The problem with necrocracies

[Peregrine]

If you watched Game of Thrones in the plot there is going to be a "zombie" apocalypse over Westeros. Sure, the White Walkers aren't undead, but I am saying its a necrocracy because the undead (wights) will outnumber the living if white walkers and wights take over Westeros, what happens after that, I find it illogical that the Others and wights completely win and the readers of the novel get a downer ending because the world gets "ruined". Westeros becomes a anarchy and then what?

I am talking below only about corporeal undead, not including skeletons.

I find it weird to imagine undead monarchies and lichdoms, especially post-apocalyptic zombie apocalypses. Can you imagine a undead blacksmith? Or a post-apocalyptic undead apocalypse? A city of undead where life is "normal", undead merchants, undead city guards? An undead organized army? Surely, the more intelligent and less decomposed undead will form the elite, while the "zombie" ones will be dumb muscle for future undead invasions for world conquest or whatever their motivation is.

I personally can't rationalize or visualize this so I am asking do you find undead governments unrealistic and weird?

 

[WooHooMan]

I was kind of mulling the idea over and my conclusion is that the undead should be regarded as basically a separate species in the same way that modern humans are a separate species from early cavemen.
An undead society won't be "normal" by our standards because the undead would have radically different needs/behaviors than us. Not really with a "civilization" as we know it.

So, if you're building an undead society, you have to build it from the ground-up. You can't just take human society and switch-out the humans for zombies.
I imagine necrocracies would likely operate more like bees or ants with a singular mastermind/monarch (the lich) and a legion of mindless drones with specialized purposes.

 

[valiant12]

I find it weird to imagine undead monarchies and lichdoms, especially post-apocalyptic zombie apocalypses. Can you imagine a undead blacksmith?

A city of undead where life is "normal", undead merchants, undead city guards? An undead organized army?

I think these guys are very common in World of Warcraft.

 

[CupofJoe]

...so I am asking do you find undead governments unrealistic and weird?

It depends on context. Personally the few zombie/undead stories I have read have had them more at the mindless monster end but I can't see why a "sophisticated" government it couldn't work.
It would have to work for those within it and not just be a human society with the heartbeats removed. If it doesn't feel "real" then the readers will start wa/ondering off...
If you are talking post-apocalypse, then any society will be changed and different to what went before.
I kind of like the idea that Zombies would "remember" their previous live and try to recreate them in some form...
A Zombie Blacksmith making Horseshoes for horses that no longer exist... or a Zombie merchant selling rotten fetid food that no one will ever eat...

 

[Peregrine]

I think these guys are very common in World of Warcraft.

WoW is a high fantasy kitchen sink, literature needs to be more believable and make more sense than a game with cartoony graphics. There is everything in WoW, aliens, interplanetary invasions, pirates, panda-men, Native American Tauren, steampunk, magitech, the list could go on, therefore WoW isn't a good example since I am trying to make low (closer to realism than fiction) fantasy, while WoW is the opposite, it is the highest fantasy.

 

[Queshire]

Well, it's fine if you want to make it low fantasy, but you asked if we would accept an undead government and, cartoony or not, that's still an undead government that twelve million people have no problem with. There's also Warcraft books so I mean, it IS literature. If you can't look at what works and what doesn't for something just because of the tone or the medium, that's going to end up hurting you as a writer.

It's not as if it's particularly hard to come up with a low fantasy version. An undead blacksmith? Of course there'd be one! Your average undead might not need to eat, but they still need tools or weapons and both of those break. Really, it's not like they would choose to use the same rusty sword they died with for their entire afterlife.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Oddly your post reminded me of Heroes of Might and Magic III - a game I haven't played in years. But yes, you could have necropolis. Not sure how the government side of things would work. But the rest could make sense.

The other thing that popped into my poor nearly undead brain was a fil "Aggh Zombie", which was second rate and yet somewhat amusing. It looked at life / unlife from the point of view of the zombies (who didn't know they were undead). And they were terrified because suddenly there was this plague in the world of people who were burning hot and moved too fast etc! The point is that all you have to do is turn your understandings around, and you can make sense of an undead civilization - spreading unlife to the rest of the plague ridden world. I think in HOMM VII there was a saying - that life was chaos while death / unlife was beauty and order.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[evolution_rex]

I'm a little confused by what you're asking, Peregrine. What exactly is the problem? It sounds like maybe you're asking what exactly is the end goal of these undead armies you always see in fantasy, but it also sounds like you're asking what a post-life undead civilization would be like, but there aren't any problems within that concept as long as you have an imagination.

And really, it's a fun idea. I'd never thought about what happens after the world succumbs to the zombie apocalypse and now it has my imagination wild. Do the zombies slowly learn and evolve some how, gaining intelligence? Could they somehow breed? Or would they all just eventually rot away? Tons of things to think about.

 

[Peregrine]

I will not respond further to comments this thread, so I suggest that you leave this thread to rot.

 

[shangrila]

It depends on what type of undead you're talking about, among other things.

Civilisations evolve to fulfill people's needs, roughly speaking. So assuming the undead don't have to eat then, no, there'd be no zombie farmers. A zombie blacksmith? I could kind of see that. They may still need tools. But generally speaking a lot of the jobs and roles humans have probably wouldn't apply.

And then it depends on the circumstances of the undead themselves. Are they sentient and self aware? That's the reason the World of Warcraft undead are at least plausible; even though they're dead, they're still individuals. They pursue their own agendas and so are similar to humans in that sense. The undead in GoT though? They're mindless beasts as far as I can tell. In that sort of scenario any civilisation that forms would be through the whims of the ones who control them. Maybe a human necromancer would recreate some of the world he knew but something inhuman, like the White Walkers? It's hard to say though logically it would be something simple like slavery.

 

[Queshire]

I like the idea of necropoli. I haven't used them in a story, but I have given thought to how they would work. It's a lot of fun.

Farmers for example; they'll still need food if they want to trade with living nations and they would need at least a supply of living citizens who live to breeding age in order to be able to make up for the inevitable loss of citizens over the years. Mostly thought, I think farms would support live stock. A cow farm would be a useful source of bones, muscles, skin and sinew to turn into inhuman, undead monstrosities without requiring multiple citizens to be combined to make a giant six armed skeleton or something.