a living creature and stuffs its body and soul into a gem, or Soul Bind (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/soulbind.htm), which is what Xykon uses, which draws the soul from a newly killed body and stores it in a black sapphire, and the victim cannot have been dead for more than 1 round per caster level.

It appears that EvilVaarsuvius® had a pretty astronomical caster level, so the Soul Bind spell certainly had plenty of time to work, but that wasn't the spell EvilVaarsuvius® used. I mean, I'm sure artistic license is probably the reason, but it sure sounds like EvilVaarsuvius® forced that black dragon's soul to come back to her head to witness his familicide. And I thought that wasn't possible unless you did a Trap the Soul or Soul Bind spell before the soul had a chance to go to the afterlife...

[chorpler]

1)All he needs is a body he doesn't neccesarily have to have been the person to kill them.

Well, actually that's what I meant, not necessarily that he would have had to kill them himself. But it seemed, from reading the source material for heucuvas and death knights at least, that the free-willed skeletal undead creatures he created had some specific requirements; a huecuva, for instance, is supposed to be a fallen cleric who, as a result of having fallen, now has a burning hatred of all that's good and pure (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0453.html).

So did Redcloak actually have to find human corpses that fit those requirements, or is there a way to just conjure up those super-powerful undead creatures?

Or is this another case of "It wouldn't technically be possible in an actual game of D&D, but it makes for such a cool plot twist that it's house-ruled in as far as the OOTSiverse is concerned"?

[Sanguine]

Well, actually that's what I meant, not necessarily that he would have had to kill them himself. But it seemed, from reading the source material for heucuvas and death knights at least, that the free-willed skeletal undead creatures he created had some specific requirements; a huecuva, for instance, is supposed to be a fallen cleric who, as a result of having fallen, now has a burning hatred of all that's good and pure (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0453.html).

So did Redcloak actually have to find human corpses that fit those requirements, or is there a way to just conjure up those super-powerful undead creatures?

Or is this another case of "It wouldn't technically be possible in an actual game of D&D, but it makes for such a cool plot twist that it's house-ruled in as far as the OOTSiverse is concerned"?

Specific beats general. Having not read the actual wording I can't be sure but from your post I would say yes it would need to fit the requirements but a fallen cleric isn't that hard to find, especially since there is no age limit for creating undead.

Edit:In other words it was probably hand waved as it wouldn't be easy it but it wouldn't really be hard either and there was plenty of off screen time for it to happen.

[chorpler]

Specific beats general. Having not read the actual wording I can't be sure but from your post I would say yes it would need to fit the requirements but a fallen cleric isn't that hard to find, especially since there is no age limit for creating undead.

Edit:In other words it was probably hand waved as it wouldn't be easy it but it wouldn't really be hard either and there was plenty of off screen time for it to happen.

OK, that makes sense. Interesting about there being no age limit for creating undead -- does that mean you could find an ancient corpse, rotted away to almost dust, and still create an undead creature from it? Or does it have to be sturdy enough to walk around and hold together?

[Sanguine]

OK, that makes sense. Interesting about there being no age limit for creating undead -- does that mean you could find an ancient corpse, rotted away to almost dust, and still create an undead creature from it? Or does it have to be sturdy enough to walk around and hold together?

The corpse has to be mostly intact(or at least the skeletal structure in the case of bones undead) for you to be able to animate it.

[KillianHawkeye]

If you have a deceased creature and you create a sentient undead creature from it, is the sentience actually provided by the deceased creature's soul?

Most forms of sentient undead creatures will at the very least retain all of the original creature's living memories. They also usually lack a soul, what with being soulless monstrosities and all. As far as that goes, it's probably just artistic license on Rich's part.

Of course, I suppose it's possible that Haerta, being an epic level evil Necromancer, could have developed her own version of create greater undead that specifically calls back the creature's departed soul and binds it to their former body. Y'know, just because turning the decayed corpse of a once-living creature into a vile mockery of life just isn't evil enough. :smallwink::smallamused:

[Optimystik]

1) Redcloak himself states that he just found 3 human skeletons and some blue robes. That's all he really needed (well, that and a boatload of xp.) Committing any actual murders would not have been necessary - animation depends on the condition of the bones, which gives him a much longer window than raising them would.

2) This is another area where Rich has diverted from the RAW for the sake of good storytelling. While it is possible to have bound Mama's departing soul in her head and then animated it, V by RAW would have had to cast two spells to do so, not just one (and not a core spell, at that.) We know that souls can be bound to Mama since that's what she planned to do to V's children (irony?), so V doing that to her isn't much of a stretch. I would further think that a third spell might have been needed to allow her bound soul to speak through the animated head.

Note that this is all easily handwaved by Haerta's necromantic expertise and sadism.

[Zevox]

2. The dragon's head that Vaarsuvius brought back to life by doing "Create Greater Undead" so she could watch Vaarsuvius destroy her entire extended family. Was that the actual dragon's soul embodied in her head there? It seems like it must really have her soul in it, since she said "What--? Where am I? I was with my son and husband..." But I thought you couldn't bring a soul back without its consent.
It is important to note that this is a house-ruled use of "Create Greater Undead" anyway. Normally, that spell can only be used to create a few types of undead based on your level: Shadows, Wraiths, Spectres, and Devourers. The former three are all incorporeal, at least somewhat ghost-like beings that drain the strength/constitution/life (respectively) out of creatures they touch. The last is a powerful, intelligent undead normally found on the Ethereal or Astral Planes. For V to create a zombie-like creature with that spell is entirely a house-rule or artistic license.

However, all of those undead, being intelligent (and three of them being spirits), do indeed contain the soul of the being they were animated from, albeit twisted by the magic that animated them. Intelligent Undead in D&D by default are Undead who retain the soul they had in life, either in a twisted form such as those, or as it was when they were alive (Liches and Vampires being two that are like that, as is, apparently, the Dragon-head-zombie-thing V made). Undead without a soul are mindless, such as skeletons or zombies, and are just the body of the dead re-animated via negative energy. And as others noted, the "consent" matter is only for resurrection - the creation of undead is rarely done with the consent of the individual being turned into an undead. Only spellcasters who deliberately become Liches or perhaps the rare individual who tries to become a different sort of intelligent undead, like a Vampire or Mummy, actually become an Undead willingly.

Zevox

[Herald Alberich]

Normally, that spell can only be used to create a few types of undead based on your level: Shadows, Wraiths, Spectres, and Devourers.

Only spellcasters who deliberately become Liches or perhaps the rare individual who tries to become a different sort of intelligent undead, like a Vampire or Mummy, actually become an Undead willingly.

So, is it possible (as Haley speculates (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0474.html)) to create those three undead using a dead body? Vampires and Liches are both normally created (by other vampires, or by the future lich himself) out of living beings, yes? This could probably be excused as Haley not knowing how necromancy works, especially since it was for the sake of a few punny lines.

[Optimystik]

So, is it possible (as Haley speculates (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0474.html)) to create those three undead using a dead body? Vampires and Liches are both normally created (by other vampires, or by the future lich himself) out of living beings, yes? This could probably be excused as Haley not knowing how necromancy works, especially since it was for the sake of a few punny lines.

Mummies, yes; Shadows and Vampires are typically created by other shadows and vampires. There are always exceptions, of course. (Example: Cleric Quintet, Cadderly's friend Kierkan Rufo becomes a vampire after chugging down a bottle containing Talona's Chaos Curse. He then goes on to create several lesser vampires from the Edificant Library clerics, including a Sune priestess and several followers of Deneir.)

[Zevox]

So, is it possible (as Haley speculates (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0474.html)) to create those three undead using a dead body? Vampires and Liches are both normally created (by other vampires, or by the future lich himself) out of living beings, yes? This could probably be excused as Haley not knowing how necromancy works, especially since it was for the sake of a few punny lines.
One thing to add to Optimystik's post: the spell Create Greater Undead can indeed create Shadows out of a dead body. Otherwise, he's right - Mummies would be created from a dead body, Vampires normally only come from other Vampires biting and killing a living victim, though there are probably exceptions besides just in novels.

And since you mentioned them, Liches are, as far as I know, always created out of living creatures voluntarily undergoing the ritual to become one.

Zevox

[hamishspence]

For V to create a zombie-like creature with that spell is entirely a house-rule or artistic license.


Only if you are assuming core. Numerous non-core monsters exist (in books such as BoVD) and several say "Can be created using the create undead spell" or "Can be created using the create greater undead spell"

Among these is the Corpse Creature (BoVD), which retains the full intelligence and powers of the living creature, and looks like a zombie.

So, it doesn't require a houserule, if you are using books outside of core (and BoVD is seen in-strip).

[Jalor]

Also, the Eye of Fear and Flame is from BoVD. She created a Corpse Creature of the dragon's head.