Flesh Tank
You hear a Flesh Tank before you see one. The ground carries the rhythm of its approach: heavy, deliberate footfalls with the weight of something far larger than a person should be. Then it rounds the corner, and the scale of the problem becomes apparent. Flesh Tanks are the siege engines of the Endless Horde, massive bloated corpses armored in layers of hardened, leathery skin that absorbs punishment the way a sandbag absorbs rain. They do not run. They do not need to.
Flesh Tanks do not appear in low-level Horde encounters. They are an escalation, a sign that the local undead presence has concentrated into something worse than the usual shuffle of Shamblers and Bursters. Where those baseline threats test a survivor's reflexes and ammunition, a Flesh Tank tests their resolve. It walks through gunfire. It shrugs off blows that would drop any other corpse. It smashes through barricades, shields, and armor with deliberate, crushing force. And when you finally put it down, it gets back up with its defenses restored, ready to do it all again.
The only permanent answer is the Double Tap, and even that comes with complications. Flesh Tanks resist the finality of death with a stubbornness that borders on obscene; multiple applications of Double Tap may be required before one stays down for good. Each time it rises, the armor regenerates, the body is whole (or what passes for whole in something that bloated), and the advance continues. Brute force is the wrong approach. Evasion, repositioning, and patience are the tools that keep survivors alive against these things.
Settlements that have weathered a Flesh Tank incursion describe the experience in similar terms: the barricade held until it did not, the fighters held their ground until they could not, and the thing kept coming until someone finally managed enough Double Taps to end the cycle. The fetid juggernauts earn their reputation one shattered wall at a time.
Flesh Tanks do not appear in low-level Horde encounters. They are an escalation, a sign that the local undead presence has concentrated into something worse than the usual shuffle of Shamblers and Bursters. Where those baseline threats test a survivor's reflexes and ammunition, a Flesh Tank tests their resolve. It walks through gunfire. It shrugs off blows that would drop any other corpse. It smashes through barricades, shields, and armor with deliberate, crushing force. And when you finally put it down, it gets back up with its defenses restored, ready to do it all again.
The only permanent answer is the Double Tap, and even that comes with complications. Flesh Tanks resist the finality of death with a stubbornness that borders on obscene; multiple applications of Double Tap may be required before one stays down for good. Each time it rises, the armor regenerates, the body is whole (or what passes for whole in something that bloated), and the advance continues. Brute force is the wrong approach. Evasion, repositioning, and patience are the tools that keep survivors alive against these things.
Settlements that have weathered a Flesh Tank incursion describe the experience in similar terms: the barricade held until it did not, the fighters held their ground until they could not, and the thing kept coming until someone finally managed enough Double Taps to end the cycle. The fetid juggernauts earn their reputation one shattered wall at a time.
Basic Information
Anatomy
A Flesh Tank barely resembles the person it used to be. The body is enormous and bloated, swollen with mass that the Infection has packed beneath the skin like ballast. The skin itself has thickened into something resembling leather: rough, cracked, layered in overlapping plates that give the surface a scale-like texture. Coloration runs through sickly grays, muddy browns, and dull greens, the palette of something that has been dead long enough for the decomposition to plateau into a kind of permanent decay.
The sheer physical presence is what registers first. Flesh Tanks dwarf other Horde types in mass. Every surface is armored in that calloused, hardened flesh, from the broad slabs of the torso to the thick columns of the limbs. There is nothing fragile about them. They look like what they are: something built to absorb damage and keep moving forward regardless of what the wasteland throws at them.
The sheer physical presence is what registers first. Flesh Tanks dwarf other Horde types in mass. Every surface is armored in that calloused, hardened flesh, from the broad slabs of the torso to the thick columns of the limbs. There is nothing fragile about them. They look like what they are: something built to absorb damage and keep moving forward regardless of what the wasteland throws at them.
Biological Traits
The layered, leathery skin functions as a natural armor that must be chewed through before the body beneath takes any real damage. Worse, this armor regenerates each time the Flesh Tank rises from being dropped. Combined with ranged damage reduction that blunts firearms and thrown weapons, the total punishment required to put one down permanently is staggering. Melee remains more effective than ranged, but even melee fighters face diminishing returns when the thing they are hitting keeps getting back up with fresh plating.
The real danger is the equipment destruction. Flesh Tanks shatter armor and crack shields with targeted strikes, stripping away a survivor's defenses piece by piece. At the highest threat levels, they carry disease in their bite, can send shockwaves through the ground to disrupt nearby fighters, and require three separate Double Taps before the resurrection cycle finally ends. If the Double Tap is not applied before the corpse stands, the counter resets, and the entire process starts over. Fighting a Flesh Tank is not a battle of strength. It is a battle of resource management, and the Flesh Tank always has more resources than you do.
The real danger is the equipment destruction. Flesh Tanks shatter armor and crack shields with targeted strikes, stripping away a survivor's defenses piece by piece. At the highest threat levels, they carry disease in their bite, can send shockwaves through the ground to disrupt nearby fighters, and require three separate Double Taps before the resurrection cycle finally ends. If the Double Tap is not applied before the corpse stands, the counter resets, and the entire process starts over. Fighting a Flesh Tank is not a battle of strength. It is a battle of resource management, and the Flesh Tank always has more resources than you do.
Behaviour
Flesh Tanks do not stumble or sway. Every step is ponderous and deliberate, carrying the weight of that massive frame forward with the inevitability of a landslide. They are slow, slower even than Shamblers in some cases, but the pace is irrelevant. A Flesh Tank does not need to catch you. It needs to reach you, and it will, because it does not stop.
There is no hesitation in their advance. Damage does not alter their trajectory. Pain, assuming they can feel any, does not register on whatever remains of their face. They walk through obstacles the way water flows around rocks: not with grace, but with the patient certainty that nothing in their path will outlast them. When they reach a barricade, they smash it. When they reach a shield wall, they break it apart. When they reach a person, the strikes come heavy and wide, and anything worn for protection crumbles under the impact.
There is no hesitation in their advance. Damage does not alter their trajectory. Pain, assuming they can feel any, does not register on whatever remains of their face. They walk through obstacles the way water flows around rocks: not with grace, but with the patient certainty that nothing in their path will outlast them. When they reach a barricade, they smash it. When they reach a shield wall, they break it apart. When they reach a person, the strikes come heavy and wide, and anything worn for protection crumbles under the impact.
It does not flinch. It does not slow. It simply keeps coming.
Threat Class
The Endless Horde
Counts As
Zombie
Body Range
75-125
Key Threat
Regenerating armor; multiple Double Taps required
Average Physique
Massive, bloated, armored in leathery skin
Body Tint, Colouring and Marking
Sickly grays, muddy browns, dull greens; cracked leathery texture
