Orcs as demon-corpses

So the etymology of orc is a bit complicated. Originally it appears in Beowulf as orcneas, meaning "demon-corpse." Tolkien used it as inspiration for his orcs, and C.S. Lewis anglicized it to orkny/orknies. As I've mentioned in prior posts, they're named after Orcus, the Greco-Roman demon of oaths. Although the "oath" part has long since been forgotten, both in the depictions of orcs themselves and the depiction of Orcus in fantasy fiction.

Some authors and bloggers have used this etymology as a springboard for reimagining orcs as demon corpses created by Orcus. Both because of its perceived novelty, and because it avoids bizarre moral questions like "what do we do with the baby orcs?" Perhaps these orknies are created by necromancers from spawning pools, perhaps summoned by devil's forgemasters in corpse shells, perhaps they are transformed from demikind through foul applications of alchemy... the possibilities are endless.

Links

• https://flintlocksandwitchery.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-orc-renaissance.html
• http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/2020/04/blood-for-bacon-another-ecology-of-orc.html
• https://daegames.blogspot.com/2018/05/dungeons-delvers-where-do-baby-gnolls.html
• https://daegames.blogspot.com/2021/05/inherently-evil-races-arent-bad-game.html
• http://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/2020/04/orcneas.html
• https://dailyadventureprompts.tumblr.com/post/637422331142307840/monsters-reimagined-orcus-the-dead-god-patron
• https://ingmaralbizu.com/about-orcs-and-our-fascination-with-barbarism/

Mummy lords and horcruxes

The mummy lord, among other names, is a fairly common archetype in fantasy gaming (not as common as others, but nobody's perfect). Whereas the standard mummy is a mindless shambling tomb guardian, the mummy lord and its ilk are intelligent, remember their mortal lives, and typically have a number of additional powers such as spellcasting.

Particularly, they often have a rejuvenation power of some kind. This is typically tied to some kind of horcrux with an appropriate mummy theme, such as the mummy's tomb, the mummy's heart, and/or the mummy's canopic jars. (Obviously Egyptian-styled mummies are being used as the point of reference here, but feel free to devise ideas for non-Egyptian mummies.)

Below are a few examples of mummy lords and similar variants I've seen in both official books and 3pp, as well as some of my own commentary.

• Book of Templates - Deluxe Edition 3.5 (2005) presents us with the "true mummy." This is similar to the 5e mummy lord but not quite the same thing, namely in that they aren't necessarily evil and their touch doesn't curse foes with mummy rot. Unlike the 5e mummy lord, their rejuvenation and mental faculties are linked to their three "sacred vessels" (i.e. canopic jars, one for each mental ability score). If any of the jars are destroyed, then the true mummy will lose their immortality and will slowly mentally deteriorate into a "desecrated true mummy" that is more or less the same as the mindless shambling curse-spreading mummy in the MM (which is contrasted from the true mummy as a "lesser mummy"). The mummy has a sympathetic tie to the sacred vessels that aids in locating them and using magic to view or visit them, and the vessels may be drained of their spiritual energy reserves by thieves to power necromancy spells (which is labeled an evil act). The true mummy's rejuvenation is technically a fast healing power that works even if the body is destroyed, which is stated to function only if the true mummy is in possession of its sacred vessels. This implies that the mummy doesn't heal if they're stolen but still intact, opening the possibility for the mummy's to be destroyed and its sacred vessels stolen, leaving it in limbo where it isn't actually gone for good but can't restore its body until the sacred vessels are returned (nor is it specified if all the sacred vessels need to be stolen or only one does to halt the fast healing). I'm not sure if this implication was intended by the writer or not, as "possession" maybe was supposed to mean that the vessels were intact rather than physically present with the mummy. That said, a seemingly destroyed mummy being revived by the return of its sacred vessels is an interesting plot hook by itself, a possibility not offered by the other variations on rejuvenation.
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 4 (2013) presents us with the "mummified creature," which is basically a more intelligent mummy created to serve more complicated purposes than simply guarding a tomb. It doesn't spread mummy rot and the mere sight it doesn't scare the living. Aside from the lack of any rejuvenation power, it is comparable to the true mummy above. It's basically just a middle rank between the standard mummy and the mummy lord below.
• Advanced Bestiary (2014) presents us with the "dread mummy." It's comparable to other takes on the mummy lord, with the notable exception that it is able to raise its slain foes as zombies and/or mummies themselves and that it lacks any kind of rejuvenation power.
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 5 (2015) presents us with that game's take on the "mummy lord." It is more or less the same thing as the 5e mummy lord, aside from a few minor differences in powers such as being able to take control of nearby undead. If destroyed, then the mummy lord's body will be rejuvenated within its tomb unless its remains are purified with specified magic. The text doesn't specify what happens to a rejuvenating lord if its tomb is destroyed. Does the rejuvenation fail? Does the rejuvenation restart if the tomb is rebuilt?
• The 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (2016) presents us with the mummy lord, which most should be familiar with. Its rejuvenation is tied to its heart. As long as the heart is not destroyed, the mummy lord's body will rejuvenate next to it. The rules don't specify if the heart needs to be inside the body or not, though the implication is that you can store it inside a canopic jar or something.
• Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars (2020) presents us with mummies based more closely on The Mummy movies and derivatives than the standard D&D mummy. These mummies are normally intelligent (albeit typically evil and/or insane) and drain life from the living to assume a living form. Its rejuvenation is tied to its 2d6 (average 4) canopic jars (the heart is always inside the mummy's body). Unless all the jars are destroyed, a slain mummy will reform over 2d10 months within its original sarcophagus or place of burial if the sarcophagus was destroyed. Furthermore, destroying a canopic jar will permanently weaken the mummy; if all the jars are destroyed, then it is restored to full power but will not longer rejuvenate if destroyed. It is explicitly compared to the D&D-derived lich included in the same book. This variation essentially combines the rejuvenation powers of the true mummy and the Pathfinder mummy lord.
• Addendum 10/6/2022: A blog post on OSR mummy rules that covers the basics and so forth. I don't know how I missed this!

I like the idea that maybe different mummies may have different horcruxes based on the nature of the mummification ritual that created them, so that defeating one's rejuvenation requires either research or trial-and-error. I also like the possibility of a seemingly destroyed mummy being revived by the return of its missing canopic jars.

Signing off...

Walking dead and spectral dead intellect

An oddity I noticed in the distribution of undead intelligence scores is that the incorporeal undead are almost always of average intelligence. Of those in the MM, only the shadow has INT lower than 10.

I don’t understand why this would be the case. In general I would have expected the specter, will-o’-wisp, and wraith to have lower intelligence. I would’ve expected at least some spectral dead with comparable intelligence to zombies and skeletons.

Or perhaps, more likely, the writers didn’t give much thought to what effect intelligence had on the fluff. 

In real life, the voodoo religion tells of “astral zombies” as the spectral counterparts of regular zombies. These spirits are enslaved by bokors and used to perform various tasks.

In a future post, I plan on dedicating thought to a more thoughtful ecology of the spectral dead. With influence from The Lord of the Rings too.

Demons of the katardi family

So I had an idea for a monster. The premise of this idea is that the "wendigo" mentioned in Stephen King's Pet Sematary (the novel and both movies) was not a wendigo. Instead, I posit that this cemetery demon was the same sort of demon as seen in the Evil Dead movies.

Jud is the one to imply the the soured ground is haunted by a wendigo. Given that he is not Mi'kmaq and probably heard distorted versions of the folklore, he could have easily been wrong about the nature of the demon. Just like Blackwood and King themselves!

The cemetery demon displays none of the characteristics of a wendigo as it appears in Algonquin stories. It is not limited to acting during the winter, but acts year round. It is not motivated by greed or gluttony, but by more generic malevolence. It does not go around killing and eating people, nor possessing victims to do the same. Instead, it torments its victims with misfortunes, psychological manipulation and (as of the 2019 movie adaption of Pet Sematary) vivid hallucinations a la The Shining or Poltergeist. It possesses and reanimates the dead, using them to terrify and torment the living a la The Evil Dead or The Exorcist.

Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon featured a "god of the lost" who fans conflate with the cemetery demon from Pet Sematary, but there is no evidence of this in the story itself. Both demons appear and behave completely different. In the novel, the god of the lost appears as a wasp-faced demon that torments lost travelers with paranormal SFX until they die of exposure. Perhaps more importantly, the supernatural events of the novel are ambiguous and could have been entirely imagined by the protagonist. Only the 2019 movie adaption of Pet Sematary suggests any similarity when it adds hallucinations to the demon's repertoire. Addendum 10/4/2019: The "god of the lost" is similar to "Oz the Gweat and Tewwible," an imaginary demon that Rachel conceived to represent the influence of evil, the specter of death, and the bad luck inflicted upon the family by the presence haunting the cemetery.

In the Evil Dead movies, the "kandarian demon" possesses both the living, the dead, inanimate objects and trees as "deadites" in order to torment and kill people. Much like the cemetery demon needs victims to bury bodies on its burial ground before it can reanimate, the kandarian demon needs to be invoked by spells from the Sumerian Book of the Dead before it can possess victims.

There is a funny coincidence that I have to share! In the script for Within the Woods, a short film intended to pitch The Evil Dead to studios, the kandarian demon was called "Tinga." It was described as an spirit that protected the Native American burial ground (as if we did not see that trope a bazillion times). When the protagonists violated the grave of a medicine man, it killed and possessed victims as deadites.

Sound familiar?

Thus, I was inspired to make a connection between the cemetery demon and the kandarian demon. The reanimated dead in Pet Sematary are not wendigo zombies, but deadites!

Which brings me to another idea...

In an early draft of the script for The Evil Dead, the demons are described as members of the katardi family. The katardi inhabit forests and, while dangerous and omnipresent, cannot possess victims unless invoked or resurrected by reciting spells from a six-volume book of the dead. Only the high priests of the Ca'n Dar tribe were allowed to have these books, because they alone could control the demons.

Forest demons named katardi, huh? The common thread between the cemetery demon, the god of the lost, and the kandarian demons is that they inhabit forests, display crazy SFX, and have arbitrary prohibitions. In Minnesota, tales told to tourists describe the "wendigo" as a protector of forests. Is that a solid basis for imagining a new family of demons? Seems good enough to me!

Addendum 11/6/2019: YSDC CthulhuWiki has a page on deadites. It made the same connections.

Why bury the dead when undead exist?

A question I came across is "why does anyone bury the dead when undead are around?" Which is actually quite a reasonable question to ask. You would think that if undead are a problem then people would not leave bodies around to reanimate. So what keeps people building cemeteries and tombs and so forth?

In order to answer these questions, I had to devise a cosmology that departs from the incoherent D&D standard. Instead of souls passing to the outer planes, they enter the shadowfell and retain a connection to their bodies even after death. The souls of the dead are not disconnected from the living world, but connected to it. This forms the basis of ancestor worship and respect for the dead.

Cemeteries and tombs and such exist for the psychological comfort of the deceased. As spiritual beings, the dead may actively benefit from spiritual activities. Offerings of food, goods, servants, etc provide a benefit to their afterlives in the shadowfell. If the dead aren't properly appeased, then they haunt the living. Naturally, they'll look very unkindly on any adventurers who go around robbing graves. (In my setting, adventurers are murderous hobos, mercenaries, looters and generally bad people that sometimes believe themselves to be heroic because medieval morality is not modern morality.)

Cremation is an option but, as you can probably guess, necromancers will compensate by developing spells that can raise soldiers from ashes. Read about the "essential salts" from the stories of Charles Dexter Ward and Necroscope some time. Necromancy isn't some quick and easy path to zombie apocalypses, either. It involves either building a rapport with the dead, or summoning demons to possess their corpses. If you're going around enslaving the dead, then they will hate you. In order to maintain an army that doesn't hate your guts, you need to devote effort to making the dead follow you willingly.

But I digress.

Is it wrong to animate dead?

In the past I’ve posted long dissertations on the morality of the undead and the shadowfell. In general, I have felt that the morality would vary by campaign setting and GM discretion.

Another idea I had involved a different take on the afterlife. In my post on the cosmology of my head-canon setting, I said most people who die pass to the shadowfell rather than the outer planes. When revived, their soul likewise returns from there. The shadowfell serves as the mythological underworld and occult spirit world.

To explain why people in-setting have such a visceral reaction to the undead, I decided to adopt a model of the soul based on real world mythology. Rather than being totally disconnected from their bodies, the dead retain a connection to their bodies. They can essentially scry using this connection, even interact with their living relatives without leaving the shadowfell. In extreme cases, they can enter and reanimate their own corpses, such as to defend their tomb from robbers or help protect the necroscope. Temporal parameters vary from manifestation to manifestation.

So, among other things, the spell speak with dead actually communicates with the soul of the deceased and not just an impression. Even if the soul is far away enjoying (or not) their afterlife, this operates like a long-distance phone call. This also explains why societies, as in real life, develop complex practices regarding mourning the dead even long after the funeral: the dead benefit from such treatment, like consuming offerings, being guardian angels, etc. 

The reason why animating the dead, at least without their consent anyway (they can give consent, or have reason to animate themselves a la BoED’s deathless), is so taboo is because the dead know it and may become upset with such treatment. To prevent the dead from rebelling, you have to enslave their soul too even if it isn’t providing the animating force. (This opens a lot of plot hooks too, such as a lost soul begging you to kill the vampire demon animating their corpse.)

So you can only have good necromancers if they have a positive social rapport with the dead. Otherwise it’s no different from enslavement. That said, there are definitely societies with state-sanctioned necromancy where people sell their corpses as slaves. Even though the dead are aware of what going on, they’re still dead. Backbreaking labor loses most of its unpleasantry when your body no longer feels pain or thirst.

That’s the gist of it. I might explore this further in future posts, but I don’t know if I find it interesting enough at present. I had enough of a headache trying to make sense of the many inconsistent ways that soul loss is handled.

Undead level advancement

So a fascinating concept I saw posted on another blog, as well as presented in some GameLit of Japanese origin like Overlord and Tensei Slime, is the idea that the undead monsters are actually a hierarchy along which an individual monster evolves as its hit dice or challenge rating increases. (This can be applied to monsters in general, but that's another tangent.) I briefly touched on this in one of my previous undead taxonomy posts, but the "undead progression road map" expands this immensely beyond my own suggestions. For example, it posits the progression: ghoul → wight → vampire, as seen in the image below.

I don't know if I said so already, but I am definitely using ideas like this in my own world building!

Classifying undead: the dread lords

The "undead lords", also known by many other names like "dread undead", are the upper tier of undead monsters. They are often legendary monsters, more powerful variations of the more generic undead monsters.

Ghouls, Vampires and Zombies

Although originally fairly distinct in their original mythologies, these three creatures have been blurred in modern popular culture. The modern idea of the zombie as an infectious flesh-eater is actually due to conflation with ghouls and vampires.

The ghoul was originally a type of demon or genie that consumed corpses and could disguise themselves as human. Some stories depict disguised ghouls marrying humans and having children with them, before inevitably being discovered when their spouse investigates their unusual behavior.

The vampire was originally a reanimated corpse or ghost that predated on humans, stealing breath, consuming flesh, etc. They spread sickness and disease, including vampirism.

The zombie was originally a corpse reanimated by an evil sorcerer to use as slave labor. This was culturally relevant because these tales circulated during the height of the Colombian slave trade.

There is overlap between ghouls and vampires in some instances, such as if the vampire is actually a corpse possessed by a demon. Folklore is often vague, so it is difficult to tell when this is the case unless explicitly stated.

Undead rejuvenation

A number of undead monsters have a trait often named "rejuvenation." When re-killed, they will not stay dead but will instead rejuvenate after a period of time unless special conditions are met. This makes them particularly difficult to deal with...

The undead that typically rejuvenate in the SRD/PRD are the death knights/graveknights, ghosts/revenants, liches, mummy lords, and vampires. Death knights, liches, mummy lords and vampires are tied to particular anchors (e.g. panoply, phylactery, canopic jars, coffin) and typically will not stay dead until said anchor is destroyed. Ghosts and revenants will not stay down unless their unfinished business is solved.

This is further extended in various third party products. For example, the Unhallowed from Creature Collection Revised cannot be destroyed until confronted with their crimes on hallowed ground.

In Polyhedron #150, the Shadow Chasers mini-campaign setting extended this to all undead creatures. The example in the sample adventure were bog-standard skeletons that would keep rejuvenating unless coins were placed in their eye sockets. Mercifully, this was dropped when the setting was republished in d20 Modern.

Distinguishing constructs, elementals and undeads

The monster types mechanic in D&D has always been iffy due to the arbitrary definitions and distinctions between the monster types.

For example, the [fey] type is an amalgamation of many different concepts from mythology and folklore. It include Greek rustic gods (dryads, nymphs, satyrs), Celtic nobility of the Otherworld (seelie and unseelie courts), Celtic tricksters (sprites), fairytale hags, the ghostly fairy dogs of the British Isles (blink dogs, yeth hounds), and “celestial fey” invented for Planescape (eladrin, guardinals).

Another example would be the distinctions between the [construct], [elemental], and [undead] types. Although they are self-explanatory, it is very easy to devise monsters that straddle more than one of them or stretch the definition. This reveals weaknesses of the mutually exclusive tagging system.

Creature Collection Revised features the [elemental] “strife elemental.” The strife elemental is a personification of an abstract emotional concept rather than a physical classical element. What else would you type it? [demon]? [monstrosity]? Those are poor fits.

Forgotten Foes features the [elemental] “junk elemental.” The junk element is a spontaneous personification and animation of an artifice, in this case thrown away junk, rather than a simple classical element. It clearly straddles [construct] and [elemental].

Legends & Lairs: Elemental Lore features the [elemental] “last breath.” The last breath is an air elemental animated by the spirit of a dead person, the animated literal last breath. It clearly straddles [elemental] and [undead].

Creature Collection II: Dark Menagerie features the [undead] “siege undead.” (Monsters of Porphyra reprints it as “besieged undead.”) The sieged undead is constructed like a construct from the parts of a corpse, separating the skin, muscles and bones into three separate constructs with other materials (like sand, wood, nails, and wire) to fill the gaps. It clearly straddles [construct] and [undead], if not wrongly typed and more sensible as [construct] to begin with.

Creature Collection III: Savage Bestiary features the [construct] “spontaneous golem.” (Monsters of Porphyra reprints it as “spontaneous construct.”) The spontaneous construct arises naturally (or supernaturally) from crafted objects like pelts and gallows, but never deliberately created. It clearly straddles [construct], [elemental], and [undead], for all the same reasons mentioned prior.

Mythological and folkloric roots of hungry dead

Zombies

Zombies originate from Haitian voodoo. Evil sorcerers use magic to capture the souls of the dead, reanimate their corpses and use them as labor slaves. This was especially terrifying to the Haitians: at the time they were enslaved by the colonists and thus it made sense they especially feared being enslaved after death. Haitian folklore has attributed other supernatural powers to zombies, such as transforming into smoke to get around barriers.

A similar belief appeared in Chinese culture, where funeral directors were once believed to use magic to reanimated dead bodies to make them easier to transport to their homelands where they would receive last rites. The reanimated were called 僵尸 jiāngshī meaning “stiff corpse.”

D&D zombies and skeletons are more or less identical to the Haitian zombie.

Ghouls

Ghouls originate from Arabic folklore, where they are a type of genie that haunts graveyards and consumes corpses. They are said to have traits of donkeys, like pelts, tails, hooves, and large ears.

The wendigo from the folklore of the Algonquin peoples bears similarities to the ghoul due to their carnivorous nature, though the wendigo is sometimes claimed to be a human transformed or possessed by a wendigo as punishment for cannibalism.

Ghouls appeared in some of the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and his followers, where they were attributed to kidnap human children and replace them with their own (similar to the changeling, a European fairy) and to transform humans into ghouls through some manner of black magic (similar to some stories of the wendigo).

D&D ghouls drawn some inspiration from Lovecraft's ghouls, but are mostly conflated with the "ghouls" from Night of the Living Dead.

Vampires

In 20th century fiction and beyond, both zombies and jiāngshī would be attributed ghoul- or vampire-like hunger for the flesh or vitality of the living. Meanwhile, ghouls would be conflated with zombies as a kind of flesh-eating undead creature. These modern monsters bear more resemblance to the vampires of folklore than to the zombies and ghouls of folklore.

The modern vampire retains the hungry nature of its predecessors, but has acquired overtones of power and sexual lust. This movement started with Dracula, was refined by Interview with the Vampire, and reached its nadir in the Twilight books. That being said, the folkloric vampire has made resurgence in counter-cultural fiction.

D&D vampires are taken straight out of Dracula.

Revisiting the morality of undeath

In past editions the undead were heavily involved with positive/negative energy and associated planes. These distinctions no longer exist in 5e, being replaced by necrotic and radiant damage which are entirely separate from healing (good riddance!). There are plenty of arguments for non-evil necromancy and non-evil undead, but in the end it depends entirely on the metaphysics the GM has chosen for their campaign. In this post I present a number of "moral options" I have seen proposed...

Classifying the undead

Since the undead do not exist in reality, any attempt to classify them is arbitrary. The best way to classify the undead is by their traits and capabilities, such as their corporeality, appearance, intelligence, motivation, etc. Like others have done, I would prefer to place all undead into a small number of families to keep track.

Ecology of plague doctors

Monsters of Porphyra 3 introduced plague doctors as a monster. It explains them as appearing to be benevolent doctors treating victims of plague epidemics, but they are secretly undead creatures which spread the plague as a pretense to euthanizing their patients. Plague doctors have a long history in real life.

Monster intelligence, part 2: undead

For my second post on intelligence scores, I decided to look at undead. Undead have changed dramatically in 5e compared to 3e (for whatever reason nobody remembers 4e). They are no longer mindless or lacking constitution scores, at least in the 3e sense of the terms. This is because 5e takes cues from 2e and earlier, but I digress...

Undead hunger

5e does not have any rules for undead hunger, but it is a neat concept. I decided to use a twist on the idea: All undead are subject to physical deterioration without a steady stream of animating power.

undead race options

Some undead race options I stumbled across while googling.

Living dead:

https://daemonsanddeathrays.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/the-living-dead-an-undead-race-for-dd-5th-edition/
Soulbound: http://www.tribality.com/2015/02/23/richs-gameroom-soulbound-bonus-archetypes-college-of-the-banshee-pale-knight/
Awakened undead (1): https://dnd-5e-homebrew.tumblr.com/post/134526127807/awakened-undead-race-by-thesingularanyone
Awakened undead (2): http://walrock-homebrew.blogspot.com/2015/12/race-awakened-undead-third-draft.html
Eleti: http://dragonstarsrd.freehostia.com/races/eleti.htm
Darakhul http://www.dashjperiod.com/tag/undead/
Risen https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/119501/Liber-Vampyr
Restless Soul https://paizo.com/products/btpy8da9/discuss?Restless-Souls
Dødelig https://adventureaweek.com/shop/pathfinder/player/underworld-races-dodelig/?doing_wp_cron=1562490716.5211520195007324218750
Obitu https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/3rd-party-races/alluria-publishing/obitu/
Promethean, raijin and uzamati: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/128350

Why are undead evil? Why does necromancy get such a bad rap?

Why are undead always evil? Necromancy is not evil: it includes healing and resurrection! How many stories portray ghosts or vampires as sympathetic? Zombies and skeletons are supposed to lack the free will necessary for moral judgment in the first place. Making undead inherently evil is redundant when you have fiends. I take a morally grey approach, using other sources to derive alignment rather than undeath itself.

Distinguishing elementals, spirits and undead

13 True Ways and Eidolons introduced the new types Elemental and Spirit. Sometimes the distinction between these and other types may be ambiguous. I will try my best to sort that out here. Later I should write a primer on spirits and related things.

Spirits are the souls and personifications of natural forces, abstract concepts and emotions. They may overlap with spectral undead, in which case the GM could decide that spectral undead automatically qualify as both undead/spirit types.

Elementals are seething masses of base matter animated by demons, spirits, undead or similar entities. Constructs and elementals are similar because their bodies are composed of base matter and both have animating spirits bound into them. Some sourcebooks have included spontaneously animating constructs. The distinction is that the two are tied to opposing magical winds: constructs to artifice, elementals to nature.

Constructs and undead are pretty similar, being animated masses of something which isn't alive but might have been in the past. The difference between them is that they are tied to difference magical winds: constructs are tied to artifice, undead to death.

Not everything made of something other than flesh is an elemental, however. It is entirely possible for beasts and humanoids to have alien physiology based on fire or crystals or whatever. The reason why they aren't constructs or elementals is because they have a living metabolism: they eat and reproduce just like other living creatures.