Living Zombies [Horror/Zombies]

[AlexanderHowl]

Living zombies are living entities (usually human, but technically any higher animal would work) that exhibit any combination of decreased intelligence, increased aggression, and, sometimes, increased perception, willpower, strength, and/or other advantages. They may be created through divine curses, magical rituals, or scientific processes, and they may or may not be contagious. For example:

The Rage Plague

Stage One: ST+1, IQ-1, Per+2, Will+2, Bad Temper (15-), and Berserk (15-)

Stage Two: ST+2, IQ-2, Per+4, Will+4, Bad Temper (12-), and Berserk (12-)

Stage Three: ST+3, IQ-3, Per+6, Will+6, Bad Temper (9-), and Berserk (9-)

Stage Four: ST+4, IQ-4, Per+8, Will+8, Bad Temper (6-), and Berserk (6-)

The Rage Plague (a mutation of the rabies virus) is an example of a highly contagious disease that transforms its victims into living zombies. Whenever a potential target is exposed to bodily fluids that contains the Rage Plague, they must make a HT roll. If they critically succeed, they do not catch the disease. If they succeed, they become carriers of the disease. If they fail, they proceed the stage one over the next week. If they critically fail, they die within the next week due to inflammation of the brain.

Rage Plague carriers are asymptomatic and will not progress to stage one, but they may spread the Rage Plague to anyone who comes into unprotected contact with their bodily fluids (as above). If an individual progresses to stage one due to failing a HT roll, they roll another HT roll a week after reaching stage one. If they critically fail, they die. If they fail, they proceed to stage two. If they succeed, they stablize but are contagious. If they critically succeed, they stablize and are no longer contagious.

The HT rolls continue until the character stablizes, reaches stage four, or dies. While the symptomatic population is problematic, it is the carriers that are the true threat. They are capable of spreading the disease through donating blood, kissing, sex, etc., and they are unaware of the threat.

So, have you used living zombies in your settings? Are they similar to the victims of the rage plague (which suffer from a 0 CP change) or are they less capable? In your opinion, are living zombies better than undead zombies and, if so, why?

[Antiquation!]

I have used living zombies in several campaigns, in several different varieties. I don't necessarily think either living or 'regular' undead zombies are "better," but I think that certain types fit certain campaigns better than others. It also depends greatly on the type of implementation even within each of those broad spheres of undead, as with zombies of either type you can have a huge deal of variety (easily evidenced by GURPS Zombies and a massive plethora of media inspiration).

My living zombies have never resembled living rage zombies, but I don't necessarily dislike the idea. Voodoo zombies in particular tend to have a very distinctive style to them which I've enjoyed in the past.

Recent example I posted elsewhere of live zombies in one of my campaigns:

In one instance of living zombies, there was a bit of a "twist" with an ongoing, seemingly mental affliction spreading (sometimes one person, sometimes an entire village at a time) in which the person would become more or less catatonic, before one night mysteriously walking off into the darkness, taking nothing with them and disappearing with little trace, and no one knowing where they went. Occasionally resulting in eerie ghost towns.

This eventually culminated in a huge mass of these zombies (still living) showing up at the PC's doorstep, seemingly all enslaved and interlinked by a single intelligent hive mind and moving all of the zombies as a single amorphous "body" of sorts. Turns out it was a way for the Sleeping King under the Black Ziggurat to manifest himself into the world again, and exact his vengeance as a side dish (the PC's having earlier broken into his temple with high explosives and ransacking it, ignoring all the written and physical warnings/dangers and reawakening him in the process).

It was a lot of fun, and slightly more complex than dealing with "regular" undead in that these people were still alive and could perhaps be saved... but at a certain point, it becomes "us or them" especially when you have 200+ literally shaking down the rickety structure you're standing on top of. Then again around 3/4 of the zombies they encountered then were cannibalistic tribesmen from the nearby jungles, so the PC's may not have been quite as conflicted at that particular moment...

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Living zombies are living entities (usually human, but technically any higher animal would work) that exhibit any combination of decreased intelligence, increased aggression, and, sometimes, increased perception, willpower, strength, and/or other advantages.

Not seeing the need for increased perception... also...

Your Rage Zombies here are perfectly playable as PCs.

So, have you used living zombies in your settings?

Nope. But I mostly run Fantasy or Fallout, so, no not really.

(technically in Fallout the Feral Ghouls are basically 'living' zombies, but I don't run them as such in my system, having given them the full run of Undead benefits in my setting)

Are they similar to the victims of the rage plague (which suffer from a 0 CP change) or are they less capable?

Since they probably should have Intolerance (non-Ghouls), my Ferals are far harder to get along with. Your's don't attack on sight, for instance.

In your opinion, are living zombies better than undead zombies and, if so, why?

No. They have different uses and different facets.

[Varyon]

In the zombie apocalypse campaign I designed (and managed to run all of one session of...), the zombie plague was magitechnological in nature (nanomachines that convert matter into mana, which they used to run), and normal zombies could be divided into shamblers and bleeders. Shamblers were unliving corpses forced to move about by the nanites. They were slow, but highly resilient. Bleeders were either those who succumbed to the plague while living, or were shamblers that the nanites had had enough time to fully repair. They were living, and had some access to their old memories (although for former shamblers the brain was previously damaged enough that pretty much all of this was lost), but were rather controlled by the nanites. They were more fragile than the shamblers, but much faster. Both types were a bit stronger than they were prior to infection, and the bleeders were a bit faster than ordinary humans, but neither were really intended as serious threats - that was reserved for the special undead, basically bleeders that had been remodeled by the nanites to be greater threats. Technically there were shambler variants of each (to represent those that had been killed, but the body not burned, and that the nanites hadn't managed to fully repair), but I never got around to even introducing any of the special undead (and their shambler variants would have likely stayed hidden while under repairs).

[Anders]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Living zombies are living entities (usually human, but technically any higher animal would work) that exhibit any combination of decreased intelligence, increased aggression, and, sometimes, increased perception, willpower, strength, and/or other advantages.

So... murderhobos?

[dcarson]

A story I like had a nice scientific version.

But the prion is a serious problem. We irradiated some of our sample so we could track it, and we tried testing it on chimpanzees. It goes straight through the blood-brain barrier and creates specific lesions. There’s a lesion between the amygdala and the inferotemporal cortex, so the victim loses the ability to recognize the people he knows as the people they are. So he loses all friend-or-foe identification.”

“Like Capgras Syndrome?” Alex asked.

There was a big pause. “Umm, yes, exactly like some forms of Capgras Delusion, down to the usual location of the brain damage.

The lieutenant went on, “To make things worse, lesions also appear on the hypothalamus and prefrontal cortex in places we associate with control of aggression and predation.”

“Aaaand this means…”

Lieutenant Marshall concluded, “We end up with a chimpanzee that will attack any threat without hesitation, and it will not recognize anyone or anything except as a threat. We ended up with four chimpanzees that would just sit perfectly still and then launch themselves at anything that came their way, and would not stop until the threat was gone or extremely dead. After a while, they weren’t interested in food or sleep or sex or anything but waiting for a threat to attack. I think this means exposed people would become killing machines. They wouldn’t do anything except kill everyone and everything in their range, and then they’d hunt down everything else and try to kill them too.”

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by dcarson

A story I like had a nice scientific version.

Loss of Friend or Foe identification, combined with increased aggression and predatory behavior, is going to give results quite different from "zombie." "Insane spree killer" is more likely. Having a large portion of the population suddenly turn into such is going to be devastating, but particularly considering the infected will be targeting each other, as well as favoring whatever weapons they have at home (in an area with few firearms, expect to see a lot of people with large kitchen knives, hammers, and tire irons) rather than unarmed, it's going to look like an incredibly chaotic civil war more than a zombie apocalypse. Of course, "zombies don't target each other" is often one of the odder bits of a "living zombie" story already.

Still, that could make for an interesting setting. Have the disease take some time between infection and going all-out spree killing, with increasing paranoia as it progresses, and you can end up with some very well-prepared infected (as they spend a good deal of the disease progression stockpiling weapons, ammunition, and other supplies).

[Agemegos]

We discussed a lot of possibilities once before in a thread about hard-science zombies.

[AlexanderHowl]

Living zombies are also not necessarily hard science zombies. The Rage Plague Living Zombie is reasonably hard science, the devolution is within the realm of possibility and it happens slowly enough that it might be plausible, unlike many 'scientific' zombies. Of course, part of the realistic changes are a reduction of the mental governors that limit ST and a reduction of the vulnerability to shock that limits HP, which is makes them such a threat.