Zombie

Weaknesses: | Long Range

### Appearance

Zombies are purple-skinned humanoids in torn, decrepit clothing with grey hair and gaping holes where their eyes should be. They walk with their arms outstretched.

### Background

Zombies are unfortunate villagers and adventurers who fell prey to Death's curse. The curse strips the living of their free will, their minds overwhelmed by unthinking rage and a never-ending craving for the flesh and blood of the living. The curse is a cruel one, from which death is no release ; even as the body rots, the spirit remains trapped by the curse. While most zombies are simply corpses animated by the curse, many zombies are living beings, now prisoners of their own bodies. The body being rotten to a nearly non-functional mess by the curse, moving only because of the curse, the only possible mercy that can given to those unfortunate people is death.

### Tactical analysis

Zombies are extremely weak ; their rotten, almost liquefied flesh cannot stop any reasonably solid blow and their rags offer little protection against weapons. Likewise, the rotting effect not only give them a horrible look but also destroy the articulations and muscles of their bodies, meaning that they are moving mostly only because of the curse. As such, their movements and general agility is inferior to that of living beings by a large margin.

Most of their mind been overwhelmed by their need for flesh, zombies will pause briefly when someone enter their room and then give pursuit. Not being especially bright due to said overwhelming craving for blood, zombies will take the most direct approach toward their victims, often getting stuck in scenery, objects, other foes' path, or even get in each others' way. Likewise, their low constitution make them fairly incapable of ignoring pain ; they will flinch very noticeably when struck. This makes it easy to slow or even interrupt their already slow charge.

All together, those factors make single zombies nearly harmless ; any adventurer worth his or her salt should be able to defeat a zombie with his, or her, hand tied behind its back. The problem is that zombies, being so utterly simple to create and requiring no maintenance or control structure to keep under Death's control, tend to be created and thus found in large numbers. Graveyards, in particular, can be filled with dozens of zombies in a single room. As such, in those cases, adventurers should keep in mind the position of all zombies and remain mobile as to prevent the zombies from mobbing him or her. Abuse of their low tolerance to pain may help in controlling the flow of the zombie hordes.

Most importantly, adventurers should keep in mind foes others than zombies. A zombie has weak muscles and its teeth and hands are rotten to the point where it will take many bites to kill even a weakened warrior. A healthy adventurer, clad in fine steel, will barely feel the attacks of even multiple zombies. However, focusing on zombies too much may result in some of the deadlier breeds of monsters serving Death sneaking in far more lethal hits ; Green Goblins, Zombie Graverobbers, and Werewolves in particular are fond of using zombies as meat shields while they line up their own, much more formidable attacks. This is not to say that zombies should be understimated either ; they may not do much physical damage but their bites will add up, especially against a weaker and/or unarmored target.

Due to their weaker nature and tendency to travel in groups, the Dagger family of weapon and piercing weapons such as the Boomerangs and Trident, will do best against zombies. The Boom Spear is a risky weapon but will tear apart zombie groups if used well.