Cursed Remains: the rising bones of the dead

The Cursed Remains were animated skeletons that haunted the Greek world, rising from scattered heaps of bone to take up arms against the living. Slight as individuals, they grew far more dangerous in great numbers, and they slipped away from death by collapsing into bone and reforming when least expected. Kratos faced them again and again across his journeys through Greece and its underworld.

Bones that rise#

The most constant trait of the Cursed Remains was their form: they always appeared as simple human skeletons. Beyond that, what they bore and how they fought varied. At first each appeared as nothing more than a pile of bones lying on the ground, but as the living drew near they rose up and assembled into full skeletons, arming themselves to fight.

Individually the Cursed Remains posed little danger. Gathered in numbers, however, they became a far greater menace. Their defining defense was their ability to come apart: when pressed, they would collapse back into the original heap of bones to avoid further harm, then reanimate and strike when their foe least suspected it. To destroy one for good demanded a deliberate finishing blow, such as smashing off its skull and shattering the rest of its frame, or seizing it and breaking it apart; struck down by ordinary means, it would only fall to pieces and rise again.

Across the Greek world#

Kratos first met the Cursed Remains among the ruined city of Heraklion, where they appeared as bone before rising into skeletons armed with a sword in one hand and a small shield in the other. He encountered them again armed with large rusted swords, capable of sweeping spinning strikes, first in the Bog of the Forgotten near the entrance to the Temple of Euryale, and afterward in the Catacombs of the Fallen and other haunted places.

They rose once more in the depths of the underworld, within the Pit of Tartarus and upon the body of the fallen titan Cronos. There they bore small shields and helmets, fighting much as the sentries of Olympus did, and shedding blood as they fell, where elsewhere they had spilled none.