Keeping spirits in the world of the living tends to be taxing. It’s generally more efficient to send spirits back into physical bodies. The Bonds of Flesh spell is what accomplishes this.
The goblin necromancer in Citadel of the Fallen turns dead people into ghouls and wights, but how does it work? First, the type of undead that is created is determined by the type of spirit forced into the body. Wraithsmake ghouls. Apparitionsmake wights. Shadows, by the way, make zombies.
Although only human and goblin corpses were used in Citadel of the Fallen, virtually anything can be animated. The Bonds of Flesh spell basically allows a necromancer to force a spirit into any dead body. That corpse doesn’t have to be humanoid. A necromancer could, for instance, make a zombie cow, or a ghoul python.
Undead created with the Bonds of Flesh spell do not continually draw power from the necromancer, but the energy spent in the Bonds of Flesh spell can not be recovered while the spell is still operational. A Bonds of Flesh spell will cease to operate if the necromancer loses consciousness, or gets too far away from his undead creation.
Note, an undead creation doesn’t fall apart when Bonds of Flesh spell ceases. The undead creature remains, it simply becomes uncontrolled. It’s possible, for instance, for a single necromancer to, over the course of years, animate and release thousands of corpses into the wild.
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