The Abridged Classic of Death

[Saohuang]

Behold, people of Tiěyá!

The Queen has seen that among many of her subjects there is much superstition and misunderstanding surrounding the nature of the undead and of necromancy. As the Royal Government proceeds with its attempts to fully integrate the undead into society, these circumstances have proven increasingly troublesome to the maintenance of harmony and social order. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Qiángshàng, in her wisdom, believes that the crux of the problem lies in education: superstition and misunderstanding arise ultimately from lack of knowledge. The details of necromancy and its related subject matter, it must be admitted, are traditionally a closely guarded secret of its practitioners. This is not without reason: necromancy is not an art to be wielded recklessly, and it is for the good of the public that they not be exposed to all its secrets. Nonetheless, after consulting with her Minister of Rites and representatives of the licensed necromancers, the Queen has determined that there is still much in the way of general knowledge that may be safely be explained to the people, so that they may understand their undead brethren and come to accept them.

Therefore, qiángshàng has commanded that an abridgment of the Sǐ Jīng (死經), the Classic of Death, be compiled and published for the enlightenment of her subjects. This august work has been the standard reference work for the priests and necromancers of the Kingdom for centuries, and many of its highlights will hereafter be available.

Heaven and Earth defend and preserve the Queen!

[Saohuang]

Souls

Understanding of the undead begins with the understanding of souls, for it is in particular combinations of presence (or absence), situation, and type of soul that the various forms of undead are manifested.

Know, first, that each within each human is contained two souls. The one is called pò (魄), and is the soul of the body; the other is called hún (魂), and is the soul of the will. Although each will interact with the other when the two are in proximity, they are separate entities, each with its own attributes and behavior, each with its own implications for the being to which it is bound.

Pò

Nature

The pò is the seat of what could be called animal vitality, the expression of the desire of a physically alive being to remain alive. From it emanate a person's basic drives: hunger, thirst, the desire to draw breath, the urge to procreate, the urge to flee or fight when threatened, the drive to accumulate. It is a person's pò that drives their body to grow and develop, and seeks to mend and undo its injuries. Its association with the living state is such that some believe it to effectively be the life of a person - but, as we shall see, it is entirely possible for something that is dead to have a pò.

The pò is not intelligent, and has no ability to think or to consider the future; it is a reactive force. A pò is defined by what it seeks and what it avoids, what it wants, what it needs. It should not be thought, however, that pò are all the same; though they do not think, pò are capable of memory and reactive learning. Therefore, they develop differently based on a person's past stimuli and experience: one may develop a taste for a particular kind of food; another may become driven to avoid a particular place or thing; in yet another two people, the same drives may have different strengths.

The nature of the pò is such that it is not a feature unique to humans; effectively, every living thing has one, from the largest animals to the tiniest microbes. As such, although the scope of this work deals largely with human-based undead, it is in principle possible for the remains of any life form to rise - or be raised - as undead, so long as the form of the undead involves the being’s pò.

Disorders and Maladies

The pò is generated from the physical body, and in a healthy, living individual remains within that body. Aside from pushing the body as a whole toward or away from various places or actions, it also acts within the body, encouraging such things as the functioning of the immune system. One those occasions where something is wrong with the pò, it can cause physical maladies, weaknesses, and dysfunctions. Such situations are most likely to arise when the pò is weakened by a deterioration in the overall state of the body, such as by malnutrition, lack of exercise, overheating, and so on, but do not always end when the initial cause has been addressed. The most difficult such disorders of the pò to treat, and often the most dangerous, are those caused by severe pain or emotional trauma, which if it does not heal by itself often requires one of various forms of therapy to address.

In exceptionally severe cases, the pò may be driven completely out of the body, and urgent and considerable aid from a suitably trained priest is required to coax it back into place; although the body will not immediately expire without its pò, and can be sustained through artificial means, it will cease to expend any effort to keep itself alive. The individual will not generally feel motivated to eat or drink, may breathe only shallowly, or their heart may cease to beat without other cause. If there is a saving grace, it is that the pò is usually bound enough to its originating body that it will not travel far from it and will not be difficult to find.

But weakening of the pò is not the only misfortune that can befall it. In some people, the pò is very strong; so strong, indeed, that it cannot be properly restrained by the hún. It is often the fate of such people to fall prey to strong appetites – whether for food, drink, money, or sex – or to suffer mental dysfunctions, in the form particular distortions of the hún as a side effect (for example, the development of paranoia from an intense desire for safety).

After Death

The pò is tied to the matter of the body. Therefore, when a person dies, their pò does not normally disappear immediately, but lingers in the area of the corpse, dissipating slowly as the physical matter of the body returns to the environment, until it diffuses into the spiritual reservoir of its surroundings. How quickly this happens, however, depends on several factors:

* Vitality: An intensely strong pò will linger after death. One who greatly enjoyed the experience of living and the pleasures to be found in life, who reveled in the moment and in their sensations and drives, is often hard put to let go.
* Age at death: The pò of one that died when young and strong will be stronger than that of one who died at a great age.
* Manner of death: A quick, sudden death, especially a desperate one, such as in combat, will leave a stronger pò than a protracted death such as by illness, wasting, or age. Some rare, but spectacular, exceptions to this rule can occur when the prospect of a protracted death strongly intensifies the individual’s determination to live, even up to the moment of death itself.
* Decomposition: After death, the state of the pò is linked to the coherence of the body. A body preserved through mummification and stored in a cool, dry place may have a strong pò for many thousands of years. Cremation may have varying effects depending on how the ashes are stored; if they are all carefully collected and kept in a sealed container, the pò may last for centuries, while if the ashes are scattered widely enough, the pò may begin to dissipate almost immediately afterward.
* Physical complexity: A factor that is generally only considered in situations involving nonhumans, the physical size and complexity of an organism is correlated with the strength of its pò after death. A one-celled organism or even a virus may have a pò, but the brevity of the decay process for such an organism means that it is likely to dissipate very quickly.

[Saohuang]

Hún

Nature

Whereas the pò is generated from the body, the hún comes from the consciousness, and is the soul of the mind and self of its owner. Notwithstanding the variations between the pò of different people, it is the hún that is usually said to define an individual, because it is in the hún that their intellect, will, and personality reside.

In many ways, hún are more difficult to quantify than pò, because each hún is unique. There can only be so much variation in what sustains the body, but what sustains and strengthens the self depends very strongly on the self. Some people, after all, thrive on social interaction, and others on solitude; some in the realms of the learning mind, and others in those of the exercising body.

Although it is possible to correlate the strength of the hún with willpower - how resistant it is to change by external stimuli, and how much effort it puts into effecting change or action - it can sometimes be somewhat difficult to call a hún strong or weak overall, because it may have different areas of strength and weakness. The person who adamantly refuses to consider that one's favorite music artist could ever be surpassed might happily concede that their opinions on economic practices might not be the best. The person who enjoys math and can solve difficult problems in their head might be an utter dunce at identifying trees.

Like the pò, the hún is not unique to human beings or other sapients; however, unlike the pò, the hún is not universal, having a strong correlation with the complexity of the organism’s brain and nervous system. For this reason many lower animals do not have a hún of any significance; even newborn humans have extremely rudimentary hún, which only develop to significance as the individual matures.

Disorders and Maladies

Afflictions of the hún can be somewhat more esoteric and diverse than those of the pò, but broadly coincide with many of the same types of disorders that are the focus of treatment by psychiatry: personality disorders, psychoses, hallucinations, and so on. In some cases, the causes are ultimately tied to the state of the body - a neurotransmitter is not being produced, an extreme stimulus is causing pain or distress - and the effect on the hún, though quite real, is secondary.

In others, the hún is directly impacted. This may be from memorable or emotional events, to discontent with or unfavorable qì in the environment, to some attack to the soul itself, such as mind control or possession. In the first case, the role of a priest would largely communicative, providing a willing ear and a source of guidance and spiritual comfort to the afflicted; in the second, one might work with a geomancer or interior designer to correct the deficiency in the person’s surroundings; in the third, the priest would make use of his or her more supernatural capabilities.

It should be noted that, unlike the pò, the hún is not generated from the body, merely tied to it. It is therefore not directly damaging to either the body or the hún should the latter leave the confines of the former, and indeed is it quite normal for most people to have their hún flitting around their body as they turn their attention to various aspects of their surroundings, although the individual is most usually unaware of it. Those who are capable of controlling this activity and sending it over longer distances are among those often labeled by society as being capable of clairvoyance or astral projection. There may even be beneficial reasons for separating the hún from the body temporarily, such as to insulate it from effects due to damage to the body or pò (brain damage, in particular, can also damage the hún.

Nonetheless, there can be drawbacks if the hún goes too far away from the body, or does so for too long. For one thing, the body, though it can be awake, generally cannot be consciously controlled if the hún is further away than about fifteen meters. Moreover, the further in time and space the hún and body are separated, the greater the risk that the bond between them will weaken, to the point that it can be entirely severed. Without a bound hún, the body will eventually begin acting entirely under the direction of the pò.

Even if the bond does not decay and sever by itself, the absence of the hún opens it up to the action of outside forces. Fù​shēn​ (附身), or possession, in which the hún of another being takes possession of a body, is much easier while the owner’s hún is away (or has been pushed out). Long-term possession can itself destroy the bond with the original hún.

It is possible, if done soon enough, for a priest to perform rituals to anchor the hún back to the body; but for anchoring to occur, the hún must be near the body. This can prove problematic should the severance occur while the hún is far away, as once the bond is broken, the hún has no guide back to its body and can become lost.

Another form of affliction has to do with balance. When the pò overpowers the ability of the hún to restrain it - when one’s will is too weak to control one’s urges and appetites – an individual is led to excess and ill health. On the other hand, there are also situations where the hún overpowers the pò; we hear of people neglecting their health over obsession with some task, or out of devotion to some ascetic principle. Likewise, different aspects of the hún ought to be balanced with each other.

After Death

The physical death of the body automatically severs the bond between it and the hún, allowing it to go free. Many hún, upon release, proceed to the afterlife; it is generally held, in Tiěyá, that they are reborn from there into new bodies, but in truth this must remain in the province of religious belief; new hún do not have consistently verifiable memories of the time before conception, and although it has on rare occasions proven possible to call hún back from the afterlife, they are generally unable to communicate their experiences there to inquirers.

Some, nonetheless, remain in this world. Generally this is because the hún is consumed by some overriding preoccupation that makes it reluctant to pass on. It may have some unfinished business it desires to see completed; it may be subject to some worldly obsession that it cannot let go of; it may be waiting for a loved one’s hún to join it in death before proceeding to the afterlife; it may simply be too curious or interested in the world to want to leave it immediately. The latter two, particularly, are the usual reasons for the hún of children to remain, as they generally lack the focus of purpose for the former two.

The procession of a hún into the afterlife can be occasioned in a number of ways. Sometimes the purpose of their waiting will be completed, or they may even manage on their own to let go. Very often, however, if they will not go willingly and their failure to do so causes distress to themselves or to others, they must be ushered to their destination. This may be done either through counseling of the dead by trained priests, or (usually only in the case of particularly malevolent spirits) through rituals designed to evict the wayward hún from the mortal plane.

[Saohuang]

Classifications of Undead

The term bùsǐ (不死), ‘undead’, is used to describe all those beings which, having once been alive and subsequently died, nonetheless become or remain active in some way after death; they are bùsǐ shēng​wù​ (不死生物), ‘undead creatures’. But there are many different kinds of undead, according to the presence and nature of its soul, its nature and state before death, the state of its body, its motivations, and so on. Exhaustive lists are available elsewhere. But it is possible to create broad classifications based on various factors.

Factors

Pò-presence

One must ask: is the undead in possession of a pò?

Many undead do not, particularly if they have no body, but the presence of a body does not necessarily imply that of a pò. Although in nature the pò lingers with the body after death, it is possible by necromantic means to separate one from the other, so that the pò is dispelled - or even kept and bound to some other physical object - while the body is left without one. However, the pò itself must have a “body” - it need not be the original body, or even a biological creature, but it must be some physical object to which the pò is bound. Without one, it will disperse.

Separating pò from body is, in fact, a common practice, because for the purposes of necromancers it is often not desirable for a pò to be retained. As previously mentioned, the pò has no capacity for reason or forethought, and is the seat of the primal desires and urges. Therefore, when an undead is being created to perform a particular kind of task, the behavior that a pò might engage in will often interfere with the directives its owners or creators might impose on the undead. Even many fully sapient and free-willed undead prefer not to be burdened with a pò, which might only cause them to yearn for pleasures or urges that can no longer be entirely satisfied, whereas without one they are free to think clearly.

Even in natural undead, the pò can cause trouble. Undead dominated by their pò often have hungers and desires that may involve human beings, other sapients, or the animals and objects important to them; if these creatures are not restrained by a hún, they will pursue their chosen prey with little or no compunction.

On the other hand, it is the pò that provides self-preservation instincts, without which an undead does not have the natural flight-or-fight responses, the automatic reactions against damage, that a living being might. An undead with no pò must perform such actions based entirely on quick thought or habit, or - in the case of less intelligent undead, which struggle with such things - must have the proper reactions implanted in its being by either necromantic or technological means. Although self-preservation is not always the highest priority for those who are, after all, already dead, most undead can be destroyed in one fashion or another.

Hún-presence

One must ask: is the undead in possession of a hún?

As with the pò, there are many undead that have no hún. In some cases, as with animals or very young humans, they had none (or a very rudimentary one) in life; in other cases, it has moved on, or been lost somewhere far from the body, or simply has no interest in remaining near its mortal shell. In the cased of raised undead, it is often desirable, where intelligence and personality are not required - as in the case of menial workers - not to bind a true hún to the body, instead relying on external commands or implanted directions to control its behavior.

Nonetheless, when a hún is present, some measure of care is demanded in how it is treated. Being capable of thought and feeling, it would not be appropriate to simply banish, bind, or unbind it without first having, if not its permission, then at least due cause. Nor should it be forgotten that, as thinking undead, those with a hún are often among the Kingdom’s most valued undead subjects.