Undeath

Transmission & Vectors

When a soul is rejected by Astus and Khydar harvests the soul before it can be hunted down by Hunia, the God of Undeath will return the soul to a corpse in Valine, animating the dead flesh with the corrupted soul and creating an undead creature. True undeath is not transmissible, but in the hands of the gods that oversee the domains of death and undeath.

Causes

True undead are created when Astus rejects a soul from the afterlife, releasing it to be hunted by Hunia, but the soul is harvested by Khydar the Unnatural before Hunia has hunted it down and either destroyed it or returned it to the cycle of existence for another chance. These harvested and corrupted souls are returned to corpses (not necessarily their own) and form the hordes of the mindless undead - zombies, ghouls, ghasts and the like.

Treatment

There is no treatment for undeath. By the time the corrupted soul inhabits a corpse, the soul is already lost and the inhabited flesh beyond repair. The only way to deal with undeath is to destroy the body or damage it sufficiently to destroy the corrupted soul within.

Affected Groups

Creatures such as liches and vampires are often thought of as undead creatures, but these more self-aware, sentient creatures carry different curses and, while their bodies may be physically in a state of death, the souls remain within along with their identity and self-awareness. These curses are related to the true undeath of a separated and corrupted soul, but are, in fact, curses that can be reversed or destroyed, releasing the soul to Astus's judgement. With true undead, the soul is lost and destroyed with the body of the undead creature it inhabits.

Hosts & Carriers

Plants and animals, though without souls in most cases, can be affected with the corruption of undeath. Though not truly undead, the effects of the taint are, for all intents and purposes, the same. The true differences lie in the realm of philosophy for most.

Prevention

Certain precautions can be taken to prepare the soul for Astus's judgment before death, but the only true prevention is for the soul to be admitted to the afterlife. Even those souls hunted by Hunia and returned to another life remain at risk until their soul is finally admitted to the afterlife.

History

Before Khydar the Unnatural's creation, there was no undeath. Though many blame Khydar for unleashing the undead on Valine, in truth Jopha and Astus are as much, if not more, to blame through their foolhardy scheme to create the perfect divine being, as Khydar was the result.
In essence, the undead are lost souls - those who have been rejected from the afterlife by Astus - that Khydar has harvested before Hunia has hunted them down. With the expansion of the numbers of the undead, some souls have been harvested before they even reached Astus, denied their final judgment and filled with a primal rage at the injustice of their fate.
Khydar expands his influence through increasing the ranks of the undead, but it is also a balancing act. When the undead first emerged into Valine their twenty year reign of terror showed the danger of overpopulation of the undead. Many undead creatures need the living as a food source. Without the living, the undead would starve and fade from existence themselves. Khydar knows that expanding the ranks of the undead too far will ultimately lessen his influence, and so the numbers of harvested souls are something that the God of Undeath carefully monitors.
When the Treaty of the Dead was created in The Year of Peaceful Rest (Year 189) and the uneasy truce formed between Astus and Khydar several conditions related to, and often mistaken for, true undeath were left upon Valine such as vampirism and lichdom. Khydar has far less control over these conditions and those affected by them, although their related nature gives him a modicum of influence.

Cultural Reception

The undead are feared, reviled and hunted by most. Clerics of Khydar seldom operate on the open, but do teach undeath as an alternative to death and loss, leaning on the misconception of certain cursed creatures as being undead to begin the process of corrupting a soul before death with the promise of a loved one returning as an intelligent, functioning being. Such beings are not true undead, however, and Khydar has only limited influence over them. Thus the promises of a Priest of Khydar should always be met with skepticism.

Type

Supernatural

Origin

Divine