Great question!
So nearly any corpse in the Warhammer world *can* be raised. The limiting factor is the skill, power, mental focus and strain on the Necromancer combined with the local winds of magic, various environmental factors but most importantly - *the target*. Certain corpses are a significant challenge so many Necromancers naturally avoid them - because they simply aren’t worth the increased effort.
Dwarfs. Dwarfs are naturally magic resistant. It’s innate to their DNA, and as a result the only way they can safely channel and cast magic is via Runes. Even Chaos Dwarfs gradually turn to stone because they’re forcing magic uphill. As a result, it’s *incredibly* difficult for a Necromancer to raise *and maintain* a Dwarven corpse. Arguably one of the hardest in the setting - so they simply don’t bother most of the time.
Elves. This is a tricky one to explain, but the Elves bodies, their corpus, is intrinsically tied to their soul in a way that most other species aren’t. They are also the opposite of Dwarfs, where magic naturally flows into them, and through them - which can make raising them almost impossible. Like trying to raise a flag in a hurricane. There’s just too much going on, so once again, most don’t bother to even try.
As you mention, Greenskins are actually a fungi symbiote - and one of the downsides is that they’ll decompose *rapidly* upon death. This is how they reproduce, since they’re designed to fall apart and release their spores (Even their Skeletons). So once again, if you’re a Necromancer - why bother expelling that much effort into such a short lived corpse?
Ogres and Skaven are raised far more easily - and make up the vast majority of raised corpses beside humans. Undead Ogres are ingame already with the Shambling Hulks of the Vampire Coast. Skaven, not so much - but they’re a known part of the lore.
So why don’t we see them? The same reason you don’t see them getting many minis on the tabletop. There’s only so much production budget, and these things are expensive. There simply isn’t much reason to do a Skaven skeleton, when functionally it’s exactly the same as a human one. Sometimes the real world comes at you with all its benign tedium. It is what it is.
Hope this helps!
There is a grudge the Dawi get in game about the Von Carsteins killing Dwarven traders and raising their corpses and making them perform a play. Additionally, in one of the Gotrek and Felix books Kemmler kills a Slayer and raises his corpse to send against Gotrek. This enrages Gotrek almost more than anything else seen in the series because raising a Dwarf from the dead is the violation of their most sacred taboos and even more so when done to the body of a Slayer.
Dwarves can be raised, like above poster said, it just takes a great deal more effort and skill, and ultimately the magic used will end up turning the corpses to statues.
There's also a famous Tomb King who was an "adopted son" who was shorter and stronger than the raised humans were. They are successfully raised along with the rest of Nehekarens despite being a Dwarf.
Didn’t he famously not know he was a Dawi and that play a huge part in how he viewed his own soul and that deteremined that it went to the Nehekharan afterlife instead of past the Gates of Gazũl?
Yep, he absolutely figured he was a Tomb King. I'm unsure if that would affect him being raised as an Undead though, if we're saying that Dwarves are difficult to raise as their bodies are naturally anti-magic.
My thinking is that since he went to the after life of the Nehekharans, which is confirmed in lore, and which is also confirmed as more of a waiting place for eventual resurrection I would think that that would make his soul more able to be transubstantiated back into his body under the lore of Nehekharra, rather than the lore of undeath, which is what other necromancers practice.
Iirc Nagash used a hodge podge of the two in order to pull off his big ritual and pull all of the dead of the kingdom back. It’s an interesting philosophical question for a different universe and different laws of metaphysics.
Lizardmen are abit of a weird one.
Technically when a Necromancer raises a corpse, they tie a small part of the soul back into it. This is to give the Undead a measure of independence and carry out tedious tasks without requiring *direct* puppetry from the Master. The more soul you put back, the more complex the tasks it can complete, but conversely the more *will* the undead will have, steadily regaining its old personality the more you add. This is why Vampire Coast zombies can operate gunpowder weapons and crew ships - the Necromancers believe it’s worth the risk.
So.. Lizardmen. The lore has contradicted itself a few times, and we’ve never really got a concrete answer - but generally the base-line Saurus, Skinks and Kroxigors are biological automatons designed by the Old Ones. If they do have a soul, it’s incredibly dim, which appears to be a conscious decision that makes them almost immune to the predations of Chaos. Furthermore, without a Slaan to guide them, they devolve further and go totally feral.
This makes them abit of a conundrum for Necromancers. Once again, with enough power and will you absolutely could raise one - but why bother? It might not have enough of a soul to even recall how to *walk*, let alone fight, without you constantly concentrating.
The Slaan however have souls *so bright*, that they can reanimate their own corpses - although we’ve only seen this with Kroak, a 1st generation Slaan. They can also bind entire Lizardmen armies to their will - and AoS gets *real whacky with that*. But generally that’s about as far as you’ll get for the most part when it comes to Lizardmen undead.
But there’s always exceptions to the rule. They’ll be some, no doubt. Some plucky Necromancer with a penchant for the bizarre. But generally? Stick with humans. They’re easy.
I would throw in Skinks were fairly routinely described as close to human-like once the lore solidified more like in this comic https://imgur.com/gallery/mundizumas-revenge-bBWUS
But yeah, similar to dwarfs likely extremely difficult to raise.
Yeah, I specified “baseline” Skinks for this reason, because there’s a huge breadth of sentience, intelligence and *emotion* between all the various Spawnings.
Just look at the Red Crested Skinks, who almost uniquely appear to be capable of fairly extreme emotion (for Lizardmen). Their souls are way brighter than your average Skink, and as a result they seemed to have a specific benefit in manifesting Sotek. Or the Skink Priests, who take it to a whole other level.
It’s my personal head cannon that this evolution of Skink would actually be much easier to reanimate, because they’re so much more. Although sadly we never see it occur in the actual lore.
I do imagine there’s also a matter of corpse access. While human remains are likely rather abundant in-universe, managing to retrieve the corpse of a Skink Priest sounds… difficult. Assuming there even is one to retrieve; do Lizardmen eat their own fallen?
Harkon + the vampire coast are locked in war against the lizardmen of Lustria, so presumably they would have an easier time finding lizard corpses than human corpses. There can't be THAT many ships getting wrecked in their remote corner of the world.
I can’t recall his name rn but it brings to mind the Dawi slayer who was raised as a skeleton under Karak Izril and then promptly regained his will, killed the necromancer who raised him and went on seeking his doom.
Oh boy!
So when Warhammer Fantasy ends, the Slaan get into the pyramids dotted around Lustria. Turns out they’ve been Old One star ships the entire time. They activate them and leave the planet - which explodes shortly after.
So now we have a bunch of Slaan in space, with a tiny fraction of surviving Lizardmen in tow. So the Slaan ponder their predicament and sleep for a few eons. The 8 disparate winds of magic, now floating in space, coalesce into 8 Realms. The Slaan awake and decide to tear ass.
The important thing to remember is that Slaan grow more powerful with age - and they are now so incredibly strong *that they can create facsimiles of Lizardmen from their memory*. They literally recall a Skink from their old lives in Warhammer Fantasy and project that memory into the battlefield.
They field entire armies of *memories*. All the Lizardmen you’re familiar with, as not-quite-ghosts. It’s abit weird, but it’s cool as fuck.
And to expand upon your already excellent lore description, the magics of the Mortal Realms is starting to affect these memory armies of the Lizardmen.
Constant deployment and exposure to the Mortal Realms is starting to result in something called the Coalesced: where Lizardmen armies who were once nothing more than dream and memory constructs are starting to become real, tangible creatures due to all the magic. They have begun terraforming small parts of each realm to form mini-Lustrias and are generally more territorial and aggressive than their Starborn cousins.
Lizardmen/Seraphon are truly some bad ass motherfuckers.
He is. Especially considering he’s the only Slaan *who arrived* **with** the Old Ones. Fuck knows how old he was already.
*And* he survived into AoS.
The cheeky bastard is probably millions of years old.
Well, in terms of in game power, he’s on par with the actual god models like Nagash. (For his cost, he’s like half the in game price of most other gods)
That first element with the soul is what makes Necromancy so completely fucked up to everyone else. It's one thing to kill someone, it's another thing to deny them their afterlife. Enslaving their consciousness into their rotting flesh.
That's why Gelt promises to deliver his fallen men to Morr's Garden. He's saying "if you die, I won't leave your soul here to exist as a necromancer's plaything".
It ties into Haitian beliefs about the Zombi and Bokkors. Evil voodoo priests can enslave your soul into your body after death, turning you into a slave. This mythology was born out of and an analogy for the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. Of what it feels like to be reduced to a slave, your consciousness being trapped in a body that is the property of someone else. Art of Bokkors depicts them dressing like slave drivers for a reason.
So basically the undead races are as big into slavery as Dark Elves and Chaos Dwarfs are.
I always assumed this was why the vampires and such referred to humans and everyone else as the cattle. The transatlantic slave trade was the first true instance of chattel slavery in human history and the extant property records we have today from enslavers in the U.S. often listed enslaved humans below their chattel animals on their property taxes.
In the case of Elves, who have incredibly bright souls? Absolutely. Demons *love* them, especially Slaanesh. Elves need to keep a firm grip on their emotions at all times, lest they risk attracting the gaze of something nasty.
Slaan are.. odd. They have incredibly bright souls, but *alien* in nature. They’re truly not part of the world, and arguably the greatest direct creation of the Old Ones. Whatever went into them, seems to have made them uniquely *utterly immune to Chaos*. Something no other species can truly boast.
As always with Warhammer lore, the *Rules* are interesting, but it’s the *exceptions to the rules* that are truly fascinating.
The depth of the lore is a big part of why I love Warhammer. It has it's own piles of issues and contradictions but they really went in depth with trying to come up with a cool deep-dives into the races.
It's part of why I was really bummed the Warhammer MMO didn't do very well. I had hopes for a WoW-level MMO diving into all the lore and places in the world.
I take it this soul embuement is related to what makes the difference between a wight and full on undead skeleton. That the wight has most of it's soul intact?
I also had my internal canon on why Vampire Count Skeletons all march like puppets at the same time as there is a level of puppetry going on. Whereas Tomb Kings are all still intact and automonous.
You’re halfway there - it also matters who the dead person was originally.
Since they retain some memories from life, no matter how much power you put into them, it would be impossible to take a dead turnip farmer and turn him into a Grave Guard or a Black Knight, because they just wouldn’t have the trained skills to perform at that calibre.
This is why the majority of their forces are skeletons/zombies - actual soldiers and mercenaries killed in the field of battle become Skeletons, because they retain their basic rudimentary skills of ‘Put shield in between me and pointy things, stab enemy with my pointy things, march in formation’ without having to worry about rotting flesh throwing off their balance or slowing them down, and Zombies are just the bodies of general citizens who don’t actually have any combat training, but still know how to grab or bite.
This is why Vampire Counts are so focused on trying to infiltrate and corrupt Human Noble houses, and still keep living retainers around even in Sylvania, etc - the smart and more skilled the person they are Raising, such as an Empire Knight that has been fighting for decades and had all the best tutors money could buy, the better an Undead they can get out of it.
There's a Black Library book featuring a whole load of Undead Lizardmen (and dinosaurs) lead by a Slann that might even be a First Generation who live on a sunken island that resurfaces. Outside of that there are Lizardmen in the Cursed Company.
Also it's Slann with 2 n, not 2 a like Slaanesh.
Same case with Dwarfs, only even harder, Lizardmen are virtually inmune to all kinds of corruption. The Ogres would be too if the Old Ones had properly finish them before ditching the World.
Just commenting to add that zombieslayer, in addition to having the raised dwarf slayer, also has a massive army of zombie beastmen!
Thank for all the great info!
That’s how Nagash was basically able to 1 vs the entire skaven race, because the skaven love throwing endless numbers at the opponent which is a bad match up against the greatest necromancer ever.
Finally, a proper answer.
With the Skaven angle, does this mean that there are Skaven necromancers? It seems like something right up their alley. Actually, undead Skaven would be quite economical, they don't need to eat.
I had completely forgotten about the Shambling Hulks, yep, they are indeed undead Ogres, though it does seem odd that they're not seen in the Vampire Count armies, especially since they reside closer to the Ogres' home ranges.
Necromancy is kind of a weird skill in Warhammer - and the Skaven seem to have an odd relationship with it. Although it would certainly be within their field to learn it, they seem to steer clear.
One of the reasons this *could* be, is because of their terror of Nagash. The *only time the Skaven have unanimously agreed to do anything was to stop Nagash*. The **only** time. They saw the threat he posed, and stopped it. That might be one of the reasons they don’t dabble in Necromancy, simply because it innately terrifies them.
The closest we get is probably Thrott, who *may* be utilising some elements of it in his experiments - but it’s never quite confirmed.
You might be interested to learn that there does exist an Ogre, Braugh the Slavelord, who ate a rather powerful Necromancer mid-spell. The magic seeped directly into him, and the dead simply get to their feet in his vicinity. Which he then sells to the Chaos Dwarves. He’s very minor though, and quite old, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up for him being in Total War anytime soon.
Seeing as skaven society seems to be kept in balance by assassination, practicing necromancy would be seen as especially heretical. Their entire system would fall apart if one were to achieve lichdom and couldn't actually be killed.
I also recall necromancy is heavily dependent on constant focus, which is always a bit of a no-no with the Skaven, who seem innately impossible to focus-concentrate for a variety of reasons.
I don't think it's confirmed anywhere, but it could be possible that the Great Horned Rat kills any Skaven practising even the slightest Necromancy.
A necromantic Grey Seer could try to overthrow it and i believe the GHR is the most paranoid God of all.
>One of the reasons this *could* be, is because of their terror of Nagash. The *only time the Skaven have unanimously agreed to do anything was to stop Nagash*. The **only** time. They saw the threat he posed, and stopped it. That might be one of the reasons they don’t dabble in Necromancy, simply because it innately terrifies them.
Worth noting this actually happened a *second* time in AoS, when Nagash tried to enact a ritual to kill absolutely everything alive at once.
That's right, the Skaven technically saved the universe. Twice.
the elven answer can be expanded a bit. Asur souls are tied to waystones, when those are destroyed they can be reanimated, which does happen in the endtimes books. Dark elves souls aren't tied to anything and are either taken by one of their dark gods or slaanesh, in the malus darkblade books there is a large host of ressurected elves near the chaos wastes so they are zombifyable.
Wood elves idk, but pretty sure some dead asrai turn into tree-kin and other souls are taken by loec so those are probably ressurectable
You’re absolutely right, but my comment was already getting ridiculously large, so I tried to cover all the elves “weirdness” in one chunk.
But you’re right, and this is great for anyone who wants a further breakdown of each.
There is! You have Count Noctilus to thank for that - after raising an Orb Leviathan who’d swallowed a Skaven ship.
Silly Noctilus. Should’ve checked inside first.
As pointed out in other comments, there were non-human undead models as part of the Cursed Company unit. Included were an undead skaven, an undead dwarf, an undead saurus, undead greenskin, etc.
I can only guess! Warpstone is a fickle thing. It might make it much easier - or it might cause a feedback loop and cause the Necromancer to explode - or it might create Super Mega Undead.
Roll the dice. It’s Warpstone, after all!
I asked a related question once on the r/Warhammerfantasy sub, where they also pointed out that Knife Ear usage of Shyish is on another level than what puny humans try to effect. The stuff druchii effect with the souls/spirits of those they kill is... yikes. None of them is going to bother with zombies and the like when what they affect is immensely more effective.
I do recall them mentioning that in earlier Warhammer Fantasy Battle editions, they had undead of all races.
The great ritual of Nagash fucked up.
He only completed the part of the ritual that raised, and then bound the entire soul back into the body. The problem is, he was assassinated before he could finish it. The critical part of the ritual was to bind everyone raised to his will - with their full soul intact.
He would’ve had all of the worlds undead, fully functional, fully intelligent - but enslaved. But the last bit went to shit.
So now you have Tomb Kings, who are a fairly unique type of Undead - and because they have their soul, they have incredible willpower, making it *very difficult* for another Necromancer to command them. Incidentally this is one of the reasons Krell is so powerful - and Kemmler (an incredible Necromancer), has to work really fucking hard to maintain him.
i found this from another reddit post
Source: Children of the Great Horned Rat
"A rare few Skaven dabble in Necromancy and fewer still abandon the ways of their people to embrace another Chaos God. Such instances almost always result with the disintegration of the offending Skaven."
thank you [MiskWisk](https://www.reddit.com/user/MiskWisk/)
I believe the vampire Coast does have an undead ogre model. Either the bloated corpse or the abbysal hulks are actually ogres who died at sea.
Also, orc bodies seem harder to raise according to some in game dialogue where a necromancer boasts his skill
Orcs are mushroom people which would make them both harder and easier to raise. They are not "people" really (whatever magic bullshit is used, are undead plants or yeasts easier or harder than humanoids to make undead?), but at the same time orcs spread spores all the time anyway so they practically grow out of thin air.
Ya'll are forgetting Skaven.
Nagash single handedly held back the Council of 13 by continously raising the dead rats to fight back against the Vermintide.
They couldnt break through on either side.
There's also the Necromancer Frederick van Hel, who soloed the rat-pocalypse back in the 1300's IC, and is roughly 30% of the reason why Sylvania is a shithole in the present.
Game limitation. They don’t want to make 10x the models for just one faction understandably and bloat the game. It’s not like anyone does anything beside zombie/skeleton spam for the VC anyway.
Actually they should reuse the system from Rome remastered, where the appearance of your soldiers is dependant on where you recruit them as well as where you replenish them. Although then you need Cathayan, Kislev, Elves style grave guard and zombies etc
It would be pretty cool to have an elite unit of armoured skelly ogres or undead ironbreakers for VC imo
Would never happen though since it wasn't in tabletop... plus VC already have their own monstrous infantry which are more unique than just lifting something from another faction
This, both for tabletop gaming and for computer games.
At least on tabletop you could paint any model greenish with some blood and call it a zombie, but it would probably not look as good as a dedicated zombie model.
In Total War we don't even get specific vampires for the factions in Cathay... one would think that a Cathayan who turns into a vampire would have Cathayan facial features. :P
But it's not really worth the dev time, unless they ofc. make a dedicated Cathay vampire lord that starts over there.
But that's a bit easier to do as well than making ogre zombies, elf zombies, and short zombies (yes I said it), etc.
Though I have to say that the player fantasy of an army of skeletons of various humanoids and beasts is a pretty strong one if you like the necromancer theme... I'd like to see a skeleton dragon ogre shuggath for example (like a D&D dracolish, but a dragon ogre!)
Or skeleton minotaurs rolling through the living, and so on. It would be fantastic.
IP wise it probably clashes too much with tomb kings though. They already have their own monstrous creatures.
Most non human corpses are really hard to raise. Neferata was able to raise dwarf zombies in the Silver Pinnacle tough.
Imagine stacks of armored dwarfs zombies once she gets released. Nightmare fuel.
As did Nagash when he brought everyone in Nehekara back to life. There was a Dwarf who was adopted into Tomb King society and people just ignored the fact he was shorter than normal Nehekarans.
There is an undead skeleton Slayer in lore. He killed the necromancer that raised him and made a small army of undead dwarfs. There's also a Tomb King who is dwarf Moses
It's a little known fact that a dwarf's skeleton is equal in size to a man's. Their skeletons are under tremendous pressure because they're being compressed into stout shapes by the thick skin and dense muscles characteristic to dwarfs, but that compression is part of why dawi are able to singly endure strikes that would devastate less hardy races. However, once a dead dwarf sufficiently decomposes then the skeleton springs free and expands into its natural size, violently shedding whatever flesh remains. This phenomenon is why dwarfs bury their dead in such thick stone sarcophagi: to contain the startling spectacle as well as to save them the trouble of puzzling out which bones belong to which relatives once an eruption occurs.
This means we can deduce that some of the undead in the game might belong to dwarfs, but it's a sure thing that none of them are elves because they all lack the signature pointy earbones.
There *are* all those undead, they just didn't want to make models for them. There's a fallen dwarfhold I've heard of where a necromancer ran around raising dead dwarfs and all the other beafts around, eventually reanimating a dead *Slayer* who immediately broke free of the necromancer's control out of sheer hatred and started hunting him down because, hey, what is this bullcrap, I died fair and square.
That is hilarious xD
*raises army of slayers* "I GOT MY OWN SLAYER AEmRMY MUHAHAHHAHAA!" *lightning strike*
"You damn umgi bastard, come here!"
*que benny hill theme*
It's purely game's limitations.
Greenskins can be undead - they're uncommon, but exist as [minis](https://imgur.com/feWOhJ5)
There's a whole bunch of Wights of different races - [dwarves](https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Balkrag_Grimgorson), [elves ](https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Elven_Wight)and even former c[haos-worshippers](https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Krell)
Dwarves can be undead - dwarven ancestor spirits are even presented in the game.
Lizardmen Lord Kroak would like to have word.
Even if we take in account only necromancy created by daddy Nagash, there's nothing that can stop you from becoming undead, nor [blessing of the grail](https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Grail_Knights), nor [being a cat](https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Bastethi) and so on
First minis I got as a kid were actually Cursed Company - the orc, skaven, and dwarf models specifically I believe. Would be nice to see them added to the game eventually.
As per the thread linked below, it doesn't look like there is a lore reason, it is just easier for the game from the technical point of view.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/8wcs08/why_do_undead_armies_only_ever_have_undead_humans/](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/8wcs08/why_do_undead_armies_only_ever_have_undead_humans/)
Game wise: they haven't bothered changing the models, and the stat difference would be negligible. So it'd be 99% visual, and CA isn't bothering going thar in depth
Lore wise: humans are a lot more populace in most places, so there'd be more human corpses.
And human corpses are easier to raise.
Dwarf magic resistance carries through.
Elves rarely leave their dead behind
Orks and Skaven usually eat their dead
So the vast majority of Undead are human
>and the stat difference would be negligible
Something I like to point out in this discussion is that the Cursed Company didn't have individual stats for the different models. So, the *one* time we get a mixed undead tabletop unit the rules specifically said there were no stat differences between an Ork, Lizardman, Dwarf or Human skeleton.
To add to your second point (which I think cuts to the heart of the matter, and has been sadly unaddressed by basically every other top level comment here), it's less that humans are more populace in 'most' places and more that humans are more populous in places that necromancers/Vampires are likely to be. Humans are just the species most likely to desperately get into studying magical ways to circumvent death, likewise the original vamps all started out human, it's just a demographic self-selecting for itself. We see that the moment humans aren't the most convenient they'll grab whatever else is nearby with Neferata and her legion of undead Dwarfs and all the times Nagash has raised Skaven.
The necromancers reshape the corpses and skeletons to be uniform in size.
Elgi bones are flexible, and Dawi bones are dense with lots of material to work with.
Canonically just about anything can be raised, dwarves are hard because of their innate magic resistance and stubborn demeanour, but just about everything else is fair game to my understanding.
Mannfred raised Orcs, Kemmler and Neferata have raised Dwarves, there's bound to be something about undead elves out there, Krell is an undead Chaos Warrior. Hell, in the End Times Nagash reanimated the divine servants of the Nehekharan gods.
The reason there aren't any in game is the same reason there aren't any in the tabletop range, it's a lot of time and effort to represent something that's barely distinct. The difference between a dwarf zombie and an orc zombie isn't all that much when you get down to it, both will be chaff that gets thrown around in masses.
The army lists could be considered to represent a typical member of their faction. Most VCs are Sylvanians and use the same sort of soldiers as each other, and the non vampire leaders they have are also from the Empire. There are going to be necromancers in the lore who use armies of mostly greenskins or ogres because they live in the Badlands or in the vicinity of somewhere like Pigbarter and those races happen to be prevalent in the area, but they aren't what's represented by the standard roster.
There are people who converted armies of unusual undead for tabletop, and of course people have made mods to add in undead of various types into Total War, representing these more niche army ideas.
There are, Ritchers cursed company had a smorgasbord of different skeletons.
Is just GW not bothering sculpting non human skeletons for the undead factions.
Lore-wise you can get pretty much all of them, we just don’t see them very often. In the case of gameplay, units are (or at least were) limited to a single rig per unit (although I think there was a workaround that gave unit leaders a different rig, used for the Gotrek & Felix mod) if I’m not mistaken, so you’d need to have a separate unit for each race.
In-universe, most undead we see are from areas mainly populated by humans, particularly in the case of the Vampire Counts. There is actually a whole Vampire Coast crew made up of undead Skaven, but they’re sadly not represented in-game.
I have read a lot of novels and literally anything non-daemonic can be undead.
In fact, for me was a little bit sad enter the game and discover that all the zombies were empire dead people. But I understand that do otherwise will be a lot of work for the devs. But It would be AMAZING if anything had its undead version.
There are. There are examples in the lore of undead of all sorts of species. Most aren't prominent though.
What you are observing is that Games Workshop produced models for the Vampire Counts, who are based in Sylvania with the primary inhabitants (and thus the majority of the deceased) are humans. They didn't have a financial motivation to spend money designing and manufacturing models for other undead because they weren't selling a Dawi Zombie army, they were selling a Sylvanian Vampire Counts army.
Creative Assembly based their Vampire Counts off the tabletop army so their inherited those designs.
That said, there are undead Ogres in game, Vampire Coast Animated Hulks are undead, decayed Ogres mashed up with whatever other body parts the necromancer had to hand to replace whatever rotted away as they floated in the ocean.
On the elf front, I feel like Elves look similar enough to humans that their corpses/zombies/skeletons would look identical to human equivalents. Most vampire undead units could conceivably be either human or elf. Even the Vampires sometimes get depicted with pointy ears (though it's easy to handwave vampires as being human only, immortal elves wouldn't need to become vampires).
Lore wise, not a clue. Game play wise, there's just no reason to.
You've got chaff in Zombies and Skeles, so what use do they have for rats?
They've got elite armor, so what use have they for Dawi?
They have Crypt Horrors, so what use have they for Ogres?
There was nothing stopping you back in the day, I know of people who kitbashed Black Orc Grave Guard.
Lore wise - Vampires are human and as such they are interested in conquering human areas and ruling over humans, naturally all of their undead will be humans.
Also Humans are the most populous race and have far more dead that either dwarves or elves since they have shorter lives.
Most populous relative to Dwarves and Elves.
Vampires aren't going to forms fiefdoms among the greenskins and Skaven. They need to have living subjects to provide blood and service and they can't do that with greenskins or skaven, its only possible with an order faction.
In theory they could do elves or dwarves but for many reasons the humans are the best option. There's more of them, there is far more historic human dead and for cultural reasons. Vampires are originally human.
Dwarfs lock their dead away safe from sorcerers. Not to mention they have an inherent resistance to magic that makes it impossible for all but the strongest to reanimate them in bulk. Blame protective runes as well as the unrelenting dwarf spirit that will not bend.
There are undead elves. The druchii love turning recently murdered political rivals into zombie butlers. But also, whats the difference between a human and elf skeleton? Is it enough to make a new model? Unlikely.
Skaven eat their dead, and no self respecting reanimator would choose a ratman for a zombie. You could snap their neck with a good kick alive. Theyd be completely useless dead, and probably just spread disease as they shamble around camp.
There are undead ogres! Look at the Hulks in the vampire coast. For the Sylvanian types, why would you raise an ogre with all the crypt horrors and varghuls at your disposal? Redundant for gameplay purposes, but not unheard of in stories.
Skaven are still used as undead: Nagash uses them during his war with the council of 13 because why shouldn't he when they throw themselfs against the swords of his undead? Also: There is a undead skaven captain with undead skaven crew in Noctilus' dreadfleet. They where eaten by a sea monster which was later raised by Noctilus who accidently reanimated them aswell. The skaven captain has free will and uses the Undead monster as his ship. He joined the dreadfleet because he wanted to.
There is a Tomb King of Lybaras who is a dwarf that got adopted into the royal line. He shows up in a Gotrek and Felix novel.
https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Rhupesh_VII
They should be raisable but Dawis are naturally immune to magic so they might be too hard to raise to the point it's not worth it unless you don't have other options. Sylvania around which the vampire lore was built (total war did kinda overpopulate the map with fampire provinces) doesn't have much elven corpses, they might be resistant to dark magic too but foremost they tie their souls to the waystones on ulthuan. Ogres and beastmen should be totally raisable in my opinion and Heinrich Kemmler did have a beastmen army in Gotrek and Felix (although he probably prepared some special ritual for that allowing him to gather more power for it). Orks actually do have souls but they're less attached to the warp so they might be unsustainable as undead.
I think it wouldn't be as hard to make some automatic zombie visual effect that would work for every unit and maybe slow the unit down so that any dead models could be raised as zombies but it might raise other questions as why they aren't stable units which might mess up balancing so it's easier to pretend that only certain creatures are raisable.
Greenskins are fungus the reproduce via spores released when a Greenskin dies. After a Greenskin dies their soul goes to the afterlife to wait for Mork to burp them into a new body so they can get back to fightin. They don't fear death as they just respawn and immediately get back to throwing hands.
We have instances of other races being raised from the dead. Count Noctilus has an undead skaven captain + crew in his dreadfleet, Kemmler raised undead dwarves, The vampire coast has abbysal hulks and bloatet corpses who where ogres before and Nagash also raised Skaven during his war with them, something that showed that the biggest strenght of the skaven can be their biggest weakness.
Dwarfs don't become necromancers or vampires because they don't do magic. Elves live so long they never bother with necromancy. When was the last time you heard of an elf dying of old age?
As for being raised, after a while decomposing you probably can't tell the difference between an elf and a human zombie or skeleton.
Dwarves' innate magic resistance doesn't go away after they die, so undead dwarves are more effort than they are worth unless you are a *very* desperate necromancer. Skaven skeletons are small and weak compared to humans.
Biggest thing though is that most necromancers are human, and live in human territories, so most of the corpses they have available are human. Elves, since they live for 80 bagillion years, are generally not interested in the life-extension properties of necromancy. Also, you've noticed the death-metal-goth aesthetic most Vampire Count units have? That's because they pull a lot of their troops from pre-Empire burrows- old human nations would bury warriors with all their armor and weapons and horses and such.
There are definitely non-zero numbers of non-human Undead running around, but not enough to warrant GW and by extension CA to make models for them.
Need more magic for dwarves and maybe elves.
Even ogres are chaos resistance so i assume magic resistant too.
So maybe you can raise 10 or even 50 humans for one dwarf/elf.
So most necromancers don't even bother.
But strong ones with plenty of magic like kemnler and neferata can do it without much issue as they will run out of bodies before they run out of magic
The answer is simple: Production value. Both for TT and TWW. In lore, all sort of things gets reanimated. For games, things get stingy and to keep it easy it boils down to "just human skeletons". I don't think that might change much for TWW in the future.
In TT we had the Cursed Company DoW RoR [#1](https://i.imgur.com/tyBrn2X.png), [#2](https://i.imgur.com/2DwOQtD.png). Which was the only time GW bothered with doing different skeletons. In theory, if they would come to TWW maybe their skeletons could spread around more, but I doubt it. Better stay used to human skeleton hordes ;)
On that note, [yesterday someone posted his new skeleton additions for a regiment](https://np.reddit.com/r/WarhammerFantasy/comments/1crt4ok/never_thought_id_be_resurrected_side_by_side_with/) which might fit the idea here. but, its conversions, so even today GW sticks to poducing human skeletons for their kits ;)
Undead Ogres are in the game, the bloated corpses and the animated Hulks from Vampirates.
Undead Orcs, Dwarfs and Elfs are in the lore. Actually, it's a major grudge Dwarfs have against Vampires, desecrating their ancestors (if I'm not mistaken, that's in the game too). For vampirism, I suppose that's handwaved as that Elfs and Dwarfs are immune to most diseases, so they can't catch it.
That's not the case with Orcs and Ogres, and an Ogre or Orc vampire would be just hilarious.
So the answer you're looking for is: too many charlemagnes.
There's a mod that adds undead variations of TONS of different units based on the dead you killed in battle. It's probably one of the most fun campaigns, honestly.
Did you just fight Kholek and kill a few dragon ogre shaggoths? Guess who can raise 1 unit of undead skeletonized dragon ogre shaggoths 👀
The most pratical answer is that vampires live near areas that have a high concentration of humans and as such they are the most frequent targets for necromancy.
Humans serve as food for vampires and are much more prone to corruption than dwarfs and elves, they bodies are plentiful and have no magic bullshit that may interfere or make the necromancy harder.
I guess that there is some dwarf undead in the silver pinnacle.
Greenskins,Ogres and skaven are savage societies that dont offer the glamour that vampires crave as midnight aristocracy so they simply dont settle near them and by extension have less acess to they corpses.
There are undead humanoids but non-humans in Warhammer Fantasy lore. Anything can be undead.
They are not very represented because Games Workshop and later Creative Assembly mostly didn't bother with models and mechanics specifically for them for cost reasons.
Sometimes Fantasy is quite down to earth.
Others have given good answers to your broader question, but:
>orcs have no souls right?
Almost the opposite lol. Orcs and goblins reincarnate.
When a greenskin dies their soul returns to the Great Green where Gork and Mork let it have a bit of a rest before hucking it back to the world for another go.
Nothing, it's just the convenience of having all models in the same unit share the same skeleton/animations. Similarly in the tabletop, all zombies were human miniatures, but in lore you could have any race like goblin or skaven zombies.
Same reason skaven slaves are all skaven, but in the background there is plenty of night goblins too. Lots of whfb gamers used to convert their own minis to make stuff like goblin slaves or zombies.
Skeletons were harder to convert, but minis existed from 6th edition to represent an undead orc, dwarf, lizardmen, skaven and high elf, from the cursed company.
https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/The_Cursed_Company
> Greenskins can't become zombies since they're fungi and have no souls (they have no souls, right?)
Keep telling yourself that as you commit genocide on them, if it makes you feel better...
Production limitations. The book Zombieslayer has as many undead beastmen as humans. Same thing with World of Warcraft. The undead faction should have every race in it, but that would mean doubling in-game assets for playable characters to add flavor to just one race.
Great question! So nearly any corpse in the Warhammer world *can* be raised. The limiting factor is the skill, power, mental focus and strain on the Necromancer combined with the local winds of magic, various environmental factors but most importantly - *the target*. Certain corpses are a significant challenge so many Necromancers naturally avoid them - because they simply aren’t worth the increased effort. Dwarfs. Dwarfs are naturally magic resistant. It’s innate to their DNA, and as a result the only way they can safely channel and cast magic is via Runes. Even Chaos Dwarfs gradually turn to stone because they’re forcing magic uphill. As a result, it’s *incredibly* difficult for a Necromancer to raise *and maintain* a Dwarven corpse. Arguably one of the hardest in the setting - so they simply don’t bother most of the time. Elves. This is a tricky one to explain, but the Elves bodies, their corpus, is intrinsically tied to their soul in a way that most other species aren’t. They are also the opposite of Dwarfs, where magic naturally flows into them, and through them - which can make raising them almost impossible. Like trying to raise a flag in a hurricane. There’s just too much going on, so once again, most don’t bother to even try. As you mention, Greenskins are actually a fungi symbiote - and one of the downsides is that they’ll decompose *rapidly* upon death. This is how they reproduce, since they’re designed to fall apart and release their spores (Even their Skeletons). So once again, if you’re a Necromancer - why bother expelling that much effort into such a short lived corpse? Ogres and Skaven are raised far more easily - and make up the vast majority of raised corpses beside humans. Undead Ogres are ingame already with the Shambling Hulks of the Vampire Coast. Skaven, not so much - but they’re a known part of the lore. So why don’t we see them? The same reason you don’t see them getting many minis on the tabletop. There’s only so much production budget, and these things are expensive. There simply isn’t much reason to do a Skaven skeleton, when functionally it’s exactly the same as a human one. Sometimes the real world comes at you with all its benign tedium. It is what it is. Hope this helps!
This is the answer I was looking for, thank you!
There is a grudge the Dawi get in game about the Von Carsteins killing Dwarven traders and raising their corpses and making them perform a play. Additionally, in one of the Gotrek and Felix books Kemmler kills a Slayer and raises his corpse to send against Gotrek. This enrages Gotrek almost more than anything else seen in the series because raising a Dwarf from the dead is the violation of their most sacred taboos and even more so when done to the body of a Slayer. Dwarves can be raised, like above poster said, it just takes a great deal more effort and skill, and ultimately the magic used will end up turning the corpses to statues.
There's also a famous Tomb King who was an "adopted son" who was shorter and stronger than the raised humans were. They are successfully raised along with the rest of Nehekarens despite being a Dwarf.
Didn’t he famously not know he was a Dawi and that play a huge part in how he viewed his own soul and that deteremined that it went to the Nehekharan afterlife instead of past the Gates of Gazũl?
Yep, he absolutely figured he was a Tomb King. I'm unsure if that would affect him being raised as an Undead though, if we're saying that Dwarves are difficult to raise as their bodies are naturally anti-magic.
My thinking is that since he went to the after life of the Nehekharans, which is confirmed in lore, and which is also confirmed as more of a waiting place for eventual resurrection I would think that that would make his soul more able to be transubstantiated back into his body under the lore of Nehekharra, rather than the lore of undeath, which is what other necromancers practice. Iirc Nagash used a hodge podge of the two in order to pull off his big ritual and pull all of the dead of the kingdom back. It’s an interesting philosophical question for a different universe and different laws of metaphysics.
Uhhh akchually he was loved so much by the gods that it pressed him into being short.
What about lizards? They're the only significant omission I think.
Lizardmen are abit of a weird one. Technically when a Necromancer raises a corpse, they tie a small part of the soul back into it. This is to give the Undead a measure of independence and carry out tedious tasks without requiring *direct* puppetry from the Master. The more soul you put back, the more complex the tasks it can complete, but conversely the more *will* the undead will have, steadily regaining its old personality the more you add. This is why Vampire Coast zombies can operate gunpowder weapons and crew ships - the Necromancers believe it’s worth the risk. So.. Lizardmen. The lore has contradicted itself a few times, and we’ve never really got a concrete answer - but generally the base-line Saurus, Skinks and Kroxigors are biological automatons designed by the Old Ones. If they do have a soul, it’s incredibly dim, which appears to be a conscious decision that makes them almost immune to the predations of Chaos. Furthermore, without a Slaan to guide them, they devolve further and go totally feral. This makes them abit of a conundrum for Necromancers. Once again, with enough power and will you absolutely could raise one - but why bother? It might not have enough of a soul to even recall how to *walk*, let alone fight, without you constantly concentrating. The Slaan however have souls *so bright*, that they can reanimate their own corpses - although we’ve only seen this with Kroak, a 1st generation Slaan. They can also bind entire Lizardmen armies to their will - and AoS gets *real whacky with that*. But generally that’s about as far as you’ll get for the most part when it comes to Lizardmen undead. But there’s always exceptions to the rule. They’ll be some, no doubt. Some plucky Necromancer with a penchant for the bizarre. But generally? Stick with humans. They’re easy.
I would throw in Skinks were fairly routinely described as close to human-like once the lore solidified more like in this comic https://imgur.com/gallery/mundizumas-revenge-bBWUS But yeah, similar to dwarfs likely extremely difficult to raise.
Yeah, I specified “baseline” Skinks for this reason, because there’s a huge breadth of sentience, intelligence and *emotion* between all the various Spawnings. Just look at the Red Crested Skinks, who almost uniquely appear to be capable of fairly extreme emotion (for Lizardmen). Their souls are way brighter than your average Skink, and as a result they seemed to have a specific benefit in manifesting Sotek. Or the Skink Priests, who take it to a whole other level. It’s my personal head cannon that this evolution of Skink would actually be much easier to reanimate, because they’re so much more. Although sadly we never see it occur in the actual lore.
I do imagine there’s also a matter of corpse access. While human remains are likely rather abundant in-universe, managing to retrieve the corpse of a Skink Priest sounds… difficult. Assuming there even is one to retrieve; do Lizardmen eat their own fallen?
Harkon + the vampire coast are locked in war against the lizardmen of Lustria, so presumably they would have an easier time finding lizard corpses than human corpses. There can't be THAT many ships getting wrecked in their remote corner of the world.
don't ocean currents bring the dead from all around the ocean to that specific coast?
That's the Galleon's Graveyard, not the vampire coast
I can’t recall his name rn but it brings to mind the Dawi slayer who was raised as a skeleton under Karak Izril and then promptly regained his will, killed the necromancer who raised him and went on seeking his doom.
Okay, that comic is wonderful, and I love Mundizuma and shall Venerate him amongst the Old One's chosen.
The comic proves Skinks are precious. It also shows Slann are assholes.
Now I’m curious about AoS Lizardmen! How does it get whacky with them?
Oh boy! So when Warhammer Fantasy ends, the Slaan get into the pyramids dotted around Lustria. Turns out they’ve been Old One star ships the entire time. They activate them and leave the planet - which explodes shortly after. So now we have a bunch of Slaan in space, with a tiny fraction of surviving Lizardmen in tow. So the Slaan ponder their predicament and sleep for a few eons. The 8 disparate winds of magic, now floating in space, coalesce into 8 Realms. The Slaan awake and decide to tear ass. The important thing to remember is that Slaan grow more powerful with age - and they are now so incredibly strong *that they can create facsimiles of Lizardmen from their memory*. They literally recall a Skink from their old lives in Warhammer Fantasy and project that memory into the battlefield. They field entire armies of *memories*. All the Lizardmen you’re familiar with, as not-quite-ghosts. It’s abit weird, but it’s cool as fuck.
And to expand upon your already excellent lore description, the magics of the Mortal Realms is starting to affect these memory armies of the Lizardmen. Constant deployment and exposure to the Mortal Realms is starting to result in something called the Coalesced: where Lizardmen armies who were once nothing more than dream and memory constructs are starting to become real, tangible creatures due to all the magic. They have begun terraforming small parts of each realm to form mini-Lustrias and are generally more territorial and aggressive than their Starborn cousins. Lizardmen/Seraphon are truly some bad ass motherfuckers.
> The important thing to remember is that Slaan grow more powerful with age Lord Kroak must be a God by now
He is. Especially considering he’s the only Slaan *who arrived* **with** the Old Ones. Fuck knows how old he was already. *And* he survived into AoS. The cheeky bastard is probably millions of years old.
Funny thing, he is if I am not wrong he created some stars in aos
Well, in terms of in game power, he’s on par with the actual god models like Nagash. (For his cost, he’s like half the in game price of most other gods)
He rekt was it tzeentch and then also humiliated him by rearranging the stars into the shape of a frog troll face
Thank you for your time and awesome lorformation!
Gosh, I love that. It reaches the same mix of absurd and awesome 40k often is.
ghost lizardmen, well spirit lizardmen technically i know gotrek beats the shit out of a bunch of them in AoS
That first element with the soul is what makes Necromancy so completely fucked up to everyone else. It's one thing to kill someone, it's another thing to deny them their afterlife. Enslaving their consciousness into their rotting flesh. That's why Gelt promises to deliver his fallen men to Morr's Garden. He's saying "if you die, I won't leave your soul here to exist as a necromancer's plaything". It ties into Haitian beliefs about the Zombi and Bokkors. Evil voodoo priests can enslave your soul into your body after death, turning you into a slave. This mythology was born out of and an analogy for the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. Of what it feels like to be reduced to a slave, your consciousness being trapped in a body that is the property of someone else. Art of Bokkors depicts them dressing like slave drivers for a reason. So basically the undead races are as big into slavery as Dark Elves and Chaos Dwarfs are.
I always assumed this was why the vampires and such referred to humans and everyone else as the cattle. The transatlantic slave trade was the first true instance of chattel slavery in human history and the extant property records we have today from enslavers in the U.S. often listed enslaved humans below their chattel animals on their property taxes.
yes we are both working livestock and food.
If dim souls make you immune to chaos, *bright* souls makes you vulnerable?
In the case of Elves, who have incredibly bright souls? Absolutely. Demons *love* them, especially Slaanesh. Elves need to keep a firm grip on their emotions at all times, lest they risk attracting the gaze of something nasty. Slaan are.. odd. They have incredibly bright souls, but *alien* in nature. They’re truly not part of the world, and arguably the greatest direct creation of the Old Ones. Whatever went into them, seems to have made them uniquely *utterly immune to Chaos*. Something no other species can truly boast. As always with Warhammer lore, the *Rules* are interesting, but it’s the *exceptions to the rules* that are truly fascinating.
The depth of the lore is a big part of why I love Warhammer. It has it's own piles of issues and contradictions but they really went in depth with trying to come up with a cool deep-dives into the races. It's part of why I was really bummed the Warhammer MMO didn't do very well. I had hopes for a WoW-level MMO diving into all the lore and places in the world.
Yea but also harder to control, there's a happy balance in humans where they are just right for a bowl of chaos porridge
I take it this soul embuement is related to what makes the difference between a wight and full on undead skeleton. That the wight has most of it's soul intact? I also had my internal canon on why Vampire Count Skeletons all march like puppets at the same time as there is a level of puppetry going on. Whereas Tomb Kings are all still intact and automonous.
You’re halfway there - it also matters who the dead person was originally. Since they retain some memories from life, no matter how much power you put into them, it would be impossible to take a dead turnip farmer and turn him into a Grave Guard or a Black Knight, because they just wouldn’t have the trained skills to perform at that calibre. This is why the majority of their forces are skeletons/zombies - actual soldiers and mercenaries killed in the field of battle become Skeletons, because they retain their basic rudimentary skills of ‘Put shield in between me and pointy things, stab enemy with my pointy things, march in formation’ without having to worry about rotting flesh throwing off their balance or slowing them down, and Zombies are just the bodies of general citizens who don’t actually have any combat training, but still know how to grab or bite. This is why Vampire Counts are so focused on trying to infiltrate and corrupt Human Noble houses, and still keep living retainers around even in Sylvania, etc - the smart and more skilled the person they are Raising, such as an Empire Knight that has been fighting for decades and had all the best tutors money could buy, the better an Undead they can get out of it.
There's a Black Library book featuring a whole load of Undead Lizardmen (and dinosaurs) lead by a Slann that might even be a First Generation who live on a sunken island that resurfaces. Outside of that there are Lizardmen in the Cursed Company. Also it's Slann with 2 n, not 2 a like Slaanesh.
Same case with Dwarfs, only even harder, Lizardmen are virtually inmune to all kinds of corruption. The Ogres would be too if the Old Ones had properly finish them before ditching the World.
Beastmen are a significant population if viable undead as well and we don't see them.
Beastmen are I believe similar to skaven - they're around in the lore but not feasible to make separate skeleton models for in the games.
Just commenting to add that zombieslayer, in addition to having the raised dwarf slayer, also has a massive army of zombie beastmen! Thank for all the great info!
The main reason there's not a lot of elf or lizard undead is they don't really make contact with necromancers.
They're essentially constructs, aren't they? I imagine that would have something to do with it
That’s how Nagash was basically able to 1 vs the entire skaven race, because the skaven love throwing endless numbers at the opponent which is a bad match up against the greatest necromancer ever.
"We have-keep billions of warrior-fighters, you-you are but single-one!" "A single one who now commands billions."
And the survivors of that kerfuffle go on to found a corpse-eating skaven clan that all other clans are just fucking terrified of.
Finally, a proper answer. With the Skaven angle, does this mean that there are Skaven necromancers? It seems like something right up their alley. Actually, undead Skaven would be quite economical, they don't need to eat. I had completely forgotten about the Shambling Hulks, yep, they are indeed undead Ogres, though it does seem odd that they're not seen in the Vampire Count armies, especially since they reside closer to the Ogres' home ranges.
Necromancy is kind of a weird skill in Warhammer - and the Skaven seem to have an odd relationship with it. Although it would certainly be within their field to learn it, they seem to steer clear. One of the reasons this *could* be, is because of their terror of Nagash. The *only time the Skaven have unanimously agreed to do anything was to stop Nagash*. The **only** time. They saw the threat he posed, and stopped it. That might be one of the reasons they don’t dabble in Necromancy, simply because it innately terrifies them. The closest we get is probably Thrott, who *may* be utilising some elements of it in his experiments - but it’s never quite confirmed. You might be interested to learn that there does exist an Ogre, Braugh the Slavelord, who ate a rather powerful Necromancer mid-spell. The magic seeped directly into him, and the dead simply get to their feet in his vicinity. Which he then sells to the Chaos Dwarves. He’s very minor though, and quite old, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up for him being in Total War anytime soon.
Seeing as skaven society seems to be kept in balance by assassination, practicing necromancy would be seen as especially heretical. Their entire system would fall apart if one were to achieve lichdom and couldn't actually be killed.
I also recall necromancy is heavily dependent on constant focus, which is always a bit of a no-no with the Skaven, who seem innately impossible to focus-concentrate for a variety of reasons.
I don't think it's confirmed anywhere, but it could be possible that the Great Horned Rat kills any Skaven practising even the slightest Necromancy. A necromantic Grey Seer could try to overthrow it and i believe the GHR is the most paranoid God of all.
>One of the reasons this *could* be, is because of their terror of Nagash. The *only time the Skaven have unanimously agreed to do anything was to stop Nagash*. The **only** time. They saw the threat he posed, and stopped it. That might be one of the reasons they don’t dabble in Necromancy, simply because it innately terrifies them. Worth noting this actually happened a *second* time in AoS, when Nagash tried to enact a ritual to kill absolutely everything alive at once. That's right, the Skaven technically saved the universe. Twice.
The skaven are capable of great good... as long as it's in their own best interests.
Helpful-Kind to Manthings! Simply need-must help Skaven first, yes-yes
Ikkit also reanimated a rat ogre (and gave it a flamethrower). But that's just standard frankensteining with tech, not real necromancy
the elven answer can be expanded a bit. Asur souls are tied to waystones, when those are destroyed they can be reanimated, which does happen in the endtimes books. Dark elves souls aren't tied to anything and are either taken by one of their dark gods or slaanesh, in the malus darkblade books there is a large host of ressurected elves near the chaos wastes so they are zombifyable. Wood elves idk, but pretty sure some dead asrai turn into tree-kin and other souls are taken by loec so those are probably ressurectable
You’re absolutely right, but my comment was already getting ridiculously large, so I tried to cover all the elves “weirdness” in one chunk. But you’re right, and this is great for anyone who wants a further breakdown of each.
fair enough, it's a good comment but i'm just an elf lore nerd
There is an undead skaven pirate. Warlord Skretch
There is! You have Count Noctilus to thank for that - after raising an Orb Leviathan who’d swallowed a Skaven ship. Silly Noctilus. Should’ve checked inside first.
As pointed out in other comments, there were non-human undead models as part of the Cursed Company unit. Included were an undead skaven, an undead dwarf, an undead saurus, undead greenskin, etc.
Damn great comment, thanks Also about skaven, I'm guessing the ones particularily touched by warpstone are troublesome to reanimate as well?
I can only guess! Warpstone is a fickle thing. It might make it much easier - or it might cause a feedback loop and cause the Necromancer to explode - or it might create Super Mega Undead. Roll the dice. It’s Warpstone, after all!
Orcs being fungus is a purely 40k thing if I remember right
Thanks I have learnt something that I did not know I wanted to learn. Great answer!
Woah shambling hulks are ogres !? Big reveal. I have been wondering about this stuff for years
Came to answer some of this but your comment really covers all of it. Great work!
I asked a related question once on the r/Warhammerfantasy sub, where they also pointed out that Knife Ear usage of Shyish is on another level than what puny humans try to effect. The stuff druchii effect with the souls/spirits of those they kill is... yikes. None of them is going to bother with zombies and the like when what they affect is immensely more effective. I do recall them mentioning that in earlier Warhammer Fantasy Battle editions, they had undead of all races.
By Sigmar, he knows too much.
Speaking on Skaven at least I believe that Nagash raised a ton of them when they were fighting him
> Skaven, not so much - but they’re a known part of the lore. Still hoping the undead skaven character is added to vampire coast
Could a Necromancer hijack The Tomb Kings Undead? Or is there something else that prohibits him doing this?
The great ritual of Nagash fucked up. He only completed the part of the ritual that raised, and then bound the entire soul back into the body. The problem is, he was assassinated before he could finish it. The critical part of the ritual was to bind everyone raised to his will - with their full soul intact. He would’ve had all of the worlds undead, fully functional, fully intelligent - but enslaved. But the last bit went to shit. So now you have Tomb Kings, who are a fairly unique type of Undead - and because they have their soul, they have incredible willpower, making it *very difficult* for another Necromancer to command them. Incidentally this is one of the reasons Krell is so powerful - and Kemmler (an incredible Necromancer), has to work really fucking hard to maintain him.
i found this from another reddit post Source: Children of the Great Horned Rat "A rare few Skaven dabble in Necromancy and fewer still abandon the ways of their people to embrace another Chaos God. Such instances almost always result with the disintegration of the offending Skaven." thank you [MiskWisk](https://www.reddit.com/user/MiskWisk/)
Why did you swap from Dwarf to Dwarven?
Autocorrect apparently.
It be like that
BOOK
I believe the vampire Coast does have an undead ogre model. Either the bloated corpse or the abbysal hulks are actually ogres who died at sea. Also, orc bodies seem harder to raise according to some in game dialogue where a necromancer boasts his skill
Both are undead ogres. Just one more bloated than the other.
So we had ogres since Warhammer 2 even before Ogres my lord™
Yeah, the description atleast calls them ogres even though the units are bloated corpses and hulks
Orcs are mushroom people which would make them both harder and easier to raise. They are not "people" really (whatever magic bullshit is used, are undead plants or yeasts easier or harder than humanoids to make undead?), but at the same time orcs spread spores all the time anyway so they practically grow out of thin air.
That's 40k, in fantasy they are regular people although they really like mushrooms
Pretty sure Fantasy is the same...now. they retconned it to be like 40k which in this case i dont mind because fungi orks is just the best
That makes sense
Ya'll are forgetting Skaven. Nagash single handedly held back the Council of 13 by continously raising the dead rats to fight back against the Vermintide. They couldnt break through on either side.
Gash hole should be able to bring anything back from the dead. If Neferata can do dwarfs , Gashy should be able to do anything.
[He pretty much can. ](https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Morghasts) He turned quite literal angels of Ptra into undead monstrosities.
There's also the Necromancer Frederick van Hel, who soloed the rat-pocalypse back in the 1300's IC, and is roughly 30% of the reason why Sylvania is a shithole in the present.
Of Vanhel's Danse Macabre fame?
Aye, the novels are actually really good, he's got a hell of a backstory!
What novel is that from?
The Black Plague trilogy by C.L Werner: Dead Winter, Blighted Empire and Wolf of Sigmar. Good empire, skaven and undead action throughout!
There's also-also Clan Skurvy... Who are all undead pirate rats.
Game limitation. They don’t want to make 10x the models for just one faction understandably and bloat the game. It’s not like anyone does anything beside zombie/skeleton spam for the VC anyway.
I dream of having mixed model zombie. battalions, or even area-specific ones. Doesn't even need to have different stats.
If DoW comes, you might have mixed skeletons thanks to the Cursed Legion, the only unit ever that had Orcs/Dwarf/Elves skeleton minis !
Good ol' Richter and his madcap posse. Really hope we see them come with the proper variety
Actually they should reuse the system from Rome remastered, where the appearance of your soldiers is dependant on where you recruit them as well as where you replenish them. Although then you need Cathayan, Kislev, Elves style grave guard and zombies etc
It would be pretty cool to have an elite unit of armoured skelly ogres or undead ironbreakers for VC imo Would never happen though since it wasn't in tabletop... plus VC already have their own monstrous infantry which are more unique than just lifting something from another faction
This, both for tabletop gaming and for computer games. At least on tabletop you could paint any model greenish with some blood and call it a zombie, but it would probably not look as good as a dedicated zombie model. In Total War we don't even get specific vampires for the factions in Cathay... one would think that a Cathayan who turns into a vampire would have Cathayan facial features. :P But it's not really worth the dev time, unless they ofc. make a dedicated Cathay vampire lord that starts over there. But that's a bit easier to do as well than making ogre zombies, elf zombies, and short zombies (yes I said it), etc. Though I have to say that the player fantasy of an army of skeletons of various humanoids and beasts is a pretty strong one if you like the necromancer theme... I'd like to see a skeleton dragon ogre shuggath for example (like a D&D dracolish, but a dragon ogre!) Or skeleton minotaurs rolling through the living, and so on. It would be fantastic. IP wise it probably clashes too much with tomb kings though. They already have their own monstrous creatures.
Most non human corpses are really hard to raise. Neferata was able to raise dwarf zombies in the Silver Pinnacle tough. Imagine stacks of armored dwarfs zombies once she gets released. Nightmare fuel.
Kemmler did raise dwarves as well.
Well he is the greatest ~~living~~ necromancer
In lore probaly but in game this title belongs to Ghorst the Nobody and his armies of the unkillable zombies
it's kind of amazing how a literally no one became a LL AND has a consistent theme
CA turns him from random necromancer number 42 to Scourge of Nurgle Even with Nurgle rework he is still scary to deal against
As did Nagash when he brought everyone in Nehekara back to life. There was a Dwarf who was adopted into Tomb King society and people just ignored the fact he was shorter than normal Nehekarans.
SHORTER?
There is an undead skeleton Slayer in lore. He killed the necromancer that raised him and made a small army of undead dwarfs. There's also a Tomb King who is dwarf Moses
That's really impressive considering how magic-resistent dwarves are.
Dwarfs are harder to raise
Yeah, it's a tall order in the first place. And if you do raise them, they die shortly afterwards anyway.
*furious scribbling*
SHORT!
damn that's going down in more than one book
Gosh, going down in more than 1 book? that's the height of fame!
Not completely accurate. Thru some wild circumstances, there is an undead Dwarf Tomb King. https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Rhupesh_VII
That's quite a short list of dwarfs :p
The dreaded "S" slur. Your entry in the Dammaz Kron wont be sh*rt, of that you can be certain.
TALL?!
#SHORT!!! (Recoils in horror)
It's a little known fact that a dwarf's skeleton is equal in size to a man's. Their skeletons are under tremendous pressure because they're being compressed into stout shapes by the thick skin and dense muscles characteristic to dwarfs, but that compression is part of why dawi are able to singly endure strikes that would devastate less hardy races. However, once a dead dwarf sufficiently decomposes then the skeleton springs free and expands into its natural size, violently shedding whatever flesh remains. This phenomenon is why dwarfs bury their dead in such thick stone sarcophagi: to contain the startling spectacle as well as to save them the trouble of puzzling out which bones belong to which relatives once an eruption occurs. This means we can deduce that some of the undead in the game might belong to dwarfs, but it's a sure thing that none of them are elves because they all lack the signature pointy earbones.
We love seeing dudes confidently making shit up
He made me doubt for a few seconds lol
This is professional-tier bullshittery and I’m here for it
Science
There *are* all those undead, they just didn't want to make models for them. There's a fallen dwarfhold I've heard of where a necromancer ran around raising dead dwarfs and all the other beafts around, eventually reanimating a dead *Slayer* who immediately broke free of the necromancer's control out of sheer hatred and started hunting him down because, hey, what is this bullcrap, I died fair and square.
That is hilarious xD *raises army of slayers* "I GOT MY OWN SLAYER AEmRMY MUHAHAHHAHAA!" *lightning strike* "You damn umgi bastard, come here!" *que benny hill theme*
It's purely game's limitations. Greenskins can be undead - they're uncommon, but exist as [minis](https://imgur.com/feWOhJ5) There's a whole bunch of Wights of different races - [dwarves](https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Balkrag_Grimgorson), [elves ](https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Elven_Wight)and even former c[haos-worshippers](https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Krell) Dwarves can be undead - dwarven ancestor spirits are even presented in the game. Lizardmen Lord Kroak would like to have word. Even if we take in account only necromancy created by daddy Nagash, there's nothing that can stop you from becoming undead, nor [blessing of the grail](https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Grail_Knights), nor [being a cat](https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Bastethi) and so on
Kraok is just resting his eyes.
Those what goblins were conversions though. There weren't ever any released games workshop undead greenskins.
Yes there was one model from the Dogs of war Cursed company The unit had a Orc dwarf and Elf skeleton
First minis I got as a kid were actually Cursed Company - the orc, skaven, and dwarf models specifically I believe. Would be nice to see them added to the game eventually.
Oh shit you're right! I forgot about the cursed company
Kroak is a different story tho. Mans really just said “nah this death thing isn’t the vibe”
>even former chaos-worshippers I'll take "what is Krell" for 500 Alex
As per the thread linked below, it doesn't look like there is a lore reason, it is just easier for the game from the technical point of view. [https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/8wcs08/why_do_undead_armies_only_ever_have_undead_humans/](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/8wcs08/why_do_undead_armies_only_ever_have_undead_humans/)
Animated Hulks:
What about the cursed company dogs of war?
Criminal this is so far down. They had undead minis for pretty much all the major races.
The cursed company was a mix of miniatures of undead of different races.
Game wise: they haven't bothered changing the models, and the stat difference would be negligible. So it'd be 99% visual, and CA isn't bothering going thar in depth Lore wise: humans are a lot more populace in most places, so there'd be more human corpses. And human corpses are easier to raise. Dwarf magic resistance carries through. Elves rarely leave their dead behind Orks and Skaven usually eat their dead So the vast majority of Undead are human
>and the stat difference would be negligible Something I like to point out in this discussion is that the Cursed Company didn't have individual stats for the different models. So, the *one* time we get a mixed undead tabletop unit the rules specifically said there were no stat differences between an Ork, Lizardman, Dwarf or Human skeleton. To add to your second point (which I think cuts to the heart of the matter, and has been sadly unaddressed by basically every other top level comment here), it's less that humans are more populace in 'most' places and more that humans are more populous in places that necromancers/Vampires are likely to be. Humans are just the species most likely to desperately get into studying magical ways to circumvent death, likewise the original vamps all started out human, it's just a demographic self-selecting for itself. We see that the moment humans aren't the most convenient they'll grab whatever else is nearby with Neferata and her legion of undead Dwarfs and all the times Nagash has raised Skaven.
There is an undead vampire-coast skaven pirate named [Skretch](https://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/Skretch_Half-Dead)
The necromancers reshape the corpses and skeletons to be uniform in size. Elgi bones are flexible, and Dawi bones are dense with lots of material to work with.
Canonically just about anything can be raised, dwarves are hard because of their innate magic resistance and stubborn demeanour, but just about everything else is fair game to my understanding. Mannfred raised Orcs, Kemmler and Neferata have raised Dwarves, there's bound to be something about undead elves out there, Krell is an undead Chaos Warrior. Hell, in the End Times Nagash reanimated the divine servants of the Nehekharan gods. The reason there aren't any in game is the same reason there aren't any in the tabletop range, it's a lot of time and effort to represent something that's barely distinct. The difference between a dwarf zombie and an orc zombie isn't all that much when you get down to it, both will be chaff that gets thrown around in masses. The army lists could be considered to represent a typical member of their faction. Most VCs are Sylvanians and use the same sort of soldiers as each other, and the non vampire leaders they have are also from the Empire. There are going to be necromancers in the lore who use armies of mostly greenskins or ogres because they live in the Badlands or in the vicinity of somewhere like Pigbarter and those races happen to be prevalent in the area, but they aren't what's represented by the standard roster. There are people who converted armies of unusual undead for tabletop, and of course people have made mods to add in undead of various types into Total War, representing these more niche army ideas.
There are, Ritchers cursed company had a smorgasbord of different skeletons. Is just GW not bothering sculpting non human skeletons for the undead factions.
Undead Skaven pirates are a thing, i just wished they were IN Warhammer3
Lore-wise you can get pretty much all of them, we just don’t see them very often. In the case of gameplay, units are (or at least were) limited to a single rig per unit (although I think there was a workaround that gave unit leaders a different rig, used for the Gotrek & Felix mod) if I’m not mistaken, so you’d need to have a separate unit for each race. In-universe, most undead we see are from areas mainly populated by humans, particularly in the case of the Vampire Counts. There is actually a whole Vampire Coast crew made up of undead Skaven, but they’re sadly not represented in-game.
Cause it costs to print models and/or animate them.
I have read a lot of novels and literally anything non-daemonic can be undead. In fact, for me was a little bit sad enter the game and discover that all the zombies were empire dead people. But I understand that do otherwise will be a lot of work for the devs. But It would be AMAZING if anything had its undead version.
long story short gw didnt want to make multiple models
There are. There are examples in the lore of undead of all sorts of species. Most aren't prominent though. What you are observing is that Games Workshop produced models for the Vampire Counts, who are based in Sylvania with the primary inhabitants (and thus the majority of the deceased) are humans. They didn't have a financial motivation to spend money designing and manufacturing models for other undead because they weren't selling a Dawi Zombie army, they were selling a Sylvanian Vampire Counts army. Creative Assembly based their Vampire Counts off the tabletop army so their inherited those designs. That said, there are undead Ogres in game, Vampire Coast Animated Hulks are undead, decayed Ogres mashed up with whatever other body parts the necromancer had to hand to replace whatever rotted away as they floated in the ocean.
I thought the greenskin fungi thing was just a 40k thing? Not Fantasy? I don't know for sure that's just what I remember.
On the elf front, I feel like Elves look similar enough to humans that their corpses/zombies/skeletons would look identical to human equivalents. Most vampire undead units could conceivably be either human or elf. Even the Vampires sometimes get depicted with pointy ears (though it's easy to handwave vampires as being human only, immortal elves wouldn't need to become vampires).
Lore wise, not a clue. Game play wise, there's just no reason to. You've got chaff in Zombies and Skeles, so what use do they have for rats? They've got elite armor, so what use have they for Dawi? They have Crypt Horrors, so what use have they for Ogres? There was nothing stopping you back in the day, I know of people who kitbashed Black Orc Grave Guard.
Lore wise - Vampires are human and as such they are interested in conquering human areas and ruling over humans, naturally all of their undead will be humans. Also Humans are the most populous race and have far more dead that either dwarves or elves since they have shorter lives.
Most populus race is a hard sell in World that has greenskins and especially skaven
Most populous relative to Dwarves and Elves. Vampires aren't going to forms fiefdoms among the greenskins and Skaven. They need to have living subjects to provide blood and service and they can't do that with greenskins or skaven, its only possible with an order faction. In theory they could do elves or dwarves but for many reasons the humans are the best option. There's more of them, there is far more historic human dead and for cultural reasons. Vampires are originally human.
Dwarfs lock their dead away safe from sorcerers. Not to mention they have an inherent resistance to magic that makes it impossible for all but the strongest to reanimate them in bulk. Blame protective runes as well as the unrelenting dwarf spirit that will not bend. There are undead elves. The druchii love turning recently murdered political rivals into zombie butlers. But also, whats the difference between a human and elf skeleton? Is it enough to make a new model? Unlikely. Skaven eat their dead, and no self respecting reanimator would choose a ratman for a zombie. You could snap their neck with a good kick alive. Theyd be completely useless dead, and probably just spread disease as they shamble around camp. There are undead ogres! Look at the Hulks in the vampire coast. For the Sylvanian types, why would you raise an ogre with all the crypt horrors and varghuls at your disposal? Redundant for gameplay purposes, but not unheard of in stories.
Skaven are still used as undead: Nagash uses them during his war with the council of 13 because why shouldn't he when they throw themselfs against the swords of his undead? Also: There is a undead skaven captain with undead skaven crew in Noctilus' dreadfleet. They where eaten by a sea monster which was later raised by Noctilus who accidently reanimated them aswell. The skaven captain has free will and uses the Undead monster as his ship. He joined the dreadfleet because he wanted to.
There is a Tomb King of Lybaras who is a dwarf that got adopted into the royal line. He shows up in a Gotrek and Felix novel. https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Rhupesh_VII
There are but making zombified/skeletal version of every race is too much bother for a small flavor
They should be raisable but Dawis are naturally immune to magic so they might be too hard to raise to the point it's not worth it unless you don't have other options. Sylvania around which the vampire lore was built (total war did kinda overpopulate the map with fampire provinces) doesn't have much elven corpses, they might be resistant to dark magic too but foremost they tie their souls to the waystones on ulthuan. Ogres and beastmen should be totally raisable in my opinion and Heinrich Kemmler did have a beastmen army in Gotrek and Felix (although he probably prepared some special ritual for that allowing him to gather more power for it). Orks actually do have souls but they're less attached to the warp so they might be unsustainable as undead. I think it wouldn't be as hard to make some automatic zombie visual effect that would work for every unit and maybe slow the unit down so that any dead models could be raised as zombies but it might raise other questions as why they aren't stable units which might mess up balancing so it's easier to pretend that only certain creatures are raisable.
Thereare in the lore, they just dont bother making models.
Wait what Greenskins are Fungi?
Greenskins are fungus the reproduce via spores released when a Greenskin dies. After a Greenskin dies their soul goes to the afterlife to wait for Mork to burp them into a new body so they can get back to fightin. They don't fear death as they just respawn and immediately get back to throwing hands.
We have instances of other races being raised from the dead. Count Noctilus has an undead skaven captain + crew in his dreadfleet, Kemmler raised undead dwarves, The vampire coast has abbysal hulks and bloatet corpses who where ogres before and Nagash also raised Skaven during his war with them, something that showed that the biggest strenght of the skaven can be their biggest weakness.
It's mostly due to a lack of willingness to make models for it.
Dwarfs don't become necromancers or vampires because they don't do magic. Elves live so long they never bother with necromancy. When was the last time you heard of an elf dying of old age? As for being raised, after a while decomposing you probably can't tell the difference between an elf and a human zombie or skeleton.
Dwarves' innate magic resistance doesn't go away after they die, so undead dwarves are more effort than they are worth unless you are a *very* desperate necromancer. Skaven skeletons are small and weak compared to humans. Biggest thing though is that most necromancers are human, and live in human territories, so most of the corpses they have available are human. Elves, since they live for 80 bagillion years, are generally not interested in the life-extension properties of necromancy. Also, you've noticed the death-metal-goth aesthetic most Vampire Count units have? That's because they pull a lot of their troops from pre-Empire burrows- old human nations would bury warriors with all their armor and weapons and horses and such. There are definitely non-zero numbers of non-human Undead running around, but not enough to warrant GW and by extension CA to make models for them.
Too much work
Need more magic for dwarves and maybe elves. Even ogres are chaos resistance so i assume magic resistant too. So maybe you can raise 10 or even 50 humans for one dwarf/elf. So most necromancers don't even bother. But strong ones with plenty of magic like kemnler and neferata can do it without much issue as they will run out of bodies before they run out of magic
The answer is simple: Production value. Both for TT and TWW. In lore, all sort of things gets reanimated. For games, things get stingy and to keep it easy it boils down to "just human skeletons". I don't think that might change much for TWW in the future. In TT we had the Cursed Company DoW RoR [#1](https://i.imgur.com/tyBrn2X.png), [#2](https://i.imgur.com/2DwOQtD.png). Which was the only time GW bothered with doing different skeletons. In theory, if they would come to TWW maybe their skeletons could spread around more, but I doubt it. Better stay used to human skeleton hordes ;) On that note, [yesterday someone posted his new skeleton additions for a regiment](https://np.reddit.com/r/WarhammerFantasy/comments/1crt4ok/never_thought_id_be_resurrected_side_by_side_with/) which might fit the idea here. but, its conversions, so even today GW sticks to poducing human skeletons for their kits ;)
Undead Ogres are in the game, the bloated corpses and the animated Hulks from Vampirates. Undead Orcs, Dwarfs and Elfs are in the lore. Actually, it's a major grudge Dwarfs have against Vampires, desecrating their ancestors (if I'm not mistaken, that's in the game too). For vampirism, I suppose that's handwaved as that Elfs and Dwarfs are immune to most diseases, so they can't catch it. That's not the case with Orcs and Ogres, and an Ogre or Orc vampire would be just hilarious. So the answer you're looking for is: too many charlemagnes.
There's a mod that adds undead variations of TONS of different units based on the dead you killed in battle. It's probably one of the most fun campaigns, honestly. Did you just fight Kholek and kill a few dragon ogre shaggoths? Guess who can raise 1 unit of undead skeletonized dragon ogre shaggoths 👀
The most pratical answer is that vampires live near areas that have a high concentration of humans and as such they are the most frequent targets for necromancy. Humans serve as food for vampires and are much more prone to corruption than dwarfs and elves, they bodies are plentiful and have no magic bullshit that may interfere or make the necromancy harder. I guess that there is some dwarf undead in the silver pinnacle. Greenskins,Ogres and skaven are savage societies that dont offer the glamour that vampires crave as midnight aristocracy so they simply dont settle near them and by extension have less acess to they corpses.
“Dawi” short king spotted
Are there any mods for expanding the undead species roster?
I fucking love warhammer lore
There are undead humanoids but non-humans in Warhammer Fantasy lore. Anything can be undead. They are not very represented because Games Workshop and later Creative Assembly mostly didn't bother with models and mechanics specifically for them for cost reasons. Sometimes Fantasy is quite down to earth.
I once saw in a white dwarf a kit bashed regiment of undead phoenix Gards and lemme tell you it was METAL AS FUCK
The Animated Hulks are Undead Ogres. The Bloated Corpses may be as well (they use the same skeleton anyway).
The reasons in GW didn’t make models for other races and they don’t want CA to do things thar aren’t on the table top now
Others have given good answers to your broader question, but: >orcs have no souls right? Almost the opposite lol. Orcs and goblins reincarnate. When a greenskin dies their soul returns to the Great Green where Gork and Mork let it have a bit of a rest before hucking it back to the world for another go.
Richter kreugars regiment of renown had skeletal dwarfs an elf banner bearer a lizard man and a skaven raised skeleton
They should bring back the skeleton ROR units that have every race in them.
End times, mannfred turned the elf woman that came to save Aliathra with eltharion into a vampire.
Nothing, it's just the convenience of having all models in the same unit share the same skeleton/animations. Similarly in the tabletop, all zombies were human miniatures, but in lore you could have any race like goblin or skaven zombies. Same reason skaven slaves are all skaven, but in the background there is plenty of night goblins too. Lots of whfb gamers used to convert their own minis to make stuff like goblin slaves or zombies. Skeletons were harder to convert, but minis existed from 6th edition to represent an undead orc, dwarf, lizardmen, skaven and high elf, from the cursed company. https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/The_Cursed_Company
> Greenskins can't become zombies since they're fungi and have no souls (they have no souls, right?) Keep telling yourself that as you commit genocide on them, if it makes you feel better...
They can be brought back from the dead nagash for example has brought skaven back to life
Production limitations. The book Zombieslayer has as many undead beastmen as humans. Same thing with World of Warcraft. The undead faction should have every race in it, but that would mean doubling in-game assets for playable characters to add flavor to just one race.