How do I go about creating one? How much free will do they have? Could I turn myself into one?

Look in Cybertechnology or Man and Machine (no good for SR4 but hey)

As They are perfectly free willed. However they need regular dosing with specific chemicals to keep them alive(well to stop them becoming a walking cancer) and I doubt your kind benefactors who fitted all that ware into you then called your spirit back from the edge won't have fitted you with some form of persuasion. So free willed in a sense.

Could you turn your self into one? Yep(well with some help its not not a spontaneous process) but the real question is why would you want to?

Man and Machine will give you official answers to most of what you need.

Unofficially, if you are the GM, just throw together an ugly and unbalanced set of cyberware, and call it a cyberzombie. 8 essence of deltaware is a good starting point.

If you are a player, your character will probably never have the money or access to make yourself one

Some notes:

CZs are EXPENSIVE! They take high level and specialized medical knowlege and magical knowlege. There are probably only a few dozen places worldwide that can do the procedure.

When you hit zero essence, your spirit tries to leave. With cybermancy, you bind the spirit to the corpse. A CZ is constantly trying to die, but the spells just won't let him.

I think the biggest reason to make a CZ is to show people that you can. They really aren't cost effective, IMO. I can take the price tag of a CZ, dole it out in 1 mill increments to a team of cyber-enhanced agents, and take that undead tincan out several times over.

CZ are the extra chrome, diamond studded, platinum inlaid version of the Segway. Trendy and nifty cubed, costs an unnamed price, but doesn't get you a lot more than walking, jogging and occationally catching the bus.

They also have other byproducts of their creation process. CZ are dual natured but with no way to see on the astral. Not that they'd see much anyway if they could because they leave a trail of corrupted astral behind them (called "astral hazing").

Oh, and the two groups known/rumoured in canon to be the actual cybermancers are 1) an über (with balls) cabal of vampires 2) Aztec blood mages

Any corp creating a CZ had been subcontracting these folks. As of 2070? Well normally secretive cabals are not know to subscribe to a opensource philosophy, so it might still be quite limited knowledge.

P.S. If you went all deltaware how much cyber/bio (that wasn't redundant) would be left out from BBB at 6 essense?

blakkie makes a good point- the level of deltaware/bioware in a cyberzombie in 2070 would start to be ruled by the actual physical volume of his body.
Takes me back to one of the last SR3 runs I did... the runners had to bring back an experimental MBW[4] system(with or without the CZ it was attached to) that somebody was testing... think it was MCT. In any case, I ended up inventing new cyberweapons for the dude... he had a double-length articulated spur that basically turned his deltagrade cyberarm into a spear-length weapon. Moved so fast he managed to escape the characters by running through a series of chainlink fences, just hacking through the monowire with this thing. Only thing that killed him was my house rule about obvious cyberlimbs/torsos and large amounts of electricity... thunderbolt+shockglove+freakin' ginormous troll.

Moral is, don't try to attack anyone that the ghouls won't feed on.

Are there rules for Cyberzombies in SR4 yet? I didn't notice any.

Nope, though conversion couldn't be too difficult.

Right on.

For SR3 we have it on p.52 MM, Drawbacks To Cybermancy and on p.57 MM, Dual Nature.

They are Dual Natured and can see the astral, but need Aura Reading to comprehend what they are perceiving.
Page 57 is the ruling to the fluff on page 52.

Cyberzombies can be truly terrifying. They are used only at the very blackest darkest hearts of the corporations, and they generally are not sent out solo. Too much risk.

They are fantastically expensive and not suitable for large amounts of work. They are specialized killing machines. They are primarily used to "erase" things.

I argue that there is very little that can take down a team of cyberzombies. That is why corps pay the premium. That and the fact that they don't have to choose between the mil street sams and the likely 50-100 mil (at least?) cyberzombies.
They can have both. One for the most extreme needs. The others are more general operatives. Just think, executives at a corporation make multi million dollars a year now. A megacorp pushes multi trillion yen profits on a quarterly basis I believe. I will have to look at the Corporate Shadowfiles book. Good info there. Kind of scary. They actually had a real life corporate pirate as an advisor on the book.

Oh yeah, the corps also do it to compensate. I see your dragon and raise you a team of hot metal death!!!

Oh Holy Shit. That makes CZ's the premiere Spirit Fighters. Think about it! A Cyberzombie can use all of those nifty cyber-close combat weapons on that spirit you just summoned, and he can win.

Sad, but true. Cyberzombie independance is generally measured in seconds or minutes. Without all that upkeep, you die (finally) very, very fast. You are not Robocop; you are a metal-meat puppet who might sometimes have a glimmer of self-awareness.

You can interact with people. You just happen to get lost in the moment, hence the Invoked Memory Stimulator to snap you out of it.

You are not a mindless brute. Burnout (a Aztechnology CZ) quite often felt remorse for his previous life when he was once a skilled spellslinger (hence the name Burnout). He was also a pretty curious. Also, when the spirit Lethe possessed him they had some pretty funny conversations (which got even better when Burnout took a bad hit and his personality reverted back to when he was a 9 year old kid named Billy).

Dependent on who? I don't know the mechanics behind it. I can't get 6.2 worth of cyberware without signing up wtih Aztechnology?

True, Superbum. Mind you, that entire story arc was nutty *cough*ghostwalker*cough*, but I did get a kick out of the fact that innocent little Aquarena Springs was where the Big Crazy Ritual occurred.

Ben: Cyberzombies can be made only in delta clinics, and only in the particular ones that know the appropriate (blood?) rituals. At the time that the expansion book came out, there were supposed to be... what, like... 12? delta clinics in very secretive existence.

Lets says that 5 different delta clinics have the capability to create a cyberzombie. Depending on what clinic you actually get acess to and what clinic will actually put forth the effort to creating a cyberzombie determines which corp now owns you.

Even though magic is binding your spirit to your body, you are dead. Your body has died and your spirit is pretty much just tricked into staying in place. Your body needs drugs and other nutrients on a timely basis to keep your body from developing cancers and other necrotic effects.

The amount of resources to keep a cyberzombie in good condition also requires a delta clinic. Meaning, whoever owns the clinic owns you. If you are doing any shadowwork at all, it will be purely for their own gains.

Ah, so it isn't just some "keep your heart beating" bioware or a sustained spell, or a daily pill?

Much more complex than I'd previously thought... But as an Orc who just wants to not die of old age it's a viable option I think. Or vampirism? Or downloading my brain into the matrix?

Don't think spells. Think devious metamagic.

What's Leonization?

Named in reference to Juan Ponce de Leon and his quest for the fountain of youth, which he figured was somewhere in Florida. Might explain all the old folks that hang out there.

Basically it's a whole-body genetic treatment that rolls back your biological clock.

We had a character become a cyberzombie in one of our games. It was his "reward" for defeating the cyberzombie that was stalking him. Not "reward" as in "great job, here's your yen and your 'essence below zero' passport." "Reward" as in "we lost our trillion-yen creation to this guy, and we need a replacement... who could be better than the man who took him down alone?"

Of course, by that point in the run, the character was in so deep, the loss of what little free will he had left wasn't that drastic. It was part of a series of runs I like to call "The runners are too powerful and need a real challenge." They all began the same way: "Hello, I'm Mr. Q." Q was a physad initiate who's character sheet listed only one adept power: "Plot Device, 10 points." He was the Johnson, though he often accompanied the runs. The character that became a cyberzombie was the only one to survive every single Q mission. Well, except the one where he became a cyberzombie, but that's really a technicality. (Not all the characters died... some bailed out after a run, or left the shadows... but many tried to stay the course and didn't make it.)

Ironically, the cyberzombie character was called "Zee" which fit in nicely with the Mr. Q plotline.

Carolos Los Pepes isn't going down like just any normal person. He's going to live forever and get the most out of life and that's what he lives for. Long Haul works great for never sleeping and staying awake constantly to not waste time sleeping.

It's all just character goals anyway. Besides who knows what will happen by 2080? Zombies might be fairly common.

Time to stock up on shotguns and chainsaws.

... I mean, more than usual.

Oh goodness yes. If you have the money to make yourself a CZ, have yourself Leonized, and use the rest to buy a small island to retire on. (Like Bermuda!)

Heh. Remember in SR3 when a human could take Resources A, start with a million nuyen, and buy a permanent Luxury lifestyle straight out of character generation?

Actually, it was just a High Lifestyle.