engineering a zombie plague

for my upcoming session there's a chance a zombie plague will be released in a small city.

The 4th lvl. PC's, sponsored by a Gnome trade fellowship, will be clearing out a hive of Vampire Spawn which have been multiplying of late. There is a group of agents from Gullican, a nearby nation, who are colluding with the vampire spawn to grow the undead ooze from which the plague is sprung. The ooze is at the deepest part of the spawn-hive, so the PC's will be exposed to the powdery dust that carries the zombie....problem.

When the Gullican spies find that the PC's are assulting the hive, they'll rush down to 1)secure a sample of the ooze, 2) kill the party. I figure if the PC's can prevent them from taking part of the ooze away, and kill the cubic yards of it that will be thrown at them, the zombie-plague is prevented. If not, I want it to feel like a zombie movie; the city must fall within a couple of hours with the populace all transformed. I was thinking of making dwarves and gnomes resistant to it, or affected slower.

so there we have it. I want to throw it at the party and give them a chance to get cured, (if they get out of there in time) and also have it quick and powerful against the populace. How should I handle this arcane disease? Aside from the paladin, who'll be immune, there are still two humans and one halfling who will be affected by it.

Also, what effects would a zombie plague have in a typical fantasy setting? The most obvious to me would be that necromancers would be drawn to the region to command all the available zombies. It can be contained by naboring fiefdoms, but it will divert troops from where Gullican will attack. Thanks for any ideas.

Are they zombies or zombie-like, this is something I did, it was a disease, DC 12/20 (20 is if bitten) roll each day for exposure. The illness caused CON reduction -1 point/day, death when zero, the zombie could hold off this death by eating uneffected grey matter (brains) which could be sensed, I used the dectect evil rules just replaced evil with brains. DEX was reduced as was movement, the zombie was basicly mindless.

Cure Disease would fix the issue but as the party thought these were zombies they did not come to that answer for some time. Turnng does not work on them.

You could base the plague on ghoul fever (MM, p.118), which turns the afflicted who die of it into ghouls.

Darkness said:

You could base the plague on ghoul fever (MM, p.118), which turns the afflicted who die of it into ghouls.

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hmm....the chance that 1-3 party members will be turned into ghouls after a dungeon crawl, plus the chances of them getting out of a city of ghouls alive is pretty slim. that's got TPK potential....still, I'll check it out. Maybe it has some good disease mechanics.

Hand, that zombie-like disease is good, I'll definately use the detect brains part.

Now I just need something to call the affected besides zombies. they've already seen zombies that were not plague spreading. I guess the difference here is that the victim will still be alive, not dieing and becoming a zombie upon death. I think a 1-3 hour incubation period would be generous of me.

LazerPointer said:

hmm....the chance that 1-3 party members will be turned into ghouls after a dungeon crawl, plus the chances of them getting out of a city of ghouls alive is pretty slim. that's got TPK potential....still, I'll check it out. Maybe it has some good disease mechanics.

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I meant that you could base a new zombie plague on ghoul fever - not that you should use ghoul fever as is.

LazerPointer said:

hmm....the chance that 1-3 party members will be turned into ghouls after a dungeon crawl, plus the chances of them getting out of a city of ghouls alive is pretty slim. that's got TPK potential....still, I'll check it out.

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If the entire town is being transformed, it doesn't matter if they are ghouls or zombies. It isn't as if a party of 4th level character can stand against an entire town of transformed critters, even if the townsfolk were transformed into kobolds. Mobs will eventually take the PCs down. If they don't run like the wind, you've got a TPK waiting to happen.

If this disease is so bad that it will consume a town in hours, you'll either need to be willing to have it consume the populace of your entire world in short order, or write in something reasonably common that will stop the thing.

Darkness said:

I meant that you could base a new zombie plague on ghoul fever - not that you should use ghoul fever as is.

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ah so.....

If it's not contagious, having the city wiped out in hours might be tricky. If it is contagious, give it a low DC so that the PCs can probably save but a substantial portion of the populace won't. There's also the old chestnut, whereby the PCs are unwittingly exposed to some kind of antidote or protective agent which is the key to stopping the plague (they have to realize this and figure out what it is).

The Game Mechanics have a zombie template in their websites freebie section that makes the zombies more like Dawn of the Dead (remake zombies)

Phillip Reed wrote a "Necromatic Fog" in A Dozen Dungeon Hazards. This hazard could be the source of the zombie plague CR4 hazard.

I read the title as Engineering: A zombie plague, and thought you might be making a commentary on my profession...