LIVING DEAD
The undead are more numerous in the Unholy Lands than one might expect. The land itself is soaked with dark energies that the corpses do not rest in peace for long, but there are also necromancers, witches, demons and other entities that can use black magic to raise a small army of slaves. These resurrection rituals are complex, strenuous and dangerous, so those who perform them need to prepare thoroughly and choose a quiet or secluded place. It is not something that can be done on the fly on a battlefield where your life hangs in the balance: those who lead these bands prepare them in advance and plan a strategy that does not sacrifice them senselessly.
The arcane powers that pervade the Unholy Lands are hopelessly corrupted. Some individuals of outstanding willpower obtain magical forces that they can employ for good, healing their people or divining the future. But the vast majority are content to accept the gifts of black magic without considering any use other than to prosper and sow chaos.
DUST AND BONES
In addition to all the warriors fallen in endless skirmishes in the remotest corners of these places, many tribes have their own funeral rites concerning the burial of their dead. A few cremate the deceased, either out of precaution or religious belief, but others embalm them, mummify them or give them as dignified a burial as they can (with trousseaus, equipment and gifts) or as merciless a burial as their life (by throwing them into the bottom of a chasm without regard).
And, of course, there is also the eerie Boneyard, a plain covered with the skeletal remains of men and beasts as far as the eye can see. What drives all those living beings to crawl there and breathe their last breath in that place is unknown, but thanks to it necromancers and other infamous characters of similar ilk get their grim raw material for their wicked experiments abhorrent of life.
Be that as it may, the ancient dead abound in the Unholy Lands. Necropolises, ossuaries, caves and swamps are an inexhaustible source of skeletal remains.
A band of Dust and Bones living dead lives up to its name and is composed mainly of skeletons, mummies, liches, bone golems, etc.
PAIN AND DESPAIR
Ancient caves in the Blood Range were once inhabited by one of the cruelest clans of Eaters of the Dead. They inflicted terrible tortures on their prisoners, or even on their own members when caught breaking their laws.
Their priestesses of the Queen of Hate were experts in the use of hooks, knives and daggers, with which they gouged out the eyes of their victims and forced them to eat them, or roasted their flesh alive to separate it from the bones and devour it in front of the crazed gazes of their captives. In the innermost chambers of that nightmarish labyrinth, with their deformed bodies covered only by brass masks, they performed rituals infamous even for some of their own, and liters of blood were poured out to honor their goddess and satiate their own craving.
All those deaths, that pain, soaked the very rock of the mountain to create a cesspool of anguish and despair. It is not known what happened to that cursed clan, but today that area is avoided even by their own tribe. Spectral howls emanate from the rock wals, anguished wails call from the corridors and gusts of spectral air pierce the souls of those who stray into this place.
A band of the living dead of Pain and Despair is composed of wraiths, ghosts, poltergeists and similar disembodied presences born of suffering and vengeance.
BLOOD AND GORE
Those more recently dead, when resurrected, often discover to their horror that they retain many of the memories of their former life. These images torment them incessantly and they come, in many cases, to harbor an irrepressible hatred for everything alive as a constant reminder of their own death.
The Unholy Lands are a dark place that sometimes seems to come to life on its own, spontaneously resurrecting bloodthirsty beings. They seek the food of the living in a vain attempt to regain their own mortality, devouring their entrails or drinking their blood in a frenzy of madness that only brings them one step closer to their total doom.
They are rabid, ravenous undead, driven by an insatiable hunger that devours them from within without them being able to fully understand its cause. Their half-rotted brains fill them with terror, craving and hunger, in a perpetual flight forward that will only end with their ultimate death or their conversion to creatures of absolute evil and darkness.
A band of Blood and Gore living dead band is composed of ghouls, feral vampires, zombies and other recently reanimated corpses.