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GraySeaJones
2014-05-09, 07:53 PM
Graveyards in tabletop RPGs are almost invariably dangerous, dangerous places. Obviously, then, grave keepers have got be at a pretty high level if they've lasted a while.

I need help in coming up with a list of things that a fantasy graveyard keeper could reasonably be expected to face over his career. So far I have:


Vengeful spirits of the dead
Curses (usually as a result of the above)
Zombies and skeletons
Necromancer raids
Grave robbers
Ghouls
Giant maggots
Being avoided by polite company

Specific monsters that frequent graveyards, from any system, would be appreciated as well.

Thank you for your help. It's getting late, so I may not be able to respond until quite half a day later or so.

HolyCouncilMagi
2014-05-09, 07:57 PM
Yet another major concern is just about any meat-eating creature with a burrow speed.

I've heard being a wizard makes everything easier, and this doesn't appear to be an exception.

Slipperychicken
2014-05-09, 08:10 PM
Maybe he's a 1st level commoner who just runs out and files an extermination request whenever the undead show up?

EDIT: If it's a serious enough problem, and his employers are sufficiently loaded, and they care enough about his life they issue him a shirt of wraith-stalking, to let him keep working, even during infestations.

JellyPooga
2014-05-09, 08:14 PM
- Pesky kids (potentially creepy looking) getting drunk behind the mausoleums and littering.
- Stubborn weeds (optionally infused/animated with the dark energies of the dead).
- Dogs, rats and other scavengers
- Adventurers looking for grave goods (similar to grave robbers, but less pragmatic about the actual details of their chosen profession...adventurers tend to think of themselves as "the good guys" after all)
- Adventurers looking to pick a fight (they often like it so much that they do it during their time off)
- Irate family members of the recently dead (similar to adventurers looking for a fight)

Broken Crown
2014-05-09, 08:41 PM
Don't forget moody, black-clad Danish princes showing up and delivering soliloquies at you.

Rhynn
2014-05-10, 02:56 AM
- Wizard's apprentices sent to recover unsavory spell components. (Not necromancers looking for corpses, just stuff like "the thighbone of an ancestor" or "the skull of an adulterer," etc.)
- Wizard's apprentices sent to find non-existing body parts as a form of hazing. ("Hahaha, he really dug up a grave! What a geek!")
- Cultists performing ceremonies in a place of death.
- Followers of a rival deity of death who want to take over running the cemetery, either by literaly invading and conquering it, or making it look so incompetently run the town fathers give the job to their temple.
- Kobolds / goblins / dwarves / etc. who dug their way into the catacombs by accident and now refuse to leave.

BWR
2014-05-10, 05:09 AM
- People trying to build houses there because they "like the neighborhood/ambience"
- Members of highly intrusive (and annoying) missionarying religions coming and trying to perform their own death rites for the dead "so that they may be embraced by the loving arms of XXX, rather than waste away in hell"
- Similar to above, only try they dig up and cremate the dead to prevent undead from rising (Rokugan is the only RPG culture I know of that learned its lesson after the first great zombie outbreak - cremate your dead!)

Necroticplague
2014-05-10, 05:53 AM
- Similar to above, only try they dig up and cremate the dead to prevent undead from rising (Rokugan is the only RPG culture I know of that learned its lesson after the first great zombie outbreak - cremate your dead!)

There's a special type of undead that's a burning skeleton that can be created when you try that.Fire immune, obviously.

-Bone Oozes
-Negative energy elementals
-Morhgs (if executed people are buried there)
-Shadows

GraySeaJones
2014-05-10, 07:56 AM
Yet another major concern is just about any meat-eating creature with a burrow speed.

I've heard being a wizard makes everything easier, and this doesn't appear to be an exception.

Earth elementals seem like the way to go there. A cleric might see some success in dealing with such things as well.



Maybe he's a 1st level commoner who just runs out and files an extermination request whenever the undead show up?

EDIT: If it's a serious enough problem, and his employers are sufficiently loaded, and they care enough about his life they issue him a shirt of wraith-stalking, to let him keep working, even during infestations.

I'd at least hope the grave keeper is able to take a wight or two, since the infestation problem only gets worse as you let it... Any spawning undead has the potential to get pretty nasty, and a 1st-level commoner just adds fuel to the fire.

Thanks for the suggestion about the wraith-stalking attire. At-will detect undead looks very, very useful. It's unfortunate that graves are over three feet deep, so you can't tell whether something just came back or not.




- Similar to above, only try they dig up and cremate the dead to prevent undead from rising (Rokugan is the only RPG culture I know of that learned its lesson after the first great zombie outbreak - cremate your dead!)

You know, I started thinking about that not long after I posted the thread. The only problem is that the Raise Dead spell, the most accessible form of resurrection, needs the entire body intact. But since that doesn't work after CL days, once a corpse has been left around for 2-3 weeks you could cut off a finger, stick it in a labeled jar, and cremate the body.

Of course, a 2-3 week window while keeping a "fresh" corpse is pretty darn significant.

BWR
2014-05-10, 09:52 AM
You know, I started thinking about that not long after I posted the thread. The only problem is that the Raise Dead spell, the most accessible form of resurrection, needs the entire body intact. But since that doesn't work after CL days, once a corpse has been left around for 2-3 weeks you could cut off a finger, stick it in a labeled jar, and cremate the body.

Of course, a 2-3 week window while keeping a "fresh" corpse is pretty darn significant.

I....don't see the point. Most dead people are left that way. Either raising them is too expensive or the gods get a bit upset at people ignoring the natural order of things too often and withhold their blessings. And you wouldn't inter people you planned on resurrecting anyway. At least I've never come across people digging up dead people in cemeteries to riase them.

GraySeaJones
2014-05-10, 10:45 AM
I....don't see the point. Most dead people are left that way. Either raising them is too expensive or the gods get a bit upset at people ignoring the natural order of things too often and withhold their blessings. And you wouldn't inter people you planned on resurrecting anyway. At least I've never come across people digging up dead people in cemeteries to riase them.

Eh... You're probably right. I'm thinking too much from an adventurer's point of view, here - "irrevocably lost" feels harsh, but most people wouldn't be able to afford a Raise anyway. (And those who can will just pay up front.)

Sartharina
2014-05-10, 11:40 AM
- Pesky kids (potentially creepy looking) getting drunk behind the mausoleums and littering.
-- Pesky kids and their meddling dog unmasking his attempts to fake a haunting in the graveyard to artificially depress property values and scam the local villagers.

Melville's Book
2014-05-10, 12:07 PM
-- Pesky kids and their meddling dog unmasking his attempts to fake a haunting in the graveyard to artificially depress property values and scam the local villagers.

--- Incredibly genre-savvy adults and their freakishly large talking great dane (who for some reason doesn't just maul the costumed criminals) figuring out the odd and inefficient plans of amateur criminals through a mixture of lucky guesses and being in the wrong place at the right time.*

Sorry, my internal spellcheck activated.

Slipperychicken
2014-05-10, 12:13 PM
--- Incredibly genre-savvy adults and their freakishly large talking great dane (who for some reason doesn't just maul the costumed criminals) figuring out the odd and inefficient plans of amateur criminals through a mixture of lucky guesses and being in the wrong place at the right time.*


I think you misspelled "Player Characters".

Sith_Happens
2014-05-10, 12:40 PM
I think you misspelled "Player Characters".

Actually, I think he defined it.

Kid Jake
2014-05-10, 01:00 PM
--- Incredibly genre-savvy adults and their freakishly large talking great dane (who for some reason doesn't just maul the costumed criminals)

That's always bothered me! I actually made a comic (http://untcs.com/?p=363) that's just a giant rant about it.


On topic though, isn't this why there's so many gods of Death? Wouldn't a gravekeeper be a cleric so he could be like 'No! Bad wight! Get back in your grave!"

LokiRagnarok
2014-05-10, 02:20 PM
- Pesky kids (potentially creepy looking) getting drunk behind the mausoleums and littering.
There is a lot of potential here!

- Pesky kids making out in the graveyard and getting hunted by zombies
- Pesky kids performing a "fake" ritual to summon something and accidentally succeeding
- Pesky kids smoking <insert local drug here> and accidentally setting fire to something
- Pesky wizard kids harrassing you (let's see how well you can dig a grave after a Mud to Stone on the ground!)

Melville's Book
2014-05-10, 04:01 PM
I think you misspelled "Player Characters".Actually, I think he defined it.

This is just going right the hell into my signature.

Doorhandle
2014-05-11, 05:32 AM
There's enough material in here for a campaign.
* Pesky mafia types trying to bury a former associate alive.
* Two-bit necromancers trying to be the next BBEG.
*A perky necrophiliac looking for love in all the wrong places.

...sounds familiar. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0457.html)

Rodin
2014-05-11, 05:44 AM
Itinerant time travelers wandering in, trying to steal a certain book, then mis-saying the ritual words to safely grab it and waking all the dead in the graveyard instead.

Altair_the_Vexed
2014-05-11, 07:05 AM
Surely the point of a graveyard is that it's holy ground - so the spirits of the dead are at peace?
Are the gods / churches in your game setting so slack that they let an obvious thing like this slide?

~xFellWardenx~
2014-05-11, 12:44 PM
Surely the point of a graveyard is that it's holy ground - so the spirits of the dead are at peace?
Are the gods / churches in your game setting so slack that they let an obvious thing like this slide?

That might be the point, certainly, but it's a rare thing to be meant literally, as your average hillside villages and the like are highly unlikely to each have enough level 3+ Clerics to maintain a 24/7 Consecrate on an entire graveyard (they can get rather big).

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-05-11, 01:00 PM
"*sigh* Not another wight infestation..."

Slipperychicken
2014-05-11, 01:21 PM
"*sigh* Not another wight infestation..."

[Reaches for his +1 Undead-Bane Shovel]

Gildedragon
2014-05-11, 01:40 PM
[Reaches for his +1 Undead-Bane Shovel]

And his Lantern of Rebuking; after all you ought give the tennants one chance before you lay down the Smite

Clearly the grave keeper is a venerable-age fella

As to dangers: taint elementals, undeath fueled plants, living headstones, vandals, PCs (ie vandals), Deer, Hunters (seriously look at Vienna's Zentralfriedhoff, so big it was used as hunting grounds), Druids, Druids wildshaped into Deer, constructs made of grave dirt or broken tombstones, Vampires gathering up dirt, Historians taking rubbings, Fog

~xFellWardenx~
2014-05-11, 03:09 PM
Awakened Deer Urban Druids Wildshaped into gravestones...

Venom3053000
2014-05-11, 05:02 PM
attacks from a Corpse Gatherer looking to add more corpses to itself

TuggyNE
2014-05-11, 09:54 PM
That might be the point, certainly, but it's a rare thing to be meant literally, as your average hillside villages and the like are highly unlikely to each have enough level 3+ Clerics to maintain a 24/7 Consecrate on an entire graveyard (they can get rather big).

Nah, just have a single bishop or whatever come in and cast hallow, once, and there you go. (Might need it cast again when the graveyard expands, but the "undead prevention" part lasts indefinitely.)

Slipperychicken
2014-05-11, 10:43 PM
Nah, just have a single bishop or whatever come in and cast hallow, once, and there you go. (Might need it cast again when the graveyard expands, but the "undead prevention" part lasts indefinitely.)

That really depends on the availability of mid-level clergy. Besides, hallowing a graveyard would be expensive (visit a graveyard sometime. Even for a small town, a 40ft radius circle is barely going to make a dent. And those things are 1000gp a pop), and the bishop probably has better things to do, such as running his part of the church or persuading mercenaries to clear zombies out of the graveyard.

veti
2014-05-11, 10:48 PM
I can't believe no-one has yet mentioned:

Freshly made vampires rising
Gargoyles
Weeping angels

TuggyNE
2014-05-11, 11:45 PM
That really depends on the availability of mid-level clergy. Besides, hallowing a graveyard would be expensive (visit a graveyard sometime. Even for a small town, a 40ft radius circle is barely going to make a dent. And those things are 1000gp a pop), and the bishop probably has better things to do, such as running his part of the church or persuading mercenaries to clear zombies out of the graveyard.

OK, so it takes more than one casting. Once each.

Point is, it's a long-term investment that is only ever nullified by deliberate enemy action, so it's strictly a non-depreciating fixed cost, not a variable; as such, it's reasonable for hallowed sites to be built up over time. (For cost-effectiveness, they might switch to cremation or something, so as to pack the remains in much tighter, but the only real question is how long it takes for the initial investment to pay itself back with a given assumed value per grave. If there's any value at all to protecting a grave it is guaranteed to be worth it eventually.)

LokiRagnarok
2014-05-12, 12:30 AM
Minor nitpick: That is of course assuming the city has enough liquid resources to pay off the bishop in the first place, or enough working hands they can provide as reimbursement.

Gildedragon
2014-05-12, 02:19 AM
With regards to Hallowing:
Yeah paying off the bishop might be costly but presuming that it is a high cleric of either a death deity/church or anti-undeath deity/church the castings of Hallow would be within the deity/church's best interest and assigned duties. After all if it is a church that doesnt do its part for the town it is gonna get run out in favor of those druids over in the woods, or those interesting folk with the dark robes and glowing eyes that say they'll take care of our dead for us...
Note also that in a world where priests can have magical powers but based on their faith/divine connection there might be two types of clerics in churches administrative, miracle workers (and in militant churches: beatsticks) all equiped as priests of ritual, but certain activities will be delegated. Bishop I-Can-Raise-The-Dead won't be put in a paper pushing position (ideally) it is a waste of a god's divine conduit.

Also: there are magic items and relics (such as the Bleeding Statue from the BoED) radiate or cast Hallow effects. with one such item that casts a temporary Hallow effect, clerics would probably take such item on pilgrimages to bless towns for the year (years) to come.

But back on track:

Dead gods trying to push their way back into the world
Recently resurrected and disoriented PCs who were accidentally left in the coffin (either partymates didn't know they'd come back or thought the ritual had failed)

GuesssWho
2014-05-13, 11:54 PM
A boneyard in a bone yard LOL
Alhoons or dracoliches, if it's a city with 'monster' citizens

Doorhandle
2014-05-14, 03:30 AM
*Clown car graves that somehow hold more zombies than what should fit in there.
*Cattle driving necromancers.
* ghost wizards.

Storm_Of_Snow
2014-05-14, 07:23 AM
--- Incredibly genre-savvy adults and their freakishly large talking great dane (who for some reason doesn't just maul the costumed criminals) figuring out the odd and inefficient plans of amateur criminals through a mixture of lucky guesses and being in the wrong place at the right time.*

Sorry, my internal spellcheck activated.


Zoinks! :smallwink:

Alternatively, you could have a bottle-blonde late-teenage girl, and her well meaning but generally inept friends skulking around looking to deal with anything that does happen.


Minor nitpick: That is of course assuming the city has enough liquid resources to pay off the bishop in the first place, or enough working hands they can provide as reimbursement.
Exactly, 1000gp/40 foot radius - which might be enough to cover say 6 graves lengthwise and 10 widthwise, but not those in the corners of that rectangle - may be more than the entire settlement is worth, including all the livestock, and several years of the working salary of every adult living there. For something which may never happen in the first place.

And assuming multiple castings of hallow won't interfere with each other when the areas of effect start overlaying themselves.
Edit: Just checked the SRD...

"An area can receive only one hallow spell (and its associated spell effect) at a time."

For other perils: Bad weather, tripping over things in the dark and running out of whatever his favourite tipple is. :smallbiggrin:

But IMO, in most standard psuedo-medieval fantasy environments, the graveyard will be left unattended over night, the grave digger will live in separately from it (although fairly close to it), the priest will be secure in his rooms in the church/temple (if the graveyard's even part of the grounds), and if something happens, they'll have the doors heavily barred, possibly even warded, and look to deal with it in the morning.

Slipperychicken
2014-05-14, 10:20 AM
*Clown car graves that somehow hold more zombies than what should fit in there.

Plot Twist: There actually is a clown car at the bottom of the grave. All the zombies are wearing clown outfits and makeup.

Gildedragon
2014-05-14, 10:22 AM
Plot Twist: There actually is a clown car at the bottom of the grave. All the zombies are wearing clown outfits and makeup.
Plot twist twist: the car is an alien thing. Internal combustion engines haven't been invented
Plot twist twist twist: they have! The game world is earth 5000 years in the future. They find a copy of the PHB in the trunk of the car.

Lord Raziere
2014-05-14, 10:43 AM
those dang magical transhumanists trying to make immortality widely available. if they succeed, you might be out of a job!

Overzealous consecrators and crazy undead hunters being paranoid about your graveyard "we're here for an undead inspection! are you harboring undead in this graveyard!? are you, are you!?" "graveyard are hives of scum and villainy, practically havens for things like vampires and mummies. best thing to do is to burn the corpses. all the corpses. and maybe the gravekeeper as well for harboring them..."

merchants and their thugs plotting to destroy the graveyard to build a new mega-shop over it that mostly sells cheap watered down merchandise and knock-off phoenix downs.

Sith_Happens
2014-05-14, 03:47 PM
merchants and their thugs plotting to destroy the graveyard to build a new mega-shop over it that mostly sells cheap watered down merchandise and knock-off phoenix downs.

Those FIENDS!

Icewraith
2014-05-14, 06:41 PM
How far down does hallow go?

Also, what's the metamagic adjustment on widen spell? Alternatively, the church invests in a metamagic rod.

You have 1-2 hallow spells to cover a small local graveyard. The graveyard has a worked stone tunnel running down under it that contains a proper crypt (basically a giant sorting system for bones) covering the same area. Gravediggers bury the dead, dig up the graves after enough time for nature to do its thing, then re-inter the bones in the crypt, categorized by type.

High level necromancy probably just raises the whole mess into a giant, horrific undead abomination, but less powerful necromancers break in, look at the sorting they'll have to do to avoid raising pitifully crippled and funny-looking skeletons, swear, and go back to sulking in their semi-hidden cave that will totally be a sweet fortress of evil once he gets a few levels.

If the crypt gets full.... dig another level down. Even if a higher level priest has to come around every so often to hallow a new tier of crypt (i.e. the effect doesn't just keep going down), that's more than enough time for the local populace to more than make up the money by providing the church with food and supplies. Also, cryptbuilding generates a source of jobs and bolsters the local economy. For the churches, an once of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Also, the people who end up being gravediggers tend to be very strong from all the gravedigging, slightly crazy, carry improvised bludgeoning/slashing weapons (shovels) with them at all times, have excellent night vision, and aren't tolerant of nosy strangers hanging around their houses, which are usually immediately adjacent to the graveyard.

Getting to rest in peace in one piece in one go is usually reserved for rich people/families, retired adventurers that build their own extremely well trapped tombs, spellcasters that don't end up becoming undead and do the same, and adventurers buried alive in collapsing dungeons etc.

Gildedragon
2014-05-14, 06:48 PM
So I was reading up Hallow to see if it affects multiple "floors" of a graveyard and a couple things came up, well one thing but it is big for the use of Hallow as a undead deterrent:
It is an emanation. Mausoleums, coffins, corners, tightly packed tombstones... these all block emanations. Overall it is a poor undead deterrent because it is easy to block.

edit: which is not to say the consecration of a cementery wouldn't be useful (and common practice) just that in a D&Dverse that particular spell would probably be not the most useful.

TuggyNE
2014-05-14, 07:49 PM
So I was reading up Hallow to see if it affects multiple "floors" of a graveyard and a couple things came up, well one thing but it is big for the use of Hallow as a undead deterrent:
It is an emanation. Mausoleums, coffins, corners, tightly packed tombstones... these all block emanations. Overall it is a poor undead deterrent because it is easy to block.

In other words, you have to design the cemeteries to take advantage of it, possibly in catacomb form, or possibly with flat gravestones, modern-style. That is certainly a terrible drawback indeed!

(Note that while a mausoleum might reasonably block the progress of the spell past itself, that mausoleum itself would be protected: the effect must penetrate whatever container a body is buried in, or else it would never have any effect at all, which would contradict the wording of "interred".)

Gildedragon
2014-05-14, 08:19 PM
In other words, you have to design the cemeteries to take advantage of it, possibly in catacomb form, or possibly with flat gravestones, modern-style. That is certainly a terrible drawback indeed!

(Note that while a mausoleum might reasonably block the progress of the spell past itself, that mausoleum itself would be protected: the effect must penetrate whatever container a body is buried in, or else it would never have any effect at all, which would contradict the wording of "interred".)

Well yes it is Terrible! Flat tombstone really do rob a cementery of its je ne sais quoi. The mists can no longer curl ominously around the angel shaped monuments, Cthubertian crosses and Hieronite Lightningbolt pillars no longer loom like outstretched fingers... Suck all the armosphere out won't cha. :P

actually the effect doesn't care for the container or the body, just the site. If the site is hallowed then bodies interred in it are ipso facto immune(ish) to undeadifying... and that mausoleums can be built on the ground (after it has been hallowed) but totally mess up future hallowings.
Also it means that you can bury or entomb as many bodies up and down as you like (past the 40' radius) because they are all "interred" in the same site...

Huh. Graveyard floorplan is a 40' radius tower with a flat top that gets hallowed every year. Only the top gets the rider effects of turning bonus and whatever extra spell, but the spiraling chambers underneath are all warded against unholy animation.

As an interesting note: A place can be both Hallowed and Unhallowed as they do not dispel each other

Icewraith
2014-05-15, 12:17 PM
The spell text specifically states it works on buildings and structures.

Also note that Hallow is instantaneous duration. The rider effect spell lasts for one year if you include one.

So you can cast Hallow once, and it works all the way down, forever, then build your mausoleum.

A forward thinking necromancer might unhallow a mausoleum, then come back in 80 years to raise the corpses that have been buried there since. However, any necromancer that can cast Unhallow is probably better off just cloudkilling a small town or using spawning undead to raise everyone. The corpses are all both fresh and intact, so there won't be any pesky technicalities over what constitutes a "corpse".

There's also some weirdness with the way hallow/unhallow are written. You can cast multiple hallows on top of each other to maintain the additional spell effect, but even a single hallow appears to persist indefinitely, even though you can only have one hallow and one unhallow effect in an area.

Unhallowing a hallowed area may be impossible then, since the best you can do is bring it back to neutral. Alternatively, you just need to cast unhallow twice. Sounds like a DM call.

Braininthejar2
2014-05-17, 09:08 PM
I remember one short story where executed criminals were dumped into a hole filled with lime somewhere outside of town and the city executioner considered it a part of his duties to go there with a silver axe and face anything that tried to rise. (he had a "I torture and kill people as a job. I must be lawful stupid or else I'll become a monster" thing going)

Fable Wright
2014-05-18, 10:57 AM
Apologies for any repeats.

Adventurers intending to loot graves.
Adventurers digging up graves to reanimate their friends.
People waking up 6-feet under and Kill Bill-ing their way out of their graves. Without being undead.
Angels showing up to bring back the dead.
Death-priests trying to round up souls for a reverse exorcism.
Ambitious teenagers actually managing to summon a demon in the middle of the graveyard.
Statues coming to life. Either from being animated, being gargoyles, or whatever.
Bard-Necromancers. They're surprisingly common.
Party goers. Think Sin-Eaters, from Geist: the Sin-Eaters.
Monsters that prey on people taking shortcuts through in the dead of night.
Idiots who take a shortcut through a graveyard in the dead of night.
People who want to pay their respects to the dead. (And usually get mistaken for one or more others on the list.)
Brooding and/or insane adventurers about to reach an emotional epiphany. (Someone's got to put the chewed up scenery back in place.)
Angsty teens.
Sentient forms of lichen developing on the tombstones that worship him as a god.
Powerful undead from across the land who met on one moonless night.
Incompetent apprentice gravekeepers.
Incompetent co-workers.
Tourists.
Lovecraftian abominations.
Conventions.
Eternal vigils over one grave. (Those immortal types tend to be rather obsessively sentimental.)
Shady criminals meeting at night to discuss business that no one else should hear.
Weekly poker sessions with the assembled oddball graveyard inhabitants. (Undead, living, fungus, demon, or some combination thereof.)