"It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally (I know not by what agency) from their graves, and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living, and again return to the tomb, which of its own accord spontaneously opened to receive them, did not frequent examples, occurring in our own times, suffice to establish this fact, to the truth of which there is abundant testimony"
-William of Newburgh
So a player character died. My condolences - my players always take that shit hard. The rest of the party probably couldn't afford to resurrect her and her player probably had another character all ready to go anyway. Maybe they buried her.Anyway.
About a day's journey from her grave, a charming old man appears. He is offering to sell a scroll of resurrection for ridiculously cheap. (At this point the players may believe that the old man is a crudely shoehorned way for the DM to apologise for killing of a character and bring her back into the game. That's funny.)
The scroll will detect as magical and examination by those knowledgeable in the arcane will confirm that it should indeed summon the dead. However, the scroll does not work. Or, at least, it appears not to. Though after being cast on a corpse it no longer detects as magical.
In d66 days after the scroll is cast, begin questioning the player about the dead character. Where did she grow up? Did her family move around? Did she have any close friends back home? Did she ever go to school? Was she a member of any organisations? What was her hair colour? Eye colour? What tailors did she favour? Who would she have liked to have been, had she lived? Explain nothing. When the player runs out of biographical details, the dead character will finally seek out her old party and kill them one by one until she is saved.
Probably.
Let's talk about summoning a revenant.
