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Zombies. First, we must differentiate between Zombies (or Jumbie, Nzumbi or Draugr) and the Undead Beings so often featured in films and games, such as Resident Evil, and other games in which slaying the rotting, decaying, maggoty, putrid, vile corpses which have been granted substitutiary locomotion (motion to the motionless) is the prevalent theme.

Now, rather than bore you senseless with knowledge of Zombies which you most likely already know, or have read before, let me tell you the amazingly interesting (...) truth behind those creatures known as the legion of the Undead.

And before you go running to Wikipedia, to double check my work, let me tell you now that the "facts" held on the Zombie page are sketchy at best. Here is the truth.

Zombies. When you say that word, you think - Slave, Evil, Mindless, (un)Dead. Well... Those four statements are only Half Right. The Mindless, and Servants are the truth. Evil and (un)Dead are myths, spread to prevent people attempting to make them. It tends to work. In general.

Zombies are not the reanimated corpses of the dead, slain in ritualistic purposes with the sole aim of creating a bound revenant (more on those in a moment) to do the necromancers or sorcerers bidding. In truth, no magic is involved. Neither are gods. Or spirits. Or even (Shock Horror!) the dead. For, you see, there is no dead. No corpse. No reanimation. No brain eating and maggot infestation.

A zombie, for all intents and purposes, is alive. And the conjurer a charlatan. Wellish. He (for it is very rarely a woman with this job...) is very knowledgeable on his Craft. For his Craft is one that many Witches, Pagans, Heathens, Apothecaries and Chemists are familiar with. Many know it is Wortcunning, Greenwork, or Herbcraft.

Have you got it yet? Your undead raising mage is actually an Alchemist. Through the skin, he works his poisons, often applied to wounds and cuts, (especially handy, considering that in many places this alchemist is also the tribal doctor) to slowly ease his victim into a stupor.

This stupor worsens to a deep sleep, then a coma. While in this narcotic induced coma, more drugs are administered, powerful memory erasing drugs, and then an infusion to bring them back from the brink of death. When the subject has reawakened, without their prior thoughts, and prejudices, they truly are mindless, and to make matters worse, their "saviour" and now master, convinces them that they are of the Legion of the Undead, and bound to them forever.

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