Anatomy of a Horror Setting #2-11: *Dun-dun* Zombie Love

The last article merely touched upon the zombies of horror’s voodoo lore. As stated those zombies tend more toward the living that are ensorcelled, or conversely, those held just away from the fringe of death. That said, there is nothing stopping any particular zombie from being in rough shape, with unhealed wounds, if not actual rotting flesh. Certainly if they are disconnected from select senses and awareness of being, then they may be grievously wounded and still carry on as long as their limbs remain intact enough. The biggest problem with these kinds of zombies as slaves though is that eventually they will collapse. They are still subject to most of the rules of physiology such as the need for rest and for food. That is why necromancers like to make real zombies, living dead zombies.

The living dead have no need to rest. They have no need to eat. This means that they can work ceaselessly. They do not feel pain. A lot of the time they do not retain any kind of survival instinct; though as with Romeroan ghouls, in some instances they do inexplicable retain a fear of fire. At the other end of the scale, the living dead and their kin, such as walking skeletons, may not need even flesh on their bones, and may not need their sensory organs (eyes and ears) to still be able to sense the world around them and operate within it. This means that the intelligence of the necromancer’s dead creations can have varying levels of intelligence despite their physical makeup. This leads to the two different routes that the necromancer can take in making and using zombies.

Necromancers can animate the dead with simple spells and control them like puppets to do their bidding. These zombies have no intelligence whatsoever, fear nothing, and do not need anything more the limbs necessary to do their tasks--and could even be just zombie limbs. In the alternative, necromancers can raise the dead to a semblance of life via rituals. These are the zombies that can be actually almost smart, depending upon the freshness of corpse involved in the creation of the zombie, or the strength of the ritual. That is of course unless the necromancer is binding spirits, life echoes, or incorporeal supernatural creatures to his corpses for the purposes of making a kind of greater zombie. This of course involves the other aspect for which necromancers are known.

Mood: harried.
Music: The Scorpion Sleeps by Rob Zombie and Zombie by The Cranberries.

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