Dark Tempus promotional picture of a Blight Corpse circa 2012
Blight Corpses (or BC’s, as veterans of the War like to call them) are by far the most numerous and pervasive creatures of the Swarm. Imagine something like the offspring of a 28 Days Later zombie and a stereotypical caveman. BC’s are of very low intelligence, roaming the land individually or in small groups. They are intelligent enough to find or craft simple weapons, such as clubs and axes, but firearms are far beyond them.Once a BC sees a target, they instinctively attack with no thought of personal safety or tactics, usually charging directly at their target and only altering this tactic should they find their way blocked in some fashion. So a BC will attempt to attack a person through a window and, if unable to do so, will then look for an alternative way into the building.
Physically BC’s are no more robust than living humans and can be killed in much the same way, with the notable exception that BC’s seem to register no pain or injury and simply do not stop until the damage to their body’s is great enough to leave no possibility of survival. Many a new combatant in the war received an ankle height unpleasant surprise from a BC they thought was dead, and many Falket tribes even went so far as to introduce a ritualistic position of ‘Final Man’ (or ‘Final Woman’), whose role is to, after every fight with BC’s, scour the battlefield in order to ensure that all the BC’s are, in fact, dead.
Combat Tactics[]
Tactics against BC’s tend to fall into two camps; overwhelming force, and ‘fishing’. When using overwhelming force, you simply have access to sufficient strength to engage the BC’s on their terms, however this is generally considered somewhat reckless. The more popular approach is ‘fishing’. This is where one lucky soldier (usually the newest member of a squad, although some units have developed personal rituals, such as last one to touch their nose is ‘it’.) is selected to be ‘bait’. They will go out with the purpose of being seen by the Swarm, drawing them back to a pre-prepared position in order to be taken out by the rest of the unit... assuming they can run fast enough, of course.