Ares (twice), Shiawase, Horizon, Saeder-Krupp (several), Proteus (of course) ... all those arcologies have been built in a hot radioactive zone. And yes, ARCOLOGIES. Not outposts or moon-base-ish encampments. Arcologies with several thousand permanent inhabitants. They also, while at it, built a huge underground monorail sytsem to connect these arcologies. And they have factories there too (saves them a dime on environmental regualtions).

Don't blame me, I didn't make this up.


No, but Aztech propably is one of theirs, oil and all. Solving their worst problem might incline them to give them nicer prices.


Bad comparison. The expensiove part for the US was the occupation, not the attack. Also, the goals are very different - occupation on part of the US with Iraq, extermination for the hypothetical Aztech engagement against the Ghoulies.


Based on the experience that not everyone in the UCAS is infected by now because a Ghoul has been someplace near where theey have at one point been - not very long.


Again. Drones. Also, with ghouls being an astral beacon and warm blooded, and with local shamans possibly supporting operations (which would, of course, rule out FAB 3) I don't see how the ghoulis should stand much of a chance, even if 4th massively pushed their stats and gave them reversible blindness. That war could even be mainly run from the air, with the bulk of soldiers staying on warships offshore. Drones in SR are advanced enough to function as grunts.


Again, seriously off comparison. The carrier for HMHVV is much easier to eliminate because humans don't reproduce en masse in any collection of water. Actually Ghouls have a hard time reproducing at all. So, really, all you have to do is shoot those ghouls dead. That's a lot easier than killing off every mosqito in the world. It also doesn't have the ecological impact a mosqito holocause would surely have.


If I was from the rural, impoverished, crime ridden areas of Aztlan, I peopably wouldn't notice such a big difference. And propably, you would get a damn good pay, compared to what you get as a landless farm worker.


Yeah ... like the Bugs in Chicago. Okay, that wasn't totally successful, but it did a lot to improve the situation there, judging from Chicago's current writeup.

The arcology thing isn't that bad. Not everyone of those Arcs is in the middle of a hot zone.
Officially there are 15 arcologies, two in the vicinity of Cattenom. Inofficially on the other hand...
Some of them are connected, but not every single one. Most rely on airship, the old railways, street or sometimes waterways to get supplies.

Why? Simple: No one cares what you are doing there, or what you produce. And it's a little bit cheaper to maintain since waste disposal goes like "Throw it out the window"

Just have Horizon mediablitz the "Ghouls kidnap and eat humans alive, and they are building an army, and they are spreading! We need to kill them to protect us" theme, and see how long the cannibal country lasts once killing ghouls becomes the good and decent thing to do, and any corp and country gets brownie points for doing some pest control.

Wouldn't be that hard either, with the right angle of coverage for the slave treks seen in feral cities, and by playing up on the "you could be next, zombie acopalypse" fear.

How is Catenom not a hot zone?

I'm not going to respond to every line here, but basically - even if you use drones (how are you going to fix them? What about environmental hazards? How are they going to navagate and move effectively through the bush? This place is more than halfway to being a wilderness) you need lots of people to operate them. You need to transport large amounts of them long distances (at least from Europe, probably from Aztlan). The Azzies leave themselves open on other fronts militarily. Then you need to completely build up the countries infrastructure for even basic services like water, waste-management, etc so your workers can even live there... and yes, I have no doubt, based on modern Liberia and Mexico, that Asamondo is WAY worse than living even in poor areas of Aztlan... then spend all the money to make an arcology, set up security, keep dealing with the remaining ghouls (no shamans helping - you're performing a genocide - major background count for the whole area, anyone?). Even if you're getting 'damn good pay' which I don't beleive for a moment - the whole point is to make things cheaper - your quality of life would be significantly worse. You also have to deal with amazing levels of shedim infestation, probably bleeding over into neighboring countries (who will also love the mass ghould exodus over their non-existant borders). For what? What economic encentive is there possibly there? Why not just buy their stuff on the open market?

*long pause*

Good point.

Maybe I should.

I'll look into it.

- J.

- Aztech has bases right around the corner, in Lagos (or at least, could expand it's oplaces there to support operations)
- Remote Operating via satlink can be done from far away - Lagos, or hell, even Aztlan.
- You transport via ship to Lagos. Drones are relatively inexpensive and don't need special facilities, so freighters will do. Of course, you'll need some frigats for escort.
- The Azzies could subcontract drone operations to a merc outfit or just hire more riggers. It's not like they'd really face much danger.
- As for terrain? Use walker drones. Have some drones with an arm and something cutty with the drone force. And enlist local shamans, whose spirits will also be a big help in navigating the territory (again, the mages can do this from afar and don't need to fight the ghoulies directly).


Why would you need to do that? A simple camp would suffice, and strip mines don't exactly require engineering marvels. Once the ghoulies are gone, you can also enlist locals for work. As for clean water? Same as in Lagos, really. Cooking your water before drinking it really doesn't require sophisticated technology either. You're setting up a strip mine, not a luxury club resort.


Uhm ... why? It's not like the local shamans are much like tree huggers ... and it's not like offing some 100.000 ghoulies in an area the size of Denmark would really screw up the background count. If background count was so sensitive in SR, most of Europe would have been rendered uninhabitable because of being a mana warp because 500.000 dead were a pretty common outcome of battles back in the day (not to mention the world wars and stuff like the 30 years war, the Catharian and Baltic crusades, or the French revolution).


Not nescessarily. It's not like shedim lurk everywhere in case soemone dies and every stiff jumps up again and starts eating brains the second he died. clean up the battle sites - have drones with flame throwers, or have spirits dispose of the bodies.


Because you get to control the sources of the material that way. Unless you try to both be friends with the locals and massacre them, which is how the US failed in Iraq, that IS a decent monetary win in the medium to long term.

I could easily see another private war going on, not unlike the Holocaust, but replace Jews with Ghouls.

That would not get a lot of press coverage either until it had advanced a long, long way...

Now the question would be which groups, megacorps or nations, would be the ones to initiate a campaign like that... ?

- J.

Bases maybe, but major military support? Not enough to massacre, say 100,000 quasi-organized sentients. They'll need to transport things in. Even if you transport tons of drones on freighters, you need to refuel the drones, get them where they're going, fix them, make sure their signals stay strong, monitor them... all of this takes infrastructure that Asamondo and the surrounding region just doesn't have. It would need to be built. If you hire mercs (that would be a LOT of mercs, too, and I imagine they'd want hazard pay for fighting massive amounts of infected on their own turf), you'd be shelling out lots of . Any why wouldn't this be dangerous again? Every single variable favors the ghouls. It's not like there's one major city you can carpet bomb. Its rugged wilderness with small, scattered population centers of rabid, hungry man-eating things that are dual-natured and often nearly feral.




How will the population get there? You need to build roads. How will you transport the product out? Where will your workers live? How about sanitation (I'm sure all the remains of ghoul-lunches from the years of domination make that a fun proposition)? How about housing? What about techology? What about matrix connection, at the least for tracking shipments, etc? Where will these people get their food from? Clean water? Hospitals? You can't let them die, because, again, that kills morale, stops workers from wanting to work there, interrupts production, etc. TONS of infrastructure would need to be built to have an efficient operation. Ghouls don't need that kind of stuff and don't complain about it so can do all this work cheaper.




Okay, a recent murder of 1 person makes a background count for a while; the wholesale cold-blooded massacre of 100,000 won't do much? Seriously? I have no doubt that most of Europe has had horrendous background counts for a while after big battles. It might eventually fade after some months or years, but until then (certainly while in the middle of it) - background count CITY. No shaman is coming within miles of there. Maybe some toxic crazies would, but they'd hurt as much or more than help.




Again - spirits, not so much because of the background, if nothing else (also, very expensive to have enough mages/shamans to summon enough spirits to dispose of thousands of bodies. Corps are about the bottom line). As for flame throwers - then you'd have to have people operating them. Or more drones. This would pose problems. Also, there would be huge risks of starting an uncontrollable fire.




Yeah, but what are we talking? Tin? Hardwoods? If it was orichalcum, sure, I see the profit in that. But tin? Really? How many other easier places can you get that? Just find it somewhere else in the world and buy the mining company. Way cheaper.

Anyway, we're clearly never going to agree on this. Obviously you're not going to change your mind and I am certainly not going to stop beleiving that you're wrong. Without actual figures, it's not really possible to give hard proof. But I just don't see that profit margin. At all. If there was one, we'd see a lot more major industrialized nations invading 3rd world countries for natural recources today. We don't see that because it isn't cost effective. Military action/occupation is just too expensive.

Actually, you should read Feral Cities if you think Asamondo is like this. It might clear up a few misconceptions. Like, say, the fact that they're the most stable government in the area (heck, in most of Africa), have the longest lasting leader of any African country, have a population with a higher literacy rate than many other countries even out of Africa, have a mandatory military term required for all citizens, have repelled numerous invasions from neighboring nations - and have significant contracts with a variety of megacorps, both AA and AAA.

Okay, I'll stop now, with the suggestion that Feral Cities does present some interesting information on Africa in the 2070s.

Murdering 100,000 ghouls would create a staggering level of background count.

Anyone read Street Magic? The Cermak Blast, Auschwitz, all these places have been touched on already and would have background count of 6+.

The real question here is 'who would murder them and why?'

I personally think natural resources would be a very plausible suggestion. What resources could be debated. I'd say diamonds or orichalcum could be viable. Whose to say that a new, huge vein of it hasn't been found in Asamondo?

Maybe it would be a company like MCT as they've done with Tsimshian? They make allies with Asamando to get their foot in the door and then eventually decide to go to war with them. A racist Japanacorp with a history with places like Yomi wouldn't bat an eyelid at wasting thousands, if not millions of ghouls. It strikes me as right kind of sick, twisted tragedy that history should repeat itself and they learn nothing of the mistakes of the past (e.g. Nazi Germany), or the mistakes of their peers (e.g. Aztechnology/Yucatan).

Then again, I think it would be ideal for Ares to do it. Especially given their relationship with the bugs and experiments. It'd be interesting to see Ares unleash the bugs in Asamondo to take out the ghouls...

- J.

It's true that I haven't read Feral Cities. I'm waiting for the street date as I generally don't buy PDFs. I have the smuggler's handbook from 3rd Ed and I know a decent amount about modern day Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire (and somewhat less about Ghana). That's where I'm making my assumptions. If it's really organized, that makes it simultaneously harder and less cost-effective to really destroy but cheaper to set up shop afterward, if the basic infrastructure was fairly untouched. Modern day W Africa is NOT a place you can have any kind of reliable infrastructure.

The ghouls are mass-murderers, they regularily have people brought in alive to be killed and then eaten (check feral cities). I'd say any background count is already taken there, killing the ghouls would not add more.

And given modern sensors, and drones, and napalm, taking out the ghouls would not be much of a problem for a modern military force.

Personally, I don't understand why anyone would care for the ghouls or consider the killing of mass-murdering cannibals a bad thing.

That's interesting, because when I was running my SR Africa game, I treated Asamando like the ghoul Israel. Persecuted the world over, ghouls or any HMHVV could seek refuge there. (Here's an old post that goes into more detail.

If SR ghouls were just mindless undead, 28 Days Later or Dawn of the Dead (the remake) types, then maybe, but SR ghouls are sapient. Which is not to say they can't be monsters, but you can say that about (meta)humanity in general.

Since they import humans for food, I would say they are clearly monsters.

When compared to what's happening in the rest of Africa, the rapes and mass-murders for the control of some rare mineral deposits, governments' money paying for sport cars and luxury housing in Europe and the like, Asamondo's not that bad. I mean, Asamondo can qualify for the African Nightmares A-league championship, but they may not get the prize. Ghouls are people suffering from a disease : it's medical fact that they must eat human flesh or they'll die of starvation. Go compare with cannibalism as it occured in Sierra Leone under Charles Taylor's rule.

In the canon "civilised" countries, there's big business in human trafficking. We're talking about co-ercing and abducting juves to be chipped and chopped with whatever mods make them more marketable. It's slavery, rape and brainwashing bundled into one. "Monsters" is ultimately a far too subjective label. Also, the fact that they import their food suggests that they have business savvy, connections, security and infrastructure to support such an operation suggests they wouldn't be too simple.

In addition to the previous points, Tamir Grey was a one-ghoul mediablitz. Eradicating the population of Asamando would hundreds of thousands of sentient martyrs. And that's not even considering the prohibitive background count.

And ultimately, what does the metaplot gain by having a corp flex it's military muscle and wiping out a unique nation? Not much, in my opinion. I do agree that Asamando should really have been comprehensively covered by now. We've had whole books on how corporations work, where-as that info could have been pulled from wikipedia, a unique nation has been largely left in the dark.

After all the hype about technomancer hysteria, the metaplot would gain some semblance of realism back if a cannibal nation gets exterminated due to the rest of the world fearing infection/digestion by the zombie horde.

Ah, they have a contract with Mary-Sue, inc. That changes everything.

Sorry, Tiger Eyes, but this defies sanity even more than Emergence. Where did all that stuff come from? How the hell do 60% of these ghouls get college degrees? Does their HMHVV make them superbrains or something? And if the answer to 'who paid for this' is 'Tamanous', then I REALLY don't see why this place hasn't been wiped off the map by an Omega Order. And how Horizon gets away with BEING IN BED WITH TAMANOUS AND ACTIVELY SUPPORTING THEM.


The authors want it to support the Infected as PCs? Or maybe because ghouls are cool, in a whiny, oWoD sort of way?

Or maybe to prove, yet again, that Horizon can do whatever they want, no matter how much it boggles the mind.

What the hell does Horizon have to do with Asamondo.

This should be fun.

Popcorn, anybody?

Ghouls are people too. (And not just because you are what you eat.)

I seem to recall that ghouls were considered more monstrous in the early days of SR, I think there was even a bounty for them in the UCAS back in 1st and maybe even early 2nd edition. That changed, though, about the time that being a ghoul went from being a UGE to a strain of HMHVV.

Asamando, as far back as Cyberpirates (which I believe was it's first mention) was written as one of the more stable (if disturbing) areas of the Cote d'Ivoire. I think the high literacy rate can probably be attributed to the number of high-functioning ghouls who travel there from all over the world to escape persecution. Those are going to be the ghouls who have the means to travel. I think if people don't like ghouls (and let's face it, most don't), they should be donating to pro-Asamando charities because giving ghouls a place to live seems a far better choice than having them hide out in the sewers below your house.

Personally, I like using ghouls as ravening monsters sometimes too. I like there being a "dead zone" (even if SR ghouls aren't undead) around Asamando that the least-functioning, most bestial ghouls inhabit. Because it's fun to have the 'runners drive a road train through a wasteland full of cannabilistic, mad-dog killers. But I also like the canon version that not every ghoul is a mad-dog killer, that ghouls are people too.

"Horizon is leading the pack at the moment, being one of few corporations—and the only AAA—to recognize the ghouls as sentient and Asamando as a nation." - Feral Cities, p 74


Actually, that changed in 4th, with the companion and introduction of vampy PC options galore (and a lot of retconning about the Infecteds' nature, especially the Wendigo's, the Goblin's, and the Dzoo-Noo-Qua's). Presumably, because Horizon made people change their minds.


"They’ve got one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, and potentially in the world, and over 60 percent of adults have a college degree." - Feral Cities, p. 74

Right. Presumably, all the highly educated ghouls who give all kudos for being so insanely propped up to Queen Lauda, traveled there from afar and were just inicdentally all Sasobasam, too. And even though the queen had zero to do with their high education, they give her credit for it.

Eh. That doesn't make the least of sense. Seems like someone really went over the top with cannibal central.

Well, the infection angle on ghouls dates back to at least SR2, because it was a plot point in one of the modules. I seem to recall the Krieger-something strain being mentioned in some of the sourcebooks I own, which would be SR2 or 3.



Asamando isn't all sasobasam, although Cyberpirates does mention that it is considered the most desirable strain for Lauda's breeding programs. Maybe the ghouls don't have a 60% college degree rate, or maybe they classify low-functioning ghouls as livestock and leave them off the census data. (That reminds me of a funny line from The West Wing, when Barlett asks Leo how a particular country has a 100% literacy rate. "Maybe they don't and they're bad at math too.")

I don't know, it's possible we're just looking at this from two different sides. If you see ghouls as ravening monsters, it isn't going to make much sense for them to be one of the more stable regions in that part of the world. If you see them as people (who have a weird disease that makes them need to eat dead people), then you can buy the idea of the ghoul nation, which probably isn't any more or less weird than a lot of other places in the 6th world.

Asamando was one of the more interesting places for me when I was running my game, because I was able to throw a lot of stuff in about the ghouls and other HMHVV's in a different context-- here the monsters were people. I guess I have a lot of sympathy for monsters, because the "monsters as people" is something that crops up in a lot of my games. And even though I'm not a "vampire" guy, vampires and the other HMHVV expressions have turned up in a lot of my games.

We import animals for food. If they were sentient, and we had no choice but to eat them to survive, does that make us monsters or victims of necessity?


Yes. I like where this thread is going. Cough.

Uhm ... given that ghouls had a one in 6 chance of not being mentally damaged to some degree (I'm not sure what chance they have post-massive-retcon, though), yes, it doesn't make much sense that a horde of creatures ranging from slightly insane to Reaver would be able to magically make first world infrastructure, schools, and stuff pop up out of thin air, paid for with dimes they get for tin ore and hardwood apparently, form a working nation and then have a 60% college degree quota. Of course, they could sell their prey's organs on a massive scale, but that might eventually convince the wider world that something needs to be done about them.

As for background count: Considering they're killing some 50.000 people a month for sustenance, I really doupt the astral in asamondo is a nice place to begin with.


Monsters, for all that our food source was concerned. But what's your point there?

More like tons of money they get from gold and diamonds.

Funny, a bit further up it was only tin and hardwood, so it wouldn't be economically viable to kill the ghoulies off ...

Well by canon it's gold and diamonds, but i agree with it not being really a sound move for any corporation to take over Asamando.
Corps don't really do ruling countries, thats what they keep goverments around for.

They weren't to take it over, but to retake it from a horde of nonhuman beasts (like Chicago). And then import population, or something to that effect. They might save on infrastructure, though, what with all these college nerd ghouls and their first-world, luxury infrastructure ... even if slightly bombed out, it's propably relatively cheap to repair back up to african standrads.

And where's the profit in that, when they allready have a good busines realationship with the current goverment.

I think Bug Spirits to ghouls is a false analogy. You can't negotiate with bugs, at least not in terms that sane people would consider. But you can negotiate with ghouls, in fact, every mention of Asamando dating back to Cyberpirates points this out.

Asamando has gold, diamonds, telesma and other assorted export goods. Bombing them off the map would require a massive investment of military force, then a massive investment of infrastructure, including bringing in all the people that would have to work in those industries. All to get resources that the ghouls are already happy to trade at favorable rates.

This is how I see that conversation going at the boardroom level:

Exec 1: We have to wipe out these horrible monsters and make sure that those valuable resources are available to the world.

Exec 2: But the ghouls are willing to make us lucrative trade deals.

Exec 1: My god man, we have to protect their sovereignty. Those ghouls are people too. Why don't we shoot one of our low level employees and send them to ghoul queen as a gift. Something to nosh on while she's signing the contracts?

Personally, I don't see advocating genocide against diseased people as taking the moral high road, but even if it was, when do corps ever take the moral high road?

Why can't yo? In fact, if you keep selling people for hosts to bugs, I bet you can live peacefully with them next door for some time (in fact, that's what Ares is doing, though they use animals for hosts). Same with Asamondo.


Uhm ... why rebuild infrastructure that's already there from scratch? Background count won't get much worse than it already is, what with the ghoulies eating their victims piece by piece; the infrastructure Lauda built (including towns that can easily be cleaned with FAB III or nerve gas), and there's loads of people in Lagos who're used to shitty living conditions anyways and would propably consider concentration camp level barracks and sanitation a vast improvement in lifestyle. And yes, all to have a hold on ressources you otherwise had to pay for. Also, numbering around 500.000, the ghouls aren't that numerous. And again, they live in towns, so the bulk of them could easily be wiped out with air strikes or kinteic projectiles from orbit. Mopping up the remainders shouldn't be that hard, especially if tribal shamans from neighbouring tribes work against them (and turn the woods against the ghoulies).


That would be Leman Brothers level stupid. As the megas have existed for the better opart of a century by now, it's fair to assume they're not that brainless. Also, I doupt Lauda, obsessed with being the new Übermensch and all, would be willing to negotiate much. People with an übermensch complex usually are a bit self-absorbed and unwilling to consider being at the short end of anything.


They're not poor diseased lepers but cannibalistic, murderous reaver-like psychopaths. And if you can lobby for taking out the Yucks and get away with that, PR-wise, so can you for wiping out a lingering zombie reaver holocaust.

*cue music, remix of Toto's "africa" -replace line"I bless the rains down in africa" with a subtle "we don't eat brains down in africa"

Voice over: "welcome the Asamado, the jewel of the dark continent! bringing peace and prosperity to our wonderful lands!"
*pan video feed across happy street scene. zoom in on ghoul bartering with tourist for trinkets. both smile and shake hands.

voice over: "We're building a better tommorow, today!"

Its all in the PR,chummers!

Where every other explanation fails.

You can't loose as long as Horizon is with you!

From Year of the Comet:


From Runners Companion:



From Feral Cities:



As well as whatever corps are working on the synthetic flesh, like Biogene (Yakashima). And Ares likely provides Asamando's weaponry and other goods/services. So there's three megas and a couple of AAs who have plump trade contracts with Asamando. Horizon may be in the mix, but they're the newcomer on the block. And since Cyberpirates, SOTA63, and YOTC are all sourcebooks prior to 4th ed that mention the nation (and their corporate contracts) it's obvious that Asamando has been working with corporations long before Horizon came on the scene.

In spite of a seemingly popular belief, Ares is not the only weapons manufacturer in the world. Anybody willing to be armed doesn't have to deal with Ares. Besides, the top position Ares enjoys in the defense sector is more probably achieved through major contracts in the billion of nuyen with first world armed forces, and not a lod of assault riffle ammo crates and machetes. As far as African requirements for armament goes, Saeder-Krupp and a bunch of other corps can probably answer their needs just as well as Ares would.

No kidding. Given S-K's presence, it's likely that they're providing some guns -- after all, the K in S-K does stand for Krupp, the company that made cannons and warship guns for centuries.

And where would you have that from? As far as weapons go, Mah'Mula arms from Morocco propably is the more likely supplier (of AK-97s and accessories produced from blueprints stolen from a singaporean AK rip-off manufacturer). Or, as Nath mentioned, SK might supply them (Or Horizon, since they undouptedly also have a fantastic, ground-breaking and thoroughly better weapons division).


Where in SotA63 and YotC are asamondo's corp contacts mentioned? YotC states in passing that Asamondo is facing an invasion from Asante (and how Asamondo's finances crumbled when the local Orichalcum mines dried upp. 67), and YotC provides nothing I could find beyond that quote (page numbers would have nbeen helpful). Cyberpirates mentions Asamondo as a country of desperate, but vigilant ghouls that hasn't been cleaned up because noone really gives a dmn at the moment, not some sort of Ghoul switzerland with 60% college degrees.

The only source before SR4 you can point out is YotC, adn it also fails to mention how Asamondo evolved from rag-tag ghoul copuntry looking to make ends meet (and no, strip mining in Africa has no tradition of making countries rich) to what has been described in SR4 books. Also, DeBeers-Omnitech isn't even a triple-A corp.

Has anyone given any thought to how would an entire nation of ghouls eat?

I assume its nothing as gruesome as ritual sacrifices.

Criminals? Sick? Elderly? Those with a terminal illness wanting euthanasia?

I find the basic logistics a bit staggering that's all.

- J.

The food-appropriation business is probably the biggest business in Asamondo. And you know all those people who mysteriously go missing every year...?

Enough people die of natural causes every day, even if you do eliminate those who have dangerous diseases that can be transmitted via ingestion.

Random thought but what about clones? From what I recall of the ghoul rules, I haven't read them in an age, their feeding doesn't involve essence or anything like that it just needs metahuman flesh. Why not simply set up a production line to clone bodies, force grow them since developmental intelligence isn't an issue and then butcher them for food? Now granted it might be somewhat expensive but IIRC ghouls don't actually need all that much metahuman flesh a month to survive so even then it could provide for a large proportion of the local population and help alleviate the situation.

Exactly. Ghouls don't need to eat real people. I suppose eating clones is like eating soy and krill, not very tasty but filling all the same. Heck, you can even site your bio-tech organ manufacturing facilities there, you can even pay the ghouls their pound of flesh. Kind of like working in a restuarant kitchen, I suppose.

I think the key is cost. Growing a clone body is a very expensive endeavor, while shooting a random guy in the head is relatively cheap. Both produce the same product, edible meat, but the latter is substantially more cost-efficient.
The only reason not to use the latter method is risk, but risk can be mitigated. A simple risk-cost analysis will provide ample understanding of the best ways to select metahumans for slaughter such as to minimize both risk and cost.

One of the reasons the corps don't just over-throw every nation in sight is given in um... Corporate Download/Corporate Shadowfiles. Essentially there is a gentleman's agreement on the corporate court to not overthrow a nations government unless you are willing to pick up the pieces afterward. Given the difficulties in ruling an a ghoul nation, and (more importantly) the amount it would detract from the corps bottom line, it should come as no surprise that it hasn't been done. With the corps one should always look at the bottom line. Since they Corporate Cort has dictated a 'you break it you buy it' attitude when it comes to nation-states, it simply isn't cost effective.

As for who sells them guns, no doubt they buy them from everywhere. However, Feral Cities does state Ares having a serious presence in Africa. And Ares is still the #1 manufacture of bang-bangs in the world. So I wouldn't be surprised if sizable chunk of them come from there.

Asamando also pays 5 to 10 nuyen a kilo for dead bodies. Given that the Ivory Coast is listed as one of the poorest and most violent places in the 6th World, this is probably a workable arrangement. Also, I'm a little rusty on my ghoul-fu, but as I recall, ghouls eat all sorts of necrotized flesh, not just metahuman. So not only can they consume regular meat, they're actually a good market for meat that is too spoiled to feed to regular humans.

Where's Frank Trollman when you need him?

As far as I know, ghouls need metahuman flesh to survive. They cannot eat dead animals. And I wonder how many corpses the ghoul nation consumes per week.

Also, with FAB III floating around still in Chicago, what are the odds for one of the "not so cannibal-loving" groups to get some samples of that, and deliver it to the ghoul nation?