Zombies in the Tellus Arc
Ahead of my zombie movie reviews, here’s a little spiel about how zombies work in my canon. I use “zombie” for the convenience of contemporary audiences. The word isn’t used in the Tellus Arc as it would’ve been wildly anachronistic. (Yes, there are plenty of anachronisms in my stories, but I try to cut back on some of the most egregious ones.) The word you’ll typically hear is “revenant”, “the dead that walk” or something similar. We’re going to restrict ourselves to a discussion of undead zombies, which are all raised by means of the magic arts.
Zombies can be divided into their physical type and intellectual type. You can mix and match these with varying degrees of success. First, the most basic physical type is an ordinary dead body. It is subject to regular decomposition and its physical limitation can be overcome relative to the power of the magic infusing it, but eventually its usefulness will be completely expended. A flesh-eating zombie can delay the rate of decomposition, not by the physical means of digesting the flesh it consumes but rather by absorbing the life-energy within the flesh. A preserved body, such as in the manner of Egyptian mummification, can function for longer, but this depends on the manner of preservation. For instance, physical preservation is subject to physical limitations. You wouldn’t be able to keep a traditional mummy from decaying for long if you took it to a tropical swampland. Magic-enhanced preservation could be virtually perpetual. A patchwork zombie is crafted from multiple bodies (not unlike Frankenstein’s monster), which can yield a stronger amalgamation, but these are difficult to do will and the different parts make it difficult to bind a spirit to the flesh. The final type is a Copy Golem, made from bones (or ashes) and grave soil (think Kikyou from Inuyasha). Though essentially a clay doll, by means of advanced necromantic arts, it takes the likeness of flesh. Caligo’s Companions were revived by the Monarch Lich in this manner. It is the most resilient type of zombie and the most ready vessel for holding a person’s soul.
As for the intellectual types, the most basic is a mindless drone, animated entirely by magic. Every action must be directed by the necromancer. This is sufficient if you’re just trying to send waves of the walking dead at an enemy. The slave type is more advanced, capable of following simple commands. They are made by binding a soul with the zombies body. An animal soul of sufficient intelligence will suffice. The most advanced intellectual type comes from binding a sapient soul to the body. If available, the original soul will be the best fit. A fully sapient zombie is the most difficult to control, which make them dangerous to necromancers punching above their weight.
When it comes to stopping zombies of any type, there’s no particular virtue to aiming for the head. Depending on the power of the magic animating the zombie in question, you may have to completely destroy the body before it stops, and that’s assuming the necromancer behind it hasn’t enchanted it to regenerate (which isn’t usually a risk but does happen). Merely being bitten by a zombie won’t turn you into one, though the bite is likely to fester fairly quickly and kill you (and that’s not even accounting for any particular dark energy or curse that may be transmitted via the bite). Being recently dead does make it easier for you to be raised as a zombie yourself and it’s possible that the curse can be transmitted via the bite to activate upon your death, but strictly speaking, it’s not the bite alone that makes more zombies. (For that matter, the curse could be transmitted by scratching or via other fluids.) The risk of the curse spreading is mostly restricted to high order necromancy, but naturally you’d want to keep your distance as a general rule.
Lastly, when it comes to shamblers vs. fast zombies, it again falls to the magic animating the body. As you might imagine, dead tissue isn’t apt to move too quickly. A relatively fresh body still in rigor mortis isn’t going to be moving very fast without damaging the tissues. However, once rigor wears off, the flexibility of the flaccid state makes it easier to move the body more quickly. Generally speaking, though, zombies aren’t likely to move all that quickly as it requires more magic to push the body that hard and mitigate the damage. This of course means a fast zombie is that much more an unpleasant surprise.
That should do it for our coverage of some of the creepier denizens of my stories. I may or may not do a follow-up post on vampires. Otherwise, we’ll move on to other topics. Stay tuned.
Tags: Commentary, Miscellany, Tellus Arc
Commentary, Miscellany, Tellus Arc | James Carmack | 26 October 2015 |
