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Mordaenor
2010-11-19, 02:28 PM
Hey all. Some I'm cooking up a campaign idea that involves the Undead taking over. Different from a Zombie style story, in that there is still a thinking intelligence at work. Liches and Vampires raise an army of undead that conquers the Known World (I'm leaving open the possibility of foreign lands still ruled by the living.) So, assuming that the Undead don't kill EVERYONE, what would the undead use the living for? I'd appreciate any creative ideas to help me flesh out this concept.

sonofzeal
2010-11-19, 02:30 PM
Undead don't get tired and living do, so slave labour's probably out (unless they're just in it for the power tripping). Skilled trade, maybe? Commerce with non-undead nations? Maybe they just don't bother with them at all?

Depends on your world, really.

Archpaladin Zousha
2010-11-19, 02:31 PM
I think the general agreement is that when undead are in a position of power, they either use the humans as food or they turn the humans into undead themselves.

Choco
2010-11-19, 02:34 PM
I would say breed them for food and reproduction. Mostly reproduction though, since undead don't need to eat. Let them grow to young adult age, then kill em and raise em as undead, have a feast if they are to become skeletons, etc.

Tyndmyr
2010-11-19, 02:43 PM
I would say breed them for food and reproduction. Mostly reproduction though, since undead don't need to eat. Let them grow to young adult age, then kill em and raise em as undead, have a feast if they are to become skeletons, etc.

This. Most undead don't breed, in most myths. So, when the undead win, humanoids are cattle.

Plus, there's exotic food sources for vampires. Perhaps the taste of half-dragon elves is a delectable, highly costly one?

Eldan
2010-11-19, 02:45 PM
It depends a lot on the undead in question.

You specified a) vampires and b) liches.

Vampires, by the rules of D&D, don't actually need to drink blood. That's silly. So, they need humans as livestock. Which means most humans work to sustain other humans, there's just vampires in place of a normal upper class who, instead of eating human food, eat humans. Particularly gifted humans may be vampirized or turned into spawn (they make good soldiers without being that much of a threat to a true vamp).

Liches on the other hand don't really need humans, at all. They are, by definition, high-level casters, most likely super-powerful wizards. They don't need any goods, and if they did, they could conjure them into being. I see no point for them having humans, save perhaps for experimentation, entertainment or other sick purposes.

Ravens_cry
2010-11-19, 02:49 PM
Well, Vampires still need to feed, so any of them would need food.
As well, an immortal Lich or Vampires life is pretty precious when you have all eternity to consider, and even a wizard generally can't be everywhere at once, so they need underlings in-between their intelligence and that of your average ghoul, much less zombies and skeletons.

Any good conqueror knows you want to insert yourself into the existing power structure, just make sure they know that if anyone wants to start anything they will be crushed like an overripe grape. And that means that farms would still needed to exist to feed your food.
Just like servents, having a large retinue of mortals would be a show of wealth to Vampire noble.

Liches don't need the food, but they can't be minding the zombies and skelies all the time when they could be undertaking arcane research in mythic lore,a much more worthy use of their time.

mucat
2010-11-19, 02:58 PM
If the undead are intelligent and fee-willed, the answer is "whatever they choose". As mentioned above, if the undead want to perpetuate their society there needs to be a baseline living population to reproduce and provide new potential undead converts. They might be forcibly converted after they reach a certain age, might be allowed to live out their natural lives (possibly becoming undead at the end), or undeath might be an elite status to be "earned" by especially capable people.

A more capable mortal will become a more capable undead (since they keep their existing and abilities, modified by the new template) so it might be in the interest of the undead to keep a large population of living beings around and choose only the most talented for "promotion," rather than letting every random schmuck join their society. This could lead to a brutally hierarchical system in which living mortals are evaluated at an early age, and marked either as potential converts, who are given all the best education and training to prepare them for their eventual status, or as peons who will eke out a miserable existence as the lowest rank of society.

Of course, depending on whether undeath automatically turns a creature evil in your world, they might eventually form a more benign society where the distinction between undead and living carries no great importance; undeath is simply a "medical procedure" people undergo when their mortal bodies begin to fail them.

Finally, there could also be certain skills that the living are simply better at. Diplomacy to non-undead nations is an obvious one, but it might turn out that living people are better artists or musicians (creating works that the undead can appreciate and value), better at adapting to the unexpected (since undead are often portrayed as set in their ways and "stuck in the past"). There might be some forms of magic which simply can't be practiced by anyone without a life force. So it might turn out that the most successful undead nations not only keep a living population for reproduction, but also have an "elite" which is a mixture of undead (valued for their vast experience, cold rationality, and grasp of the big picture) and living (valued for their adaptability, quick thinking, and unexpected brilliant leaps of intuition.)

Mordaenor
2010-11-19, 03:02 PM
It depends a lot on the undead in question.

You specified a) vampires and b) liches.


Yeah I specified them as obvious examples of self-willed intelligent undead who could lead armies. Not neccesarily limited to them though.

Thanks for the help everyone. My first thought was slave labor, but I kept hitting the wall of "slave labor to do what?" This gives me a few ideas to work with.

Tyndmyr
2010-11-19, 03:03 PM
There's also the lich loved feat. Yay?

If it's necrophilia for us, what do the undead call it?

Coidzor
2010-11-19, 03:05 PM
There's also the lich loved feat. Yay?

If it's necrophilia for us, what do the undead call it?

I think Xykon mentioned biophiles or something.

AmberVael
2010-11-19, 03:08 PM
Undead don't get tired and living do, so slave labour's probably out (unless they're just in it for the power tripping).

Anything is easier when you're not the one doing it. If you're in control, and you have other people to do things for you... heck, it doesn't matter if you're better at it if they can do it and you don't want to.

Ask yourself- assuming you're willing to conquer and enslave people (which seems to be a premise in this thought exercise) - if you could accomplish the same amount of work with the options: 1) Do all the work yourself, or 2) Delegate it to some slaves and go have a party, which would you do? Would it really matter that you don't get tired and your slaves do?

Now, if you could choose between slaves that tire and slaves that don't tire, things change a bit, but I'm under the impression that the undead in general are ruling, not just a few elect.

Callista
2010-11-19, 03:47 PM
I think Xykon mentioned biophiles or something."Biophiliacs".

Are we talking evil undead here, or not? I know that in core, they're all evil, but there's also the possibility of non-evil undead societies; you just have to tweak the flavor a little. Animating Grandma as a skeleton after she dies could mean long-term free labor for the farm after you pay for the onyx and the spell; and if her soul isn't bound to the skeleton and the skeleton only stands there if uncontrolled, it isn't even evil. All you have to do to change undead from "evil" to merely "creepy" is to remove that "Always Evil" descriptor and have them act more like Ghosts, who keep the alignment they had in life. It would be an interesting society where the dead are either animated and mindless, with their souls in the afterlife, or else in the forms of everything from ghuls to liches and as sentient as they always were. Maybe the upper class would have the money to be brought back as undead, and the lower classes would only be able to afford to animate their dead relatives to help on the farm. It might lead to a very sharp divide between the classes, and a lot of stagnation because the most powerful people would all be ancient undead.

Coidzor
2010-11-19, 03:50 PM
Anything is easier when you're not the one doing it. If you're in control, and you have other people to do things for you... heck, it doesn't matter if you're better at it if they can do it and you don't want to.

Ask yourself- assuming you're willing to conquer and enslave people (which seems to be a premise in this thought exercise) - if you could accomplish the same amount of work with the options: 1) Do all the work yourself, or 2) Delegate it to some slaves and go have a party, which would you do? Would it really matter that you don't get tired and your slaves do?

Now, if you could choose between slaves that tire and slaves that don't tire, things change a bit, but I'm under the impression that the undead in general are ruling, not just a few elect.

Well, skeletons still aren't ruling anything unless someone wants to waste XP awakening them all.

Urpriest
2010-11-19, 03:53 PM
China Mieville's New Crobuzon setting has an undead-ruled nation with a rather interesting social structure. Humans, while low-ranking, are actually fairly well protected. Vampires are viewed as junkies, and beg for human blood on the street. Humans are essentially viewed as a middle class who can, via hard work and loyalty, work their way to be transformed into an undead after death. Think Flatland: very Victorian and social structure oriented.

AmberVael
2010-11-19, 03:56 PM
Well, skeletons still aren't ruling anything unless someone wants to waste XP awakening them all.

Yeah, but skeletons will lose out due to their lack of intelligence and need for constant oversight. While a human slave might be rebellious, at least they have the intelligence to switch from one task to another.

Maybe that could be it? Instead of wasting time awakening skeletons or hiring undead overseers, undead could dominate humans and have them be overseers for the mundane work of unintelligent undead. You get the efficiency of laborers that never tire, with the intelligence of an overseer, with very little risk involved. Any rebellion would be quickly stifled, because ultimately you control your undead slaves, not the human, and thus there would only be a few human slaves to rebel, so you'd be able to overpower them if they tried to do anything.

Aotrs Commander
2010-11-19, 04:12 PM
There's also the lich loved feat. Yay?

If it's necrophilia for us, what do the undead call it?

We call it "asking for a smack to the face with the heavy end of a rocket launcher." Or "having a sudden desire to have one's soul torn bodily out and spirit-bound into a pebble, in infinite screaming pain and then dropped into a random location in intergalactic space/time."

If there's one thing I hate more than Vampires and Shi'Ar, it's THAT feat. I swear, when I find the guy who came up with THAT feat, I'm going to give them full demonstration as to why you. Don't. F- ...rag with an Epic Lich with access to high-tech resources!

(Incidently, this is what Undead do with the living, keep them in line and respectful while they serve a useful purpose, and then expunge the little buggers when their usefulness expires. But then again, no point in being Evil if you can't oppress somebody. Though having all the Vampires die slow and agonising deaths of starvation and madness is nearly worth it for that fact alone.)

Zen Monkey
2010-11-19, 04:19 PM
Vampires need daytime guardians, to defend them from the plots of other undead. A lot of lower level undead can stand sunlight but aren't strong. Wraiths and other non-corporeals can't deal with daylight. Higher level undead are potential threats and competitors. A well-balanced PC squad would be a good retinue to have, and if you keep them stocked with good equipment from your influence/wealth/etc maybe it will keep them from turning on you and killing their golden goose.

Sipex
2010-11-19, 04:24 PM
You can also run the PCs as part of the last of humanity. Maybe have a hidden 'living' city that the PCs learn about.

Randel
2010-11-19, 06:07 PM
Also, the Brain in a Jar is a type of undead with psychic powers. The Brains tend to operate by mentally dominating people becase they don't have bodies themselves (though they can fly). Maybe the Brains act as a sort of manager who dominates various humans to get them to work.

Liches create the Brains and basically have them handle the job of dominating humans. The Brains can't fight the liches so if they try to rebel or don't do their job then the liches crush them. Or the Brains could be tools of the Liches who spend their time helping with spell research or other brainy things.

The Liches and Brains set up public schools and universities where humans go to learn and study... those who do good get jobs as mages to help the undead and eventually get turned into Brains in jars (or if they are really lucky then some other intelligent undead). Other soldiers and artists might come out of the schools if their talents lie elsewhere.

Those who don't do well or break the rules either get turned into zombies or other mindless undead, get mentally dominated or reduced to slave labor, get used in experiments, get used as food, or otherwise messed up.

Crime would likely be low due to the undead always having demand for fresh blood or test subjects. Anyone who steps out of line or cuauses problems gets volunteered for the job, while otherwise they just grab members of the lowest class.

Expect alot of bread and circuses (everyone gets plenty of food and beer... if there isn't enogh to go around then its soylent green for dinner until there is enough food for everyone) to keep the mortals doctile enough to avoid causing trouble (unless the undead like it when troublemakers liven things up).

The Glyphstone
2010-11-19, 06:11 PM
China Mieville's New Crobuzon setting has an undead-ruled nation with a rather interesting social structure. Humans, while low-ranking, are actually fairly well protected. Vampires are viewed as junkies, and beg for human blood on the street. Humans are essentially viewed as a middle class who can, via hard work and loyalty, work their way to be transformed into an undead after death. Think Flatland: very Victorian and social structure oriented.

Where can I find more info on this setting? It sounds very much like one of the nations in my own homebrew world (but without vampires, and mummies at the top of the social structure), and could be excellent inspiration.

MachFarcon
2010-11-19, 06:28 PM
Quick question: How far down the command chain does the intelligence reach?

Urpriest
2010-11-19, 06:37 PM
Where can I find more info on this setting? It sounds very much like one of the nations in my own homebrew world (but without vampires, and mummies at the top of the social structure), and could be excellent inspiration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas-Lag

That's the world itself. It's not a game setting (though there was a Dragon that statted up some of its denizens), it's the setting for some novels (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council) and a short story. Still could be fun inspiration, though the undead area doesn't get too much detail. It's most relevant to the Scar because one of the villains/heroes is a vampire.

Newbieshoes
2010-11-19, 07:09 PM
More Undead.

Jack_Simth
2010-11-19, 07:40 PM
Vampires, by the rules of D&D, don't actually need to drink blood.
In Core, vampires don't need to drink blood, ghouls don't need to eat the flesh of the living, and so on. If Libris Mortis is in play, they do. Regularly.

That's silly. So, they need humans as livestock. Which means most humans work to sustain other humans, there's just vampires in place of a normal upper class who, instead of eating human food, eat humans. Particularly gifted humans may be vampirized or turned into spawn (they make good soldiers without being that much of a threat to a true vamp).I once DM'd, and had a town where the top ruler was vampire. She was a 'farmer'. Humans were *mostly* left to their own devices. She had a few spawn, and she controlled their feeding. Her goal was a plentiful food supply, and she built the laws of the land (and the laws for her spawn feeding) around that.

The public bit (easy to find out, as everyone knew about it) was that tax men left girls who were nursing, or obviously pregnant, alone at tax time. Marriage wasn't required, socially speaking, to have kids. Otherwise, laws were mostly normal. This was to encourage breeding among the living.

The ruler's spawn (and regular vampires ... not that she had any on-screen, as the party was relatively low-level at the time) weren't permitted to hunt the girls. They were only permitted to hunt the menfolk (less impact on reproduction that way - same reason a herder will kill bulls over cows: one bull can service ten cows, no problem). And the vampire queen wanted to encourage breeding, so she had a scoring system for the menfolk, and had her spawn keep tallies on them. When it was time for eating someone, the spawn were to avoid those with high scores, and go after those with very low scores - with the scoring system based around breeding, so that there would be lots of humans to eat.

Between the two (clear, concrete, money reasons why it's good to have lots & lots of kids, and men being a lower portion of the population), I decided that this lead to unattached women being a bit... forward ... especially as tax-season approached. Creeped the players out rather heavily (they didn't know *why* the women were being so forward, and they kept thinking 'succubi' ... until after they'd been attacked in their private rooms and captured one of the two vampire spawn who had been after their blood - the other got away after drinking just a little of one PC's blood).

Really, though, just do it as a thought-experiment. Assign goals to those in power, as to *why* they'd want a bunch of living people around, and go from there.

Foryn Gilnith
2010-11-19, 08:04 PM
""Companions, the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks -- those who write new values on new tablets. Companions, the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest..."

Not really related to anything, but it popped into my mind while thinking about liches. What does the ruling class of liches seek? They don't need corpse material or cattle or slaves. They need people like them - skilled in magic, innovative, capable of research partnership. That is what they need from the unwashed masses. And, incidentally, why they need to keep them alive, because converting a human to a lich is easier than converting a necropolitan to a lich, and the human aging process creates some useful mental changes.

JellyPooga
2010-11-19, 09:14 PM
According to Libris Mortis, the Undead have a tendency to get a bit hidebound; stuck in a rut of traditional methods and routine tasks. whilst they don't tire and could technically provide endless labour, they suffer when it comes to creativity (game mechanic stats aside) and invention. In order for an Undead dominated society to flourish it would need the living to provide fresh ideas and impetus to forge ahead into the modern world. Left to themselves, a nation of undead would quite literally stagnate and would probable be swiftly dominated by their more progressive neighbours.

Mordaenor
2010-11-20, 09:28 AM
Thank you to everyone for you input. I have some ideas for "covert" reasons that the Undead still needed the Living, but I needed some more obvious ones. This has helped tremendously to give me new directions to go with this concept.

hamishspence
2010-11-20, 09:41 AM
Introduce laws that ensure the living fail all exams.

After all "The Dead shall not suffer the living to pass"

:smallamused:

FelixG
2010-11-20, 09:48 AM
A few reasons could be:

-To replenish the ranks, some undead are going to get destroyed in accidents, if there is nothing to build from its a slow inevitable decline to nothing

-Status, undead may never tire but why kill the living off when you can make them work to show you are better?

-Food, some undead like to eat, even if they don't need to, I think the picture of the ghoul shows it eating?

WinceRind
2010-11-20, 10:14 AM
I bet the undead would use 'em as pets.

Why? Because it's awesome.

Real undead shouldn't be doing any eating, they won't need slave labour because there would be plenty undead around with nothing to do on their hands and it's not like there would be much an undead society would need. Food? Probably out, and that's one massive industry for a medieval-level society.

So, yeah, status image and maybe slave labour but only for the sake of the power trip. Undead are kinda superior in all possible ways, it's just like robotic overlords.