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As I prep an Eox adventure, I find myself going back to a conversation about undead that we had on another thread. In particular to this and similar remarks from Redelia:
Undead are by their very existence inimical to all living beings. The divide between them is larger that the divide between angels and demons, between Einstein and a slug on the path.
My response to this was kind of flip at the time... but as I look through Pathfinder undead with a view to adapting them to Starfinder (I want a bit of a broader sample than what's in Splintered Worlds), I'm appreciating Redelia's view with fresh eyes. It strikes me that yes, this really was a central concept for Pathfinder undead. And it's still a thing for some undead in Starfinder, like for example the Driftdead.
This has me thinking. How does Eox deal with this? What do they see as differentiating their form of undeath, which is clearly consistent with a functioning (albeit creepy) civilisation that can be a working member of the Pact Worlds, with those forms of undeath that really are just totally inimical to all life?
Maybe they aren't quite as different as they think or claim they are, for that matter, but what I came up with is that there would have to be some kind of ideological framework and accompanying rhetoric about the degree of difference that at least allows Eox to function. I'm going to slap the term "immortuacy" on this ideology; it's not exactly immortality but it's not your father's undeath, either.
I'm big into producing fake PSAs and propaganda leaflets for my game, which technically would seem better suited to the Homebrew forum, but I figured I'd post these here since the originating discussion was here. With belated thanks to Redelia for getting me to think through this a little more, I proffer the rough drafts of some "Come Visit Sunny Eox!"-style tourism propaganda, and a rather salty guide to making the "transition" to "immortuacy". I hope the idea is useful or at least mildly diverting for a few people here, comments and critiques are more than welcome.
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I tend to think of Eoxian culture as, in some way, tragic, rather than evil.
They came to their current situation because of a massive accident with a superweapon. I'm sure, internally, many in their society at the time thought that this weapon and its use was necessary, even if they thought it was wrong, morally.
Now, they're stuck with the consequences of that. Most of their planet is uninhabitable by mortals. Even the parts that are, probably can't support a healthy enough population to maintain a stable Elebrian culture. It's only a combination of magic and technology that prevented wholesale extinction of their species.
Undeath, for many of them, was a stop-gap. It probably started (outside of the nobility at least) as a sacrifice they made for the greater good of their culture and species. They made it for their kids. You reach a certain age, you've reproduced, but the food processors can't support another person, and your society needs your knowledge/skills to keep up. So you convert to a corpsefolk or bone trooper or whatever, so you can continue to serve your people but your kids can still eat. Over time, this just became normal and expected of everyone.
Their society has, I think, both a lawful and an evil bend to it. But most of their people are probably neutral or even good (even the undead ones). It's lawful, because they are pretty authoritarian (they're an oligarchy with a strict military tradition). And it's evil because there's a lot of corruption because of the near permanence of the power structure. In your day to day interactions, I plan on running people (even undead ones) as being people, generally.
Moreover, some percentage of the populace came out changed after undeath. They stopped seeing themselves as people and started seeing themselves as better, beyond mortal concerns about their souls or whatever. That's the faction that partly broke off to form the corpse fleet, but also deals with the characters in parts of the AP.
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pithica: I agree with that assessment overall, definitely.
I hope giving them some extra-chirpy and confident-sounding propaganda makes the contrast with the bleakness of non-life that much more poignant when my players get there.
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One thing seen in the adventure path is there are facilities for creating flesh that is edible by the various undead who require such and in the use of necrografts. Presumably blood can be created in the same way so as potentially inimical undead are to living beings they now possess the technology to at least coexist without being forced into predation of the living. This is likely one reason eox can exist in its current state as a member of the pact worlds. I am sure most are pretty dubious about eox but the ability is there to exist side by side peacefully.
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What do they see as differentiating their form of undeath, which is clearly consistent with a functioning (albeit creepy) civilisation that can be a working member of the Pact Worlds, with those forms of undeath that really are just totally inimical to all life?
That's a good question. It's obvious that many don't. The Corpse Fleet, after all, went rogue after their world signed a peace treaty with the living, and it has substantial (albeit quiet) support from many still living on Eox.
Some Eoxians are probably good creatures that don't harbor ill will towards the living, but they're likely far and few between. After all, I feel that one needs to be decently greedy or self-centered to pursue undeath, and even freshly-turned undead (see some of the NPCs in Splintered Worlds) are generally hostile and/or unfriendly to the living, even in a professional situation.
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I hope giving them some extra-chirpy and confident-sounding propaganda makes the contrast with the bleakness of non-life that much more poignant when my players get there.
The early undead interactions I'm planning will mostly be with government functionaries and will be just as annoying and mundane as those with people. The Pact Worlds equivalent of TSA agents or the like. I'm trying to make it seem as normal as possible to ease them into the difference.
That being said, my group has always played pretty well with moral grayness. Even the capital E evil monsters in our games tend to be complex and have a valid (even if sometimes selfish) point of view. I don't honestly even like treating devils as moral absolutes. I honestly don't expect a problem as long as no one intentionally makes a undead hater.
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Question is, do they have all kinds of creepy tech like this or would they be easier to identify with? The style does change how others react as much as the substance does.
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I do think there is meant to be a sense, for at least some (perhaps much) of Eox, where none of it registers for them as creepy. That they genuinely think of it all as just being their unique contribution to civilisation and are able to persuasively recruit people to join the Eoxian, uh, "life"style voluntarily.
(Excepting the Corpse Fleet and the hardcore undead-supremacists who sympathise with them, because certainly their attitude and entire modus operandi is about deliberately embracing and celebrating their own sense of menace, leaning hard into being truly malign undead in the fine old megalomaniacal style. So there's a built-in tension between those parts of Eoxian society that have reconciled themselves to needing the Pact Worlds, and those that will never accept this and genuinely despise and wish to crush the living -- the sort that gets involved in creating undead like Marrowblights. The hardliners seem to have a position that isn't dominant in Eoxian society by any means and is genuinely rejected by many, but still has an influential network of supporters working clandestinely for them. Sort of like the thuggee cult in India of a certain era or the Klan in the American South of a certain era, but with a navy.)
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As I see it, Undeath has layers of “life” just as much as Living creatures do. There’s free-willed sapient undead (e.g., Vampires, Liches); enthralled but sapient undead (e.g., Lesser Vampires); sentient but not sapient “animalistic” undead (e.g., Ghouls); and non-sentient, non-sapient, automata-like undead (e.g. Skeletons, Zombies).
We wouldn’t expect a Human, a Wolf, and a Shark to have the same sort of moral and ethical standards, right? If a Human steals your cattle, you can hold him responsible for violating your property rights, but if a Wolf eats your sheep you can’t sue him or have him arrested for homicide.
Immanuel Kant’s famous maxim “ought implies can” seems to apply here. A fully sapient undead, like a Vampire, can restrain himself from murdering every living being he meets, so we can say that he ought not commit homicide. A mindless undead, like a Ghost, cannot stop itself from attacking the living so saying that it ought not do so is meaningless.
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Minor quibble. Ghouls in SF are fully sapient beings. The only 'ghost' we have so far is technological in nature, but it too is sentient. So far, all the undead I remember seeing in the SF books except for the generic zombie and void zombie have human or better intelligence.
There's a hologram Ghost in Dead Suns 4, that's basically an AI Hologram that's gained self-awareness. They too have above human average intelligence, in fact, they're near genius with a 14.
Moreover, ghosts have never been mindless that I recall. They aren't in PF, certainly, so I don't expect them to be mindless in SF. The template version always had whatever Intelligence it had in life. If I remember correctly, Ghosts were the only potentially good undead in vanilla PF (someone correct me if that's wrong, it's been a while since I played vanilla PF).
I think a huge part of everyone's problem with undead is with how they're often played as mindless murder machines. You can't reason with or empathize with a mindless murder machine. You just destroy it for the good of everyone around you.
Undead in SF aren't mindless murder machines. They just aren't. Sure, some (maybe even many or most) are a-holes that think they're better than everyone else and should just be allowed to rule everyone else with an Iron fist. But, the same is true of a lot of living people too.
I never ran them as mindless murder machines before, though, so for me this isn't a switch.
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Relatively few PF undead were mindless, strictly-speaking. Ghosts had an average INT score (although I don't think making a mindless ghost that was really just an echo of a consciousness would be a stretch, be it "technological" or occult). And you're quite right about ghouls.
I was struck by the consistency with which phrases like "they are full of rage, hate and malice toward the living" or the trope of their having died in the throes of something horrible and therefore manifesting horrific powers cropped up in their descriptions. "Mindless" murder machines not quite, in fact many PF undead were quite canny, which was what made them dangerous. Almost always malignant, though, to be certain.
This is quite clearly different or can be different in SF, of course, to some extent, except where circumstance or deliberate practices negate that difference. It amuses me to think there's probably a specific therapy profession behind some of the difference, helping undead to acclimatise... though not all undead benefit from it or want it. I'm kind of imagining a bureaucracy of case workers like Juno from Beetlejuice.
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I actually think this is one of the more interesting aspects of the setting.
With all the AIs, Androids, Aliens, and Undead available, you can play around a lot with all the big questions about what it means to be a 'person'. If you want, you can take it to some pretty deep places philosophically. I mean, you can ignore all that if you want, but I think you're selling your game short if you do (but that's just my opinion).
I totally think that the 'converted therapy' would be a thing. I'm totally stealing that.
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Where are we getting all this data on SF undead?
(Sincere question, as I own no GM resources.)
Sure, Eoxians have a functional government able to form treaties. Most any alignment can pull that off, with chaos/law being a larger factor.
It seems a lot of this is speculation based on our personal senses of will overcoming nature. While noble, is that a Starfinder norm? Or maybe other story metaethics are bleeding into SF?
PF's Geb comes to mind, their folk being quite evil, but lawful enough to function and canny enough to raise crops for sale to the living. Even Ustalav, where the undead prey upon the living, has some treaties involving undead. And in PF, as per Jacobs, all undead were evil. The nature of magic used, the nature of the souls capable of undeath, the torments & hungers involved, etc., all come together to make undead evil. If I recall, this was in reaction to Forgotten Realms where good undead were becoming increasingly common (so many elven protectors). No watering down in PF!
That said, there's at least one non-evil PF undead, an Iroran mummy who is called out as a rarity. He used a specific ritual while I don't think there's mention of a neutral Eoxian method. Or has the nature of necromancy changed since PF? Or has magic progressed such?
What if in SF too, evil is hardwired into undead due to magical essences? Maybe the best undead can hope for is to resist psychopathy?
Have there been non-evil undead in SF? (I suspect the Eoxian ambassador might be neutral, but have not seen his stats.)
Heck, I strongly suspect the Corpse Fleet works for the Eoxian government (or portions thereof), and might also be a handy place to put the undead incapable of maintaining a civilized facade. They might be of use later. Disowned, or maybe just disavowed.
The fact Eox manufactures flesh may only be an amoral, practical solution which also stems off any crusading armies. As for blood, it's often tied to life force, so would manufactured blood work? (Designer's call.)
To me, the Eoxians seem no better than the Drow, just with a more sophisticated diplomatic corps. Y'all just been suckered into believing the hype! Pharasma forever!!!
Hmm...can UPBs make wooden stakes? Or does it have to be natural wood?
Can you put a holy fusion on water? What tech level are super-soakers?
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Where are we getting all this data on SF undead?
There's a few Undead listed in Alien Archives and Dead Suns 3 apparently has quite a bit about Eox. I don't own the latter, but there is a non-evil Undead listed in AA, the Cybernetic Zombie.
I don't think there's mention of a neutral Eoxian method. Or has the nature of necromancy changed since PF? Or has magic progressed such?
Well, I don't know about that, but Animate Dead certainly doesn't have the "Evil" descriptor any more. In fact, the only spell which can have descriptors indicating alignment is Planar Binding. I feel like that was sort of overlooked.
But to me, this definitely implies that creating Undead isn't necessarily evil, and that Undead themselves need not be Evil either. Sure, you could say that their being lends itself easier to Evil than Good, but the same's true for Dhampirs, Tieflings and Changelings in Pathfinder. And the Pathfinder writers made it pretty clear that those could be of any alignment.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
What do they see as differentiating their form of undeath, which is clearly consistent with a functioning (albeit creepy) civilisation that can be a working member of the Pact Worlds, with those forms of undeath that really are just totally inimical to all life?That's a good question. It's obvious that many don't. The Corpse Fleet, after all, went rogue after their world signed a peace treaty with the living, and it has substantial (albeit quiet) support from many still living on Eox.
Some Eoxians are probably good creatures that don't harbor ill will towards the living, but they're likely far and few between. After all, I feel that one needs to be decently greedy or self-centered to pursue undeath, and even freshly-turned undead (see some of the NPCs in Splintered Worlds) are generally hostile and/or unfriendly to the living, even in a professional situation.
Eoxians joining the pact world was cold blooded or unblooded whatever pragmatism. Better to be a part of the pact which both makes you stronger defended but also lessens the chance of getting attacked by close neighbors. If they play by the rules everybody else tends to do so as well.
The corpse fleet was a faction that thought nope eox is number 1 and their goal is to get strong enough to basically match the entire pact word power themselves. But undead who can live effectively forever hedging your bets is also just being pragmatic. If they bone fleet succeeds eox will embrace them if they don't eox would disown them. nobody likes a loser.
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Where are we getting all this data on SF undead?
(Sincere question, as I own no GM resources.)
There's some in the CRB in the setting info, spell, and alignment sections. There's some in the AA, in the various monster entries, and there's some in the Dead Suns AP, much of it in Dead Suns 3 (which has a Gazetteer on Eox among other things) but also some in the others, so far.
It seems a lot of this is speculation based on our personal senses of will overcoming nature. While noble, is that a Starfinder norm? Or maybe other story metaethics are bleeding into SF?
The section on alignment at the beginning of the book says that alignment is far less important in SF than in previous games. I've seen/read/listened to a number of interviews and questions to the developers, and I've gotten the impression that alignment is a mechanic you can do without, entirely, in SF. The Animate Dead spell doesn't have an [Evil] tag on it any more. There are playable undead race(s) coming out, one in the Pact Worlds book.
There's a lot of things both stated and implied that point to 'nature' of undead creatures not being inherently Evil anymore.
And in PF, as per Jacobs, all undead were evil. The nature of magic used, the nature of the souls capable of undeath, the torments & hungers involved, etc., all come together to make undead evil. If I recall, this was in reaction to Forgotten Realms where good undead were becoming increasingly common (so many elven protectors). No watering down in PF!
That isn't the case in SF.
What if in SF too, evil is hardwired into undead due to magical essences? Maybe the best undead can hope for is to resist psychopathy?
Have there been non-evil undead in SF? (I suspect the Eoxian ambassador might be neutral, but have not seen his stats.)
Undead in SF aren't automatically evil. It isn't hardwired into them. There have been non-evil undead described in the books that are cannon already, I expect there will be more when Pact Worlds comes out.
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Eoxians joining the pact world was cold blooded or unblooded whatever pragmatism. Better to be a part of the pact which both makes you stronger defended but also lessens the chance of getting attacked by close neighbors. If they play by the rules everybody else tends to do so as well.
The corpse fleet was a faction that thought nope eox is number 1 and their goal is to get strong enough to basically match the entire pact word power themselves. But undead who can live effectively forever hedging your bets is also just being pragmatic. If they bone fleet succeeds eox will embrace them if they don't eox would disown them. nobody likes a loser.
There is a completely valid argument that Eox joining the pact was more altruistic than pragmatic. The Eoxian navy was the only part of the pact system that was consistently winning its battles versus the Veskarium (as well as occasional skirmishes with other future Pact worlds). At the time, they had superior technology, numbers, and tactics. The Corpse Fleet had a completely valid point that joining up made them weaker, not stronger. Eox could have just bided their time and animated the corpses of any pact world (or their ships/colonies) or Vesk that lost a battle. It cost them significantly to make this pact, and continues to cost them to the present day. In hindsight, since the swarm likely would have been unable to do anything with Eox itself, they could have just let the swarm clean up the whole system and ruled the ashes, if they wanted.
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I kind of like the idea of a life to undeath councilor. "SO you have woken up as a Ghoul, here's what you should expect" sort of video for the people to watch.
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pithica raises a good point in regards to the CRB. The only creatures it lists as being absolutely, unquestionably locked to an alignment are the outsiders of the Outer Sphere. Everything else can be of any alignment. Undead are not mentioned.
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Where are we getting all this data on SF undead?
Personally I'm working within all of that, but loosely. Mostly I'm inventing a framework that seems fun (and occasionally even funny) to me but seems to fit with the observed official "facts." I think this:
It seems a lot of this is speculation based on our personal senses of will overcoming nature.
... is certainly something I'm inferring as part of that. That there is some kind of infrastructure helping the Eoxians to overcome what might otherwise be a kind of "undead instinct" (still manifest in some modern undead) and function as a civilization. What exactly this is hasn't been particularly specified yet, but I think something like it is an implied Starfinder norm, or at least that there's room to imply it and it's a fun idea to do so.
I am honestly not super-concerned with whether the folk of Eox are "good" or "evil." Or, well, I am concerned with it because who falls where is interesting story material and yes, it is very clear that "all undead are evil" is not a rule that applies, since there are non-evil undead citizens of Eox in the story in Splintered Worlds. But that's different from the big-picture question of just what makes them functional as a civilisation that can host trade and tourism and work with the Pact Worlds, which is a question simply of what allows them to be rational... at any rate more rational than the faction supporting the Corpse Fleet.
Heck, I strongly suspect the Corpse Fleet works for the Eoxian government (or portions thereof)
It's reasonably clear from the content in Splintered Worlds that the Corpse Fleet works for elements of the Bone Sages but does not enjoy anything like the unanimous support of Eoxian society, much less its government (since there is no unified "Eoxian government," really). There are solid reasons for mainstream Eoxians to resent the Corpse Fleet that have nothing to do with PR or good vs. evil; for example, it's revealed that the Corpse Fleet had an opportunity to rally to support their homeworld as it was fighting for its unlife during the Swarm attack in 291 AG but did not do so, because they're too obsessed with their mission to break up the Pact.
This all tracks with what's already been revealed about Eox and I personally like it better as a scenario anyway, because it's more complicated and interesting that way.
The fact Eox manufactures flesh may only be an amoral, practical solution which also stems off any crusading armies.
Fun fact: the flesh we see manufactured in Splintered Worlds is being produced in order to be aged and cured into undead tissue for necro-grafts. I am personally assuming Eox can manufacture cloned meat and blood that has life-force but not consciousness -- and also that this is like the undead equivalent of trying to live on Velveeta -- but those are just my assumptions. They don't appear in any official content yet.
** spoiler omitted **...
Because of this interplay of forces, the Eoxian government occasionally does (or at least sanctions) some pretty nasty ish, but it generally follows the precepts of the pact they chose to sign, including recognizing rights for non-undead.
The whole section on the underground city where all the survival games are played goes out of its way to point out that everyone there has to be their by un-altered choice and they have to be legally capable of giving their consent for participating. They even go so far as to take any children born in the city and raise and educate them at government expense far away from the survival games if the parents choose not to leave when they're born.
So far, this whole part has been the most interesting aspect of the AP for me. It's got the most of my brain juices going.
Is that true? That the Eox navy was the only one winning? New information?
Not the only one winning, but:
Not that it was "altruism" for the Bone Sages to join the Pact. No matter how it happened, the failure of the Magefire assault made it clear that they could not hope to continue to try dominating the Pact Worlds with raw military force and still expect to have a planet of their own at the other end of it. Later on, threats like the Veskarium and the Swarm would have had to make it clear that they were better off cooperating with other worlds.
I'm fascinated by details like that, too. And yes, generally agree with your thoughts there.
Is that true? That the Eox navy was the only one winning? New information?
They'd failed earlier in an attack on Absalom station, I believe.
Yes, the Magefire assault. That was shortly after the Gap.
Practically speaking, they were unlikely to have been able to remain out of the war and they would have wound up standing alone against whichever side won. The Vesk would certainly have tried to conquer or destroy them and a united Pact Worlds (without Eox) would be unlikely to tolerate them - especially if they'd been preying on...
That depends entirely on their strategy. If they stay at the edges of the fight, moving in late and swelling their ranks with the corpses of both sides, they could have been in a position at the end of the war to be far more powerful than the remnants of the winning side. They could have even limited their corpse collection during the war to dead vesks to keep the other Golarion worlds from balking at the process until it was too late. The deaths of their enemies can literally make them stronger. That's the strategy the corpse fleet is employing today. They just go around picking easy fights and swelling their ranks or following the bigger battles of other players collecting corpses.
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Velveeta is so good though…
EDIT: Heh. Apparently, talk-type either doesn’t understand that word, AutoCorrect doesn’t understand that word, or talk-type doesn’t understand me saying that word (which might mean that I’m saying it incorrectly…)
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:D I was wondering what "Vida Ville" was. That's hilarious. (And yes, Velveeta is perfectly tasty, no argument there.)
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Those hand-outs, are amazing, by the way! I love them!
To answer the question about whether or not undead are evil, in addition to much empirical evidence found in various printed materials, there are direct statements by the various developers indicating that undead are not inherently evil. This is noted as a purposeful and intentional shift away from Pathfinders tendencies, although, it must be noted, that even in pathfinder there were many, many exceptions to that rule. Ghosts, of course, are the most well-known exception, and are probably the most common, however, there are various others, as well, including a giant spider filled with tiny spiders… With no language, and intelligence of seven. Sooooo... that’s a thing in PF!
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Holy crap. I totally missed the links to the documents in the OP. I'm reading them now, I like what I'm seeing so far.
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Even in a high tech war, to hold territory, you need someone with a weapon standing somewhere and saying, "This is ours, you can't have it." Without that, you get a power vacuum and someone else does it. The nature of the corpse fleet makes that easier, since you can irradiate a population or disease them to death and then raise the corpses. You can turn every single enemy civilian you kill into a soldier for your side. Collateral damage potentially makes you stronger.
Their answer to building space ships is to take all those corpses and use them to build factories for making space ships on otherwise dead planets. Moreover, their ships described as being a sort of hybrid undead thing anyway, so they may literally use the corpses to build the ships. It also gives them a lot of material for their necrotech weapons and the like.
It's possible that the winner wins by out producing their enemy. It's also possible that one side or the other (or both) resorts to a biological or nuclear or other mass kill option that leaves the losing (or both sides) smoking husks full of corpses ripe for re-animation. With the right strategy, they could have even instigated this with false-flag WMD strikes and espionage. The war was described as being a stalemate, essentially, until the swarm showed up.
Re-animation fundamentally changes how any war plays out, in my opinion.
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Glad people are enjoying the docs, by the way. :) This discussion has already given me some ideas on how to improve them, so thanks everyone.
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I'm blerching a bit on the term "cis-biological". I understand what you're going for with it, and I can't think of a better term off the top of my head, though. I've always liked the word, zoetic, but that implies animate in all its forms. Maybe mortuate and immortuate works?
It's a minor quibble though. I'm playing around a lot with how living Elebrian culture works, myself.
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Yeah it's a wee bit on-the-nose, innit. ;) I'm thinking so myself. I'll see if I can manage something a little less obviously satirizing-our-times.
Be interested to hear your ideas on living Elebrians. The only one I've featured so far was an isolated hedonist with lots of undead family connections back on the homeworld who's kind of sowing her wild oats before undeath. Or immortuacy, rather. I conceived her as a kind of netherworld trustafarian. But I haven't really thought much about living Elebrians as a society.
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Eox should have a Día de Muertos themed tourist town to receive the living.
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Oh my goodness, yes. Grim Fandango FTW. That would be a great tourist-trap theme for the Pact Port, even.
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Pre-transition, early form, biologically animate, chemical energy dependent (given PF cosmology - positive or radiant energy dependent?), first order consumers... just brainstorming ideas for names the more pompous unliving might give the living. They might well get worn down in actual use, bioanimate or bios, chemdependent or chems, etc.
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Pre-transition, early form, biologically animate, chemical energy dependent (given PF cosmology - positive or radiant energy dependent?), first order consumers... just brainstorming ideas for names the more pompous unliving might give the living. They might well get worn down in actual use, bioanimate or bios, chemdependent or chems, etc.
I like "bios" as a laconic term for non-undead a lot. It's punchy, immediately clear from the context, and neither insulting nor pompous.
Speaking of which, what would be some insulting slang terms for the living? What terms would Eoxian traditionalists or Corpse Fleet members use when talking about the living expanding their influence? The other way around is easy, I'm pretty sure calling an Eoxian a zombie would be pretty offensive.Somehow, my mind is stuck on "breathers" as slang for the living. It doesn't sound immediately insulting, but it's a great word to spit out in disgust. I can totally picture the Eoxian equivalent of a racist grandpa muttering about "those damn breathers".
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The term I've seen used the most as a derogatory term for the living in canon has been "breathers". Both Androids and Eoxians seem to use it. I like it, as it kind of seethes with superiority. Haha, the breathers can't handle all the smoke in the club.
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I came up with "breather" as an Eoxian curse before I even saw it in official content. It's a wonderfully organic (as it were) epithet.
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The term I've seen used the most as a derogatory term for the living in canon has been "breathers".
I came up with "breather" as an Eoxian curse before I even saw it in official content. It's a wonderfully organic (as it were) epithet.
I don't own Dead Suns, so this is some major hivemind.
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Be interested to hear your ideas on living Elebrians. The only one I've featured so far was an isolated hedonist with lots of undead family connections back on the homeworld who's kind of sowing her wild oats before undeath. Or immortuacy, rather. I conceived her as a kind of netherworld trustafarian. But I haven't really thought much about living Elebrians as a society.
All the stuff I've read has indicated that after the cataclysm, the living Elebrians were all but wiped out. In my mind, in order to maintain a viable population, they likely would have had to implement some sort of breeding program. But I'd prefer they be at least somewhat enlightened and egalitarian, so rather than it turning into Handmaiden's Tale, they used combinations of technology and magic to do as much of the 'dirty work' and keep the whole thing as fair as possible.
At the beginning, all the females would be required to produce at least two viable offspring with two separate unrelated males to encourage genetic diversity and/or donate their eggs for fertilization and implantation in surrogates ('natural' or artificial) before transitioning into undeath. The process could happen as naturally or artificially as the mothers desired, in order to preserve as much of their rights as possible.
To keep it just (and not turn it into another patriarchy), the males would have the same requirement, using the serum of sex shift to change their genders at some point in early adulthood to act as mothers and/or egg donors themselves. My head canon is that the Elebrians actually invented the serum for this purpose originally.
The only exceptions would have been individual Elebrians that were genetically infertile or people that became diseased because of the environmental factors on Eox before reaching sexual maturity. Those individuals were transitioned as soon as they became adults to keep resources available for breeders.
Once an individual made their contribution to the preservation of the species, they would be required to either undergo transition into undeath or leave Eox, to lessen the tax on the resources for the remaining living Elebrians. Originally, transitioning was probably done with or without an individual's consent, because they didn't have enough air, food, or water to keep 'breathers' around.
Over time, this became less requirement, and more just social norm. They still have all the possible family structures and romantic/non-romantic partnerships of other humanoids, they still have personal autonomy in their relationships, but most Elebrians still see this 'breeding' as some contribution to their species and still follow it, when possible. The government provides ample compensation to anyone willing to act as surrogate/actual mother or foster parent to an Elebrian child. I imagine that many undead Elebrians even consider it some sort of honor to raise a living child of their people. This ties them back to the living and keeps them grounded, it also might explain why their government embraced the Pact and didn't just try to overrun everyone else with swarms of radioactive undead troops.
That's all just head canon based on what I've read and me attempting to embrace the idea that Eox isn't full of evil monsters.
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There was also the book Breathers (a Zombie love story) that was about zombies who found out if they ate human flesh they became more fleshy.
But Breathers seems like a great slang term. I would have gone with Fogger (as you fog a mirror) as well.
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I do wonder what the natural terms for living people with necro-grafts, who are mechanically but not really undead, would be. I'm leaning toward terms like "dabbler," "tourist," "converted" or maybe even "apostate" (but that last one might apply more to undead souls that have been reincarnated into living bodies).
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All the stuff I've read has indicated that after the cataclysm, the living Elebrians were all but wiped out. In my mind, in order to maintain a viable population, they likely would have had to implement some sort of breeding program. But I'd prefer they be at least somewhat enlightened and egalitarian, so rather than it turning into Handmaiden's Tale, they used combinations of technology and magic to do as much of the 'dirty work' and keep the whole thing as fair as possible. [etc.]
Holy crap, some awesome ideas there, love it. Thank you!