Abomination
Some things the Infection makes are recognizably human. Shamblers wear the faces of the people they used to be. Ragers still have the right number of limbs. An Abomination is where that stops. What walks toward you is a mass of fused flesh and warped bone that used to be several corpses, melted together by concentrated Infection until the seams between bodies are nothing but scar tissue and exposed sinew. It moves with a gait that should not work given its proportions, and every extra limb it has grown finds something to grab, strike, or tear.
Abominations are the disruptors of the Violent Dead class. Their threat is not raw durability (they carry only 50 to 100 Body) or mindless charge speed. Their threat is that they break every assumption a survivor brings to a fight. Blinding Pestilence takes your vision. Delusions fill your head with things that are not there. Abduct drags you bodily out of your defensive position and deposits you wherever the Abomination wants you, which is invariably somewhere worse. At higher ranks, that abduction hits multiple targets at once, scattering a formation as effectively as any Rager charge but with deliberate, targeted precision.
The ability that makes experienced fighters go pale is Corpse Bound Frenzy: an area-of-effect pulse that drives every nearby zombie into a frenzied state. One Abomination in a mixed horde does not just add its own threat to the encounter. It amplifies every corpse around it. That shambler you were ignoring is suddenly a problem. That half-dead Rager you thought you had handled is back on its feet and twice as aggressive. The Abomination is the multiplier, and in a numbers game, multipliers kill.
Mature specimens add acid spew, Dangerous Grounds (rendering entire areas hazardous to traverse), and Cerebral Scourge, a disease that does not kill you during the fight but follows you home and finishes the job days later. A single Double Tap will end one, and melee bypasses its ranged damage reduction. The difficulty is staying coherent long enough to deliver either when your eyes are burning, your mind is full of phantoms, and the ground under your feet is trying to kill you.
Abominations are the disruptors of the Violent Dead class. Their threat is not raw durability (they carry only 50 to 100 Body) or mindless charge speed. Their threat is that they break every assumption a survivor brings to a fight. Blinding Pestilence takes your vision. Delusions fill your head with things that are not there. Abduct drags you bodily out of your defensive position and deposits you wherever the Abomination wants you, which is invariably somewhere worse. At higher ranks, that abduction hits multiple targets at once, scattering a formation as effectively as any Rager charge but with deliberate, targeted precision.
The ability that makes experienced fighters go pale is Corpse Bound Frenzy: an area-of-effect pulse that drives every nearby zombie into a frenzied state. One Abomination in a mixed horde does not just add its own threat to the encounter. It amplifies every corpse around it. That shambler you were ignoring is suddenly a problem. That half-dead Rager you thought you had handled is back on its feet and twice as aggressive. The Abomination is the multiplier, and in a numbers game, multipliers kill.
Mature specimens add acid spew, Dangerous Grounds (rendering entire areas hazardous to traverse), and Cerebral Scourge, a disease that does not kill you during the fight but follows you home and finishes the job days later. A single Double Tap will end one, and melee bypasses its ranged damage reduction. The difficulty is staying coherent long enough to deliver either when your eyes are burning, your mind is full of phantoms, and the ground under your feet is trying to kill you.
Basic Information
Anatomy
An Abomination looks built from debris. The body is a chaotic fusion of multiple corpses, stitched together by Infection rather than intent. Extra limbs jut from the torso at angles that make no anatomical sense. Elongated appendages end in hands or claws or things that split the difference. Where the bodies merged, the flesh shows seams and scars, patches of mismatched skin tone fused into ridges of glistening tissue. Exposed muscle and sinew are visible throughout, and bone protrudes where the joining was imperfect.
The face, if it can be called that, is warped and almost alien. The proportions are wrong in ways that trigger something deeper than disgust. It is larger than human, but how much larger varies; the mass of constituent bodies determines the final shape, and no two Abominations look quite the same. The overall impression is of something assembled rather than grown, as if the Infection grabbed whatever was available and pressed it together until it held.
The face, if it can be called that, is warped and almost alien. The proportions are wrong in ways that trigger something deeper than disgust. It is larger than human, but how much larger varies; the mass of constituent bodies determines the final shape, and no two Abominations look quite the same. The overall impression is of something assembled rather than grown, as if the Infection grabbed whatever was available and pressed it together until it held.
Biological Traits
The Abomination's kit is built around disruption, not endurance. Blinding Pestilence strips vision. Delusions plant false perceptions that make it impossible to trust what you see or hear. Corpse Bound Frenzy amplifies every nearby zombie into a more aggressive threat. Abduct physically relocates targets (area-of-effect at higher ranks), dismantling defensive positions one grabbed survivor at a time. These abilities cascade: the blinding hits first, then the delusions, and by the time a survivor can see clearly, they have been dragged thirty feet from their allies into a crowd of frenzied dead.
Advanced Abominations add Dangerous Grounds, turning the terrain itself into a hazard, and Cerebral Scourge, a disease with consequences that extend well beyond the encounter. The Body total is low for a Violent Dead (50 to 100), and a single Double Tap finishes the job. Melee bypasses ranged damage reduction. But engaging in melee means entering the range of every debuff the Abomination carries, and that is a trade most survivors lose.
Advanced Abominations add Dangerous Grounds, turning the terrain itself into a hazard, and Cerebral Scourge, a disease with consequences that extend well beyond the encounter. The Body total is low for a Violent Dead (50 to 100), and a single Double Tap finishes the job. Melee bypasses ranged damage reduction. But engaging in melee means entering the range of every debuff the Abomination carries, and that is a trade most survivors lose.
Behaviour
The movement is the first thing that unsettles you. An Abomination has a lumbering, uneven gait driven by limbs that were never meant to work together, yet it covers ground with deceptive speed when it wants to. Extra appendages reach and grasp independently of the main body, grabbing at the environment, at obstacles, at anything living that strays too close. In combat, those limbs become tools for Abduct: seizing a target and physically relocating them, stripping them from cover and allies in a single motion.
Abominations are focused on annihilation, but not the mindless kind. Their mutated forms give them reach and versatility that other Violent Dead lack, and they use it to deny ground rather than simply occupy it. They push survivors out of fortified positions with psionic disruption, pestilence, and area denial, then let the horde do the rest. The Fractured Meal ability lets them feed from multiple sources simultaneously, which tells you everything you need to know about what happens when they catch someone.
Abominations are focused on annihilation, but not the mindless kind. Their mutated forms give them reach and versatility that other Violent Dead lack, and they use it to deny ground rather than simply occupy it. They push survivors out of fortified positions with psionic disruption, pestilence, and area denial, then let the horde do the rest. The Fractured Meal ability lets them feed from multiple sources simultaneously, which tells you everything you need to know about what happens when they catch someone.
Several corpses fused into one screaming horror
Threat Class
Violent Dead
Counts As
Zombie
Body Range
50-100
Key Threat
Psionic disruption and area denial
Average Physique
Larger than human, warped by mutation
Body Tint, Colouring and Marking
Mismatched flesh tones, fused seams, exposed sinew
