EXPERIMENT
A wasted corpse, rotten from so many years in the dank hole (SAN loss: 1/1D8 from the Unnatural), Marlene is more than an inexpertly raised zombie. Her resurrection was the result of Baughman unwittingly imbuing her remains with a unnatural consciousness we term “The Other.”
THE OTHER
The Other is a formless intelligence from dimensions outside of our own that can inhabit the corpse of any creature that had an INT of 1 or greater in life. The reanimated corpse is unnaturally strong and fast. It is more cunning than intelligent, but it can draw upon the memories of the corpse it animates.
The Other knows much of what Marlene knew. While it could not convince Clyde that his wife had returned to him, it made it impossible for him to destroy the body that spoke with his wife’s dead voice. It hopes to manipulate the newcomers with greater effect.
CHATTY
If “Marlene” realizes human beings are near, she attempts to get their attention and sympathy by pounding on the inside of the tank and crying for help in a croaking, pathetic voice.
She says that her husband was a sick man, always seeking terrible secrets. She says he did something strange to her, some kind of awful pagan prayer to make her his slave forever. But it didn’t work the way he thought, so he locked her in this tank. Whatever he did kept her from dying. She begs for air and light. She begs for freedom.
Trying to discern anything from her voice with HUMINT is no good with the concrete in between.
she does her best to persuade the Agents to help her. If an Agent reaches down to help her, she takes the offered hand. She says that she’ll recover. She needs only to eat and rest and things will be all right.
- HUMINT 40% can’t tell what to make of her body language and mannerisms. They’re all strange. But if she’s been stuck in a septic tank for all these years unable to die, that should be no surprise.
- HUMINT 60% senses a strange disconnect between her speech and her facial expressions and mannerisms. It’s unlike any the Agent has encountered.
- HUMINT 80% can tell she’s in a high state of alert, not quite as defeated as she seems.
Remember it is more an animal cunning than a true intelligence. Likewise, if they are able to catch a glimpse of her in the tank, any Agents with Medical knowledge should see signs in her decay that she should not be able to be alive. But maybe they just misread something? The suspense here comes from the competing tension between the desire to help her/not murder what claims to be an old lady and the pressure to follow orders and the dangers behind not doing so.
Marlene, in desperation, might promise them access to secret knowledge.
HOW SHE LOOKS
An Agent who opens the hatch sees her inside, huddled weakly in the shallow water, reaching a hand feebly up. On first glance she looks like a small, somewhat misshapen, nude woman in her fifties. Her flesh is grey-blue and she has torn out most of her hair. Her hands are blood-stained, the flesh stripped by constant clawing at the walls. Her feet and lower legs are swollen from frequent immersion in water, and their skin sloughs off with alarming frequency. And yet she lives.