Setting Focus - Undead

It might be a bit before our next game session; let me know whenever you guys are free. Until then, I'll try to give out some more information about the setting, specifically concerning the undead. You can skip to the bolded parts for the actual information. (Excuse any typos. There really isn't an excuse, but my keyboard is in an awkward position, making for a lot of backtracking and missed mistakes.)

From a heavily bound tome found deep within a long-forgotten library:

"A long time ago, when age had not taken my strength and swiftness, I was of mind to foolishly venture into the wildernesses, into the earth and over waters in search of various creatures of such terror and malice I might prove my courage by felling them. I gathered many trophies and many scars in such days, too many to count, and when time came that I wished to cease my brazen hunts I bought my place in my King's court with tales of bravery and the skull of a great wyvern, being granted lordship of the Black Tower. It was more reward than a hunter as myself could ask for, but as time went on I realised why I was given possession of the lonely halls. In my time as master of that mountain keep, I was tested by a greater threat than any wyvern or bog lurk.

It began with the murder of the stableboy, Miloch. We found him twisted and maimed among the muck and hay, suspecting a rabid wolf or monstrous thing from the mountains. It wasn't until the baker and his wife were found dead, with a third, unknown body amongst their broken home, that my squire and I began suspecting something more sinister.

We'd seen these kinds of wounds once before, in the ruined township of Jarod's Landing. It had been victim to a plague of undeath, infesting the land with ghosts and walking bones. It was something of a terror to walk into that fog-ridden, dead village; a place where naught a sound could be heard but the baying of black hounds in the distance and the howl of the wind. Not even the scavengers of the forest set foot or wing toward the stead.

All of the bodies began to rise as we came near, drawn to the warmth of our life blood. We had eight in our party of hunters then, and by the time we rid the town of the Restless we were cut down to three. The nights were never quiet, even in the homes we barred to keep the dead out.

Since then, I became aware of the signs, of the makings of undeath. Something about the town and my Keep had poisoned the land beneath it. When we investigated the Lonely Spire at the top of my mountain home, we discovered scores of Restless locked in a long-forgotten crypt. They were the ancestors of the family that had once ruled the Black Tower, forever cursed to rise once more after death. What we found upon further searching of the musty graves chills my bones still. In the depths of the Black Tower, the crypt connected by a series of water-filled chambers, and there were more of the walking dead than I had ever seen, driven back to life by our presence. In the throngs of undead, there were several of a variety I had never witnessed, with glowing eyes and black boils covering their dry, leathery skin. In time, we encountered the first Lord of the Tower.

His was not the undeath of the others, indeed he was fully aware of his actions, and spoke in a long-dead tongue of mountain lords. But madness had taken him, being surrounded by the ghosts and spirits of his own ancestors and descendants for so many years of torment. His chest was burst open, with a great glowing fire where his heart had been. His very soul was burning out of his body, and he screamed with a pain greater than any he had felt in life. We could not send him to the grave a second time, so we struggled to make our escape. Again, only three of us would see the light of the sun again.

I saw good men die in those days of our delving, only to come back to meet our blades. The experience has haunted me ever since, such that I have not slept through the night once in the time past. In my dreams I am hounded by the ghosts of my men, and by those who we met with steel in those dark times. I know that, when my time is come, I will join them in angered undeath. I pray only that my end is far off..."

The Restless

The restless is a catch-all term for the undead, as often times through sorcery or a trick of nature the bodies of the dead will rise up for a new (often short) life. The process of forcing corpses to move again is known by a few secret orders, but full reanimation is still outside of the meddling of magic. Often times, a "zombie" is simply a carcass that has been pumped full of elemental magic, with mana replacing blood, oxygen, and food as its sustaining force. Skeletons are created by a similar process, with their bones held together by thin tendrils of magic like pins. Ghosts are the souls of the dead left with imprints of a powerful will or a mere thought of someone who died in an area saturated with natural magic. The area has to be of a particularly high concentration of magic, otherwise it is lacking the essential force that allows the ghost to keep itself together. Variations of undead such as the Bone Lantern or Burning Soul are often result of experimentation or oddities in process.

Souls

Many magic arts make use of souls, or the natural mana inside a living creature. Mana is altered in a nearly infinite number of ways as the soul of a being, creating an equally infinite variety of magics. Soul Magic is erratic, wild and unwieldy, but those who master it are possessed of an arsenal of unknowable attacks, fueled by the will of their captive souls. Soul Magic is the foundation of necromancy, as this manipulation of raw magical power is essential in the creation of undead.