I recommend the campaign the Empire of Ghouls from Midgard Campaign Setting

Check out the necropolitan. They're people who gave up life in a ritual to become undead with all their memories and skills and they have cities

Yes I support this video idea

Also there's some novels about Thay and Rashemen which are amazing for undead content(main character aoth and his Griffin riders)(on edit damn auto carrot always turns Thay into that... Gotta proofread heh).

it is the underdark, so slavery is likely involved.

Right, I am guessing that the Antimagic field just means the necromancer can no longer give additional commands to those undead while they are in it.

@@evannibbe9375 yeah, that and supernatural abilities won't work. Even incorporeal undead aren't destroyed, they just blink out of existence

Hence why he said they *should* collapse.

@@alchemysaga3745 I mean I guess, but they've worldbuilt around it, and that's good enough for me

Hey, maybe your DM means that those Ghouls remember you as the one who let them live, and they will be willing to help you with a new problem! That or you're going home to a Graveyard, I'd say about 50/50.

A good necromancer? I thought I was the only one

@@theyondant6088 Why not both!? An abandoned graveyard that resembles a village and as you walk through the old ruined gate you see a deathly pale boy who greets, cracking some horrible pun like "Follow me. Don't worry I won't bite". Then they escort you into the epicenter of the town where the mayor's daughter greets you. Saying thanks for the meal and asks if you have any other good shopping locations for a carnivore.

"Your DM will remember that."

That character must have to do a lot of good deeds to balance out the creation of powerful undead.

Good idea on both counts. Shelve it but definitely use it. Sounds great

A similar enough thing happened to me, though not with a whole campaign. Before the campaign I was working on an isolated village that I trying to have a strange custom the party has to deal with. I decided on it was considered rude not to cover a part of the body normally not considered unusual to show. At first I was going to have it be a requirement of wearing hats, but then had the idea that maybe instead they should always keep their faces covered in some way. I thought it would be interesting, because it would make insight checks more difficult, but when the pandemic started I felt it seemed to correlative with the mask wearing that has become common place, though an ancient plague could give a nice backstory for why the behavior started and became part of their culture.

Wdym? People often times refuse to stay in there homes. Having massive protests against the quarantine

Honestly, I would say just run it. It might feel good to be able to literally punch a virus in the face as a player!

With some Adjustments it still can be fun. Maybe keep the pandemic level of the ghoul infection. Maybe even a small snippets when it comes to patient zero or the first Ghoul to trigger said event. Set up Doresain as the obvious villain in that, but during the first confrontation and maybe the first fight against him, it becomes clear that he has no clue either what the meaning behind all of it is. Maybe the Ghouls themself react different. Maybe someone else tries to create a total army that overruns the world turning everyone into ghouls only to let the normal ones die out after a while and those special ones stay behind. The whole idea you have is nice to be honest. And with some perfect plot hooks, some dead ends and red-herrings and you could have an fun story at your hand.

It's new that's why 😉

Almost every undead are tied to the abyss... Why? Because is against the balance of life and death

@@Voldrim359 I would have link it to the Négative Plan instead of the abyss

ghouls (the mindless ones) and the occasion not so farial ghast are low lvl pains in the ass, but as you go up in lvl so do does the numbers of ghoals and the intelagiance of ghasts

@@Voldrim359 no, because Orcus live there

Yeah, I've been wondering what creature to use for a regular intelligent humanoid undead community and that fits the bill alright!

@@Harrowed2TheMind wights with an intelligence boost are a good one too.

Gotta go the extra mile and make a ghoul named Pickman who paints beautifully graphic depictions of ghoul feasts.

It'd be the wight thing to do

Nah, those are just dead wight

Wight power

Good idea! Guess we'll just have to wight for it.

These puns are bad enough to wake the dead!(good job everyone)

Was about to say could of swore they were in PotA at the first stronghold of the water cultists.

My favorite has always been the greater mummy

Mine is the dracolich.

Illithilitch is just too interesting to me

*ZomBees*

@@bodaciouschad ZomBeavers

Probably, especially since the ghouls will eat each other when they run out of flesh from other sources.

In my campaign they do not. They require the flesh of a sentient human or humanoid. The process of becoming a zombie destroys their intelligence and making them inedible to ghouls or ghasts. In a weird way, they are spoiled meat to them.

@@singledad1313 if they starving,I pretty sure they we'll eat zombies

Yes.

Do you eat zombies and ghouls?

A ghast that shoots arrows cover with their own ichor/ blood to poison PCs to increase his numbers. Had that happen to a few of my low level PCs over the years, at lest the DM allowed us to run PC as monster. Mostly cause it free them up from making all the dice rolls themselves.

Wasn't this song used in the movie the ghoulies?

Everybody needs ghouls in life.

@@mahro-wulf9947 I don't know but it's always fun to fight Ghouls, ghouls, ghouls. Long legs and bloodstained lips. Dancin down on sunset strip, with blood red lips and fingertips.

@@BrakhianSoldier It's definitely a ghouls world.

Who run the world? Ghouls

As a long time necromancer, I approve of your studies lol.

@@mylesdrake2949 The most common pattern I saw was that beings of unlife have to have a supplementary diet of "normal" living things or they faced degradation. Liches seem to have found the most effective source of energy as living things souls. Ghouls require humanoid flesh, etc., they all need something extra to sustain themselves. With two exceptions! Mummies and Mummy Lords are unique in that they spend undeath not needing any form of sustenance. This is probably because they are feeding directly on the divine energy of whatever god of death has gifted them with their unique forms. Either the mummy draws directly from a god (implying minimal costs required with their upkeep, showing divine energy to be incredibly potent a food source) OR their transformation is so perfect not even this is required. I am leaning towards the former conclusion as it seems highly irregular for there to be no "costs" associated with their undeaths. As a fellow student of the arcane, Id love to hear your thoughts!

@@daniell1483 as far as Mummies go, they do remove their organs and put them in canopic jars which is how they tie themselves to the divine. Destruction of these jars allows a Mummy to permanently be dealt with. As far as degradation goes, while yes divine magic plays a part, Mummies mostly don't degrade due the techniques use to preserve their bodies. Being the most preserve out of all common undead.. As for other divine intelligent undead you have the "death knight" we can compare to Mummies. These ones are unique in the sense they have no reason to kill or "eat" but kill out of sheer hatred of the world even as their bodies crumble to dust their souls remain piloting their armor. Both however feel they have a "purpose" that must be upheld. Mummies guard their place of burial killing intruders and Death knights engage in a black crusade. Both won't stop till either completely and utterly destroyed or that what purpose that binds them has been fulfilled.

@@mylesdrake2949 I suspect that Death Knights are feeding on some small part of their target's souls. DK are to liches what fighters are to mages, so I suspect they have similar needs as a lich, i.e souls. And yeah, canopic jars hold the organs of the mummy, but besides ceremonial reasons, it isn't like they truly need those jars besides the initial creation process. So I think canopic jars are perhaps more a game mechanic than anything; an enemy that is truly unable to be destroyed is problematic for D&D, so I can't help but think that is more of a compromise reached rather than their true purpose. That or, the gods of death are perhaps not allowed to create a perfect undead that isn't able to be destroyed. Either way, as undead, their true nourishment to prevent degradation isn't tied to those jars, it is perhaps just a medium through which those divine forces are able to work to keep the mummy bound to the Prime Material. That is my thoughts anyway.

Specifically the flesh and brains of sentient creatures.

I got this spell that basically gives you a small price of flesh and it satiates most undead for 12 hours

You seemed*

That's probably a difference between editions. Since they are only immortal in the Abyss, an in-world character would be far more likely to know that they can starve.

Check if your DM is an Age of Sigmar fan or has at least heard of the faction called the Flesheater Courts, because I think he might have borrowed the idea from them.

There's a similar phenomenon in Japan/certain Asian countries. Though that is called Fox Sickness, and is more of an obsession with consuming specific pieces of anatomy, usually the liver.

Did that in a game, a ghoul guillotine a PC, hangs the body to drain the blood for the vampires and then butchers the corpus. Saves the skeleton for later animation. It was .. very .. grimdark horror so non of the players were running their stander PCs.

@@krispalermo8133 that's very, very grim and dark, lol but seemingly very on brand for a vamp/ghoul alliance. I wonder about the meta narrative of it all, is there some essential (metaphysical) life force that they (ghouls and vamps) are tapping into when they consume flesh/blood or is it simple physiology/biology as in the specific variety of cells that fuel them? If there's some spiritual essense they're consuming are they reducing their individual nourishment by sharing a kill or is it a symbiotic?

@@SpaceCowboy1218 " cough, cough, " ghouls normally eat dead rotting or dried out flesh where the body's blood has already scab up or rotted away. Vampires feed on life force that is carried in the blood. In some campaign setting vampires must take fresh blood and cause temporary con dmg to feed themselves so they can't drink stored blood like modern film vampires do. Ravenloft vampire will punk their guts out if they drink animal blood.

@@krispalermo8133 I was confused as to ghouls appetites as I thought they hungered after the living too but that does round out my understanding of them. As for vampires, I'm not too familiar with the Twilight varities but the Anne Rice ones are a little more my speed, so I appreciate it when vampires can choose to merely subsist on animals so as to not feed on humans unless they cross some moral line of the vampire's creation. I think that's a little differeent than the 5e (and maybe even broader D&D lore) but I think that leaves them more flat as far as narrative potential. Thank you for your feedback though, food for thought, I could see how they could work together better now.

@@SpaceCowboy1218 The vampires I deal with running a game is lore base off of AD&D2nd Ravenloft Van Richten's Guide to Vampires along with White Wolf/ World of Darkness: Vampire. Twilight is a teenage girl train wreak and I read the Anne Rice novels as a teenager back in the 1990's. I hated the movie " Queen of the Damn," cause they cram three to four novels into a single 90min film. Imagine all three of the Lord of the Ring movies cram into a single 90min move, there is no justice to it. When I played RPGs back 15 years ago, my last game shop DMs follow my trend of doing a hack slasher horror game of telling everyone to roll up three to four extra PC to play at once, and don't play your favorite PCs. PC deaths tend to be more than a bit brutal, if they play their main PCs .. then treat it as a mass group Nightmare spell encounter where they gain half XP and suffer 1d6 temporary Wisdom dmg for the next week if they live through the game. If they died in play, they lose One Xp class level, plus 1d10 temporary Wisdom dmg, if death was really brutal they take 1d4 permanent Wisdom dmg on top of it all, as being effected by an Energy Drain by a Succubus. Examples, ... a.) It didn't matter how many hp the PC has, a surprise sneak attack one hit kill shot with an ax to the head is for dramatic effect. Roll Fort sv DC 10+dmg for the number of sec you flop around twitching like a fish out of water missing half your face/ head choking on spitting blood. " Prue nightmare fuel." b.) Having to wrestle a mid size dog with rat's muck disease with Str/ Dex rolls till exhaustion sets in, along with biting hp dmg. Even if you live through the dog attack, you still have to deal with blood fever. What makes the encounter scarier is fighting in the dark after taking a fall breaking a leg so you also have to deal with reduce movement. Cross the dog with a mutated squid for a Call of Cthulhu encounter, let the PC roll four or six atks each round as they rapid slap and try to kick the creature off of them. c.) A little eight year old vampire girl that makes fast attacks with a strait razor and sicking street rats on her victim to build up terror so she can feed on the cripple person fear enrich blood. Just before her victim dies they are eaten alive by her rats ..." the screams echo down the cobble stone pave street." d.) D&D3.5e ghouls had a high enough charisma score to have a few levels in the sorcerer class granting them a couple of 1st-level wizard arcane spells for bonus low level dmg. Or spell effect such as True Strike ( +20 insight bonus on next atk tro hit.) or double movement to rapid rush atk a PC. A ghoul with Spider Climb is a nice plot encounter twist. " PC feels something .. dripping on them .. and when they look up to see where it is coming from, a ghoul is eating a blood dripping corpus above them. " e.) Having a ghoul/ ghast hunt PCs with arrows covered in it's own bloody ichor to infect it's targets to build it's followers. The PCs don't know what type of poison they have been hit with. Only after 1d4 hr after the PC have died do they learn what is stalking them, after one or a few of them turn into a ghoul themselves. f.) .. what is the best way to F**K with the PC group. 1.) pack of werewolves " dog/ cat " napping as they take turns keeping the PC woodland hunting party from sleeping for a week till they simply fall over from exhaustion instead of hp combat dmg. 2.) Heavy snow fall that covers tracks within a couple of minutes, all a hunter has to do is sit and wait for a bit and the snow will cover them into a perfect hiding camo. Heavy snow and fog limits vision range but the hunter tracks the PC by scent, fires arrows and drags the bodies up trees. " A 13th-level wizard with the spell Control Weather and polymorph themselves into a fiend/ demon or large size dragon with a Fly spell to travel without a sound. " 3.) Hell I drop Darth Vader into a D&D game using the 3.5e rules as a twist. In away he could pass as a .. normal .. Death knight, but it was his know speech phrases that gave him away. Using Star Wars force skills in D&D is a scary plot twist as is using Psionic feats into a Star Wars campaign. Mind blast & Ego Whip is brutal. Check out YT videos on Pacific Cargo Cults, .." For some reason the local barony troops started to wear plate armor painted white and use rapid fire light cross bows." .. much later on, " Where did these guys get magic rod/ wands mounted on cross bows firing Flame Arrow spells ?" 4.) There is a killer on the loose that drowns people in rain puddles and drains them of their blood. .. Plot twist, the murder is not a vampire .. yet. 5.) Have you ever watched the movie " Children of the Corn " ? ... but the children Must have been Charmed and being controlled by some master mind. No just a bunch of murderous little b@stards treated as 1st-level rogues with sneak/ flanking atk. " crying little brat knife my ribs when I gave him a hug after he ask for one." 1d4 knife in sleeve of shirt +1d6 sneak atk. " Poor fool kneel down to help the little girl only to be dog pack by the rest of the children. " +4 Prone, +2 flank, and +2 sneak =+8 to hit, club or blade the children's choice. " 6.) Some jerk polymorph a troll into a bleeping rabbit, " Attack of the Killer Bunny." .. ahh such a cute rabbit .. - the last word from many victims. Cross a troll with a red dragon built like a pit bull for running speed. .. two headed dog with dragon scale armor and resist fire dmg. 7.) Vampires have to sleep during the day, ghouls are awake for 24hr .. so ghouls are the day watch. Years ago I had a Dungeon of Death, the ticket booth sell person was a smart mouth insulting ghoul that was cemented into place from the waist down that couldn't run/ move from his place. If the PC failed or would have died, they were teleported back up front being dumped into a trash heap where the ghoul would insult them some more.

That would be terrifying to challenge.