Alter Aeon The Great Library

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Note - as with any topic, researchers should question the reliability
and veracity of these texts.  The library's aim is to preserve
documents, not verify accuracy.

AABN:  13781
Title: The Necromarcanorum Volume II: Undeath

 This scroll is made from black leather, rolled around a waxed rod of
darkwood. The text is large and blocky, written with dense white chalk that
is sealed into the leather:

"Undead have existed ever since living beings experienced death.
Spontaneously rising corporeal undead result when enough soul-binding
energy gathers around a corpse and specific conditions are met. It is
fairly rare, but time is long, and death ever present.

Certain locations are more favorable to undead rising, as well as certain
burial practices, such as the mummification that became popular among
ancient giants and in Old Q'thelas.

Non-corporeal undead, or ghosts, are previously living souls engendered
with soul-binding energies they collect from their environment and from
living creatures they kill. They use the energies to bind shadow, fairy,
demonic or elemental energies into crude shapes mimicking their living
forms. This results in shades, banshees, wraiths and a host of other
strange, bodiless entities.

Ghosts and their ilk have been known to possess inanimate objects, poorly
shielded golems and the bodies of living creatures. Strange sights, from
floating candlesticks to walking suits of armor, have been reported in
environs haunted by ghosts. Ghosts sometimes leave behind a jelly-like
substance known as ectoplasm when they are destroyed. Its nature is poorly
understood, as it quickly evaporates. 

The first true necromancers, distinct from clerics and mages, came to be
with the practice of deliberately creating undead using soulstones. These
processes artificially reproduce the "natural" phenomena of undead rising,
while adding a method of control.

It is believed that the power to turn undead was granted by the gods to
clerics as a fail-safe to control undead populations. The dead far
outnumber the living, and undead creatures don't age or suffer from other
forms of attrition that thin out living populations. Some undead, like
vampires, can reproduce by spreading their condition to living creatures."