"Mmhmm. It's one of the more common ways to get magic, where I'm from. There are lots of gods, and some people care about the same thing a god does - travel, in my case - enough and in the right way to act as their agent, and if they devote themselves to that, the god they're following will give them magic, a little at first and more as they prove themselves with it."

"Where are you from?"

"Well, I spend most of my time on the continent of Ospor, but I've never heard of Gusu, so I'll be surprised if you've heard of us. I had thought the gods were known of everywhere, though, at least the most popular ones. I have a map with me, though, maybe we can figure it out in the morning."

"I've heard of gods, just not ones that give people magic like that."

"-huh. What kind of magic do you have - if I say there are eight kinds, does that sound familiar at all?"

"No..."

"Huh. All right, I'm very far from home, then, that's supposed to be universal."

"I...see. Well, uh, we have--one kind--maybe two technically but, uh..."

"I probably don't need to know about it right now, unless it's going to matter in the next day or two."

"...Probably not?"

"It can wait, then. I will need to decide what spells to ask for in the morning, though, if you're having any problems besides the undead that I might be able to help with."

"Ahh...you would probably have to ask someone else." 

"All right." Tromp tromp. "Is there an inn at Cloud Recesses?"

"...There are guest quarters." 

"Would I be able to stay there for the night, do you think? I don't usually mind camping but I'm sure you'd rather not have an extra shambler to hunt down tomorrow."

"Yes, of course. You expect you would die and become a walking corpse if you camped out?"

"That's how I'm used to undead working, at least. It'd be safe enough to camp most places I'm used to, but not knowing what's making them rise here I wouldn't risk it, not without protective magic and preferably someone on watch on top of that."

"Re...sentment?"

"-we get ghosts, that way, at home. Sometimes, not very often. We don't get walking corpses without something more serious happening."

"More serious like what?"

"Someone doing magic to make them, most often, or a hostile god in the area, or a leakage of negative energy across the planes, or something like that."

"...Hostile god? Leakage of negative energy across the planes???"

"Neither of those is common at all. And I'm the wrong sort of cleric to deal with a hostile god, but an energy leakage isn't that hard to handle if you catch it early enough; I helped with one once." Yawn.

"I have never heard of either of these things. I mean, I've heard of entities that tried to become gods and failed and it went badly, but..."

"Well, it sounds like this is a different world, you might not have them here at all. Hostile gods are just - gods, of things that are bad for people, most of them don't have anything to do with undead but some do. Usually pretty weak ones, as gods go, not many people will follow one like that. And planar cosmology I probably shouldn't try to explain on two hours' sleep if you've never heard of it before."