[2] The tantric types of ro-langs are raised from the dead through a ritual for personal reasons, such as to serve a necromancer and satisfy his lust for the power of the occult.
[2] Demonic ro-langs are created by an evil spirit with the goal of contaminating other humans; they are independent, and do not serve a master.
According to American scholar and Tibetologist Turrell Wylie, ro-langs can be described in one of three storytelling formats.
The characters described in the stories are often labeled without names, instead with title such as "mother", "father", "prince", etc.
[2] A comatose story takes place at a definite location, a short time ago.
The ro-langs can be classified by one of five vulnerabilities: 1. lpags-langs or skin-zombie; 2. khrag-langs or blood-zombie; 3. sha-langs or flesh-zombie; 4. rus-langs or bone-zombie; 5. rme-langs or mole-zombie.
A blood-zombie must bleed, a flesh-zombie must be deeply cut or have flesh removed, a bone-zombie must have a fractured bone, and a mole-zombie is only vulnerable at a mole on the body.
Ro-langs are unable to bend at the waist; to exploit this weakness, many buildings in early Tibetan architecture were built with very low door frames.