Corpsychid

Name: Corpsychid

Troupe: Parasite

Archetypes: Jester, Converter

Description: Reanimate corpses as spore-filled hosts. Reanimate yourself if your time comes too early.

Objectives: None.

Masquerade notes: N/A

You swear you killed this guy? What do you mean? That's my best friend in the whole world! Why not give him a handshake?

Concept

The Corpsychid is a parasite mask oriented around hijacking dead bodies (including their own), reanimating them and forcing them to semi-aggressively amble around before bursting into spores after being attacked.

Abilities

The Corpsychid has a medium-cooldown action which allows them to target a corpse and reanimate it. After one minute, the corpse will suddenly rise from the ground and begin to wander aimlessly. After a certain amount of time, it will grow aggressive and begin attacking those around it. All parasites can differentiate animated bodies, but to others they seem like real people. If the reanimated corpse is attacked before it grows aggressive naturally, or someone tries to strip them, they will immediately begin their assault, primarily targeting the person who instigated the fight.

If the animated corpse enters crit, it will husk and burst into a cloud of gaseous spores that convert anyone who inhales them for too long into a Corpsychid. Gaseous spores slowly decay over time. If an animated corpse does not enter crit within a certain timeframe, it will husk and return to its regular state as a dead body. A husked corpse cannot be reanimated again.

Non-infectious spore gas will also exist elsewhere in the game--as a result of gas leaks, other mechanics like plants, etc. Non-infectious gas has a litany of random low-medium severity negative effects on those who inhale it. If a Corpsychid inhales spore gas, they will get dizzy and begin hallucinating.

If the Corpsychid is killed by someone else, they will burst into spores. If the Corpsychid is killed by an environmental source or themselves, they gain the option to reanimate themselves after a moment: reviving with full control, but unable to speak and husking after a certain amount of time like a regular corpse.

Gameplay

Corpsychids present unique strategic issues for both the Parasites and the Crew.

Their method of conversion is not actually fool-proof: you can get around it with internals; assuming a worm doesn't rip your internals off and drag you into the cloud, which persists for much longer than other effects like the Burstworm's projectiles.

Furthermore, a Corpsychid's usefulness scales as more dead bodies show up and as other parasites die, since a parasite death is worth twice as much when a Corpsychid is around to reanimate their corpse for another bout. This can present issues in the early game, where the Corpsychid's usefulness is far below that of other parasite masks.

Presenting the reanimated corpses in a convincing way is another difficult task for the Corpsychid: since the corpses eventually grow aggressive and attack nearby targets, you need them to be in a place with others where you simultaneously won't be noticed dragging the corpse in before it reanimates. Handing the corpse weapons makes it more dangerous and thus more of a valid target for retaliation by others, but also makes it more likely that they'll just run away instead of triggering the spore burst. Dressing the corpse up like the Captain could be a method of ensuring they're targeted by any Traitor that walks by.

A competent crew will keep tabs on who has died and who has been killed so far. This presents massive problems for a Corpsychid, who must either ensure the corpses are either of those who haven't been noticed, deliberately obscure the identity of the corpses they reanimate, or simply bank on the crew not realizing what's happening.

Obtaining the corpses is another problem entirely. A competent crew will make sure to bring them to Medbay and the Morgue as soon as possible to reduce the chances of theft, though a Corpsychid Coroner could make this a severe miscalculation.

Because a husked corpse cannot be reanimated again, Corpsychids must make the most of their limited resources before they simply must resort to risking their own life. A troupe made up of mostly Corpsychids who waste their valuable zombies may find the journey ahead much harder than it might otherwise have been, since they're generally incapable of generating new corpses directly.

Corpsychids have an extreme amount of paranoia-inducing overlap with Changelings (not docced), since they both care about hoarding corpses, can cause husking, and can reanimate themselves and others.