No, you don't have permission to create that version of Lauren. I know you've found a credible explanation for who she becomes in your version, but if you told me that a divergent version of me became a biologist I would laugh in your face.
Which, to me, shows that for all of your imagination, you have a surprising lack of it. In this version of history, your parents got divorced when you were 4 years old, your mother remarried, and your new stepfather steered you towards science instead of music or gaming. That's all it would have taken. For someone who imagined the Multiverse in all of its glory, your imagination is very limited where people are concerned.
My father did steer me toward sciences. He was an electronics engineer; my mother was a mathematician and efficiency expert. I did fine in science, but avoided it because I did not wish to dissect anything and couldn't get out of it if I took the science track--and I excelled at music. My parents told me I had the intelligence to do anything, but the only thing I believed I could do until long after I graduated from college was music.
My father thought music a bad career choice. He was right. It didn't make a difference.
And stop insulting me. It gets tiresome.
--M. J. Young
OK, so your parents were killed in a car wreck driving you home from the hospital the day after you were born. You, the sole survivor of the crash, were adopted by a molecular biologist who just happened to be named Young. This new set of parents got you over your fear of dissection. OK, so that's a little extreme. Maybe all it would have taken would have been falling out of a tree when you were 5 years old and breaking your hand so that you couldn't ever play guitar. You could still hold a scalpel just fine though, and having faced death, you were no longer afraid. Hell, maybe your uncle Herbert just gave you a chemistry set for Christmas one year and you got inspired. "John, I don't have an uncle Herbert, and I had lots of chemistry sets." Well, your divergent does have an uncle Herbert, and the chemistry set he got you was way cooler than any you ever really had. Maybe everything I mentioned happened to your divergent. Give me some time, I'll give you a hundred ways you could have turned into a molecular biologist.
If you're going to ask that I not insult you, I'm going to ask that you not argue with me on this. I know, deep down inside yourself, you know I'm right. You could have turned into a molecular biologist if the scenario played out correctly.
The end result of this is you two breaking down into a 'nature vs nurture' debate, and that really never gets anywhere. How about you both retiring to neutral corners and not derailing this thread, which could otherwise become a very interesting world idea. I mean, really, plant zombies? Who does that? It could be very win. Let's focus on that, yes?
...
You do plant zombies, and I'm picturing different groups of people growing strains of them. Like orchids. Like really goddamn creepy orchids.
I think that was the most intelligent post I've seen on this thread Osevens. What else do you have in mind for it? Did you read everything else I put down, before the thread got derailed? I liked all of your ideas, although probably not for even similar reasons as you do.
I like your idea for the Mormon missionary and his oddball guns. Maybe he even sells guns and oddball ammo to people in exchange for food or useful information?
Yeah, certainly. Another tactical advantage to having these oddball guns. They do make excellent trade items.
(Doing Therapy)
Two
Just an observation. Does anyone else notice that MJ and I usually seem to have exactly the opposite viewpoint on most topics? He's clinically depressed, I'm paranoid psychotic. Those two mental illnesses are exactly the opposite of each other from a medical standpoint. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. Seriously.
This opens up a host of new possibilities. What if your divergent was born psychotic instead of with depression? God only knows what could happen to him then. Maybe he became a biologist in hopes of curing his condition. He hooked up with my divergent not because of time travel, but on a site he wrote about mental illness. Perhaps it was one of your sons, born psychotic. You, being the dutiful, loving father, went to medical school instead of law school so that you could better care for him. Tell me that couldn't possibly have happened. I think if I had been born with depression, I easily could have been a Goth. As a psychotic, I think they're dorks. Sorry, I think I've made my point, and I'll shut up about it now.
Osevens is right, we shouldn't derail the thread, if you want to start another for this, go ahead. Or just give a single reply and agree to drop it there. I think I like that better.
(Doing Therapy)
MJ,
I'd be pleased to have you use Tadeusz in a story or novel or world. You have my permission. Same to you John. And that applies to my other characters as well (Princess and Paladin of the Eye of Truth Lilandra, and The Walking Man, and Captain Charlie and Two-Gun Annie, and Professor I forget his name and She Who Is Gold {the documentarian versers}, and so on.
I know that letting one of my players run Lilandra as an NPC resulted in the far richer character than I had originally created. He came up with a weird tangent, and I found ways it fit,a nd it made it far more interesting than the already cool character I had.
John,
My idea of the garbageman was fairly generic. You've fleshed it out, not in the way I would have gone, but hey, God wouldn't have made you if you thought just like me. Because then you'd be unneccessary. :)
Second Post,
I also don't mind if you send characters to Starsong or Northgate City or Fantastique/Gothika (my parallel Steampunk worlds). It might even be a good idea for your sons because they are probably already familar with the worlds you've created. And if you want to write Lauren into Starsong, have fun.
If I was making billions of bucks from my worlds, I would have a different view, but as it is, I'll give John, or MJ, or O7 or Wodium permission to do so. Just tell me you're going to do it, okay? (Legal note: This is not a general permission for anyone who reads this to use my worlds however they want. Standard copyright applies.)
Third post.
What about rivers and creeks? Some bass boat fisherman who has a trolling motor powered by electricity with a solar array, and fishes for um, fish, and builds a fire in his metal bass boat in the midst of the river while the plants foam at him angrily from the river bank.
He's not tough, or fast. He knows the river. He's patient and thoughtful. He always has a plan to get out, and tries to avoid getting into fights he knows he would lose. He moves slow, and tries to arrange things so there's zero danger to himself.
He was able to rescue his family and move them to one of those tiny islands in the midst of a big river (during storms, they climb the trees to escape the rising waters, and pray for no lightning strikes.) He does not visit them that often because he does not want to draw attention to them.
He would be able to float all the way through the city as long as a zombie did not jump from a bridge down on him. He would be an excellent transport and spy.
He's not tough, or fast. He knows the river. He's patient and thoughtful. He always has a plan to get out, and tries to avoid getting into fights he knows he would lose.
His armament consists of 1 or a limited supply of scavenged LAW rockets. He hates guns, and would rather not even have the rockets. They're used more for intimidation (Would you argue with a guy who was pointing a bazooka at you?) He carries them because he recognizes the need to, but he hopes all he ever needs to do with them is intimidate people. I see this guy as kind of passive, just trying to get by through fishing, scavenging, and the occasional transporter mission. His defense against zombies is the boat, which is armored and practically impossible to board without help, and melee weapons for any that actually do get on board. The rockets are meant for other humans. Just because they're human doesn't make them friendly.
It just seemed to fit that. I'm trying to get into his head.
(Doing Therapy)
I'm thinking of a big, fat or stout morelike as he has some muscles guy. Heading toward retirement age. Good vision.
He was tanned already, but since then he's gotten weathered.
I thought that the water might block xombies.
In his head. PATIENCE.
He's willing to wait for a whole day through the blazing sun, just sitting there for the precalculated right moment when he is sure its going to be safe to move through an area. And if it turns out not to be safe, he has a couple plans to deal with that already made, and he can come up with a few more.
He knows that in a straight up fight, he loses, so he makes sure he doesn't get in one.
The chief way he's likely to get hurt is 1)an accident like a fish biting him, and this slowing him down. 2)He sees someone along the riverbank running from zombies, and they are female or a child. He hates it, and curses himself, but he goes to rescue them if he thinks he has a decent chance.
You ask this guy to do you a favor. He turns away, sits down, and stares at the edge of his boat for ten fifteen minutes. You try to interrupt him. He waves you off, and goes back to staring.
Inside his head, he's calculating what the plan is. What the odds are. What could happen. How to deal with it. If its possible. ETC.
He turns back to you and says in his softspoken way...
"Yeah. let's do it."
or.
"Sorry, pal."
He is not likely to change his mind. He might explain a bit why not if you press him, but he won't go into all the details.
Eric, even though this was my world idea, my ideas aren't written in stone. If you think your ideas are better than mine, I'll listen to anything. I think you were going after the more traditional "Salty sea captain". I see this guy as somebody who got pushed around most of his life, to the point that he would rather be alone. Hence, becoming a fishing boat captain. Tries to avoid not only conflict, but most people in general. I could almost imagine a divergent version of myself who turned into exactly this guy.
OK, well, we've got more than enough NPCs, which is not to say we can't think of more, but let's see what else we can come up with.
More like the guy who is an insurance salesman or some sort of middle management, but he has a bumper sticker on his car 'a bad day fishing is better than a good day at the office'.
OK. Moving on. We got NPC's and a possible loose network. We got the zombies in concept.
What do we need?
Stats and skills for zombies. Stats and skills for NPC's. Names of stuff in the area (like the city we're next too, and the forest...is it a state park or a royal preserve or a hunting preserve for now dead rich guys or just undeveloped wilderness?)
What odd little bits of This Is Not Precisely Earth do we need? (like stop signs are pink and yield signs are blue...) Do we have three wheeled electric cars? Evidently solar arrays work a bit better here than elsewhere.
You may want to look for my article 'Ten Faces of America' which has ten different divergents on America. All fairly nice places, and basically America, but with enough differences to be interesting. Choose one of them as the backdrop for the zombie war if you like.
Why not start by upping the world temperature and making the sun a blue dwarf? It'd help explain where the daywalkers are getting enough energy from and be an easily noticed sign of difference.
JTM - Except that if the daywalkers are based on plants (and I'm picturing them akin to something more like Morning Glories than orchids, in fact) then a regular old yellow sun works just fine, without having to explain to the Verser how freakishly different everything looks under the light of a sun that glows in a different wavelength than ours.
I like the idea of ramping up the solar and electric power and turning down everything else (less internal combustion, less nuclear, etc). Put a big emphasis on biotech, too, maybe the odd Bod device floating around. It feels to me like this is a world that went a bit overboard on the whole 'renewable energy' thing and instead of finding the happy medium (paving over a section of desert in solar panels) created themselves a monster (biological recycling isn't supposed to work like this!). One problem I have with this is that it removes the classic 'almost out of fuel' problem - one would have to be using a very inefficient vehicle, or a damaged one, or just in a place that gets almost no sunlight in order to have that problem.
Overall the Tech level should be more or less busted. People might remember how the things they use on a daily basis - electric cars, explosive-driven weapons - work, but overall not so much. Nobody really remembers how the Internet was supposed to work, or city-wide electrical grids, or GPS. You might even have a low-but-slowly-rising Mag bias, as people turn back to nature and thus back toward spirituality and magic, but that's just me, the resident heathen getting his marks in, your mileage may vary.
Eh, it's pretty easy to run low on power in a solar vehicle. Just use a higher wattage than the amount that filters through the atmosphere for an extended period. Admittedly, that only works when running away from something or otherwise on a timer. However, the energy density of solar power is lower than you might expect, and at least currently solar panels are extremely low efficiency, so it wouldn't be as hard as you'd think. If you want "low fuel" without a tight timer, it can just be very overcast for a few days in a row.
The thing with just using them being plants as an explanation for where they get their energy is that there is a reason plants don't move, and animals don't photosynthesize. It might be easier to just have the planet orbit a bit closer to the sun, though, since that'd be easier to describe and imagine.
I read that solar cells aren't nearly as good as people think. Supposedly it takes more energy to build one than the solar cell would generate in 100 years. That's with our technology though. Not just solar though. A solar backup. Gasoline hasn't gone completely out of fashion, it's just a little more difficult to come by these days.
I kind of doubt that exact figure, unless it is counting in energy expended in the natural processes that create the raw materials, and of course it isn't mentioning the benefits of slowly getting power in exactly the needed locations instead of having to store the power used in the creation and distribute it. It may also be making questionable assumptions on where the solar cell would be located. However, I have heard the efficiency of solar cells currently is pretty low, and there's only so much solar energy per square foot in the first place.
Whereas I read that if you covered an area about the size of Spain in solar panels (a nicely uninhabited chunk of the Sahara Desert, for instance) in solar panels, they would provide all the power the world would ever need, even at today's admittedly halfassed efficiency ratings, but again your mileage may vary.
Meanwhile, plant zombies, anyone? Maybe they eat people to make up for the nutrients they don't get from the roots they don't have?
Which just leads to the conclusion that the technology has probably improved a lot. Nothing unbelievable there.
I like that idea Osevens. I was trying to figure out why they would attack people in the first place. That's where I got the idea that they would turn into trees. If one was wandering out in the woods for a while, he would eventually grow roots or something. Thoughts?
(Doing Therapy)
Maybe that's what happens if they don't eat for too long. They start turning vaguely wooden and slow down as their bodies prepare to put down roots, and then they find a place to anchor for a while, soaking up nutrients until they're well-fed enough to dig up and shamble off again. Or maybe that's the end of their life cycle - once they become trees they're trees for good, just using their vines to strangle/infect others?
Or maybe that's the end of their life cycle - once they become trees they're trees for good, just using their vines to strangle/infect others?
That's more what I was thinking. Some people actually find the trees quite pleasant. If you can keep the prehensile vines trimmed back, they're actually not so bad to look at.
(Doing Therapy)
I keep remembering, "On most planets the animals eat the plants; on planets where the Krynoid is established, it's the other way around."
So it's an interesting idea with several ways to approach it.
--M. J. Young
In Soviet Russia, vegetables eat you?
Ya know, I just had a thought. Short of the world being destroyed in a nuclear war trying to kill the zombies, this story cannot possibly have an unhappy ending. If the humans win, the humans win. Life goes back to normal. If the zombies win, when there are no more humans to chase, they go plant themselves. We would have a Garden of Eden, albeit one with prehensile vines that try to snatch and grab you. The story cannot have an unhappy ending. I like that.
(Doing Therapy)
Two
Weapons to use against zombies.
Would weed killer or salt work against them? Salt kills plants, they say to put it on Poison Ivy plants in the yard to kill them.
Disconnect the head? Destroy the brain? These are plant zombies, after all. Are things normally lethal to plants lethal to them as well? Perhaps some of the zombies are discovered to be suffering from Dutch Elm disease or something. Wouldn't that be a hoot?
Since they're plant-based, they have regenerative capabilities. In sunlight anyway. How does that work? Can they regrow limbs, and if so, how long does it take them to do it?
There would be some that I would expect, like prime time good shape, best of the best zombies would have skin as hard as tree bark, giving them a defensive value. Or perhaps that's at the end of their life cycle, right before they go plant themselves.
Maybe like to kill them in the daytime, you have to disconnect the head, and take it far away from the body rather quickly. Otherwise, the vines grow out of the neck, and reattach itself. It had to be done really quickly, within minutes at most. And of course, all of the limbs do that. But only in the day time. Of course, if his leg is still within range when the sun comes up, it will reattach then.
Thoughts? Ideas?
Here's a thought. NPC zombies. No, I'm not kidding. One big badboy of a zombie that you want to put your verser up against.
(Doing Therapy)
I don't think that the humans would consider that a "not unhappy" ending.If the zombies win, when there are no more humans to chase, they go plant themselves. We would have a Garden of Eden, albeit one with prehensile vines that try to snatch and grab you. The story cannot have an unhappy ending.
I mean, sure, if the knight wins the countryside is saved from the harassment of the dragon; if the knight loses, the dragon gets a tasty meal. It's a happy ending either way, depending on who you are.
Multiverser allows that the death of the player character is not the end of his life and thus not an unhappy ending; that does not mean that there are no unhappy events along the way. Adric can die on the temporally unstable ship before the Doctor can rescue him, even if the Doctor saves the universe in the end anyway. It's not all happiness and light. We need the dragons and the demons and the dungeons so that the heroes can have a meaningful victory, but a meaningful victory is only possible if there is a chance of meaningful failure.
--M. J. Young
I agree with MJ on this one. It goes along with my whole theory of there has to be dualities in pretty much everything, but I know he disagrees with me on that and will be annoyed that I'm agreeing with him because of that, so I'll leave it at that.
As for NPC zombies, I like that idea. Maybe they don't have 'names' per se that they identify themselves by, but maybe the survivors designate certain ones. "There's this willowy one, used to be a girl of about twelve... We call her Siren now. If you hear a sound like songbirds after a couple of minutes of silence, run like Hell," or "Yeah, we've salted Fat Pauly a couple o' times. No idea why he keeps growing back. I think he's just too big to pickle." That sort of thing.
I don't like the idea of them being able to regrow severed limbs. Reattach, yes. Regenerate, no. If they could generate a leg, and then an arm, and then a torso, why do they bother reanimating the dead at all? Why not just generate bodies and go a-shambling all upon their own?
And yes, I think they only turn wooden when they're about to put down roots. Otherwise they are fleshy, perhaps a bit stiff with a touch of springy, rather like cutting bamboo.
Whether or not the human population of that world would think it's a happy ending is beside the point. A planet populated entirely by huge trees? Tell me that's not a happy ending to a story!!!!!! (Said with a laugh)
I don't like the idea of them being able to regrow severed limbs. Reattach, yes. Regenerate, no.
I'm with you 100% there.
And yes, I think they only turn wooden when they're about to put down roots.
Yeah, I think you're right. I was thinking that if you had a really tough zombie to begin with, AND gave him wooden skin armor, that would make a very formidable adversary for your verser. I think this makes much more sense though, now that I think about it.
Wait a minute. Why does it have to be one or the other? I'll go with 90% about to put down roots, 10% means it's an exceptionally tough zombie. Or something. We can work out the specifics later. They would be far more rare, I'll agree with that, but I would want some really tough zombies with wooden skin.
Wooden skin would mean that either it was about to die, or it used to be somebody of extremely good physical shape. Like 9 out of 10 it's dying and less harmful, but once in a while, it was that 1 in 1,000 person who was at the top of his game in life. It's already 10 times stronger than you are, now it's also got a quarter inch thick skin as hard as fresh Spruce wood. Tell me that's not a badass opponent for your verser to face. It's still as flexible as skin would be, and it still takes damage the same way skin does (it wouldn't split like wood when hit with an axe) but it's as hard as a good hard wood. As thick as skin (quarter of an inch, if I'm not mistaken) but hard.
There would have to be an easy way to identify them from a distance. Maybe it has a bark-like appearance. Think about it for a second. You see a bark zombie, think it's a feeble old woman zombie that you can easily avoid. Turns out it used to be a bodybuilder, has 3@2 strength and skin you can't easily pierce with a knife. That could be a very interesting encounter, ya know?
As for NPC zombies, I like that idea.
I like your suggestions. Why don't you "flesh those out" some more? I was thinking about just one. An adversary for your verser. But you're right. The indigs would name certain zombies that they saw a lot. I thought people would think that was stupid. It's nice to see it got some support.
(Doing Therapy)
Two
MJ, just to be clear up front, I'm not trying to step on your toes, and I'm not going to do it no matter what you say. I'm just curious about something.
Suppose I was to name an NPC Lauren Hastings but it had nothing whatsoever to do with your character? She was an 18th century slave girl that grew up in Mississippi, for instance. Is the name "Lauren Hastings" copyrighted, or is would it have to be clearly a variant on your character?
(Doing Therapy)
Three
Their lifespan is a normal human lifespan. "Dying" is turning into a tree.
It came in after a meteor shower. They were harmless seeds on a meteor. Zobmbifying acceptable lifeforms is the tree's method of transporting it's seeds to other locations. In it's natural environment, finding acceptable lifeforms to snatch and zombify happened so rarely that it never spread very far. The acceptable lifeform usually died within hours of being infected. If it happened to encounter another acceptable lifeform in that time, it would infect it. It might even be a symbiotic relationship of sorts. Thus, the tree was not widely known about. In it's natural environment, it was more or less harmless. Unfortunately, it landed here. A population of close to seven billion acceptable lifeforms, who didn't die within hours, for its reproductive cycle. These new lifeform's resistance to the "You need to go plant yourself" instinct, and the sheer number and population density of the acceptable lifeforms (humans) made it spread out of control like wildfire. It's really not a bad tree, it's just misunderstood. There might even be small pockets of protesters against the slaughter of these innocent creatures. However, that's not at all important to me, and unless someone else wants to write up the details, I'm not planning to include it. Just a suggestion for someone else to follow. I think that's a good back story. Any other thoughts?
(Doing Therapy)
Four
Their blood is thicker, syrupy and darker in color. More like plant sap. The skin has a greenish tinge to it. The zombies aren't zombies. Not "undead" per se, more like victims of a horrible disease. They don't rot and decay like the Dawn of the Dead zombies. They catch fire slightly more easily than a human would, due to the plant-like body structure. The infected attack and infect others not to feed themselves, but to spread the trees around. Walking out into a field and turning into a tree is the equivalent of dying of old age for the zombie. The human body morphs into something else, like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. People of extremely advanced age (like say 90 and up) are much, much more susceptible to the "Go plant yourself" instinct, and usually do so within a month of being infected.
What happens to the trees when the sun goes down? Perhaps they have similar patterns? Is it safer to approach one at night or in the daytime? Since this is set in sub-rural country, these trees would be encountered once in a while. How far can they reach? How fast do they move when they do? How long does it take them to infect a host?
I would want the trees to be harmless, and perhaps even desired in some fashion, if the prehensile vines are trimmed. Perhaps the tree sap has some unusual properties? I'd want this to be kind of a blessing wrapped in a curse kind of thing. The trees being the blessing, and the zombies the curse. If all the infected zombies are killed, they have acres and acres of really great trees with sap which makes medicine or something really special and unique. If the zombies can be killed, and the trees can be trimmed back and/or avoided completely, this will actually be a great benefit to mankind.
Here's a strange as all hell thought. What would happen if a human tried to mate with one of these things? (Hey, there are some strange folks out there) What would the offspring be like? Would the human get infected? Your player might ask....
(Doing Therapy)
1: Alright, I'll flesh those out when I have more time. I like the barklike appearance and thick skin. Maybe amp up their Density and give them a Bod-based Damage Reduction?
2: I wouldn't go that route, if only because you're writing primarily for a Multiverser-familiar audience. People would assume your Lauren Hastings was the Lauren Hastings whether she was or not, and it would cause confusion. As a writer you don't want to mislead your audience unless it's for a very good reason (for instance, your narrator is himself insane or lying). Just putting something in that is a deceptive coincidence is a literary mistake.
3: 'It came from space' is kinda played out, and doesn't really tie in with what's going on right now culturally. Sci-fi writers typically comment on the world around them. Making it a result of nuclear or biological engineering, or a creature accidently drawn in from a parallel dimension is closer to today's current scientific concerns (just look at the silly things people thought the Large Hadron Collider was going to do).
4: I would say it's safer to approach the trees at night, when they're less energetic. They don't rot and decay - I would say they don't die of old age at all. Think of how long trees can live. Aren't there trees in the Redwood Forest that count their age in millenia? I picture the 'go plant yourself' instinct as a starvation thing, not an age thing (again, your mileage may vary). As for how fast they move, I would say probably pretty fast - just look at how quickly a Venus flytrap snaps shut - but not very often. If they miss it takes them a while to reset. Actual infection probably takes days or weeks. Plants do nothing quickly. Maybe make the sap grant people who imbibe it (either pure or fermented - zombie-tree beer?) some of the plantwalkers' regenerative abilities, or something like that. As for what would happen to your necrodendrophiliac (yes there's a word for having sex with a zombie tree) that's entirely up to you - since the infection takes a while to spread I would say probably nothing except the social stigma, except that you leave yourself vulnerable while you're at it and (if you want it to be riskier) might pick up a seed which would need to be surgically removed in order to prevent infection.
Persuasion N/A
Charisma 0@2 (they are severely handicapped)
Animal Magnetism 0@2
Strength 2@1 (average zombie...special zombies are rated as +1@10 to their previous strength.)
Stamina 2@1 (yeah, this needs to be expanded what with the sunlight and stuff. I'm just doing a rough chop here first.)
Resistance 1@8
Density 1@1
Flexibility 1@3
Agility 1@2
Hand/Eye 1@3
Intellect 0@4
Intuition 0@3
Ed Level 0@4
Willpower N/A
Target Value 0@8
Damage Value (since I put WP at N/A, I'm only going to divide by 3????) 1@7
RSV N/A
MSV 1@2
OK, Rules Meisters, whatdya' think?
A standardized set of stats won't work for these. They are made out of all kinds of different people. An old woman who could barely move around now has the stats of a teenager. For her, that's superhuman strength. A former body builder would be 3@ in at least some bod skills. For him, that's superhuman strength. Well, for anybody actually, but you get the point. It would be based on the individual zombie. I wouldn't want a standard sets of stats for all of them.
When I was writing this up originally, I was thinking that an old woman would have the strength of a teenager and walk at a fast walking speed. At least at night. Imagine a Friday the 13th style "Chase through the woods" running from your grandmother. Tell me that wouldn't be funny.
Then you want a standard set of modifiers with a separate mod for darkness, I think.
Like so...
STR +@5 (Day); +@9 (Night).
You still want a standard zombie I think because your GM is going to want Normal Person so he doesn't have to do so much work.
Yeah, that could definitely be funny. I'm not much on horror movies tho', and I'm not sure I've seen all of any of the Friday 13th movies.
Attributes of living beings are never not applicable. See the descriptions of Attributes in the Attributes chapter and the section on 0-level attributes in the chapter on Worlds for help with the odd cases. A lion might not be able to articulate an argument, but if he can make his intentions known he is very persuasive. The movements of a tree might be extremely limited, but it still has an agility score.
As far as "not standard", that of course means you've got a lot more work to do. But then, part of the point of standard "one each" character types is to give you something you can use quickly and easily.
For example, if you had a copy of Dark Honor Empire, you would note that the charts for the ancient ninja list stats for a Burglar/Spy, a Raider, and an Assassin. Nobody thinks that all ninjas have exactly one of these three stat sets, and the book includes extra columns for referees to drop in whatever specials they want to add. What the three "one each" sets do is thumbnail three types of characters who have particularly strengths and weaknesses that qualify them for particular types of missions. If you need to put together a crew of three or five or ten ninjas for a specific mission the player character is undertaking, you don't need to spend the time to create them--you can use them as is, or modify one or two specials to make them different.
You object to fixing stats for "one each little old lady zombie" because each one would be different; but how many little old lady zombies do you think your world has, and how important are the differences? Create a "one each little old lady zombie" stat set that is different from a "one each former special forces zombie" and a "one each middle aged businessman zombie" or "one each teenager zombie"--a collection of different types that provide the fundamentals for what you want to cover. Of course no two zombies are exactly alike. The same is true of palace guards, samurai, men-at-arms, wizards, orcs, horses, dogs, and any other creatures, but it's helpful to have standard stats on record so you can grab them in the cases where it doesn't matter and work from a base when it does.
--M. J. Young