Editing Ameth (section)

===Undead===
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The Faith promises undeath as a reward for a good life. There exist only one mechanism of resurrection and all Faith priests. 7 gods and freelancer necromancers use it.

Souls doesn't exist. A person wanting to be resurrected are given a magical golden object, usually a an ankh, by the Faith. This object must always be with you. When the object feels you dying it makes a destructive copy of your mind. Later the body is prepared for the Return. A ritual is performed and the mind is recopied into the undead brain. And so another undead is created. All mind transfers are destructive, you can CTRL-X CTRL-V but not CTRL-C CTRL-V. It is very hard to build an ankh to make a good brain copy. Low grade ankhs copy only the deeply rooted brain patterns. Walking, doing menial works eating etc. Resulting in a mindless zombie at the end process. Mummifying the body for the Return is not strictly necessary but a normal undead corpse will start to rot and turn unusable in a short time.

The quality of the ankh determines what type of undead is created:

*Mindless undead. Lowest grade ankh. Only the deeply rooted brain patterns are recorded. Moving, using tools. Usually end up being field workers
*Slightly less mindless undead. Medium grade ankh.  They retain muscle memory and some instincts they had in life. Usually used as soldiers. 
*Intelligent undead. High grade ankh. They retain the same personality they had in life. What most people aspires to be.
*Liches. this ritual must be performed while the subject is alive. Retains the personality and adds magic powers.

When creating ankhs for the mindless undead necromancers take care in making sure the brain patterns responsible for the obedience get recorded. When creating an undead slave or soldier they can be coded to take orders only from a wearer of a specifically keyed small amulet. Those control jewels are often sold and traded. For this reason generals of undead armies are seen wearing tons of golden jewelry in the middle of battle.

====Illegal experimentations====
Each mind recording and transfer slightly corrupts the mind and have a chance render it totally unusable. For this reason while it possible to change bodies many times no one is willing to do it on themselves. 

As you have guessed a mind recorded in an ankh is can not be necessarily transfered to the body it originated from. You can't put a high grade mind into a different body because the patterns of the dead brain are very similar to the original patterns and they create interference making the resulting undead utterly insane. But you can do it with lower grade minds. Obtain some fresh corpses, a terabyte of minds and create your own undead slaves. 

Another way to prevent this problem is to transfer the mind into a non-human head. Since the brain need a lot less work to do (No more breathing, regulating hormones levels and other body functions) the mind can be transfered into a smaller head, usually an animal. One of uses of this possibility is to sew an animal head to a human body and transfer the mind into the animal head. Most of the time the result is yet again an insane abomination but some combinations result in a stable creatures. Another stable combination is putting the original head on top of an animal body. Crazier necromancer combine several bodies via grafting to create enormous abominations. In all this experiments you need to implant a high grade mind because a low grade knows only the how to move a human body and will be unable to learn the use of the new body.

The Faith condemns and outlaws similar experiments, for they result in great loss of human resources and are quite horrifying from the public perspective. But often the Faith turns a blind eye on them  as the 7 gods enjoy seeing new creations and sometimes this experiments wield stable and usable results.

The most famous of such stable combinations officially permitted by the Faith are the Anubians. They are made with the head of a golden wolf attached to the big, 2 meters tall, pitch black body of a nubian savage. Each Anubian is a work of art and i unique, minor improvements varies from one specimen to another: paws in place of the feet, the integration of the wolf nervous system, magicla runes to increase speed and strength, hippopotamus leather in place of skin etc. The minds of great warriors is placed in Anubians and it is a great honor to become one.

Since the Faith condemns experimental necromancy , the practitioners must buy secretly various components. Under these condition a  thriving black market arose. You can find anything n it. From fresh corpses to exotic animals both alive and dead, to golden plates with hundreds of minds uploaded on them.

====The life after the death====
After Returning the sentient dead must not visit his family for 1001 nights. This rule exists for the human psychology is fragile and people cope better with such a dramatic change of events if they are given time to forget. 

The Returned live in cities of the dead. Protected by high walls and forbidden to living. This is mainly because the number of necromancers is much higher among the dead. And people begging to have a relative resurrected are quite annoying.

After 1001 nights the undead are free to live among the living. They have some limitations of course. For example they can not work in the same place form more then 10 years or stay in the same city for more then 50. This is to avoid crucial infrastructure getting too dependent on a specific undead and not let undead accumulate too much power.

A special police composed entirely of living citizens exist to regulate the undead. Often in their job they end up killing someone and destroying someone who could have lived for eternity is a social stigma. The undead police wear masks to hide their identities.

====Dead Water====
The dead have one great weakness. They no longer regenerate nor heal wounds. If you break your leg you have the rest of eternity to live with a broken leg.

The only way to help this is the dead water. A dense liquid that reflects any light shone on it. When put on dead tissues it triggers a regeneration. This is the only way for undead to heal their wounds. Also thanks to it bodies grafting required to make Anubians are possible. 

The secret of the dead water production is known only to the high priests and thanks to the monopoly of this resource the Faith is able to control the undead population. In alchemist circles dead water is also known by the name mercury.

====Necro-coding====
For the creation of an undead you need a dead body and a stored mind. The mind is basically a software that runs the body. The main difference is that sorcerers are unable to create a new software. They can only transfer an existing one and slightly modify it. Like cut away higher brain powers expect obedience and make the undead obey only the one who wears a suitably keyed amulet.