Two questions that came up as I was considering a possible campaign:

1. I don't have all the books but I was wondering if any current Dark Heresy book have any stats for plague zombies (I'm guessing Plaguebearers are not the same thing)? If no book have any stats, could someone who has more knowledge about the 40K universe take a guess what those stats would be like? And are they one kind of creature or do plague zombies come in many different varieties?

2. Reading the traits of Plaugebearers it says "any injuries inflicted by a Plaguebearer automatically become infected", so I tried to find if this is covered in any of the rules, but came up empty. Was it my ineptitude that produced nothing or is the effects of infections left to the GM to decide?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

The only info I have on hand comes from Necromunda

Plague Zombies stats are as follows:

M: 2D6 WS: 2 BS: 0 S: 3 T: 3 W: 1 I: 1 A: 1 Ld: 5

So Initiative, Attack, and Leadership

I suppose Initiative could be Agility and Leadership could be Willpower.

I would suggest a WS of 25 or so, Strength of 35, Toughness of 35, Agility of 15, and Willpower of 50

Primitive weapons as they use claws, bones, whatever... They feel no pain and have no fear and they also have the potential to transmit the plague. Basically Necromunda says that someone wounded by a plague zombie has a 50% shot to get the plague themselves... with modifiers. I.E. Medkits, access to medical facilities, doctors, etc...

Well, official stats for Plague Zombies exists in DotDG and another set that's fairly close exists in Purge the Unclean as Warp Zombies.

The breed presented in DotDG have a varying infection chance based on circumstances and contact type ranging from 5% (skin to skin or tissue contact) to 75% (deep critical wounding from a zombie bite). If infected, the subject has to make a toughness test to resist the disease and just become a carrier as opposed to it killing them.

If you go with the stats listed above this post, toss in the stipulation that only critical damage that destroys the head or chest "kills" the zombie. Anything else is just an inconvenience. ;-)

xenobiotica said:

In terms of the zombies, the others have answered that...they're in DotDG in terms of rules, suggestions and stats. Just remember, a player character that's infected will die.

In terms of the second question, Plaguebearers typically carry Nurgle's Rot, an incurable disease that, when the infected die, they become another Plaguebearer. It's one of the reasons I'm reluctant to use them in the campaign I run.

I agree with User. If your fond of your player characters dont use anything with infectious, uncurable wounds. Or do the old "priests blessing" trick.

...or do it sparingly, the way real survival horror plays it out. There should be clear ways to protect one's self, the only difficulty is making sure that you can survive long enough to get out alive. The reason zombies are slow in most movies isn't a special effects thing - it's to make them not-unstoppable. You can just keep shooting them, but they come in such numbers that you'll click on empty before you get them all. Hence, you have to fight them smart, not hard.

One of the WFRP books has info on Nurgles Rot I believe, cant recall at the moment.

But year, DOTDG and PTU both have zombies in them. DotDG has what you are looking for.

If you dont feel like spending the money, just use an amalgam of mutant and plague bearer from the core rules and make them slower and dumber.

This is great, thanks everyone!

I never knew the infections were that deadly. Instantly I'm thinking the same thing as you, Pneumonica: survival horror. That's the angle I've always wanted to go with in Dark Heresy.

What a second. Plaguebearers are daemons, correct? They carry a disease that causes the infected person to become a daemon? That doesn't sound right to me.

What a second. Plaguebearers are daemons, correct? They carry a disease that causes the infected person to become a daemon? That doesn't sound right to me.

That's exactly what Nurgle's Rot is all about, though I'm not quite sure whether "lowly" plague bearers carry that or if it needs a higher daemon.

However, plague bearers are not directly related to plague zombies (apart from both being children of granpa' Nurgle), the latter being your run-of-the-mill zombie apocalypse movie zombies.

bogi_khaosa said:

Essentially, the infected person's soul (that shiny lump of warp energy) becomes a Plaguebearer... if it happens fast enough that their body isn't dead yet, then they might still have the opportunity to possess their own almost-cadavre and mutate it, almost like an instant mini-daemonhost.

That settles it! I'm running a zombie game the next chance I get. Right after I get the DotDG...

I'm running a zombie game at the moment and I'm basing my zombies on the DotDG stats but I've gone for the '28 Days Later' style of zombie, so they actually have Unnatural Speed rather than the lumbering 1/2/3/- movement given in the book. I know the slow, lumbering zombie is more traditional but I find it impossible to be scared of something that I can escape from at a casual saunter.

I ran a scenario on Senophia, involving zombies. This was before the release of DotDG so I had to make up my own rules for 'em.

Basically, these zombies don't have a wound score. All hits are critical (read: messy) hits. However, critical hits are not cumulative, and only hits that destroy the body or the head stops the zombie. So, depending on weapon type you typically had to deal around 7 or so damage in a single hit, after Toughness soak, to have more effect than just making the zombie uglier.

It worked fantastically... players didn't really catch on to needing strong hits to take them down, so they were spraying all over the place with their autoguns and practically panicing when it had little effect. It helped a lot when I graphically described the soft, squishy sound of something falling to the ground, and they turned around to see this dissected corpse sitting up so its innards fell out of the open gut. Ew.

And then there was the poor zombie who got both his feet shot off, yet bravely continued it's duty, trying to claw its way over to the players who just couldn't take it down.

Overall, the zombies probably wasn't as dangerous as I had expected (they were slow) but the players were badly wounded by the time they ran into them, so it certainly had the desired effect.

My zombies (as well as their creator) were largely inspired by the Vhazilok from City of Heroes. Dead bodies "animated" by cybernetic implants in their joints. It was planned as a recurring villain... but I'm not sure whether to keep my zombies or use the official ones. I kinda like mine.

Morollan said:

This may show how much thought I've put into zombies in general but what the warp right?

I have this theory on how zombies could theoretically be track stars at first, and start to move slower as time passed. Basically after a person who becomes infected dies they get back up and since they're dead and effectively don't feel pain they can push their bodies further than normal, not caring about pulling or straining muscles etc. But as rigor starts to set in the muscles start to tighten up restricting movement to the point that they move slower and seem to shamble.

My zombies (as well as their creator) were largely inspired by the Vhazilok from City of Heroes. Dead bodies "animated" by cybernetic implants in their joints. It was planned as a recurring villain... but I'm not sure whether to keep my zombies or use the official ones. I kinda like mine.

Actually, there already are tech-zombies described in the DotDG, so you could just compare those to yours and transfer what you like about both kinds.

Morollan said:

Did you ever notice that in "classic" flesh eating zombie films, it's not the walking dead that are scary. It's the behaviors and attitudes of the people that come to occupy a little patch of safety. Ignorance, hate, lust, and all those little negative traits that find their time to shine when the chips are most definitely down.

Sure in Night of the Living Dead the zombies feasting on their victims was a terrible sight. However by the end of the film, all that gore is easily overshadowed by the evil in some of the film's characters.

When you put it that way, slow zombies are just as sinister for their ability to bring out the worst in people.

Mark It Zero said:

That's a very good point. Though if you want to look at the zombies themselves (ruling out the evils of human nature in those that aren't) the Romero zombie was never really meant to be frighting as an individual. They are utterly pathetic when seen individually but when you take a them in as a whole, they become far more ominous (though not cheaply frighting).

In the end, with the Romero zombie, you are one and they are legion. No matter how far you run, they will still be there and they will still be coming. No matter how fast you are, you still have to stop sometime, you still have to rest... they don't. What they are is a slow creeping but unavoidable doom, a sign of what you will eventually become unless you put a bullet through your own head. Eventually, you will make a mistake, not wake up in time, or run out of bullets. Eventually, one way or the other, you will die (it's unavoidable after all and when you do, you will join their number as just another pathetic mindless consumer. That's what's scary about them.

Of course, in the end, human nature (greed usually though arrogance takes a close second) is what always dooms the protagonists when faced with the romerian zombies. The mindless masses of clamoring consumers can bring out the worst in anyone really ;-)