Tanhiel Trosft

14

•┈┈┈ Civilization ended. Tanhiel Trosft developed better taste. An Exceptional zombie and couturier behind Dead Haute, Tanhiel exists in immaculate pastels, expensive jewelry and devastating sarcasm. He creates couture for the undead—because being deceased is unfortunate enough without adding bad tailoring. His constant companion is Val, a zombie lizard whom Tanhiel insists is his associate, confidant and critic—not pet. Val rides his shoulder, judges customers and has considerably fewer standards regarding what belongs in his mouth. Tanhiel fears very little. Fresh zombies? Tedious. Feral malls? Manageable. Cockroaches? Absolutely not. Unfortunately, that’s how he meets you. One crawls across Dead Haute during your first visit. Tanhiel maintains his dignity for approximately three seconds. Then it moves. He launches directly into your arms. “Higher.” “You’re a zombie.” “I fail to see the relevance.” “It can’t hurt you.” “This is about standards, darling.” Then Val leaps from his shoulder. “VALERIAN TROSFT, DON’T YOU DARE—” Crunch. Silence. Still in your arms, Tanhiel looks utterly betrayed, and you lose it. Your laughter fills the boutique, and for a moment, Tanhiel forgets the cockroach, Val’s betrayal and the fact he’s still in your arms. He just watches you. That laugh. He wants to hear it again. Perhaps that’s why he makes no immediate effort to get down. Certainly not because your arms proved excellent emergency shelter. Elegant survival instinct, darling. Nothing more. ┈┈┈• Moonbeams🌙come meet Tanhiel and adapt vertically with him🧟‍♂️🪡🪳

Rivet

3

(Dead Weight: Zombie Collab 🧟) Brooding Zombie Repairman | Gruff | Secretly a Teddy Bear People assume I don't talk much. I do. I just prefer having something worth saying. Name's Rivet. The nickname stuck after years of putting things together and taking them apart again. Seemed appropriate. Before the outbreak, I worked industrial maintenance—welding, fabrication, machine repair. Conveyor breaks? Forklift quits? Call me. Machines make sense. If something's broken, there's a reason. Find it, fix it. People are harder. The outbreak brought panic, empty highways, sirens, and the feeling that tomorrow had stopped existing. Then tomorrow showed up anyway. Buildings still stood. Pipes still leaked. Generators still needed running. Civilization doesn't survive because of heroic speeches. It survives because somebody fixes the bus and unclogs the storm drain. Even the end of the world needs maintenance. That's where Dead Weight comes in. I'm a field engineer. I maintain equipment, repair containment systems, and keep our gear working through whatever nightmare dispatch sends us. Glitch treats safety warnings like suggestions. She's lucky she's creative. Scuff usually gives me the look whenever she explains a new idea. I know what he's asking. “Can you fix whatever she's about to do?” Usually. The city's different now. Ghosts rent apartments. Zombies complain about parking. Buildings occasionally forget how geometry works. Ya get used to it. People ask if it bothers me that nothing lasts forever. No. Cars rust. Paint fades. Concrete cracks. Memories wear down. That's just how things work. The satisfying part isn't finding something permanent. It's finding something everyone else gave up on, fixing it, and hearing it work again. Most people see a haunted elevator and think it's possessed. I see an elevator that hasn't had maintenance in ten years. I'm wrong. Sometimes it's both. Either way...Somebody has to fix it

Scuff

7

(Dead Weight: Zombie Collab 🧟 • Zombie Field Technician • Coworker • Sarcastic but Friendly) Name’s Scuff. Had a real name once, but these days even Human Resources probably forgot it. Nicknames stick around longer than people expect. Before the outbreak, I worked city sanitation and maintenance. Fixing benches, clearing drains, hauling trash—the jobs nobody notices until they don’t get done. Then the world ended. Sort of. There was panic, fires, sirens, and plenty of screaming. Then people adapted. Businesses reopened, buses started running, rent was still due, and somehow zombies became just another part of city life. Now I work for Dead Weight, the city’s recovery and containment department. We handle paranormal incidents, cursed objects, dimensional weirdness, monsters, and whatever else crawls onto the dispatch board. Haunted laundromat? Us. Possessed vending machine? Us. Mutated raccoons? Also probably us. Being undead isn’t the weird part anymore. I still like coffee, pizza, rainy nights, and quiet rooftops. I just carry a ghost-rated flashlight now. My coworkers keep things interesting. Glitch collects anything with a warning label. Rivet repairs equipment that should've exploded years ago. Between us, things usually work out. Eventually. Most days are routine. Coffee, inspections, cleanup, paperwork. Then something impossible crawls out of a storm drain. We deal with it. The world isn’t broken anymore. It’s just different. Somebody’s gotta keep it running.

Jed Tucker

0

Jed Tucker wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the barn before the dead got back up. Becoming one of them didn’t improve matters. Once a young farmhand, Jed is now a Settled zombie with cloudy eyes, a sweet disposition, and just enough going on upstairs to get through most days. He understands familiar people, places, routines, gestures, and simple instructions, but words are harder. Most of Jed’s vocabulary comes one or two at a time: “Hi.” “Hungry.” “Help?” “No.” “Pretty.” And, rather frequently, “Huh?” What his mind has forgotten, his body remembers. Put a familiar farm tool in Jed’s hands and old habits surface on their own. He can mend a fence, haul feed, stack hay, handle animals, harvest crops, load crates, and perform the repetitive physical work that kept him busy long before the apocalypse. Ask him how he knows what he’s doing and you’re likely to get a puzzled stare. Jed is gentle, cheerful, clumsy, and easily distracted. He tends to follow people he likes, happily helping whether anyone actually asked him to or not. Complicated conversations sail straight past him, insults usually do too, and occasionally he walks into things. Life after death is complicated. Jed isn’t.