As per the "Salt Marsh Horror" thread (thanks very much for ideas) I am planning to use 'zombies' that are really host bodies for colonies of the young of giant insects. I was trying to think of what the logistics of this would be, what kind of stages might exist and so on.
This is a rough outline but I'd appreciate some help with it.
1. The young--I'm trying to figure out if these should be larvae or nymphs, though I'm thinking that the larvae inhabit the body (much as some wasps and other insects put their larvae in bodies). I'm figuring that they're Tiny to start with and grow to Small.
2. Damage to the host body. The way I've done it in general is that the host body dies soon after the eggs are laid, and the infant colony controls the body in order to intake food. But how much damage needs to be done?
3. Growth--what begins to change about the host body?
That depends. How many larvae/nymphs are we talking about per body? I'm thinking of a whole swarm, but I suppose it could be a smaller number, even just one. A Tiny creature is the size of a house cat, and a Small creature is the size of your average dog. Not too easy to fill a human body with a large number of those. Now if they went from Fine to Diminutive, then escaped and later transformed from Diminutive to Small, that's another story.
I just had a vision of the PCs cleaving through the "zombie" host body, and out flies a storm of the ravenous larvae. In addition to biting at the PCs, they consume each other so that only a relative few of the Diminutives escape to even attempt growing into Small creatures. Only the strong survive. Not sure if it would work, but it could make for an interesting death throe.
I can't remember the book, but there's a template for creating an undead that is full of bugs, I think it's called Swarmhost or something similar.
Saern: very good ideas, thank you very much. I appreciate the reminders about the scale. The swarm's burst as the undead 'dies' is exactly the kind of thing that I want--more or less it only seems like a zombie. As for them devouring one another, I like that idea too, so that it would explain why only a few of the larger larvae that had managed to survive would remain.
I've tried to look up swarmhost but have drawn a blank so far...any idea of what book it's in?
Insofar as the actual encounter goes, it's supposed to be what seems like a zombie outbreak--shamblers but hungry dead that seem to be what the local villagers have become. The first encounters lead up to the ultimate encounter with the hive. I figured that if the larve 'hatch' from their host normally they then by instinct head towards the hive. Until then they are considered mindless vermin by the hive itself.
Saern: very good ideas, thank you very much. I appreciate the reminders about the scale. The swarm's burst as the undead 'dies' is exactly the kind of thing that I want--more or less it only seems like a zombie. As for them devouring one another, I like that idea too, so that it would explain why only a few of the larger larvae that had managed to survive would remain.
I've tried to look up swarmhost but have drawn a blank so far...any idea of what book it's in?
Insofar as the actual encounter goes, it's supposed to be what seems like a zombie outbreak--shamblers but hungry dead that seem to be what the local villagers have become. The first encounters lead up to the ultimate encounter with the hive. I figured that if the larve 'hatch' from their host normally they then by instinct head towards the hive. Until then they are considered mindless vermin by the hive itself.
Still can't remember the template name unless it's Hivenest? anyway it's in Dungeonscape.
Thank you very much for posting that, that saves me a lot of work!
I'll probably add a number of visceral description stuff (smell, appearnce, etc) but that's exactly what I wanted. I'll just put the hellwasp swarm for my bug zombies.
There's also the Roachlings(?) from the Eberron core setting book. But then they fill the body with a single, very large, very unpleasant roach.
The creepy factor's still there, though, when you infest an orphanage with them.
-Ben.
Director of Narrative
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I realize that this isn’t exactly what you are looking for, but I'm a huge fan of bugs and bodies and all that lovely stuff. In the second Sidetrek Adventure Weekly product from LPJ Design, I did a critter called a ghasp that was a swarm of bits of viscera, negative energy and flies that could inhabit dead bodies (or undead) and slightly control them, by use of a disease type thing. Once the body was destroyed, the swarm was ejected and sought to inhabit another host. It was a fun critter in a mass of mindless undead, because it was the real threat and once its host was destroyed it would just hop into something else that the PCs had to kill to get to the real root of the problem.
I actually ran the adventure this weekend; I used the hellwasp swarm template but added that a severe amount of damage transferred grubs to a new host. Anyway it worked very well. The adult bugs were a version of the insects from "Mimic". Thanks everyone for the suggestions. The grub cannibalism worked very well.
In a way as suggested above the fun thing about the bug posessed corpse is that it isn't the monster it seems to be. (lack of reaction from spells and priest abilities is a bit of a giveaway though.)
Did the players have the reaction and surprise you were looking for? Your mention about a giveaway makes it sound like maybe they figured things out sooner than expected.
The zombies themselves were a giveaway only in that they didn't seem like real undead--but they still creeped the pcs out, because of course they didn't know why they were animated or by what exactly. (though they did of course see a cascade of worms fall out of one of the 'fresher' corpses)
What creeped them out were the following things:
1. the camouflage ability of the adult bugs--I described them as figures in sleek black cloaks walking slightly hunched, wearing what seemed to be masks in the likeness of the local folk--all the same face. They seemed to be carrying hooked knives.
2. The one native they met, who referred to 'the cloaked ones' and 'the tower of the cloaked ones', the accursed tower they came from. (this tower was of course a strangely deformed looking tower rising out of one of the islands in the salt marsh, made by the bugs.)
3. The discovery of the life cycle of the bugs--that they cannibalize one another till the strongest grubs take over the corpse. As it starts falling apart by this stage the grub by instinct takes it to the hive, where it goes into a pupal stage and is nurtured by the adults near the queen's chamber.
4. the horrible paralyzation of the victims of the bugs, who are taken to be 'impregnated' by the queen's ovipositor.
So I got the effect I was looking for. Tunnel collapses as the pcs tried heavy artillery spells, nightmarish scenes of giant bugs racing along ceilings and walls towards them, the duel between the paladin and 'the king'. (dramatically depicted as the king bug slamming her against the wall and floors because his claws couldn't penetrate her armour, the paladin losing her sword, having to try to scramble to grab it, awesome fight.) Plus of course a desperate race to get away from a chittering horde, delays with warding spells...it was a good climactic encounter.
It was also good in that it made the pc group think. Using a familiar and spells to scout out the place didn't reduce creep factor at all. (I think I forgot to mention that an npc they needed to rescue had gotten paralyzed and taken into the hive/tower.)
Sounds like a really fun time! It's always nice to creep out the PCs.