Forgotten

The forgotten are dead who have not passed on, yet walk with their minds unveiled and remember everything. Scholars gave them the name: forgotten by death, and forgotten by Rakash.¹

The dead who remain

Those who died violently, those who left business unfinished, and sometimes those seized by a curse cannot move on to The Gate. They are not empty corpses raised from the grave by a necromancer: whether in body or in spirit, these dead remain in the world with their souls.¹

Most such lost souls in the mortal world lose their minds. Most do not know that they are dead; some have a consciousness clouded as if in deep sleep, and some are consumed by a bloodlust that leaves them no different from an animal. The fate seems cruel and dangerous to mortals, though it is held that the lost souls are at least spared the torment of their memories and the longing for what they have lost.¹

The forgotten are the exception. A forgotten may regain consciousness and wake after years of mindless wandering among the graves, or on the very first day of their cursed life. No one, the forgotten included, knows why death spared them the fate of the other damned, and the privilege may not last.²

Appearance

A forgotten looks as they did before death. They keep the features of the people they belonged to, and even the battle wounds of their mortal life. Only their newly cursed bodies are paler than before, their eyes turn ice-blue or grey, and their bodies never grow warm: anyone who touches their skin knows at once that they have long left the warmth of life behind. A little makeup and confidence can hide some of the other signs.¹

Some have no shadow, some do not appear in mirrors, some are troubled by strong light, and some struggle to cross running water. These ghostly signs are not as fixed or permanent as in other damned; they come and go like the symptoms of an illness, growing stronger and weaker.¹

An unliving body

A forgotten can make friends, enjoy themselves and take pleasure in the simple things of the body, but one of their five senses is always weakened. Some cannot see; some have a dull sense of touch and feel no pain; some hear a constant ringing and whispers they cannot understand; for most, everything they eat and drink tastes of ash.²

Their bodies do not decay or give off a foul smell, and show no visible wear over many long years. Their hearts do not beat, no blood moves in their veins, and they do not breathe. A forgotten therefore neither ages nor has children, and does not die of natural causes, being dead already.²

A need for purpose

A forgotten must follow a purpose left over from their former life or find a new one; otherwise they slowly begin to lose their sanity again. If the purpose they devote themselves to goes unfulfilled for too long, or if they fail at it, they turn into an angry spirit. That change is slow, a process of decades filled with pain and sorrow.²

Names and society

A forgotten keeps the name they used before dying and rising. Sometimes, though, they forget parts of it, and as time passes more pieces fall away and the name grows shorter: someone called Balthasar might become Balthar after death, and after a long while simply Thar.²

The forgotten have no language or culture of their own, and they do not usually live together in communities.²

Lineages

Two subraces of forgotten are found in Teneris: the Desolate Forgotten, whose mortal bodies witnessed The Desolation, and the Gravewalker Forgotten, who have risen from their graves for reasons unknown.²

Other uses of the name

Some well-read sages and adventurers also use the name Forgotten for a different kind of being: entities malformed and lost to void corruption, which are sometimes wrongly called Voidborn.³