The Deathnostate

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I'd like to pick your brain on this topic @Sociological Implications

Necromantic fascism

Sociological Implications
hmmmm

this could go well with the obsession on Lineage and Ancestors and Continuity, but with the awkward twist of your ancestors being right there to tell you that your view of history is full of shit

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I was more thinking about how most undead are very old and come from a bygone cultural era. IE an Elven liche may still embrace cultural prejudices about dwarves even when the majority of Elven society doesn't care anymore. So you basically have all the old racists stick around for a long time and preserve absurd tradition within their particular spheres of influence. There's also fascism obsession with preserving cultural and historical landmarks, and the theme of a lot of undead monsters is that there frozen in time and have an emotional obsession with certain reminders of their past. You could have a vampire who is obsessed with preserving a specific type of arhictectural style because of the simple fact that he loved it as a child.

Sociological Implications
but even so, it's a bygone cultural era with all kinds of battles and prejudices that make no sense to the current generation

they're confronted with how weird the past is, and have to go from there

like, imagine some ancient Romans being around to tell the Nazis, "are you seriously saying that you Gothic barbarians are in perfect continuity with our Empire?"

and I've heard about a comic where some British fascists resurrect King Arthur, but they completely forgot that he's Welsh and doesn't especially like Anglo-Saxons (edited)

maybe the current regime revives ancient figures as handy props, but they have to keep them constrained and silenced or else all hell breaks loose

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I mean you are right, and I think it could be interesting to play with that even more with how fascism obscures the truth. Hitler delegitimized and silenced the soldiers he fought along side because of how they would have pointed out that he didn't actually have a distinguished service record. Maybe you could have Necromancers casting illusion spells on themselves and pretending to be a powerful historical figure to serve as a mouth-piece for propaganda. I was also thinking about how generally undead armies are hordes of mindless zombies and other weak servants being lead by powerful, charismatic figures who wield supreme power. Thehordes could reflect the populace being molded into ideal mindless and unthinking servants of the powerful. (I was just following orders) A death Knight giving an impassioned Hitler-style speech to whip a horde of simple minded specters, ghouls and wights.

Sociological Implications
yeah, and this sounds like a fun theme to explore- zombies as Mindless Thralls, the perfect populace for fascism

except it still takes a lot of work to hollow them out enough that they're smart enough to be good soldiers, but without any moral compass

and having an army with no actual sense of morale or cameraderie is very unstable

you can only ever win through Sheer Overwhelming Force, and there are only so many viable corpses

I was thinking about this earlier- zombies are an evolutionary disaster

they have to go up against their top predator to eat or reproduce, (usually) no abstract intelligence or fine motor skills

enough of them can overwhelm the smartest and best-equipped people in the world, but sheer mass and attrition is their only weapon

a fun angle: the "Dictator For Life" will never actually truly die, but his inner circle keeps trying to rules-lawyer it with different medical/spiritual definitions of "dead," so it's just a constant simmering succession crisis

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You could even have something where there's a perfectly normal, living populace that lives in subservience to this undead regime and believe that the undead are actually the superior lifeforms and want to establish a "Deathnostate." (or race if your prefer) You even have the actual basis that undead don't need food, air, water and are naturally more physically powerful than mortals (Although they probably wouldn't mention that most undead get neutered just by walking out into the sun. These undead supremacists will use themselves as cannon fodder to serve an honorable duty to their masters, with their service rewarded with mortality.

Sociological Implications
ooh

this reminds me of a neat Magic setting, Amonkhet

it used to be a fairly nice Egypt-y place, until a planeswalking tyrant brainwashed their gods and killed everyone over 30

now it's a death-cult where people train to be the greatest warriors and seek an honorable death

the champions get entombed to become a mineral-plated zombie army later, the losers are mummified servants

zombies are typically in black, but putting them in white as sterile, programmable mummies is a great thematic twist

a mockery of white's typical "duty and order" themes

Sociological Implications
yeah, overextending yourself is a classic rookie mistake for necromancer warlords

you can theoretically keep replenishing your armies with the people you kill, but you can't brutalize them too much or else they can't even walk or swing a sword

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World War Z has a couple really great chapters about why zombies are such a touch challenge, specifically in that zombies cannot be fought in the traditional style of war that many armies are trained to fight in. They don't tire, which means that a soldier in the cumbersome and heavy gear is going to have a hard time keeping up. They can only be killed by a headshot, which renders a lot of traditional training useless because most soldiers are taught to aim for the chest because of it's size (Also there's the problem that most soldiers are taught to fight with cover and not against enemies that have no need for it). And they have no supply chains, no bases to attack and no high ranking officers to kill. Their decentralized nature is completely inimical to how any war in human history is fought. Even terrorist cells that commit hit and run tactics have organizers and leaders, propaganda, suppliers, and bases for organizing strikes. The armies of the world had to develop an entirely new style of warfare and change how their armies functioned at every level, including making up for supply shortages.

Also the fact that you need to fight more wars to keep your weird hodgepodge state functioning perfectly ties into fascism.

Sociological Implications
yeah, and even minorly tweaking the "rules" of zombies in the setting has huge consequences

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The armies of world war Z basically went back to early gunpowder line battles of Europe. Troop formations wouldn't have body armor ( too heavy) instead having good flexible, light clothing that had some bite resistance. Rifles became bolt action and single fre to maximize ammo efficiency, and soldiers would be line up in ranks to maximize fields of fire. Soldiers wouldn't even have vehicles because they needed to be preserved to transport all the munitions and supplies for the army, because they understood that battles could go on for hours and every soldier needed a good supply of food and ammo. There were specific drill sergeants who had watched troops from basic training ensuring that no one got too tired. If you missed a few shots, your sergeant would tap you on the soldier and tell to take a break (this actually was quite feasible because the zombies of WWZ are cute slow. You'd take shit and eat a bar, and then you'd be fresher enough to keep fighting. This was in order to match the zombies ability to never run out of stamina and to keep the formation running as long as possible.

Sociological Implications
I love premodern technology and tactics abruptly becoming relevant again

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Also fighter planes and other heavy aerial units were phased out for transport planes because dropping bombs wasn't super effective at killing zombies when you have to hit their brain. the whole point of splash damage is that the shrapnel makes the target bleed out, which doesn't work that well when the enemy can't bleed out

Sociological Implications
oh, I love it

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But all this does demonstrate how zombies have a major advantage over the living, especially if they're led by a single leader who can give them directions. They don't need a lot of logistical support because all they really need are maybe some clubs and some directions that involve "go kill those people over there." A town is going to run out of troops to defend itself whilst the enemy continues on. It's even worse if you have a cabal of sorcerers because if someone dies they can just resurrect the leader again, meaning that just killing the big guy may not work all the time. This is what happened with Vlad Von Carstein from Warhammer. He had a magic ring that allowed him to quickly regenerate if he was ever killed so he was able to push really hard into empire lands very quickly

Mortals need food, weapons, replacement parts, rest, and so much more. They can't just pump out troops to make more of themselves

Sociological Implications
maybe new religions arise whose defining feature is the lack of an afterlife

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Yeah, I know Ebberon has a religion called "The Blood of Vol" who believe that the gods are cruel to the mortals and that one should focus on achieving immortality (though not necessarily undeath) because the afterlife ensures that you'll forever be in the realm of cruel assholes.

(though the blood of vol generally are the ones whose members often end up being end of being undead terrorists. The Emerald claw, one of the few unabashedly evil factions in Ebberon, literally came out of them)

Sociological Implications
I was toying with a setting earlier where the only definitive way to end an undead being is to burn it on a pyre of geistwood (a dead tree grown with a strange, elaborate ritual, ideally cured and dried for several years)

geistwood groves are target number one for aspiring necromancer lords

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Yeah. I also think Druids would be the most dangerous enemy of the Undead because they could probably just spam Ents (who for the most part can't be turned into the undead) or fey spirits who just return tor the fey wild after being killed

I was also thinking of a type of Cordryceps fungus that targets Zombies.

'''To build off the issue of needing new bodies to replenish ranks, the Ossiarch Bone reapers have an interesting solution to this problem. They're an army of enhanced skeletons led by what is essentially Skeleton Alexander the Great, and they'll go to cities and towns and demand a tithe of bones to be paid as essentially protection money.''' Most Ossiarch armies develop several client states that serve as resuppliers for their cast of Bone-shapers, who are responsible for making new soldiers. Most people go along with the tithe because a group of powerful Skeletons warriors who are intelligent are pretty scary, and those that resist generally just get killed and used as more resources.

Sociological Implications
https://write.as/levelsinsearchofagame/fire-domains

Levels In Search Of A Game

Fire Domains — Levels In Search Of A Game

I've seen my roommate play plenty of Dark Souls, and I love its moody, atmospheric world with the motif of fire as safety and hope. ...

this is also fun for an undead-focused, Dark Souls-y world

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Another weird idea: What if you separated an undead army into different roles based on what type of undead they are?

Zombies, ghouls, and skeletons serve as the ground troops, whilst ghosts and specters are like spec ops forces responsible for infiltration and assassination.

Necromancers and other mages are essentially the officer corp, and especially powerful undead like zombie ogres or Flesh golems are shock troops?

Sociological Implications
ooh, I like it

reminds me of the Magic localizers complaining that many languages don't have that many words for "an undead being"

English has zombie, ghoul, lich, wight, specter, etc but other languages might have only a couple

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Skeletons are intelligent enough to work siege equipment if ordered, so they'd also probably be support troops

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@Sociological Implications You might be interested in reading more about the Vampire counts of Sylvania. Essentially they are the answer to the question of "what would a semi-functioning undead society look like?" Sylvania is a back-water shithole bordering the human empire, where necromantic energy has suffused the land and monsters prowl the night, and this is all completely normal. Most of the peasant class doesn't really care and looks at it with an ill and death obsessed sense of humor. They don't even mind that their nobility are actual vampires because they keep the taxes lower than the mortal nobility did, and the only tax is really blood. This means that instead of skulking around in the shadow, vampires can just roll up to a peasant town and get their feed. Also the nobility's bloodline is passed through infection and vampirifcation. You count as a "noble" not because of any family relation, but because you were chosen by one of the vampire nobles to be a member of the upper classes

Sociological Implications
I want to see Parasite but with peasants faking vampirism

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Holy fuck that sounds amazing

Sociological Implications
also, Innistrad has a similar vibe

the ~guardian angel~ isn't there to save humanity, she's a game warden to ensure that the vampires have sufficient food stocks

(almost nobody knows that, though, and saying so will absolutely get you cast out as a heretic)

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Undead generally could be seen as a critique of capitalism because it's more or less old people with the greatest amount of power abusing people into servitude for personnel gain and advancement.

There's also the idea in Warhammer fantasy that Vampires have black coaches that transport them throughout the land during the day so they don't burn alive

Sociological Implications
you need plenty of very good thralls

The Magnus Archives has a wonderfully disgusting take on vampires

they're marginal predators, not aristocrats

they open their mouths as little as possible and communicate telepathically

they can suppress people's instincts of "huh, this is weird and unsettling" but not absolutely

once they've found some vulnerable prey, they gorge themselves with a lamprey-style tongue

and they don't seem to actually have bones or organs in any humanoid sense

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Tbh '''Necromancy could affect almost any monster race because it is so alluring. The power to life forever can appeal to everyone from Dragons to Orcs to Yuan-ti.''' Like there could be a story about how this Yuan-ti temple has something off about it, and then you find out that a cult of a Death God has infiltrated the temple and it's ruled by a mummy rather than a typical leader. Maybe the adventurers have to team up with the monsters they would usually fight to overcome this new undead threat

The Witcher has an interesting take on vampire with different sub-species and ranks. Like there are predator vampires who hide in sewers eating beggars that no one will miss, and then there are just average blokes who have developed a specific taste for a king of prey (ranging from beautiful young nobles to corrupt aristocrats)