Opposite of Undead

[Riftwolf]

I'm putting together a group of worlds, I had the idea of four of them being Paradise (Celestials), Mundus (Mortals), Abyss (Fiends) and Necrum (Undead). And I'm having trouble coming up with a fifth one to counterbalance Necrum? From memory the nearest d&d analog would be the Positive Energy Plane, which was basically 'very few things can survive there and there's not much lore attached to it'. I was wondering if there was some kind of superliving being in any game setting I could read? I don't want to conflate Necrum and Abyss.

[brian 333]

Possibility

This realm is the fountain of creation. Its ever-shifting landscape births beings as yet undreamed or long forgotten.

The continuous state of flux means that most beings warp, change, grow quickly and die soon to make room for the next incarnation. Some intelligences can stabilize themselves and possibly an area around them for a time. The positive energy beings most adventurers know are native to this plane, and are able to survive only for a short while away from the flux of their home.

Leaks from this realm result in new creatures or things on other worlds.

[Greywander]

"Undead" is a pretty broad concept. It would help if you could settle on an identity for your undead, unless you really do mean all generic undead.

For example, if your undead are a bit more like Halloween Town from Nightmare Before Christmas, less evil and more just creepy tricksters, then the opposite of that might be some kind of stodgy bureaucracy.

Maybe it would help to figure out where you're getting your different worlds from. Why does Necrum need to be "opposed" by anything? It kind of sounds like you're making your own version of the Great Wheel, but what are you basing yours on? Is it alignment? If so, what are your alignments? Is it something else? Figure out what it is, then it should be easier to come up with a suitable world to represent that thing. I would guess that Paradise represents Good, while the Abyss represents Evil; what does Necrum represent?

[Metastachydium]

I was wondering if there was some kind of superliving being in any game setting I could read? I don't want to conflate Necrum and Abyss.

The opposite of undead (at least in 3.5e) are the deathless^BoED. They have the same traits as undead do, but they are Good-aligned and powered by positive energy.
"Superliving beings" could perhaps describe creatures with the vivacious template^PH.

[MoiMagnus]

I'm putting together a group of worlds, I had the idea of four of them being Paradise (Celestials), Mundus (Mortals), Abyss (Fiends) and Necrum (Undead). And I'm having trouble coming up with a fifth one to counterbalance Necrum? From memory the nearest d&d analog would be the Positive Energy Plane, which was basically 'very few things can survive there and there's not much lore attached to it'. I was wondering if there was some kind of superliving being in any game setting I could read? I don't want to conflate Necrum and Abyss.

I suggest the following:

Pure Life => Celestials (Paradise)
Corrupted Life => Undead (Necrum)
Pure Elements => Elementals (??)
Corrupted Elements => Fiends (Abyss) [Most fiends have some elemental theme: fire, ice, etc]

Alternatively, you could also have mechanical beings as 5th kind.

[Chronos]

Yeah, 3rd edition had the whole "deathless" thing, but it wasn't really necessary, because there's already an opposite-of-undead in the rules. They're called "living".

[brian 333]

That's where I was going with my suggestion.

Undead = unchanging, undying beings seeking to exist forever without regard for the welfare of others.

The opposite of that is endlessly changing, ephemeral beings which by their nature always make way for the next incarnation.

This flips the Great Wheel Law and Chaos axis, making Lawfulness the stifling corruption of existence and Chaos the creative originator of life.

I've never liked the Gygaxian model because I disagree that beings of Law easily embrace the new and unexpected, and if Chaos is disolving existence to achieve oblivion, how was it also responsible for the spontaneous creation of the first gods?

In the model I presented, Chaos is destructive because it is constantly recycling the old to create the new while Law preserves what exists now by preventing change.

[Riftwolf]

That's where I was going with my suggestion.

Undead = unchanging, undying beings seeking to exist forever without regard for the welfare of others.

The opposite of that is endlessly changing, ephemeral beings which by their nature always make way for the next incarnation.

I like this idea, so would the opposite of Necrum be closer to the Feywild from Pathfinder? Instead of undead ossification, short-lived bursts of intense emotion and sensation? I currently have fae as beings of Mundus but I guess there's enough of them to warrant their own realm.

The reason I wanted five worlds is a bit complicated, but boils down to other categories for random character generation having five so it's easier to remember/build to. I like building new systems and if I could get other people on-board with mechanics, playtesting or coding, I might actually finish one some day XD

[Metastachydium]

Yeah, 3rd edition had the whole "deathless" thing, but it wasn't really necessary, because there's already an opposite-of-undead in the rules. They're called "living".

Technically, the opposite of the living are the dead, of which the undead are a subset at best, if not a third, liminal category.

Undead = unchanging, undying beings seeking to exist forever without regard for the welfare of others.

The opposite of that is endlessly changing, ephemeral beings which by their nature always make way for the next incarnation.

This flips the Great Wheel Law and Chaos axis, making Lawfulness the stifling corruption of existence and Chaos the creative originator of life.

I've never liked the Gygaxian model because I disagree that beings of Law easily embrace the new and unexpected, and if Chaos is disolving existence to achieve oblivion, how was it also responsible for the spontaneous creation of the first gods?

In the model I presented, Chaos is destructive because it is constantly recycling the old to create the new while Law preserves what exists now by preventing change.

The problem with this is that undead usually undergo change, often enough to a radical degree, to become undead. They aren't necessarily shielded from erosion of incapable of change (if intelligent) while others (those unintelligent) do not seek anything, let alone ways to exist forever.
In such a paradigm, exemplar type outsiders would be much better examples of Law, since they are undying creatures incapable of change.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I like the idea that life (including the cycle of seasons and birth/death) and undeath are thematic poles. So that puts the fey/natural cyclical forces in opposition to the undead. Balancing the feywild/faerie/Underhill against the realm of the should-be-dead.

[Quizatzhaderac]

plane of genesis

If somehow a gap in life forms in genesis, new life (plant, animals and people) will spontaneously form.

Everything ages a year in a day. People wake up each morning with new ideas spontaneous placed in their heads.

Passage of a day also has the same effect as the regeneration spell, explaining the few visitors.

[Riftwolf]

Technically, the opposite of the living are the dead, of which the undead are a subset at best, if not a third, liminal category.



The problem with this is that undead usually undergo change, often enough to a radical degree, to become undead. They aren't necessarily shielded from erosion of incapable of change (if intelligent) while others (those unintelligent) do not seek anything, let alone ways to exist forever.
In such a paradigm, exemplar type outsiders would be much better examples of Law, since they are undying creatures incapable of change.

I wanted to keep the setting fairly light-hearted without getting too much into the moral philosophy of undeath. 'Immortal but unchanging' is enough to describe the Undead (or 'change happens slowly' if unchanging turns out problematic, which it probably will) while 'short, intense bursts of life with long racial memories' is close to how I've got fae in another setting (who are born remembering ancestral grudges, but can be swayed by what's happening in the now rather than before). Undead I'm thinking of are Vampires, Ghosts, maybe Ghouls (undead jinn) and Ogres (undead giants).

[Yanagi]

I like this idea, so would the opposite of Necrum be closer to the Feywild from Pathfinder? Instead of undead ossification, short-lived bursts of intense emotion and sensation? I currently have fae as beings of Mundus but I guess there's enough of them to warrant their own realm.

The reason I wanted five worlds is a bit complicated, but boils down to other categories for random character generation having five so it's easier to remember/build to. I like building new systems and if I could get other people on-board with mechanics, playtesting or coding, I might actually finish one some day XD

Yeah, but undead are more about lack of change--fixity--and repetition than they are straight-up eternity. Ghosts are locked in traumatic loops, your various -phages are compelled by base consumption, the most dangerous varieties of undead are driven by appetites and emotion that are dark and immutable. It's not just that they persist, but that persistence is a mutilation of the full self that stunts being.

By contrast, think of the opposite less as "short lives' and more as "all things are becoming something else such that the very categories of alive/dead lose distinction." While technically every single being is a slightly different being each day, in an ever-blooming positive energy world this becomes very literal. The life of the soul and the life of the body are no longer on the same track: physical forms change rapidly...a thing becomes different kind of thing because its context is transformed or its perception is altered. Spiritual existences merge, split, enlarge in ways that are impossible in any other context. Contour confusion, but for existence itself. Everything is ferment.

So the whole plane looks a little more like Limbo than the old PE plane--things snap in and out of being, the ether is intensively response to thought--but not necessarily an oil-bubble void.

But I think for the sake of color and variety, it would be interesting to do a sort of mix--elementals, fae, other spirits that are all kind of mashed in, each becoming some other type periodically--but I think that instead of trying to find an exact opposite for undead you should go with...dragons.

Traditionally, dragons are personifications of the volatile but essential forces of life and nature...running water, the firmament, earthquakes, etc...and in most places they are creatures of transformation (in that they are shapeshifters, and in some stories other things become dragons through accident or incident) but also strangely many-formed and prone to hybridity (dragon turtles, dragon dog, color-coded dragon, wyrms/linnorms/zmei/long) and also radically change within their lifetime. There is also a grandiosity to their mortal existence--their appetites are large, they're highly individual, they have complex intertwining with both other beings and places, and they are massive accretions of power and life...strength, intellect, longevity, magic, dynamism.

[Millstone85]

From memory the nearest d&d analog would be the Positive Energy Plane, which was basically 'very few things can survive there and there's not much lore attached to it'.

I like this idea, so would the opposite of Necrum be closer to the Feywild from Pathfinder?

The Feywild can also be found in the 4th and 5th editions of D&D, where it is explicitly the opposite of a realm of undeath, grim emotions and obsessive cycles, called the Shadowfell.

[Metastachydium]

Wait a second! I figured it out! If the undead are dead things that move more than dead things should, the opposite of undead are clearly PLANTIES, plants being creatures that are very much alive but are of limited mobility.

[noob]

Wait a second! I figured it out! If the undead are dead things that move more than dead things should, the opposite of undead are clearly PLANTIES, plants being creatures that are very much alive but are of limited mobility.

Hence plants vs zombies?

[brian 333]

hence plants vs zombies?

logic wins again!

[Metastachydium]

Hence plants vs zombies?

[Nods.] This one gets it.

[Sharur]

Another vote for Fey as the "opposite of undead" faction; in addition to the reasons above, I'm inspired by a post I read online about giving creatures factions, based on their type.

Beasts care about food and territory and mates; Dragons are "uber beasts", so they care about food and respect (and treasure, as physical intermediary of respect; that's why dragons sleep on hordes of gold, gems, and magic items).

Humanoids are driven by their social bonds; Giants are "uber humanoids" so they are bound and driven by the Ordening.

Undead are driven by compulsion; Every undead is driven, compulsively to do something, even if it is attack the living. Fey, in contrast, are driven by emotion, and so are erratic and impulsive an whimsical.

[Greywander]

Oddly enough, undead could be the ultimate expression of Law: a static and unchanging existence. Contrast with Chaos, which is both a creative and destructive force that is in constant flux. Those who become undead often do so in an attempt to escape the cycle of birth and death; they're happy with the "being born" part, but less enthused about the "dying" part. Chaos, as a cosmic force, is constantly attempting to create and destroy universes, while Law is struggling to maintain this one particular universe that Chaos created. In a sense, the universe itself could be said to be undead.

Anyway, that's one possible take on the concept.

In D&D 5e, undead seem to sometimes be associated with the Shadowfell, a parallel dimension to the Material Plane. The other parallel dimension is the Feywild, a generally pretty chaotic place. So those saying Fey might be on to something.

[Lord Vukodlak]

I'm putting together a group of worlds, I had the idea of four of them being Paradise (Celestials), Mundus (Mortals), Abyss (Fiends) and Necrum (Undead). And I'm having trouble coming up with a fifth one to counterbalance Necrum? From memory the nearest d&d analog would be the Positive Energy Plane, which was basically 'very few things can survive there and there's not much lore attached to it'. I was wondering if there was some kind of superliving being in any game setting I could read? I don't want to conflate Necrum and Abyss.

Here's an idea.
Mundus, that is the opposite of Necrum the realm of the dead. Undead are those caught in-between.

[Millstone85]

Chaos, as a cosmic force, is constantly attempting to create and destroy universes, while Law is struggling to maintain this one particular universe that Chaos created.

This, I agree completely.

Oddly enough, undead could be the ultimate expression of Law: a static and unchanging existence.

Those who become undead often do so in an attempt to escape the cycle of birth and death; they're happy with the "being born" part, but less enthused about the "dying" part.

This too, were it not for the word "cycle".

A cycle is a change, yes, but from one state to another and back to the first one. Night after day after night. Summer after winter after summer. Tick and tock and tick goes the clock. Mechanus loves them cycles. Whereas Limbo is not so much a cycle of creation and destruction as it is a million little universes created all at once and left to gnaw at each other while ever more competition is thrown into the fray.

Similarly, a cycle of birth and death would mean being born, dying, and being born anew. Whereas us poor mortals, we are born, we die, we stay dead. Immortality-seekers do not want to escape a cycle of birth and death, they want to enter one.

Now, the problem with the undead in D&D is that they compare poorly to the afterliving. Sure, the Outer Planes come with a lot of silly rules about losing your memories and abilities, but certainly it would make more sense to research ways around those instead of on how to become a walking corpse.

[Rakaydos]

Here's a twist:

Undeath = Preservation and animation, which opposes death and destruction.

[noob]

Here's a twist:

Undeath = Preservation and animation, which opposes death and destruction.

I do not have the feeling it is a twist.
I think it is more a barely explored aspect of undeath that deserves more study.

[Spore]

Feywild, but this time with less of a focus on capricious fey, but more upon verdant life.

What does consume dead? Life does.
What is considered the opposite of decay and stagnation? Growth.

Make it a realm where day and night constantly shifts, superimposing an everlasting twilight. A realm where if you drop a seed it germinates immediately. Where you struggle to find the path as plants grow and wither in an eternal cycle, ever changing positions. A realm of Megafauna, where the average beast is at least twice their size. And a realm of chaos and everlasting change, a bit akin to Alice in Wonderland, but with less insanity.

[Millstone85]

I do not have the feeling it is a twist.
I think it is more a barely explored aspect of undeath that deserves more study.

The Blood of Vol, one of the faiths in the Eberron setting, teaches that mortality is neither desirable, just nor the natural order of things. People are only mortals because they have been robbed of their immortality. Undeath, however, is an incomplete recovery of it, and those who settle for it are martyrs paving the way for others to regain true immortality.

[brian 333]

I think Fey oppose Undeath, but are not its opposite.

When water and fire are mixed you either douse the fire or turn the water to steam. They cannot coexist in the way that earth and water, (mud, pond,) or air and water, (fog, rain,) often do.

Fey can coexist with undead, and even become undead. This is not polar opposition as is the exclusionary pure good/pure evil axis where you can be one, the other, or neither, but not both.

The opposite of undead must destroy or be destroyed by undeath, with no middle ground where they can live and let unlive.

Since negative energy powers undeath, it should be positive energy which powers anti-undeath. This was my original proposal, which I further equated to the law/chaos axis as an example of how they are mutually exclusive philosophically as well as physically.

If you choose to oppose undeath with fey, it is your world and your choice. My choice would be to oppose undeath with creation. New life opposes immortality, constant radical change opposes eternal stasis. The undead must die so the new creation can live, or exist forever fighting the change that would destroy what it has preserved.

[Riftwolf]

Here's an idea.
Mundus, that is the opposite of Necrum the realm of the dead. Undead are those caught in-between.

Nice idea, but I pictured the realm of the dead as being completely separate from the five realms. Like the flip side of the coin on which the five worlds are all one side. Having a definite quantifiable afterlife raises questions I'm not prepared to answer.
And again, setting is light-hearted supposedly, Fairies Vs Vampires is good enough for me

[Metastachydium]

Oddly enough, undead could be the ultimate expression of Law: a static and unchanging existence. Contrast with Chaos, which is both a creative and destructive force that is in constant flux. Those who become undead often do so in an attempt to escape the cycle of birth and death; they're happy with the "being born" part, but less enthused about the "dying" part. Chaos, as a cosmic force, is constantly attempting to create and destroy universes, while Law is struggling to maintain this one particular universe that Chaos created. In a sense, the universe itself could be said to be undead.

Anyway, that's one possible take on the concept.

(Hard disagree. Law is not about preserving the random murderous impulses of rampaging monstrosities or, for that matter, about transforming living creatures into these. Most undead, even intelligent ones, are victims of such creatures rather than immortality seekers anyway.)

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah, 3rd edition had the whole "deathless" thing, but it wasn't really necessary, because there's already an opposite-of-undead in the rules. They're called "living".

Kind of my thought. The living are the balance to the undead.

Huh. What about a setup like this.

At the center, your fulcrum, are the dead. Towards "east" and "west", you have the living and the dead. Towards "North" and "South" you have Elementals and Genies. Towards "up" and "down" you have Celestials and Fiends.

Now, the fun part. The dead are the center. The dead are the place around which all of this turns, and so the dead are the commodity that everyone craves. The living do so through a program of breeding (i.e. having babies) and reincarnation. The undead do so by consuming corpses and stealing life force. The Celestials offer paradise; the fiends offer power. Elementals and Genies harvest the dead as fuel for their fires, and they offer gifts.

Now, the Living, the essence of the Living, are elves (or Fae), who live forever. Humans, who live short lives, are closer to the Dead (though, obviously, not Dead themselves). This means they're a lot more vulnerable to the Undead... their own counterparts are zombies and skeletons (the bearly undead), with vampires and liches being more akin to elves (the deeply undead).

You could throw others into the intermediaries, of course.