> VociferousVidar Wrote: So, to check I've understood this, when there's a lot of death including sophonts any spirit that was angry about its death can hoover up the latent necrotic energy in the area and rise naturally?
Well, strictly speaking there are two processes going on simultaneously, but only tangentially connected.
1- The font of death energy.
2- The walking corpse.
Like all energy interactions, death creates spirits and *is* spirits. A raindrop is a spirit, a flicker-being snuffed out not long after birth. Death is... much the same thing, but with a lot more energy than a raindrop since it is the dissipation of a entire lifetime of experiences, released in a single burst of energy (which is why a human sacrifice is a great source of energy if you're lacking in both power and scruples).
Thing is... if you put together enough raindrops, you can create a puddle, or a pond, or a lake, or even an ocean. A genius loci spirit is born of this condition. Spirits of this nature grow to various strengths before natural limits hold them back. Eventually you reach a point where water evaporates as fast as it gathers, and power bleeds off as fast as it's generated.
Thing is, in any "conglomerate" spirit (like, say, the spirit of a forest or city), the strongest force of will in the crowd will take control over the crowd. The strong rule, while the weak add their strength to empower the strong beyond what they can achieve alone. Packs, gangs, families, mob mentality, all the way up to the highest structures of economic, military, and governmental power. The same holds true to spirit.
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The "taint" is that spirit, one created of pain, death and hatred instead of falling water. A will strong enough to refuse to cease, empowered by the energy of all those who succumbed to death in spirit as well as flesh. And that's the problem... hate is just about the only thing that's powerful enough to drive a spirit to defy death. And even that isn't enough, the vast majority of the time.
Undead bodies, on the other hand, are... more like side effects. A corpse once spent an entire lifetime (literally) sheltering a spirit, a life, and a will- that ability remains, damaged perhaps, but not gone. The more compatible (compatibility is a big deal in Midara's magic system) the body is with the tainted genius loci, the easier it is to animate. The former body of the animating will is by far the most compatible thing one could hope to find, save perhaps a willing live sacrifice or some really high level magic.
But, spirits grow in strength and experience, and the new, twisted, genius loci gains strength with all the death energy surrounding them in the world. Because everything, even gods, will die sooner or later. One animated body becomes many, the spirit grows, death propagates, and the spirit of an ember becomes the spirit of a conflagration.
And, like a forest fire, most animating taint is nonsapient. It exists as a thing of emotion and instinct. It kills for the same reason fire burns- that is how it fuels itself. Until eventually it burns every source of fuel, and dies out.
Usually. Things get a whole lot more terrifying when you have sapient taint spirits. But, then, a sapient forest fire ain't the most pleasant thing to fight, either.
That is how undeath works in Midara, and part of why it is so feared and hated.