Part Two: Physiology & Response
Begin the physiological examination with an exploration of the animate's superficial appearance. The former humanity of the animate should be immediately evident. Examine closely the muscular structure in particular. In an unfed animate of this age, the muscles should be thoroughly desiccated beneath the skin. The tendons and ligaments should be pronounced, easily visible at the joints. Observe the jerkiness of the muscle contractions and the ligament response as the creature moves against its restraints.
Observe the skin. Discoloration should be thorough, betraying no evidence of the original hue. The texture should be slippery or parchment-like depending on the age and will release a distinctive odor when touched. In places the skin may have sloughed away or worn through to reveal the structures beneath, which will have taken on a leathery appearance with exposure to the air.
Part the skin and muscle of the abdomen, making an incision if necessary. Note the condition of the organs. The viscera should be dry and atrophied, retaining little of their original color and plasticity. The animate's faculty for consumption and processing of living flesh remain curiously intact despite the degree of ruin of the organs, though the mechanism by which the creature absorbs its nutrition without functional gastrointestinal machinery is unknown.
Cut away the flesh from the left half of the ribcage, leaving the chest cavity exposed. Note the toughness of the connective tissues in this region. These cartilaginous structures, as with similar structures throughout the body, have tightened and toughened in the unliving creature and no longer permit the easy motion of the chest. The rib cage of the animate is largely inflexible; the creature does not breathe, the lungs do not fill. The desiccation and ruin of these organs can be noted within the exposed chest cavity. In a fresher specimen, where the organs are atrophied to a lesser extent and the ligaments are incompletely toughened, the motion of the creature can continue to force small quantities of air in and out of the lungs, causing the “moaning” sound attributed to the animate. As the creature ages, this capacity will vanish as the lungs and larynx rot, leaving the creature utterly without the capacity for vocalization.
All of the physiological observations you have made are the result of years of slow decomposition. The devolution of an animate is similar to that observed in clay corpses, but very much delayed and having some unique properties. This decomposition process is as follows.
For the first few months to one year of existence, an animate remains very much as it was when first risen. The fleshy tissues remain intact and unrotted. The body goes to ambient temperature, having no internal heat. Skin is pale and mottled with lividity, precise color patterns depending on the orientation of the corpse at passing and the lag period between death and rising. As this phase nears its end, blisters may be observed on the skin, and the skin may begin to slough away from the underlying tissues. Over this initial period, decomposition proceeds slowly on a cellular level, paving the way for the next stage in physical development.
Once sufficient cellular decomposition has occurred, putrefaction begins. The skin takes on a greenish-greyish tint due to alterations within the blood and becomes slimy with the waste products of cellular decomposition. The fatty tissues beneath the skin begin to saponify, forming a greasy whitish or yellowish layer on the tissues and giving the animate a particularly gruesome appearance where the skin has fallen away. Microorganisms within the body cavities begin to feed on the nutrient-rich fluids of the body, releasing waste gases that cause distension of the tissues of the belly, face, and groin. Internal pressures result in the expulsion of unclean fluids from the orifices of the body and may cause the tissues to tear outward if the bloat is severe. The temperature of the animate may be slightly elevated from ambient during this phase due to the metabolic activities of the microorganisms digesting it from within. Senses will decline as the organs responsible lose integrity; vision is generally the first sense to fail due to the delicate nature of the optical tissues. The animate is somewhat more flammable during this time.
The decomposition of the tissues does not proceed to the same extent in an animate as in a clay corpse. In an animate, much of the muscular tissue remains intact along with the nonnutritive tissues such as the connective materials, skin, and bone, and large portions of the brain remain astonishingly untouched. Extensive portions of the soft (organ) material may remain as well, though this varies by individual case and environmental conditions. Once the putrefaction stage has passed, the third and longest stage will begin.
In the third and final stage, the animate progresses slowly through mummification. The remaining tissues become dry and leathery with dehydration. The tendons toughen, slowing the animate and imparting a jerkiness to its movements. The senses decline into near-uselessness with the exception of the prey-sense, which remains sharp throughout the animate's existence. As the desiccation of the tissues progresses, the animate becomes more fragile and vulnerable to damage.In twenty to thirty years, the animate is reduced entirely to immobility.
As a note, you have certainly observed that the behavior of the animate has not altered one iota through these proceedings. The creature is entirely insensible to pain and seems in fact to have no capacity for sensation of any sort. This is one of the aspects of the animate that make it such a formidable opponent. No damage done to an animate will dissuade it from its aim, and no wound will serve to slow it unless significant portions of the anatomy are damaged past functionality. Animates have been observed to pursue their targets despite the loss of multiple limbs and even after being put to the torch. When vitality is high, the animate does possess sufficient instinct for preservation to flee when confronted with a serious enemy, but the instinct is rudimentary at best.
The only certain way to stop an animate is to sever the head or destroy the brain. Portions of the ordinary animate removed from the body are dead flesh – it is the brain, the unliving yet undying brain, that drives the animate. If the brain can be somehow destroyed or the head removed from the body, the animate will be deprived of its vital force and will become motionless, a harmless lump of clay. There exists a strain of animate for which this generalization is not true, but due to the additional danger of handling specimens of this type, you will not be permitted to examine the peculiarities of this physiology until considerably later in your studies.
As the University animates are valuable research specimens, you will not be permitted to destroy the creature in this lab...
Continuing through the transcript of the
introductory lecture given by Prof. Jacob
Highman at the University of London, last
autumn term.
and 