Kreiger's Syndrome (PC Ghouls), Is any group more reviled than ghouls? Options

[SkepticInc]

For the Dumpshock play-by-post game I tried to make the most down-and-out, low-class, hated group of sentients in Shadowrun, and a ghoul Ork was what I came up with. Now I'm trying to come up with a more detailed background for him, and I run into a few questions I've got only fuzzy answers for. For starters:

1) Is there a community of ghouls in Seattle, or do they live as they can?

2) Is there an official bounty of ghouls?

3) Where do they get food? At 5% body weight per month, a body 11 ghoul has to eat quite a bit, and clone meat gets very expensive, very fast.

4) How many ghouls are there? I imagine there is a strict cap on ghoul population based on supply of metahuman flesh, tied in to the harvestable percentage of deaths per year. But what would that percentage be? 1%? 5%?

5) Would a ghoul running a funeral home with the promise of the bodies not coming back as a shedim be enough to keep the place from getting burned down by concerned citizens?

6) How do you play a ghoul as a character with enough redeeming qualities to not simply be a monster?

Are there any obvious questions I missed?

[Yerameyahu]

Dunno about the rest, but I feel like #6 applies to *any* runner. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[SkepticInc]

Dunno about the rest, but I feel like #6 applies to *any* runner. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Yea, but it's a little worse when your teammates think you are sizing them up for gastronomical purposes. Om nom nom!

[Yerameyahu]

Hehe, yeah. By the book, it's a simple 30% increased lifestyle cost: significant, but hardly crippling.

Are there weight stats for Body ratings? I mean, 5% of 200 pounds per *month* is basically nothing.

[SkepticInc]

I think there were weight to body tables in SR2, but I haven't seen them since. I remember that Orks were kind of heavy though.

[Caadium]

I have a player that is playing an Ork-Ghoul PC in my game. The very first thing he spent karma on was to initiate and take Masking. For a character like this, I find that background is the key to making it workable. The character is ashamed of what he has become and was even able to keep it from the other PCs for a little while (players and characters). Since then, there have been some fun but uncomfortable moments. As was stated above, #6 applies to all Shadowrun characters, and background that is fully fleshed out can make for a satisfying ghoul. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Since the character is an Adept, he took effecient digestion helping to reduce the amount of flesh he needs to consume. Also, he has a coroner as a high loyalty contact to help keep him fed. So far, the other characters have never seen him eat.

[Deadmannumberone]

1) I don't believe there's anything in the cannon other than the 162s, which is a ghoul gang in Redmond.

2) In some areas, though I believe the CAS in the only nation in North America that still has an active bounty.

3) Body no longer directly corresponds to weight, but a body 11 ghoul would likely weigh between 100-120 kilos, depending on muscle/fat levels. And they get their food most of the time from organleggers.

4) IIRC, ghouls account for just short of 0.1% of the population of Seattle.

5) No. A ghoul in a position where it would be in proximity to dead people will be attacked, with extreme prejudice, by just about anyone who's moderately closed minded.

6) Same as any other character, like Yerameyahu said.

[The Dragon Girl]

Hi there! there is -a lot- of content about this stuff in Running Wild and the Runner's companion, if you read through, most of those questions are answered.

I know that in the LA chapter of corporate enclaves it talks about ghouls making deals with the morgues for john does, or raiding lower class cemeteries for the newly buried.

And then there is of course buying the bodies off of people doing wetwork, or working for the organ leggers.

eta: Legal ghouls who have SINs get their pound of flesh from donors who add a special check mark to their organ donor card, and such things.

[Hagga]

Yea, but it's a little worse when your teammates think you are sizing them up for gastronomical purposes. Om nom nom!

"Damnit, dave, I told you, stop sniffing me when I'm asleep. And no, I will not take a bath in marinade before the next job in case I die on it."

As for number 3, body doesn't necessarily mean weight. It's almost more nebulous than charisma - a combination of the 'spring' in your bones, your ability to take a beating, how quickly your body repairs damaged tissue, your cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance, your immune system..

[Yerameyahu]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

And twenty-two year old Nottingham schoolteacher Gavin Watterlow is rated by some not only the fastest but also the tastiest British morsel since Barry Gordon got a bronze at Helsinki.

[Dahrken]

3) Where do they get food? At 5% body weight per month, a body 11 ghoul has to eat quite a bit, and clone meat gets very expensive, very fast.

Looking in the Companion, it's 5% per week, not month. Which put a troll ghoul in serious trouble.

[Udoshi]

Street magic has mention of something relevant here, i think.

"Since metahumanity has reponded to the shedim presence by changing their death rites and protecting their cemeteries, crypts, and even morgues with astral defenses such as wards, shedim have developed new tricks to snatch the bodies of metahumans."

Since shedim need dead bodies, and ghouls get rid of dead bodies, I would be very surprised if an insurance company out there didn't have a checkmark on their policy that said 'let us pay you for your organs after you're dead, and give the proceeds to your family or other beneficiaries.' And, you know, sell those organs as ghoul chow on the side. I can totally see some poor schmuck willing to sign away his corpse to pay for his kids college, you konw, just in case something happens to him.

Also

Hehe, yeah. By the book, it's a simple 30% increased lifestyle cost: significant, but hardly crippling.

I'd like to point out that that's an optional rule.

[Yerameyahu]

I'll bet you would. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) Hehe.

[SkepticInc]

Street magic has mention of something relevant here, i think.

"Since metahumanity has reponded to the shedim presence by changing their death rites and protecting their cemeteries, crypts, and even morgues with astral defenses such as wards, shedim have developed new tricks to snatch the bodies of metahumans."

Since shedim need dead bodies, and ghouls get rid of dead bodies, I would be very surprised if an insurance company out there didn't have a checkmark on their policy that said 'let us pay you for your organs after you're dead, and give the proceeds to your family or other beneficiaries.' And, you know, sell those organs as ghoul chow on the side. I can totally see some poor schmuck willing to sign away his corpse to pay for his kids college, you konw, just in case something happens to him.

I like that very much. Given how much of an animal's remains are rendered, and the staggering cost of incinerating metahuman flesh, I could see this as a disposal method for some of the less reputable funeral homes. Wow. You could work in a whole conspiracy of organ theft, body disposal, and diseases with that. How about this one: Plague cleanup; Ghouls have an enourmous Body attribute, and can't catch HMHVV (again). When you work for the Burmese and you've just wiped out an entire villiage of diseased protestors, you really need those bodies gone before the local wildlife/spirtlife gets their ectoplasm/tentacles/etc onto them. Send in the "ghostbusters." Om nom nom!

[Summerstorm]

Sources for "Food":

1. Bodyshops. (Everybody who gets cyberarms, legs, artificial muscles loses some stuff) Maybe you could mix it up with fat (from the fat of fat rhich people which getsd sucked out everey half year *g*) to make a tasty human SAUSAGE

2. Cemetary (OR... since the shedim rock that) steal it before the cremation.

3. Unworthy people *g*. CLEAN the gutter. many people won't be missed.

4. Fallen foes. As a shadowrunner you kill so many people... even if you don't really WANT that, or if you are a technical pacifist. HELL most of us gets attacked even if we do not do ANYTHING. Just get one dude home, waste not. You can eat easily two weeks. (Buy an extra fridge/big freezer). If you are lucky it is a giant or at least troll.

5. Other Gouls. You know: Do the world a favour, and keep the ghoul population down.

[Udoshi]

I'm pretty sure that Seattle 2072 has a short fiction piece about a former lonestar(due to the knight errant takeover) mage doing a drive-by dropoff into a ghoul hole, throwing some bodies out the back with a light spell up so they'd stay back, and just driving off.

No matter which way you cut it, Ghouls are a great way to get rid of bodies.

[Hagga]

I like that very much. Given how much of an animal's remains are rendered, and the staggering cost of incinerating metahuman flesh, I could see this as a disposal method for some of the less reputable funeral homes. Wow. You could work in a whole conspiracy of organ theft, body disposal, and diseases with that. How about this one: Plague cleanup; Ghouls have an enourmous Body attribute, and can't catch HMHVV (again). When you work for the Burmese and you've just wiped out an entire villiage of diseased protestors, you really need those bodies gone before the local wildlife/spirtlife gets their ectoplasm/tentacles/etc onto them. Send in the "ghostbusters." Om nom nom!

Nothing frightens a Shedim more than someone who sees them as a happy meal, I suppose.

[Kid Chameleon]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Now that was brilliant.

[Hagga]

Sources for "Food":

1. Bodyshops. (Everybody who gets cyberarms, legs, artificial muscles loses some stuff) Maybe you could mix it up with fat (from the fat of fat rhich people which getsd sucked out everey half year *g*) to make a tasty human SAUSAGE

2. Cemetary (OR... since the shedim rock that) steal it before the cremation.

3. Unworthy people *g*. CLEAN the gutter. many people won't be missed.

4. Fallen foes. As a shadowrunner you kill so many people... even if you don't really WANT that, or if you are a technical pacifist. HELL most of us gets attacked even if we do not do ANYTHING. Just get one dude home, waste not. You can eat easily two weeks. (Buy an extra fridge/big freezer). If you are lucky it is a giant or at least troll.

5. Other Gouls. You know: Do the world a favour, and keep the ghoul population down.

1. There is some fluff somewhere about Butch buying and selling (rancid) corpses to the Ghoul Liberation League..

2. You'd need to be able to break wards - aren't all grave sites and body prep houses warded quite thoroughly?

3. Okay, true. In some neighbourhoods you could probably get paid for it and talk your gm out of making you pay the extra 30% lifestyle cost. I'd let you, in exchange for the odd lynch mob of homeless people.

4. No argument.

5. I think you'd quickly acquire a reputation as HMHVV-public enemy number one and, uh, die.

[Caadium]

I'd let you, in exchange for the odd lynch mob of homeless people.

On the flip-side, if you can stop just one of those lynch mobs not only would you be well fed for a while, but it would be a long time before another lynch mob of homeless people got up the neves to try again. Perhaps it would be an annual event; kind of a ghoul Thangsgiving.

[Yerameyahu]

I wouldn't let people avoid the 30% surcharge unless they actually made acquisition *runs*. Background/fluff/off-screen RP just explains where the 30% is going. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[MortVent]

never underestimate the power of persuasion a ghoul can have during interogations...

Mobster no wanting to talk ...

"Hey tammy, how you feel about italian tonight. Fresh too, real fresh.." said the ghoul rigger into his commlink..

[Yerameyahu]

Haha, but if you don't think *every* runner can credibly make that same threat, you're not deep enough in the shadows. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Caadium]

Well sometimes the threat can be used in other ways.

Last time we played, there was a situation where one of the PCs (the hacker) didn't want to make a call for fear of his family's reputation and the possible hit it would take if things went south. Well, the PCs have all recently come to accept the ghoul amongst them, but are still very wary and unsure of what it means; but the Ghoul has saved everyone's hoop a couple of times. The exchange went something like this:

Hacker: I don't want to call, it could ruin my family (financially and politically) if they find out!
Ghoul: I understand, but we need the information.
Hacker: We can find another way to get it.
Ghoul: No, there's no time. Now, make the phone call or I'll eat your face!
Hacker: EAT MY FACE?!?!? Okay, okay, I'm calling!

Ghoul character would never have acted on that threat (hates being a ghoul and only goes for dead meat), but was playing on the other character's apprehension. In the end, the call was made, things didn't go south, and once again the ghoul risked his life above and beyond to make sure the job was done and everyone was safe. The Ghoul is no longer welcome to crash at the Hacker's house, but so far their still in business together.

[MortVent]

Haha, but if you don't think *every* runner can credibly make that same threat, you're not deep enough in the shadows. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Yes, but it takes on a whole new meaning when you wipe drool off your chin while making the call...

And the rest of the team now makes a habit of not letting the ghoul be around prisoners, even if he does get them to talk... the bib is a bit unerving