Some questions about undeath in PoE

[Gromnir]

But, anyone who was older, or afflicted with any kind of life-shortening disease would totally jump on that ride.

you really believe that? well, ok.

 

keep in mind that on top o' everything, the animancy is prohibited, so your access to fresh dead is gonna be problematic. if undead is recognized as a problem, then obvious means o' limiting undead, such as widespread cremation, would also be recognized. 

 

the whole setup seems sketchy. got nobles and extreme wealthy who is willing to make themselves guinea pigs in spite o' seeming fact that animancers in past produce monsters? you got a relative scarce food supply... don't fool self about that. got fact that the undead become increasing erratic w/o food supply. undead state requires an animancer to actual do something to an individual, so source o' the problem will be traceable. got government condemnation o' the practice. etc.

 

look, we get that there could be some ghouls in the poe world, but am not seeing how they could be anything other than extreme rare... save for momentary explosions such as our plague scenario. gets a bunch o' animancers to be claiming to have a cure for plague or somesuch when in fact they is creating future ghouls... or better yet, our nefarious animancers engage in widespread poisoning that has similar symptoms as a plague. then our devious animancers can selective hand out the cure/antidote to be proving that they does indeed have a cure. get lots of test subjects that way. am not sure what is the end game there, but we could come up with something. regardless, corporeal undead as presented would be a far more rare encounter than the nobles and extravagant wealthy... which is already gonna be rare. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Lephys]

 

But, anyone who was older, or afflicted with any kind of life-shortening disease would totally jump on that ride.

you really believe that? well, ok.

 

I was talking about animancers. Osvir was talking about animancers granting themselves their own imperfect immortality so as to extend their lives so that they can perfect it before they die.

 

It seems like you read that out-of-context, and thought I just meant "literally any person who was threatened by death would accept undeath." I could be mistaken, though, in which case, I apologize.

[Silent Winter]

 

keep in mind that on top o' everything, the animancy is prohibited, so your access to fresh dead is gonna be problematic. if undead is recognized as a problem, then obvious means o' limiting undead, such as widespread cremation, would also be recognized. 

Animancy is actually not prohibited in the Dyrwood region (it used to be and still is in other places - it is, however, frowned upon by many, including the churches).  I think this is one of the conflicts in PoE factionism.

(or have I misunderstood and it's "the animancy of immortality" that's still prohibited?)

 

What do you mean by 'limiting undead by widespread cremation' - we're not talking about reviving corpses necromancy style (not sure if that also exists in PoE world) - the animancy process begins while they're still alive (AFAIK).  Or did you mean going on a crusade against undead with fire?

 

I agree that there shouldn't be loads of fampyrs in a small area, there could be more skeletons though as they might build up over a long time (assuming adventurers haven't been doing their job very thoroughly).

Edited May 22, 2014 by Silent Winter

[Gromnir]

 

 

keep in mind that on top o' everything, the animancy is prohibited, so your access to fresh dead is gonna be problematic. if undead is recognized as a problem, then obvious means o' limiting undead, such as widespread cremation, would also be recognized. 

 

What do you mean by 'limiting undead by widespread cremation' - we're not talking about reviving corpses necromancy style (not sure if that also exists in PoE world) - the animancy process begins while they're still alive (AFAIK).  Or did you mean going on a crusade against undead with fire?

 

 

undead eat human flesh. we didnt see anything that said that the human flesh need to be from one killed contemporaneous with eating, but that the eating need occur while essence were still in flesh. am not sure what sorta time frame that is. in any event, murdering living folks would attract loads of attention. eating the flesh of the recently natural deceased would be less dangerous for those wishing to keep their undead status hidden. however, as we noted already, there would be difficulties in acquiring fresh corpses.

 

regardless, short o' our plague example or some other remarkable but limited event, am just not envisioning a Reasonable way to explain undead in numbers... particularly in numbers that would legitimize a crpg monster staple. a boss or two? sure. maybe a single locale wherein the twisted dr. of evil type is using "volunteers" in large numbers to fuel his nefarious experiments... muahaha.  

 

*shrug*

 

dunno. just doesnt seem well thought out. am doubting loads o' development effort were expended on a monster that is gonna get extreme limited game time.

 

couple more points 'fore we forget. souls in poe is different than real world, yes? we haven't read too close, but soul is less abstract in poe. potentially bind your flesh to your corpse for eternity would be seeming have more o' a concrete cost for folks. also, gap 'tween fampyr and dargul is implied to not be great... not take much to slip. the kinda lifestyle needed to maintain fampyr would seeming require great discipline. personal experience suggests to Gromnir that great discipline is a rather rare quality. 

 

"Undead abound in Heritage Hill."

 

need a very compelling explanation to rationalize. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited May 22, 2014 by Gromnir

[Valorian]

Should we assume that all humanoid/corporeal undeads are the product of animancy (i.e. created by scientists who are called animancers)? Obsidian described this particular process of creating undeads in PoE's universe, doesn't mean it's the only one.

 

It's dead body + soul.

Perhaps there's a natural phenomenon that sometimes prevents the soul from leaving the cadaver.

Couldn't a strong wayward soul possess a corpse? 

 

Also, according to update 73, skeletons (the final stage) don't need to eat human flesh to function. 

 

With all that in mind I don't see why undeads in large numbers would be something 'hard to believe'.  The more the merrier! 

 

[PrimeJunta]

I'm sure there could be plenty of explanations for large numbers of undead. Maybe there's a mad god who sticks souls into corpses for her unfathomable purposes. Maybe souls of people who died under traumatic conditions linger and spontaneously animate corpses from time to time. Maybe these types of situations bypass some of the stages of undeath and go directly to skeleton, dargul, or something else. Maybe this, that, and the other.

 

Gromnir is right though that the devs haven't given any such explanations, and it would be good if they did rather than just letting it pass without comment.

[JFSOCC]

I figured a while back there might be other schemes wealthy people might fall for in a world with reincarnation.

 

But doing something like this... considering how people in the real world try all sorts of hocus pocus for hair growth, **** enlargement, longer life, cure for aids. etc. From the eating of dried snake or keratine, to the raping of six year old children, to voodoo, to magnetism to numerology... yeah, I'm not surprised a wealthy noble would rush in before thinking about the consequences.

[Gromnir]

I figured a while back there might be other schemes wealthy people might fall for in a world with reincarnation.

 

But doing something like this... considering how people in the real world try all sorts of hocus pocus for hair growth, **** enlargement, longer life, cure for aids. etc. From the eating of dried snake or keratine, to the raping of six year old children, to voodoo, to magnetism to numerology... yeah, I'm not surprised a wealthy noble would rush in before thinking about the consequences.

am gonna avoid some of your examples for obvious reasons. nevertheless, if it were known with certainty that viagra turned a person into an undead monster, am doubting folks would use it... regardless o' desperation. have some random guy try and sell you New & Improved viagra on some street corner somewheres is gonna be successful or not? without proof that your New & Improved viagra doesn't end in monsterdom, who would buy or use... save as worst party prank ever. cures for aids back in the early 90s? yeah, there has been some strange ones, but failure o' the miracle cure, at worst, results in death... which is exactly the eventuality the aids sufferer were looking at w/o the cure. drink a mixture o' shark pi$$ and coffee grounds is disgusting and probably a waste o' money, but you is dying anyway. heck, if the cure kills you what has you genuine lost by trying? turn you into undead monster is clear different, especially in poe world where souls is not abstract. knowledge that animacy results in undeath is making your examples not analogous. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Lephys]

^ But Gromnir... why would it definitely be known with certainty that animancy tethering the soul to the body leads to monsterdom?

[Gromnir]

why? because undead exist and there is a causal link to animacy... based on the info from developers. there is all kinda real world myths and folklore regarding undead. many people believed even w/o concrete or verifiable evidence. poe is different. you actual know that undead is real. you know animancy causes. is different. am not saying that future acts o' animacy carry absolute certainty o' monsterdoom, but this ain't a myth or folklore kinda thing. animacy results in undead. we got prohibitions 'gainst animacy. we got actual undead walking around.  if you know undead is real and that animancy causes, you is gonna be extreme suspect o' animancy claims that don't include eventual monsterdom. in such a worlds as poe, desperate rich folks won't account for numerous undead. is not even remote similar to snake oil salesman or other schemes and scams. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Lephys]

^ Nowhere in any of that did you explain how/why people automatically all know that animancy leads to undead. I mean, the animancers know, but is it posted on Facebook or something?

 

Similarly, you've noted how preposterous it would be for some noble who needs to feed on some manflesh (or womanflesh -- fampyr's don't discriminate u_u) to kill someone without anyone knowing. Without anyone knowing they died? Sure, that's pretty unlikely. Without anyone knowing they were killed? I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure plenty of nobles had plenty of people killed in real life, and no one was any the wiser.

 

I'm not understanding why the obfuscation of specific information is somehow impossible in your perceived world. If something occurs, apparently everyone knows exactly how, when, and why it happened.

[Gromnir]

^ Nowhere in any of that did you explain how/why people automatically all know that animancy leads to undead. I mean, the animancers know, but is it posted on Facebook or something?

 

Similarly, you've noted how preposterous it would be for some noble who needs to feed on some manflesh (or womanflesh -- fampyr's don't discriminate u_u) to kill someone without anyone knowing. Without anyone knowing they died? Sure, that's pretty unlikely. Without anyone knowing they were killed? I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure plenty of nobles had plenty of people killed in real life, and no one was any the wiser.

 

I'm not understanding why the obfuscation of specific information is somehow impossible in your perceived world. If something occurs, apparently everyone knows exactly how, when, and why it happened.

*sigh*

 

again, this ain't gonna be an unknown. if you got governments prohibiting, and if you got stated means o' undead creation being synthetic, then the likelihood that the rich/nobles is somehow gonna be complete ignorant is stretching credulity. governments is prohibiting on a whim? please. so now you suggest another quality. before we were talking rich/noble and desperate. well, lephys wants us to add "ignorant." ok, fine. nobles being hoodwinked and turned into undead is rich/noble and very ignorant.  thanks for making more rare.

 

and no, we don't require that everybody know exact process o' undead creation, but imperfect knowledge actually makes volunteering for sketchy experiments less likely. sudden appearance of undead is gonna cause very little panic amongst imaginary adventurers as we has seen literal undead thousands o' times. can you imagine the hysteria that sudden appearance of Real undead would create? before governments had a chance to investigate, prohibit and inform, people would come up with theories, and many o' those theories would survive even after truth were known.  folks burned witches in spite o' fact that there never were any such thing as black magic. nevertheless, some animancers somewheres actual did create undead in poe world.  you think ignorance results in less suspicion of animancers?  sure am suspecting that in addition to animancers folks such as midwifes and foreigners and lord knows who else is feeling increased bad will, but animancers is gonna be on that list. 

 

and yes, am not doubting that nobles has had people surreptitiously murdered... but am doubting it is anywhere near as common as you would have us believe. killing people is one thing, but doing it so that folks don't know that bob were murdered and not seem to care what happens to his corpse is making more problematic... and we ain't talking 'bout a single murder either, is we?  with each additional "disappearance" the chance o' keeping it secret is all the more difficult. as a noob undead you can probable makes a single person disappear if you is careful enough.  as a matter of fact, you can get away with many crimes if you plan well enough and only do once. sadly for our ghoul, eternity is a long time. 

 

again, we is making this whole scenario less and less common, which am suspecting were not what you intended.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[illathid]

Gromnir, the undead side effect is not the reason animancy is banned by most governments. IIRC it's banned because of "religious" reasons, and likely has been banned as such for much longer than the undead creation process has been around.

[Gromnir]

Gromnir, the undead side effect is not the reason animancy is banned by most governments. IIRC it's banned because of "religious" reasons, and likely has been banned as such for much longer than the undead creation process has been around.

yet another limit on how common undead would be: religion. if there is religious reasons to find animacy deplorable, then am guessing we has yet other reason to shrink our pool o' potential willing victims. 

 

some folks is trying to have cake and it it too. you want undead creation mysterious enough so that otherwise reasonable rich people would be hoodwinked into making themselves a guinea pig for an animancer. at the same time, you want undead widespread enough to be a crpg staple monster. if you make mysterious and obscure, then you is reinforcing Gromnir's criticism that undead necessarily is gonna be rare. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited May 23, 2014 by Gromnir

[W.MacKinnon]

Gromnir your making a good point. Basically Ghouls in Pillars won't be anything like standard ghouls from D&D(or previous Infinity engine games). Ghouls(in fact most undead) in fantasy and folklore create more ghouls/undead whenever they kill a victim - which means one undead could lead to a monster epidemic. Potentially filling an entire dungeon area with monsters or creating a zombie plague.

 

On the reverse if creating undead is more of a forbidden ritual - more akin to creating a Frankenstein. Lone (insane/mentally ill?)individual breaks societies morals to create abomination A created undead, which cannot transfer their undead curse would be much rarer. I can kind of see where he's coming from. If undead are difficult and costly to create- a dungeon area filled with undead would be ludicrous. Stretching the imagination to the utmost, maybe a rare indigenous tribe(maybe a religious cult or sect?) at one point bound all it's people to undeath - which could fill a dungeon/adventure area? Even those adventure threads a bit out there, since Animancers are a new in the Pillars game world. How long would it take a person to turn into a rotting ghoul - days,weeks,months?

 

The only really cool idea, that I might use in a fantasy setting with Pillar's undead tropes - Would be a king/leader allowing undead to be created in mass to ensure it's military victory. For a mentally ill/insane dictator turning it's dead into cannon fodder and launching them at their enemies seems quite plausible. One of the only ways I can see of making an array of undead in vast enough numbers to ensure undead as a common monster enemy. Heck alternately if an evil ruler created undead from his enemy - let them go feral and then proceeded to launch them via catapults at said enemy - could lead to enemy losing morale. In this instance some might survive the landing, attack their fellows. Others would be broken, but all would still be moving making noises - ontop of having recognizable faces - damn good strategy for an evil villain.

[illathid]

 

Gromnir, the undead side effect is not the reason animancy is banned by most governments. IIRC it's banned because of "religious" reasons, and likely has been banned as such for much longer than the undead creation process has been around.

yet another limit on how common undead would be: religion. if there is religious reasons to find animacy deplorable, then am guessing we has yet other reason to shrink our pool o' potential willing victims. 

 

some folks is trying to have cake and it it too. you want undead creation mysterious enough so that otherwise reasonable rich people would be hoodwinked into making themselves a guinea pig for an animancer. at the same time, you want undead widespread enough to be a crpg staple monster. if you make mysterious and obscure, then you is reinforcing Gromnir's criticism that undead necessarily is gonna be rare. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

See, I personally don't care if undead are "widespread enough to be a crpg staple monster." Given the lore description of them it seems unlikely, and I don't see why that's a problem.

[PrimeJunta]

I like the idea of an evil or desperate king raising an undead army for a war, with the leftovers still wandering the world.

 

It's pretty clear that we don't know everything about the origins of undead at this point, by the way. Several of the undead monsters that have been presented clearly aren't part of the fampyr to skeleton chain. I'll be interested to hear what the lore for them, and others, is.

[teknoman2]

and let's not forget that the more unscrupulous animancers may kidnap beggars and use them in experiments making them undead in the process.

[Gromnir]

 

 

Gromnir, the undead side effect is not the reason animancy is banned by most governments. IIRC it's banned because of "religious" reasons, and likely has been banned as such for much longer than the undead creation process has been around.

yet another limit on how common undead would be: religion. if there is religious reasons to find animacy deplorable, then am guessing we has yet other reason to shrink our pool o' potential willing victims. 

 

some folks is trying to have cake and it it too. you want undead creation mysterious enough so that otherwise reasonable rich people would be hoodwinked into making themselves a guinea pig for an animancer. at the same time, you want undead widespread enough to be a crpg staple monster. if you make mysterious and obscure, then you is reinforcing Gromnir's criticism that undead necessarily is gonna be rare. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

See, I personally don't care if undead are "widespread enough to be a crpg staple monster." Given the lore description of them it seems unlikely, and I don't see why that's a problem.

 

it's a problem 'cause Gromnir said that based on descriptions given to us thus far, corporeal undead would be rare. folks disagreed. that is how we has got to this point.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited May 24, 2014 by Gromnir

[illathid]

 

 

 

Gromnir, the undead side effect is not the reason animancy is banned by most governments. IIRC it's banned because of "religious" reasons, and likely has been banned as such for much longer than the undead creation process has been around.

yet another limit on how common undead would be: religion. if there is religious reasons to find animacy deplorable, then am guessing we has yet other reason to shrink our pool o' potential willing victims. 

 

some folks is trying to have cake and it it too. you want undead creation mysterious enough so that otherwise reasonable rich people would be hoodwinked into making themselves a guinea pig for an animancer. at the same time, you want undead widespread enough to be a crpg staple monster. if you make mysterious and obscure, then you is reinforcing Gromnir's criticism that undead necessarily is gonna be rare. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

See, I personally don't care if undead are "widespread enough to be a crpg staple monster." Given the lore description of them it seems unlikely, and I don't see why that's a problem.

 

it's a problem 'cause Gromnir said that based on descriptions given to us thus far, corporeal undead would be rare. folks disagreed. that is how we has got to this point.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

I I thought you were saying that the idea itself was ridiculous, regardless of how rare or prevalent corporeal undead are. But I see now you're it was ridiculous idea if corporeal undead were as prevalent as they tend to be in RPGs. My mistake.

[W.MacKinnon]

On the same topic but somewhat diverged, how common would "incorporeal" undead be? From what lore we've been given so far aren't ghosts created when the body of the animated dead decomposes to dust. Similar to the creation of a demi-lich - the body now dust leaves the spirit of the undead being free to cause havok. Interesting to wonder how possession might work, or on how soul splintering might affect the undead.

 

On the topic of soul splintering could their technically be multiples of the same undead being - or a reincarnated spirit fragment being alive while another technically undead. Pillars lore leads to some interesting complications if the act of animancy could potentially splinter the initial(targeted) spirits soul. By that I mean something similar to the Horcruxes from Harry Potter, where multiple being could technically house fragments of the same being soul. The idea of a person meeting a part of themselves, either alive, or in some state of undeath sounds interesting, a lot of good plot threads could come from how this setting is dealing with death.

[Lephys]

A) I don't think anyone's trying to suggest that there would be any "sudden" appearance of undead, nor would undead as created by nobles trying to live forever be necessarily "common," nor would hordes of undead be attributed solely to this one specific scenario.

 

B) Look at all the stuff that's banned nowadays, and yet people still do it. Not to mention, every day, the news has some new thing that "causes cancer." Oh no, don't drink coffee! Oh no, don't eat such-and-such! The vast majority of people just go on about their lives.

 

The fact is that it wouldn't be preposterous for some noble to hear out some animancer and decide he wants to try and live forever. Hell, some people might even just hear the honest truth "Well, you'll have to feed on people, but other than that..." Be it slave trade, or what-have-you, someone's going to already be sociopathic enough to already be toying with human lives. Having to eat them to stay alive supposedly forever? That wouldn't be much worse of a step.

 

And, just because a lot of people are afraid of something doesn't mean everyone automatically knows all about it, fact-for-fact. In that type of era, if the government's banned something like animancy, most people are just going to think "It's evil!" and whatnot. It's not like they're going to know for a fact the science of it all. And it's human nature to doubt things.

 

IF a noble were to volunteer for such a process, most likely no one else would even know he was doing so, much less exactly what he was doing. Even if everyone knew exactly what was going on with the animancy process, and that noble started going crazy and just eating people without retaining enough of his own sanity to actually cover it up (not to mention decaying and whatnot while he's doing it), then eah, people might all go "AHHH! ANIMANCY! SOMEONE TRIED TO BE IMMORTAL!". But, that still doesn't change the fact that it already happened. That choice was up to the noble.

 

As we've already talked about, maybe someone was REALLY convincing, or maybe that person was desperate, and believed they could control the hunger and supply themselves with fresh meat. Who knows.

 

But, I really don't understand how no one would ever do such a thing. Everyone knows the consequences of heroine use, etc., and yet look at all the people who value getting high more than they value not suffering those consequences. I know it doesn't turn people into undead, but people do some pretty crazy stuff when they're on drugs, not even knowing what they're doing. So, it's not too dissimilar. Hell, look at all the recent "bath salts" snippets, of people eating other people's faces. That's EXTREMELY similar to the fictional effects of animancy, and yet, people in real life still do bath salts, etc.

 

I just think you underestimate humanity.

[Gromnir]

compare drinking coffee to animancy? 

 

...

 

can't even have a serious conversation. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Silent Winter]

compare drinking coffee to animancy? 

 

...

 

can't even have a serious conversation. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

I don't think 'drinking coffee' = 'animancy' was his point

The 'bath-salts' / drugs analogy was better.

People doing things, even knowing the potential hazards, aren't always logical.

And there's no indication that people will know the hazards (I wouldn't have heard of the bath-salts thing without internet - in medieval times, if it didn't happen in the next town over, it may as well not have happened (except as some fanciful story embellished by travelling bards or whatever) (unless you're the king with a network of spies or something).  How informed are the nobles about the workings of animancers in PoE?

 

Even so, I still agree that there should be more than just 'immortal-wishing-nobles' to bolster the undead ranks (e.g. the aforementioned village-plague 'cure'.)  If "undead abound in heritage hill", then perhaps something like that happened there.

Edited May 28, 2014 by Silent Winter

[Gromnir]

...

 

this real world stuff people is trying to make analogous, ain't. bath salts is actual useful, 'cause the graphic bath salt stories is all bs. the difference here is that you get REAL freaking undead... undead who eat people. is not people with a caffeine-headache, dehydration or even a slightly weird trip. seriously, you gotta see a difference, no? the bath salt stories tend to be far more graphic and scary than the reality. so, what kinda scary stories is gonna attach to animancy if bath salts spawn ridiculous cannibalism nonsense? 

 

driving car is statistic very dangerous. drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, play hockey without a helmet... whatever.  if ace bailey and other hockey players who didn't wear helmets sudden turned into flesh eating undead, how long would it have taken before helmets became mandatory? two weeks? a few days? ten minutes? ace doesn't just get knocked out, but he gets up off the ice as an unstoppable ghoul and charges into the stands, where he starts feasting on some idiot with the temerity to wear a canadians jersey to a leafs game. 

 

as we noted above, the snake oil stuff ain't analogous 'cause end result is death, and you were sadly expecting death anyways. it is admitted difficult to distinguish bad medicine from disease when eventuality o' both is death.  but again, we is talking UNdeath and the more common you make undead, the more obvious you is gonna make a causal link 'tween undead and animancy. you not need ace bailey to jump into the stands if this kinda thing happens with frequency slight better than being struck by lightning. say nobles is hoodwinked is plausible only if they is extreme rare. extreme desperate don't help. even extreme stupid don't cut it. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited May 28, 2014 by Gromnir