What are undead, and what was Tsukiko's sexual orientation? [Archive]

Xzenu

2012-02-09, 05:46 AM

What are the undead, really?

Redcloak has referred to them as bits of skin and bone glued together by dark energy. Tsukiko has referred to them as negative energy lifeforms, the opposite of positive energy lifeforms such as humans.

These statements are compatible with each other, and are probably both true.

Redcloak has referred to them as being nothing more than tools. Tsukiko has referred to them as being loving and caring, although misunderstood.

These statements are not compatible with each other, and are probably both wrong. Both characters are deranged, and use their supernatural abilities to force reality to conform to their prejudices: Redcloak use his Command Undead ability to force the wights to behave as mere tools, while Tsukiko use similar abilities to force them behave as if they were loving and caring.

So, what are undead? Obviously they can have opinions and wishes of their own... or can they? Is a lich like Xykon capable to developing new true motivations, or is he simply a broken record carrying out the true motivations he had while alive?

Also, Xykon seem incapable of positive emotions such as caring and love. Is this true for all undead in this setting?

As for Tsukiko's sexual orientation, she's certainly not a necrophiliac: Those love the dead, not the undead. Very different things. Tsukiko has never been shown or even implied to be attracted to non-animated flesh or bone, her attraction is to negative energy lifeforms.

So, what is her true sexual orientation? It might be an extreme case of xenophilia or an extreme case of sexual narcissism.

If Xenophilia, love of that which is different from oneself, she has simply fixated herself on the most exotic and alien form of life/existence she could find.

If narcissism, love of oneself, her love for the undead is simply about her ability to control them and make them be whatever she want them to be.

My guess is xenophilia: If it was narcissism, why not take the easy route and stick to spells like Dominate Person?

The Succubus

2012-02-09, 05:53 AM

Oh lord. So now that alignments have been done to death, we're now going to have a thread for every single character's sexual orientation? :smallsigh:

I'm pretty sure that when someone's sexual prefences contain the word "Necro", any further speculation is a really, really bad idea.

Killer Angel

2012-02-09, 05:58 AM

So, what is her true sexual orientation?

She's sexually attracted by undead. There's really the need to find a word to define it?

pffh

2012-02-09, 06:09 AM

immortuiphilia?

Lord Bingo

2012-02-09, 06:21 AM

My God, man!

The undead are per definition dead! You figure out the rest...

Lord Bingo

2012-02-09, 06:32 AM

-Damn. Double post-

Omergideon

2012-02-09, 06:35 AM

Lets see........do we have a word for people who have "relations" with corpses
...
...
...
A Necro based word...........
Maybe using the greek Phillia...........
Necro.......phillia............
hmmmm

Maybe someone else can solve this conundrum for me.

I know the idea it is necrophillia is dismissed by the op, but really no other term applies for the situation.

As for which term is right, I lean towards Redcloaks myself. If I could borrow a phrase said by the OP. "Redcloak use his Command Undead ability to force the wights to behave as mere tools, while Tsukiko use similar abilities to force them behave as if they were loving and caring".

Force them to behave as though they were loving and caring. That is the key phrase. Left to their own devices the undead we see in the comic (apart from a tiny number of intelligent ones) are all just simple tools. They are like robots, but ones made of flesh. They do not seem to exhibit any desires or wishes beyond doing what their creator tells them. To get them to act in any way like they are more than organic robots needs force.

Xykon seems to be a special case, and certainly I can accept there being exceptions to the automaton idea of the undead. But for most that is all they are.

Dr. Gamera

2012-02-09, 06:43 AM

Lets see........do we have a word for people who have "relations" with corpses

Dead is to necrophiliac as undead is to unnecrophiliac.

Perhaps you would prefer necromantophiliac.

Xzenu

2012-02-09, 07:03 AM

Please don't get too caught up in terminology.

What interest me here is the questions of philosophy and psychology. Words and labels are a side effect of that, not the main point.

I'm sure most of us can agree that Xykon doesn't have a healthy human mind and that Tsukiko was deranged. The question i'm trying to adress is their deeper natures.

Can (free-willed) undead be capable of love? And what was the psychological nature of Tsukiko's love for them?

(As for getting stuck in the labels: Please note that "dead", "undead" and "necromancer" are three separate concepts. The word necrophilia is about loving the actually dead, not about loving the undead or about loving the necromancers - in spite of those labels having dead and necro in them.)

Michaeler

2012-02-09, 07:16 AM

I'm inclined to say that Tsukiko was asexual. She romanticised the undead into something perfect for a pure, honest love without any of the base passions and related icky squelching noises that interfere in human relationships.

Tulya

2012-02-09, 07:28 AM

To move away from the baggage and inappropriateness for a family forum that necrophilia has, try considering robots in a scifi setting. Exclusive attraction to mindless robots would be a fetish. Attraction to robots who possess sentience would not, unless it's an exclusive attraction due to their robotic state.

So, we'll say Tsukiko is a roboticist who creates and imbues robots with sentience and personality. Also automatically included in every program is a directive for the robots to obey their creator.

Tsukiko hinted in her discussion with the MitD that she'd had crappy experience with humans. Humans are liars, cheaters, and scum. What exactly they did to hurt her is irrelevant. So Tsukiko is put off of humans.
Now, Tsukiko developed the misunderstanding, somewhere along the lines, that robots are inherently perfect. Therefore, they have none of the failings of humanity in them, and a sentient robot behaves in the most perfect manner, and is capable of the love that humans are incapable of. Accordingly, Tsukiko fixates on robots and sees them as a source of warmth and love. Because the robots must obey the directives of their creator, they automatically emulate the traits that Tsukiko indirectly wills.

Tsukiko's robots are sentient, but the programming that grants them sentience is limited: It exists to enable them to make optimal decisions while following the directives of their creator. Thus, they are incapable of the reality of love, as emotions were not within the scope of their programming. Nevertheless, their capacity to retain and follow orders allows them to perform outward expressions associated with love.

What Tsukiko loves are imaginary friends projected on to the robots, with the programming lending significantly greater apparent reality to those imagining.

Xykon could be another story, were he ever actually capable of love. She might have had a happy ending with a Baelnorn, I suppose?

Edit:

I'm inclined to say that Tsukiko was asexual. She romanticised the undead into something perfect for a pure, honest love without any of the base passions and related icky squelching noises that interfere in human relationships.

Her misunderstanding about 'doing both' and mention of the female crypt thing suggests that might not be the case.

Edited edit: I don't think there's any official writing that actually explores the nature of the intelligence of Wights, though. They may well have the full spectrum of human emotion available to them, but that isn't really a common assumption. The Wights of Order of the Stick don't seem to, given the strips they've shown up in.

factotum

2012-02-09, 08:12 AM

Edited edit: I don't think there's any official writing that actually explores the nature of the intelligence of Wights, though. They may well have the full spectrum of human emotion available to them, but that isn't really a common assumption. The Wights of Order of the Stick don't seem to, given the strips they've shown up in.

Wights are certainly intelligent undead--SRD lists their INT score as 11, as opposed to mindless undead like Skeletons who get 0. However, I think Redcloak is closer to the truth than Tsukiko here; lower-level intelligent undead like Wights are animated by some dark spirit from the nether regions, not by the original soul the body had when it was alive, and thus you can't really project human emotions onto them.

For higher level undead we only really have Xykon as an example. We know he can feel anger, and can also gain pleasure from watching people die, but whether he carried over any of the other emotions he had in life is unknown right now.

Tulya

2012-02-09, 08:29 AM

Wights are certainly intelligent undead--SRD lists their INT score as 11, as opposed to mindless undead like Skeletons who get 0.

By nature, I meant the full scope of what that score confers. The vast majority of mundane creatures of the animal type are not sapient (there might be an exception identified and accepted in the future) but we do know that many are wired to experience varying degrees of attachment. Others don't.

Xapi

2012-02-09, 08:30 AM

Wights are certainly intelligent undead--SRD lists their INT score as 11, as opposed to mindless undead like Skeletons who get 0. However, I think Redcloak is closer to the truth than Tsukiko here; lower-level intelligent undead like Wights are animated by some dark spirit from the nether regions, not by the original soul the body had when it was alive, and thus you can't really project human emotions onto them.

For higher level undead we only really have Xykon as an example. We know he can feel anger, and can also gain pleasure from watching people die, but whether he carried over any of the other emotions he had in life is unknown right now.

Xykon has his soul, so it's a safe bet he is as able to have emotions as he was before undying. That is to say, he is quite unable to have emotions other than amusement for the suffering of others.

Xzenu

2012-02-09, 08:44 AM

MReav

2012-02-09, 08:49 AM

Xykon has his soul, so it's a safe bet he is as able to have emotions as he was before undying. That is to say, he is quite unable to have emotions other than amusement for the suffering of others.

SOD Spoiler:
And love of coffee. The loss of his ability to taste was what redefined the original power dynamic of seeming partnership to Redcloak being (or at least acting like) Xykon's bitch.

Palthera

2012-02-09, 08:50 AM

I'd hate to bring some sort of pseudo-scientific logic into this, but for real emotions, you need glands more than a soul. Xykon's only real pleasure is in watching things die or experience pain or else he gets bored - that would be the nature of the negative energy that powers him. Before he was undead he [SoD Spoiler]
was at least able to have surface friendships beyond business. Namely, the Wizard Ydranna (I think) who he wished luck in her new career when he wandered off to do some of his own evil.
Plus the coffee enjoyment, it's not a deep emotion but it was something he really missed after his undeath when he couldn't experience it any more.

Tulya

2012-02-09, 09:19 AM

Pleasure is still an emotion. Anger, regret, remorse, sadness are all emotions as well. (You can't 'miss' something if you feel nothing for it.) But beyond that, why expect that magic is sufficient to emulate a neural network and sense organs, but insufficient to provide for anything else? (Never mind that emotion is part of our neural network.)
In any event, undead like the Lich and Baelnorn retain all of the memories and personality they had in life.

Liches are a bad example to look at for anything beyond base emotions, though. Of the characters who seek to become liches, the vast majority are evil, and the ritual to become one is often hinted at being vile and terrible. (The only consistent mechanical requirements are gold and XP, though.)

There are Good undead and undead-like creatures, although they're far rarer. They typically continue to exist to protect, preserve, and/or carry out some noble quest from beyond the grave. Undead like the Baelnorn aren't spiritually bound to one specific task like the Martyr Ghosts of the Sapphire Guard.

pendell

2012-02-09, 09:24 AM

Hmm... what are the undead when left to themselves?

Isn't it true that, left to themselves, the undead are dead?

The key point about the undead is that their time in the 'cycle of life', as the druids put it, is supposed to be over. But instead they've been dragged back by dark magic. In the case of a zombie, it's at the bidding of another to carry out tasks. In the case of a lich or vampire, it can be a self-made curse cast to stick around beyond the normal bounds of life, clinging to existence on this plane long after it should have ended.

So there's not much point to asking 'what are they by themselves' or 'what are they in a state of nature'? They don't exist in a state of nature -- they are literally un-natural , brought into existence and kept there by dark magic. In the case of wights made from Azure City soldiers or resistance fighters, bound into existence against their will to serve a traitor they would have spit on in life.

The fact that these wights serve Tsukiko when the original people they were made from hated her tells us they aren't the original people -- they're a hollow, twisted mockery of same who have no more in common with the originals than the fact they once shared the same body. Maybe there is something of the original still in there, but it is controlled and enslaved by the same dark magic that brought the corpse shambling back.

In such circumstances, probably the most loving thing you could do for a wight would be to destroy it, freeing the captive soul to go to its reward on the outer planes where it belongs, not holding it here a captive to serve whatever necromancer comes along.

If that is true -- and it might not be, I'm speculating -- then it seems to me that Tsukiko is much more deluded than Wrong-eye is. Maybe there's more to the undead than bits of bone and dark magic. Maybe they can exist as free-willed creatures. But I think Wrong-eye is closer to the truth than Tsukiko is. Certainly events in comic lead me to believe he understood the undead better than she did.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Bulldog Psion

2012-02-09, 09:27 AM

My personal interpretation of the questions on top:

1. What are the undead -- a corpse being used as a puppet by dark magic.

2. What is Tsukiko's sexual orientation -- weird, sick, demented, and revolting.

There, that took care of that in a nutshell. :smallbiggrin: My work here is done! :smallwink:

Xapi

2012-02-09, 10:02 AM

sr123

2012-02-09, 01:16 PM

Tsukiko treats her non-sentient wights, etc, as her children. This could be compared to the artist/craftsman who projects a parental-like protective instinct on his/her work.

Then there's Xykon, to whom Tsukiko is clearly attracted. But Xykon has a soul and all that jazz (btw, any bio-emotions are pretty much taken care of by undead-magic; after all, the actual dead have no biology whatsoever yet still maintain emotions).

Greek suggestions:
Any undead: metanecroid; abiomorph?
Soulful undead: necromorph; necranthrope or anthroponecroid (humanoid only)
Undeadedness as a problem or disease of the living thing that should now be a restful dead: necropathy?

I'll let you go from there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greek_and_Latin_roots_in_English). FTR, I think I'll now use the terms "metanecroid" and "necromorph" exclusively - no more of this "un-dead" nonsense.

blazingshadow

2012-02-09, 01:29 PM

i'm posting here if this ever devolves into a discussion about vampire true love

Chronos

2012-02-09, 01:29 PM

Roland Itiative

2012-02-09, 01:49 PM

Most undead are exaclty what Redcloak described: tools made from dark energies and dead bodies, incapable of human emotion. Some undead (like Xykon, ghosts or vampires), on the other hand, are pretty much human(oid) souls who managed to trick death and stay in the world of living, and are thus as capable of human emotion as any living one. So, technically, it was possible for Xykon and Tsukiko to have a romantic affair. The reason why it would never happen is because of Xykon's personality, not because of his undeath. The wights, on the other hand, were always simply dark energy (non-human) spirits bound to dead human bodies. They only "corresponded" to her love because they were bound to obey her.

As for her sexual orientation, she seems to be a mostly heterosexual (there was some joke involving the MitD that implied experimentation with lesbianism) necrophiliac of sorts. In a world where necrophilia takes a whole different meaning by the existence of living dead.

pendell

2012-02-09, 02:22 PM

I'll just point out that ghosts (such as Eugene and Violet) are technically undead, and still capable of something resembling love, or at least lust. Though I suspect that Tsukiko would have had no interest in ghosts.

Check me on this, but it's only on the prime material plane that they manifest as ghosts. The inhabitants of the Celestial Realm are alive in the outer planes, yes? It's only when they come back to the prime material plane that they manifest as ghosts.

Otherwise -- are devils alive? Is a lemure dead? Does a dead lemure become a live devil if it's "promoted"?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

SoC175

2012-02-09, 02:57 PM

A quote from Open Gave (yes it's 4e) about soulless undead such as wights

Creatures such as specters, wights, and wraiths are soulless beings that retain only remnants of the minds they had in life. They can be exceedingly cunning, and some can freely draw upon their living memories. However, these undead have been irrevocably changed by their transformations. Lacking souls, they are perpetually filled with a tormenting hunger for their lost souls, a hunger that can only be sated by devouring living creatures. These undead hate the living in part because they possess souls that the undead lack. Some of these soulless undead are little more intel-ligent than cunning animals, whereas others retain the same intelligence they had in life. In either instance, their minds are far more focused than before. These undead have only two desires: to survive and to devour the living. They have no thoughts, emotions, or plans that do not involve attempting to satisfy these two drives. The most intelligent and strong-willed of these undead can make complex plans, but these plans con-sist of nothing more than ways to insure a continued supply of mortals to feed their hunger. Soulless undead retain memories of their previ-ous loves, passions, and interests, but these are little more than distant remembrances. Even the strongest feelings now have little more than a passing faint significance.

Knight.Anon

2012-02-09, 03:28 PM

I'd say Tsukiko is a necrophiliac. In the real world there no undead so necrophilia would be limited just to the dead. In a magical world that not the case.

In a world where undead exist maybe there would be a new word for that type of thing. Unnecrophiliac doesn't sound right. Necroality? Necroeros? Thanaphilia - if you don't want to be limited by the whole "Necro" thing.?

Insane - Works best for me.

MReav

2012-02-09, 03:30 PM

I'd say Tsukiko is a necrophiliac. In the real world there no undead so necrophilia would be limited just to the dead. In a magical world that not the case.

In a world where undead exist maybe there would be a new word for that type of thing. Unnecrophiliac doesn't sound right. Necroality? Thanaphilia?

Insane - Works best for me.

Given her personality, she is a NecRomantic.

KoboldRevenge

2012-02-09, 03:51 PM

She also does both. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0700.html) :smalltongue:

Also undead are people who undied.

CoffeeIncluded

2012-02-09, 05:14 PM

A quote from Open Gave (yes it's 4e) about soulless undead such as wights

Hm. That quote raises good RP questions? For instance, what would happen if you gave one of them a soul? Or forced them to remember all of their past lives?

veti

2012-02-09, 05:20 PM

If you see the undead as "beyond death", that would be "metanecrophilia".

If you see them as "un dead", that could be "anecrophilia". But that's confusing, because it looks like it means "not necrophiliac", which is definitely not what we're trying to convey.

If you go for the Greek word that translates roughly to "undead" (and using the old transliteration conventions), she would be "brycolaphiliac".

But what interests me more is this question:

Can (free-willed) undead be capable of love?

First, you would have to define "love". As a starting point, I would suggest this definition that I've been mulling over for a few years:

Love is the process by which an intelligent being willingly changes its own nature in order to accommodate another.

(Of course the problem then is to define "nature", but let's gloss over that for now.)

Using this definition, it's obvious that wights (as depicted in OOTS, at least) can't love - even if they are "intelligent", their nature never changes.

But ghosts, vampires, liches - okay, maybe we do need to think about "nature" after all. I think all of these creatures are capable of having habits, idiosyncracies, preferences that are distinctly "theirs", quite apart from their basic "type" characteristics, so they may be said to have a soul of sorts. And I think that makes them capable of "changing their nature" to some extent. So I'm going to plump, with some hesitation, for "yes".

WowWeird

2012-02-09, 08:00 PM

Actually, I'm surprised that nobody took the douchey way out yet.
Allow me :smallbiggrin:

Undead are once-living creatures animated by spiritual or supernatural forces.
Heh. But in all seriousness, while I can't find it in the SRD, I'm almost certain that there are two types of undead- sapient and mindless. The mindless are the zombies, skeletons, and other grunts that make up the bulk of necromancer minions- they are corpses running on negative energy (as Redcloak put it, "nothing but skin and bones and dark energy"). The sapient, however, actually have their souls bound to that skin, bones, and dark energy. While the most famous example would be Xykon, vampires are notable for it too. There are also other kinds, as played with here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0474.html) and played horrifically straight here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0639.html) As shown in D&D, the existence of a physical body has almost no impact on a person's mind because of the RL-unsubstantiated existence of souls. From there, I would guess that Tsukiko actually meant, believed, and lived what she said to the MitD- she was soured on people and made a Miko-style leap to their opposites, the undead. Is that love? God only knows- love is inherently subjective.

thubby

2012-02-10, 12:24 AM

redcloak is in the wrong here. his logic can just as readily be applied to himself or other living creatures as it can to the undead.

ti'esar

2012-02-10, 12:33 AM

I actually find the discussion on the undead fairly interesting, but are we seriously making threads about characters' sexual orientation now?

dps

2012-02-10, 12:45 AM

joe

2012-02-10, 07:44 AM

In the Book of Vile Darkness, there is a feat called "Lichloved" that implies this sort of relationship with undead, and gives you bonuses toward dealings with them (and allows non-intelligent undead to regard you as such).

Though considering Tsukiko was consumed by her own undead (albeit under Redcloak's control at the time) it is difficult to say whether or not she would've actually possessed this feat.

Vinyadan

2012-02-10, 09:30 AM

The tale of Tsukiko as it seems most probable to me:

She always had mental problems, which led her to necrophilia (or, necrophilia always was her mental problem. I am no expert, so I don't know which one comes first). The weirder she got, the more people shunned her. The more people shunned her, the more she felt that the company of the dead was better than that of the living. However, she was aware that they were dead and that she was in no normal situation, and that whatever feeling she felt would not be returned. When she learnt how to cast necromancy spells, she tought that she would be able to get love (and consensual sex). Then things escaladed in her mind, until she came to her ideas about undead superiority.

If this analysis is correct, I'd say that she is a glorified necrophiliac who peruses necromancy for secondary means.

KillianHawkeye

2012-02-10, 10:59 PM

Hm. That quote raises good RP questions? For instance, what would happen if you gave one of them a soul? Or forced them to remember all of their past lives?

They'd move to L.A., start a detective agency, and seek redemption for their past sins by fighting the monster of the week. :smallwink:

Joe the Rat

2012-02-11, 01:36 AM

Undead covers a lot of ground (intelligent or non-, ensouled or non- corporeal or non-), but the commonality is that undead are things that were once alive, and don't have the sense to stop moving. They are unnatural - as in a disruption of the cycle of life and transmigration of souls, or something along those lines.

The evolution of D&D ties Negative Energy into this - dark energies, hates light, energy drain, Heal Harms Zombie, etc. You dwindle down to 0 (dead), and come out the other side. That "negative life" rating is what keeps them moving, in defiance of all laws of nature.

Given her personality, she is a NecRomantic.

Aw, dangit! I wanted to say that.

Phosphate

2012-02-11, 05:44 AM

1. Tsukiko clearly doesn't love the dead, but the undead. Not a necrophiliac.
2. Tsukiko doesn't love ghosts. So it's not an astract wish of hers to "love" undead. So not an asexual.
3. Tsukiko uses spells to control her minions, but if she didn't, they'd leave (I mean, they're intelligent, they know whether they want to or not for her to sleep with them - probably not). So you can say she's a dominatrix.
4. Tsukiko wants Xykon to love her - remember, Xykon is a souled, free willed, undead that cannot be turned or dominated due to his epic saves. Sounds redeeming.

So my personal view is that Tsukiko was just a bisexual with dominatrix tendencies and weird preferences, and you guys are looking too much into it. You can compare her liking only undead to a girl liking only say caucasian males, for instance.

Vinyadan

2012-02-11, 07:01 AM

So my personal view is that Tsukiko was just a bisexual with dominatrix tendencies and weird preferences, and you guys are looking too much into it. You can compare her liking only undead to a girl liking only say caucasian males, for instance.

Tsukiko is not bisexual, if not by accident. In the comic, when the MitD says "since you do both" (meaning, arcane and divine magic), she reacts in a defensive manner, saying that she didn't know a "crypt-thing" to be a woman. So, if she were bisexual, she wouldn't be admitting it.

I find it odd, to say that it's the same thing, only liking caucasian males and only liking the undead, but I suppose that in D&D anything could be true. The Azurites didn't seem to agree, anyway.

martianmister

2012-02-11, 07:15 AM

bisexual

If she is "open" about her other preferences, why would she want to hide her bisexuality? There is no reson for her lying to MitD.

ti'esar

2012-02-11, 08:04 AM

you guys are looking too much into it.

Well, we agree on this much, at least...

Kish

2012-02-11, 09:28 AM

If she is "open" about her other preferences, why would she want to hide her bisexuality? There is no reson for her lying to MitD.
Because she's a homophobe who thinks there's something wrong with a woman being attracted to women, though there's nothing wrong with a living person being attracted to an animated corpse?

You speak as though having "nonstandard" sexual desires automatically made someone open-minded and tolerant. It doesn't.

Phosphate

2012-02-11, 11:01 AM

Umm, actually missed that defensive part, sorry. You're right, she's straight.

What my initial point is is that necrophilia in the real world and love for undead in a fantasy world where undead exist are miles and miles from being even remotely similar.

Why? Because the latter can be consensual. I believe that's all that matters.

hamishspence

2012-02-11, 11:11 AM

A quote from Open Gave (yes it's 4e) about soulless undead such as wights

3rd ed's take on wights, wraiths and the like, is a bit different- Aside from maybe zombies/skeletons, a lot of undead do have a soul of some kind.

From Complete Divine (p126):

The souls of characters who die in specific ways sometimes become undead. Those driven to suicide by madness become allips, while humanoids destroyed by absolute evil become bodaks. As with ghosts, the soul creates a new body, whether it's incorporeal such as an allip's or corporeal such as a bodak's. The soul is twisted toward evil if it wasn't already. The new undead creature retains some general memories of its former life, but doesn't necessarily have the same mental ability scores, skills, feats or other abilities. Not every suicide victim becomes an allip, and not everyone destroyed by absolute evil becomes a bodak; as with ghosts, the exact nature of the transformation is unknown. Similarly, liches are characters who've voluntarily transformed themselves into undead, trapping their souls in skeletal bodies.

Some undead such as wights and vampires create spawn out of a character they kill, trapping the soul of the deceased in a body animated by negative energy and controlled by a malign intelligence. Sometimes the undead creature can access the memories of the deceased (vampires, spectres, ghouls, and ghasts can) and sometimes they can't (as with shadows, wraiths and wights).

The soul is trapped in there, but some other malign intelligence is in the "driving seat". A bit like Angel when Angelus is in charge of his body in the Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel TV series', come to think of it.

JaxGaret

2012-02-14, 07:04 PM

Tsukiko has referred to them as negative energy lifeforms, the opposite of positive energy lifeforms such as humans.

I'm surprised that this hasn't been mentioned yet; this statement is false. Mortals are not "positive energy lifeforms", if we had to describe them as anything it would be neutral energy lifeforms. There are positive energy lifeforms such as Deathless that are the inverse of undead.

SavageWombat

2012-02-14, 07:27 PM

I don't think Eugene counts as a Ghost in the Monster Manual sense of the world. Ghosts are ethereal undead; Eugene is a spirit in the afterlife capable of appearing to his son under some circumstances.

Ravian

2012-02-14, 10:01 PM

In 4e (at least the preview books) part of their work was in defining the behavior exhibited by undead

Eventually they settled upon a 3 part being (similar to Ancient Egyptian mythology)

All creatures are composed of three parts: The Body, The Soul, and The Animus (Life force, Ka, ect.)

The body gives the creature physical prescence
The Soul gives the creature emotions, dreams, and most higher level thinking, basically sentience, thus most animals and nonsentient creatures have a much less powerful soul

The Animus is much more basic, instincts, reflexes, and other more subcounsious traits are properties of the Animus

When a creature dies, the soul typically leaves the other two parts behind, the body decays, and the Animus lays dormant

Necromancy essentially uses necrotic energy to awaken the animus at some level.

The simplest (Zombies, skeletons) give the animus the basic powers of movement (as directed by the necromancer) naturally awakened zombies (think night of the living dead) are driven by the most basic function of the Animus, which is to feed and survive.

More intelligent undead (like wights and ghouls) are more directed by their animus, able to make some form of basic planning. They typically behave like feral beasts at best. Many (particularly more powerful Wights) may retain an imprint left over from the soul, that gives them some memories and skills from their previous lives.

Incorporal Undead (like Wraiths and Spectres) are almost eintirely Animus, behaving much like intelligent undead (essentially a Wraith behaves like a Wight without a body) they too may have an imprint

Finally some undead retain souls, this is usually because of an intentional or forced transformation. The most powerful undead are in this category (Liches, Vampires, Death Knights, Mummy Lords, and Ghosts) however more often then not the Soul may be twisted by the empowered animus, and the undead is usually more malevolent then beforehand (A vampire consumed by the thirst for blood, a Ghost who focuses on avenging his murder, or a Lich driven to further atrocities due to the weakening of the soul by the animus)

It's less complicated then it seems.

But basically Tsukiko's Wights, while retaining some intelligence (enough to make a basic plan) would behave in a much more feral manner without anyone's control. Tsukiko and Redcloak simply bent them to their will, and caused these slight quirks in their behavior based on their master's personality (Redcloak kept a tighter grip on them, causing them to act more like tools while Tsukiko subconsiously willed them to behave like her children)

Xykon however has a soul, all of his abilities to think reason and plan but is much more twisted than before
SOD:
Redcloak mentioned that after his transformation, he mostly only enjoys watching things suffer and die.

ti'esar

2012-02-14, 10:37 PM

SOD:
Redcloak mentioned that after his transformation, he mostly only enjoys watching things suffer and die.

That was pretty much what he enjoyed while alive, too, except then he also coulddrink coffee.

And that... issue was physiological (he no longer had taste buds) rather then "lichification" stripping away what little humanity he had.

davidbofinger

2012-02-15, 02:56 AM

When Tsukiko orders her wights to release her they say, "We're sorry, Old Mistress. Master gave us an order." There's no way Redcloak or Tsukiko would have ordered them to say that, so it must have come from the wight itself. That implies there's some sort of mind in there, even if its will is shackled. The natural assumption is that wights retain the mental capacity they died with, and should be seen as intelligent and enslaved.

However, nobody does see them that way. A bit like droids in Star Wars, though at least they don't have to worry about a faction that wants them dead.

Bastian Weaver

2012-02-15, 03:47 AM

I don't think the wights were really sorry, it was just a figure of speech.
And also, do you guys remember how Xykon reacted to Tsukiko's original attempt to flirt with him? Pretty much the same as Belkar's Eyes of Fear and Flame - "biology is so gross".
So Tsukiko was perverted even by the standard of the undead. Cool, huh?

CCC

2012-02-15, 04:02 AM

Tsukiko's love of undead was rooted in some old pain (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0700.html). See panels 6 and 7 of the linked comic.

Someone living - at some point - had hurt Tsukiko, emotionally, and very severely. Probably more than one person. This caused her to violently reject anyone living. She thought that the living were worthy only of contempt - that they were 'lying, untrustworthy jackasses, every one of them'. (This can also be seen in her treatment of Redcloak - she thought he was contemptible, therefore she underestimated him).

However, Tsukiko still had a yearning for companionship. She was lonely; on top of that, she rejected all living companions, to a greater or lesser degree. This only left the unliving - specifically, the undead - as possible companions. To put it in her words:

So, logically, undead must be the opposite of that: caring, sensitive, honest souls who are oppressed by the living majority and their negative stereotypes.

The Pilgrim

2012-02-15, 04:05 AM

What are the undead, really?

This:

Redcloak has referred to them as bits of skin and bone glued together by dark energy.

Case solved.

factotum

2012-02-15, 08:07 AM

There's no way Redcloak or Tsukiko would have ordered them to say that, so it must have come from the wight itself. That implies there's some sort of mind in there, even if its will is shackled. The natural assumption is that wights retain the mental capacity they died with, and should be seen as intelligent and enslaved.

Yes, Wights *are* intelligent--the SRD lists their intelligence score as 11. This doesn't mean this intelligence is anything to do with what they had while they were alive, though; it could be that whatever spirit is animating the corpse is just somewhat more intelligent than the lower-level ones found in zombies and skeletons.

toughluck

2012-02-15, 08:45 AM

What are the undead, really?
(...)
Redcloak has referred to them as being nothing more than tools. Tsukiko has referred to them as being loving and caring, although misunderstood.

These statements are not compatible with each other, and are probably both wrong. Both characters are deranged, and use their supernatural abilities to force reality to conform to their prejudices: Redcloak use his Command Undead ability to force the wights to behave as mere tools, while Tsukiko use similar abilities to force them behave as if they were loving and caring.
Tsukiko was dead wrong about the undead. Redcloak wasn't really wrong there.
There are two types of undead: free-willed and non-freewilled. The first sort (liches, vampires, certain other undead) keeps their sentience after death, but their will is hindered by certain factors -- there is a sense of purpose (for better or worse), which drives their actions to a large extent. There are no undead which would keep complete free will. Redcloak uses this sense of purpose to aim Xykon in a general direction.
As for the second type, non-freewilled undead are nothing but tools. This includes wights. They only responded to Tsukiko with apparent kindness and love because they were ordered to do so, and she was misguided in thinking they were anything else. Redcloak is right in making them complete tools.

So, what are undead? Obviously they can have opinions and wishes of their own... or can they? Is a lich like Xykon capable to developing new true motivations, or is he simply a broken record carrying out the true motivations he had while alive?
Yes and no on both counts. There are two types, as mentioned above. Xykon is capable of developing new motivations, but it's going to be heavily influenced by his sense of purpose.

Also, Xykon seem incapable of positive emotions such as caring and love. Is this true for all undead in this setting?
Undead are evil. Utterly. No capability for positive emotions (except for themselves).

And I'm not touching the rest of the post with a ten-foot pole.

hamishspence

2012-02-15, 08:49 AM

Undead are evil. Utterly. No capability for positive emotions (except for themselves).

It's quite common in D&D fiction for undead to manifest positive emotions (Jander Sunstar the elven vampire, in Forgotten Realms, for example. Or various ghosts, liches, and so forth).

Wights may not have a "soul in charge of their body" (instead the soul is trapped in it, and an evil spirit controls the body) but even they are not entirely incapable of change.

All "non-mindless" undead could be said to have a degree of free will- it's just that its easier to control them than it is to control mortals.

Psyren

2012-02-16, 11:59 AM

Redcloak's point wasn't necessarily that intelligent undead are incapable of higher emotions. His point was that it really doesn't matter in the end because they are weapons, designed only to be controlled and aimed at enemies.

Tsukiko's wights may have indeed felt some affection for her - who can definitively say? What we do know is that it didn't matter one bit in the end. Powerful cleric says "toad" and they hop. There isn't even a saving throw.

Michaeler

2012-02-16, 02:10 PM

I note that Redcloak didn't claim that the living are never tools to be controlled and used as weapons against your enemy.

Ulysses WkAmil

2012-02-16, 11:22 PM

Un-necrophillia...? Necromancer Complex? TO THE LATIN BOOKS!

ShikomeKidoMi

2012-02-17, 01:15 AM

I know the idea it is necrophillia is dismissed by the op, but really no other term applies for the situation.

No other existing term, certainly. Whether or not it's actually necrophilia is a bit debatable, since corpses aren't motile. It's really close to sexual attraction to robots for reasons I'll go into below. But I really don't want to go into detailed debate here, so I'll leave it at that it would take such to determine that.

As for which term is right, I lean towards Redcloaks myself. If I could borrow a phrase said by the OP. "Redcloak use his Command Undead ability to force the wights to behave as mere tools, while Tsukiko use similar abilities to force them behave as if they were loving and caring".

Force them to behave as though they were loving and caring. That is the key phrase. Left to their own devices the undead we see in the comic (apart from a tiny number of intelligent ones) are all just simple tools. They are like robots, but ones made of flesh. They do not seem to exhibit any desires or wishes beyond doing what their creator tells them. To get them to act in any way like they are more than organic robots needs force.

Xykon seems to be a special case, and certainly I can accept there being exceptions to the automaton idea of the undead. But for most that is all they are.

Robots are a very good comparison. Because robots can be made with varying levels of complexity and if you are capable of making a true AI, then it's basically a person (not a human but a person). But even if you could make a true AI, robots made with more simple programs wouldn't be people. Undead are much the same. They aren't all created equal. Lesser undead are simple constructs and more advanced Undead are sapient creatures. The transformation generally seems to twist their personalities towards an instinctive hatred of normal life, which makes evil easier, but the more intelligent undead are capable of hopes and dreams and plans. Several settings have entire underground ghoul cities, where the ghouls indulge in hobbies that go considerably beyond just eating different kinds of corpses. And ghouls aren't even template undead, so this spark of personhood isn't even limited to undead who most resemble their living selves. That part's important because it suggests they can be more than a recording of a living person.

It's also important to note that you can't take anything Redcloak says, especially if it justifies his own actions as necessarily true. The man runs on self-delusion and there are a lot of things he NEEDS to believe to get through the day. He has to believe all undead are weapons, that he's the one in control, that Xykon is a means to his ends, and that it will all work out for the Plan. Grabbing control of creatures with a supernatural power doesn't actually mean they lack free-will (although Tsukiko's wights appear to be simple enough that they might) anymore than Dominate Person means humanoids are just weapons.

Both Redcloak and Tsukiko are overgeneralizing when they treat all undead as the same. Redcloak's generalization is right more often, many undead aren't more than tools. He may be lying to himself a little to simplify things, but he isn't completely deluded. Tsukiko's opinion is... almost always wrong. Even the undead that are functionally people are usually warped by the transformation (things like suddenly having a desire to feed on the living or losing several important senses will impact your personality) and frequently evil before it happens. Therefore, while it's possible to find kind, loving undead, you'd have better odds of winning the lottery, which makes treating them all as if they were that way self-delusion.