Salt Zombie (Basic Lore)

Salt Zombie (CR 17)
Pure Evil - Medium - Undead (Zombie)
Zombies are corpses of the (fairly-)recent dead, brought back to unlife through necromantic ritual, having been killed by other zombies, or dying on desecrated ground. They have no intelligence, and are driven only by a need to consume the living. While brains may be extra tasty, zombies are happy to eat any living (or recently dead) flesh. Indeed, all but the freshest zombies show extensive bite wounds from being near other zombies (or even themselves). Zombies are attracted to sounds, but can sense life when it is nearby. Once attracted, zombies will never stop trying to kill and eat their prey. Salt Zombies are powerful and dangerous examples of this horrid strain of monstrosity. They can be created by powerful workers of death by modifying the standard zombie creation rituals. Alternatively, they can arise spontaneously in places where the earth is both unhallowed and exceptionally bitter. Dead Salt Seas, bitter alkali wells, crystal caves, abandoned salt mines, all are places where salt zombies can arise spontaneously. Even worse, it is fairly common for Salt Zombies to arise on especially bitter battlefields, and especially from salted ruins, where one nation hated another so intensely they razed entire regions and then salted the earth. Such places may be left as benighted wastes where Salt Zombies amble ceaselessly with eternal, silent hunger. Salt Zombies are much faster and more agile than lesser examples of the breed, able to shamble with alarming speed, moving in a scuttling sideways shuffle faster than a man can run. They are not usually able to climb, but they can make astonishing leaps. Astonishing and deadly. And of course, there's always the salt. Wounds left after attacks by Salt Zombies are festering, abraded messes, with coarse, sharp, bitter salt infesting every injury they inflict.