Jumping into this.
You know how some legendaries in worldgen strive to extend their lives by any means necessary, then become vampires and such? They gotta figure those things out somehow. What if the Revenant civ is an alliance of like-minded cults and cultists?
The base race are living souls who seek the darker magics. Embrace death and become necromancers, extend life indefinitely through vampirism or lichdom, or raise the Carp God. Loosely allied, they find safety in numbers. Even the drow distrust them. (Challenge: Create a civ that contains representatives from the other races.)
Their pets are anything from shades and ghosts (humanoid as well as ghost dogs and kitties) to Lovecraftian deep one abominations.
Citizens must study to become or be transformed into supernatural creatures, such as vampires and werebeasts or lichs. (Think the transformations of the golem forge or the Masterwork temples.) Anything that comes from the living and still has a semblance of life.
The cultists have sacrificed the ability to reproduce naturally, either as a vow of celibacy or enforced through more macabre means. Reproduction (to answer Isngrim's question) would then be through recruitment or conversion. Migrant waves would be of fresh recruits or converts. Any invaders captured would be either converted or sacrificed.
Fallen untransformed citizens and fallen invaders could be ressurected as zombies or part-zombie convert slaves. Ideally, these become citizens, but pets would work well enough if the other reproduction avenues are in place.
Also, corpse bone and flesh and blood would be important materials. Maybe sanctify their weapons and armor? Give the butcher shop or slaughterhouse an "extract blood from fresh corpse or victim" reaction, then use bone and blood as reagents in forging.
The soul shard would have to be harvested easily if you're going to require them for items. Perhaps a certain type of mage would take a sentient being's corpse and magically distill it down into a crystal. If the soul distilled had already become a ghost, the ghost disappears as if memorialized. Or the shard is dropped from some corpse-munching animal like the golden goose drops gold bars.
Ooh, idea: Revs create special dark glass for various uses, take raw dark glass and sentient being's corpse to make soul shard!
And I vote that blood or bone meal is the special ingredient to make dark glass.
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Topic: Extra Civ for Masterwork: The Revenants (Read 11596 times)