Creatures of the Night: The Undead

Creatures of the Night: The Undead
by Thanis Ianakussis

The following document details the undead creatures which can be found in the Warhammer World, and these descriptions may well clash with other written interpretations/definitions. This is fine; any and all definitions of the creatures listed in this document are acceptable in the Castle Of Shadows, as long as the character(s) in question are specified not to be native to the Warhammer World. Unless such a specification is made, the default definitions for undead creatures played or used in the Castle Of Shadows are assumed to be the following.

It is scarcely any wonder that the dead do not easily in their tombs, for the Warhammer World is steeped in magic and everywhere there are the energies required to undermine Nature. In places where sorcerous power is inexplicably strong, there are many undead creatures, which roam the night, or gather in the cold comfort of caves and dark forests. Such a place is Nehekhara, the Land of the Dead, in the Southlands. In the Empire, the province of Sylvania has an evil reputation, and in ages past, the von Carstein vampire family waged war from its borders, razing nearby lands. Then there is the cursed city of Moussillon, the zombie-ridden swamps of Skavenblight, and the ancient crypts in the Grey Mountains. The Barrow Hills of the Border Princes is a land of dread, which all living creatures avoid wherever possible. Undead slayers and Witch Hunters from the Old World track down and destroy fell beings mercilessly, but not even the Gods are able to completely best the dark magics which fuel the undead of the Warhammer World.

Throughout mankind's history there have been necromancers, practioners of the Lore of Death, who have called to arms great armies of the Creatures of the Night, bringing into the living world once more. These hordes, held together by the master's will or some other infernal powers, are a horrific sight to behold - drove upon drove of dead walking forward, relentlessly, and resolutely. Skeletons, rank with grave mould and tattered rags. Zombies, re-animated corpses, covered in blood and rotting flesh. Wights, the armoured remains of fallen heroes. The insubstantial ethereal horror screeching banshees, ghosts and spirits. Wraiths, the evil souls of necromancers who dabbled with dark magic to keep themselves alive in death, but lacked the willpower to maintain a physical form. Though, it is not only the dead that can be seen marching forward; the undead can also call upon flesh-hungry ghouls, bird-like carrion, swarms of bats, and their larger cousins, the blood-sucking Fell Bats, and monstrous Dire Wolves. Speculation and rumour also tells of massive Bone Giants, and the corpses of once proud Dragons rising to stumble forward at the necromancer's call.

Of the necromancers themselves, most powerful was Nagash, the Supreme Lord of the Undead, who rests today within his sarcpophagus in Nagashizzar, the deadly master of an evil empire of wasteland and barren plains which stretches into the Old World and beyond. It was Nagash's spell of awakening that brought many foul creatures from their graves, including the dread Tomb Kings of Khemri. There have been others, too, such as Heinrich Kemmler, and Arkhan the Black, who harried the Empire and the Southlands in the Wars of Death. The vampire families too, have been a deadly peril to the Old World. Fanged men and women of supernatural strength and skill, and with a immortal thirst for blood (sometimes each other's), the curse which is theirs, Vampirism, is spread throughout each and every World, not only that of Warhammer. Mingling freely with the populace, vampires appear to be frail and in some cases, even fragile. However, they are anything but weak; their gift having bestowed on them abilities beyond those of any normal man, elf or dwarf. Horrifying are the undead of the Warhammer World, and made of pure evil; it is little wonder that they are hunted down by the Templars so relentlessly.

Below I shall attempt to describe in accurate detail each of the undead beings known to the scholars of the Warhammer World, and I intend my writings to be a warning, so that those who might practice the black arts might be deterred, saving therefore both their bodies, and their souls.

Vampires

At a previous time of their life, vampires were human, perhaps noble, kind and gentle, but now they are forever condemned to their coffins and the unholy earth of their graves, and these immortal, nocturnal predators scheme constantly to strengthen themselves and fill the World with their foul progeny. Though there have been those vampires chronicled to have turned to the good side, most seek little more than power and influence over the lesser, mortal races, which they consider cattle to be slaughtered, to sate the vampires' hunger for blood. Other nourishment, be it meat or drink or anything else, to them is little or no use; their only sustenance is the blood of living beings, and without which they will grow weak and die. By drinking mortal blood, vampires become stronger, and quicker, and more dangerous. Already supernatural in strength and agility, a vampire's potency can gradually, over the centuries, reach truly frightening heights. Fortunately such monsters are rare, for the Ordo Malleus makes hunting down particularly dangersome individuals - though some escape the hunters' attentions and wreak havoc on the World at the head of massive hordes of undead creatures and lesser vampire thralls.

Vampires are usually of human stock, and appear just as they had done in life, although their flesh is noticeably paler - from merely a lighter-than-normal hue to pure ivory skin. Their features are crisper, their eyes harder, and they are fanged like savage beasts. They are self-conscious, and often embrace finery and decadence, sometimes assuming the guise of aristocracy, if they are not already noble, for often vampire underlings are chosen from amongst such higher classes, in their sire's pursuit of keys to political power. With no fear of death, superiority over the rest is what vampires crave the most from their un-life. Despite their human appearance, however, vampires are easily distinguishable. They cast no shadow, and throw no reflections in mirrors. They cannot cross running water unless carried across in their state of sleep. Some recoil from holy symbols or from the odour of garlic, and, most importantly, all are disoriented by sunlight, weakening gradually and eventually being destroyed by the light of day. Thus vampires must conduct their business at night, or under heavy veils or cloaks during the day. Vampire hunters always carry wooden stakes with them, for a stake through a vampire's heart spells the undead's final death. Such hunters hammer their stakes in when the vampire sleeps, for there are few who can banish a fanged one in pure and simple combat.

Siring

New vampires are created from mortal men or women (and other races, though this is a rare occurrence) who are deemed to be worthy by their potential masters. Sometimes mortals are willing to accept this 'gift', but in most cases it is wholly the vampire's decision. Most of mortal's blood is nearly drained; he or she is left with enough vitae to be kept in life, and the rest is replaced by a portion of tainted blood, the vampire's own. As well as being a sensuous and enjoyable experience (akin to physical pleasure, or so I have been told; I have no personal experience in the matter!), this exchange of blood grants the mortal all the physical traits of a vampire, including heightened levels of strength, agility and quickness, as well as exaggerated canines and the unhealthy palor. This process is called siring, although it has also been named the Blood Kiss, the Dark Kiss, and the Immortal Kiss, among others. The vampire is the sire, and the mortal becomes his undying child. Fledgling vampires normally owe allegiance to their sires, being blood-bound to obey their commands, although there are always rebels, as with youths of every kind. Some fledglings resent their masters for their induction into the world of vampires, while others are grateful for eternal life and their newly-bestowed powers.

With each new generation, however, the powers conferred from sire to child are weaker. The blood passed down to the fledglings becomes less pure, and as a result, the vampires are weaker. The breach between the Master Vampires, the first created by the sorcerous power of the Elixir of Life, and the latest sirings forever widens. The Masters were stronger, quicker and more powerful beyond any hero the Warhammer World had seen before. A fledgling vampire sired in our days must spend decades, if not centuries, drinking the blood of the living before his power can even begin to resemble but a shade of his ancestors'.

Bloodlines

Every vampire's ancestors can be traced back to one of the eleven original Master, or Elder, Vampires, created with Neferata's sorcerous Elixir of Life. Their sired children, their sired children's children, and all their subsequent descendants in the World today, all belong to one of these twelve (Neferata herself included) Great Sires. In the same way as all members of a particular dwarf family or families belong to the same clan, so too do all particular types of vampire belong to a single Bloodline, according to who their Great Sire was. History informs us that not all the Master Vampires survived the fall of Khemri, and of those who did, not all are named in the scrolls. Therefore, the scholars of the Warhammer World only name five bloodlines: the Lahmians, the von Carsteins, the Blood Dragons, the Strigoi, and the Necrarchs. There are doubtlessly other bloodlines, to which belong vampires of our World, but in the absence of sufficient information on these lines, and their Great Sires, we can only speculate. For the sake of brevity, vampires of unknown lineages are assumed to be of the von Carsteins, since this is the most wide-spread bloodline in the Old World, or simply classed as 'clan-less' vampires, whose sires and bloodlines are unknown.

Liches

A powerful and dangerous type of undead, liches are undying spell-casters, usually sorcerers or mages, but occasionally priests who have studied the art of Necromancy. These wizards have honed their magical powers after long years of study and experiment, and used black sorcery to unnaturally extend their lives, with dark magics keeping bright their flame of life long after any other mortal's would have been extinguished by age or sickness. They are scheming, and somewhat deranged, individuals, who hunger for even greater power than that which they have obtained. Because the shadow of death does not cast itself over them, they often conceive plans taking years, decades, or even centuries to see fruition.

Their appearance is horrific; not unlike that of a Necrarch vampire. They are gaunt, skeletal humanoids with withered flesh stretched tightly across visible bones. A liche's eyes have long ago been lost to decay, but bright pinpoints of crimson light burn on in empty sockets. They are generally draped in wizard's garbs, garments which might once have been elegant and grand, but have since succumbed to the weight of years, becoming threadbare in some places, and completely rotten in others. Terrible as they to be hold, liches are all the more vile when their true motives are revealed, and their foul plots put into action.

Skeletons

The battlefields of the Old World are strewn with the graves of myriad nameless warriors who have fallen in combat, and have been consigned to a hasty resting place, a mass grave with their slain fellows, or simply left amidst the carnage, at the mercy of scavengers and carrion. Even in death there is no rest for the fallen, for they can be summoned back into the world of the living by necromantic magics.

Merely an animated set of bones, skeletons are little more than mindless automations, true to the call of the necromancer who returned them to the living world. Their only thought is the compulsion to fight and slay as they had done when alive. Skeletons are encountered as the bodyguard of necromancers, or in places of the Warhammer World were the Wind of Shyish is particularly strong and provides the necessary energies to maintain them; usually tombs or ruins where magical artefacts are hidden.

Zombies

The most common sort of undead in the Warhammer World are zombies, corpses brought back from death by necromancy. Such is a simple effort on the wizard's part, and so even a necromancer of average ability can command dozens of walking corpses with ease, and the most powerful spellcasters summon thousands of zombies to battle. While they are slow, clumsy, and shambling, zombies are a dangerous foe, their sheer weight of numbers able to engulf their enemy and pull them down, tearing them apart with their teeth and dead fingers.

Zombies are humanoids, but foul parodies of whatever they might have been in life. Drawn from their graves, a zombie's flesh is rank, blotched with rot and riven with maggots and worms. Their skin hangs from their bodies in gruesome strips, exposing unbeating hearts and bloodless veins. Terrible balefires burn in their putrefying eyes, and they wear the decaying robes in which they were buried. Some are rotten to the point where they are more like skeletons than corpses, while others bear a terrifying resemblance to the recently deceased. The stench of death is strong, as can be expected, on a zombie, and most repulsive.

Wights

Just as the spirits of fallen warriors become skeletons, particularly decorated and famous heroes become wights. In ages past, the people of the Old World buried such warriors beneath mounds of earth and stone, together with all their worldly wealth and ceremonial battle gear. Flooding such a barrow with necromantic magic, a wizard can bring the dead hero to unlife, and enchant his armour and weapons.

Wights appear to simply be armoured skeletons, but are much more dangerous fighters, just as quick and skillful as they had been when alive, and also completely fearless, obedient to their master's wishes, and their blades are infused with black magics. These evilly enchanted weapons sap the very life-force from those which they strike - a mocking parody of spilling blood in the way in which they had done when alive.

Though they are mainly found individually, organised regiments of wights have been encountered in undead armies or as bodyguards to a necromancer or liche. Some have even been encountered guarding the tomb of a long-dead ruler, and there have been legends of an entire army of wights, made up of the massacred legions of a Khemrian priest-king, returning from death to take their revenge on the soldiers which bested them in mortal combat.

Spirits

The dead do not always rest easily in the Warhammer World. Silent and incorporeal, spirits are insubstantial creatures, the souls of creatures trapped between life and death. Some are doomed to forever tread the World as spectres, perhaps by way of punishment by the Gods or kept in such a state by the magics of necromancers, while others may have left their life's work incomplete, and have been given a chance (or have been ordered) to complete it before their soul can finally be put to eternal rest.

Ghosts

The shimmering spectral remains of intelligent beings, who, for one reason or another, cannot rest easily in their graves, ghosts are the most common type of spirit. Some ghosts go about their business with little or not interest in the living. Others, however, are malevolent spirits who loathe all life and seek to destroy it whenever possible. Although ghosts can often be driven off or destroyed, they return again and again until they deal with the reason for their ethereal existence, or are efficiently banished or exorcised by priests, templars, or paladins.

A ghost great resembles its corporeal shape in life, but in some cases, their spiritual form is somewhat altered. Some ghosts appear to be angelic and sweet, while others looked to be twisted and horrible things, showing clearly the agony of undeath, the suffering of those who cannot die. There is often a connection between a ghost's appearance and its alignment; a violent criminal in life might appear as a tormented wretch in unlife.

Just what a ghost does while in the World is usually modelled on what it did while alive. A covetous man, for instance, might continue to hoard wealth even though it has no use for such treasures. Ghosts are also closely tied to their places of death. If the aforementioned miser had died in a robbery, the ghost might remain in the counting house, taking its revenge on the new owner and all who do business there. While ghosts cannot use material weaponry or tools (nor can they be affected by them - only appropriately enchanted blades can hurt spirits), theirs is a chill touch which can freeze a man's blood in his very veins, and often the very sight of a lost soul is enough to drive even the stout-hearted away with fear.

Banshees

Banshees are the restless spirits of particularly evil women, and their appearance is that of a wretched, female humanoid, clad in tattered rags. Their shades linger in our material world, fearing to cross the void to death and face punishment from the Gods for their misdeeds. Banshees howl in bitterness and remembrance of when the pleasures of mortal life were theirs. A banshee's wail, ghastly and miserable at the best of times, can reach a lethally high pitch, enough to burst the skulls and liquidise the brains of living beings, and even the weakest of their screams can shatter ear-drums and cause men to literally lose their minds in fright.

Wraiths

Although some necromancers and other such dabblers of the black arts may succeed in living beyond death as liches, the willpower and skill required to maintain both a spiritual and physical form is immense. Most can only keep their spirits alive, and over the years wither away to insubstantial spectres, desperately clinging to their tragic existence with enchantments and magics. All that remain of wraiths are the cloaks and cowels they wore in life, clothing an ethereal skeleton, for their bodies have long since rotted away.

Hating all life, but fearing death even more, wraiths hover in this in-between state, hungering for the warmth of mortality. Ultimately doomed to the coldnesses of the ethereal plane, they spitefully strike out at living things whenever they can, their dark enchantments having gifted them with a numbing, life-draining aura which surrounds their incorporeal silhouettes.

Ghouls

There is much speculation as to what ghouls truly are, and how they were originally created. One Imperial tale is that when famine struck, the inbred hamlets of Sylvania took to feasting on corpses. These cannibals were driven mad by the meat of their dead brothers and sisters, and degenerated into a race which was no longer human. While this is the most popular explanation of ghouls, it is maybe fuelled by the resentment the people of the Empire feel towards Sylvanians. Others believe that ghouls are created on the death of men and women who taste the flesh of their kind, or are those who were slain by ghouls for food but left uneaten. It is fair to say that no scholars or scientists have been somewhat unwilling to closely research the birth of ghouls!

Ghouls, despite their uncertain origins, are confirmed to crave the devouring of warm, living flesh. They haunt graveyards and cemetaries, often digging up the most recently buried corpses. Swarms of ghouls haunt dark forests and caverns, ambushing unwary travellers. They are a cowardly lot, and as a result only attack if they greatly outnumber their opponents. This weight of numbers, coupled with a ghoul's hunger-inspired savagery, makes them very dangerous creatures, and they are disgusting to behold: stooped, filthy creatures with yellowed teeth, sharp nails caked with dry blood, and they have mottled, leathery skin in horrid hues of purple or blue.

The most feral and cunning ghouls are known as ghasts, and are generally found leading the rest in some sort of primitive organisation. Lacedons are the aquatic cousins of ghouls, found lurking around river-fords and hidden reefs, and their hides are greenish brown, like the carpet of a fetid swamp.

Dire Wolves

The land of Sylvania, in the Old World, is plagued by packs of giant wolves which emerge in the winter snows from their lairs, high in the World's Edge Mountains, and destroy entire villages with their ferocious raids. The men of the Empire hunt down these beasts relentlessly, but this is not always enough. Even from beyond the grave, these once noble creatures return to terrorise men. The carcasses of these wolves are buried in deep pits, but the cursed ground of Sylvania, seeped in the magical energies of Shyish, allows them not to rest. Often they burrow their way through the rotting layers of earth, and emerge to hunt once more.

These undead wolves are the hunting packs of vampires, and gather around their castles to follow their masters to war, just as quick and savage as they had been when alive. Dire Wolves have skull-like heads and rotting black fur, and mouths full of sharp fangs. Their eyes glow with un-natural light, and their bodies dissolve into nothing when they are finally slain. The strongest wolves, the leaders of the pack in life, lead their kin once more beyond death, are called Doom Wolves, or Great Dire Wolves.

Fell Bats

Among the clouds of bats which gather around undead, and darken the skies above, come those of truly monstrous proportions, with wingspans of twelve feet or more. They are nightmarish predators of the dark, silent and deadly, able to lift a man off his feet or tear his head off with ease. They exist solely on the blood of the living, and scholars speculate that perhaps an ancestor of these beasts attacked and drank the blood of a vampire, joining the ranks of the undead and giving birth to more of its kind.

These are but the most common undead creatures known to myself, and the scribes of the Warhammer World. Only the Gods know how many more kinds exist, more terrible than those which I have described above, and it is of my God, Sigmar, to whom I pray daily, in the hope that our protector might deliver us from the horrors of this World, those both known to me, and those which I never have (and never wish to!) encounter.

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