could a land of the dead based on ancient Egypt be sustainable?

[The_Russian_Col]

The heretic Pharaoh Akhanaten and his wife Nefertiti have foolishly turned their backs on the Egyptian gods to embrace the monotheistic faith of Atenism. He has declared himself the son of Aten and has outlawed the worship of all other deities, bringing his population into heresy. Outraged at this betrayal, the gods have cursed all of humanity with what has come to be known as the undying plague, and closed off the afterlife to humans. From then on, all people who die will arise a few days later as a mindless zombie. Prevented from passing on to the next life, they suffer the eternal anguish of undeath and an intense craving for flesh.

However, the heretic pharaoh has discovered a forgotten ritual that leads to true immortality. After a person dies, their body is embalmed and then mummified during this ritual, conducted by the priests of Aten. When the person inevitably rises, they retain their original faculties as when they were alive. The magic of the ritual sustains their bodies and prevents them from breaking down. The heretic pharaoh and Nefertiti themselves become liches through this ritual due to them having divine status. They commission for a magical wall to be built around Egypt, protecting it from the outside world.

Current Egyptian society is as follows:
1. Liches- this encompasses the king and queen, their relatives, priests, and anyone they consider necessary to preserve the new faith and prove themselves useful. Their bodies represent perfect undeath and are eternal and never break down, requiring no form of mummification.

2. Mummies- these are the common citizens who are the followers of Atenism. They have proven themselves worthy in life and have been rewarded with a lower form of undeath. Although mummification sustains their bodies through magic, they suffer wear and tear and must be periodically repaired.

3. Living humans- these flesh and blood individuals go through life proving their worthiness to society. Now that the afterlife is barred to them, they must show their faithfulness and loyalty to be granted eternal life, or risk suffering the curse in death.

4. Zombies- these pitiless souls are made up of individuals who were not mummified and are forever cursed to walk the earth in agony. They suffer eternal hunger and waste away in a state between life and death, never to know peace for the rest of time.

Would this society be sustainable in the long term?

[Grim Portent]

Can the zombies be controlled?

Even if they can't the mummies present a low maintenance labour force to supplement the living, so assuming they're good at dealing with the zombies trying to eat the living their population would just keep going up until they hit the resource limit for repairing mummies and stabilise.

Assuming zombies can't be truly killed they'd need to be near fully taken apart to make them harmless, but mummies could hack them up with swords and axes and scatter the pieces or grind them to dust and any damage they take in the process could be fixed. Unless something causes a lot of sudden deaths the odd old or sick person's corpse getting up would be pretty manageable.



The zombies themselves present no real threat to society, and no outside forces can invade, so only civil war or assassination threaten the society, as well as natural disasters like famine or earthquakes.

[Yanagi]

Technically, its sustainable because it exists, as fiction, only by fiat. I can generate criticisms of where I could imagine things collapsing or failing, but there's really no guarantee. I mean, people live in truly terrifying conditions under the whims of madmen in reality, so I have no idea how to set hard limits on what would make any fantasy society fall apart. But--

1. Zombies are functionally an uncureable epidemic that at any time could become pandemic.

If the zombie population becomes unmanageable rapidly--a mass casualty event--then it potentially creates pandemic-equivalent situation in which zombie casualties cannot receive proper rites, and thus become zombies. Given that mummification is a lengthy process requiring a lot of labor, chances are good that there are little flashes of zombie propagation on the regular. The level of danger depends on the sophistication of the infrastructure built to deal with end of life, death, and undeath. Risk of zombies, plus the social contract that hinges on the reward of preservation, means that for the society to function as intended there would have to be immense civil service.

2. Zombies are a hazard to the system that are built into the system.

What is the evaluation? A moral test like the "weighing of the heart" and 42 negative confessions, or an evaluation with a goal in mind. "Faithfulness and loyalty" suggest the latter, since they peg worth to compliance with the system and the ruler. Which means a system that rewards neither excellence nor morality, but performative compliance with norms dictated top-down.

If the distinction is "merit becoming a mummy by compliance, or default to zombie," but the evaluation system that is part of governance, that means all the woes of bureaucracy--incompetence, error, graft--but with the stakes being someone's eternal disposition. But even if the system runs "perfectly" it's just accepted that zombies--a hazard to normal people and a terrifying existential tragedy embodied--are just going to be a part of life.

There's also the problem of triage. Mummification takes time and effort and there will be times when the timing and geography of death--completely stochastic unless there's some kind of state-structured pallative care/euthanasia program (which would be a sensible move, given the scenario)--means there will not be the right magic-users and tools to make everyone a mummy; there will be times when it's really an "A or B" choice. And any time that problem arises its a breach of the sacred and social contracts that under-gird this society's divine monarchy.

3. Long-term structural problems created by undead elite will stress this system in a few generations.

That the most powerful people are "perfect" immortals means that as the number of liches increases, the social position of each lich either diminishes, or new positions have to be created for them. In both knowledge and resources, there's always going to be a dead guy with the "right" family ties (and, given the described system, societal values) to hold a position of power over others (and magic-augmented isolationism removes the most common solution for this problem...expansion through conquest). With each generational harvest of undead, the more likely you're going to have intrigue and jockeying for position. There will be liches working hard to find reasons not to make more liches; there will be hungry mortal nobles looking to knock down a lich ancestor to free up a choice post in the court or temple hierarchy. It's like the succession contests that screwed up the Inca multiplied by the skullduggery that drove civil conflicts between British dukes...but also magic.

Corollary to this is that undeath and the Peter Principle don't mix. Imagine everything that goes lopsided and sour inside cliques of people with power, cloistered together, then add on an extra layer of theological conviction, and then for lagniappe add "no longer mortal" and what you get is a spiral of groupthink, drama, and machiavellian bull that never ends. And, case-specific, Akhenaten was not a competent pharaoh and ended up consumed promoting his religion. So...bunch of undead twits, salted with a few truly dangerous sociopaths, lightly dusted with religious fanaticism.

4. Mummies are a demographic issue unto themselves.

This is why I was asking about the evaluation system earlier: who gets to be a mummy. "Faithfulness and loyalty" suggest compliance rather competence...so what function are the mummies performing in society? If they have no designated function, what is the societal understanding of what they do, every day, for eternity or until failure?

Most the candidates would be "normal" people...basic education, one skillset (likely agricultural)...so what would their utility be as undead? If they continue to labor, they decrease the value of living labor...ancient Egypt wasn't capitalist per se, but commoners paid taxes through corvee, and got bread and beer while doing so (that's how the Pyramids were built--seasonal labor during the Nile's high phase). If they're repurposed, they have to be retrained--who's paying, is it feasible, et cetera. Either way, they have to be housed and have maintenance needs...so they have the equivalent of subsistence costs. Mummies affect the labor market like automation. In both scenarios they're going to pinch society in ways that create discontent. There's also the social system weirdness in which customary roles will be transformed because there's no generational changeover of authority. Isolating mummies--building cities for them out in unlivable regions--could keep them from disruptive existing socio-economic systems, but they'd still be this entirely novel economic niche that just popped into existence.

I mean, given that the society is being rebuilt on an eternal theocratic monarch and mummies are in their "afterlife"--having gone through an approximation of the traditional Egyptian funerary practices--I could see them existing as something along the lines of a monastic community, devoted to a highly structured existence of worship and sacred tasks. This would "solve" the disruption they'd have on conventional, mortal life, but creates new social wrinkles. Imagine the kind of reflexive fear of novelty the very old exhibit, but intensified by alienation from basic human needs and being completely ensconced in a group selected for alike thinking. Groups like that go wrong, get obsessed with minutiae and develop obsessions with ideological purity and strictness.

[b]5. At the level of basic "civilian" mummies, cost is going to become an issue.

That sounds silly but you're talking about a magical ritual performed...how often, per day. How much labor, how much of a set of materials, each time? How many designated locations just to perform these rituals? This society now has a branch of its economy solely devoted to necromancy, complete with labor issues, raw material supply lines, depreciation (mummy repair). With that is going to come all kinds of unintended consequences--grow durum to feed mortals or flax to shroud mummies? Can you cut corners to make a cheaper functional mummy that degrades faster? Who's responsible if a mummification fails? Who pays for the mummies, and where does the money flowing within the necromancy industry tend to accumulate? What raw material required for necromancy becomes scarcest, first, thus dictating the cost and accessibility of mummification?

If the answer is anything other than "Aten creates a post-scarcity society, including the goods to mummify, and thus all economic issues are moot" then there's going to be a problem that calls back to what I wrote about mummy-versus-zombie triage: labor and material needs are going to result in a choice of who to mummify and the discontent of anyone whose loved ones are chosen to go "zombie" because of budget and time/motion issues. Worst case scenario, economic failure translates into zombies. But more likely is middling cases, where scarcity and capital flow just make the system less bearable and vulnerable to corruption and bad faith dealing, increasing the likely of revolt, civil conflict, and general dysfunction. Indeed, mummification at some point will create the kind of budgetary pressures that aging real-life populations cause: if there's more of them that are..less functional, with needs that have to be subsidized...than there is revenue that can be taken from mortals, there's a crisis.

6. Embalmers are de facto the power brokers of the nation.

Those that control the supply of undeath functionally become an estate...equivalent to bankers challenging the power of clergy and kings as finance and debt became more sophisticated. The whole society, its core premise, requires the labor of the embalmers. It's a captive market with a metaphysical twist: consume the product or eternal suffering. Unless the system is incorruptible--because actual knowable divine being present and correct--this point of convergence is also a point a failure. There's so many exploitable niches for graft and fraud...or just cruel/petty exercises of personal whim if that's what's you're into.

If mummification has any quality component--effort put in creates a better mummy, materials used create a better mummy--if the evaluation to determine what your post-death fate will be involves human bureaucracy--then there's room for graft, fraud, exploitation, and a host of coercive practices.

But even if they are wholly "ethical" w/r/t the Atenist system, they're still the bottom rung of a metaphysical/political system that people have been forced into. Even if they do everything "right" they're going to be hated because of their power. This is the other half of the zombie issues in (1): any problem that results in zombie represents a failure of the embalmers, and that's going to generate enormous anger and frustration.

7. The best case scenario is still a nightmare in the cultural value system of Ancient Egypt.

If we allow that people couldn't opt out, that there wasn't an immediate fight/flight reaction to a drastic religious shift...there'd be another shakeup when the "you're going to be jerky wrapped in linen for eternity, you're welcome" proposal is aired publicly. Being a mummy for eternity is, well, not something any person from an Egyptian culture would want. The "natural" order is that the body must be preserved and reverence paid to the ba, but the the ka passes on to the afterlife to be tested and assigned to its fate. While there are many visions of the Khemetic afterlife (Duat) from different periods, the standard Book of the Dead version of a happy afterlife is very sensual: it's a place where your farm labor always prospers, the food is good and the beer plentiful, and you have magical servants to do the heavy lifting.

Being "tested" for your worth by...dudes with all the power and no incentive but to keep the status quo in their favor...would be disgusting, a breach of moral order. Pharaohs and priests do not get to dictate Ma'at by fiat, and disasters (Real life: the drought that ended the Old Kingdom. Fantasy: ticking off all the gods such that they create an undead plague) are signs that the authority figures have strayed from Ma'at. Being an eternal laborer with no material incentives and only the prospect of falling apart if not maintained is...body horror. Lots of folks would bail at the outset.

In real life, people just performed Atenism in public and practiced their old-fashioned syncretic Khemetic religion in private. People with power converted and then de-converted tout de suite when it became clear the Tutankhaten could be pressed to undo his father's dictates. But in a supernatural setting, the anger at Atenism would be more intense, the sense of deep spiritual offense even greater, because the cost of the change was (1) ubiquitous, (2) would fall on everyone equally. In other words...pitchforks, torches, and heads on pikes in short order.

8. Kids.

Everyone mourns dead kids and consoles themselves with the idea that there's an afterlife that will specifically cherish and comfort children. But the Egyptians were so fond of their kids the Greeks made fun of them for being sentimental.

Infant mortality. Early childhood illness. Crocodiles. Asps. Angry gods.

What you've described is a society in which the hard fact is that if your child dies an untimely death they either waste forever or get turned into a thing that can't grow up or mature. If they meet the standard of "worthiness" of a pharaoh who is super weird and spouting heresy. In terms of long-term sustainability to this society, I think this fear would have a massive initial effect--the "conversion" generation trying to get their kids away from the fallout by worshipping new (foreign) deities or fleeing, but also a year-after-year erosion to population as people make the call to maybe not have a kid, just in case. Again, I don't think it can be underplayed how devastating theological certainty would be to normal life, but especially when it comes to creating new life.

Then again, maybe that's what you do with your mummies: enough Cleric levels and childcare classes they can create the perfect hugbox so that the cult has a next generation.


None of this really guarantees an unworkable society. In real life there are isolationist nations, cults and communities where people have acclimatized to terrible things, to the point I'm not sure there is a X factor that designates failure. Many social problems can be "solved" by keeping people so completely stuck in an enclosed worldview that they can't conceive things could be better, or that the system as it operates could be fairer or less cruel. And divine fiat can solve anything left over.

You've created something very close to an apocalypse with a Khemetic vocabulary. Eternity as a mummy versus eternal dissipation as a hungry corpse speaks to the fears about the body after death present in Egypt's distinct vision of the nine-part soul. The system of the world described is like an in version of the promised afterlife of the Duat--eternal labor in a failing, limited form rather than eternal ease and sensual enjoyment in a spirit body free of injury. The backstory as written makes the line of who is acting within Ma'at--the "right" cosmic order--versus being an agent of injustice and chaos, Isfet, unclear, so to the individual trying to cling to the Law there's no good answer and no painless resolution. It's impressively grim; kudos.

(edited because of formatting, grammar, and because I struggle to ever feel my work is truly done)

[Vogie]

You should look up the literature of the MtG Amonkhet plane, which has something very similar, with the following changes:

• The rulers were massive avatar-esque Deities, rather than liches
• The living were in constant training for trials (think deadly, group versions of the Ninja Warrior series) when they became of age
• The mummies were those who had fallen in the trials, and provided all the labor for the living, creating a pseudo-post-scarcity society. They are controlled en masse through cartouches applied to them during the mummification process
• The order was only in the main city - the rest of the plane held the roaming zombies, separated from the main city by a magical barrier

[Steel Mirror]

<cool stuff>

That was an amazing post Yanagi, wow.

For all the ways that the system might collapse on itself in the near to medium term, it's also interesting to think of what it might look like if it did manage to survive for a good long time. It would only take a generation or two for the undead to outnumber the living. A few generations after that, the living would be a tiny minority, and one that the undead might begin to regard as unnecessary or even a threat. After all, the living consume huge amounts of resources needing food, comfortable accommodations, medical care, and so on, which can all be considered base desires. And every living person is a potential threat that could fall down a well and become a zombie. Meanwhile the undead are older, some of them are well educated, and their desires might bend towards monasticism, the arts, and so-called higher pursuits. What, really, is the worth of all those fleshy mortals to an undead member of the elite, especially when every century there are more and more of them gunning for your position? Alternatively, they could just be bored with little to do in an eternity of existence, and messing with the short lives of the mortals might prove a diverting pass-time. At some point, a movement could very well grow to simply make the current generation of mortals the last one, and schedule every current living person for an "early promotion" to the undead state that they'd all end up in eventually, anyway. I mean it's not really murder if the people are up and talking in a few weeks again, right? It's just the natural end state of this perfect society of immortals- eternal demographic stasis.

The alternate path is stricter and stricter rules for who gets converted into mummies (much less liches), with more and more people being left to rise as zombies and dumped beyond the wall. If you have the undying isolated in their own cities, as Yanagi said, then it's even easier to do this without disrupting mortal society. You just tell them grandpa is being taken away to live undying and exalted with the ancestors, then secretly dump the corpse over the wall and don't tell anyone about it. Eventually, as the country became so crowded with idle undead that there simply wasn't room for more, you might do this to basically everyone that dies, turning the entire system into a huge lie based on necessity.

Both of these could happen at once, with the latter eventually building pressure on the elite until they become comfortable with the former.

Yanagi already covered everything I said because that post was really great, but I thought I might point out how, in this society, the idea of killing all the mortals to solve the demographic problems might well be considered not only pragmatic but morally proper by those authorities, given the realities of the system they live in. Would make a hell of a revolution plot for a campaign!

[Yanagi]

That was an amazing post Yanagi, wow.

For all the ways that the system might collapse on itself in the near to medium term, it's also interesting to think of what it might look like if it did manage to survive for a good long time. It would only take a generation or two for the undead to outnumber the living. A few generations after that, the living would be a tiny minority, and one that the undead might begin to regard as unnecessary or even a threat. After all, the living consume huge amounts of resources needing food, comfortable accommodations, medical care, and so on, which can all be considered base desires. And every living person is a potential threat that could fall down a well and become a zombie. Meanwhile the undead are older, some of them are well educated, and their desires might bend towards monasticism, the arts, and so-called higher pursuits. What, really, is the worth of all those fleshy mortals to an undead member of the elite, especially when every century there are more and more of them gunning for your position? Alternatively, they could just be bored with little to do in an eternity of existence, and messing with the short lives of the mortals might prove a diverting pass-time. At some point, a movement could very well grow to simply make the current generation of mortals the last one, and schedule every current living person for an "early promotion" to the undead state that they'd all end up in eventually, anyway. I mean it's not really murder if the people are up and talking in a few weeks again, right? It's just the natural end state of this perfect society of immortals- eternal demographic stasis.

The alternate path is stricter and stricter rules for who gets converted into mummies (much less liches), with more and more people being left to rise as zombies and dumped beyond the wall. If you have the undying isolated in their own cities, as Yanagi said, then it's even easier to do this without disrupting mortal society. You just tell them grandpa is being taken away to live undying and exalted with the ancestors, then secretly dump the corpse over the wall and don't tell anyone about it. Eventually, as the country became so crowded with idle undead that there simply wasn't room for more, you might do this to basically everyone that dies, turning the entire system into a huge lie based on necessity.

Both of these could happen at once, with the latter eventually building pressure on the elite until they become comfortable with the former.

Yanagi already covered everything I said because that post was really great, but I thought I might point out how, in this society, the idea of killing all the mortals to solve the demographic problems might well be considered not only pragmatic but morally proper by those authorities, given the realities of the system they live in. Would make a hell of a revolution plot for a campaign!

First--I appreciate the feedback! ^{I did cut out some bits about how one long term solution would be mummy communism.}

Second...you're right--the scenario, if not "broken" would develop in wonderfully strange and nasty ways. Maybe not the place the adventurers start, but the country three rivers over that everybody's super nervous about.

So reading your ideas--which flow very naturally from the cult operational logic that you have to "prove yourself" but that proofing is just a loyalty test--here's my new thought:

Mortal life becomes equivalent to childhood, structured entirely around prepping for undeath.

Since mortals are potential zombies *and* their relevance as low-skilled labor diminishes as the undead population increases (less subsistence needs), alive people are now handled like they were kids: too fragile to be given autonomy and requiring structure to shape them into someone that has utility--or entertainment value--in a society of immortals.

Also, no frivolous boning, because zombies. I can almost visualize the public health campaign's posters rhyming "promiscuity" and "zombie."

Basically a people zoo with postgraduate education and a breeding program. And some kind of cultural frame in which the mortals believe that What Is Good In Life is to work really hard at being very good at some skillset that the liches view as worthy of eternal preservation. Or the various eternal, noble family groupings maintaining their own little mortal bloodline in carefully-locked away walled garden, warily negotiating with other family to arrange marriages (or just reproduction) to keep the trickle of their mortal line going. Instead of fleshy mortal life becoming meaningless, it becomes fetishistically important in creepy stage-parent ways. Nothing matters more than cultivating a new worthy immortal; nothing is more shameful than having a family member that doesn't rate mummification.

There's this incredibly dark funny piece by Bertolt Brecht called "If Sharks Were Men"...and it's pretty much what I'm getting at.

[Great Dragon]

All of the above is great!

Looking at it from a (D&D) mechanic view, there are some additional problems.

Spoiler: Bards?

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Perhaps these are the Designated Speakers to the Masses?
Are there Rebel Colleges? If so, what do Cause do they support?

Spoiler: Barbarians?

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Where do these Classes fit in the Society?, or are they only Outsiders?
Barbarians could be Wilderness Nomads, forever struggling to survive.

1) What happens if someone is destroyed/cremated?
Does that person exist as some kind of Spirit?
If so, what determines the difference between:
an Allip, a Shadow, a Specter, a Wraith and a Ghost - or Other?

Spoiler: Druids, and Rangers?

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Rangers could be dedicated Undead Hunters, seeking to purge the region of the plague, not knowing it's source. Perhaps they simply create more Spirit Undead?

Or, if Druids know about the Curse, constantly use Reincarnate - on both Zombies and Spirits?
Thus making more Living People (that may, or may not, remember who they were in Life), and it's own Problem?

2) Remember the innate weakness/vulnerability of Mummies - Fire!
Literally everyone would know this, which could cause more problems as both the Living try to burn Mummies, and the Mummies seeking to destroy each other.
The quest for magical items with Protections against Fire could start (Secret) wars!

3) I noticed a lot of Divine/Cleric-based power.

Spoiler: Clerics?

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Are there any (underground) Clerics of the Old Gods, or Outsider Gods?

Spoiler: Paladins?

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I'm assuming that there are Divinely Empowered Warriors for The Cause. Enforcers, perhaps.

5e D&D has Paladins that are not bound to any Religion or Church, but only to an Oath.
Would these types be Outsiders only?

How common (and accepted) are Mages - especially those that create Items?
If Mages exist, they would be limited to a College or Guild, (With no distinction between Sorcerer and Wizard within the Guild, though each could be a seperate Faction within the Guild) and could be a Political Power unto themselves. With just as much of a chance of Graft, Bribes, Blackmail, and Betrayal as all the others!!

Mages would especially seek to become sentient Undead, to "preserve their Knowledge" or to Horde/Increase their Power. Most could accept becoming Mummies, but a lot would want to find a way to become Liches, going outside the Bounds of the Faith, and perhaps making deals with powerful Extra Planar Beings (D&D = Orcus, the Demon Prince of the Undead.
Egyptian = either Set or Anubis) to become at least a Mummy - or better yet, a Lich.

Spoiler: Warlocks?

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People who trade their Soul for Power. Fiends. Faeries. Elder Gods. Celestial Powers.
If Warlocks exist, they would be a series of Secret Societies, each unto themselves.

4) Liches also have a weakness - their Phylactery. Destroying this makes it possible to (normally) permanently destroy the Lich.

Imagine all the Tombs that exist in the Real World, and now add Traps both Mundane and Magical (plus Monsters?) to keep intruders out.

The creation of a Golem, while effective as a Guardian, is both expensive (time, materials, and magic) and very obvious. Placing one in the Tomb without anyone knowing would be nearly impossible.

Both the Living and Mummies would seek to gain entry into one of these places, perhaps even passing up - or, more likely, destroying - obvious Treasure, in the search for any Phylactery that might be located within.

Spoiler: Rogues?

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There could be lots of these, as Professional Tomb Raiders; as a Guild of Assassins; and Gangs of Each 5e D&D Rogue Subclass.
More Skullduggery!!

Perhaps the True Royalty do not have a Phylactery, since they are Divine Beings.
(There should still be some means of destroying a Royal Lich, even if each one required a different method. Perhaps one Artifact for the King and another for the Queen, plus one for each Lich offspring? These could be a Quest for each Artifact.)

But, lesser Lich members (Priests, Anointed Mages, etc) might have to have a Phylactery, since they are not Divine enough to get that Blessing?

Any Lich going Outside the Faith would require a Phylactery, and if discovered, they are hounded - and every means to find and destroy their Phylactery is made.

5) Remember that the Phylactery has to be fed souls in order to maintain the Lich at full 'health' and power. (The GM determines how often this is needed: Daily? Monthly? Yearly?)

Can this affect the Spirits listed above, or does it only affect Living People?
{For those Liches with Phylactery, this could be a major incentive to keep as many Living People alive as possible.}
If only the Living, what happens to their Soul? Is it truely eternally destroyed?
And if destroyed - does anyone know that this happens? I could see lots of Living People that know they are doomed to be Zombies lining up to 'feed' a Phylactery, just to avoid eternal pain. With their bodies cremated to make sure that they don't become Zombies - perhaps infused with Evil Spirits (D&D Demons or Devils)?

Another possibility is that this is perhaps the only way to get to the Afterlife.
But, no one knows this - so that line of people above don't know which happens - eternally destroyed or Instant Judgement.

The Old (Original) Gods would determine Acceptance according to their Laws, and dedicated followers of the Heretics might be banished to The Underworld.
Perhaps the Soul is given another Chance and sent back to try and bring down the Heretic Faith?
Could be an excuse to Multiclass (especially Cleric or Paladin).

6) Another thing to consider, is that the Old Gods are not inclined to simply sit by and do nothing.
While not as bad at being petty as the Greek Gods, the Egyptian Gods never-the-less hated being ignored.

Does Anubis, the God of Death, start using the Curse to create Vampires?

Maybe Set makes Ghouls and Ghasts ?

Isis, the goddess of magic, could imbue semi-sentient Skeletons with magical power.

Ra could create a few Death Knight (Vengeance) Paladins!

Questions about any D&D info?

Spoiler: Contact Info

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http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...brew-(Offline)

Sorry, if this was not what was sought after.
But, if your running any type of RPG Game, these are things to consider.

[Grim Portent]

I am curious about what happens if you chop a zombie into pieces, turn those pieces into paste and then feed them to livestock. The afterlife is still shut so the body is still undead, but it's also being digested by a pig. Can the spirit do anything or is it just permanently defeated?

If the latter then the zombies are little real issue, the elderly and infirm aren't going to pose much threat to people with swords and axes and they'll make up the bulk of sudden deaths that become undead. Just hack them up till they can't move and either bury them or feed them to stuff.