Undead

Undead were creatures that had died and then been animated by spiritual or magical forces. Some deities employed undead as divine servants; for example, the dwarven god Dumathoin used undead dwarves as divine messengers. Among the inhabitants of the Malatran Plateau, undead were known as the Headshrinker's children.
==Abilities==
Undead were extremely resilient to a number of effects and substances that were extremely harmful to the living. They were immune to all mind-affecting effects, poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, and death effects. In addition, it was not possible to drain their life force in any manner.
==Origins==
There were six basic ways a living creature could become undead:
;Purposeful personal reanimation:
: A living creature could willingly undergo the transformation to undeath. In most cases, the creature possessed a disposition towards evil, but this was not always the case. More common reasons included fear of dying of old age, fear of dying from a grievous wound, and a thirst for power.
;Minions:
: An intelligent creature might create undead servants as a means to their own ends. These mindless minions were created by malevolent spellcasters to serve as guards or otherwise carry out their bidding.
;Atrocity calls to unlife:
: Sometimes, a living creature committed an evil and heinous act that transformed them into an undead creature. The intensity and specificity of the required act was somewhat random and not entirely uncommon.
;Unfinished business:
: An intelligent creature died or was killed with an important deed left incomplete. In a similar manner to atrocities, the specifications surrounding undeath achieved in this manner were often left up to chance.
;Dark forces:
: Malign forces created undead beings seemingly at random. This had the potential to befall any creature, at any location and seemingly at any time. In Cormyr, it was thought that wandering evil spirits would take over corpses and use them to slay and scare the living.
;Death by wounds caused by another undead:
: Many forms of undead creatures inflicted their undeath upon others when striking them with a mortal wound. Perhaps most famously, this occurred in the case of vampires and their bite.
==Aquatic==
Aquatic undead or marine undead were a subtype of undead that were better adapted to bodies of water and often risen from the bodies of those who had died in water.
Aquatic undead in the Realms included aquatic remnants, drowned ones or "sea zombies", drowned dead, lacedons or "marine ghouls", the velya strain of vampirism, and any aquatic animal risen from the dead, such as sharks. There also existed a special shark form of monster zombie known as death sharks. And though rare, there were aquatic variants of undead normally found on land, such as spectres, wights, and wraiths.
Some specialty priests of ocean deities in the Realms were granted a limited version of turn undead that could only affect aquatic undead. These included the Anchors of the Church of Umberlee and the Aquarians of the Church of Deep Sashelas. Though all manner of aquatic undead were also considered servants of the goddess Umberlee, who granted her priests the ability to call them up from the sea or create them in order to defend their temples or fight for them.
In the 14 century DR, major populations of aquatic undead on Toril could be found in the Sea of Swords, where a horde subservient to the Myrkulyte temple Legacy of Deep Death terrorized those above and below the sea and death sharks terrorized the Sword Coast, and in the Sea of Fallen Stars where the remnants of Iakhovas's undead army continued to linger following his defeat in the Twelfth Serôs War.
==Appendix==
===Further Reading===
====AD&D 1e====
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====AD&D 2e====
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====3e====
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====3.5e====
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===References===
es:Muerto viviente