Zombies in need of freshness

I previously wrote how I think zombies are overused. This got me thinking that maybe some more constructive advice might be warranted.

So, below, some ways to maybe use the ‘zombie’ in new ways. Zombie here is being used to describe your basic ‘walking corpse,’ style monster.  

Give me that old time voodoo religion.

The voodoo zombie is something that gets surprisingly little use these days. I say surprising because you go back far enough, and they were all over. In fact, the only really modern, mainsteam depiction of the voodoo zombie I can think of, comes from an odd place.

Indiana Jones.

The blood of Kali is a hell of a drug

The dark priest of Kali, Mola Ram captures the illustrious Dr. Jones and forces him to drink a strange concoction which is described in horrific terms as trapping him living inside of his own body as it is forced to follow the insidious will of the Thugee cult. It’s subtly implied that all of the thugee were subjected to this.  Jones almost kills his friend and companion Short Round under he’s shaken out from under the spell.

See, when you said zombie to the folks who used to watch the pulp adventure shorts on which Indiana Jones and Star Wars were based they’d think about a creepy weird witch doctor who drugged people to turn them into their slaves.

Will, and action subverted. The power of agency and free will stripped away by some evil necromancer’s magic. See, the older zombie ethos wasn’t about creepy corpses shambling around or ‘the proles rising up,’ it was about violation. Violation of the self. Violation of the tomb. Violation of the sacred things that made someone a human being and not an animal.

Imagine that the zombies your party encounters aren’t necessarily walking corpses, but are glassy eyed fanatics who blindly, and mechanically surge forward at the behest of their creepy, bizarre taskmaster. Who show no emotion. No drive. No real will, besides the hatred burning in their blank eyes, that isn’t even their hatred. And can liberation be provided to these poor devils, or only in death will they be free?

The Weary Dead

Dark Souls made its bank on this one. And that bank has firm foundations in ancient tales, legends and the sort. The gunslinger who killed someone over a shot of whisky and is doomed to travel until he loses in a drinking game. The ghostly retainers called on in Lord of the Rings. A standard trope for the undead is being tired, something which gets overlooked frequently in tabletop RPGs where we get obsessed with ranting bad guys, or power sets.

Now, the gunslinger could be a Pathfinder Pale Stranger, or the ghosts are ghosts, but let’s examine say the hollows from Dark Souls.

In Dark Souls, every undead is cursed. Their curse is to not die. No matter how many times they get struck down, they eventually get back up again, and each time robs them of something, it robs them of the thing that makes them themselves.  Some try to find some use for themselves, a quest, a guide, a goal, anything to force their minds to remain focused before they fade into the blank madness. Each undead knows his ultimate fate is to be laying on the earth, immobile, staring blankly off into the distance in a waking nightmare of never ending despair because so long as the fire remains unlinked, they cannot rest.

And every undead in the game, looks tired.

Again, this touches on the idea that something wrong has forced the undead out of their graves. They shamble around, striking out almost blindly at what draws near, or are lost to obsession or memory. Zombies standing guard over long collapsed fortresses, who were once noble stalwart and dutiful men, but who now are just weary monsters. In a way this touches on the tragedy of death itself, but also how we have to move on when we encounter it. The dead shouldn’t be wandering around in their rotting corpses, it’s an insult, and a humiliation to them. They’re also very dangerous.

The perfect exemplar of this concept is from the King Vendrick of Dark Souls 2.

He was more impressive in life

A hero. A man of massive and impressive stature, who fought and bled to save the world from its fate. And when you encounter him, he’s an insensate naked corpse wandering around (who can still absolutely murder you if you aren’t careful).  

Have your players encounter a necropolis, filled with the weary remnants of its populace still carrying out their activities in silent, uncomprehending ways, until roused to violence by discovering the party or the players interacting with them. Bud from the Living Dead fame was akin to this, but played for comedy in how he’d still moan and play with tools like a mixture of toddler and ape. With the weary, describe things like how the faceless corpse still intricately moves its fingers over the empty loom, weaving a masterful carpet made only in her dreamlike memories, or the zombie musician who plays an incomplete masterpiece on a lute where half of the strings have snapped both of whom devolve into snarling or weeping beasts striking out brutally when agitated.