valkoharja (Adept):
> I wonder if the Death Rune gives a magician potential to raise
> undead?
I'm not that keen on Runic-based powers. I much prefer powers to come from a deity's bacjground, origins etc.
> I know there's the hunger/undeath rune outside the core runes, but
> I've always been a bit unhappy with that.
> Basically, are undead a manifestation of chaos? Is the path for
> creating undead through Death and Chaos runes? Am I missing
> something (probably)?
In my opinion, Undead are created by many means and for many reasons. In RQ2, we had zombies made by Zorak Zoran, Cacodemon, Bluegloom and Vivamort and also Kralori zombie galley-rowers, RQ3 had Gark the Calm. Maybe the goalposts have changed, but Zorak Zoran is definitely not a god of Chaos and nor is Bluegloom (I think).
Undeath is a perversion of a kind, but not always. Zorak Zoran uses his Underworld powers to raise otherwise useless corpses against his enemies. Bluegloom takes the bodies of dead sailors, given to the deep, and animates them for her own purposes. Gark the Calm seems to have zombies that do nothing. Vivamort raises undead as an affront to the gods of life.
So, Undeath is not intrinsically chaotic, nor is it necessarily evil.
> I think ZZ powers have more to do with his origins as a god that
came
> to hell from the outside. Denying hell of a spirit by fixing it to
a
> corpse seems to me like a thing that a true god of hell wouldnt do.
Zorak Zoran is a primal god of Hell. His mother and father are major Darkness Demons, his Sister is Subere. He came from Hell and his powers include Hell-Powers.
> I also think there are two kinds of zombie/skeleton magic: One type
> involves enslaving the soul to the corpse (Gark), and this is
chaotic
> since the soul is denied transit to its god's afterlife, the other
type
> is purely the animation of a corpse with magical power (Sorcery,
ZZ).
Not always. A dead Zorak Zorani Death Lord may well want to return as a Mummy to wreak havoc after death. His soul would be in the Mummy but he would be animated by the god.
See Ya
Simon
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