ENTRY 19: THE BLIGHT (Talbot Grimes)
"Capable of gaining ground on Survivors in mere moments, The Blight’s lethal efficiency must never be underestimated. With the ability to bounce off surfaces and realign his trajectory, his relentless presence forces Survivors into snap decisions. The learning curve may feel steep, but mastering The Blight is a worthwhile pursuit."
LORE SUMMARY: fascinated since childhood with the effects of poisons on the human body, Talbot became a brilliant chemist who developed horrifying, mind-altering drugs for use by soldiers. Carelessly contributing to so much misery and violence, he was one day beaten over the head and thrown into a pit of rotting corpses, where the gaze of a dead woman horrified him into nearly a complete change of heart.
Talbot came to in a monastery, actually a front for forbidden research, and was recruited by the resident monks to continue his experiments into the biochemical secrets of the human mind, the pursuit of a "soul chemical" he thought might bring enlightenment and prosperity to the world. Instead, he was kidnapped(?) once again to be forgotten in an opium den, where he lost months to years of his life in a timeless haze until he began to hear a mysterious whispering. Recalling all his research, he carved it into the walls until he ran out of room, then began carving the words into his own body...but once he disappeared, the only words found written again and again were "death is only the beginning."
Awakening in a strange alien realm, Talbot found a journal left behind by someone who once managed to escape, and he began conducting experiments on a glowing "nectar" the landscape was secreting under the influence of some temporary affliction. What he distilled from this substance was even capable of animating a dead rat, but he began to undergo certain changes once it bit him in the arm...
LORE SUMMARY: fascinated since childhood with the effects of poisons on the human body, Talbot became a brilliant chemist who developed horrifying, mind-altering drugs for use by soldiers. Carelessly contributing to so much misery and violence, he was one day beaten over the head and thrown into a pit of rotting corpses, where the gaze of a dead woman horrified him into nearly a complete change of heart.
Talbot came to in a monastery, actually a front for forbidden research, and was recruited by the resident monks to continue his experiments into the biochemical secrets of the human mind, the pursuit of a "soul chemical" he thought might bring enlightenment and prosperity to the world. Instead, he was kidnapped(?) once again to be forgotten in an opium den, where he lost months to years of his life in a timeless haze until he began to hear a mysterious whispering. Recalling all his research, he carved it into the walls until he ran out of room, then began carving the words into his own body...but once he disappeared, the only words found written again and again were "death is only the beginning."
Awakening in a strange alien realm, Talbot found a journal left behind by someone who once managed to escape, and he began conducting experiments on a glowing "nectar" the landscape was secreting under the influence of some temporary affliction. What he distilled from this substance was even capable of animating a dead rat, but he began to undergo certain changes once it bit him in the arm...
Of the original killers, we're only now into the full blown monster-monsters, with very little humanity left if they had ever been human at all. Poor Talbot was maybe never malevolent, originally, but he was indifferent to anything other than furthering his research, whether or not it was used as an instrument of war, and he had to learn the hard way to develop any conscience at all. That's not saying much, obviously, but he wasn't all that violent himself, so just why did The Entity call out to him?
The Blight isn't just the nickname of Talbot's Killer Persona, but as we've previously touched upon, a parasitic infection that strikes The Entity, forming parasitic "pustula flowers" from the terrain of its realm that ooze a glowing ichor. It seems as though Talbot may have been stolen away to the realm specifically to treat this disease, and the ichor, essentially the pus you get when a cosmic being is sick, evidently held some of the secrets he'd been after all along. His experiments with the pustula "nectar" as he called it gave him heightened senses and strength, but mutated him horribly. Hunched and corpselike, he now has luminous eyes and an elongated, gaping maw lined with crooked fangs, a design that's neither too forgettably subtle nor too extravagant of a "creature."
His in-game ability is just to inject himself with his serum, which sends him rushing forward in a straight line until he hits an obstacle and gets to change direction. It's fun, once you get the hang of it, and even considered pretty powerful, though I honestly feel like simply flipping out and bouncing off the walls is kind of an underwhelming gimmick for a guy called "The Blight" with a backstory like this. Give him some more poisonous stuff to do!
...And bring back those awesome looking Pustula Flower things, too! Their last appearance was apparently a 2020 quest event, and if you had the quest active as a Survivor, the plant would always spawn in the map every time, until you finally completed the quest. A few players have opted to just leave this open and treat the plant as basically a "pet," which is great except that I didn't play the game until 2025, so I completely missed out. Actually, there should just be pets in this game. They don't have to do anything special, they don't even have to follow us around! They can just spawn in and hang out wherever!
BEST SKIN(S):
"AQUATIC ANOMALY:" The nautical ones are pretty much always at least A-tier for me. This one comes with the expected barnacles and seashells, but it also has bright blue tentacles pouring out the mouth!
"TRUE BLIGHT:" of course the Blight gets a Blighted skin! It's ironically not as severely oozing as a lot of the other killers, but maybe that's because his body is a little more accepting of the pustula parasite? It's growing more happily here! They're getting along! He's got a lumpy, bloated hunchback with twitching insect-like limbs popping out at odd angles, and a collection of meaty parasitic flower stalks erupting from his face. It's a lot freakier looking in-game, since the Blight always stands hunched over. Here's a nice clear model rip by Kabalstein on Deviantart!
