A New Breed of Zombie - Zombie Fungoid
Added 2022-07-19 14:00:08 +0000 UTCNature is crazy and it is probably going to kill all of us one day. In the meantime, how about we use the dangerous elements of nature and throw them at our players, in the form of zombie plants. Well, not technically plants, but creatures infected by a fungus that causes their brain to break and become nothing more than a husk controlled by a wash of chemicals that the fungus feeds the mind.
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David P. Hughes, Maj-Britt Pontoppidan, Wikipedia CC BY 2.5</figure>For those who have gotten lost on Wikipedia before, or like to read about weird things that will kill you if you ever leave the safety of your home, you may have heard of ophiocordyceps unilaterialis and its relationship to ants. If you haven’t, here are the basics: ophiocordyceps is a type of fungus that infects ants and then begins to cause changes within the ant. It releases chemicals that cause the ant to behave weirdly and forces the ant to move to an ideal location for the fungus, where it then locks the ant’s jaws around a leaf in a death grip. The ant is then stuck there as the fungus atrophies the ant and grows the fungus-fruit that will help spread the fungus to even more ants to turn into pseudo-zombie-ants.
With zombie ants in mind, we can create a new breed of very dangerous zombies to attack our players, and because I think that everyone should be terrified, these zombies can pretty much go on any living creature. Just like how the ophiocordyceps can take over an ant, this fungus can take over any living creature, which means we have a template that we can throw onto any creature and opens us to even more options for zombies in our games.
