Goruum - The Zombie
They say he still stands at the gates—armor rusted into his flesh, eyes full of that dull, waiting hate. He doesn’t wander. He doesn’t moan. He just waits… for the call.
Role in Its Society:
Goruum is not a mindless corpse—he is a bound sentinel, cursed to guard the ruined threshold of an ancient fortress that no longer exists. Once a loyal footsoldier of a forgotten kingdom, he was animated by necromantic residue left behind by the battlefield’s mass death. Unlike typical zombies, Goruum does not roam or hunger without cause; he awaits commands that never come.
Undead and necromancers see him as an old artifact—proof that binding death to duty works. To mortals, he is an unsettling legend of a corpse too stubborn to lie down.
Appearance Description:
Goruum’s body is mostly skeletal, but wrapped in sloughing sinew and cracked black leather. His breastplate is half-melted into his chest from an old fire spell. A rusted tower shield remains bolted to one arm, and a shattered longsword is wedged in his torso, hilt-up like a handle. His jaw hangs crooked, broken long ago. Vines grow through his ribs, binding him to the gate he guards.
Backstory:
Goruum died in the final hours of the Siege of Shale Gate. Refusing to abandon his post, he fell on the steps of the fortress he had sworn to protect. An arcane detonation, unleashed during the siege’s climax, raised hundreds of the dead—but Goruum alone remained standing… unmoving, forever bound to his purpose.
Even as centuries passed, the gate collapsed, the kingdom fell into myth, and the world forgot the war. But not Goruum. He still guards the invisible border between then and now.
