Apostles of Doom

Revenants are essentially less powerful drauger. Revenants may come back on their own accord, or they may be created by necromancy or shamanism. Depending on how the revenant is created, it MAY be Unlife; however, not all are Unlife. Revenants are not contagious and typically do not consume animus, although some Unlife revenants can do so.

Skeleton:

Skeletons at first glance seem to simply be animated bones. However, there are multiple ways to animate skeletons and this makes them tricky to deal with. Some are simply animated bones controlled by a necromancer, a curse, or some other spell. These are essentially puppets and their ability to think is limited by what the controller can see, do, and manipulate.

In some cases, what appears to be a skeleton is actually a revenant or drauger in very late stages of decay. These are often the most dangerous, because they really are not skeletons; they simply appear to be skeletons.

Skeletons are also popular tools of ghosts. A single skeleton is animated by a single ghost, so one is actually fighting a ghost that is using the bones as a tool. This is different from a necromancer or spell, because in those cases there will likely be multiple skeletons active. In theory, a very powerful ghost could manipulate multiple skeletons, but this is extremely rare.

Finally, what might appear to be a skeleton may actually be a severely decayed zombie. In this case, the skeleton is Unlife and may be contagious.

Wight:

A wight is a ghoul zombie. If a ghoul under the influence or control of a necromancer dies, that necromancer may choose to bring the ghoul back from the dead as a zombie. These are particularly dangerous because they are contagious both as a ghoul and as a zombie. A victim who survives a wight attack may become either a ghoul, a zombie or a wight.

Zombie:

A zombie is, most commonly, someone who has been brought back from the dead improperly (depending on one’s perspective). From a clerical perspective, a zombie is a failed resurrection where the returning animus becomes accidentally polarized as antimus and thus imperfectly binds to the body.

Zombies typically have relatively low intelligence. However, there can be exceptions, particularly for fresh or powerful zombies. Truly powerful, well-fed, well-maintained zombies can be as intelligent as they were in life. The problem is simply that of brain decay; it muddles their thinking and other cognitive functions.

Zombies are usually Unlife and they are thus contagious. The distinction is similar to ghosts. What appears to be a zombie could simply be a body animated by a puppet master, or even a powerful ghost. In these cases, the zombie is not Unlife and is not contagious.

Zombies will eat any part of a mortal to consume animus, just like a ghoul.However, as has been widely reported, they particularly like brains.Brain tissue is a critical part of thezombie diet in order to keep cognitive thinking working properly.The more brains a zombie eats, the smarter they are.

Chapter 135

Isle of Doom: DOA + 12, Dawn

Tom watched the sun, or rather Atun, rise above the horizon from Doom’s Watch, the extremely high watchtower on a peak near the main volcano. This tower was used by the shamans, Valg in particular, to scan for potential threats. For the last few centuries it had not been continuously manned; rather, the shamans took turns coming up every few hours at semi-random intervals to do scans.

It had originally been built in the earliest days of the Doomalogue, before the full monitoring network had been deployed, and then again after the fall of Doom, when the monitoring network was down. The Storm Lords had been relatively quiescent for several centuries, at least by comparison, so they had gone to random watches. The Doomalogue was so far inland that Targh and the other elders felt that the outer watch towers and patrols would give them enough advanced information that they could be confident of the reduced schedule.

Tom really had no opinion on that. He knew very little about combat, tactics or strategy other than what he had read in fantasy novels. He was quite fortunate to be surrounded by commanders with thousands — tens of thousands, in fact — years of experience. That is just still too surreal, Tom thought to himself, thinking about being around people with tens of thousands of years of experience.

He stared intently at the atunrise, his demon eyes automatically polarizing to shield themselves. He wanted to concentrate on the beauty of the atunrise in order to suppress his own uncertainties. As he seemed to be always observing, he was in way over his head trying to lead others that were thousands upon thousands of years his elders, and soon he would be tested.