We had a litte discussion about CZs at another forum and I was wondering if the Infection power could be used on CZs. There's nothing about infection and negative Essenz in the rules. As I guess one can't drain negative Essenz from a CZ, it shoulden't be possible to infect a CZ as the Infection power says the Vampire has to drain the victim to Essenz 0 first. Still the idea of an infected CZ's scary.

Enter the Carrier quality?

I dont think cyberzombies are "alive" enough to supply sustenance to a vamp....or to become one. I'm not too sure on the rules around it, but i though vamps died(in a sense) if they got to 0 essence

You shouldn't be able to drain Essence from someone who has none.

I agree, the Infected power (p.289 SR4) requires the critter to drain you to 0 Essence to infect you. Cyberzombies can't be essence drained, so they can't be infected via the Infection power.

As for someone who's already Infected becoming a CZ, the problem I see is the Magic rating. CZs say that their magic is set to 1, and it can't be increased in any way, but it CAN be decreased. If it becomes 0, they die. An Infected's max magic is equal to their essence. Thus, an Infected with Essence of 0 or less would have their magic reduced to 0. Because a cyberzombie with magic 0 dies, and because an Infected's magic can't be higher than their Essence, the two qualities are incompatible.

Everyones Magic is capped by Essence, by that logic CZ would all die. Obviuosly, this is not true so this argument does not invalidate Infected CZs.

So, this is ignoring initiates entirely?

That's true, but Infected have a special rule about this. They die the instant their Magic becomes 0, and I'm pretty sure that means they'd die on the operating table before the cybermantic ritual is complete. Most people, even mages, can survive with Magic 0, so they can be sustained temporarily when their Essence goes negative while the ritual happens, but Infected can't.

And I mean, come on. Can a creature that survives by draining Essence from others be turned into a cyberzombie who doesn't even have any Essence? Maybe he can, but in that case, the Infected powers would no longer work. Infected powers depend on drawing energy from other life forms, and when your body goes negative Essence, there's not enough meat left to do that. I mean, you don't have enough meat body left to be alive, what's there to be infected? Maybe it's not exactly RAW, but I think common sense does apply to things like vampire cyberzombies

No infected CZs! Shesh, the CZ is already a dead body with its spirit bound into the animated corpse. What more do you want? It doesn't have any essence to drain.

Way to go, inveting rules to prove you point.
Unfortunatly, Infected do NOT die from having magic 0. They simply lose their powers. They might regain them after they gain magic 1 from cybermancy, who knows.

The fluff part on page 146-147 of Augmentation talks about the Ordo Maximus (predominately HMHVV led powerful magic group) is playing with cybermancy. They say it possibly started as a test to find a cure for HMHVV, but turned into something else.

I can't remember too well, but somewhere else when it talks about Ordo Maximus, HMHVV, and Cyberzombies, I could have sworn it said something about Infected not being able to go through the process. Can't find it though, and it could have just been an extrapolation from fluff...

Besides, the incapability of gaining Essence coupled with the Essence Loss of most Infected = Dead Infecte-Cyber-Zombie in at most, 1 month.

However, a ghoul CZ would be a decent choice. They don't run the risk of losing Essence every month, and bring their own unique powers to the mix.

And have it inhabited by a queen spirit in hybrid form (an evil GM could even rule that the inhabitation bustes the cap on magic).
Now you know what nuclear weapons are for.

Well, using Inhabitation would replace the target's magic rating with the Spirit's. And their Essence.

The question begs though, can you prepare something for Inhabitation multiple times? Because as part of the Cybermantic ritual you have to effectively prepare the person's body for inhabitation from their own spirit again, locking it in (semi)permanently.

Not to mention the Queen Spirit would get a kick from the Astral Hazing.

But all in all, I think you're on to something here... It'd be better if you got just a normal high-force Free Spirit (as detailed in my thread) to do it, as you gain a lot more power than having just a Queen.

For example: a nosferatu gains Ally Conjuration, conjurs a force 8 spirit with Inhabitation, has it inhabit a glass statuette. He then goes through a Cybermantic proceedure, gains all the super-bonuses of a CZ, then goes back to his house and breaks the glass statuette. Then he simply asks his F8 Inhabitation Ally Spirit to Inhabit himself, using his Conjuration dice and whatnot to force a Hybrid Form Inhabitation Merge. The new creature is now a F8 Free Spirit, and gains new abilities = Edge. Give him the Geomancy metamagic to Geomance the Astral Hazing, and now he can also suck up to 24 points of Essence (the Nosferatu's is his max Essence x 3; the Spirit would gain that ability, working off his 8 Essence x 3 = 24), being able to channel those into stats (including Magic), as well as getting the aspected backround of the Astral Hazing.

Oh God. It's the Nothing all over again...*

*My friend called me up one day as I was working on a D&D NPC who was going to be a Paladin of Tyrrany/Blackguard/Assassin. He and I started talking, and he became a Paladin of Tyrrany/Rogue/Hexblade/Blackguard/Assassin/Maybe 1 other class. Charisma to saves 3 times. Extremely good BA and F/R/W. We statted him out at 20th level and found he could kill every creature and god in D&D, except a Great Wyrm Prismatic Dragon. But the GW-PD couldn't kill him either. We named him the Nothing.

But they could be CZ for a few days at least

Ghouls are awesome, might be a quite interesting choice as CZ. Their inherent drawbacks pretty much go out the window and their attributes can make them scary in combat, to say the least.

Not cost effective: it would damage the "bottom line."

Using a Nosferatu, however, would increase the baseline field time to ~6 months instead of 1.

And combining that with my Inhabitation Ally Spirit idea would create a god.

At the VERY least, you'd need a new cybermantic ritual to cyberzombie an Infected. I can't imagine that the ritual would be the same for a person as for a creature as magically different as a vampire.

The other issue is regeneration. Trying to implant an IMS in a vampire would probably be an exercise in frustration as the body continually ejects the cyberware.

That's covered in Runner's Companion. They have to be delta-grade implants, and the Infected has to be introduced to their allergen to prevent Regen from taking hold.

As a side note, Acid Rain counts as a Mild Allergen to all characters, so that would prevent trying to Surgery a Nosferatu in daylight from killing him. Just put his hand in a cup of acid rain, and no more regen for him.

That's... a totally ridiculous workaround. I find it hilarious.

I figured there was probably a way to implant stuff in a vamp, I just didn't have a copy of any of my books at work.

Edit: Question, now. Since I'm honestly trying to find an in-game, rules-explicable reason why vamps can't be CZs. How would their Immunity to Toxins interact with the CZ drug regimen? I imagine it'd interfere a significant amount, if not outright prevent the drugs from working.

Umm... Excellent point. Since ItT is based off of Magic, however, if we drop said vamp's Essence to 1 to start with, his Magic would drop to a 1, causing his "hardened armor" to be 2, far below what most Toxin's power would be.

It's not just about raw power, it's more about making a nasty thing nastier and nastier again, and insect spirits do qualify as nasty, so the nospheratu CZ queen spirit would be among the nastiest things ever.

Is there such a thing as courtesy or decorum in this shithole? Telling me I'm wrong, fine, maybe I misread it, I don't have the book right now. But telling me I'm inventing things just to be right? Seriously, what the fuck?

Failing to have acidic rain would troll's piss suffice?

Calm down chummers, calm down.

Yeah, there is. Malicant just seems to have been a little bit...abrasive...over the last couple of days.

Lies! I'm always like this.