Dead and Reborn

Typically having no lands to call their own, undead with an awakened sense of self are typically perpetual foreigners, wanderers in a land and often a time not their own. Compounding matters, most mortal cultures carry within them an instinctual fear of death and the dead, and many associate necromancy specifically with dark tidings. This forms a wall of (often well earned) prejudice and hatred that sentient undead find themselves up against, and many undead choose to hide their necrotic natures behind clothes, masks, and pungent perfumes when journeying into civilization.

Depending on composition, humanoid undead typically range a wide gamut from 20 to 300 pounds, and may possess empty eyes, a colored flame-like magical aimuss in their sockets, or harrowed, surprisingly mortal eyes burning with an inner fire. Hair (if they have it at all) is usually lank, dark, and wrought with grime and grave dirt that no amount of cleansing will fully remove.

Service and Freedom

Undeath is effectively immortality, a strong reason why many mortal spellcasters of a certain moral bent consider it a viable alternative to actually dying. Still, it is not immortality without price - senses and emotions dull, food and drink no longer have taste, and often an undead state comes alongside a subservience of will and unthinking service to a master who likely does not have the world's best intentions at heart.

    Some undead are born into freedom, while others earn it or have it thrust upon them. Regardless, all undead that have freedom greatly cherish it, as the reminders of what could easily happen were they not fortunate enough to possess free will abound throughout history. Many consider it their sacred duty to free other mindless undead, or simply dispatch them wherever they may be found. The reason is straightforward enough: a final rest awarded to all mortals is greatly preferential to eternal slavery to the likes of a short-sighted, megalomaniacal wizard.

Fallen Home, Forgotten Past

For many awakened undead, the past is a distant homeland to which they may never return, holding names and faces now partially-forgotten, and loves and lives as dead as they are. The anguish of this loss is enough to drive many mad, but others use this rage and pain as a source of power and drive, carrying them further on the road to whatever dark destiny awaits.

Frequently, entire countries, customs, and cultures the undead may be familiar with no longer exist, and the sentient dead behaves or speaks in a antiquated fashion because of this. It may be even more difficult than usual for such undead to relate to more modern mortals, and typically these undead leverage what companions they may have to bridge this epoch-long communication gap.

Undead Names

Many undead that awaken into sentience prefer to keep the names they held in their mortal lives. For others 
however, their mortal names are forgotten or have lost meaning. These undead often adopt nicknames given to them by their former masters or present companions, and hold them to be as true as any other creature's birth name.

Examples of names given in this fashion may be seen below:

Names: Rattlebones, Spore, Rotface, Raven, Bane, Carver, Drudge, Rook, Mort, Pale, Minion, Crumble, Shade