The Core Worlds

Zombies!

Zombies! Watch out or they might eat your brain!

This week's cliche that is begging to get weird is a classic horror staple and dungeon crawl opponent: the zombie.

At first it was just a few carts that passed through the village where the PCs were staying, then a few more, and then more. Maybe there was some truth to the rumors that the dead had risen from their graves and were running rampant over Morginston, munching brains as they went. Morginston is the town two days ride to the west, but its pretty large, so shouldn't there be more people fleeing?

The characters arrive in Morginston two days later, the sun is low in the sky, but still shining, the streets are clean, and bright flowers can be found everywhere. Really everywhere - there are window boxes, there are bed of flowers along the edge of every street, trellises streach across the street between buildings with vines crawling all over them blossoming flowers. All it lacks is Julie Andrews to pirouette out from a side road and start singing. Morginston doesn't look like a town overrun by zombies. Its strange how everyone is so quiet though.

The quiet doesn't last long as they walk through the town, it seems that most of the citizens who haven't locked themselves in their homes have formed a mob in the town square. A wild eyed priest is denouncing the undead monsters that rise each night to perform their unspecified evil atrocities, and TONIGHT the good people or Morginston are going to do something about it. The PCs have rather a hard time getting specifics out of anyone though.

The sun inches closer to the horizon and the crowd gradually drifts away leaving a small core of peasants insane enough to take on The Zombie Horde!

The sun sinks and the moon becomes visible, a smell of rotting flesh fills the air and Zombies begin to march through the streets. Lots of Zombies. Could there really be that many fresh corpses in the graveyards? Most of the remaining members of the mob flee in panic, one or two faint and fall to the ground. The priest, mad though he might be, doesn't fancy the chances of himself, five peasants, and a few out-of-townies against so many undead and legs it.

The Zombies move closer, closer, closer and ... start to tend to the many lovely flowers scattered around the town. That's right, the entire town is sent quivering in their beds by a horde of undead horticulturists.

Why? Are they perhaps being summoned by a batty old woman who likes flowers a lot, but has no sense of smell? Did Loki get his hands on Hades' long, black, magic rod?

What can the players do about it?

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