Making Undead Phenomenal

[McQ]

Trying to make undead exceptional and uncommon to make them more terrifying. While I do want to have undead, I plan to have them enter the world gradually, to give them a reaction like with what a Zombie Apocalypse might incur.

There are sparse cases of incorporeal undead existing, haunting various locations that many avoid and normally are only sighted or known by locals. The same for the corporeal undead, but they are still infrequent, often being dealt with quickly and covered up (I Sell The Dead is my reference).

Necromancers exist, but often deal with the Negative Energy spells, and often only create a few undead because the process is secretive and difficult.

Since I want to introduce undead gradually, I'd appreciate some help of how to go about making the progressive amount of undead build at a tense pace.

While the progression occurs, Necromancers will have a less difficult time creating undead, as well as some locations having that "Night of the Living Dead" force that animates any corpse.

What do you all think?

[Cieyrin]

Sounds to me like the swinging of the pendulum from Positive to Negative, with a returning of the energy balance of the world to equilibrium. Think Star Wars.

Ways I could see this happening is having gates to the Negative Energy Plane or the Plane of Shadow opening up in forgotten and out of the way places, where the resurgence of the undead would go unnoticed, at least initially. As more spirits from the afterlife cross over, it should become more evident that something is wrong, like the local god of death losing hold on his reins or something similar.

Alternatively, you could pull from the Age of Worms campaign path and have the rising of Kyuss or a similar undead menace, like some of the Elder Evils, come to the world and have corpses spontaneously rise from the ground and menace people.

Just a couple ideas. Take them for what you will.

[Pokonic]

Oh, to help with the idea of undead being more sparse.

The way mortals learned of necromancy is that the occasinal evil god sent down artifacts that allowed/helped the caster learn necromancy,and often necromantic creations of the gods own devising are on individual artifacts as a way of showing the gods personal choice of minions Ex, Liches from Vencia, Vampires from Orcus.
However, as these artifacts eventualy get imprisened/destroyed, only the most powerful necromancers know how to raise,say,a Boneclaw, and the only way that one can learn necromancy or spells with that deal with Negative Energy is to be ''blessed by the gods'' or learn from another necromancer.

This change in how necromancy is learned makes every necromancer have there own story and minons that could be terrifing to the PCs because every one could have different ways of killing you.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Two thoughts:

First off, Making undead sparse is fairly simple. Necromancy requires an intimate working knowledge of the subject to be reanimated. In essence, a Necromancer has to be a highly talented and knowledgeable doctor as well as mage. Imagine Doctor House wielding a fireball and you've got the right idea. It takes days to make one undead, more if the Necromancer makes a mistake.

Also, when I think of scarce, terrifying undead, I think of Grendel from Beowulf. Grendel is deliberatly vaguely described in the text. The Anglo-Saxon Grimmgaest he's referred to as can be anything from a ghost to a demon to a giant. I would take a page from that and leave any incorporeal undead as vague and mysterious as possible. In Grendel's case he could be nothing more than a very strong outcast, or an uncontrollable force of nature.

Hope this helps.