Undead
Undead find food and shelter where decay begins for other slimes.
Plate III · Between decay and new growth Poison and carrion help sustain life in the Undead Grove.
Sustenance from decay
Undead live from two closely linked sources: food and toxicity. Rotting wood, carcasses and mushrooms satisfy hunger. Natural poison sources replenish their need for toxicity without poisoning them. Ground dangerous to another slime may be a resting place for them.
Their own nest steadies this need as well and offers shelter. A foreign nest does not do so to the same degree. Their tie to home remains, even for a slime that seems able to leave poisonous traces almost anywhere on the surface.
Source and trace
A natural poison source is permanent. The toxic trace of an Undead that has rested in one place for a long time, or of a decaying carcass, instead diminishes over time and washes away faster in rain. Both appear in the toxicity overlay, but do not play the same lasting role.
Undead reliably replenish their need only at natural sources and in their own nest. A trace they leave behind makes a place dangerous to others, but does not automatically replace the source of their own sustenance.
Nothing remained in the abandoned clearing. Another slime still fell ill there, hours after the Undead had moved on.
Carrion need not be prey
Carcasses appear after combat, hunting and the natural deaths of many wild animals. Undead can eat from them or carry carrion back to the nest. Even animals Magma do not hunt enter this cycle after death.
If a body is left lying, its food value does not visibly dwindle forever in small portions. It eventually decays and leaves a temporary poisonous trace where it lay.
Rain over the grove
Rain slows Undead on the surface. Below ground, this weather no longer affects them; movement again follows their ordinary energy level. Rain also washes temporary poison away faster.
A shower thus changes two things at once: it slows surface transport and shortens the life of some once-useful or dangerous traces. The difference is more evident in combat and on long foraging routes than in a resting animal.
In the rain, the carrier took noticeably longer to reach the entrance. Underground, it soon caught up with the others.
Encounters and the nest
Undead share the general rules for slime combat and groups. Their immunity protects them from poison, not blows or exhaustion. A reachable nest of their own steadies their toxicity supply and remains a retreat, store and centre of defence. A foreign poisonous trace serves none of these purposes.