Zombie RP

I absolutely love the suggestions for this, End.  However, there's a few things we probably need to address:

1. You mentioned that the infection can let individuals live for several months without food, although water would likely be the same, if not intensified by the amount of fluids continuously being lost by the infected individual.

However, I imagine that most infections would have happened within the first year of the outbreak, before survivors began to organize, hide, and found groups like the Erie Coalition and the Wardens.  What I'm trying to say is, most of the people would have died or have turned within the first year or so of infection- but they can only go for so long without food, not even mentioning human flesh.

If it's 8 years after, I suspect that not only would the infected be a part of life, they would also be slowly dying out.  The first, and probably largest generation of infected, unless they've managed to sustain themselves for nearly a decade, would have long since passed to starvation and the elements, and succeeding generations of infected, comprised of survivors unfortunate enough to be caught by surprise, would be considerably smaller.  Now, it's easily possible that infected have developed (or maintained) enough intelligence to organize themselves, and find a consistent source of food, possibly cannibalizing the fallen and animals for sustenance, but after that, what would they eat?

Perhaps we should set this 8 *months* after, or 2 years later, when it's becoming obvious that the infected will not survive without sources of food. It seems as though humanity might be able to reclaim the planet after roughly 3-4 years, if they keep in walled communities.  What happens amongst themselves would be a whole different story, but the infected would only be a token party.

Also, a note: the Erie Coalition's flotilla wasn't built to be permanent. Eventually, boats will rust, and ships will sink.  8 years might be a lot of strain on the settlement, and by the time the server starts, it might be sinking.

2. This may sound odd, but the idea of the infected retaining some of their intelligence would allow for us to create more RP for infected players.  After all, the infected do not technically die, and if the line between rejecting and succumbing to the spores is so thin that all it takes is a healthy immune system,  then it's possible that some infected may turn, initially at a semi-coherent state but gradually devolve into an animalistic savage as time goes on. Savage infected will not attack docile infected unless they have resorted to cannibalism, or have become so deranged that they cannot tell each other apart.  The infected may depend on sight as humans do, and do not attack those who have the bleached irises.

We could take this one step further, and say that some intelligent infected may not entirely lose their humanity to begin with. If they can eat anything, is it possible that a wiser infected might try and do the following:
	a. Try and make organized hunts against humans, or animals.
	b. Attempt scavenging missions to find canned and other surviving foodstuffs.
	c. If infected do not truly lose their minds, some of them may figure out how to plant crops, and then attempt to direct his less informed colleagues that in order to survive, they must eat, and if they want food, they must tend to these crops. As long as an infected has not become a savage, it's not a stretch that these infected would still have some concept of the idea of farming, even if they may not understand how to do it themselves. Grim's idea of herding zombies could be modified, to the point where the infected themselves are doing the herding.  Perhaps a constant source of food is what keeps the infected from devolving into animals.

What you could end up with are primitive settlements of horticulturalists, perhaps savage in nature but misguidedly attempting to survive, even rebuild what they see as human civilization.  After a while, these infected may form alliances, declare war on, destroy, possibly eat each other, even to conquer those human monsters across the valley (We could take the ideas suggested in the graphic novels for I Am Legend and Left4Dead, where the infected hallucinate that uninfected humans are monsters).

In the end, you have an entirely new, self-sustaining race that would eventually be humanity's next obstacle towards reclaiming their planet as the dominant species.  This is something that I guarantee you will not find in any zombie book or movie.

Of course, if the virus by default deactivates certain parts of the brain, then any form of intelligence can be discarded entirely, except for maybe skills of base logic and reasoning (Motor memory would allow them to climb ladders, open doors, bash people to death with their own guns). Those who were dead but reanimated would definitely be little more than a savage beast- the idea of having feral infected comes to mind here.  But if the infected lasted 8 years, they would have needed some way to find food, and probably the brains to find it.

I also had a brief idea where individuals exiled for appearing infected (even if they were not) due to their eyes were the heads of this strange society of savages, either unintentionally (having simple infected following him), or who for various reasons take advantage of the infected not attacking them.  Again, this implies that the infected only rely on sight, or are (un)intelligent in any way.

Overall, the reason I suggest having the infected be smart isn't just because it sounds cool. It's because at Necropolis, where they had all types of zombies, the infected faction became basically what Skynet became: the faction you only went on to provide shotbot/zombie for the survivor faction. And apart from interactions with humans, you could get very little RP out of being an infected. If you *did* try RPing, such as specks of intelligence, you would get in trouble for it because they're supposed to be eating people all the time.  Maybe we can change this.