Death Troopers (Zombies)

**"Death Trooper"** was a nickname used to refer to Storm Troopers of the Galactic Empire who had been infected by the viral agent known as the **Sickness** at some point between the Battle of Yavin and the Battle of Hoth. After dying a painful death, those troopers had been turned into mindless, walking corpses with cannibalistic urges. Studies revealed that, because of the infection, Death troopers were slower than living humans, but had an improved ability to sustain damage. The virus allowed the Death Troopers to communicate telepathically and learn. Acting as one, the Death Troopers were willing to organize themselves into a deadly swarm and launch coordinated strikes on Imperial forces and Rebels alike. They even managed to reprogram and hack turret controls and security measures at fallen sectors to their advantage. This gave them the ability to fortify overrun bases against possible counter strikes, using blaster cannons, walls, and shield generators to fight off hostile contacts. This level of skill and coordination earned them the nickname **"Army of the Dead"**.

## Overview

The **Imperial Bioweapons Project I71A**, dubbed **Project Blackwing**, and also known as the **Sickness**, was an infectious viral agent created by the Galactic Empire in a secret research facility located on Dandoran . Borne of scientific research and Sith Alchemy, it was initially designed to produce Immortality. However, the virus killed its hosts instead, attacking their biological tissue and turning their lifeless bodies into cannibalistic, brutal zombies. The virus alters the bodies stamina and strength, making its host move slower than they where prior to exposure. It increases their resilience to physical damage allowing victims to take punishment which would be more critical or possibly even fatal to the being of origin without falling. There also seem experience a changing in skin texture, host have it altered to a greyish-green. The virus communicates with itself and allows the zombies to act as a single entity and to learn things from the survivors, including how to use blasters and pilot ships. At some point between the Battle of Yavin and the Battle of Hoth, Imperial Storm Troopers stationed at the Dandoran research facility were infected by the virus, leading to their transformation into so-called **"Death Troopers"** There was an outbreak at the facility, and the Blackwing-infected soldiers threatened to spread across the galaxy. It was presumed destroyed, but rumors began cropping up soon after that surviving samples had been retrieved by criminal organizations, gangs, cartels, extremist, and other nondescript factions for trade or possible weaponization.

## History

### Early Origins

The **Sickness** was originally created by the Sith Lord Darth Drear on Odacer-Faustin sometime prior to 4645 years before the Battle of Yavin, and was intended to grant immortality to its crafter. Drear's initial experiments resulted in failure, and the Sith Lord himself fell victim to his creation. Over the course of a thousand years, during the period of unrest following the Great Galactic War, the Sith Lord Darth Scabrous attempted to recreate Drear's disease in the hope that he would be able to succeed where his predecessor had failed. Scabrous likewise failed to create a path to immortality, and in the process unleashed the virus upon the unsuspecting students and staff of the Odacer-Faustin Sith academy. Before long, all of the Sith Acolytes and Masters on the planet died and were born anew as cannibalistic monstrosities motivated only by the will to eat.

### Brought into the Modern Era

Knowledge of the Sickness, as it had been known during the Odacer-Faustin outbreak, survived several millennia and eventually fell into the hands of Darth Vader, a Dark Lord of the Sith who was active during the reign of the Galactic Empire. Around a year after the Battle of Yavin Vader commissioned a scientific team from the Imperial Biological Weapons Division to re-engineer the virus and turn it into a weapon that could be used to further Imperial interests. Operating in secrecy, the scientists were able to recreate the disease under the codename **"Blackwing"** and prepare it for deployment. However, in that year, an accident unleashed the Sickness once more, turning almost all of the personnel into savages not unlike those on Odacer-Faustin. The infected took control of the Imperial stations on Dandoran and used them as bases of which to forge armies of **"Death Troopers"** and unleash them upon the planet turning the living into the undead.

## Statistics of Infection

Victims of the plague suffered numerous, extremely painful side-effects prior to death, and became mindless monstrosities postmortem. The virus itself was fully self-aware, and utilized the undead to spread the pathogen and either transform or eat any who were able to avoid infection. Due to the extremely quick rate of transmission and the difficulty of isolation, successful treatment of the disease was very rare; although one could be prevented from contracting the virus by injecting an anti-virus intravenously, those who were already infected had little chance of survival. The fluid that coagulated within the bodies of the infected and carried the virus throughout their anatomy bore many similarities with the entity known as Mnggal-Mnggal, leading some to believe that the two were in some way related.