Undead Campaign Ideas?

[YoricksRequiem]

Hey guys,

I've been looking at running a campaign where the players are undead characters. I don't want to do anything like, "Surprise, you've been playing for a while and now I'll kill your characters off and make them undead" because it feels too much like GM railroading. I'd rather let them know right off the bat what we're doing. So I'm just having them start with their characters already dead, but having no memory of what happened (Kind of a Planescape Torment beginning).

The only thing is, I have no idea where to actually go with it. I want to play up the idea of them being "special" and not having them fight other undead, or even having most people have encountered such. Necromancy should not exactly be super common. But I'm not sure what to do with their story - were they adventurers in search of a magical item? Why have they been brought back? Etc. Any ideas would be very much appreciated.

[Hopeless]

How about the fact they're actually dead be a plot point they only eventually discover as they adventure?

Maybe they have to accomplish some unfinished task before being able to pass on and part of that involves discovering what caused their deaths and why they're still walking around as if still alive?

[Blightedmarsh]

I've got an theoctatic undead empire as a faction setting you might find a useful source [/shameless plug]. Players their might find undeath a massive leg up on the political and financial ladder and embrace it without any prompting from you.

Other than that I might suggest that a circle of bloodsoaked undead (the PCs) awake simultaneously around a mutilated body. The have no idea of who they are,what their relationship is to each other, where they are or how they came to be. The campaign is then an exploration of the (potential quite hostile) world and of their own back stories.

[BowStreetRunner]

Have you taken a look at Ghostwalk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwalk) at all?