The Walking Dead: The Craving

[Jack of Tears]

After a years long hiatus I am returning to my Ravenloft game in the near future and as such was reading through my VanRichten's Guides again. In the intro to "The Walking Dead" the book discusses "The Craving" which drives the undead and states that the most basic craving - that witnessed in zombies and skeletons animated by Necromancers - is the craving to serve their masters. I thought this could be an interesting basis for a short adventure.

What if you had a Necromancer with a full staff of undead servants, who died quietly one night of old age, or disease, but his servants - limited in their capacity to reason - did not realize he was dead? These servants, driven by an unending need to serve, continue to carry out their master's routine long after his demise.

They collect corpses from graveyards and the nearby woodlands for his experiments, until his lab is piled with rotting bodies; perhaps once a month he had them kidnap a citizen from one of the nearby villages for his rituals, and so now they drag off people every dark of the moon and toss them in cells awaiting a master who will never come to taunt, or even feed them. He was weak and lacked mobility, so his undead would carry him from room to room on a regular schedule to conduct his studies ... now they carry a decaying corpse from place to place, with no recognition that he is falling apart in their very arms. They brought his clothing every morning and now his bed is covered in old rags, piled high where they are left and never worn ... having long since run out of clothes, the creatures now simply go through the motions ... though occasionally, when doing his "bidding" near villages or the like, they become distracted at the sight of unworn clothes and have a tendency to pick them up and carry them back to the manor to restore the old wardrobe. They hunt for food, gather wood for fires, anything and everything an aging necromancer would have needed of his unholy servants ... and are only violent when somehow interrupted in their duties.

It is during the course of their duties ... probably a monthly kidnapping, that the PCs come into the story ... stumbling upon this macabre demonstration, working with unearthly efficiency, with nothing but their need to serve driving the creatures to behave they way they do.

The adventure itself wouldn't require much ... eliminate the undead, discover the truths behind the necromancer's studies, perhaps destroy his research ... but it has a lot of potential for creating a creepy one night scenario for your adventuring group. (and, of course, depending on the kinds of things the undead where sent to do, the adventure might be rife with red herrings - and even once they decide it is a necromancer, it might take most of the night before they realize they are researching and preparing to confront a - truly - dead man.)

[alhoon]

Well... your idea is good and "adventurable".

The main part I liked is... the PCs can "deal" with a necromancer in a way without having them to face a high level wizard. So, the PCs could go and fight nasties, helping people and do some good at 2nd lvl, without fear of "well... the 5th lvl cleric or 7th lvl wizard would pawn them!"

Keep in mind though that (Although I disagree with it) obedient dead are also supposed to kill or they go crazy and end up going in a rampart. That part I would leave out though since it feels... I don't know. Bad.
IMC I have obedient dead that would guard their master's tomb 500 years after their master died, not leave to go kill rats after 2 months because "the negative energy in them demands bloodshed".

To help you a bit:
Obedient dead tend to be ... stupid. Not these though! For undead to be able to sneak into a village and steal people they would need intelligence at least 7 IMO. For undead to sneak into a graveyard, recognise what a tomb is, dig it up and steal the body I would say an intelligence 5 is required.
For the "rank and file" undead that accompany the gravediggers an intelligence of 2 is enough IMO. They just have to recognise that the gravediggers are in danger and attack the danger.
Since the necromancer is a master in making "smart" obedient dead though, I would say these fellows (the guards) have an intelligence of 4 so they can recognise classes and that "the guy with the robe in the back that chants and waves hands is 1. dangerous 2. easy to hit and kill". They could also form basic plans.

PS. The gravediggers don't need to be powerful in combat since they can have rank and file with them. The abductors though, need to operate alone or in pairs so they have to be better.
IMO they should have along with stealth a "silence" special quality so that 5' around them there is silence or at least an activated such power (1/day) so if the victim puts up a fight, smashes things, screams, they could still do it undetected.

Very good idea.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

yes, a very creepy spin on Weekend at Bernies. I really like it. Though I agree, there's a problem in that you can't make the undead too dumb, or they won't be able to do these complex tasks, but if they are too smart, they'll realize that Bernie the Necromancer is dead. Maybe the smart ones never actually see their master, but just hand off stuff to the dumb ones that serve him directly?

[alhoon]

I would respectfully disagree Gonzoron.

They are obedient dead. Sure, they may have intelligence 7 to be able to steal people.
Yes, they realize that their master is dead. So are they. They're not humans with intelligence 7, their obedient dead with intelligence 7.
Nobody said that the intelligence 12 obedient servant, the masterpiece of his master's necromantic acts, that is sweeping the floor will be happy that his master said to him "Sweep that corner until I tell you otherwise... OH! My heart. Ouch... Ohhhh" and died. He will be unhappily be sweeping the floor for eternity.
He may stop with a will save for a few minutes, enough to kill a rat or change the broom since it has melted from sweeping for 12 years. But the craving will start pushing. The more time he spends away from sweeping the floor the more terrible the need to start sweeping again.
The undead servant is not a person that just doesn't eat, sleep and drink. It's a corpse risen from the dead, it's will bind by black magic. Perhaps because he's smart, he may have developed a personality but that personality has nothing in common with a living person.
Contacting his mind = madness check. That's how alien his mind is.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

An excellent point, alhoon. I was thinking like a person, not a monster. An undead mind could be as intelligent as you want, and yet be compelled to obey his master's last command. Perhaps they simply assume that the master will rise again eventually, and would be furious if they disobeyed even the strangest seeming orders.

[Ryan Naylor]

Perhaps they understand what they're doing is stupid, but they're unable to stop doing it. Like really, really intense OCD.

[Germaine]

Or like an overwhelming addiction, given the equating of obedience with the Craving. The more intelligent ones may realize their actions are immoral, potentially harmful to themselves, or even completely pointless, but be unable or unwilling to stop, lest they suffer the torments of their Craving.

[Jack of Tears]

The more intelligent ones may realize their actions are immoral, potentially harmful to themselves, or even completely pointless, but be unable or unwilling to stop, lest they suffer the torments of their Craving.

I don't think most Obedient Dead concern themselves overmuch with questions of morality ... what is it to a skeleton that he should kidnap a woman every month and leave her in a cell to starve? Even if he is intelligent, he isn't going to empathize with her ... they have nothing left in common, nothing that they share. She is an object and the skeleton is likely to give her no more thought than it would that broom. (even less if it spends more time with the broom)

[Germaine]

You may in fact have a point, but I seem to recall that much was made in VRGttWD of many obedient dead retaining some or all of their personalities, but essentially being helpless and horrified prisoners in the remains of their own bodies.

[Jack of Tears]

Actually the material says it is very rare for them to keep anything but maybe the most fleeting of memories, though there are some which do fall into the category of these "prisoners in their own bodies" thing.

Myself, I tend to assume that almost no body which was dead, then animated through magic, retains any sense of who it was. Undead which raise for other reasons, or are transformed through an attacking creatures curse, may very well maintain much of their original minds for a time ... though it does still vanish over time and - trapped in these rotten parodies of who they once were - they get to suffer through the gradual loss of their humanity. Those which are often put to the task of killing for their masters or food, however, are likely to go insane before their humanity decays "naturally".

[Germaine]

Interesting point. Perhaps I should review the book myself. It has been awhile...

[Strahdsbuddy]

While I had not really given it much thought,t he trapped in its body idea is sort of more terrifying and tragic, particularly with a religion that has firm ideas about where the soul is supposed to be while its mortal remains rot peacefully in the earth. While no Ravenloft religions jump out at me with this particular belief, its roots in real world religions would explain the D&D animosity between Clerics and the Undead, as though souls which would otherwise be happily inhabiting Heaven are suddenly sucked back into their mortal coil in order to do the bidding of some 5th level spellcaster.

In-game, the simple belief that this is happening would be enough to convince most people to want to destroy the creatures, particularly the lesser undead that have no will of their own but still are mobile prisons for a soul whose only sin was being buried in a poorly patrolled cemetery. Now that I'm thinking about it, the Turn Undead ability seems like something a good priest would be loathe to use, since it prolongs the suffering of an innocent soul in the simple interest of the safety of the priest. A true believer would destroy those hideous things and free those souls!