In this world, the dead walk.
In this world, the dead walk.
Or float. Or hover. Whatever it is that incorporeal types do.
Anyway.
In this world, the dead walk, and they've always walked. Not everyone who dies, but enough. Everyone's got a ghost in the building or at least at a neighbor's house.
Spectres lurk, looking for someone to finish the deeds they cannot. Ghouls rage and rage, knowing that what they desire will never be. Revenants weep, bound by obsession and lashing out at those who dare to befoul their obsession. Angels, incorrectly but accurately named, walk the fields of battle, choosing to stay out of love for their people, their country, their fellow man, but unable to ever leave it. More types linger and wander, searching for whatever it is that still keeps them there. They all vary in ability to think and to feel, in how much of their personality, their self, has been preserved after death,
The living rarely treat them as people proper, either placing them on a pedestal of supernatural power or plain ignoring their plight. Few hate them, instead simply disliking them the way someone dislikes an irritating dog. Few people love them, instead simply feeling affection for them like some sort of dumb animal. Some use them as weapons, most simply live around them, as a feature of the landscape. Exorcism utterly destroys them, but denies them their afterlife, whatever it may be. A rare few embrace that death, but most are terrified of it.
This is the world in which the dead walk, and have walked, and will walk. There is no magic, there is no other type of nonhuman being. There is only them. Only the living, and the dead, and the unliving.
(And vampires are dumb and not suave)
Or float. Or hover. Whatever it is that incorporeal types do.
Anyway.
In this world, the dead walk, and they've always walked. Not everyone who dies, but enough. Everyone's got a ghost in the building or at least at a neighbor's house.
Spectres lurk, looking for someone to finish the deeds they cannot. Ghouls rage and rage, knowing that what they desire will never be. Revenants weep, bound by obsession and lashing out at those who dare to befoul their obsession. Angels, incorrectly but accurately named, walk the fields of battle, choosing to stay out of love for their people, their country, their fellow man, but unable to ever leave it. More types linger and wander, searching for whatever it is that still keeps them there. They all vary in ability to think and to feel, in how much of their personality, their self, has been preserved after death,
The living rarely treat them as people proper, either placing them on a pedestal of supernatural power or plain ignoring their plight. Few hate them, instead simply disliking them the way someone dislikes an irritating dog. Few people love them, instead simply feeling affection for them like some sort of dumb animal. Some use them as weapons, most simply live around them, as a feature of the landscape. Exorcism utterly destroys them, but denies them their afterlife, whatever it may be. A rare few embrace that death, but most are terrified of it.
This is the world in which the dead walk, and have walked, and will walk. There is no magic, there is no other type of nonhuman being. There is only them. Only the living, and the dead, and the unliving.
(And vampires are dumb and not suave)