Swarm Infector

The Swarm Infector was a small Necromorph that attacked not as one creature but as a swarm, scuttling across the ground in numbers and burrowing into the dead to bring them back. It combined the work of two earlier forms, the Infector and the Swarmer, and a single swarm could raise several corpses at once into a sudden wave of Necromorphs. The form was among those encountered during the disaster on Tau Volantis.

Form#

The Swarm Infector was not a single body but a mass of small creatures that strongly resembled scuttling crustaceans or arachnids. Where earlier outbreaks had relied on the lone Infector to reanimate the dead and on the Swarmer as a small consuming pest, the Swarm Infector filled both roles at once. The creatures were remarkably pliable, seeming to share traits with octopi: they could squeeze their bodies down to a smaller size and slip through narrow cracks and holes.

Behavior#

The swarm's chief purpose was to reanimate the dead. On encountering a body it rushed toward it in numbers and burrowed inside, converting the corpse into a new Necromorph, most often a Fodder and less commonly a Slasher. Because the swarm could spread itself across several bodies at once, it was able to raise a wave of Necromorphs in a short span of time. A single member could carry out the process alone if left undisturbed. When a freshly raised body was destroyed, the swarm simply moved on to the next corpse within reach and began again.

Deprived of usable bodies, the Swarm Infector turned on the living. It latched on and fed, and if it overwhelmed its victim it crawled over them until one of its number forced its way beneath their helmet or into their mouth. The host would collapse, and then rise again as a Fodder, joining the ranks of the dead the swarm had been raising.