Just a bunch of silly ideas on how being a resurrected corpse would affect Lewyn and his life. I'm making a bunch of these, for what different kinds of undead he could be. I have ghost, vampire, ghoul…
The (un)Life of King Lewyn
No one actually knew where (the de jure King of Silesia) Lewyn went when he wasn't needed. He had an uncanny knack for not being on the battlefield, and somehow arriving at the castles just as Seliph seized them. Most of the older members of the Liberation Army paid Lewyn's antics no mind, as they had gotten used to him in the last Holy War. The younger generation, however, started making theories about where Lewyn was going and what he was doing.
"He's doing research," Seliph insisted. "He tells me about the enemy and the conditions of the towns we visit before we get there."
"Then where does he go after that?" asked Ced. "He hangs around camp sometimes and does promotions, but he disappears right before we sortie."
"Probably singing for coin somewhere," said Patty. "Or out drinking."
That Fee and Ced didn't immediately admonish Patty for insinuating that their father was a drunkard probably spoke volumes about their relationship with Lewyn.
"Hey, Julia, you've been living with Lewyn for a while," said Faval. "What does he do when he's out?"
Julia shook her head "Lewyn… didn't let me out of his sight, so I saw a lot of him. He did play for coin, but that was to support us. I've never seen him drink, either. He mostly just sleeps."
While no one believed Julia to be a liar, no one actually thought that this was the case. Ironically enough, that was actually the truth.
Lewyn was a zombie. No, that is not a gross metaphor on his sleep habits, he's actually a corpse resurrected by a dragon. After being killed by Manfroy, Forseti had appeared before Lewyn and offered him time on the earth in exchange for fulfilling Forseti's goals. Lewyn had accepted, and never regretted it since.
However, there were many times when Lewyn almost regretted it. His life no longer belonged to him, he could no longer fight to protect those who he cared for, and he was forbidden to become close to his own children. But besides the emotional pains, Lewyn also had to deal with the needs of the undead. Contrary to popular belief, zombies don't eat brains. They can't eat anything. Lewyn's body had to recharge by other means.
The power of Forseti allowed Lewyn to recharge by sunlight, but sunlight was a poor substitute for food. Lewyn no longer had the energy to fight, let alone one-shot all of his enemies like he used to.
Sleeping preserved precious energy, so Lewyn usually slept the day away whenever it was cloudy out. Back when he took care of Julia, he told her that 'no one wants to listen to a bard when it's raining,' and she accepted this axiom without doubt.
Unfortunately, a sleeping Lewyn was almost indistinguishable from a dead Lewyn. That had caused a lot of problems in the past, especially right after his death and before he had Julia.
Lewyn was already used to the life of a wanderer from his youth, so he had not expected his new (un)life to be that different. The added danger was a given, but the undead factor played far too often for his liking.
One day, Lewyn walked from Heirhein to Nordion on his winterly migration to Verdane. He couldn't feel the cold, but the lack of sunlight was a problem. The weather had unexpectedly turned stormy, so he was forced to seek shelter underneath one of the castle's door frames.
The next morning, at around dawn, Lewyn woke up buried underneath a small pile of bodies. A priest was droning in the background, and Lewyn could barely make out the words.
"…my son, gaze upon the horrors… in ashes, there is fire…"
Normally, Lewyn wouldn't have purposefully alerted someone to his state of undeath. But he was pretty much drained of energy, the corpses above him were blocking all but a small window of sunlight, the corpses were starting to smell… and the priest went on droning his prayer.
So Lewyn let out a loud groan, hoping that the priest would assume that he was simply a drunk dumped on a mass grave. The priest stopped chanting.
"Peter, go check."
Lewyn heard a small boy's footsteps run towards him and the sound of someone slowly shifting the bodies above him. In a surprisingly short amount of time, the young boy had shifted the bodies off of Lewyn enough so that Lewyn could emerge without breaking anything.
As soon as the priest caught sight of Lewyn, he gasped. "B-by Blaggi!"
The boy beamed. "It's a miracle, Father!"
Lewyn took the time to stumble and feign a hangover. "Th-thank you, f-f-f-Faather…" he moaned. "M-must have had t-too much to drink last night…"
The priest looked horrified, for some reason. Strange, thought Lewyn. Anyone who can pray at a pile of dead bodies should be able to stomach a drunk…
And then Lewyn felt some sharp thing sticking at least an inch out of his chest. He looked down. It was a dagger.
He poked it. Yup, that was his heart. He really should be dead by now. Surprisingly, there wasn't any blood spurting out. Hm… What could he do?
Option one: I can laugh and say, "Got you!" (That would make him angry)
Option two: I can roll my eyes back and pretend to be a zombie. (That would also make him angry)
Option three: I can roll my eyes back, pretend to be a zombie, and do the moonwalk. (I can't slide on grass)
Option four: I can pretend I'm not hurt. (Probably will get me into more trouble)
Option five: I can pay the guy to pretend this never happened. (That would offend him. Plus, I'm pretty sure that I'm out of cash)
Option six: Pretend the knife is fake.
Option seven: Like six, but better.
He looked up at the priest. "Must have been a rough night, eh?" he smiled weakly. "Did the troupe leave me behind?"
The priest tried to collect his thoughts. "Er… I… do not believe that I saw any… troubadours in the city…"
"No, I'm pretty sure that there was a circus trope that passed by," Lewyn insisted. "You must have missed it."
"Ah, yes… haha… we might have missed the circus, Peter," said the priest. It was much easier for him to wrap his mind around the idea of missed circus than the notion that a dead man was walking. Because dead people did not spontaneously come back to life.
Peter looked at Lewyn, and back at the priest. "But we've been in Nordion for-"
"The circus trope that had the act with the fake knives," said Lewyn.
"Aha… it looks like some of your friends might have been a bit careless…" said the priest. "Lucky that you're not dead, eh?"
Peter looked confused. "But he wasn't breathing when we-"
The priest cuffed Peter lightly. "He must have been breathing very lightly, then."
"Yes… ha…ha…" Lewyn said. "Well, I had best be off… I need catch up with everyone… ha…"
That was a close one, thought Lewyn as he walked off, leaving the stunned priest and the confused boy. I'll never sleep outside a castle or a village again.
Unfortunately, before Lewyn took in Julia, inns were just as much as a problem. Some inns were honest and didn't rob patrons in the night. Lewyn had stayed at a few, and found his throat slit in the night. The innkeepers always looked pale when he greeted them the next morning and inquired about his lost possessions, but no one could say anything without exposing the fact that they killed him in the night. But even good inns could be pretty bad, too.
During one winter in Verdane, Lewyn spent most of his days wandering the country, playing music, and gathering information on the politics of the world. The empire had not really bothered with subjugating Verdane after Sigurd's band of merry men had invaded it (Lewyn privately wondered why Prince Jamke stayed with the army when he could have claimed the throne), so Verdane was a good place for political exiles to stop by. The sun wasn't constant, but it was the sunniest place in Jugdral during the winter. Lewyn privately wished that he could see a Silesian winter again, but knew that it could never happen.
Anyways, after a tiring day of walking, Lewyn checked into an inn to sleep. He also paid one of the maids to wake him up at dawn.
The next morning, rather than being shaken awake or even having a bucket of water dumped on him, Lewyn woke up to screaming.
He jolted awake, grabbing his Wind on instinct, and looked around the room. One of the maids was standing over his bed, her face pale and her mouth wide open. She appeared to have stopped screaming the moment Lewyn sat up.
"Good morning," he said cheerfully. "Did something happen?"
The maid (unfortunately not the fainting type) whimpered. "Y-your pulse… your heart wasn't beating…"
Lewyn fumbled for an excuse. He really should come up with a list these days. "Well, you see, I have a condition that-"
"EYAAAAHH! Zombie! ZOMBIE!" The maid screamed and ran downstairs. Moments later, Lewyn heard men's voices and the sound of weapons being drawn.
Ten minutes later, Lewyn was running away from a mob of villagers wielding torches, scythes, and pitchforks, as well as Archers with flaming arrows and Shamans with light tomes.
But probably the worst problems with Lewyn's undeath came from being attacked by bandits. When he stayed at a village, he would normally let the mercenaries the village hired to take care of them (mercenaries were making a real profit these days), occasionally taking down a few bandits who got too close to the houses. Castles were never attacked by bandits, unless they were particularly stupid. The road was the biggest danger when it came to bandits.
The first time he was attacked, he easily dispatched them using his Wind. And then he passed out from the effort. Lewyn then resolved not to use magic unless it was an emergency.
That became a problem the next time he was waylaid.
"Hold!" shouted a large man with an axe. "Stand and deliver!"
Lewyn sighed and crossed his arms. "Look, I don't want a fight, but I don't have very much money. I'm not fit enough to even try fighting any of you, and I'm male, so you won't get very much from selling me. Unless you go to a highly specialized market. If that's the case, I'm not a virgin. I have two kids."
The axe man looked confused. "So… are you surrendering?"
Lewyn shrugged. "Sure. Take all my stuff. Can I keep my scarf? And my flute? And my underwear?"
The bandits really didn't want to go to the trouble of slaughtering a defenseless man who had no intention of fighting back. Unfortunately, the next bandits who came along weren't willing to negotiate with a penniless man.
"Stand and deliver!" shouted another man with an axe.
"I already gave all my money to the last bandits who came along," said Lewyn smoothly. "I am also frail, male, and not a virgin."
"You sure?" said the axe man menacingly.
"Yes, I'm sure. I have a wife and two kids (they don't live here, so unless you want to cross half the continent and several mountains)-"
The axe man smashed Lewyn's shoulder with his axe. Lewyn just crossed his arms. "You know that won't change anything. I'm completely unarmed and not a threat to you at all."
The axe man and his men (bandits tended to be rather non inclusive) staggered back. "Y-you're a monster!"
"You can't kill me, I can't hurt you. How about we stop here and call it a day?"
Then the axe man fainted.
Pretty much every time run in with bandits ended with him either giving them his money, letting them mutilate him, or rarely calling for help. All that had to change once he adopted Julia.
With Julia around, Lewyn was never mistaken for a corpse in inns again, but that added a new set of problems. As a young, defenseless girl (and no way to get Light magic tomes), Julia was in danger of being kidnapped and sold into slavery, at least more so than Lewyn was.
At first, Lewyn had forbidden Julia to leave the inn when they stayed so that she could vouch for him. Later, he forbade her to leave the room without him.
Things were fine during the first years after he met Julia, but Julius's (or rather, Loptyr's) influence began to spread and more people were coming after Julia for her Major Naga blood.
One of the reasons why Lewyn gave Julia to Seliph to take care of was because he was exhausted from using so much magic to take care of her. The business that he had to take care of was to go away and get a lot of rest and sunlight.
But that's another story.
TO BE CONTINUED!
Sunlight is a weird thing. But the other idea I had was recharging through wind, which I didn't think would work out. Yeah, Forseti is the wind god, but how would he convert wind energy to nutrients? Photosynthesis is more plausible.