Plot Bunny Theater: Undead of Equestria · 12:44am Dec 23rd, 2019
I just put together a short list of a few types of Undead (or close enough) that might work in Equestria. And allow you some interesting enemies to deal with:
Here are a few undead types that could work in Equestria:
-A Lich. A body with the soul forcibly bound to it and locked onto this plane of existence. The physical body still deteriorates though so it's not a pretty picture.
-A Wraith: The physical body is gone but the soul has been enhanced enough with magic it can stay on the mortal plane and re-manifest a physical form with sufficient magical power. King Sombra is a notable example.
-Standard zombie. Soul partially anchored to the decaying form but only enough to animate it. Usually animated via magic by a necromancer. No Romero style zombies here.
-Energy Vampony. Doesn't have to be an Undead, technically, but can still technically be alive. An Earth pony who through skill or chance is able to steal life energy from other living beings: Usually other ponies. The Earth magic that sustains Earth ponies has to be "digested" to be used by ponies properly. Ergo, a vampony steals that energy from other ponies as they can no longer sustain themselves on energy from the tap. Over time more and more energy is required to sustain the vampony, as eventually this forced draining of magic takes its toll. If the vampony is also a magic user there are ways to enhance and delay this, but eventually death will come. A desperate vampony can be very dangerous indeed. Reports of vamponies of different tribes are not as well documented and warrant further study.
-Lithobolia, or "stone throwing ghost". A soul of an Earth pony can be bound to physical objects or locations. Within this area the spirit can cause many kinds of phenomena to occur, ranging from levitation to localized earthquakes, to strange behavior in flora and fauna. When bound to a house the entity is often referred to as a poltergeist.
-Ghost. Standard unachored free floating apparition of a dead pony, unable to transition from the mortal plane. Can range from harmless to dangerous. Some types can possess living entities, others can utilize magic.
I swear I remember a similar idea from years ago, where Nightmare moons original actions caused such widespread destruction and death that it poisoned the land resulting in the restless dead.
However this being equestria, the Restless dead were not evil, and were a bit more like Reg from Discworld, in that they were exactly the same as they were alive, just life impaired.
This continued on to modern Equestria, where the country has adapted to the fact that just because a pony dies, doesn't mean they will stop moving.
I think in that story Pinkie was meant to be some kind of ancient ghost that had died from starvation during the original conflict. This was explained as her constantly eating a ridiculous amount of food, and any ability she had was due to being a ghost.
Rarity was a Vampony, Rainbow was a Thestral (don't get them confused with Vamponies, totally different things). Applejack was the still an earth pony and I don't think the story ever got to any of the others before it died.
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In the case of this bestiary, it's more to come up with undead that could fit in the show verse and would be at least somewhat unique.
It's actually interesting that before Fallout, the concept of sane zombies without any malevolence wasn't really a thing. Helpful ghosts, perhaps, but not completely neutral zombies...
The Fallout Equestria ghouls basically range from "standard zombie" to "lich" in that, but honestly, the only difference between the two is whether there's someone home in the noggin. They're classified as "feral" and "non-feral" ghouls, but it's generally considered to be a bit of a sliding scale, with the possibility of degradation of sanity over the years, with increasing chances of "gnaw your face off".
Liches, in Fantasy settings, are generally wizards that did that stuff to themselves to ascend the boundaries of the living flesh, though. Given that the FO:E ghouls are all created by necromantic megaspells fired at cities, the sane ones don't really have any specific affinity for the necromancy that created them; they just happened to get back up after they died, and now they're stuck that way. So I'm personally hesitant to classify them as "liches".
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Speaking of undead, Banjo64, currently of Undead Robot Bug Crusaders brony fame, actually has an older trio of one-shots about this zombie 'apocalypse' sweeping Equestria.
Undead and Unconcerned
Still Undead, Still Don't Care
Undead? I had no idea!
I'd heartily recommend them. It's a hilarius little series, very light hearted about the whole thing, and only about 10k words all-in-all. Rather good example that just because you're writing about undead doesn't mean that it has to be grim dark and/or an action fest.
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Hee, I actually read the first of those back in 2014.
And now I read all the rest. Well worth it