Resurrection Cults in the CU

mlmii

Hello, I was wondering what if any resurrection cults exist in the background. My daughter's character is a formerly normal human who has risen from the dead with powers and I figure this might be a good opportunity to teach her about light role-playing and background fluff.


Thanks.

bulgarex

Interesting question. Character death is rarely permanent in comics, but actually returning from the dead is usually a momentous event. I can think of a few CU-based possibilities.

The closest thing to an actual "resurrection cult" would be the Bone Children, a small organization which combines necromantic practices with worship of The Dragon, primordial source of all the most evil impulses in the human psyche. The Bone Children is led by vampire-priests who promise the cultists "immortality" if they die in the service of the cult... then reanimate the cultists as zombies. Very few cultists reach the ultimate reward of being turned into a vampire to join the leadership.

A few official characters returned to life after being killed. Both the hero called The Drifter, and the villain known as Entropy, were given the choice by a mysterious mystic entity (almost certainly not the same one) to live again, with new powers, if they would serve the entity's purposes. Another villain, the assassin Deadman Walkin', is a sort of free-willed zombie who simply "woke up" after being murdered, with no knowledge of how that happened (a deliberate mystery for a Game Master to develop if desired). The Canadian hero named The Constable is a revenant, a spirit made flesh, formerly a murdered policeman who returned to find his killer, but remained to continue to fight crime.

Of course Takofanes the Archlich is a master of returning people from the dead. During his rampages he often slaughters whole crowds of people, then reanimates them as his undead army. The semi-mystic scientist Necrull and his followers experiment to unravel the secret of eternal life, but have so far succeeded only in granting themselves a monstrous, parasitic prolonged existence. Another sorcerous villain, Rictus, specializes in creating zombies. Your daughter's character could have accidentally slipped free of the control of one of those monsters.

For someone capable of visiting Death's Domain (normally only a powerful magician), it's possible to bargain with Death to restore a person to life. However, Death requires another life in exchange. Usually this is either a person who volunteers to exchange souls with the departed, or someone who has cheated Death (e.g. by becoming undead) who Death demands be brought to it.

bulgarex

If you'd be interested in a more scientific explanation for your daughter's character's return: One of the members of the supervillain group The Brain Trust, known as Mr. Zombie, was the result of some of the materials from failed artificial-life experiments by the Brain Trust's scientist leader, the Overbrain, leaking into the graveyard where Mr. Zombie was buried. He was returned with superhuman strength and invulnerability, but otherwise looks pretty corpse-like and only dimly remembers his former life; but there's no reason to assume another corpse could only gain the same powers, or suffer the same side effects. If the Overbrain discovered her origin he'd be very interested in "acquiring" her to examine.