If a spawn of Kyuss dripped worms over a pile of bodies, would the worms animate the bodies into spawn, or would the worms simply die?
The worms would die. Kyuss worms, as written, need a fresh brain to infect in order to animate the corpse as a spawn of Kyuss.
That said, the Kyuss broodlings from Encounter at Blackwall Keep have the special ability to infect corpses and raise them as spawn. Maybe they've been engineered by Ilthane to have more durable worms.
Also, I would rule that if the body only recently died, it could be animated by a worm. So if a PC falls in battle and later in that same battle, a spawn of Kyuss threw a worm at it, it would probably animate just fine. But that's an interpretation on my part.
Creative Director
|
Normal Kyuss worms can't infect a corpse. They have to be able to eat a living brain (hence the Intelligence damage); they can't drain intelligence from an object (like a corpse).
The spawnlings in "Blackwall Keep" are indeed a variant form of the undead with worms that are engineered to infect corpses, making these things a MUCH more effective method of spreading the Kyuss love.