Just for Fluff: Undead beauty regime

[Jowgen]

Lets say you have a lich or somesuch that only very recently became undead and would like to stay pretty. Obviously there is spells/items for that, but for this scenario lets say this undead also intends to employ a normal beauty regime.

So my starting thought would be to take extended baths, which have a concoction of natural and alchemical ingredients added into to soak up and help maintain a lifelike palour.

So how would you go about making a bath salt concoction for an undead?

Obviously a dash a Unguent of Timelessness, but what else?

[Asmotherion]

Depending on the definition of corpse Gentle Repose cast on self each time it's former casting expires seems as a great solution for an undead.

Disguise Self or Disguise Undead can give the finishing touch (to simulate breathing/give a lively tone to face etc).

[Malphegor]

You'd be amazed how often this song comes up with necromancers I play. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=374xW4zZbZA)

So, you want to look as good dead as you did alive?

Cosmetic treatments to your skin, with a bit of cheap 1 ply almost transparent thin paper over puncuctures stuck on with Sovereign glue drops you can fix up skin, apply suitable skin paints, makeup,

Potpourri, absorbent sponges, anything to keep you dry, and absorb the juices and foul spells. Perfume to make you smell good

run milk through your blood vessels to prevent you going yellow with low blood running to your skin cells

Wax and modelling clay to rebuild some sections.

I'd actually advise against baths depending on the type of undead- you're adding moisture to a body that isn't necessarily flushing it out as much as the living. Wet undead probably stink like something rotting, think of raw sewage mixed with the smell of meat that's been left in a puddle for a week- because you are rotting. Whatever animates you probably stops bacteria and foul odor-creating things absolutely breaking you down, but that doesn't stop them thriving in the juices that are soaked into your dead cells.

[Telonius]

Full immersion in Quintessence (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/quintessence.htm) would probably do it.

If you want to kill some catgirls, the decay that you'd experience is caused by microbes. Anything that would kill those, would prevent decay.

[Jowgen]

You'd be amazed how often this song comes up with necromancers I play. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=374xW4zZbZA)

So, you want to look as good dead as you did alive?

Cosmetic treatments to your skin, with a bit of cheap 1 ply almost transparent thin paper over puncuctures stuck on with Sovereign glue drops you can fix up skin, apply suitable skin paints, makeup,

Potpourri, absorbent sponges, anything to keep you dry, and absorb the juices and foul spells. Perfume to make you smell good

run milk through your blood vessels to prevent you going yellow with low blood running to your skin cells

Wax and modelling clay to rebuild some sections.

I'd actually advise against baths depending on the type of undead- you're adding moisture to a body that isn't necessarily flushing it out as much as the living. Wet undead probably stink like something rotting, think of raw sewage mixed with the smell of meat that's been left in a puddle for a week- because you are rotting. Whatever animates you probably stops bacteria and foul odor-creating things absolutely breaking you down, but that doesn't stop them thriving in the juices that are soaked into your dead cells.

Excellent perspective, just what I was looking for.

The balance of liquid is a good point. I see the problem with being too moist, but being too dry seems like a problem too, as we'd start loosing cohesion and begin to flake apart IIRC.

I think that introducing milk, which is just begging to rot, would be counterproductive.

So what if instead we worked towards replacing the organic liquids in the body with something biologically inert that mirrors the tactile and olfactory qualities of the living?

Leech salt from Sandstorm can be used to easily draw the moisture out, then we just need to work on a spa treatment to replace it with another mixture of liquids, i.e our bath concoction.

Petroleum Jelly might be a decent basis? Not a chemist, but IIRC it holds aroma compounds well, takes ages to break down, and being hydrophobic it helps keep our moisture level low. Heat it to liquid, add unguent of timelessness and fragrance mixture, immerse and infuse partially desiccated undead in it.

Issue I see though is how to handle keeping it stable at higher temperature, i.e. not start becoming super flammable in the desert.


EDIT: Obviously we can also add pigments of our choice to keep our colour vibrant, though then we'd have to seperately do hair, eyeballs, etc to not be totally monochromatic.

[Faily]

I think for this particular issue you have to completely abandon most thoughts around dermatology and instead look in a mortician's handbook. This is because dermatology works with living skin, which is different from dead skin (dead skin is what you want to remove from living skin most of the time, hence why the use of porebrushes and exfoliation).

Article about preserving loved ones' tattoos (don't click if skin freaks you out) (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48047002)

From what I can see from that, you would be looking into embaling techniques, and the most important of all: protection from UV. Dead skin and sunblock won't really do the trick either over long periods of time.

In addition to that, you would want to keep the temperature where you are very low. Since undeads in D&D and fantasy don't seem to have trouble moving around in subzero temperatures, I guess you might as well shack up in a frozen cave (no sun, cold temps!).

For makeup, you'd want to use powders, and stay away from cream-based or liquid makeup, as liquids will soak into the skin (we don't want this on dead skin since you can't really go through the washing and cleansing everyday anymore because you need to limit any potential damage to the skin), and both types will start "caking". Powders have less staying power and need more touchups than the other two, but on the plus side will be easier to remove.

[Malphegor]

For hair, I’m almost tempted to say give up and wear a wig, Roald Dahl’s witches style. Living people’s hair is continuously growing, and in undeath it probably isn’t, which whilst undeath probably protects from damage, it’s going to lose colour.

Dyes exist... But you might be better off with a wig sewn right into your flesh. Take advantage of your new unlife, try a style you never had while alive, after all, life is short but undeath is forever!

Now I strongly advise never doing that one skin treatment for feet that involves fish nibbling dead skin because not only does this carry infections amongst the living (and you don’t want to be a carrier for a disease even if you are unaffected. Plaguebearers are so out of fashion in undead that you will be ostracised from most monster mashes if you try it), you are 100% dead and they will gorge.

Your eyes probably look sunken and dark, making them look like a skull’s eyesockets so I highly recommend you the skin around your eyes with a good few weeks glaring at the sun and all it represents.

[Elves]

Just like the common fashion advice for balding people is to shave it off and go full bald, I bet the advice in this case would be: go full skeleton. Otherwise it will just look tryhard, and even while you were alive you could never get your skin as clean and sparkly as polished bone is. Take the bonepill.

[The Viscount]

You might get some use out of plastination like they do for Bodies: the Exhibit. The only thing is I'm not sure how it works on skin.

[Jowgen]

You might get some use out of plastination like they do for Bodies: the Exhibit. The only thing is I'm not sure how it works on skin.

That's actually where I got the idea for using Leech Salt (Sandstorm) to remove the water, as irl they use acetone for that.

Now looking back into it, it does offer one other thing that might be useful in this, and that is to use a vacuum to force the cellular liquids to evaporate so they are replaced by a liquid polymer of choice.

Naturally, plastic is not a thing that's easy to come by in D&D. For undead purposes, I'm still not sure what would be best to use, with Petroleum Jelly (i.e. vaseline) being the best thing I can think of atm.


I think for this particular issue you have to completely abandon most thoughts around dermatology and instead look in a mortician's handbook. This is because dermatology works with living skin, which is different from dead skin (dead skin is what you want to remove from living skin most of the time, hence why the use of porebrushes and exfoliation).

Article about preserving loved ones' tattoos (don't click if skin freaks you out) (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48047002)

From what I can see from that, you would be looking into embaling techniques, and the most important of all: protection from UV. Dead skin and sunblock won't really do the trick either over long periods of time.

In addition to that, you would want to keep the temperature where you are very low. Since undeads in D&D and fantasy don't seem to have trouble moving around in subzero temperatures, I guess you might as well shack up in a frozen cave (no sun, cold temps!).

For makeup, you'd want to use powders, and stay away from cream-based or liquid makeup, as liquids will soak into the skin (we don't want this on dead skin since you can't really go through the washing and cleansing everyday anymore because you need to limit any potential damage to the skin), and both types will start "caking". Powders have less staying power and need more touchups than the other two, but on the plus side will be easier to remove.

UV protection is a fair point. Perhaps we can use Shadowlight Oil (C:totW) and/or Liquid Night (LM) as part of our cellular liquid replacement mixture. With the Unguent of Timelessness added, both should be sufficiently stable to provide protection against radiation based decay.

Other ideas: Alchemical Deodorant, Dungeon 124, to keep our scent neutral.

Lakeleaf, Dragon 357, a magical plant used in cooking that if rubbed onto meat prevents it from ever drying out, even if set on fire. Should act as a good binding agent to keep the petroleum jelly from evaporating and combusting when it gets too hot.

[RatElemental]

Depending on the definition of corpse Gentle Repose cast on self each time it's former casting expires seems as a great solution for an undead.

Disguise Self or Disguise Undead can give the finishing touch (to simulate breathing/give a lively tone to face etc).

There was a shirt of gentle repose in one of the more infamous third party books for pretty much this exact purpose.

[Jowgen]

There was a shirt of gentle repose in one of the more infamous third party books for pretty much this exact purpose.

Well, there's actually a robe specifically designed for this in City of the Spider queen as well, but the purpose herein is to come up with a non-magical fluff solution intended to supplement the magic for good measure.

[Malroth]

Well as undead are immune to the harmful effects of radiation while bacteria are not I'd imagine there are all sorts of substances a vain enough undead could inject themselves to stave off cellular decay. Replace ones own blood with a slurry of Black sand, pitchblende and alchemists frost and keep it circulating via some kind of mechanical pump.

[Jowgen]

Well as undead are immune to the harmful effects of radiation while bacteria are not I'd imagine there are all sorts of substances a vain enough undead could inject themselves to stave off cellular decay. Replace ones own blood with a slurry of Black sand, pitchblende and alchemists frost and keep it circulating via some kind of mechanical pump.

Good thought, could powder some sickstone (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20021228a) and add it to our mixture, having it add as a means of internal irradiation.


So current recipe:

- Petroleum Jelly: base, intended to replace natural tissue moisture
- Unguent of Timlessness: preservative, for all the organic additives
- Lakeleaf: stabilizer, keeps in the absorbed mixture even in high heat
- Liquid Night (i.e. moonflower extract): UV/sunlight protection
- Powdered Sickstone: radioactive anti-bacterial agent
- Powdered Blue Ice: just a little bit for temperature regulation
- Alchemical Deodorant: what is says on the tin

We put all this into an alchemists glass (DC) so it all mixes and infuses evenly.

We first have a dry bath in Leech Salt to dehydrate the tissue (or, I dunno, just swallow a gallon of the stuff). Then we immerse in the mixture to let it all soak in.

[Zaq]

I mean, okay, Wikipedia is Wikipedia, but Wikipedia indicates that Earth didn't get petroleum jelly until we started drilling for, y'know, petroleum, which most D&D worlds don't have much of an infrastructure for. Was it mentioned specifically in some obscure Dragon article or something? If not, I find it to be a bit of a stretch to import it into the typical D&D fantasy world.

I'm not saying it's impossible to develop the process of manufacturing it in D&D (I mean, you could theoretically eventually invent anything we invented in reality, given time and resources), but it strikes me as a little bit outside of the default setting assumptions.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Depending on the definition of corpse Gentle Repose cast on self each time it's former casting expires seems as a great solution for an undead.

3rd party, but the BoEF explicitly states that gentle repose works on undead, and even has a magic item that continually produces the effect.

EDIT: Ninja'd.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I feel that this thread needs more Renegade Mastermaker liches, who have entirely the best fluff for preserving their looks--it's a lich reinforced with warforged tech! It's not nonmagical (in fluff; the class ability is), it's not RAI, but it is Undead (living construct), with a Constitution score and all that entails. (the RAW application of the living construct subtype to the undead type is in question, though it's more straightforward than it might seem, due to the similarities between undead and constructs.)