Skeleton and Zombie - undeath is horror
Inspirational Rant
Modern DnD made Zombies and Skeletons into wimps. At least early editions gave them scary abilities like all the other undead. Negative levels were scary. Cumbersome, troublesome, why-would-you-do-it kind of bad gameplay but scary for players. Newer editions made them cannon fodder. I guess I kinda understand it. Cinema produced a ton of stuff with Walking Dead and similar, the zombie stopped being a thing of horror of undeath and more of a horror of infectious crowds, of beind bitten and becoming one of them or living in a community paranoid that someone was bitten and can turn on you at any moment. Or that there is no cure and this calamity will destroy all humans. Different type of horror.
When we take a look at cultures around the world most of them had some kind of myth relating to dead rising from graves and walking among the living. It was a really scary prospect in pre-modern times, especially since mortality was so high. People had art and culture relating to death, making it more familiar and easy to bear though it seems people never became widely desensitized towards it. You had Danse Macabre but people still mourned their dead children.
I planned to write this post for a long time now, which is why it was very fortunate I found Good Friends of Jackson Elias did a podcast about Zombies recently https://blasphemoustomes.com/2025/09/09/zombies-with-maverick-haenze/ Well, they certainly focus more on zombie as a zombie, while I want to talk more about undead in general but it fits. Go listen to them.
So a zombie in most RPG games is necromancer-made cannon fodder. Necromancy is of course bad and so zombies are bad. It rarely has a solid explanation. Usually it is because you need some negative energy or evil magic to do this. At times authors bring up the point of raising zombies as being potentially valuable asset and ease of labour. But hten it tends to be just lazy "it always goes bad" like it is explained in The Witcher video games. And zombies by extension can be the humanoid enemy that can be killed without looking at morality because they are just evil-magic-bodies, right? I hate it.
Specifics?
Okay, still meandering but trust me, closer to my point. I'm always interested how necromancy supposedly happens? How are dead bodies animated, by what and with what? You're telling me you just summon bad energy and dead bodies know how to move? And if there is no body and just a skeleton it still somehow knows how to behave? And if you hit it a few times it just stops? Does the bad energy dissipate? If it can animate skeletons it shouldn't stop if you hit a whole corpse a few times, right?
When it comes to zombies I always have in my head Evil Dead movies, which fits nicely with whole necromancy thing. You know why? Necromancy term was originally reserved to spiritists and diviners, to people who spoke with ghosts, who contacted spirits of the dead and divined future or hidden knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necromancy. In Evil Dead zombies don't just raise and kill - they are dead human bodies possessed by evil spirits. There is a dead frame and you invite some alien spirit to fill it. That's why it is animated. That is why skeleton can be animated. It's not some "muscle memory" thing or necromancer steering every single move of those creatures. There must be another intelligence behind them. Which also makes them really hard to defeat. Which leads us to the point.
Would I be scared shitless by moving skeleton? Yes! Would my peasant ancestor from two hundred years ago? Even more scared! Why then protagonists, and by another extension NPCs, aren't scared to death? Well, because mechanical reality of zombie-dummies spills onto fictional reality of the setting. You can write as much as you want in your Bestiary book how zombies are horror in the flesh but if they are weak enemies no one will be scared by them. Maybe peasants will treat them as any other enemy, maybe slightly more scared (aside of the situation it is a body of someone close to them - but that is yet another type of horror). Modern fantasy zombie doesn't even have the infectious ability to scare players away. It's just placeholder enemy.
So if we agree to avoid level drain what else is there that can threaten players and PCs? Personal horror is okay but very situational. I also don't think infection works, it bears too much weight of popculture and films about modern times and zombie infections. It's fun but would feel wrong in a fantasy. What else is there?
Well, I really like the setting of Ironsworn. In it Bonewalkers are thematically well connected with the whole world, they are animated by mysterious forces and are part of hardship and evil that hangs around these lands. They cannot be killed. If you do defeat them they will lie dormant for a while but will soon raise again. And since they are known to roam specific locations it is a recurring problem for civilisation. Bonus thing is they are not the weakest enemy. The question isn't "Do you have enough HP to kill them in a fight?" it's more like "How far are you willing to go to remove this threat?". There are no known ways to exorcise the horrors, no clerics with holy powers. This encounter is a dangerous puzzle. And even if you bury them somewhere deep the power that animates them is still out there. And you know they'll be trying to dug themselves out. They have eternity for it. You only delay the problem. Are you willing to do this for future generations?
What to do then?
Well, I like Ironsworn approach. But it assumes the lore of mystery and evil and no holy powers. Also Bonewalker is not the weakest foe but also not the strong one. And if one could summon them it would be terrible thing for the world to wield such power. Necromancers be damned for it.
I think I'd make zombies and skeletons into undying enemies. Animated by evil spirits of realms beyond. Without weak points like a vampire (again, different type of horror). No matter how much and how hard you beat them up they are still going. Their goal is to destroy the living. They will try to grapple you to secure easier hit. They will slowly dig out of any form of containment. Even crushed to dust or burnt to ash they will raise again, in a week or month or even a year, as undead cloud in humanoid form.
That is scary in a way, the relentlessness, like fighting against time (remember monster from Jeepers Creepers film who raised every twenty-something years to feed on people?). But I think it needs a twist to make fighting them directly be a scary prospect. The tactic 'first grab, then bite' is fun in itself especially when you have more than one Zombie or Skeleton attacking but not enough for me. Infection would also be fun but is too modern, too biological. Maybe something similar? Like a curse? If you got stricken by the touch of an undead horror your wounds will heal very slowly and if you die before they are all healed you will raise as another? It is some kind of a curse so it can perhaps be lifted, or a local mystic may consecrate the body not to raise before it's too late?
Answers for questions unasked
Yeah, okay, so the regular Corpsewalker works like above, what about Skeletons? How are they different than Zombies if both can't be killed (no HP/HD)? Damage doesn't matter to any of them. Well, I think they are the same creature, just at different stages of rot. Skeletons are yellowed traces of what was a whole undead corpse. Maybe easier to break and crack. At the same time I would make them more dangerous, with bones sharpened by elements even their touch on naked skin is considered cursed wound.
Do they use weapons? I don't think so. Leave tactics and weapons to intelligent humanoid foes, it can be something distinguishing. Maybe a zombie could, by a lingering memory in a possessed body, hold and crudely slash a sword. But these creatures are not intelligent or even animalistic. These are the most basic, foundational forces of alien evil that tries to seep here. Make them alien, uncaring and relentless. You already have very human-like undead in form of Vampires, and animalistic undead predators in form of Ghouls. Let them be special in their own way.
Yes, don't make cursed wounds a part of every undead arsenal. They have their own things.
After skeleton is destroyed to dust or ash they don't "regenerate" their body. I think they'd start looking more like undead apparitions, like wights, wraiths or haunts. Maybe even turn into those? Or start being more haunting and spoiling presence instead of physical danger? Like the evil grounds from Pet Sematary?
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