Cannibal Zombie

Cannibal zombies seem less dead than real zombies, yet utterly worn: staring eyes, slack faces, oozing wounds and filthy rags. Their faces change only when they attack, twisting as they drool and moan and grab for food. A mixed stink of spoiled meat and old blood surrounds them to 50 feet.

They can still speak their old languages, barely, though they almost never stop to. Speak with dead or similar magic forces a pause for conversation, but once it ends the hunger returns.

Packs roam at night hunting humans and demihumans, typically surrounding a lone farmhouse and battering doors and windows with no regard for their own injuries. Having chosen prey they keep at it until turned (as ghouls) or held off until dawn, when they withdraw with mournful groans, sometimes devouring one of their own. There is a 50% chance they return the next night, and every night they are driven off, until they win or move on.

In melee they always act last. Each attack is either a claw for 1-8 or a bite for 1-2. A bitten victim saves vs. poison; on a failure, cure disease must be cast soon or he becomes one of them. After 2-8 (2d4) rounds he feels a gnawing hunger, then must pass a Constitution check every other round. When a check fails, the poison kills him and he rises to join the pack, beyond the help of cure disease. Slow poison only postpones the end.

No poison affects them, nor do hold, charm or sleep. Each flask of holy water deals 1-6.

They shelter in ruins, empty mausoleums or wherever they last fed, and band together for convenience, not company, readily eating each other when living prey runs short. A cannibal zombie that tastes no flesh for three nights in a row consumes itself and collapses into a lifeless husk, so making more of their kind is really a way of making more food.

Zombie lords can talk with them and often hire packs with promises of living flesh to help overrun a village. The arrangement suits a lord perfectly, since any cannibal zombies killed in the fighting can then be raised as his own true zombies.

Their origin is unknown, but they clearly lie outside nature, though they will scavenge carrion when they find it.