: Personally, I assumed that Thrall are mentally controlled
: by the Fallen Lords and their Shades. However, each
: Shade and Fallen controls at least a hundred Thrall,
: accounting for their lack of skill. So when they are
: no longer needed in ambush positions, a Fallen can
: simly unearth all buried Thrall and get them to rejoin
: his main force. Also, the Thrall buried here may not
: have been unique. By having small groups of Thrall
: buried throughout the swamps, they would be able to
: sense the vibrations in the mud, and thus their
: masters would know exactly where the main body of the
: Legion were. They would also be useful for attacking
: any scouting party, as if the Legion's scouts could be
: effectively eliminated, it would be incredibly
: vulnerable to ambushes and there would have been
: nothing to stop the entire Legion wandering into a
: quagmire and sinking.
I have no quarrel with this. I just think it's an unnecessary complication to say that a few particular Thrall were buried to ambush some guy who, it turned out, was actually shooting at them at the time. There was a thunderstorm, Thrall were being buried to ambush anyone who came by, and that's all the explanation necessary, say I.
: Soulless, on the other hand, probably have some kind of
: ''programming'', eg. ''follow these Thrall, attack all
: living you see'', etc. although they would be able to
: accept verbal orders from their Fallen, one of their
: Shades, or anyone who their Fallen had told them to
: obey.
GURPS has a bit of info on the relative intellects of the various undead. Thrall, like Ghasts, don't *have* to be controlled directly--they're smart enough to be trained to a very limited extent. The stupidest undead are Stygian Knights, who are basically simple robots--they do what you tell them and nothing else.
--SiliconDream
