Something is causing undead to rise... but what?

[PeteNutButter]

I've been running a campaign with heavy inspiration from the witcher series. Someone dies in a creepy way and comes back as some unique creepy monster that the party must learn to find it's weakness before they can succesfully fight it, etc.

It's been a blast, but I'm kind of up against a turning point with limited ideas. The party has traversed deep into hostile territory having learned that the increase in undead spawning in the cities is traced back to a ruined city where someone or something is causing undead activity to increase in the empire, especially in the vicinity.

They are now about to set foot in a ruined city overrun by undead, in an area that is inhospitable from magic wars (think nuclear fallout) and are looking for the source of the increase in undead arrivals.

I'm have a few ideas, but none of them really strike me as interesting. It could be a lich or some artifact that they have to destroy, but those seem boring. I do a lot of homebrew monsters, and feel like it'd be cheap to just throw a lich into the mix. I'm looking for something that fits into the witcher/supernatural type them of the campaign.

Any ideas you guys have are greatly appreciated.

[MrBig]

A fallen aasimar/celestial. He was ambitious, and eager - rising quickly through the celestial ranks. However, his rise to power began to stumble, as concerns about his fondness for power began to be evident.

He began to be passed over more and more, until his ambition turned to rage, and he fought his brethren, and was ultimately cast out.

Now, exiled from the celestial realms, and scorned by his kin, he seeks foul magic in the earthly realm to raise the undead. Why?
To deny his celestial kin the souls.

Every undead he creates is a soul that is denied entrance to the heavenly realms. It’s a soul that he has stolen from those that have wronged him.

And when his magic has spread across the land, and captured every living soul in this mortal plane, then he will storm the gates of heaven with his army of bound souls, and reclaim his rightful throne, and rule all creation.

[Kane0]

A cadre of Slaadi (Grey and Death kicking around Red/Blue/Green minions) are holed up in the abandoned city. The recent bout of undead isn't really intentional, more like a byproduct of whatever they happen to be doing there. Investigation leads you to believe it has something to do with Negative Energy Flood and the preserved body part of some famous old Slaad, but you can't be sure. If you looked into it long enough you'd find that whatever they're planning changes every couple of days/weeks.

That'll be a good wrench to throw in the gears if the party has gotten used to the pattern of learn about enemy > discern weakness > tear it apart. Being unpredictable is the enemy's strength, throwing a lot of planning right out the window.

Edit: If you want to give them a creepy homebrew touch add in some Great Old One vibes with tentacles, enchantment/illusion spells, telepathy tricks, etc. These slaadi could have been touched (read: corrupted) by some horrible thing deep in the recesses of Limbo and hurredly ejected to prevent its spread.

[Greywander]

One piece of advice I heard somewhere was to reject the first idea that came to mind. And the second, and the third...

By continually thinking of ideas and then rejecting them, it allows you to filter out the most obvious choices. Once you're ten ideas down the chain, you're starting to get into the more unpredictable ones that most people probably haven't seen in fiction before. A lich or necromancer are the most obvious choice. Second would be some kind of death cult. Then maybe a necromantic tome that is leaking power. You have to keep going until you come up with something that the players likely have never seen before, and thus which will be more interesting to them.

Let me list out a few more ideas and we'll see how far we can go.

• A wizard is trying to resurrect a loved one, but the experiment keeps going awry and raising random undead.
• The gate to the afterlife has been shut, and the souls of the dead are returning to their bodies because they have no where else to go.
• A literal zombie plague. Probably should have thought of this one sooner.
• This world has become connected to the spirit world, and spirits are seizing recently vacated bodies to use as their own as they flee some disaster in their native world.
• The god of death is either on vacation or has been slain or is otherwise unable to perform his duties.
• The players have actually been dead this whole time and just haven't realized it. The illusion is beginning to unravel...
• The dead that rise are actually the descendants of a powerful necromancer that is finally enacting his Thanatos Gambit.

That's all I've got for now. Maybe you can think of some others.

[MrBig]

A fallen aasimar/celestial.

Also, he would naturally prefer to corrupt/turn the righteous and the virtuous - those who were going up, not down.

So, he seeks out churches, temples, places of worship, where the virtuous are found. Then, he gives glimpses of his celestial nature, both to inspire awe and adoration , which he craves, and to lead them to their doom.

The adventurers hear rumors of an angelic being that has been seen at a nearby temple. They go, have a brief encounter in which it gives them guidance on where to find some evil nearby. AKA - go get yourself killed, ya’ bunch of do-gooders. After a few such missions in which they stubbornly refuse to die, after increasingly powerful baddies, the angel finally tells them where to find the source of all the evil. He also gives them a talisman, and tells them that they may use it once, and once only, “in their hour of greatest need”, and he will arrive to help them.

Pitch it as a one-time use magical boost for the BBEG fight.

Then they go off to fight what they think is the big bad, but when they start getting strained, and they pop the talisman, thinking it’s energency backup, celestial arrives, undead baddies all bow to their celestial god, players crap their pants, ... good fun for all.

[Hyde]

Personally, I'm going a little Bloodbourne-y with something similar. An entity that literally warps reality around it, in this case spontaneously creating undead.

Orcus' actual corpse could be something fun.

[Cespenar]

All of the undead are actually just one guy. An archmage from the magic wars had devised a contingency spell to clone himself if he ever fell in battle. Then the spell went haywire.

Edit: The liche and the more powerful undead are from the first clones, and can even remember some of the earlier stuff. Then the spell started to wear out more and more, creating weaker and weaker undead.

[Unoriginal]

A wizard tried a mad experiment trying to give sapience to spells. He failed, and destroyed the city. Now, in the ruin of the wizard's laboratory, a gigantic Living Spell (aka an Ooze that's the incarnation of a spell) rest, and the spell it's based on is Animate Dead. Its mere presence has been slowly wrapping the country, and now its influence is enough to raise the dead miles of distance away.

You could drop rumors and other hints that the wizard is the one responsible, and when the players think they're going to fight a lich, it turns out it's a blob of dark magic

Or: a cursed king was betrayed 40 years ago by his young second-in-command, but the power he had over the land and its inhabitant remains. As his usurper's daughter is about to get crowned, the king is using everything he can from the grave to destroy this family, or at least ruin their land.

Of course, while the cursed king present himself as a victim who was unjustly treated, it turns out he was a borderline madman who was killed when he ordered the massacre of loyal subjects who just happened to live on the lands of the (loyal) family of a rebellious baron.

[PeteNutButter]

Thanks guys for ideas. Lots of good stuff to go on here. I like the idea to incorporate a deity. The group has already encountered a Divine Soul whose deity is a god that was thought to be dead. Perhaps his resurrection wasn't so natural or successful...

Might still be a little too obvious, but there is probably something to go with the "unintentional evil" ideas. Next session isn't for a week, so keep any ideas you've got coming.

I'd add that I'm really fond of giving the party moral dilemmas. If they have to choose between killing a good god (or anything good) to stop undead or letting him live there'll be at least someone in the party to argue the other side.

[Throne12]

If the undead is spawning in a area that been hit by a magic nuke. There's no magic there so the souls of the dead can't pass on to the after life.

[MrBig]

Moral challenge: what if the celestial had ‘turned’ an entire village?

E.g. when he creates ‘undead’, it isn’t simply a magical re-animation of a corpse. As a celestial, he is pulling their soul back from the other side, and putting it back into their body.

So, shortly after he fell from grace, he went to a temple in a small town (seeking adoration and worship), and found a village that was dying, en-mass, from a plague.

He used his power to bring some of them back to ‘life’. They were, of course, grateful, and worshipped him as their god. This only fed his ego even more. He kept resurrecting people as they died, until he became impatient because they were dying too slowly, and he killed and then resurrected the rest of the village to speed it along.

So, the villagers look human. But, they aren’t completely natural. Maybe they can’t leave the village boundaries, or they don’t eat food, etc. The village has women, children, etc,

The adventurers would need to spend some time there, maybe as a base of operations. Maybe one is a guide, that leads them around the countryside? Once they start to fight the BBEG, the guide starts to sicken and fall. He reveals that the death of the god will mean the death of everyone in the village.

[MrBig]

Another moral quandary: give the players a taste of his power.

They find a wand of healing. It can heal, and even resurrect people that have died. They run around, using it for a few sessions.

When they meet BBEG, it is revealed that this wand is powered by the baddie. Baddie dies, all the people they resurrected, die again.

Of course, the ultimate quandary would be if a player had died and been resurrected with the wand .... then, they would be forced to decide between life for the player, or killing the baddie. If they kill the baddie, then you have the DM challenge of what to do with the player while the party carts around his body, looking for another source of resurrection.

Bad guy monologue could offer to share his power with them. They could wield the power of life and death, be gods among men, never need to fear death...

Flavor elements: baddie raises his fist, and it glows, and any of the players that have ever been healed by the wand feel shooting pain where they were healed by his magic.

It’s unlikely they would join his side, but not completely inconceivable. If they did, they would, of course, have to die first, and be brought back. Then go forth as his thralls.

[Wilb]

Maybe a powerful spellcaster (non specified class) managed to capture a minor demigod or weaker entity descending from a god. He decides to use it as a battery for a ritual or something, binding it to a druidic stone circle deep in an ancient forest, using the ley lines running in the land as a filter for the power extracted then absorbing it himself, devoid of any divine influence.

Add a couple millenia and that spellcaster is long dead, but the entity remained bound, leaking power to the land until it died, which happened relatively recently, with its hopes of being rescued before being completely consumed by the land after perceiving the death of the caster and the pain it felt when it realized that resisting the suffering all this long wasn't going to do anything and it was going to die in pain anyway, permeating the land around it and gradually expanding, with each creature dying in its reach having their soul feed the "magical tumor", being bound with the lingering presence of the divine being and their empty corpse being animated by the energies heavily saturating the land (make it always cloudy and raining around the place, with the faint smell of decay being a given everywhere).

If this goes on unchecked a new demigod of death and suffering may be born in the material plane, with dire consequences to the whole continent, island or whatever land it appears on. Maybe the suffering of the creatures can also restore the dead demigod, with its soul being caged inside the evil entity, and killing it before it gets enough souls could permanently destroy a literal part of the "total good" of the world, while allowing the entity to feed may not only make it too strong to be defeated but condemn the souls in its power to be eternally suffering, bound to the very earth their bodies touched in their deaths.

[Elminster298]

Viagra? I know, I know... I'll see myself out. 😔

[Unoriginal]

Moral challenge: what if the celestial had ‘turned’ an entire village?

E.g. when he creates ‘undead’, it isn’t simply a magical re-animation of a corpse. As a celestial, he is pulling their soul back from the other side, and putting it back into their body.

So, shortly after he fell from grace, he went to a temple in a small town (seeking adoration and worship), and found a village that was dying, en-mass, from a plague.

He used his power to bring some of them back to ‘life’. They were, of course, grateful, and worshipped him as their god. This only fed his ego even more. He kept resurrecting people as they died, until he became impatient because they were dying too slowly, and he killed and then resurrected the rest of the village to speed it along.

So, the villagers look human. But, they aren’t completely natural. Maybe they can’t leave the village boundaries, or they don’t eat food, etc. The village has women, children, etc,

The adventurers would need to spend some time there, maybe as a base of operations. Maybe one is a guide, that leads them around the countryside? Once they start to fight the BBEG, the guide starts to sicken and fall. He reveals that the death of the god will mean the death of everyone in the village.

How is that a moral challenge? Those people are already dead, and under the control of an evil entity who massacred them because he was petulant. That "god" of their is clearly malevolent toward them too, and he's planning on turning other communities into his worshiping slaves (since the Undead are attacking other people)


There is no moral challenge. As much as it's sad this village was targeted by a mad fallen celestial, the only moral choice is to stop said mad celestial.

Another moral quandary: give the players a taste of his power.

They find a wand of healing. It can heal, and even resurrect people that have died. They run around, using it for a few sessions.

When they meet BBEG, it is revealed that this wand is powered by the baddie. Baddie dies, all the people they resurrected, die again.

Of course, the ultimate quandary would be if a player had died and been resurrected with the wand .... then, they would be forced to decide between life for the player, or killing the baddie. If they kill the baddie, then you have the DM challenge of what to do with the player while the party carts around his body, looking for another source of resurrection.

Bad guy monologue could offer to share his power with them. They could wield the power of life and death, be gods among men, never need to fear death...

Flavor elements: baddie raises his fist, and it glows, and any of the players that have ever been healed by the wand feel shooting pain where they were healed by his magic.

It’s unlikely they would join his side, but not completely inconceivable. If they did, they would, of course, have to die first, and be brought back. Then go forth as his thralls.

It's not a moral quandary either, just conflicting pragmatic options:

Do you accept to "live" as the eternal slave of an evil entity, or do you let people die with the chance to bring them back?

I would consider being the eternal slave of an evil entity as a certainty is far worse than dying with a change to come back, but others might disagree.

[QuintonBeck]

Running with a few of the ideas presented already and fusing some together. Perhaps this "fallen celestial" isn't your Lucifer archetype of the arrogant angel but some ancient celestial hero who was slain in some ancient god-war. Perhaps they were an instrumental part of a divine crusade that besieged this now abandoned city when its mage masters began to conduct dangerous arcane experiments back when.

Turning the evil cult idea on its head maybe its a group of clerics who worship a Good deity who recently made a pilgrimage to this ancient city hoping to recover artifacts/whatever but when they arrived they ended up finding the "corpse" of the ancient celestial. Except the celestial wasn't quite dead and so the clerics set to work trying to revive them. However, the sheer magnitude of life/positive energy represented by the return of this celestial has caused the cosmos to attempt to rebalance the scales with this rash of undead. The celestial is still only partially restored and unaware of these consequences and the high priest of Good is so convinced that raising this celestial is a good idea that he refuses to accept the undead are connected and/or threatening lives as things stand. You could then have some built in decision points with lower level Good clergy being somewhat worried about their mission, the high priest insisting he's doing a good thing, and the central figure (the celestial) too out of it to offer their own opinion.

If the celestial is successfully revived then have them decry the actions of the high priest and trigger an even worse undead problem. Allow the PCs to decide whether they agree that a powerful celestial on the side of good basically forever (or until the next super major catastrophe) outweighs the lives lost to the undead side effect or if they think the Celestial needs to actually die (like everyone thought it was before now) and whether they achieve this latter goal through negotiation and moral appeal or combat.

[Sigreid]

"When there is no more room in Hell, the dead shall walk the earth."

[Vykryl]

You could scan The Third Kingdom for ideas from the half people. Humans stripped of their souls and acting very much like zombies while retaining the speed and intelligence of the living. They know you have a soul and they want it. From the Sword of Truth series. Believe there are 3 varieties in the story.

Fire Sea from the Death Gate Cycle has another take on zombies. The dead are raised to continue in their tasks from life. The living conditions are harsh and the living in short supply. Everything is working fine until a resurrection is performed too early.

Maybe these stories will spark some new ideas.

[Crgaston]

Don’t really have time to type a bunch, but google Shadar Logoth. First thing I thought of.

[Ganymede]

A city is not only beset upon by strange undead creatures that can't be killed, but the local wild elf populations have also taken to raiding caravans and murdering those in the outlying villages.

The party discovers that the undead creatures are wild elves kidnapped by a breakway faction of the church of Hextor, a murderous element of a respected albeit feared force for law in the city.

The party also discovers that the wild elf attacks are direct retaliation for the kidnapping and defilement of their people, and see those in the city as responsible.

The party has to end the undead menace while simultaneously trying to get the city, the church of Hextor, and the wild elves all on board without killing each other.

[Aett_Thorn]

Throw the party a twist. Sure, the bodies are coming from this abandoned area, but it's not because they're coming from there that they are impacting the town, it's because they're trying to GET somewhere.

So not:

X....(town)....(old city)
<----------

But:

X....(town)....(old city)
<-----------------


So they're not being sent OUT. But being CALLED BY something on the other side of the city instead. Have people on the west side of the town go missing after they die, but on the east side they are seen wandering the town trying to get west. It would be very easy for the party to believe that the dead were coming from the old city and attacking the town. But what if they're just trying to get through? (Or even into because it's actually below the town somewhere)

[Hrugner]

I'll give it a shot. Here's two.

1. It's a mass resurrection spell that takes a year or more to completely revive everyone. It was cast during the war that caused the fallout and has been draining life from the area all this time till it had enough to bring back everyone of a certain faith, nationality, or whatever. While have raised they walk the earth as undead, killing them delays their resurrection resetting their regeneration. From there you get to decide the nature of the resurrected army and see if the party wants to let the spell complete, speed it along somehow, or end it. This sounds like a powerful wish gone awry, so you have everything from wizards to genies available as the culprit.

2. A death cult is on the cusp of reaching critical mass and becoming a public rather than secret cult. They're activities have pushed the prime material plane closer to the negative elemental plane and that energy is seeping through whenever someone dies and animating them directly with no actor being directly responsible. The cultists live lavish lives of pleasure in their city served by the undead that swarm around them. Once in the city, they should start to see some of the undead working at mundane tasks.

[jojo]

I don't know how fleshed out your setting is in this case so forgive me if this doesn't fit but:

"You stand at the center of the ruined citadel, your hopes of unraveling this monstrous mystery seem almost within your grasp. Though you can't be certain the longer you observe your surroundings the clearer it becomes that the ethereal scriveners just visible beyond the veil of arcane mists are central to the circumstances."

Perhaps the gods decided to punish the inhabitants of this ruined city for their complicity in committing mass murder. As a punishment the gods locked down the souls of everyone who died in the city and cursed them to record the story of each creature's death forevermore.
Subconsciously the souls of these powerful wizards and warlocks and what not, have been seeking escape. Sometimes they find it, coming back as some sort of undead after which their souls are able to move on provided they don't get destroyed again within the magical fallout zone. Each time one of them succeeds it increases the burden on the others who are struggling to keep up, which in turn makes it easier for more of their fellow cursed souls to escape, etc.
All the PCs have to do to stop it is find a way to cross over to the other side, steal enough books to set the remaining dozen or so wailing scribblers free as powerful undead likely bent on revenge, then kill them in an epic battle. Thus dispelling the mist and ending this particular curse. This shouldn't be much of an issue for high level PCs but unfortunately whatever powerful entity that controls the curse... Orcus, Kyuss or such, isn't going to be happy and will try to retaliate against or interfere with their efforts.

[The_Jette]

Personally, I like the idea that the party follows the clues into the underdark (or expy of the underdark), where they find a ritual going on to resurrect this ancient death deity. So, the party struggles and finally stops the cult.

When they get back to the city/town/whatever, they find out that the dead are still rising. Turns out that it wasn't the deity being risen that was causing it, but a local kid who found a book of Necromancy washed up on the shore of the local lake/river/bog/etc and thought it was just a fun book that he could use to make drawings. And, every time he'd make a new drawing from the book, a random person/monster/animal/etc would rise from the grave. He kept it hidden because his parents don't like him wasting money on paper to make his "doodles."

[StoicLeaf]

A lich has raised rent prices to astronomical heights and many undead can no longer afford accomodation.
So they leave the city in search of new real estate!

[Easy_Lee]

What could make the dead rise from their graves? These low low prices, of course!

[Kane0]

A lich has raised rent prices to astronomical heights and many undead can no longer afford accomodation.
So they leave the city in search of new real estate!

Spoiler: Should definitely NOT be the BBEG

Show

[Nifft]

Abyssal Demon Yeast.

"All of the Fallen shall rise, until the great dark lord Carbo-Hydra has eaten her fill of mortal souls."

[Clistenes]

You could get inspiration form Dungeon Magazine's module Headless: In that adventure a derro priestess of Orcus built an obelisk made of reanimated heads of murdered people, creating an artifact that sucked the souls of people who died in that kingdom, and sent the souls to Orcus as fodder.

It would make sense if that artifact also turned people into undead.

It could be necro-terroristm too: A Death Cult is killing people and reanimating them as undead. They could steal bodies, turn them into powerful infectious undead and release them in cities. Or the could kill people using spells, poisons or magic weapons that raise the victims as undead.

Or it could be a supernatural disease created in the Abyss and spread by a madman who is contaminating the food and water. The disease could make people mad before they die, or have them rot inside out while still alive, or have an ooze eat them from inside and replace their innards, for bonus creepiness.

Or it could all be provoked by the arrival of an Elder Evil. The rising of the undead could be one the the warning signs.

Anyways, the ruined city could be a previous target successfully destroyed by whoever is provoking this. You can make the story creepier by having the mindless undead there repeat their daily chores as automatons until the adventurers arrive. You could also have intelligent undead like ghouls or ghasts live in a delusional state, believing they are alive and their city is still normal, We Happy Few style... Allow the playes to be able to disguise as undead and interact with the inhabitants of the city...

[Longman]

Somehow in their travels, your party have been evil-twinned, and there is now an ANTI-PARTY hanging around doing stuff specifically to mess them up.