The Accursed of Alabrin

In the ancient days, Alabrin, King of the Light, raised His hand, and pierced the Veil of His sister, the Mistress of Shadow. And soon, mortal man did his best to imitate that mighty Lord, reaching with his magics along the path opened by the King of Light, for there was little that those men feared more than their own deaths. In this experimentation, many met with failure, and many with partial success... but for them, an incomplete success was worse than the failure.

The Failed One

Created with a complex and massive infusion of Light into the dead body, these soulless creatures are twisted in form and nature, their glowing flesh warped by unnatural, and random growths and cancers. Woefully for those who encounter them, these growths do little to weaken them, for the Light that sustains them infuses them with a dreadful strength.

Without souls, without minds, these Failed Ones desire only to sate the terrible hungers of life that rage within them, seeking to fulfill the same basic functions that all creatures must. They seek to survive, to feed, and to reproduce. Filled with these hungers, the first often falls to the desires of the second and third orders, for they are no longer able to understand the warning that is pain, and beyond, will heal rapidly even when injured, due to the power that sustains them. Typically, if their diet contained meat before their deaths, they will seemingly prefer to dine on any available flesh, regardless of it's source, either man or beast. Perhaps worse than their habit of devouring all in their path, however, is their desire to reproduce, though it arises only occasionally. These monstrous once-men will stop at little to sate those desires when they arise, no longer respecting law or choice. Unfortunately for those they attack, children almost always result, though they are typically stillborn or cancerous at birth.

Mere damage to the flesh is not enough to kill the Failed Ones, sustained as they are by the sorcery of light, though the patternless regeneration that follows may or may not be sufficient to restore full function. Rather, that sorcery itself must be destroyed, and the creature will collapse once more into death. This is, however, often harder said than done.

The Unwilling

The victim of a more complex sorcery, one which seeks out the soul that it would bind back into the body that it is resurrecting, the Unwilling are none-the-less, unwilling to return from the realm of death, and in truth, very few have reasons compelling enough to desire to return.

Fully aware of their circumstances, the Unwilling are filled with a tremendous rage against their creator, and all those it judges similar to them, and will try to destroy them at all costs, hopefully even that of their own life.

Like the Failed Ones, the Unwilling are bound to this world by the powerful sorcery that courses through them, but unlike the Failed Ones, their soul is present to drive this sorcery in the proper direction - though they glow with the same light, their bodies are often much closer to as they were in life, save for an extremely rapid regeneration. Again, there are very few weapons that can kill the Unwilling, and the sorcery must be dispelled in some fashion to defeat one.

The Driven

The Driven are those who seize upon the thread of magic in the realm of Death, as it seeks a soul to revive, and interpose themselves upon it. Requiring a will and unfinished purpose of the highest order to be remembered in death, the Driven effectively force the living to bind their soul to the body of the one intended to be resurrected, thus gaining a second chance at life, and the price of another.

Whatever this purpose in life is, the soul of the Driven will seek to accomplish it, uncaring of the price, for it knows it is already dead. When that unfinished purpose is accomplished, the Driven will release the grip upon the sorcery that sustains it, and die once more.

As the others, it is fully sustained by the sorcery, and cannot be slain by ordinary weapons.