[UA] Re: UA vampires

[Nick Wedig]

>I've been thinking some more on the idea and putting together some of the 
>ideas from the list as well as some from my roommate (this semester he's in 
>a class named Vampires in Literature). Here’s the idea pretty much finished 
>(if someone wants to archive it anywhere):

So the discussion of alternate vampires somehow got me thinking about alternate zombies for UA (I forget how, exactly, although it involved vampires being a type of zombie, or vice versa or something).  This is the basic idea of what I've got:

UA distinguishes between spirit and soul.  Most of the time, the two are effectively the same.  But animals have spirits but no soul, so the distinction is made and questions are raised.  Now, we know that when the soul AND the spirit leave the body, you die.  And we also know that the spirit alone is enough to keep the body alive, as in the case of animals.  So what happens when someone loses their soul, but not their spirit?  You get a zombie.  
Zombies are basically humans, but without those unique qualities that separate us from animals, like sentience, speech, complex thinking, and technical finesse (ie using complex tools).  They also lack certain abilities that animals have, such as treating (or even recognizing) wounds, differentiating betwen friend and foe, and knowing when it's better to run away rather than fight, as at some point in our evolution these tasks were taken over by our sentient mind and thus the soul.

Zombies live only to satisfy very basic animal desires, to eat, and sleep. They will attempt to kill, and eat, anything nearby that lives.  They'll just move on, mindlessly chasing prey and ignoring any wounds to them (eventually leading to the point where they're a walking pile of ground beef, looking more or less like a movie zombie who's not quite rotten yet.  

Zombies can be created by various causes, all of which are extremely uncommon unless forced.  Dipsomancers with a lot of charges might be able to make them.  Various attacks on the astral plane might have a small chance of hitting the soul but missing the body, etc.

Body: 30 - 70
Speed: 30 - 70
Mind: 0
Soul: 0

All zombies have the skill "Get Back Up" (as a demon) at the body score, as well as basic struggle / dodge skills of 15%.

In a similar vein, vampires might be bodies with a soul but no spirit, so the body is technically still dead (and rotting) but they're still plenty intelligent and mean (and can delay the rotting by absorbing people's blood and/or spirit)

mr. teapot
hopes he didn't confuse soul and spirit

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