There are more undead strewn about the world than most citizens of Alvena would like to believe, and their unliving forms are as varied as any alive. Not a species but an existence, the undead are immortal creatures that have broken the cycle of death and rebirth, though for many their existence is a struggle of hunger and eventual apathy. Still, some have managed to embrace their existence and stave off the woes that are associated with the curse of undeath, accepting their existence as something new and different.
The undead as a whole have no language or society in the world, for they are as varied as the living creatures of the world, ranging from mindless drones to beings that have long since forgotten or abandoned to nuances of petty human thought processes and have become something beyond. Most states of undeath are templates applied to living creatures, though a few undead become something entirely new when they come into existence.
Concerns of the Undead
Player characters that are interested in playing undead characters should strongly consider several things before beginning an undead character in the campaign.
Defenses: Undead in this campaign are not immune to mind-affecting effects unless they are also mindless (and player characters cannot be mindless), which makes them vulnerable to effects such as cause fear, hold monster, and even charm monster. Undeath also makes a character vulnerable to feats such as Command Undead and Turn Undead, as well as a plethora of anti-undead spells and effects such as halt undead, command undead, hide from undead, and so on. Because undead have existed in Alvena and are rather common monsters, you can be reasonably expected to run into anti-undead spells and effects with some frequency even as a player character. This is especially true for NPCs using the Destruction sphere, where one of the most common energy groups is Light (Blinding, Incandescent, Radiant) which are popular because they tend to be equally effective against most enemies but all are actually especially effective against the undead.
Social Concerns: The vast majority of people in the world have an innate fear and distrust of the undead. Part of this is instinctual fear from generations of defending themselves from dangerous undead, but there is also a very strong sentiment against undeath that springs up in various faiths, cultures, and superstitions across the world. As a result, in some regions (such as through the kingdom of Omas) being discovered as the undead is effectively a death sentence (most NPCs are innately hostile and you typically lack rights under the law in such areas), while even in more tolerant locations it tends to unsettle most living creatures and people that don't interact with the undead regularly (most NPCs in these regions have a starting attitude of Unfriendly).
Even when you have improved the attitudes of citizens, when they discover a character's undead nature their attitudes typically drop two steps (such as from Helpful to Indifferent), making being discovered a painful process for most undead trying to make their way in society.
As a result, most undead wisely attempt to draw as little attention to their nature as possible. Some undead (such as vampires or animated that have had their corpse's manipulated in preparation for their animation) often have racial modifiers to Disguise checks to help them blend in with normal members of their kind, but almost all civilized undead will want to have a few ranks in the Disguise skill. However, they can be accidentally outed by things such as positive energy effects, death watch spells, or effects that divine the undead even if their disguises are good. Similarly, most animals do not react well to the undead and those in the know may grow suspicious of this (animals must be specially trained to attack or approach the undead which can be a dead give-away even in combat, no matter how good your character's disguise might be).
Because of this, many will…