Art by Peter Mullen
When the body rots away, when the funeral furnishings have crumbled into dust and the name has been spoken for the last time, it is the skeleton that remains. And if the soul has been snatched or has fled, and the bones left forsaken and alone, with no ornament, no weaponry, nothing to mark what it was in life, a great want fills the bones. The Naked Dead.
More than anything, they want what they have lost. Not even to live — at least, not at first. They have lost so much that life seems impossibly distant. A body would do for now. A name. Clothes, perhaps. A sword, through some miracle. It is easy to convince them to do what you wish, at first: just promise them a bit of muscle. They’ll count themselves lucky if they get an liver or a stomach. Most would kill kings for an eye.
It’s once they’ve got a few pieces already that they become tricky. When the bare necessities are met, they become more discerning. Scraps of skin and silk no longer interest them. Many strike out on their own, seeking finer materials with which to rebuild their lives.
Some have a taste for the exotic, create outlandish forms for themselves. Limbs cut from ifrit nobles, eyes from saturnian spiders, teeth from cobalt dragons. They become a force to be reckoned with, strange questing soldiers of patchwork death.
Others are more insidious. Recreate the forms they had in life as best they can. When they have completely assembled themselves, if they are very cunning, it is hard to tell the difference between this new form and their old. Brains of their great great great grandsons. Lips cut from distant descendants, hands from noble warriors of their clan, attached with hidden stitches.
Most do not make it this far, of course. Simply roam, patching themselves with crow feathers and bits of armor. Kill a woodsman and take his eyes and tongue if they can. But those that have prospered, who once again have full bodies and names, set out to find their souls. Some say that the only fight Death ever lost was to a band of the Naked Dead, finally wrestling their souls from his grasp and joining the living once more.
This is a fun twist on animated skeletons. In my 5e setting, some of my players are a few steps away from creating the first sapient and intelligent undead and I think I'm gonna take some heavy inspo from this as to how some of the newly risen might process their fate. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteDaaaaamn this is great! Is this the difference between skeletons and zombies then? Skeletons want what they used to have, zombies want you to be like them?
ReplyDeleteDeath didn't lose. The Naked Dead may have won the fight, but it was a pyrrhic victory, Death knew they'd win the war easily enough. In time.
ReplyDelete