Few beasts invite more mystery and excitement than zombies. This fact, in and of itself, makes zombies all the more dangerous. In their weakest forms, zombies are simple reanimate bodies, easily taken down with a few hacks of a sword. As they accumulate more and more magic, though, they can quickly become far more powerful, threatening entire cities.
Zombies are painfully easy to create, and many of their formations are completely accidental. Simply casting a spell incorrectly can cause the dead to rise, hungry and ready to consume anything they see. Any and all species can be brought back in this way, all behaving more or less the same. Once brought back, the zombies will continue to absorb latent magical energy from the environment, gradually becoming more and more powerful.
Height: - Various (depends on resurrected species and magical progression)
Characteristics: - Insatiably hungry, will never stop trying to eat anything it sees.
Habitat: - Calsin
Weaknesses: - As they are made from rotting flesh, zombies are often taken down quite easily.
Types of Zombies: - Tithin - A tithin is a newly-animated zombie. Regardless of species, this type of zombie will usually move quite slowly and possess no natural armor. - Koncher - A koncher is a zombie that has began amassing magical power. They are often characterized by bone plates growing across sensitive areas, as well as the ability to run. While possible to kill a koncher in hand-to-hand combat, it is advisable to take this beast on with a group. Without extra help, tithins will turn into konchers after around a month. - Jolisul - These zombies are far more powerful, sporting a full-body covering of armor. By now, the zombie will have roughly doubled in size, and display increased strength and incredible speed. It typically takes around a year for a koncher to turn into a jolisul. - Sonithan - Sonithans are what governors and kings fear most. These enormous zombies can tower well over one hundred feet into the air, and will usually be covered by bone plating multiple feet thick. In addition, they will often have a latent magical field surrounding them that resurrects nearby corpses. These corpses, under the Sonithan's protection, can easily turn into a nearly unstoppable hoard. For this reason alone, nearly every country in Calsin has patrols with the sole purpose of sweeping the countryside to find zombies in the transition stage between jolisul and sonithan. They've largely been successful, as the last reported sonithan attack was recorded shortly after the Dwarven Civil War. It usually takes around ten years for a jolisul to begin emitting the magical resurrection field indicative of a sonithan. - Pure Incarnation - Pure Incarnations are the final stage of zombie development. In the wild, these have only been observed in deep caves, where trapped zombies underwent their entire transformation unhindered. Once the sonithan grows so large that not even magic can sustain it, the creature will put down roots and transform into an undead tree of sorts. This plant, made from rotting flesh, projects a powerful resurrection field for miles around it. In addition, it has the ability to produce new zombies, usually tithins or konchers, identical to the original undead body. To top it off, Pure Incarnations have powerful healing abilities, making them nearly impossible to kill. Only a few of these beasts have ever been recorded in Calsin's history, and none in any location near civilization. A long-term experiment performed at the Undead Academy in Tifingor proved that it takes around one hundred and fifty years for a zombie to reach this stage. After a century of providing zombies for the students at this academy to fight, the monstrous plant finally died, capping a zombie's natural lifespan at around two hundred and fifty years.
Other notes: - Though it might initially seem so, the magic used to resurrect zombies is far from the magic used to actually bring people back from the dead. That said, since most people naturally assume that the magic would be similar, many a half-baked necromancer has earned a fortune simply animating the bodies of loved ones. - While all species can be brought back as zombies, and for the most part will all behave the same, different races do require different amounts of magic to start the process. Humans are by far the easiest, with elves and dwarves being slightly more difficult, and aqahartis requiring much more energy.
