Undead: An oversight, or a paradox?

[Necroticplague]

O.k.. Undead. One of the larger creature types in the game, coming in both specific and templated in a massive variety. Got their very own splat with a hefty amount of information. however, despite my reading on them, one things continues to confuse me:

What makes them move?

I understand that they have negative energy as an animating source (the evolved template being relevant here). However, this seems extremely odd, given the nature of negative energy. Negative is basically the source of Entropy in dnd, apposing the growing force of Positive. And, as exemplified by the related Plane itself, negative is, in a word, hungry. In large concentration, negative energy simply starts to leech color and life from things. in ridiculous concentrations, almost anything is devoured. So how does a force whose almost every other use tends to destroy things able to be used to make a creature start moving again? If anything, it makes more sense to pump it so full of positive energy that it no longer needs bodily functions to sustain itself, fueled by the energy of growth. The only real explanation I can think of was that they wanted to keep necromancy, which had most the Negative related stuff, the thing that makes undead. And to not ruin the arbitrarily evil image they tried to give undead by making them so overpouring with life that grass practically springs up where they step.

[Coidzor]

Good question. Not sure where to start exploring that myself.

[Phelix-Mu]

Negative= death, positive = life is a bit of an oversimplification, though the OP wasn't really suggesting quite that.

So here is my take, probably not at all supported by published fluff, but, meh, I could care less.

Undeath exists in a state that is suspended between life and death. It's not just about negative energy (NE); the entropy of NE is not synonymous with death or undeath, but with a voiding of all distinction and differentiation as things head toward non-existence. Thus, it is useful in undeath, which blurs the line between the living and the dead, creating a mockery of life that at once mimics it (motion, reproduction, consumption), but which is a vehicle of more death/undeath (undead rarely increase life, whereas death, in the normal cycle, gives rise to more life...meanwhile undead never die properly, lingering indefinitely).

So the undead are tied to both death and life by their use of negative energy, straddling the difference between the two as the pull of entropy draws them (and those around them) closer to oblivion (since undead unbalance the life/death cycle in favor of death and undeath, their unchecked influence pretty much destroys the natural cycle).

Too much negative energy is bad for undead, unless I am very much mistaken. Voidstones' disintegration effect works on undead, IIRC, and that is the most concentrated form of NE out there.

I tend to picture positive energy (PE) as more about the energy of motion, agitation, and vibrance. This can invigorate living creatures, but it also can hurt them. Properly speaking, life is a mix of NE and PE, with both fluctuating during a natural lifespan, before the creature dies and the energies that make them up return to the land or fuel other forms of life. That cycle is normal, and undead (or too much PE oriented creatures in the same vein) unbalance the cycle.

[Lord Vukodlak]

O.k.. Undead. One of the larger creature types in the game, coming in both specific and templated in a massive variety. Got their very own splat with a hefty amount of information. however, despite my reading on them, one things continues to confuse me:

What makes them move?

I understand that they have negative energy as an animating source (the evolved template being relevant here). However, this seems extremely odd, given the nature of negative energy. Negative is basically the source of Entropy in dnd, apposing the growing force of Positive. And, as exemplified by the related Plane itself, negative is, in a word, hungry. In large concentration, negative energy simply starts to leech color and life from things. in ridiculous concentrations, almost anything is devoured. So how does a force whose almost every other use tends to destroy things able to be used to make a creature start moving again? If anything, it makes more sense to pump it so full of positive energy that it no longer needs bodily functions to sustain itself, fueled by the energy of growth. The only real explanation I can think of was that they wanted to keep necromancy, which had most the Negative related stuff, the thing that makes undead. And to not ruin the arbitrarily evil image they tried to give undead by making them so overpouring with life that grass practically springs up where they step.

The nature of negative energy is what makes undead abominations the fact they shouldn't exist and yet they do anyway. Negative energy has no effect on objects so to say. Negative energy is the energy of death but it is still an energy so why can't it be used to animated something? With that in mind undead being evil isn't arbitrarily its a natural extension Their very existence is a mockery of life and as death incarnate they can only bring ruin to the living.


If anything, it makes more sense to pump it so full of positive energy that it no longer needs bodily functions to sustain itself, fueled by the energy of growth.
They're called Deathless and they already exist, I find the type rather stupid with the exception of using it for non-malevolent ghosts.


Too much negative energy is bad for undead, unless I am very much mistaken. Voidstones' disintegration effect works on undead, IIRC, and that is the most concentrated form of NE out there.
To much positive energy is bad for the living too. Kaboom!

[Chronos]

They've gone so far past "dead" that they've come out the other side. This is also why healing magic hurts them, and vice-versa.

[Dalebert]

They're not so much running on the negative energy as much as their negative energy nature allows them to absorb the life energy they need and which they can't produce on their own in the typical biological fashion. They're actually subsisting (most of them) by the life force of others. Their negative energy allows them to function but at great cost. A vampire or wight, for instance, will absorb the life forces of many, many people to keep themselves going. So I guess mathematically, there's a net loss of life by virtue of them existing, i.e. negative energy.

This doesn't really apply to some undead. Most intelligent undead seem to have some aspect of hunger for life that they need to keep going. The skeletons, zombies, lichs, and mummies (for instance) seem to be powered by magic and rituals and just have a lesser negative energy-ness to their nature by virtue of being undead.

That said, I wouldn't over-think it. If it made sense, there'd be undead walking around in the real world. They're just the fabrications of people who were creeped out by gross dead things and let their imaginations run wild with nightmarish scenarios of them walking around and killing people. And since D&D (and storytelling in general) is all about oversimplifying good and evil and morality and stuph, negative energy is just a relatively sciency-sounding metaphor for evil darkness.

[Bullet06320]

or go with the simple answer, a wizard did it

[Sith_Happens]

They've gone so far past "dead" that they've come out the other side. This is also why healing magic hurts them, and vice-versa.

This. Look Ma, ten characters!

[KillianHawkeye]

They've gone so far past "dead" that they've come out the other side. This is also why healing magic hurts them, and vice-versa.

Yeah, this is basically my take as well.

If you picture it on a scale, living creatures make use of positive energy and are represented by positive numbers, things that aren't alive such as tables and mountains and corpses are represented by the number zero (neither positive nor negative), while the undead are fueled by negative energy and are represented by negative numbers. Essentially, this makes undeath the opposite of life just as negative energy is the opposite of positive energy. This also explains why living creatures are hurt by negative energy while undead are healed by it.

If you use this view, then negative energy is not merely entropic in nature. There has got to be something more to it that makes negative "life forms" a possibility. You could try to blame it all on necromancy, but there are so many undead that just spontaneously spring into existence when somebody dies the wrong way that it's a little difficult.

[Milo v3]

but it is still an energy so why can't it be used to animated something?

I've always wanted to write a class based around animating creatures with energies other than positive and negative. Like corpses animated by fire and swords powered by earth.

[Khatoblepas]

They're called Deathless and they already exist, I find the type rather stupid with the exception of using it for non-malevolent ghosts.

Well, they're the mirror image of Undead - creatures who exist beyond death fuelled by pure positive energy rather than negative energy. Living creatures aren't wholly powered by positive energy, their cells die and people, too, die. If you want to treat Deathless as just as horrifying as Undead, then they need to be the opposite - where Undead are constantly decaying and dying, Deathless would be constantly growing, out of control.

Deathless would be a cancerous tumour, growing and consuming everything around it, burning people out and afflicting them with countless amounts of bacteria and new life.

It would look kind of like:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_RUJ95nvsL3Y/TEB0_RwWE-I/AAAAAAAAAi0/p85FO0sh5pY/s1600/TETSUO-AKIRA.jpg

[Ettina]

Where does the idea of negative energy being entropy come from? I always thought of it as a creative force directly opposed to positive energy. You know, kind of like water vs fire.

[Fitz10019]

They are a conduit of hunger and destruction of life. Think of them as the evil antithesis of spoons.

[Psyren]

Think of it like wind. Whether you have a low-pressure area (becomes a cyclone) or a high-pressure area (becomes an anticyclone) the wind is still moving. So even though one is positive and one is negative, there is still movement in both. Undead are the low-pressure gradient in energy terms - they move so they can get to all the positive sources (living things) and consume them, restoring equilibrium.

[Telonius]

I understand that they have negative energy as an animating source (the evolved template being relevant here). However, this seems extremely odd, given the nature of negative energy. Negative is basically the source of Entropy in dnd, apposing the growing force of Positive ... So how does a force whose almost every other use tends to destroy things able to be used to make a creature start moving again?

Sometimes chaos looks like order, just to mess with people.

[Segev]

My personal headcanon is that life is not "positive energy," but the result of positive energy flowing from its source to its sink. In fact, there's no such thing as "positive energy" and "negative energy" as such. It's all one energy; what there is is a source (the Positive Energy Plane) and a sink (the Negative Energy Plane). Energy flows from one to the other. What people call "positive energy" is really just greater exposure to the Positive plane; this increases the flow of energy from the source to wherever it is being measured, thus registering as an influx of this energy. What people call "negative energy" is really just greater exposure to the Negative plane; this increases the flow of energy from wherever it is being measured to the sink, thus registering as a sudden dearth of this energy.

Much like "cold" is, in real-world physics, an absence of heat and not its own energy type.

The living are conduits from the positive energy plane to the Material. The flow of that energy from its source is the water moving our mill-wheels of biological processes, pouring through the channel of our spirits to power our bodies. Our bodies' ability to repair themselves is just another part of these processes which are fueled by this energy flow. When injured, we can benefit from a surplus of this energy supercharging our healing processes; thus, healing magics tend to involve strong sources of positive energy. It's like pouring a bucket of water onto specific sub-systems in the complex water-works to accelerate them.

The undead have the linkage reversed. Instead of being a conduit to the positive plane, they are a conduit to the negative. The energy of the material world flows out through whatever soul-stuff they have (whether a necromantic construct or the actual once-living spirit still bound to the body...or a spirit sucking down life energy in a desperate bid to stay in the material world rather than move on) into the negative plane. Their bodily functions are dead, and do not work right. What they have instead are the echoes, the channels worn by the energy that flowed through them in life, enabling them to use that flow from the material world to the negative plane to force the gross motions of the body, or to cling to this plane with their spirits (rather than moving on).

When they are damaged - their link to the material world or their animating force taxed due to injury of the corpse - a stronger connection to the negative energy plane increases the flow of energy through well-worn channels, reminding the body of its proper shape and bolstering the will to remain to which the spirit clings.

Actually exposing them to the source of this energy is like directing a firehose through a model of a water-wheel. The flow needs to be from a diffuse source, or it crushes the channels, altering them in ways that break apart that which normally is used to hold the structure together.

Similarly, exposing the living to negative energy - that is, a greater exposure to the Negative Energy Plane - is like sucking the water out of their mill before it is finished flowing through. It damages the living by disrupting the natural flow of energy from the positive plane, shutting down internal systems and causing the normal flow to have to pick back up and re-regulate any touchy timings.

The dead - that is, corpses whose spirits have moved on and which are not animate - are just objects. They no longer provide conduits to either plane. The reason necromancy can animate them as undead, but can't do so with that which was never alive, is simply that the channels for the energy worn during life are still there, enabling them to be conduits for the energy through to the negative plane and use that sucking flow to re-animate the body.

[Shining Wrath]

O.k.. Undead. One of the larger creature types in the game, coming in both specific and templated in a massive variety. Got their very own splat with a hefty amount of information. however, despite my reading on them, one things continues to confuse me:

What makes them move?

I understand that they have negative energy as an animating source (the evolved template being relevant here). However, this seems extremely odd, given the nature of negative energy. Negative is basically the source of Entropy in dnd, apposing the growing force of Positive. And, as exemplified by the related Plane itself, negative is, in a word, hungry. In large concentration, negative energy simply starts to leech color and life from things. in ridiculous concentrations, almost anything is devoured. So how does a force whose almost every other use tends to destroy things able to be used to make a creature start moving again? If anything, it makes more sense to pump it so full of positive energy that it no longer needs bodily functions to sustain itself, fueled by the energy of growth. The only real explanation I can think of was that they wanted to keep necromancy, which had most the Negative related stuff, the thing that makes undead. And to not ruin the arbitrarily evil image they tried to give undead by making them so overpouring with life that grass practically springs up where they step.

1) It's magic
2) Negative Energy is not a sink into which energy flows, it is energy of a different qualitative nature. It differs from Positive Energy not in being incapable of causing an entity to move, but in its relationship to the type of life most commonly found on the Prime Material Plane

[Urpriest]

I've always wanted to write a class based around animating creatures with energies other than positive and negative. Like corpses animated by fire and swords powered by earth.

Golems are basically already that in the fluff.

[Slipperychicken]

O.k.. Undead. One of the larger creature types in the game, coming in both specific and templated in a massive variety. Got their very own splat with a hefty amount of information. however, despite my reading on them, one things continues to confuse me:

What makes them move?

I understand that they have negative energy as an animating source (the evolved template being relevant here). However, this seems extremely odd, given the nature of negative energy. Negative is basically the source of Entropy in dnd, apposing the growing force of Positive. And, as exemplified by the related Plane itself, negative is, in a word, hungry. In large concentration, negative energy simply starts to leech color and life from things. in ridiculous concentrations, almost anything is devoured. So how does a force whose almost every other use tends to destroy things able to be used to make a creature start moving again? If anything, it makes more sense to pump it so full of positive energy that it no longer needs bodily functions to sustain itself, fueled by the energy of growth. The only real explanation I can think of was that they wanted to keep necromancy, which had most the Negative related stuff, the thing that makes undead. And to not ruin the arbitrarily evil image they tried to give undead by making them so overpouring with life that grass practically springs up where they step.

Page 7 of Libris Mortis lists commonly accepted theories regarding undead. That may be the source of your confusion, since you seem to be trying to combine them.

[KillianHawkeye]

Sometimes chaos looks like order, just to mess with people.

Aaaaaannnnd we have a winner!!

[Prime32]

The nature of negative energy is what makes undead abominations the fact they shouldn't exist and yet they do anyway. Negative energy has no effect on objects so to say. Negative energy is the energy of death but it is still an energy so why can't it be used to animated something? With that in mind undead being evil isn't arbitrarily its a natural extension Their very existence is a mockery of life and as death incarnate they can only bring ruin to the living.


They're called Deathless and they already exist, I find the type rather stupid with the exception of using it for non-malevolent ghosts.


To much positive energy is bad for the living too. Kaboom!Fluff positive and negative energy like yin and yang.

Living creatures are animated by both positive and negative energy - they have a soul made of positive energy which provides their higher thought processes, and a spirit made of negative energy which provides their desires/memories/assorted mortal stuff. Without negative energy you'd be selfless but lack the motivation to do anything. Without positive energy you'd be a mindless beast that consumes everything around you. When you die your positive-energy soul passes to the Outer Planes, while the negative-energy spirit remains in the body for a while - this negative energy is what you talk to with the speak with dead spell. If you're animated as an intelligent undead then your memories and desires are the only part of you that remain, with the spell constructing an artificial mind around them (a mind built on unrestrained desires is usually a selfish one, therefore evil). This also explains why turning someone's body into an undead can prevent them from being resurrected, even though their soul is still doing fine in the afterlife - resurrection requires both the person's positive and negative energy, and the negative is tied up.

[Phelix-Mu]

@Prime 32: That is pretty cool.

To the more general discussion, I don't much hold that undead are even farther down the death direction than death, or super-dead. If anything, they are less dead than the dead, because they don't behave much like the dead. They behave like the living, roaming about, hungering, sometimes even reproducing. That's pretty unusual behavior for the properly dead.

Something that was super-dead would be like...I dunno, it would cease to exist entirely, I guess. Perhaps the entropy of the NEP does draw all things toward super-death, but I don't think undead are closer to that state than the dead. Indeed, entropy of the NEP in its most concentrated manifestation, the voidstones, pretty much erases everything. Undead more linger about, refusing to be erased, whereas death is a limited-scope erasure (as part of the dead being re-enters the life-death cycle, and certain things about the dead being persist).

[Bakkan]

My personal headcanon is that life is not "positive energy," but the result of positive energy flowing from its source to its sink. In fact, there's no such thing as "positive energy" and "negative energy" as such. It's all one energy; what there is is a source (the Positive Energy Plane) and a sink (the Negative Energy Plane). Energy flows from one to the other. What people call "positive energy" is really just greater exposure to the Positive plane; this increases the flow of energy from the source to wherever it is being measured, thus registering as an influx of this energy. What people call "negative energy" is really just greater exposure to the Negative plane; this increases the flow of energy from wherever it is being measured to the sink, thus registering as a sudden dearth of this energy.

Much like "cold" is, in real-world physics, an absence of heat and not its own energy type.

The living are conduits from the positive energy plane to the Material. The flow of that energy from its source is the water moving our mill-wheels of biological processes, pouring through the channel of our spirits to power our bodies. Our bodies' ability to repair themselves is just another part of these processes which are fueled by this energy flow. When injured, we can benefit from a surplus of this energy supercharging our healing processes; thus, healing magics tend to involve strong sources of positive energy. It's like pouring a bucket of water onto specific sub-systems in the complex water-works to accelerate them.

The undead have the linkage reversed. Instead of being a conduit to the positive plane, they are a conduit to the negative. The energy of the material world flows out through whatever soul-stuff they have (whether a necromantic construct or the actual once-living spirit still bound to the body...or a spirit sucking down life energy in a desperate bid to stay in the material world rather than move on) into the negative plane. Their bodily functions are dead, and do not work right. What they have instead are the echoes, the channels worn by the energy that flowed through them in life, enabling them to use that flow from the material world to the negative plane to force the gross motions of the body, or to cling to this plane with their spirits (rather than moving on).

When they are damaged - their link to the material world or their animating force taxed due to injury of the corpse - a stronger connection to the negative energy plane increases the flow of energy through well-worn channels, reminding the body of its proper shape and bolstering the will to remain to which the spirit clings.

Actually exposing them to the source of this energy is like directing a firehose through a model of a water-wheel. The flow needs to be from a diffuse source, or it crushes the channels, altering them in ways that break apart that which normally is used to hold the structure together.

Similarly, exposing the living to negative energy - that is, a greater exposure to the Negative Energy Plane - is like sucking the water out of their mill before it is finished flowing through. It damages the living by disrupting the natural flow of energy from the positive plane, shutting down internal systems and causing the normal flow to have to pick back up and re-regulate any touchy timings.

The dead - that is, corpses whose spirits have moved on and which are not animate - are just objects. They no longer provide conduits to either plane. The reason necromancy can animate them as undead, but can't do so with that which was never alive, is simply that the channels for the energy worn during life are still there, enabling them to be conduits for the energy through to the negative plane and use that sucking flow to re-animate the body.

New headcanon achieved. +1 Internet to you, sir.

[Psyren]

Segev said what I did with a lot more words but in greater detail as a result, so I'll point to that.

[Elderand]

It's simple.

Negative energy is just anti positive energy. Not it's opposite. It's like matter and anti matter. Anti matter is just matter with a different charge. Well, Negative energy is just positive energy with a different charge.

To the eyes of mortals anti matter is bad and equal with death and entropy because the two are mutualy exclusive and most of the multiverse is positive energy biased.
But they have the exact same property. And undead is just a form of life powered by a different energy, but energy just the same.
Now the question of why undead don't...die like positive energy creature do after a while is simple. it's all due to the positive energy bias of the universe. See there is exactly as much positive energy as there is negative energy. But positive energy is spread way thinner, essentialy there isn't enough to go around to everyone forever, and so things die. Positive energy is used up by living thing to live, but there isn't enough to restore everyone stocks all the time.

But there is enough negative energy to power every undead forever because there are so few undead comparatively. So even though they use it up, it's replenished whitout any issue. There is even a large surplus of negative energy compared to the number of undead. That's why you got the evolved undead template.

Now the whole death, entropy, undead and such terms are merely loaded language coming from positive energy biased creature.
Positive energy causes as much entropy to negative energy creature as the opposite, undead get harmed by cure wound spells after all.
Death is something that happen to both too, you can kill undeads. And presumably, if there were enough of them their stock of negative energy wouldn't get restocked and they'd run out and die naturaly.
Undead is ready the worst loaded term. I think we should adopt the term differently alive.

-Signed Elderand, totaly not a lich in disguise-

[atemu1234]

You're missing the point. Positive energy *is* used to animate something. This is called a resurrection. Negative energy is a force of evil energy that replaces the thing's need and desire for positive energy, which heals normal creatures but cancels out negative, harming undead.

[AuraTwilight]

Undead move and act despite being fueled by negative energy because they're fragments of the larger void that is the Negative Energy Plane. Thus, they will seek to return, but not before sending everything they possibly can there first, like a sort of reverse Bodhisattva.

[Sith_Happens]

If you want to treat Deathless as just as horrifying as Undead, then they need to be the opposite - where Undead are constantly decaying and dying, Deathless would be constantly growing, out of control.

Deathless would be a cancerous tumour, growing and consuming everything around it, burning people out and afflicting them with countless amounts of bacteria and new life.

It would look kind of like:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_RUJ95nvsL3Y/TEB0_RwWE-I/AAAAAAAAAi0/p85FO0sh5pY/s1600/TETSUO-AKIRA.jpg

That's actually one of the Elder Evils' shtick.

[Pan151]

If you use this view, then negative energy is not merely entropic in nature. There has got to be something more to it that makes negative "life forms" a possibility. You could try to blame it all on necromancy, but there are so many undead that just spontaneously spring into existence when somebody dies the wrong way that it's a little difficult.

Negative and Positive energy are a lot like the real-life matter and anti-matter.

In real life we are all made of matter (electrons, protons, etc.) and if we were to come to contact with an equal amount of anti-matter (positrons, anti-protons, etc) we would both explode. There's nothing inherently natural about matter or anything inherently unnatural about anti-matter, we just so happened to be made by the former, so we called the latter anti-matter. Likewise, there is nothing inherently life-giving about Positive energy, or inherently death-causing about Negative energy - it just so happened that the world was powered by the former, so the latter is called Negative. It can till be used as a form of energy - just like irl anti-matter has its usages, such as in medical scans.

[DeadMech]

Something I worked out for a previous RP I ran was an explanation of how magic interacted with undead. Not D&D so perhaps not perfectly suited.

Healing magic worked by supplying energy to the body and using it to supercharge the processes cells used to replicate while protecting the dna from becoming damaged in the process. Turning this against undead would have interesting effects. Their cells not being alive wouldn't replicate. Instead the microbes living on or in their bodies would absorb the healing magic. They would replicate several hundred times in short order, damaging the undead by basically eating it's body and turning it to putrid mush. This being an exothermic reaction didn't make it any more fun for an undead either.

Conversely something that typically killed life the way poison does wouldn't affect undead bodies. In fact it would help preserve them by killing the microbes that were constantly eating away at them, allowing whatever regenerative effects that the undead used to catch up on injuries.

Though that doesn't explain undead that take the form of spirits. Though in my backgrounds spirit enemies were harmed not with healing magic but usually by magic in general. Why. Because incorporeal and meta physics... it's not important or relevant so I'll stop here.

[Spore]

Negative Energy only makes sense in an universe where the absolute zero temperature and energy content is not the lowest point. There has to be a state where the environment isn't only devoid of energy or motion but actually requires energy to get to zero. My layman brain can only imagine negative energy as some sort of magically controlled antimatter devouring power.

Which makes Zombies actually antimatter constructs. How cool is that?

[hamishspence]

Mimir.net (Planescape fansite) had an interesting essay on the Inner Planes - including the negative and positive energy ones - and how they applied to the Material Plane:

http://mimir.net/essays/planarphysics.html

The last part is all about undead and negative energy.