Irradiated Undead

To survive in the unforgiving expanse of space, creatures must be naturally adapted or take protective measures. While the dead rarely need such precautions against these threats, sometimes radiation can animate a corpse (or several) to a state of undeath!

Scientists and religious scholars alike debate whether a specific type of radiation is to blame for this phenomenon that spontaneously triggers unlife, but all agree on the dangers such irradiated creatures pose. Many types of radiation could be the cause: intense bursts of cosmic radiation emitted by the stars, magically enhanced radioactive isotopes found in a planet's or moon's crust, or even the advent of new energy sources in a society (or its radioactive waste) contaminating the land. Regardless of their specific origin, irradiated undead all pose the same threat—they emit ionizing radiation that ravages everything around them.