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[Jeoshua]

Burn the dead.  Nothing comes back from being turned into soot and plasma!

[Neonivek]

Burn the dead.  Nothing comes back from being turned into soot and plasma!

Sure! just have Ash Spirits come, Angry ghosts, and Fire spirits!

I am sure those are MUCH better then an easy to kill zombie or skeleton that may be missing several bodyparts.

[Uristocrat]

The main worry would be that one could have a corpse of something where one part could perform three functions and make it unkillable.

Undead floating guts say hi!

EDIT:
Actually, it's something more along the lines of "blaaharugharula"

Haha, too true.  I guess you can make parts get too damaged to support these functions.  Say, a hand that has no fingers loses grasp and can't attack any more or a head that's been smashed in deprives the zombie of any meaningful senses and gets rid of it.

Or, maybe Toady will go completely the other way and let every undead body part keep going until we smash it, so you'll have the serrated disc weapon traps out front working over time until you're assaulted by a horde of undead goblin fingers and troll toes.  Or skeletal heads that try to bite at people's ankles until someone grabs them and makes them into a totem.

And then people will start making magma dumps that go all the way down to the magma sea, and we'll finally know how all those undead folks wind up in hell:  dwarves were dumping their corpses down a hell chute to get rid of the damn zombies the whole time.

[goukaryuujin]

Has anybody really thought about some of the curses simply bringing the said member back as a working part of their civ? IE: Urist Mcsoaper was struck down by the last seigh with him not getting very mutalated in the event and was properly buried, olny to rise from the grave and continue with his soapmaking, olny with no skill growth from that point on, and maybe abit of miasma untill he goes skelital...

[Pilsu]

Skeletal enemies don't really mesh with any notions that corpses need senses to be viable for possession. And, just to point out, a rotten eye is not an eye anymore either. It's worthless. Unless eyes work through mysticism as opposed to actual physical processes, the idea makes no real sense. Besides, decapitated zombies still coming at you is hilarious and much more at home in high or low fantasy than headshots are.


Unkillability is just a matter of poor combat A.I. and suspect game mechanics. I would wager the bone in your arm isn't just a pain repository for instance but instead serves some critical purpose in the use of the limb. If you mangle a zombie with a mace, it should be unable to attack. Silliness with attacks would need to be dealt with though, as is dogs with no legs can still bite you and zombie humanoids don't actually grapple you to land bites. Neutralizing the threat of the zombie should be fairly easy, after that it's a matter of making the A.I. ignore harmless targets. Granted, re-resurrection is kinda pointless if anyone getting back up is inevitably already limbless and headless. I suppose them getting up from the pyre still poses some trouble for the dwarves.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, it might make sense if there were some sort of "energy requirement" for making an undead.

If spirits have to gather energy to raise a corpse, maybe it's easier to raise a mostly-intact corpse, so that's why spirits prefer to go for a zombie, because it can simply use the body to take over many of the functions of remaining corporeal.

Meanwhile a wraith-type "ghost" creature that wants to interact with the world physically doesn't need any sort of physical springboard, but they have to expend a much greater amount of energy, and only the strongest of ghosts (or a collection of ghosts where all but the "alpha ghost" have to expend all their energy, and wink out of existence afterward) are capable of even doing it.

That way, the difference between zombies from intact undead is lots of weak enemies, while no corpses at all with angry spirits produces a few very difficult-to-(re)kill enemies.

[Ahra]

Well, it might make sense if there were some sort of "energy requirement" for making an undead.

If spirits have to gather energy to raise a corpse, maybe it's easier to raise a mostly-intact corpse, so that's why spirits prefer to go for a zombie, because it can simply use the body to take over many of the functions of remaining corporeal.

Meanwhile a wraith-type "ghost" creature that wants to interact with the world physically doesn't need any sort of physical springboard, but they have to expend a much greater amount of energy, and only the strongest of ghosts (or a collection of ghosts where all but the "alpha ghost" have to expend all their energy, and wink out of existence afterward) are capable of even doing it.

That way, the difference between zombies from intact undead is lots of weak enemies, while no corpses at all with angry spirits produces a few very difficult-to-(re)kill enemies.

hurt ethereals so that their "energy" dissapates?

[Patchy]

Well the wraiths sounds fun, but right now due to the way gaseous material works any urist mcpeasant will kill it with a single punch. Though it'd be cool if you could only kill them with silver weapons or maybe an artifact.

[bitterhorn]

Two solutions to the eternally resurrecting dead:

1. An undead creature gets only a limited number of chances to reanimate after being killed. This number is reset (or not) every time the creature successfully reanimates. Thus, every corpse will eventually go extinct as it gets killed. This can be complicated by penalties for severe damage, age of the corpse, and time after last being struck down.

2. Fighters fighting undead wise up and go in for a coup de grace after downing an undead creature. More creatures deaded, more chance of killing the damn thing for good.

To add to (1), slightly, it would be pretty amazing if the lesser undead decayed over time if certain requirements weren't met - i.e., a starving zombie's tissues eventually rot away until it's a skeleton, which eventually weathers into functional uselessness itself... of course, depending on the rate at which new undead are rising, this might not be a rapid enough process to serve as anything like a counterbalance.

on that note, however...

I starved a dwarf and it came back (as a friendly undead peasant...)

...I'm sure I'm reading too much into this, but it sure would be awesome if folks who died whilst ravenously-hungry were more likely to be affected by a "zombie curse." 

[runningoutofcreativenames]

too bad you cant even kill skeletal things yet. you can break and lobotomize nearly every part of their body and they sit there cackling like the skeletons in Everquest.. "hahahahahaha" *crunch* "hahahahahha"

[Niyazov]

While I'm not generally a big fan of the Elder Scrolls mythology, I thought that they came up with a pretty good solution for the whole if-the-dead-come-back-to-life-they-will-outnumber-the-living problem that fantasy worlds with necromancers in them run into:

In the Elder Scrolls universe, the god Arkay is the patron god of the natural life cycle. Priests of Arkay will travel to regions where necromancers are creating lots of undead. The priests evangelize and spread Arkay's Law, which is basically a set of proper burial practices that permanently prevent reanimation. Thus, Arkay is venerated and his law is strongly observed in areas that have formerly had problems with necromancy. However, as the evils of necromantic magic fade from living memory, people lose their faith in Arkay because he really doesn't do very much for people who are alive when compared to other gods and daedra (quasi-demonic entities). Observance of Arkay's law gradually lapses and necromancers move back in, causing the cycle to repeat itself.

Toady has stated that necromantic magic will originate from gods associated with the death sphere. It makes sense that other gods from opposing spheres such as SPHERE_YOUTH or SPHERE_FERTILITY would introduce something to ameliorate the uncontrolled expansion of necromancy. Even death gods do not necessarily have to approve of necromancy; in DF terms, Arkay would actually fit within the death sphere but overlaps with the lifecycle spheres. Since necromancy interrupts the natural order, Arkay opposes it and is therefore a benign death god rather than a malevolent one.

[Crioca]

Killing an undead creature should require removing the force that animates it from the creature. With the case of "natural" or wild undead, this means removing the spirit from the creature, or in case of insubstantial undead, banishing the spirit from this world.

There's a few ways you could do this:

Blessed and silver or silver studded weapons are a good ones, these damage the spirits as well as the husks. Artifacts should do this as well.
Priests are going to be included at some point, even mundane weapons would be able to incapacitate undead, priests can then come up and exorcise them. In fact any dwarf, with the appropriate labour, should be able too, it'd just be a matter of time.

The other type of undead are the raised undead, the ones whose animating spirit is the magic of a necromancer: These are more simple, all the above methods still work, but you kill the necromancer and the undead fall apart.
I mentioned in a different thread the idea of crematoriums; cremating creatures and then placing the ashes into silver or blessed urns would be an exceptionally useful way of disposing of bodies, as would be silver or blessed coffins.
The same thread was about funeral pyres: disposing of bodies through a funeral pyre and then saying rituals to move on the spirits would be an appropriate way of disposing of undead.

[Neonivek]

You know the game should have what I call the point of "Effectively dead".

If you were to grind a zombie into dust... the game might as well register it as dead even if it still has the ability to technically move.

[tolkafox]

Necromancy? Isn't that magic?

Can my dreams of a fortress with invisible inhabitants finally come true?

[dwarf_sadist]

Skeletal enemies don't really mesh with any notions that corpses need senses to be viable for possession. And, just to point out, a rotten eye is not an eye anymore either. It's worthless. Unless eyes work through mysticism as opposed to actual physical processes, the idea makes no real sense.

We're talking about zombies...

Seriously, all toady would have to do to fix the whole overflow problem is make it so that, when a zombie gets targeted to be raised, the computer will check if it has the ability to grasp, walk, etc. If the body is too damaged, the spell fails and the corpse becomes useless (and will hopefully explode).