Horde Zombie

"Brrrrains..."

Horde Zombies are (relatively) slow, shambling victims of a terrible curse, now seeking to bite the flesh of the living.

Fanon Tactics Note

It may be best to change the Horde Zombie's "must kill victim" trait to something like "must inflict a major wound worth of damage to begin curse". If horde zombies need to kill a target to convert them, there's fairly low chances the resulting corpse will be in complete-enough shape to actually become a Horde Zombie. Furthermore, Horde Zombies need a way to find each other.

Tactics and Counter-Tactics

Horde Zombie
Monster Class			Mundane
ST	13	HP	17	Speed	5.00
DX	8	Will	8	Move	4
IQ	8	Per	8	Weight	NG
HT	12	FP	N/A	SM Size	0 --
Dodge		8		Parry	N/A	DR	0
Attacks		Bite/Punch (12): 1d crushing.
Social Background (TL; CF; Language)		Once alive
Traits		Bad Smell; Cannot Learn; Doesn’t Breathe; Doesn’t Sleep; Fragile (Unnatural); High Pain Threshold; Immunity (All mind control); Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Incurious (6); Indomitable; Infectious Attack (Must kill victim); Injury Tolerance (No Blood, Unliving); Temperature Tolerance 10 (-115° to 60°); Uncontrollable Appetite (6); Unfazeable; Unhealing (Total).
Skills		Brawling-12; Wrestling-12 (+2 ST when grappling).
Notes		Intelligent, but completely uninterested in negotiation, possessed by a new, hungry personality. They just want to eat.

Hunger

Horde Zombies are driven by hunger before anything else. While immune to mind-control, fear, and negotiation in general, they will choose whatever's an easy meal, and can still be fooled by illusions of prey. Note the horde zombies are often vocal about what body part they insist on eating.

Horde Movement

Horde zombies tend to migrate with the horde they're with, only getting separated if the horde moves significantly while one is busy eating. Their lack of curiosity often means you can't "cut out" a single zombie into an ambush by distracting it with a thrown rock or coin. As food is their main vice (see above), you can tactically separate zombies if you can get them to move to several separate areas--for instance, putting meat in several rooms of a manor and locking groups in, buying time to fight a few at a time before the others break out.

One Lump Sum

If you can't separate the horde, you can exploit a tight formation with area spells that hamper their movement. Tangle Growth (slowing and hindering attacks) and Glue (can bottleneck a hallway with stuck zombos). They're also not particularly agile, and can be picked off by fighters if they have to do any kind of climbing, such as clambering over a short fence or obstacle.

Avoiding Contagion

Horde zombies don't spread through the bites themselves, but by dealing a killing blow. If you can avoid dying, you can avoid becoming a zombie. If an NPC is particularly injured, it may be safest to get them to a safe spot and cast something to help them sleep it off.

Strangeness

• Horde zombies seem to seek exclusively people prey--only attacking livestock or wildlife if particularly "hungry".
• Horde zombies are curse-driven corpses (not infected people), and act independently, without a necromancer or other commander
• Horde zombies are remarkably incurious, and will give up rather quickly if they lose track of their prey. They aren't guaranteed to leave an area either, and may just wander around a given building or location until something gets their attention.

Speculation

• Some say the Horde Plague is some devilish challenge, or long-forgotten punishment from the gods. They likely register as "Unholy" if such a thing can be detected.
• As unnatural, undead creatures, horde zombies don't follow normal ecological rules -- they are effectively "born" from a poor-condition corpse and powered by strange magic.

See Also

• Dungeon Fantasy 2 Bestiary page
• Not to be confused with the ordinary Zombies summoned by necromancers and the like.

References

• Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons, p.