Impact of the Undead

Appearances

The undead – zombies, revenants etc. - typically appear at night, but also sometimes during the day. They most frequently appear around and at the sites of satanic and/or magical rituals. Frequency of appearances is significantly increased when skies turn purple, leading to full-blown invasions.

Types

Revenant

Revenants do not decay in the ground, and look (and behave) exactly as they did in the life. Only people who return as revenants are those that dabbled in magic and satanism. Koschei the Immortal, a revenant from north-east, has separated his soul from his body, hiding it in a needle hidden in an egg placed inside a duck hidden within a hare kept inside an iron chest buried under an oak tree planted on a mobile island roaming the ocean and frequently changing place by teleportation. This made him immune to swords, unlike any other revenant known in existence.

Lich

Lich is a sapient type of undead, much like revenant. Unlike revenants, they are created from decaying or decayed corpses, and thus have bloated or rotten appearance. They hold power over lesser undead creatures, using them as soldiers and servants.

Dracolich is a revenant or a lich created from a dragon corpse.

Draugr

Draugr or wight is a mindless undead type, relying on direction from more advanced types to be tactically effective. When not under control, they either wander aimlessly, or more often, return to place of their death or else their tomb. They may use weapons or attempt to devour their target. Wandering draugr will attack any living being they come across, either human or animal. Draugr prefer to be active in darkness, and large groups of draugr can cause localized darkness.

Skeleton

Skeletons are mindless undead. When not directed, they wander aimlessly, attacking anyone they meet on sight. They may use weapons or attempt to devour their target.

Strengths and weaknesses

All types of undead can only be killed by swords. Any other weapons cannot stop them except through total destruction – unless magic animating them is broken, even severed or shattered limbs will keep moving and attempting to kill, or even reconnect to the original body.

The undead, unless freshly killed – with all the muscle remaining more-or-less intact – are somewhat slower and stiffer, less agile, than living people, with walking speed limited to around 0,5 – 1 meters per second. They also cannot pass streams of water that come to above their waist.

Combating the threat

General

The war against the undead is permanent and total – there are no truces and negotiations. Any person killed may be raised as an undead. As a result, war of attrition always favours the undead side. Casualties have to be kept to minimum.

The undead do not need to sleep, eat or rest. They are not restricted by logistics or pack animals, though slow marching speed of some types of the undead as well as need to avoid water does restrict mobility.

They are also immune to fear. Unlike peasant armies, they will not break in the face of heavy cavalry charge. Neither will they retreat if pitched battle does not go their way. However, unless controlled by a necromancer or a revenant, they do not have any battle tactics – approach being to simply blindly rush at the largest nearbly concentration of living humans.

-------------------------------------------------------
Given the above, what would be the umpact of the undead on the society? Keep in mind that threat is permanent, but unstable: it waxes and wanes, with high and low points separated sometimes by centuries.

 

1) It is mostly evil people who become revenants (and so most revenants are murderous psychos)
2) Even if person is not evil, dabbling in magic required to become a revenant would cause person to become evil and/or murderously insane (definitely post-resurrection, but in some cases even before resurrection) - sometimes only towards specific targets (in which case a person dies upon murdering them), sometimes towards living humans in general
3) I am not certain whether I would include this, but in a lot of mythology revenants are only active during night
4) They are still dead. As such, while they cannot be infected or poisoned, any physical injuries they may have accumulated either shortly before death or after dying will never heal - so a broken leg will be forever broken. Normally they do not need nutrition, but an aspect I was considering would make them closer to Romero zombies: fact that they are dead means that they are continuously rotting, and have to eat the living to repair the damage.

Ghosts are a thing, but they usually cannot interact with the living, and even when they do interaction is not physical - so they can mislead you, scare you or draw you away, but unless some sort of curse is involved, a ghost cannot physically affect its surroundings.

Also, undead are not a general appearance. Under normal circumstances, they only appear at places of magical rituals and similar, though they may wander farther afield. But there is a phenomenon when skies turn purple, and undead rise from basically everywhere.

They exist and can control undead to form basically a private army; though size of such armies would be rather limited.

Well, that is what I am asking about - what would that routine entail.

 

Sword would basically be a bladed weapon with blade longer than the handle. So a swordstaff would count (maybe), but pike would not.

As for fire, swords work by basically cutting off magic which animates the undead - and are the only weapon that can do so. Anything else would require pretty much complete destruction of the body - severed limbs for example can still move. Can fire destroy bones?

As for cities and villages, there is no magic as such - but a solid body of water (not rain, but rather a lake, a river or a moat that goes over the waist) cuts off the magic which animates the undead.

 

They cannot cross water, period. So I am thinking that all settlements are surrounded by moats. As for how widespread they are, I clarified that in the reply:

And yeah, I am thinking of (eventually) writing a few legends connected to the "purple skies" phenomenon.

 

That might work for the cases when areas of appearance are fixed, but... well, witches are also a thing. I am still working all details out, mind you, but there will be definitely some Warhammer 40 000 flair here*: demonic possession, demonic summonings, witches, warlocks and so on. And that means that you cannot identify all areas where undead appear, as some are connected to people, not to places. Solution for that is... well. And this as well.

Good thing however is that such "random resurrections" would be mostly small-scale: few dozen to few hundred, but definitely no more than that.

*Though to be clear, I am drawing things from mythology; just using Warhammer for comparison.

 

It is magic. It doesn't have to make sense. But basically, swords in Middle Ages had social and even religious significance which many more useful weapons did not have. I was basing it on that. Another reason was that I had to have something which can cut off the magic animating the dead:
1) fire would not work as many of the walking dead are walking skeletons
2) blunt weapons would not work as you would have to reduce entire skeleton to fragments or even dust to stop it from moving - and I am still on fence about giving the healing ability to the undead (or rather, whether they heal automatically or only when eating people).

That being said, silver weapons would work as well. Silver symbolizes purity and holiness, and is thus natural counter to anything cursed - which would include the undead.