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  1. - Top - End - #31
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Lizardfolk

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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    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.
    Me: I wanted to keep this a light-hearted setting...
    Forum: How about the dead are a commodity and everyone's fighting for them?

  2. - Top - End - #32
    Librarian in the Playground Moderator
     
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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Quote Originally Posted by Riftwolf View Post
    Me: I wanted to keep this a light-hearted setting...
    Forum: How about the dead are a commodity and everyone's fighting for them?
    What can I say? We aim to pervert.

    Sorry. I think "Fey as the opposite of undead" works well, and changing it to "humans are the commodity", makes it a bit less dire.
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  3. - Top - End - #33
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Quote Originally Posted by Riftwolf View Post
    I don't want to conflate Necrum and Abyss.
    Quote Originally Posted by Riftwolf View Post
    Having a definite quantifiable afterlife raises questions I'm not prepared to answer.
    Then I would suggest making Necrum the antechamber of the afterlife, a place through which souls transit before passing on to the great beyond.

    Possible lore under that premise:
    • Most souls remain wholly uncorporeal, but those who linger eventually gain the statblock of a ghost or some other ectoplasm.
    • The living can physically travel to Necrum, but should they die here then their corpses are sure to rise as zombies and the like.
    • Creatures born on Necrum exhibit dhampir-like traits, and it is believed that the first true vampires began as such odd children.

    I am taking inspiration from the Nentir Vale version of the Shadowfell. An optimistic interpretation of Eberron's Dolhurr also has it work as a doorway to a better afterlife.

  4. - Top - End - #34
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    I think the opposite of the undead would be cancer tumors. So maybe your counterbalance plane is like one of those living levels you see in some videogames where everything is made out of flesh and bone and it's like a big teratoma
    "If you want to understand biology don't think about vibrant throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology" -Richard Dawkins

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  5. - Top - End - #35
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Metastachydium's Avatar

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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Quote Originally Posted by Riftwolf View Post
    Me: I wanted to keep this a light-hearted setting...
    Forum: How about the dead are a commodity and everyone's fighting for them?
    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    I think the opposite of the undead would be cancer tumors. So maybe your counterbalance plane is like one of those living levels you see in some videogames where everything is made out of flesh and bone and it's like a big teratoma
    Riftwolf: I wanted to keep this a light-hearted setting...
    Forum: How about a plane of cancer tissue?


    (I still think you should go with plants.)

  6. - Top - End - #36
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    I think the opposite of the undead would be cancer tumors. So maybe your counterbalance plane is like one of those living levels you see in some videogames where everything is made out of flesh and bone and it's like a big teratoma
    Which in D&D would be the purview of aberrations and the Far Realm.



    Not a bad choice as an opposite to the undead. For humor, you could have zombies go "braaains" but then the brains bite back.

    Quote Originally Posted by Metastachydium View Post
    I still think you should go with plants.
    That's also my main choice. Plants, fey, dryads, all that verdant stuff.

    Still, the place could be encroached by other extremes / classic videogames levels: flesh zone, elemental zone, clockwork zone...

  7. - Top - End - #37
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Quote Originally Posted by Metastachydium View Post
    Riftwolf: I wanted to keep this a light-hearted setting...
    Forum: How about a plane of cancer tissue?


    (I still think you should go with plants.)
    Beat me to the punch XD
    Thanks for suggestions but I'm going with a Fae plane. I have other ideas for this game but I'm honestly worried to post them now (I thought World would be the safest part)

    By Fae I'm thinking Nymphs (Greek), Satyrs, Leshy (Ents with the branding scrubbed off), Pixies etc. Elves would be a mortal race who are long lived; the Fae are relatively short lived, depending on the species they can last a season, a few years or as long as their loci is intact.
    Last edited by Riftwolf; 2021-11-05 at 09:14 AM.

  8. - Top - End - #38
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Bohandas's Avatar

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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Quote Originally Posted by Metastachydium View Post
    Riftwolf: I wanted to keep this a light-hearted setting...
    Forum: How about a plane of cancer tissue?
    What if it was a mix of cancer tissue and politicians, would that make it better or worse?
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  9. - Top - End - #39
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    What if it was a mix of cancer tissue and politicians, would that make it better or worse?
    Stop somehow making it worse! Forum rules prevent me quipping back!

  10. - Top - End - #40
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    OrcBarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Undead is the term fearful mortals use. Truly, it is a state of pure, bodyless intellect. The corpse thing - well, we still need to read books, so something has to turn pages. Thus we require empty shells to fill with our intellect. (/tsundere)

    The counterpoint is pure body, no intellect. Common beasts.

    On a different axis, i think golems would be opposite undead. Elemental spirit vs human soul as animating force.

  11. - Top - End - #41
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    How about the following: material plane living creatures lives and generally wants to live but when they do not want to live they do not live long, undead live because they want to and are powered by that will to live and the opposite of the undead would live despite not caring about living at all.
    (You would have to remove creatures cursed to live against their will from the undead category if you use that)
    Last edited by noob; 2021-11-09 at 06:34 AM.

  12. - Top - End - #42
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Bohandas's Avatar

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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    What if you had two undead planes, but one was ghosts and specters and so forth, and the other was zombies and vampires and stuff? The body vs the soul.
    "If you want to understand biology don't think about vibrant throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology" -Richard Dawkins

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  13. - Top - End - #43
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Metastachydium's Avatar

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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    What if you had two undead planes, but one was ghosts and specters and so forth, and the other was zombies and vampires and stuff? The body vs the soul.
    And the former would be a big meaty tumor, while the latter would be composed of political slogans and pre-election promises?

  14. - Top - End - #44
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Quote Originally Posted by Metastachydium View Post
    And the former would be a big meaty tumor, while the latter would be composed of political slogans and pre-election promises?
    I wanted this to be vaguely kid friendly guys...

  15. - Top - End - #45
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    ReaderAt2046's Avatar

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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Well, in the Dragonwatch series (which I've just been reading), a lot of the metaphysics revolve around the conflict between the powers of light/life and darkness/death. Light magic prolongs and creates life, while dark magic prevents death through undeath. In that series, the opposite of the undead are the undying, mortals who have been infused with light magic such that they are in various ways incapable of truly dying (some undying age and some don't, but all have in common that if they die they generally don't stay dead). The realms of Light are described as places where life never withers or fades, places filled with an eternal vitality. The only downside is that things generally can't grow or develop in the realms of light either, that only happens when you enter the mortal realms where light and dark mix and things can grow or die.

    But that series does very deliberately conflate light/life with good and darkness/death with evil, which you've said you don't want to do.
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  16. - Top - End - #46
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    How about progress and innovation and futurism as the opposite of undead. The undead are supposed to be gone but are still around and the other plane could be full of stuff that's not supposed to be around yet
    "If you want to understand biology don't think about vibrant throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology" -Richard Dawkins

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  17. - Top - End - #47
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Maybe undead are caused by an excess of life that prevents death.
    If undeath is the excess of life the plane opposing undeath would be a wasteland devoid of any life.
    Last edited by noob; 2021-11-30 at 10:15 AM.

  18. - Top - End - #48
    Orc in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Opposite of Undead

    Eberron has a positive energy plane, Irian, filled with creation. It has Lumi building sets that will go to become parts of the other planes, to balance out another plane of hungry undead stealing old pieces of those planes.
    yo

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