Some thoughts and questions on the various types of resurrected casualties in Lovecraft's stories. 

* Herbert West - Reanimator
Fresh corpses injected with a reagent rise quickly as (usually) violent mindless zombies.

Thoughts:

- How fresh do the corpses have to be?
- How quickly is a corpse reanimated once injected?
- How do the reanimated corpses compare to their living/pre-corpse state? Ie - In BRP terms, increases STR & CON, decreased INT, etc.? I'm thinking game mechanics stuff for BRP, Nemesis, etc.
- What happens if a living person is injected?
- Do the corpses "wind down"? Do they need new injections every so often?
- Do they eat?
- Are they essentially immortal?
- Do they rot?
- Do they heal if damaged (ie - shot, have bits hacked off, etc.)? If so, how quickly?
- Do the answers to a lot of the above questions vary depending on how soon the corpses are injected after death?
- How is the reagent created? What are the components? West created this stuff with 1920s medtech. What inspired him to start this line of research?
- Who else has had access to West's notes and papers? Are there remnants of West's work at Miskatonic U.? If so, have these notes & papers perhaps been removed or replaced with fake versions? Is anyone at Miskatonic quietly alerted to requests for or queries on anything related to West?
- Are there records of Arkham graverobbing and violations during the time West was there? Either in police reports or in newspapers?
- West is known as "the celebrated Boston surgical specialist" prior to WWI. Where did he work, and did he publish anything during this time? Are there any written materials relating to his Boston practice?
- West during WWI: - "...he had gone to Ottawa and through a colleagueÂ’s influence secured a medical commission as Major...". He was "...in a field hospital behind the lines of St. Eloi" in March of 1915. What info on West might the Canadian military have? Or the French? Or Germans?
- From the story: "He had had much trouble in discovering the proper formula, for each type of organism was found to need a stimulus especially adapted to it."
- Has the reagent been modified or possibly improved upon over the last 75+ years? If so, by whom?
- Who might the story's unnamed narrator have been, what was his (or her?) precise relationship with West, and what happened to them after the end of the story?
- Finally, from the story: "A certain number of these failures had remained alive -- one was in an asylum while others had vanished." What happened to the one in the asylum? And what asylum was this? I'm too lazy to check. Are any of the others still running loose?


* The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Possibly two forms of resurrection, IIRC? I need to reread the story in detail & make notes.

#1) Reducing a being to it's "essential salts" for raising & dismissing.
#2) Possession - A long-dead necromancer takes over a modern descendant.

Thoughts:

- We get this description of physiological changes in the resurrected:

"In the first place, the patient seemed oddly older than his twenty-six years would warrant. Mental disturbance, it is true, will age one rapidly; but the face of this young man had taken on a subtle cast which only the very aged normally acquire. In the second place, his organic processes shewed a certain queerness of proportion which nothing in medical experience can parallel. Respiration and heart action had a baffling lack of symmetry; the voice was lost, so that no sounds above a whisper were possible; digestion was incredibly prolonged and minimised, and neural reactions to standard stimuli bore no relation at all to anything heretofore recorded, either normal or pathological. The skin had a morbid chill and dryness, and the cellular structure of the tissue seemed exaggeratedly coarse and loosely knit. Even a large olive birthmark on the right hip had disappeared, whilst there had formed on the chest a very peculiar mole or blackish spot of which no trace existed before. In general, all physicians agree that in Ward the processes of metabolism had become retarded to a degree beyond precedent."

- Again, how "human" are those who are reduced to essential salts & then raised?
- What happens, physically and mentally, to those who are raised and dismissed and raised again, many times?
- Some DG fan-lore has the Karotechia stealing Commodore Martin Cook's remains from Arlington National Cemetery, resurrecting him, and Cook attempting to destroy La Estancia with a Call Azathoth spell. This would indicate that the resurrected may still have POW and MP, can cast spells, etc., and are probably more human than not.
- Note to Alphonse: Operation RIP - DG cells are tasked with finding remains of all former DG agents and knowledgeable friendlies; remains are to be cremated or otherwise destroyed per GRU SV-8 protocols, if possible, or hidden elsewhere if necessary; immediately report any missing or unaccounted for remains to A-Cell.
- It's implied that ghouls & necromancers have many interesting historically humans safely filed away:

"...half the titan thinkers of all the ages; snatched by supreme ghouls from crypts where the world thought them safe, and subject to the beck and call of madmen who sought to drain their knowledge..."

- So ghouls probably make use of this spell. Is this something a *lot* of ghouls would know? Is it in the various Ghoul Manuscripts? Does Agent Nancy mention this in her written observations on the Ghoul Manuscript that she read (ie - "Nancy's Notes", a DG tome I've suggested in the past)?
- Again, what variants of this spell might exist? What are the differences?
- How does this work in the Dreamlands? Could that be a safe place to stash "collections"?
- Have the Nazis made refinements to the process, such as keyed or variant dismissal phrases?
- What the heck *is* the process, materially? It is based partially on chemical reactions and substances obtainable at least several centuries ago and with primitive (by current standards) lab techniques.
- Did the Serpent People use this technique? If so, it is probably a safe bet that they were masters of the process, and could probably utilize it far better than human necromancers or ghouls. The SP had hundreds of millions of years to experiment with it, after all. Who or what might they have preserved?
- Something I can't recall right at this moment: Did Joseph Curwen possess Ward, have Ward resurrect him, then kill Ward and him to salts? Did Curwen get away with this by resembling Ward? Or was something else going on? I haven't made any "Cliff's Notes" on the story and it's been years since I read it.


* Cool Air
Dr. Munoz has extended and preserves his (un)life chemically for 18 years.

Thoughts:

- Per the wikipedia article: "As time went on, the doctor's health markedly worsened, and his behaviour became increasingly eccentric. The cooling system was continuously upgraded, to the point where some areas were at sub-freezing temperatures..." - Dr. Munoz's techniques begin to fail after a decade or two? Simple SAN loss/MM hits, or was Munoz mentally degenerating as well (ie - reduced INT or Mind)?
- Except for the cold temperatures, the narrator had no idea that Munoz was anything other than a bit eccentric. The narrator did note, however, "the ice-coldness and shakiness of [Munoz's] bloodless looking hands" and that fact that his breathing was imperceptible.
- Yet again, what would a medical exam reveal, and what can this type of unlife endure?
- Yet again, what is involved in the process?
- Did Munoz develop it or discover it?
- Did he leave any notes behind or publish any papers?
- What did the narrator do after the story?
- What happened to Dr. Munoz's possessions?


Comments?

PS - Dead PCs raised using each of the above techniques - discuss. Game mechanics?

PPS - What other methods of returning from the dead have I missed?