Death comes for all things in a near infinite variety of ways. So, too, are there many reasons that the dead might return from the grave. Directly applied necromancy, cursed lands, and unfinished business are but a few, and all leave the newly undead soul with a mere semblance of the life it had before. All undead carry the physical or emotional scars of what ended their mortal lives, though some may be far more subtle than others.
Dead and Reborn
Typically having no lands to call their own, undead with an awakened sense of self are typically perpetual foreigners, wanders in a land and often a time not their own. Compounding matters, most mortal cultures carry within them an instinctual fear of death and the dead, and many associate necromancy specifically with dark tidings. This forms a wall of (often well earned) prejudice and hatred that sentient undead find themselves up against, and many undead choose to hide their necrotic natures behind clothes, masks, and pungent perfumes when journeying into civilization.
Depending on composition, humanoid undead typically range a wide gamut from 20 to 300 pounds, and may possess empty eyes, a colored flame-like magical animus in their sockets, or harrowed, surprisingly mortal eyes burning with an inner fire. Hair (if they have it at all) is usually lank, dark, and wrought with grime and grave dirt that no amount of cleansing will fully remove.
Service and Freedom
Undeath is effectively immortality, a strong reason why many mortal spellcasters of a certain moral bent consider it a viable alternative to actually dying. Still, it is not immortality without price - senses and emotions full, food and drink no longer have taste, and often an undead state comes alongside a subservience of will and unthinking service to a master who likely does not have the world's best intentions at heart.
Some undead are raised into freedom, while others earn it or have it thrust upon them. Regardless, all undead that have freedom greatly cherish it, as the reminders of what could easily happen were they're not fortunate enough to possess free will abound throughout history. Many consider it their sacred duty to free other mindless undead, or simply to dispatch them wherever they may be found. The reasoning is straightforward enough: a final rest awarded to all mortals is greatly preferential to eternal slavery to the likes of a short-sighted, megalomaniacal wizard.
Fallen Home, Forgotten Past
For many awakened undead, the past is a distant homeland to which they may never return, holding names and faces now partially forgotten, and loves and lives as dead as they are. The anguish of this loss is enough to drive many mad, but others use this rage and pain as a source of power and drive, carrying them further on the road to whatever dark destiny awaits.
Frequently, entire countries, customs, and cultures the undead may be familiar with no longer exist, and the sentient dead behaves or speaks in an antiquated fashion because of this. It may be even more difficult than usual for such undead to relate to more modern mortals, and typically these undead leverage what companions they may have to bridge this epoch-long communication gap.
In addition, you may have unfinished business or some kind of goal to accomplish. Once you complete these goals or business you may ceremoniously or at your volition pass away into the afterlife.
Undead Names
Many undead that awaken into sentience prefer to keep the names they held in their mortal lives. For others, however, their mortal names are forgotten or have lost meaning. These undead often adopt nicknames given to them by their former masters or present companions, and hold them to be as true as any other creature's birth name.
Examples of names given in this fashion may be seen, below:
Names: Rattlebones, Spore, Rotface, Raven, Bane, Carver, Drudge, Rook, Mort, Pale, Minion, Crumble, Shade
Awakened Undead Traits
Ability score increase. You can increase any ability score by 2 and any other score by 1.
Creature Type. Undead
Age. You are ageless.
Size. Same size as your base race before dying.
Speed. You have a walking speed equal to your base race.
Curse of undeath. In general, most spells cannot cure you of your undeath. You can be brought back to undeath only by the revivify and true resurrection spells. True resurrection can only be used to cure your undeath when someone uses a special blood diamond worth 10,000 gp that is consumed as part of casting.
Past Life. Choose another living race besides this one. Before your death, you were a member of this race and appear as an undead version of it. Your size, height, and movement speed are the same as a typical member of that race.
Undead Condition.
- You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned, and you have resistance to poison damage.
- You don't need to eat, drink, or breathe.
- You are immune to disease.
- You treat exhaustion as if it were one level less.
- Resistance to Necrotic damage.
- When a spell is cast at you that deals necrotic damage that is cast at level 4 or below, instead of taking necrotic damage you instead get that many points in healing. You can use this feature 4 times a day.
- If targeted by healing spells or effected by magical healing you instead take that many points in radiant damage.
Sleep is for the dead. When you take a long rest, you must spend at least six hours in an inactive, motionless state, rather than sleeping. In this state, you appear inert, but it doesn't render you unconscious, and you can see and hear as normal.
Languages. You can speak, read, and write any language available to the race you chose for your Past Life.
Undead type. pick from the list below what undead type you are.
- Skeleton/Zombie. You can attach and detach your limbs as a bonus action including your head. You still have control over any part of your body, which includes if your head is detached. If a limb is detached against your will you lose control of it until reattached, with the limb or body part going limp. If your head is removed in this way you lose control of your body until your head is re-attached to it.
- Revenant. You know at all times the general direction and relative distance to a creature or creatures of the your choosing against whom you seek revenge for your death, even if they are on different planes of existence. Should they die by your hand or that of another, you instantly know. Once your revenge is complete you pass away.
- Dullahan. Your head having been removed as part of a magical ritual sacrifice finds a hard time staying on your head. Whenever you take a critical hit you have to make a DC 10 Dexterity Saving Throw or lose your head. When your head is off your body you can sense things as normal. You may as a bonus action attach or detach your head. In addition, you know a ritual to cast find steed. The only steed you can summon is a horse that looks alive or a skeleton horse. In either case the horse is considered undead and as an action you can have the horse change from a fleshy form to a skeleton form and vice versa.