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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Nickeris86 on April 20, 2011, 05:58:14 AM
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Since zombies and vampires have been such huge hits in the media as of late I thought I would ask everyone what kind of undead critters they are putting in their stories if any. The more unique the better.
I'll start things off. My undead are separated into three categories, those created by a Necromancer or mage (zombies, skeletons, mummies and a few other creatures that are more bizarre. Then there are the "natural" undead which are primarily the many flavors of ghosts and spirits. created undead for the most part are soulless husks with no will of their own so there is no real moral issue in creating them though many think its evil. Natural undead are fragments of a dead persons soul and thus have some will, evil necromancers will enslave them for their nefarious purposes while good ones will make a bond with them. Evil necromancers tend to have more slaves but they are also weaker, good necromancers have fewer undead to command but they are stronger. The last group are the divinely created, these are made only when a god steps in and turns a mortal into an undead minion these are Lichs or Deathknights depending on which god creates them (only two gods have created such beings). These beings are not true undead but living beings who exists simultaneously in the mortal and spirit world making them very very very powerful.
all undead can be modified by a strong enough mage, usually a necromancer, enhancing them with spells and other nasty surprises depending on what task they were created for.
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Sounds cool. Ill chime in when I have more time with different undead types Ive thought about. But for now I have two questions: Do Angels exist in your frame and are they the "good" version of a Lich/Deathnight? Are all Mages undead and/or spirit based, or is that just one field/school/specialization?
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In my setting there aren't angels in the traditional scenes, three goddesses rule over the pantheon and each has their own servants by a different name. Deathnights could be considered "good" they protect the natural order of life and death, and have near god like power. Lichs have forsaken their humanity and serve oblivion and are also near godlike in their power scale, though I am thinking of calling them something else. As for magic, there are several schools of magic and any magi can learn them depending on their own aptitude (not everyone is good at everything). then their are the Mavin who are the archmages they are proficient at all magic to some degree. My main character is a Necromancer training to become a Mavin.
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So there are necromancers, but also evokers, illusionists, thaumaturgists etc (or some variation of the standard magic schools)?
As far as some different types of undead, here's a few:
Vampires (Got most of this during a spin of research lookign for the Jade Court)
- They typically fall into one of a few broad categories, that the courts mostly fit. There are the monster creatures that only looks like a human being, and usually has the various levels of shapeshifting ability. There are the Undead type. There are also a lot of SE Asia myths of green skinned beings that could split/segment their bodies, send their heads off flying, and other such stuff, but sometimes that seems like the shapeshifting bits, while otehrtimes the green is rot and they are more animated dead style. And there are the Psychic/spiritual Vampires. Any of the Shapeshifting and/or Undead stuff sounds good for your Necro-Dead, while the Psychic Vampire sounds like a great Natural type; it could be a spirit drain, a possession thing, or an outright walking dead that found a way to steal life to keep ticking.
Other Undead include Patchwork types, with can be anything from franestien's monster to chimera creatures built from various animal and/or people parts.
You could have all sorts of fun with different types of based on the portion of soul preserved or the method/circumstances of their death, and moreso depending on how firm you are on the intangibility of the Natural types. So like a person that died with extreme lonliness might become a siren type that tries to drag the living down with them. Wereas the victim of a push-in robery/murder might be a poltergeist that violently tries to drive them off. And those are just intangible types; if you are willing to have physical types that are Natural instead of created, you can go even further with the twisted, monster stuff. A psychic vampire as a natural type would make sense for example. Or various forms of rage-monster, gluttany/devourer, etc. The Big 7 sins are always good fodder for that sort of thing.
If you can give me more on the flavor of the 3 goddesses, I can give you more for the divine type
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I was discussing this with a pal the other day...undead beings.
Okay, we were discussing ONE undead being, aka the main guy of a certain paranormal romance that has been made into four movies starring...*ahem* some people girls scream and die over. (You know who it is ;D)
I was kind of skeptic over the whole vampire thing, and I went like, how is it possible for a dead guy to walk around, drink blood (where does the blood GO? He doesn't have a heart to pump it anywhere!! he doesn't have a working stomach to digest the stuff!! WHAT???), and--this is the big haha moment--have kids???? With another human!!!!
Keep in mind that a vampire is DEAD. Not breathing. Eating (apart from blood).
Just a mini-vent. Sorry. :) The whole vampire sensation sweeping the nation kind of bugs me. I don't see the beauty of loving someone who's dead.
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My first post was just a very vague over view of the undead in my story. There are vampires already in it but they are more like the White Court in the fact that they aren't undead. They were created by the Goddess of death as part of the creation mythos i devised for my world. Each of the three goddesses created a race to inhabit the world (The goddess of Life created Orc like beings, the goddess of Time created Humans, and the goddess of Death created a race of vampire/elves.) They do feed on blood of living beings but they aren't evil either its actually illegal for them to kill a human by feeding in their culture.
As for the created undead i do have the patchwork ones in there, they are one of the hardest undead to create because they have a will of their own, meaning they are about as intelligent as a German Shepard. There are also the oath bound undead, who are created by their literally undying loyalty to someone, they can be any type of undead but are completely sentient and remember the entirety of their life not just a fragment of it.
Natural undead for the most part start out as ghosts which aren't all that impressive but can evolve by "feeding" on emotional energy connected to them (a sad ghost will be drawn to sadness, and angry ghost to anger or maybe fear depending) or by merging with other spirits which is rarer, so older spirits are more powerful and can become wraiths and specters and the like, even the most power undead known the Nightwalker (some think this is another type of divine undead but i haven't decided yet, they aren't quite godlike but their close). physical undead that happen naturally are corpses possessed either by a demon or a ghost that is pushed by very strong emotion like Hate or Love. most physical undead tend to be malevolent because wrath is easy. their are also ghouls who are like wild dogs. they are a mystery, no one knows what creates them or how to make them but necromancers can control them and train them its just hard so most just destroy them outright.
as for the divine undead they are champions of the gods and so rare that most scholars dismiss them as complete myth, and there are few legends about them.
Death knights are those that have some how impressed the three goddesses but died in the process. they are given the choice, continue onto their final rest or return to the world of living as a champion of the gods as a Death knight. they aren't undead in the since that they aren't an animated corpse but a person brought back to life and now excites in the realm of the dead and the living simultaneously. living champions are possible but they are more like Hercules, mortal but more so.
So there are necromancers, but also evokers, illusionists, thaumaturgists etc (or some variation of the standard magic schools)?
Yes there are different specializations in magic depending on the person. their are three general groups that any school can fit into
there are Crafters who manipulate the physical world. they are limited in what they can do by the fact that they can not create something out of nothing only manipulate what is already there its kinda a combination of alchemy from full metal alchemist and bending from avatar the last air bender. then there are Weavers who weave metaphysical energies for an outcome, the are the ones that can hurl fireballs out of thin air or summon things out of nothing. Crafters are more common and weaving is harder to learn. then their are the Mavin who are masters of magic in all its forms thought they may have a specialty. ex a mavin illusionist will prefer to use illusions and glamors but can still make things go boom if they have too.
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To Clarify, are Death Knights Champions of the three goddesses collectively, any one of them, or the Death Goddess specifically? And if they are the death Goddess specifically, what do the life and time paragons look like?
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@ Arianne: I would agree that the vampire love fest has gotten out of control but I don't consider Edward and company real vampires either, they just fail to hard. Personally I have no problem with vampires being good guys, or sexy so long as the fact that they are a predatory being is not forgotten in the angst. Some angst can make a character more interesting, having it be their defining quality makes me want to put them through a wood chipper feet first. The sexy quality I think stems from Bram Stoker and Ann Rice who made some very sexy characters but it was more on the mystery, charm and intrigue that they inspired than wanting to jump their bones. they also screwed with peoples minds to make them desire them which i think got lost in translation.
@Quantus: Death Knights are the champions of all three, they are created when the Goddesses need something killed. in my world the gods cant directly interfere with mortal affairs (I can send you a copy of my Creation Mythos which would explain why). Think of them as divine warriors, a champion of life would be a great leader and bring healing and stability, a champion of time would be the guardian of some terrible knowledge or treasure that could upset the balance of creation. that is the Goddesses main duty is to keep the world in balance.
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I was discussing this with a pal the other day...undead beings.
Okay, we were discussing ONE undead being, aka the main guy of a certain paranormal romance that has been made into four movies starring...*ahem* some people girls scream and die over. (You know who it is ;D)
I was kind of skeptic over the whole vampire thing, and I went like, how is it possible for a dead guy to walk around, drink blood (where does the blood GO? He doesn't have a heart to pump it anywhere!! he doesn't have a working stomach to digest the stuff!! WHAT???), and--this is the big haha moment--have kids???? With another human!!!!
Keep in mind that a vampire is DEAD. Not breathing. Eating (apart from blood).
Just a mini-vent. Sorry. :) The whole vampire sensation sweeping the nation kind of bugs me. I don't see the beauty of loving someone who's dead.
I'm with you on the vampire thing. I am SO ready for it to be over.
I believe it was the author Chelsea Quinn Yarboro who came up with a vampire character - set back in Renaissance times.
And because he was dead and had no circulation - he couldn't - shall we say - get it up. ::)
That would really set the "you know who" lovers off big time.
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I read an interesting article the other day in GQ talking about how vampires are no longer the hip monster in American pop culture but now its zombies. It basically went on to say that while Europe had coined the market on Vampires and Werewolves, and Asia had giant monsters and ghosts America has zombies.
It makes a lot of sense too, we have the Walking Dead show and comic series, Marvel Zombies, World War Z, the Zombie Survival Guide, and a host of other zombie related entertainment both good, bad, and freaking hilarious (Zombies on a Plane). The best part of the whole article is when they commented that the reason Zombies will never die, pardon the pun, is because you can't sexualize them as was the down fall of vampires (curse you Bella Swan and your lump of marble that is called a vampire). Zombies will forever remain horrifying because you can't humanize them despite the fact they were once your wife, neighbor, or best friend.
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Zombies will never die, pardon the pun, is because you can't sexualize them
How much you wanna bet someone is cranking out zombie fetish porn even as we type? ;D
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Eeewwwwww - isn't that rule 34 - if there's not porn on some subject there will be soon.
Double eewwwwww.
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+1 seriously ewwwed out person :D
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Offers arianne a gallon of eco-friendly brain bleech.
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necrophiliacs don't count lol. and no amount of brain bleach is going to get that mental stain out.
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I was thinking about why "undead" beings are so popular, and I thought maybe it has something to do with the fact that people feel hopeful about having an afterlife (even as a blood sucking beast with horribly messy hair) and being able to still feel emotions and connect with others. But what's the point in being undead when you might as well be alive, since apparently breathing, thinking, and feeling emotion aren't problems???
Zombies, though, do not fit that profile at ALL. I can't think of any reason why someone would want to be a zombie, or be with a zombie.
Thanks for the bleach. But no amount of anything is going to get horrible zombie porn images out of my head....
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I actually have an image I'm trying to bleech out.
Used to be a LoLCats site called - UglyTattoos or something like that.
Someone had a very nicely done (why I'll never know) zombie porn tattoo all up and down their lower leg.
Don't ask!!!!!!
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necrophiliacs don't count lol. and no amount of brain bleach is going to get that mental stain out.
Unfortuneately, I believe anyone who read that post will share common sentiments...
*shudder*
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ok morbid curiosity got the better of me thankfully all i could find was World of Warcraft undead stuff, which all said and done is not so mentally scaring as it could have been, granted i didn't look very hard either.
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That is something that bugs me at times, "Legalist" bullshit when it comes to vampires, and other legends. Stoker, Polidori, and Rymer are not the end all and be all of vampires. Watch the movie Razorblade Smile sometime.
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It depends on what region of vampire you are looking at. Every culture has had vampires in one form or another, in a lot of them they were nothing more than wild rabid animals who only sought to kill and destroy. Hell the ways to kill them, aside form sunlight which seems fairly universal, are rarely the same.
Same goes for zombies, "real" zombies couldn't be destroyed unless you burned them and in modern media the closest, according to an actual voodoo priest, was the Anita Blake vampire hunter series. you know when it still had zombies in it.
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Why is it that humans have this thing for crazy dead beings??? :)
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You know how it is... always wanting what you can't have.
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Yuck!!! I see that with a chicken or a dead cow (lunch) but NOT a human.
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Why is it that humans have this thing for crazy dead beings??? :)
people are freaking crazy.
but in all honesty i think it has to do with peoples fear of death, and various taboos on cannibalism.
Zombies could represent man kinds fear of the unknown after death and that there is perhaps only nothingness waiting for us, since zombies are empty shells trying to uselessly fill themselves. while vampires could be construed of the temptation to cheat death at the expense of another life. both are fears and temptations that most people have faced at one point or another.
then their are the weirdos like myself that hold no fear of death, dying yes death itself not so much. that's the belife that i base necromancy on, curiosity of the eternity and the secrets it holds. Death is neither good nor evil it just is and always will be, things can not change without something else ending the natural course of life.
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people are freaking crazy.
but in all honesty i think it has to do with peoples fear of death, and various taboos on cannibalism.
Zombies could represent man kinds fear of the unknown after death and that there is perhaps only nothingness waiting for us, since zombies are empty shells trying to uselessly fill themselves. while vampires could be construed of the temptation to cheat death at the expense of another life. both are fears and temptations that most people have faced at one point or another.
then their are the weirdos like myself that hold no fear of death, dying yes death itself not so much. that's the belife that i base necromancy on, curiosity of the eternity and the secrets it holds. Death is neither good nor evil it just is and always will be, things can not change without something else ending the natural course of life.
Id agree by and large for vampires, but not as much for zombies
My view on the zombie popularity has always been less about a fascination with death itself, and more about the appeal of being able to go commando apeshit with a chainsaw on a bunch of people without any moral complications you get mixed up with in with normal war stories (even the ones with aliens and such): they are both dead already and yet still threatening my life, thus you have undeniable justification (and maybe even a responsibility) to destroy the creature in the most effective (and often creative) way possible. The variation in zombie aggressiveness and such depends on how formidable you think you are, because anybody can whack the shufflers, but rage zombies pose more of a challenge. Its why zombie stories tend to become an apocalyptic situations, because its about what you do when all the rules of the world go out the window. Vampire stories by comparison tend to be less of the world-sweeping outbreak, and more of the ancient secret danger in the shadows sort of thing.
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not so much any more they are making more and more vampire Apocalypse type movies like I am Legend, or Daybreakers
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not so much any more they are making more and more vampire Apocalypse type movies like I am Legend, or Daybreakers
Daybreakers is a good example as they remain intelligent and become the master race and all, though I think I count I Am Legend as much more a Zombie flick, just with a photosensitive breed. Kind of an undead grey area though, Ill admit.
The best part of the whole article is when they commented that the reason Zombies will never die, pardon the pun, is because you can't sexualize them as was the down fall of vampires (curse you Bella Swan and your lump of marble that is called a vampire). Zombies will forever remain horrifying because you can't humanize them despite the fact they were once your wife, neighbor, or best friend.
(curiosity got the better of me and i read back to the brain bleach discussion)
Two Words: Zombie Strippers(IMDB) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0960890/). Do NOT read the Taglines without the brain bleach on hand; You have been warned.
But seriously there is also Fido(wiki) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fido_%28film%29), a legitimately well made film about the bonds between a boy, his pet zombie, and the various 1950s-esk suburban townspeople he was perfectly justified in killing. To be fair it cost $8 million and only made $400k worldwide, but it still got positive reviews. I wonder if the increasing popularity of Zombie Comedies will erode away the horror.
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I saw Fido, it was a great dark comedy ;D, not in the same way as Shawn of the Dead but still great.
You know what i have never seen in a movie, Necromancy, at least not in a way that satisfies me. In fact other than in D&D 3.5 i have never seen necromancers shown in a way that i find interesting in any media.
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Could be the word spooks people - they may assume that Necromancy automatically has to be linked
with Necrophilia.
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Could be the word spooks people - they may assume that Necromancy automatically has to be linked
with Necrophilia.
I know the type, had a friend who insisted that all necromancers are completely obsessed with death and the dead in all its depravity. Though I forgot to mention that there is a web comic that depicts necromancy in an absolutely awesome way, http://www.dominic-deegan.com.