Hey I’ll dispute that, I’m just some obsessive dweeb and people correct me or point out things I’ve forgotten all the time!
I THINK WE’VE SCIENCED TOO FAR HERE, ANON.
But in all seriousness I have so many derpy headcanons about how their preservation could possibly work, and it probably differs from DK to DK depending on how they were raised and what school of magic they follow. Frost and blood DKs probably reek a lot less than their unholy brothers and sisters overall (with exceptions, I’m sure), simply because one magic is far more preservative and the other has a huge focus on regeneration. I imagine plenty of blood DKs have a still-beating heart and a lifelike temperature, perhaps slightly lower.
Oliver is Unholy and a gross and stinky room temperature; a soup of perpetual rot and regeneration that depends on soul energy stolen by his runeblade and can’t be taken further than the exact state he was risen. Any grafting will rot away because the magic wasn’t “programmed” to sustain that flesh. I will openly admit that I devised this concept for him to stop the parade of people trying to fix his face.
I like the idea that preservation is more of a reward to keep fighting than something they’re just plain given, with the exception of maybe some of the Lich King’s favorites.
But that’s just meeee~
Tevruden is basically room-temperature, and pale like a dead body most of the time. It’s only when he starts actually calling on blood DK powers that he starts looking a little flush and he’s no longer cold to the touch. As for blood DK regeneration; there’s been at least one occasion where Tev has gotten his arm taken off and he casually dispatched his enemy, then walked over to where it was and ~scoruge magic’ed~ it back on while the people around him were freaking out about it. (Now he just gets Van to sew it back on and does the regeneration thing out of sight of mortals.)