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Hey everyone,

Today I had a dream, and it was about Deadhaus, so I decided to share it here.

In my dream, my vision accompanied two men talking to each other walking in a corridor. They seemed to be in a gaming convention such as E3, and one of them worked in Apocalypse Studios. He was presenting Deadhaus to the man beside him, which seemed to be a gaming journalist. As the developer began to talk and they both reached the booth where the game would be presented, my dream vision shifted to a gameplay video.

"In here, you are playing as a Viking prince readying yourself for battle beside your father", said the developer.

The video showcased a lush green prairie with widely spread trees as the camera flew by the landscape. It flew until it revealed a hill, and climbing that hill were numerous Viking soldiers with their weapons at the ready. They looked pale not just in color but also in texture, and they seemed all like copies of one another.

They were slowly walking upwards, and before they reached its peak, the camera zoomed in and focused behind two men wearing dark brown furs and leather strips in their bodies, mounting on large white horses with blurred dark spots in their skin, like a Dapple Gray breed. The two men were the king and the prince, as I fathomed in my dream's consciousness. They stopped beside their army in the rubble of what looked like a Greek pantheon, right before reaching the peak of the hill. Only some withered and broken columns together with bits of marble floor remained of that structure.

The dream skipped any narrative or pep talk. The Viking king grabbed his weapon and branded it, pointing at the sky, and screamed to the top of his lungs. All the soldiers in the Viking army brandished their weapons and, determined, ran up the hill. The camera's positioning indicated that the player had then assumed control of the Viking prince, and could now ride the horse. And so he did.

The animation of the soldiers was a bit too repetitive, they all looked like goblin units in an old fantasy strategy game. The game's developer was then saying that all of that was early development footage and that that was why they all seemed so stiff. I was not taken aback by that and neither was the journalist in the dream.

When the prince in the video reaches the top of the hill beside the army, the landscape revealed down the hill is a tremendous transformation from the lush fields we could see before. The earth looked damp, the plants were dead and rotten, the sky was dark, somber and angry with ravenous thunders. We could see green wisps of magic flowing in the land. Looking deep into the valley, you could see another army... an army of dead creatures.

With some hesitation now, the Vikings went forth into battle.

The dream vision shifted and disappeared, and I was left with implied knowledge after that - the sort that feels like intuition, unique to dreams.

From then on, the game would continue into a battle, with the player controlling the prince, so he could see many of the undead beings of the world and could grasp a bit how the combat system works, like a tutorial. At some point, a tragedy would occur.

The prince would be thrown away from his horse in an attack and would fall to the ground. The environment would make it difficult for him to defend himself, and a dangerous-looking undead creature would approach, threatening to make the kill.

One of two things could happen:

1. The prince would be killed by the unliving being.

The game's camera would then detach from the character's back and briefly cover the battlefield before hovering to the top of the prince's body and would showcase his face. His expression is that of shock, and pain, and horror, and time would accelerate, with the sound of battle sprinting through to the end of it, and the shadows cast from the dark clouds would fast-forward above the prince's corpse. The player would see the prince's body being disintegrated, rotting, and then being covered by the earth.
As the vision becomes dark, a few moments of silence are given before we can see light once more. This time, the light comes from magical candlesticks being lit, and we can see the prince's body, decayed and decomposed, in the very same position it was left in the battlefield. A magic ritual is being performed, and we can only hear what is going on as the camera flies further from the body very slowly, until we can see the whole body, and when the ritual is complete... the prince is returned to life, this time as a member of the dead.
From there, the player is taken to the character creation screen, and the real game begins.

2. When the creature is about to strike, a soldier jumps in front of it and strikes it with his sword.
The prince takes the opportunity to get up and run. The camera focuses on the soldier, which is thrown violently through the battlefield in a gruesome hit, and falls dead. The camera hovers over the soldier instead, and the same happens in the first alternative: time passes faster, the body decays, the screen goes dark, and the player then watches the summoning.
The player realizes, at that point, that he was that soldier who gave his life to save the prince and that now you are going to be a part of the undead army. You can then tell that the undead looks like the character that you had previously created when first starting the game - you were just watching his or her origin.
In this case, players would see different battles and be different kinds of soldiers according to which class they picked, and perhaps would be killed by different creatures as well.
In this case, your backstory wouldn't be as important since you wouldn't be a prominent figure in the human's history, and you could instead know more about one or more human factions. Also, that would make more sense than having every player be a former prince or princess.

Then I woke up, and focused on remembering as many details as I could to write it out here once the time was right. :)

I hope you found it interesting.
 
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It'd be cool if there was some say in our character's life before death, kind of like our background in the first Dragon Age. It wouldn't necessarily need to impact much. One suggestion I have is that it opens with the ritual after the character creator, with the corpse veiled so as to offer a reveal once the ritual is complete; and as it is reanimated it relives part of the memory of its former life leading up to its death.
 
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Perhaps this could be a thread for suggestions of past lives as well.

Edit- We have the viking prince and soldier, perhaps this could be a Revenant storyline.

Nobles seeking vengeance against the descendants of the army that abandoned them in the battlefield to die.

Soldiers seeking retribution against the nobility that forced them to be cannon fodder while hiding away behind their walls.
 
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By all means, anyone who would like to share their ideas are encouraged to do so. :)
 
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Cool, I've got one possible backstory for the lich.

Priests that are burned at the stake by order of the clergy as an example for defying their orders by aiding a village that is dieing of plague instead of leaving them all to die. The burning happens after the plague has passed, with what villagers that survived being killed and burned as well to prevent any chance that the plague might still linger and be carried out of the village.

The priests souls are carried with their ashes by the wind to deadhaus where they are remade as lichs.

Edit- Had another

Cultists, surviving the pilgrimage while overcoming the trials it involves to reach the capital of deadhaus in order to secure the final stage of their study in necromancy by turning into lichs.

Edit- Thought of some for the Banshee

Ladies of the night, rounded up and executed by puritanical decree of a zealot faction within the clergy


Women that died of a broken heart from the lose of their loved ones after they were drafted into service and sent to die senselessly

In both instances their souls are called to Deadhaus with the promise of a chance at revenge against those who wronged them.

Edit- Ghoul

Beggars, undesirables, and debtors taken off the streets of the capital city by the nobility and locked away in a work camp as slaves. They were denied everything to survive and told to make due with what could be scavenged, causing them to turn on each other. Among them included a number of blood cultists that rose to supremacy among everyone else by turning their followers and themselves into ghouls, ensuring their survival within the camp by feasting upon the dead and defiant. Eventually the camp become not only a place where people are sent to disappear but also where the dead are dumped. This goes on for years until the day when an attempt is made to purge the camp that fails, leading to an escape from the camp and a mass exodus to the lands of Deadhaus for sanctuary.

Wraiths

Souls of prisoners that were tortured endlessly when they lived, centuries ago by sadistic nobles in a dungeon that was later sealed with them still inside it, trapping them all this time as they relive that nightmare over and over again until the day it was broken into.
 
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