HU Crossover: Eugenic Undead

[DtMK]

I was looking through my books, and was reminded of a possibility in Powers Unlimited Two. The Eugenics category allows for the creation of genetically engineered beings with certain abilities, attributes and costs like the Hardware or Robotics sections. But one aspect I find a lot of wonderful potential is that the subjects aren't just kidnap victims or volunteers, but animated corpses. That's right folks, with this option you could make everything from patchwork monsters a la Frankenstein style or even walking dead beings who can feed on flesh, P.P.E., life force energy and have special abilities! Don't think the Juggernauts are beefy enough? Want to introduce your own zombies with a twist in case mad scientists or death cultists have been experimenting to make a better undead? Then use the Eugenics table to unleash your imagination!

How about a zombie whose chest opens up, and its ribcage has turned into a giant maw? Or perhaps some kind of human-primate hybrid undead capable of flipping over cars and taking every ounce of ammunition you have to take it down? Make a large, lumbering beast with calcified bones. The skull will be hard pressed to damage without a LOT of damage that way. Or how about a bizarre undead whose neck is thick and may even resemble a cobra's hood, but is heavily armored and naturally insulated against normal blows or weapons? The potential to make equivalent senses and capabilities to the existing zombies are all there. Plus, you can make them more intelligent, possibly even allowing them to have some influence over the other zombies like a Thinker.

How about something really freaky, like an undead whose body parts are strangely rearranged? Maybe one whose stomach appears to have been ripped open, but somehow animates its own intestines as acidic tentacles? Perhaps bloated zombies whose breakdown of natural gases make them flammable, and potentially explosive, sending shrapnel of bones in its radius, risking the same level of infection as a bite or worse? You could even make creatures that looks like two or more zombies have been sewn or melted together as some horrible abomination, perhaps some that fire bony blades connected by elastic muscle tissue out, then retracted like a strange distance weapon. Or how about ones capable of dislocating its jaw, and attempting to swallow its prey whole? Perhaps this is the zombie with the cobra neck, it would explain the musculature. The possibilities to play mad scientist or sorcerer with the undead have never been higher!

So how about you? Have you thought about doing anything like this in your own games? What could you imagine unleashing as a step above your garden variety undead?

[DtMK]

Why thank you Leon! Nice to know I meet the approval of the resident expert on evil. See what I did there?

[azazel1024]

I kinda do like that. I haven't gotten the new DR book yet (though I plan to in the next few weeks), but I am kinda hoping the DR books start to take a hair of Resident evil touch. I don't want animal zombies, but I am hoping that actual mutations start showing up, maybe not crazy 40ft tenticled monsters, but something where there is the occasional REALLY tough zombie, and not just a juggernaut.

Kind of like your describing, someone experimenting on zombies or ways to create zombies that is creating some freaky mutant/hybrid zombies. The perfect thing for a 'boss fight' for player groups or something similar.
-Matt

[Captain Shiva]

Holy Herbert West,Batman!!

[DtMK]

This thread could be so much fun! We could come up with some seriously twisted ideas, like an undead with its digestive track partially linked to the outside of its body, and on its shoulder a casting gun. Nothing like expecting to go against some flesh easting zombies, only to face being fired upon by them. We could have one called the Double Barrel, and even a dwarf zombie or Crawler with this adaptation we could call the Sawed-off!

Don't look at me like that!

[DtMK]

I had a thought about one creation using the brains of harvested savants and beheaded Thinkers. A zombie with a large cranium, like an alien's head but with a small, dwarflike or young person's body. It could have all the psionic brain augmentations, and act like a commander or the center of a hive mind. Imagine a Thinker unlike any other, in some cases making psionic illusions to trick survivors into coming to it to feed, or even making hundreds of zombies act as one with the precision of a single, controlling being with a head for strategy and tactics, perhaps playing cat and mouse games with their prey. I call it the Brain Child. And yes, I'd give its brain the Lazarus Organ treatment too!

[DtMK]

I was going more along the lines of a Mindolar, but do you really want Tranzor-Z for Zombies?