Zombie

A zombie keeps the body exactly as it was when animated, so a missing limb stays missing. Fresh corpses are scarce, so most are ragged things short of hair, flesh and even bone, and they lurch unevenly. They usually still wear their burial clothes, and their reek can carry 100 feet. They cannot speak, but may moan when an order cannot be carried out.

Zombies are very slow and always act last in a round. They take only short, single-phrase orders and fight until destroyed or recalled, turned back only by a priest. They march straight at foes, arms reaching, to claw and pound them. Poison, death magic, cold-based spells, sleep, charm and hold all fail against them, and a vial of holy water deals 2-8.

Zombies haunt graveyards, dungeons and similar places of the dead. Any humanoid corpse can be raised as one, and it obeys spoken commands of a dozen or so simple words, given in advance or on the spot. As unnatural things, they have no place in nature.

A ju-ju zombie is made when a wizard drains a man-sized humanoid's life with energy drain. Its skin is hard, gray and leathery, its body fresh, and a hateful glint shows it knows what it has become. It follows conditional orders, uses simple tactics, rolls initiative normally, attacks as a 6 HD monster and climbs walls as a thief (92%). Told to, it wields weapons, throws spears and javelins, or shoots bows and crossbows. Only +1 or better weapons hurt it; edged weapons deal full damage, blunt and piercing ones half. Beyond normal zombie immunities it ignores mind-affecting magic, psionics, illusions, electricity and magic missile, and takes half damage from fire. It is turned as a spectre.

A zombie lord is a living being twisted into undeath by a failed raise dead, gray, rotting and fly-ridden. Four things must happen: an evil human is slain by undead, someone tries to raise him, he fails his resurrection survival roll, and an evil deity curses him with 'eternal life.' He wakes within a week. He speaks his old languages, converses freely with zombies, speaks with dead by touch, and fights with two crushing fists. His stench forces anyone first coming within 30 yards to save vs. poison or suffer one of several foul effects. Every zombie in his sight obeys his thoughts, and he can see and hear through any zombie up to a mile off. Once a day his animate dead can target a living creature of fewer Hit Dice: it saves vs. death or dies and rises as his zombie in 1d4 rounds. He lairs in graveyards or battlefields, obsessed with making more undead, and is turned as a vampire.

Sea zombies, or drowned ones, are free-willed corpses of humans lost at sea, said to be animated by a reaper god of death. Bloated, dripping, eyeless and black-lipped, they force anyone seeing one or within 20 feet to save vs. poison or be nauseated (-1 to hit, +1 to AC) for 2d4 rounds. Clumsy ashore but swift swimmers, they hate the living and wreck ships on rocks or board them at anchor to drive crews into the sea. Sailor's weapons in their hands deal 1d10, and each hit has a 10% chance to inflict severe disease. Fire does half damage, cold and electricity double. They are immune to sleep, charm, illusion and mind-affecting magic and cannot be turned. Half are priests of level 1d4 granted only baneful spells. Packs haunt wrecks underwater and surface only at night, rarely straying 100 yards from water unless fog rolls inland, returning when it lifts or before dawn. They speak telepathically and whisper spell components.