Liliana Vess (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
deathsmajesty) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2025-09-04 02:19 am
deathsmajesty) wrote in fandomhigh2025-09-04 02:19 am
Entry tags:
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse, Thursday, Per 3
There was not a beautiful necromancer clad in the finest silks standing in front of the class today. There wasn't even a much younger version of said beautiful necromancer, back when she was a simple healing cleric, clad in soft linens. Nope. Instead there was a pony.
A very grumpy and disgruntled pony.
"Welcome to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse," Liliana said, one of her hooves tapping impatiently against the floor. "Normally, this is where we'd do introductions, but those will do a fat lot of absolutely no good considering our current state." Which the island had chosen specifically to interfere with Liliana's class, she was certain of it. "So, we're pushing introductions off until next week and settling down to the meat of the matter." Oh, did you think you were getting out of a lecture simply because you were all ponies? Hardly. That was the opposite of Liliana's style.
"Zombies!" she said and there was a slight thawing of her displeasure. "A staple of much modern horror media, and rarely, if ever, presented correctly. In fact, most of what I've seen depicted about how to handle them will really only serve to get you messily devoured. So today, I will be providing you some important informational background on zombies in order to properly prepare you for the next seventeen weeks. People who took my Necromancer's Guide to the Undead course will find this information familiar, though I doubt a refresher would go amiss."
Since it had been over a year and all.
"To begin, it's important to understand that zombies are not a monolith. My specialty is ghoulcalling; I wrote my undergraduate thesis on zombies, and I've spent a significant percentage of the last two hundred years studying them, and there are still new things to study and discover about then, even without taking the differences in magic and mechanics between multiverses. There are multiple types of zombies, and different planes have their own unique take on the undead. The most common kind of zombie is what is known as a ghoul or a revenant: a corpse animated by magic with little to no connection with the soul of the deceased. It is the equivalent of an abandoned house with the lights turned on. As per usual, ghouls can occur naturally, when a something dies or is buried near a font of black mana, but the vast majority of ghouls you find roaming around were raised by necromancers. Whether or not they're still under necromantic control is debatable, but their creation was due to deliberate magic used for that purpose.
"While there are multiple types of intelligent zombies, today's class is going to focus on the unintelligent ones. And while there are multiple ways to classify even unintelligent zombies, the most important classification, at least for this class, is whether the zombie is feral or not. Feral zombies are the types you see in various kinds of popular media: mindless, shambling undead interested only in devouring the flesh of the living. Their hunger is insatiable, and while a feeding feral is generally preoccupied with the meal before it, attracting its attention can cause it to leave the carcass of its previous meal to attack the next. If you are lucky enough to come across a feral zombie while it's eating, use of stealth is your best bet to continue to survive, whether you're sneaking away to leave the area immediately - the wisest decision - or to sneaking up and attempting to kill it. For the record, the latter is an incredibly stupid move if there are more zombies than there are capable zombie killers, and also, you run into the risk of zombies returning immediately from re-death who are now aware of your existence, thus cementing the idea that you have made a stupid choice."
There was also the strategy of knocking someone down and leaving them to be caught while you made a break for it, but that was a strategy to be discussed over the course of the semester.
"Non-feral zombies are certainly may still feed, but they're not as single-focused as ferals. When left to their own devices, the brainless ghouls as mentioned before are generally - please know that I'm always speaking in generalities, darlings, there are always exceptions - good for four things: killing one's enemies, devouring the flesh of the living, passing along diseases, and, in the case of infectious zombies, creating more of themselves," Liliana continued. "When I say infectious, I do mean the type that can cause reanimation in creatures that they bite. Pretty much all zombies are infectious the other way. The human mouth is disgusting even when we're alive, and only moreso once you start introducing filth and rot into the mix. When I was giving a similar lecture to Jon's class a few years ago, he asked if there were any way of telling if a zombie was of the infectious variety or not. Sadly, the only real answer is 'Wait and see what happens after a bitten victim has died'. The timeframe for that does vary, however. If the zombies have been raised because of an immediate fight the necromancer is in, the body will raise almost immediately to continue fighting, though on the necromancer's side. If it isn't part of an immediate battle defense, then it can take up to several days for the first victims to rise again."
So, you know, do try to avoid getting bitten . And, more importantly, do also avoid getting on the wrong side of a necromancer. "Zombies that are bound by a necromancer will serve that necromancer's will, carrying out their orders. However, mindless zombies are just that, with even less mental capacity than many other forms of undead. They cannot use tools or weapons; if you see a zombie with a weapon in hand, you're dealing with one that has at least the moderate ability to think for itself. Again, my suggestion to you for dealing with zombies is to run. Most zombies are very slow - though those raised by any necromancer worth her salt will have been meticulously put back together, including muscles and tendons. On the positive side, that means more targets to hit than, say, a skeleton; hamstringing a zombie can be useful if you're looking to get away. On the negative side, that does mean that zombies are capable of running. Or flying, as the case may be. If running is not an option, blunt weapons are better than sharp. Zombies cannot bleed and do not feel pain. Your best option is to do enough damage to incapacitate them, which is most easily done by crushing bones. Hard to chase if a kneecap is pulverized, easier to break a grip if the ulna and radius are dust. Sharp weapons that can remove limbs are helpful, but only if you have the strength to cleanly remove them. Otherwise, you're more likely to get the weapon lodged in bone or rotting flesh and then you're struggling to get your weapon back while the zombie's friends are surrounding you. Sharp weapons and a working knowledge of anatomy can help, if you know what tendons and ligaments prevent moving or grabbing. To be clear, though, I mean that it will help your friends. You'll likely be devoured pulling off fancy maneuvers like that, but your friends will hopefully live long enough to say pretty thank yous at your funeral." Beat. "Or to your wandering corpse, if infection is in play.
"Additional strategic thoughts: first and foremost, don't let yourself get surrounded and overwhelmed. Zombies are slow, but their strength is in numbers - save when their strength is in strength, of course - and even the strongest and most tireless fighter can't fight off an entire horde by themself. Second, zombies aren't like humans - they don't have morale, they don't get afraid, they don't get tired. They are persistence predators and they will not stop until you or their necromancer is dead. Which is the last bit of advice I have for you - if you cannot outrun the zombies and there are too many to safely fight, your best bet is to go after their controlling necromancer and hope that they were raised quickly and will die with their master. Some necromancers do raise zombies specifically to go feral after their deaths, but that's just a risk you're going to have to take."
Honestly, the people of Thraben should be grateful that she had specifically tied in docility and obedience into the ghouls she'd raised to fight off Emrakul, rather than whining about how the streets were filled with the remnants of the zombie army she'd raised to save their miserable lives.
"Over the rest of the semester, many of your classes will be assuming the scenario where your location has been overrun by zombies and you are trying to survive. This class isn't even specifically about how you can fight the zombies and live, but how to navigate a world where zombies and humanity clashed and humanity lost. And before anyone says that's impossible, I invite you to spend a few minutes on Grixis, which, funnily enough, would also be your general life expectancy if you did. That being said, zombies will be a major environmental hazard, and so learning more about them - especially if there is no sign of a controlling necromancer that you could try to take out - is one of the best ways to improve your odds of survival." How was a pony smiling? Who could say, don't even ask. "So today is an excellent day to ask question about how zombies work or to dispel certain erroneous myths and beliefs you may be carrying. Who knows? The answer you get today may be what saves your life next week."
Surely she was speaking figuratively. Surely.
A very grumpy and disgruntled pony.
"Welcome to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse," Liliana said, one of her hooves tapping impatiently against the floor. "Normally, this is where we'd do introductions, but those will do a fat lot of absolutely no good considering our current state." Which the island had chosen specifically to interfere with Liliana's class, she was certain of it. "So, we're pushing introductions off until next week and settling down to the meat of the matter." Oh, did you think you were getting out of a lecture simply because you were all ponies? Hardly. That was the opposite of Liliana's style.
"Zombies!" she said and there was a slight thawing of her displeasure. "A staple of much modern horror media, and rarely, if ever, presented correctly. In fact, most of what I've seen depicted about how to handle them will really only serve to get you messily devoured. So today, I will be providing you some important informational background on zombies in order to properly prepare you for the next seventeen weeks. People who took my Necromancer's Guide to the Undead course will find this information familiar, though I doubt a refresher would go amiss."
Since it had been over a year and all.
"To begin, it's important to understand that zombies are not a monolith. My specialty is ghoulcalling; I wrote my undergraduate thesis on zombies, and I've spent a significant percentage of the last two hundred years studying them, and there are still new things to study and discover about then, even without taking the differences in magic and mechanics between multiverses. There are multiple types of zombies, and different planes have their own unique take on the undead. The most common kind of zombie is what is known as a ghoul or a revenant: a corpse animated by magic with little to no connection with the soul of the deceased. It is the equivalent of an abandoned house with the lights turned on. As per usual, ghouls can occur naturally, when a something dies or is buried near a font of black mana, but the vast majority of ghouls you find roaming around were raised by necromancers. Whether or not they're still under necromantic control is debatable, but their creation was due to deliberate magic used for that purpose.
"While there are multiple types of intelligent zombies, today's class is going to focus on the unintelligent ones. And while there are multiple ways to classify even unintelligent zombies, the most important classification, at least for this class, is whether the zombie is feral or not. Feral zombies are the types you see in various kinds of popular media: mindless, shambling undead interested only in devouring the flesh of the living. Their hunger is insatiable, and while a feeding feral is generally preoccupied with the meal before it, attracting its attention can cause it to leave the carcass of its previous meal to attack the next. If you are lucky enough to come across a feral zombie while it's eating, use of stealth is your best bet to continue to survive, whether you're sneaking away to leave the area immediately - the wisest decision - or to sneaking up and attempting to kill it. For the record, the latter is an incredibly stupid move if there are more zombies than there are capable zombie killers, and also, you run into the risk of zombies returning immediately from re-death who are now aware of your existence, thus cementing the idea that you have made a stupid choice."
There was also the strategy of knocking someone down and leaving them to be caught while you made a break for it, but that was a strategy to be discussed over the course of the semester.
"Non-feral zombies are certainly may still feed, but they're not as single-focused as ferals. When left to their own devices, the brainless ghouls as mentioned before are generally - please know that I'm always speaking in generalities, darlings, there are always exceptions - good for four things: killing one's enemies, devouring the flesh of the living, passing along diseases, and, in the case of infectious zombies, creating more of themselves," Liliana continued. "When I say infectious, I do mean the type that can cause reanimation in creatures that they bite. Pretty much all zombies are infectious the other way. The human mouth is disgusting even when we're alive, and only moreso once you start introducing filth and rot into the mix. When I was giving a similar lecture to Jon's class a few years ago, he asked if there were any way of telling if a zombie was of the infectious variety or not. Sadly, the only real answer is 'Wait and see what happens after a bitten victim has died'. The timeframe for that does vary, however. If the zombies have been raised because of an immediate fight the necromancer is in, the body will raise almost immediately to continue fighting, though on the necromancer's side. If it isn't part of an immediate battle defense, then it can take up to several days for the first victims to rise again."
So, you know, do try to avoid getting bitten . And, more importantly, do also avoid getting on the wrong side of a necromancer. "Zombies that are bound by a necromancer will serve that necromancer's will, carrying out their orders. However, mindless zombies are just that, with even less mental capacity than many other forms of undead. They cannot use tools or weapons; if you see a zombie with a weapon in hand, you're dealing with one that has at least the moderate ability to think for itself. Again, my suggestion to you for dealing with zombies is to run. Most zombies are very slow - though those raised by any necromancer worth her salt will have been meticulously put back together, including muscles and tendons. On the positive side, that means more targets to hit than, say, a skeleton; hamstringing a zombie can be useful if you're looking to get away. On the negative side, that does mean that zombies are capable of running. Or flying, as the case may be. If running is not an option, blunt weapons are better than sharp. Zombies cannot bleed and do not feel pain. Your best option is to do enough damage to incapacitate them, which is most easily done by crushing bones. Hard to chase if a kneecap is pulverized, easier to break a grip if the ulna and radius are dust. Sharp weapons that can remove limbs are helpful, but only if you have the strength to cleanly remove them. Otherwise, you're more likely to get the weapon lodged in bone or rotting flesh and then you're struggling to get your weapon back while the zombie's friends are surrounding you. Sharp weapons and a working knowledge of anatomy can help, if you know what tendons and ligaments prevent moving or grabbing. To be clear, though, I mean that it will help your friends. You'll likely be devoured pulling off fancy maneuvers like that, but your friends will hopefully live long enough to say pretty thank yous at your funeral." Beat. "Or to your wandering corpse, if infection is in play.
"Additional strategic thoughts: first and foremost, don't let yourself get surrounded and overwhelmed. Zombies are slow, but their strength is in numbers - save when their strength is in strength, of course - and even the strongest and most tireless fighter can't fight off an entire horde by themself. Second, zombies aren't like humans - they don't have morale, they don't get afraid, they don't get tired. They are persistence predators and they will not stop until you or their necromancer is dead. Which is the last bit of advice I have for you - if you cannot outrun the zombies and there are too many to safely fight, your best bet is to go after their controlling necromancer and hope that they were raised quickly and will die with their master. Some necromancers do raise zombies specifically to go feral after their deaths, but that's just a risk you're going to have to take."
Honestly, the people of Thraben should be grateful that she had specifically tied in docility and obedience into the ghouls she'd raised to fight off Emrakul, rather than whining about how the streets were filled with the remnants of the zombie army she'd raised to save their miserable lives.
"Over the rest of the semester, many of your classes will be assuming the scenario where your location has been overrun by zombies and you are trying to survive. This class isn't even specifically about how you can fight the zombies and live, but how to navigate a world where zombies and humanity clashed and humanity lost. And before anyone says that's impossible, I invite you to spend a few minutes on Grixis, which, funnily enough, would also be your general life expectancy if you did. That being said, zombies will be a major environmental hazard, and so learning more about them - especially if there is no sign of a controlling necromancer that you could try to take out - is one of the best ways to improve your odds of survival." How was a pony smiling? Who could say, don't even ask. "So today is an excellent day to ask question about how zombies work or to dispel certain erroneous myths and beliefs you may be carrying. Who knows? The answer you get today may be what saves your life next week."
Surely she was speaking figuratively. Surely.
Re: Listen to the Lecture
The fact he had an Eye mark on his rump was not helping matters.
Oddly, the fact that Liliana was also a pony did help, a bit.