Zombies v1

Zombie

The humble zombie is the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of the living dead. A corpse reanimated either by profane magic or by a staggering amount of corruption, shambling around with a clumsy parody of life. While most zombies are encountered in the service of a necromancer, some zombies can always be found where corruption and bodies are in abundance. Zombies can be revived from almost any kind of corpse but their abilities can fluctuate depending on the base material which means their only common visual traits could be their deathly pallor and vacant eyes.

Characteristics

Acting purely on some grotesque instinct when not being commanded through necromancy, zombies will attack any living creature they can sense, doggedly pursuing their targets to the ends of the earth in order to eat them and sustain themselves.
Zombies lack any sense of pain and have no desire for self preservation which allows them to bring to bear the full brunt of force locked away by the fleshly body, making them stronger and hardier than the average person.
 Their overall lack of reasoning or agency past consumption put them at the very bottom of the undead hierarchy, used entirely as cannon fodder or labor by necromancers and greater undead alike though particularly well fed zombies can reason and speak haltingly. This also makes them easily distracted and easy to kite around when alone but a deadly threat if encountered in massive groups.

Sustenance

The average zombie lacks anything but the crudest survival instinct that manifests as a strong desire to consume spiritual energy. This shows in their drive to eat raw flesh, usually of something sapient as creatures with fully developed souls naturally absorb and retain more spiritual energy than the former. Thankfully, meat from recently slain cattle and enemies work just as well as feed for a zombie's needs. Attempts to feed magical plants to zombies have gone nowhere so far as zombies seem to lack any interest in them.
Once enough spiritual energy has been gathered by a zombie, their hunger recedes and they regain some of the clarity they had when alive. This never lasts however and they will eventually grow hungry for the mana that suffuses the flesh of the living and will slip right back into ravenous hunger.
Though zombies prefer to feed through the most visceral method, they can feed by siphoning spiritual power from the living, much to the relief of necromancers who don't have easy access to supplies of recently dead flesh.

Corruption

Most zombies are raised from corruption and there are few changes to these undead when exposed to high levels of corruption though it has been noted that increase in taint within the air makes the zombie appear far "healthier" as well as gives them a sort of teamwork. Cases where people were forced to escape crowds of zombies during demonic incursions report zombies forming human ladders and herding the living into simplistic ambushes.

Reproduction

Barring corruption and necromancy, zombies can propagate themselves by biting their victims after death has fully claim them. This bite is suffused with the profane mana that courses through the zombie itself, which works to taint the spiritual energy lingering within the victim's body into more profane mana which leads to the recently deceased victim becoming yet another zombie. This process takes roughly two hours to complete.

Origins

Zombies have lingered around the world since as long as necromancy has been practised and o one can really say if they have any sort of origin point and most liches and wights generally find better things to do with their time than worry about the origins of lowly zombies. It's considered a pointless endeavor even by the secretive necromancer cults that convene in the shadier parts of the world

Oddities

Zombies are capable of metamorphosis once they have collected vast amounts of spiritual energy over many years, while most simply become wights once this process is complete, some individual zombies have been noted to turn into other Greater Undead though it is currently unknown how and why that is.
Through research, it has been discovered that zombies can gain sustenance from the flesh of other undead though it is noted from the grimacing and few words of disgust from the test subjects that no zombie finds this meat palatable. While some zombies actually grew a taste for the undead, these zombies swiftly became ghouls which forced the stop of further research.