Hmm, I have another idea for and rp, but I think it's courtesy to run it by you all first for more ideas/ inputs. I'm feeling creepy, or rather I'm in a creepy mood. I blame the month.
For our parts in this role play, I think I would like for us to be husks of the recently deceased. I have not yet discerned our purpose for living. However, the length of our unnatural lives all depend on the extent to which we utilize certain abilities of the awakened mind.
1 ability, only one, and their applications must be intimately related to the life the character once led. The more they are used, the more our unnatural bodies start to steadily decay. We can hide the stench in alcohols and salts, but eventually we will turn to dust where we stand.
An example of this might be a character who lived out his life in a mental asylum suffering from the delusions of a schizophrenic mind. He died when he committed suicide leaping over the side of the highest floor. When he opened his eyes he was under ground and so sure that the voices in his mind were telling him the truths, he dug his way out of the pine box and lay on the bare earth in the rain. His ability is to force his own delusions on the minds of others. He had very little control over when he does it, but his only perception that is quite painfully real is the reeking stench of the rotten flesh in his back.
I propose that some of the more savvy corpses have created their own organization to hopefully help educate the most recently undead on how to maintain their forms. I still can't discern a motive. It vexes me.