Hello, glad to see that Cataclysm is alive and have an active forum. Here’s a proposal I wanted to add in the former forum (whalesdev), so I present you here. Sorry if it has been discussed already, there’s a lot of material to read and maybe I haven’t been able to find it.
[size=12pt]Darkseekers[/size]
[i]As a collateral effect of the infection, there are those individuals who have resisted the undead condition at a terrible price.[/i]
The idea is inspired in “Omega man”, “I am Legend” and vampiric lore.
Darkseekers need to feed on blood of living beings: forest animals, farm animals (if they were implemented) and particularly, survivors like you.
A darkseeker is a former human being keeping the same physical traits and intelligence but with an acquired advantage and a drawback. The advantage is a ultra nocturnal vision which allows them to see at night with a radius of the half a human can see at day; the drawback is that they avoid daylight because it damages them so badly to the point of burning and experiencing self-combustion. During drizzle, rain and storm they can go outside although acid rain hurts them the same as you.
It is UV radiation what hurts them so that UV lights should exist as a item to use it against them. You may find UV lights in labs, some police stations and in banks, where are used to check bills. Still, visible light may stun them and make them run away few meters until they become used to. Whenever they sense the dawn, they let you and run to go to the nearest shelter.
The cities inhabited by darkseekers are different from that of zombies. During day they dwell inside of buildings completely boarded up, with some self-made traps for defense against potential invaders. They also can be found in subway and sewers. At night they go outside to hunt and if they are aware of your presence they chase you. They are hungry and highly psychotic.
This offer a different approach to raid cities with respect to the zombies’ cities: at day you are able to enter in houses with the light as your main ally and raid and hunt them with some of violence, though. At night you are the prey and you should run out of the city and its surroundings or fortify yourself and resist all night long the siege whenever they find you.
You may found corpses of wild life around the city or eventually a camp of prisoners who are kept alive to be blood drained periodically in case the darkseekers still have maintained some sense of order instead of being hunger-driven. The city is also full of traps to hunt animals or humans, so you may get caught if you are not aware.
Since they are warm-blooded, a good thing to have implemented would be a thermal vision or infrared googles, which are not very valuable to detect zombies or triffids, I think. This could balance the natural advantage of darkseekers at night.
I have written in bold the items or ideas derived from the main one.
ps: I would like to see farm animals like a stray cow to have again burgers, yum.
