fandomhigh | Hunting 101 - Class 9 (Wednesday period 7)

Entry tags:

hunting 101

Hunting 101 - Class 9 (Wednesday period 7)

John was leaning against his desk as the class filed in. The sign up sheet was in its usual place and beside it were several handouts.

"Good afternoon," John said when everyone was settled. "Today we're going to be discussing the undead. The simplest definition of undead is something that is dead, but still acts in some ways as if they're alive. You've been given a handout that lists a number of the more common undead entities you may happen to encounter. The biggest group, ghosts and spirits, we've already covered earlier so today we're going to focus more on things with an actual physical body still." He smiled slightly. "The walking corpses.

"The one thing in common that undead entities seem to have is that they're all missing something that living beings have. Ghosts are missing bodies, the corporeal undead tend to be missing heartbeats and breath at the least. And a great many of them are missing consciences and souls. Or whatever you want to call the essence that makes us human.

"That doesn't mean all of them are going to be amoral or evil, but it does certainly raise the odds considerably that they will be. Add in the fact that probably the majority of the undead can or do feed off of living humans and the chances are that any you run into are going to attempting to hurt you or innocents around you. And those are the ones we're discussing here today.

"With ghosts I was able to give you a list of things that are going to work, if not all the time, damn near it. That unfortunately isn't something I can do with the undead. There are so many variations and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Even the same type of creature can vary depending on origin and home dimension -- the vampires that exist where I come from -- which are described in the other handout I gave you -- vary significantly from the vampires in, for example, Miss Summers dimension." He nodded in Buffy's directioin.

"As for zombies, I have a list as long as my arm of various methods of dealing with them, none of which is guaranteed to work on every zombie. There are some basic things though that you can try that are more likely to work than not: holy water, silver, iron, wood inserted in various interesting and specific ways, and," he smiled, eyes seeking out various students who had shown pyromanic tendencies, "always a favourite, fire. Generally one or more of those will work in some way, though there are no guarantees. You'll have to experiment and do your research to determine what will work against any specific threat you face.

"Basically, the thing you most need to remember when dealing with the undead is to not take anything for granted." John gave a slightly wolfish smile. "Which is actually good advice no matter the situation."

"We're going to try something a little new -- a inclass written assignment. I want each of you to pick something that would be categorised as undead and then find out all you can about it in the time you have -- how they're created, what they're said to do, what is said is to be effective defenses against them and why. You can hand your research in at the end of the class."

[ooc: ~~wait for~~ ocds are up. Have at it!]