Culture Focus: Wuvu-lu-aua

eeuuugh · Post by **eeuuugh** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 8:33 pm

Crocodiles, excellent, I was just going with the cougar thing. Zombies being sucky predators, though, means that zombie crocs wouldn't be as much of a threat as live crocs. That seems like a letdown to me. Also, like you said, if mind control is Death magic, then uncontrolled undead should be difficult enemies.

I have no problem with ghosts not necessarily coming from zombies. But if every zombie's already got a hungry ghost inside it, why let it go to waste?

Wouldn't fish nibbling on the zombies just result in a lot of putrid skeletal crocodiles?

zeruslord · Post by **zeruslord** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 8:38 pm

Zombies should probably be absurdly tough and refuse to die. Zombie crocs are going to be bad at sneaking up on you, but if one gets close to you, you're in for a world of hurt.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 9:04 pm

eeuuugh wrote:Crocodiles, excellent, I was just going with the cougar thing. Zombies being sucky predators, though, means that zombie crocs wouldn't be as much of a threat as live crocs. That seems like a letdown to me. Also, like you said, if mind control is Death magic, then uncontrolled undead should be difficult enemies.

I have no problem with ghosts not necessarily coming from zombies. But if every zombie's already got a hungry ghost inside it, why let it go to waste?

Wouldn't fish nibbling on the zombies just result in a lot of putrid skeletal crocodiles?

I agree that uncontrolled undead should be difficult enemies. The idea that seems to be developing is one in which people's animating ghosts are the thing that keeps them together. Kind of like the "vital essence" theories of why living things don't usually petrify and dead things do.

Going with that, it seems that that if you are in Aua Lu territory then whatever it is they did has left them with so much "ghost" around that newly released ghosts can draw on large amount of ambient ghost to stay together rather than just dissipating like normal. As such, a ghost croc or ghost cougar continues to exist as a specter because it is continuously consuming ghost energies from around it. This may give it substantially more vital essence than a normal creature, which in turn would make it incredibly resilient.

In a "you are what you eat" kind of sympathetic magic way, I would predict that such specters that have been around for a while look pretty chimeric what with persisting on a day to day basis by absorbing the remnants of ghosts too weak to hold on to their form. So you don't necessarily have to pick one between ghost aligator and ghost cougar. It can be two things.

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 2:09 am

eeuuugh wrote:Wouldn't fish nibbling on the zombies just result in a lot of putrid skeletal crocodiles?

Well, that depends on whatever meta-undead thing we come up with winds up looking like. I mean, in the Romero tradition, zombies stop being animated if their central nervous system tissue takes enough trauma, which fish-nibbling will eventually do. And in my original writeup, you only got spontaneous Wuvu skeletons from death by old age anyway.

As we move into our new ghost-based theory of how undead work, it could just be that 'animate own fleshy corpse' and 'animate own non-fleshy corpse' are two different ghost powers, and if the crocodile ghost doesn't have the second one, it's SOL once the fleshiness is sufficiently gone.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 3:10 am

'The marrow is the seat of the soul'?

Beth_Naught · Post by **Beth_Naught** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 5:01 am

How would you feel about not really having a distinct kind of skellingtons and restricting types to spirits and 28 Days Later style zombies? They're scarier, they make better top predators, and they give Wuvu-lu-aua sound reasons to master puppeteering others - when one of those suckers breaks the leash it's a problem. The Romero zombies shamble so uselessly you'd probably finish a chapter in the book you're reading before you can be bothered to go dominate them again.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 9:00 am

I would even be OK with 28 Days Later style zombies where they are technically alive and just filled with lots of angry ghosts that make them violent, atavistic, and erratic. I could even see a reproduction system where those zombies chase you down, hold your mouth open, and breath a bunch of ghosts into your mouth after which you struggle for a while, then have your eyes turn red and go on a rampage.

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin · Sat Mar 07, 2009 12:41 pm

I'm not opposed to live zombies or running zombies, but I think we're reaching the point where we need to have a distinct discussion on the setting's undead, how they work, and probably Death/Spirit/Mentem magic in general as well.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 2:49 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I'm not opposed to live zombies or running zombies, but I think we're reaching the point where we need to have a distinct discussion on the setting's undead, how they work, and probably Death/Spirit/Mentem magic in general as well.

Yeah, probably.

So here's what I pieced together from what people are going for now:

There is an ephemeral stuff that holds things together, which is called Ghost. When your Ghost is intact, you hold together. When your Ghost breaks down, you decay.

When it's very cold outside, ice has a lot of Ghost in it, which is why ice can stay in one shape for months or years when the temperature doesn't rise. Mountains and other immobile things probably have Ghost too.

The Ghost of a Living or at least Active thing needs to be fed constantly. Probably because the act of moving or even living uses up some of the Ghost when it has to reform itself into the new shape. Without feeding the Ghost, the moving thing grinds to dust, the living thing expires and dies.

Things which are alive can feed their Ghost with Life, which they can get from other life or even in some cases from the sun. The undead however cannot do that and need to suck Ghost out of other things in order to keep going.

The Bog Mummies of the Lifarian League happen because there is a lot of Ghost in the permafrost, and they can transform themselves into undead beings after being buried in it by draining the Ghost out of it until the surface is liquid enough that they can swim out.

The Ghouls of Aua Lu happen because there is a lot of "ambient" Ghost floating around in the swamp such that a creature can continue to persist even when their living body stops feeding their Ghost by draining Ghost from their surroundings. Once that has been going for a while, the Ghoul can learn how to rip the Ghost out of other living things and burn them in order to continue moving around.

When the Ghost of a living creature persists beyond its mortal life and accumulates Ghost from other sources it is called a Specter.

Specters that absorb too much Ghost from other things stop being recognizable as the original form and start being some kind of incomprehensible monstrous thing which are called Storms. Bog Mummies and Ghouls can stabilize themselves by clinging to and templating themselves off of their own body. Other Specters may be able to hold onto some other thing to keep themselves in a shape that is, if not their own, then at least stable.

28 Days Later Rage Zombies happen because of "Ghost Storms" where aggregates of Ghost invade a living creature and drag the possessed being around on a rampage to break Ghost out of things (to put into themselves) and to infect other living things. They probably do this in order to attempt to stabilize themselves into a shape, and continue to go on rampage because the Storm is simply much larger and more powerful than the bodies they are taking so they constantly spill out over the sides and don't stabilize. This is why they are driven to spread themselves into a population by filling up vessel after vessel.

-Username17

eeuuugh · Post by **eeuuugh** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 1:14 am

Beth_Naught wrote:How would you feel about not really having a distinct kind of skellingtons and restricting types to spirits and 28 Days Later style zombies? They're scarier, they make better top predators, and they give Wuvu-lu-aua sound reasons to master puppeteering others - when one of those suckers breaks the leash it's a problem. The Romero zombies shamble so uselessly you'd probably finish a chapter in the book you're reading before you can be bothered to go dominate them again.

I think it's a good not having distinct types beyond corporeal/noncorporeal. But I also like having parallel living/dead ecosystems. If every zombie is a post-Seattle zombie then these swamps are going to be a very high-level environment. On the bus in the last couple of days I was thinking about the alternative ecosystem like, in most places nature has one stomach, but here, she has two... and the cud chews itself.

I would propose that undead animals, in general, are tougher than regular animals because they are simply harder to kill (being already dead). My point about top predators was just that if zombie crocodiles have an indefinite lifespan and eat the same things as regular crocodiles, eventually all crocodiles will be zombies. Maybe only humans who are naturally zombified go nuts? Like AfaP said, this calls for a general theory of undead in the setting, and probably alignment too. If I remember the Necronomicon correctly, what we've got so far (including Frank's metaphysics post) falls somewhere in between the two options it presents... an uncontrolled undead doesn't stand in place until it falls down, but neither does rampage against life, it just follows some natural (or isomorphically equivalent to natural) urges.

One question about the metaphysics, which I'm still thinking about... in the swamps, would these rage zombies be more or less frequent? There's a lot of Ghost, so there would be more storms, but since there's so much Ghost they might also calm down faster, not having to break up living things to get it out.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 2:09 am

eeuuugh wrote:One question about the metaphysics, which I'm still thinking about... in the swamps, would these rage zombies be more or less frequent? There's a lot of Ghost, so there would be more storms, but since there's so much Ghost they might also calm down faster, not having to break up living things to get it out.

Rage zombies don't just happen because they're starving, they also happen because they've overfed and are too big to fit in a single body. They're going to be more common in the swamps precisely because there's more Ghost in the air, so the ghosts bloat more easily.

TavishArtair · Post by **TavishArtair** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 2:35 am

I motion that "rage zombies" are called Wendigo, as they are monsters that will now "eat" anything, including their own kind, and probably at least visually have a fairly "mortuary" appearance even while they're frothing and spitting blood and punching and slashing at you with clawlike hands.

eeuuugh · Post by **eeuuugh** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:33 pm

So if there are more rage zombies because there's more ghost, and the rage zombies feed on ghost to get bigger, what stops the swamp from becoming one huge ghost storm filled with rage zombies? There needs to be a negative feedback mechanism somewhere. Which hopefully won't be "the Wuvu keep things from going nuts".

Borrowing from Frank's metaphysics and Grek's early post, I'd say:
1. Ghosts should not affect you unless your body's natural anti-ghost mechanisms are compromised, or they are special.
2. Ghost storms happen when a specter whose form is not templated on anything drains too much ghost from living things that don't match their earlier form.

This way ghost possums eating ghost beetles do not become rampaging vivicidal chimaerae. Neither do sentient vampiric ghosts (which can be special, or use magic/minions to breach yr. defenses) who feed on humans, since they share a form (also provides a good reason why they WOULD feed on humans rather than cattle/other ghosts). Neither do the (special) ghost cougars/crocodiles which guard the necromancer's keep, since their forms are bound to the wooden charms on his necklace. This should apply to the setting in general; the point here is to make the ghost storm/rage zombie phenomenon a default-off system.

In the swamps, we still don't know with what frequency creatures who die move to undeath, physical and non-physical. I would suggest again that anything that dies of old age becomes a zombie. This works well with the Wuvu: their high standard of living means that more people survive to die of old age, who in turn serve as a the undead labor force keeping the standard of living up. About how the dead become ghosts, I don't know.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 11:16 am

Here's an idea:

Ghosts have a shape. When they're fresh, they look like what they did in life and can only make zombies out of that sort of animal. Ghost crocs will make zombies crocs. When they're old and have eaten lots of other ghosts, they look like all sorts of animals mashed together and can reanimate all sorts of things because they are made out of all sorts of things. Ambient Ghost, on the other hand, doesn't have a shape. If a ghost gets more ambient Ghost than it can handle, it just falls apart into a shapeless blob of ambient Ghost and it's body decays. For a while, it will keep trying to get more fresh ghosts to eat so it can maintain coherency, but that's not sustainable and, sooner or later, it will fall apart. When it's trying to get more and more ghosts, that's a Ghost Storm.