Worlds Numberless and Strange
The glistening, translucent skin covering a zombie sprayer’s bulging stomach reveals a cavity sloshing with greenish bile. The sprayer’s mutant physiology allows it to spew the material from its mouth in a vomitous cloud. After it does so, chasing down the blinded and partially digested prey is much easier. <
Motive: Hunger (for flesh, cerebrospinal fluid, certain human hormones, and so on)
Environment (Zed America | Weird Science, Magic, or Psionics): Almost anywhere, usually alone or in groups of three
Health: 9
Damage Inflicted: Minor wound (3 points)
Movement: Short
Combat: A zombie sprayer can attack with claws or a bite. However, early in any conflict, it uses its ability to spray infectious, acidic bile. This creates a cloud that can affect every non-zombie creature in a diameter of short range. Targets must succeed on a Might defense roll each round they remain within the cloud or be blinded for one round and suffer 3 points of damage. (Blinded characters act as if they are in complete darkness.) A zombie sprayer can spray about once every hour.
When a zombie sprayer is killed, its stomach bursts, creating another acidic bile cloud centered on the zombie, though the diameter of this cloud is only immediate range. Zombie sprayers are infectious, and that goes double for the spray they produce. The difficulty of the Might defense roll to resist infection is increased by one step (making it a difficulty 4 roll). If an attack would reduce the zombie sprayer’s health to 0, it does so only if the number rolled in the attack was an even number; otherwise, the zombie is reduced to 1 point of health instead. Sprayers can see in the dark at short range.
Interaction: Perhaps the same smarts that allow zombie sprayers to target their bile clouds effectively give them the capacity to know when they are overmatched, which is why they sometimes retreat from a conflict that’s not going their way.
Use: The owner of a keep enclave in the middle of the Badlands is offering a substantial reward to whoever clears out a zombie sprayer nest that seems centered on land he’s trying to cultivate for potatoes.
GM Intrusion: The character’s protective clothing is damaged by the acidic cloud, and her Armor is reduced by 1 until it can be repaired.
GM Intrusion: The character caught in the cloud of aerosolized zombie bile must succeed on an additional Might defense roll or breathe in too much and begin to choke and retch. She loses her next action and can’t defend herself from attacks until her next turn.