Corpes Composition

[Trenidor]

Did anything happen to the idea of having corpes break down and degrade? :?:

[ashjpd]

I am not sure, but I know that after a while, if a body sits there, and they have clothing and what not on. The items and stuff will just be lying there.

[UnderSeven]

Corpses breaking down would take like what, weeks?  I mean, a noticable change in a body doesn't happen THAT quickly and while this feature would be neat, I think we can for the most part just rp it.  You see a corpse you take note of the stench and bugs crawling on it maybe.  Anyway I don't think they last long enough (some items have a timelimit before they just disapear) for serious decom to happen.

What I think would be neat though, is if corpses actually attracted npcs to them.  You know the whole food thing.

[Morrolan]

Okay, I took some forensic anthropology to fulfil a grad school requirement.  We could have real, but horrible, fun with this.  I have never seen CSI, but you can probably join in.  

"The corpse of a tall humanoid, blackening from the head down, lies here in a pool of its own pus and bile."
"A swarm of maggots is here, consuming the corpse."

Okay, you see, this would be neat, code-wise, but my imagination is too vivid anyway.  Yuck.  And that is before a lot of the other problems: bloating, gas expulsion, skin-slippage, etc. etc.

Morrolan

(Mental note: Never post while this hungover again.)

[JollyGreenGiant]

The atmospheric conditions (hot and dry) combined with a voracious ecology mean that most corpses are probably either a) eaten by animals b) broken down by carrion-eating animals or instects, or c) mummified.  Water content is a large part of the decomposition process, and a dead body is going to dry out rapidly in Zalanthas.

[Ueda]

After what Morrolan said, I don't ever want to look at a corpse again. Ewwww, *puke*, but a Zalanthian, might be a bit more used to that than I am.

[Malifaxis]

A corpse on zalanthas would dessicate very rapidly.  In rare instances (in damp caves, etc) the corpse would actually rot as per normal, but in general it would dehydrate totally and then be abraded by various sandstorms and whatnot.

I very much agree that it would be awesome if corpses would set to the method of death, and would decomp as per prevailing weather conditions.

The corpse of blahdy blah is here, the skull fractured by a heavy blow.
A dessicated pile of humanoid remains is here, the skull fractured by a heavy blow.
A pile of bleached humanoid bones is here, partially covered by dust, the skull fractured brutally.

*shrug*

[Louten]

The atmospheric conditions (hot and dry) combined with a voracious ecology mean that most corpses are probably either a) eaten by animals b) broken down by carrion-eating animals or instects, or c) mummified.  Water content is a large part of the decomposition process, and a dead body is going to dry out rapidly in Zalanthas.

Regarding C, that's how the first Egyptian mummies were made. They dumped the corpses of criminals into shallow sand graves, which quickly dried them out.

[ashyom]

I believe one of the Staffers started working on this last year, but I don't recall who it was.  I'll ask around and see what the status is on this.  Quite possibly this project was set aside due to a variety of reasons, which tends to happen occasionally.

I'll post when I find out more on this.  Thanks for bringing it up!
Ashyom