Microsoft Zone Archive/Asheron's Lore/The Mysterious Portals Archive/The Undead
Related topics: Undead
Original Link (now dead) - http://www.zone.com/asheronscall/news/ashenewsportalundead.asp
The Undead
A fine sift of mortar trickles from the broken seal on an ancient room, the door opens, and stale, fetid air curls forth. Under the sudden wash of torchlight, the recumbent lines of a corpse resolve out of the gloom, skull turned face-forward. All is still . . . but wait! A red glow kindles deep within each empty eye socket, a shudder passes through the limbs, and the horror lurches from the slab.
Of all the perils of Dereth, few are quite as unnerving as the restless dead. What evil portents of the world to come are suggested by their relentless and indiscriminate hate? Sho tradition holds that magicians who bargained with demons sometimes rose after death (in times when death was permanent), but the occurrence was reportedly rare, and the undead are not unplentiful in Dereth these days. The sorcerer-scribe Ardivan Locke, son of the famous explorer Alatar Locke, claims to have bound a lich and forced it to speak on these matters. Though his interview was not conclusive, he gathers that the undead corpses generally house evil spirits and not human souls at all. He could get no answer as to what these spirits are, nor could he determine how or why they inhabit the bodies of men, but he suspects the work of Bael'Zharon.