The Living Dead And Their Makers (and also souls)

Immortality has long been a fixation of man, and during the age of the Titans its solution was simple; hunt the gods and eat their flesh, and later it would extend to count their fellow men as prey. But even so, simple.

After Salvation and the explosive growth of Gnosis, the wise began to look elsewhere. Small wonder that they sought the secrets of the soul, and sought to bind it.

When living matter emerges from the soil, Numen flows into that questing life and grants it agency beyond merest instinct, and some degree of qualia. Granted cognizance and distinction within the container of its body, it stretches the form of its Worldly matter according to its arbitrary wants, wants instilled by the instincts of that very same form, vestigial and unclear. From the body comes wants of the soul. From the mind, the temperament of the spirit.  From this comes growth, disparity, and change. It is why one form of life is unalike to another, why one may breed something into something else. 

Why humans, with their writhing, mad souls, transfigure so easily.

The shape of the soul, its unique pattern, is its ego, its persistent self. Each blade of grass, each crawling worm, each man and monster, are unique in all of Creation. Even identical copies, if Gnosis could make such a thing, would differentiate almost immediately in their spiritual fingerprint, even if in the most miniscule ways.

That which we call a Daimon is a soul so grand, so potent, that it imposes itself on its flesh and the world. Rather than being subordinate to the desires of its flesh, its flesh is shaped to the desires of its spirit. From whence, then, do these desires come? It is thought that near every Daimon was once a living thing, or in some cases, the child of one which was once a living thing, or was birthed from the collective will of many living things. Their spirits echo the nature of their creators or their old self, perpetuating into infinity unless destroyed, unchanging save by their own hand.

There are also those created by what we would consider true Gods, and of course the Gods themselves.

These things and their motivations are unknowable. Are they merely grander Daimons, or something else? What drives them? What made them? We cannot answer.

Regardless, daimonhood requires a soul of surpassing strength, and so many lack that power which forces their ego upon the world.

But Gnosis, as we have spoken of before, allows even the merest of mages to imitate miracle.

Through the arts of the magi, a soul may be bound to a shell by esoteric arts, or even bidden to roam freely as a disembodied specter, limited though these may be. And of course, should it feed on others, as monsters which transition to undead do, it may augment its spiritual deficiencies with the vitality of the living. 

The more of the self one wishes to keep intact, the more effort must be expended. One may raise great quantities of bodies with all but the barest scraps of their soul shorn away, but to preserve it is no mean feat, requiring either a great expenditure of magic in the case of true ascended undead, a steady supply of prey in the case of unliving monsters, and surpassing technical expertise and no small amount of sorcerous skill in the case of particular golems.

Without the sorcerous arts to bind and shape them, an undead being is a half-formed thing. Addled, traumatized, maddened, insensate, lost, confused, dangerous. Or sometimes, rarely, lucid, a quirk of cosmic chance. Some cling to their bodies, others exist in spirit alone, slowly decaying as they spiral back into nothingness, unless by luck or cunning they find a means of self-sustenance. No unthinking servitor or man above men are they, but a broken soul which cannot be brought to heel. Such creatures form naturally from particular radiations of the Outer Black between the stars, or by more local pollutions, though men of Tenebrous inclination retain their wits more frequently than most.

No matter how it is done, you see, it is not without cost. Sufficient quantities of the Living Dead in a single place, with their distorted spirits and Un-Worldly physiologies, pollute the world around them. Plants wither, beasts sicken. A spiritual malaise radiates throughout the land. The Ushians, Saints of Eternity and their flock alone have safely navigated this peril, but even they do so with effort. For all others, great numbers of the restless dead portend decay; of life, of civilization, of one's very mind.

The world fears undeath, yes, but it is not seen as wholly a wicked thing. It is an affliction, a disease, a pitiable state, in the eyes of most. It can be tolerated in small amounts. A trusted sufferer may have a blind eye turned to them. Some, like golems of flesh with their false half-life, leave less of a spiritual taint than others. The Ushians see it as a flawed half-apotheosis, a burden to be borne for its power even as they ever seek to diminish its hurts, until the day it is perfected. Those who hunt the dead speak of themselves as bringers of rest, and utter the blackest of oaths not at the unliving but at those who raised them. Perhaps a magi with an unliving host could use it for good, but they would have to contend with the question of why they have not joined Eternity's Gospel, far farther along that path than they, and wrestle with the blight their horde brings. If such magi exist, it is as small, furtive, radical sects and lone itinerants, acting according to their personal justice rather than that of Heaven.

And all know how imperfect such things can be.