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.

Van Richten’s Guides divide the undead into the ancient dead, ghosts, liches, vampires and the walking dead (further subdivided into obedient dead, hungry dead and restless dead). The Slayer’s Guide to Undead divides undead into the unwilled living dead, the free-willed living dead, spirits of evil, and lords of the living dead. Undead Slayer’s Handbook divides the undead into consummate undead, hungry undead, incorporeal undead (aka spectral dead) and mindless undead (aka walking dead).

ADDENDUM 9/6/2018: Dark•Heritage divides undead into corporeal undead—individualists, corporeal undead—savages, incorporeal undead, truly monstrous undead creatures, and associated monsters.

All these sources apply similar logic to classifying the undead. All undead are essentially some flavor of ghost, lich, mummy, vampire or zombie. In fact, the mummy could be considered a kind of lich. But what major traits set these four classes apart?

• Spectral dead: these undead walk through walls and fly. This includes allips, banshees, ghosts, shadows, specters, and wraiths.
• Consummate undead: these undead used unnatural means to extend their lives, such as mummification or a phylactery. This includes death knights, liches and mummies.
• Vampires: these undead typically drink blood and tend to be highly romanticized. They only constitute their own class because of their enduring popularity in pop culture.
• Walking dead: every corporeal undead that does not fit into the previous classes. This includes ghasts, ghouls, revenants, skeletons, wights, and of course zombies.
• Lycanthropes: although not traditionally classified as undead, I have seen an intriguing proposal that lycanthropy is caused by the same dark energy that animates undead.

As stated above the walking dead were traditionally subdivided into obedient, hungry and restless dead, but these subclasses may be applied to the other classes too. Liches and mummies are walking dead obedient to themselves. Ghosts are restless dead that happen to be spectral. Vampires are hungry dead that feed on blood instead of viscera.

ADDENDUM 7/13/2018: I foolishly forgot to clarify the distinction between the walking dead. The obedient dead include skeletons and zombies, the hungry dead include ghasts and ghouls, and the restless dead include revenants and wights.

Another subclass that bears noting (since it does not receive much attention otherwise) are those walking dead whose spirits are bound into inanimate objects instead of corpses, making them similar to constructs. The iconic example would be the ghost of a knight bound to his armor.

In future posts I hope to explore each class of undead in more detail.