Ecology of the Zombie City

[Morlock]

I ran a search for "ecology of the zombie" and was surprised to not get a Dragon Magazine hit. Did I use the wrong phrase?

Not that I'm really looking for the ecology of the zombie. Just some pointers as to what they do when they're not attacking PCs in hordes. Different ways settings or variant rules might approach this. Ways to spice things up and keep them interesting. I know the ways most movies handle it, how Walking Dead show and comic handle it, etc. Kinda dumb question, I know; they're "sleeping" or creeping around or hiding in a closet waiting to pounce, roll d3. But you never know if you don't ask.

I'm doing an ancient ruined city with enough undead in it that respectable folks stay well away, but just enough treasure to make it worth adventuring in. I don't want or expect the PCs to want to go there, but if they do, I want to be able to run the thing as a functional urban wilderness with lots of mini-dungeons (with a few leaving clues leading to a medium to large dungeon deep beneath the city). Basically, a side quest that probably won't be used.

So, first thing that came to mind was herds of zombies 24/7, and packs of shadows and maybe ghouls at night. Enough to make even 4th or 5th level parties think twice about messing with the place, but not so bad that a determined party couldn't come up with a strategy and start methodically exploring and looting the underground areas.

Anyway, suggestions for zombies or city are welcome.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

In my D&D campaign, zombies are always artificially created mindless automatons, so you won't find any wild packs of them running around. The closest you might see is a group that's hostile because they were ordered to "go that way and attack whomever you encounter" and were never retrieved.

You might find large numbers of them doing jobs where a large amount of manpower is required in a dangerous environment, e.g. mining, pyramid construction, combat.

 

[Morlock]

I was wondering where the zombies were going to come from, too. I was thinking about spicing up the ghouls and making the ghoul elite sentient to varying degrees, and making some of them necromancers who can create zombies. Or just a curse on the city that animates the residents (who all died in an apocalypse centuries ago) into zombies and skeletons, or brings them back as shadows and other incorporeal undead.

 

[Voadam]

Zombies arise from a number of sources. Animate dead spells, spell-like abilities from numerous monsters, supernatural abilities from certain monsters raise all slain creatures around them as zombies, and there are sometimes concentrations of negative energy that bring the dead to life as undead.

For a city I'd go with that last explanation, that there is a concentration of negative energy explaining the ghouls and zombies.

Zombies in AD&D and 3.0 were neutral and mindless they would robotically follow commands. In 3.5 and pathfinder they are evil, I would suggest having that mean they mindlessly form patrols and hunt down living people for their brains.

 

[Samloyal23]

You could have a city where everyone died suddenly, turned into undead by a blast of negative energy, and go through their daily routines mindlessly as if they were still alive. They just repeat whatever task they were doing when they died endlessly, but will randomly attack a passerby occasionally, say 10% of the time. You can walk past them unnoticed the rest of the time. Some of them will be standing around repeating conversations they were having when the pulse hit. Some play out daily tasks like bathing, cooking, sleeping, and so forth, then go to work and act out their jobs. They go home and act out dinner and repeat family conversations and do chores around the house. They look normal from a distance, but up close you see their flesh is hanging loosely off their bones. After they attack once they may just return to what they were doing or may keep attacking until destroyed. They never stray from the places they patrol during their daily routines, they will not follow if you flee fast enough.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

You could have a city where everyone died suddenly, turned into undead by a blast of negative energy, and go through their daily routines mindlessly as if they were still alive. They just repeat whatever task they were doing when they died endlessly, but will randomly attack a passerby occasionally, say 10% of the time. You can walk past them unnoticed the rest of the time. Some of them will be standing around repeating conversations they were having when the pulse hit. Some play out daily tasks like bathing, cooking, sleeping, and so forth, then go to work and act out their jobs. They go home and act out dinner and repeat family conversations and do chores around the house. They look normal from a distance, but up close you see their flesh is hanging loosely off their bones. After they attack once they may just return to what they were doing or may keep attacking until destroyed. They never stray from the places they patrol during their daily routines, they will not follow if you flee fast enough.

Very cool idea. I'm imagining the players figuring out what's going on after they arrive near the middle of the city. This is the kind of image that causes nightmares.

 

[Samloyal23]

If they are arrive at dusk, when the shadow are long, and see people moving about the town on their daily tasks they may not suspect anything, especially when the natives do not attack immediately. One party member gets separated from the group for a minute, tries to talk to a group of locals who are standing around talking, and they suddenly attack and overwhelm him with sheer numbers. The rest of the group may not even know he is dead until he turns into a zombie and starts walking around trying to finish what he was doing...

 

[Morlock]

Yeah that is pretty dang good Sam, I'm definitely going to use that. Thanks.