I don't remember writing that, at least not specifically, but I could be wrong. It's been a while, and I've slept since then, and a great deal of my discussion here has been based on my memory (a dicey proposition at times) and my current gut feeling. I definitely need to go back and re-read all the Infected stuff I can, especially RC and RW (oddly enough) so I can make more assured statements.

The bounties as a sidebar made more sense to me, and it helped with layout of the text. Where they wound up might lend to confusion, but I'd have to look at the pages again to be sure.

We'll just have to see how things shake out, and whether I ever write for the line again.

You know, thinking it over in this light, you're right. They are citizens...just not very-well-thought-of citiznes.

It does place law enforcement in a tricky position, though, doesn't it?

That would make sense. Might not actually work that way, but it would make sense. Something to ponder.

I suppose they resist arrest rather reegularily. Still, it offers them a significant plus in protection against Hunters.


No, but it could be the balance to strike if you really want rights for the und- ... post-metahuman.


Same with the AI rights laws. All it takes is a ghoul with a fluffy hat, and the laws pass. /sarc

At least if the development of the line follows the pattern chosen with AI. Which I sort of hope it won't, because it makes no sense.

A fluffly hat? Am I missing a reference somewhere?

(And NO MORE OLD POST! I can embarrass myself with this one alone now!!)

The AI rights law that passed and was lauded because the AI had a cute fluffy thingy for an icon. Because if it's avatar, which is totally arbitrary and untied to it's function, looks cute and fluffy, it cannot possibly be dangerous. I found that a bit ... stupid, for a reason why the public should suddenly support an AI ("Support bin Laden! He has a fluffy hat! Nevermind he blew up parts of Manhattan a few years ago!" Does that not make sense?)

Reference for this?

Still think running with infected is a stupid idea and that they are terrible PC options. Buddying up with the infected is like a (sentient) chilidog willing going to a baseball game, it's not productive to your long term health and most likely lifespan.

Most sentient chilidogs I know don't have guns or magic.

I just finished reading through emergence again, and I have no idea what you're talking about. What am I missing? Are we talking about the AI with Horizon? Because he clearly had a whole lot more influence than a fluffy hat.

No, this is from both RC, the AI chapter, the case of Xiao-Renraku vs. Teskit, and Unwired, "Horizon newsfeed moderated by Holly Haskins" sidebar, for the precise fluffyness reference.

He's being hyperbolic, but that's basically what Emergence? states that happens. Even after one of the new AIs takes over an orbital weapons platform they are welcomed with open arms because of a cute spokesAI. EDIT- It's suprising how quickly people forgot Dues.

Ok the sentient chilidog wasn't the best metaphor should have said a sheep in a wolfpack.

I don't know, now I want to fit one of those in. Maybe after the drone/cyberpenis.

A chilidog + free spirit PC + shared life = sentient chilidog.

It was a short life. A short, delicious, life.

Well, i hope so. It was fun to read the infected chapter in Running Wild, and i have always chalked up the contradictions between it and RC as both minor and explainable as different positions ingame.
This was reinforced by the fact that Ancient's text in RC came from the perspective of legalese-touting diplomats giving an abstract of a research paper with whose results they seemed rather uncomfortable (and we all know how that always turns out), while your text's narrator was -at least how i read it- marked clearly as unreliable as well by posters in the shadowtalk.
The parts about him not knowing about cybered vampires, his personal involvement due to the transformation of his sister, both clearly commented on by Jackpoint posters. His entrenchment in a less...post/non/para-human friendly society. Stuff like that.
When i combed through the texts again parallel to this thread, all seemed to point towards two intentionally biased sources, both labeled as such.
So contradictions seemed inevitable.

At least that's what i made of these texts, i have, of course, a completely different perspective on all that stuff.

I guess i'm reading too much into this, but whatever.



I'm beginning to love all those legal grey areas in SR4.
Infected are not the only case here.
Don't know whether such oversights and contradictions in the law are intentional, but their real life counterparts aren't either.
Works fine for me, actually.
Even though it's always giving me a headache at first.



I'd absolutely say that this is how it turns out on both accounts.

It's a different legal situation than back in SR1, but it is a continuation of well-established ingame developments, whether they made sense to all players or not. They where not as prominent back in the day, but that's plausible as well. The whole topic is really boiling up, and in contrast to other subplots like Crash 2.0 and the aftermath, it took it's time to develop.

A lot of the infected still pose a massive and accute thread as well.
Not their entire population, though.

Many of them now pose entirely different, but at least much less menacing problems now, at least in my opinion.


--Let's assume for a moment that the transformation following infection is at least partially responsible for the feral nature of ghouls (by a very far margin the most widespread infected- actually the only truly numerous group of non/ex-metahumans). Many older and current sources suggest this possibility.

--Let's also assume that decent sanitary conditions and a policy of containment by various means from hunting to limited citizenship under strict supervision has decreased the number of new infections in industrial nations.

--Let's also assume that this has led to a shift in the composition of the ghoul population. As new infections became rarer while birth rates increased or at least remained stable, the number of ghouls wo did not go through the trauma of transformation and grew up within an adapting ghoul society grew as well. Meaning that at least proportionally, the more reasonable, less feral ghouls became more and more the dominant variety of ghouls over the last 20 years of ingame time.

Even though this is a retrofit, it is internally consistent with previous statements as well as current ones.
It could provide a framework for why and how infected rights develop, would provide a reason why the zombie apocalypse didn't happen (at least outside of Western Africa) and what makes ghouls playable now without denying their previous status as a pseudo-undead threat, in fact without taking away the possibility of still including such ghouls as horrifying, threatening NPCs that can be blown up without many moral concerns by the PCs.
Knight Errant can't do it without causing problems, but still no one cares if the runners nuke a pack of sewer-dwelling, baby-hunting, totally feral zombie ghouls.
They can still collect a bounty if they track down a wendigo serial killer setting up a cabal down in Mississippi (even if they stop issuing ghoul bounties, this does not have to apply to every kind of infected equally, as the threats posed, the lobbies behind them and their overall numbers are different as well).

But at the same time, they can play a nosferatu on the Azzie payroll, complete with full corporate citizenship (and the lvl2 Erased quality to cover up what he actually is, if they want to play it safe).

I'm fully aware that's not the only viable interpretation of the fluff.
"No one gave a damn about line development and now it's all a giant mess, makes no sense and everything is filled with sparkling bullshit" is just as possible.

But i'll most likely stick to what i've outlined above. It works, it makes sense, it offers the full range of options (except for "kill em all", but even that could be arranged if the whole infected rights experiment fails).
Sounds allright to me.

I hope it's halfway intelligible to others. Maybe i'm just rambling, it's like...half past 5 in the morning here and i should probably go to bed and get rid of this buzz. Goddamn Sambuca.






This thread is giving me one campaign idea after the other.

So why not ignore the fanged (I sure hope they have fangs anyway) version of Mr sparkle and include nosferatu as the terrible monsters they are, whose actions would make most women and children at no longer have an appetite, instead of admitting defeat and letting marketers/writers ruin more things by making it into something only for children?

Look! Semi-current at last!!


Well, the government of the UCAS sub-contracts a lot. Most law enforcement jurisdictions are handled by corporate law enforcement corporations, and while those contracts theoretically oblige them to enforce the laws of the community they serve, we both know there's a hell of a lot of gray space that the corp (and even the individual officers involved) can interpret as they see fit.

Ya get what ya pay for, after all.

If I recall correctly, the bounties are also handled by way of contracts, with law enforcement agencies able to draw on an established fund to pay bounties when someone comes to claim them. They're still on the books, after all, and there's probably not a tremendous amount of oversight. Or maybe I'm not remembering that, and just imagining that it should be so. In any case, there's a lot of jurisdictions that aren't going to bat an eye if you bring a ghoul carcass (or a vampire carcass, for that matter) in for the bounty, SIN or no SIN. Friends of the Infected might blow a gasket, but them's the breaks. PETA still gets all up in arms if you kill a wolf in self-defense; why should they have all the fun?


Feral Infected still make up the majority of them, I'd think, especially HMHVV-II Infected and Infected ghouls. And it's hardly going to matter to the guy who wants to shoot you in the face for the bounty. So even places with "Infected rights" groups don't afford citizenship, or even basic rights, to everyone.

There's the matter of bred ghouls, second-generation and beyond, but that's probably best left to another discussion.

Man, I get off on some tangents. Bad Patrick!! Bad, bad, bad!


Thanks; I appreciate the vote of confidence.


You assume they're not greeted with hostility. I don't see that as actually being an issue; all the Infected-rights flak to the contrary, there's an assload of hostility in the everyday citizenry, and it's probably even worse amongst the shadow community. Human nature dies hard, and it's going to take a lot more than some resolution somewhere to make it go away.


A UN resolution/initiative that has not, as of Running Wild, actually passed, if I recall correctly (I asked during the writing of things, but as with many things, I've slept since then). There's a lot that was "theoretical" about the UN resolutions. The beauty of UN resolutions is that they're unenforceable even if they do get passed.

Playable infected are one of the worst decisions ever. They should have been left as a GM-only threat like the other toxics.

Especially with the nature of the infection (and the rediculous disease rules) making it a miracle that we still have shadowrun instead of Left4Dead. If anything those need fixed and retconned, not the status of infected in the world.



IMO: ghouls in sanctioned ghettos might get criminal sins provided they stay in their corner and accept the scraps tossed to them. But anywhere outside the bounty should be free and easy to collect.

Any PC who comes along should NOT be surprised and the GM should actively encourage the other players to off them on the principle and get the money.

Or both. Sometimes at once.


Pending further research (and I need to do it, but this whole "life" thing keeps getting in the way), I have to say that, while there's a push to allow the Infected certain rights of citizenship, it appears to me that most of the Infected rights people have in mind are ghoul rights, mostly because of the massive publicity regarding the Cabrinit refuge since the Bug City incident.

Yes, education has gotten that bad (even today it's that bad, and imagine what it's like 60 years down the line), and the PR machine of the 2060s and 2070s makes modern day PR look like hand-drawn ads on a bulletin board at a second-rate supermarket. So yeah, some of the people might be fooled...but not all, or even most, of them.

Where does it state that infected have the right to infect or kill anyone?

A vampire completely draining a victim would still be considered a murderer, draining an unwilling subject or infecting someone could also constitute criminal charges.

I see no reason to believe otherwise, unless you are obsessed with making up strawman arguments.
Unless there is an official source for such statements (hint : there is none), it's not beneficial to the discussion at all to make such assumptions.

Only if I'm supremely lucky. I do see something like this happening, though...just might not be how I'd do it. We'll have to see.


And it seems to me like this is the most sensible approach. You don't like them...just don't allow them as options in your game. Problem solved. It's how I do it.

Ding ding ding! QFT.

You know, I really wish I'd thought of that when I was writing the piece in RW, and I really wish I'd had the space to explore it if I had thought of it. There's probably a certain segment of the Infected-wannabe culture that thinks just exactly like that: It's better to be a monster and have some power and get out of my current situation. They may not give much thought to what they're becoming, and what they're doomed to, but there's probably a segment of the population that thinks it.

Thanks to you and Brazilian_Shinobi for pointing that one out to me. I'll need to file it away for later.

Ghouls do not drain Essence. They have to eat metahuman flesh, which is bad enough in most camps, but no, they don't have to have Essence along with said metahuman flesh. HMHVV-III behaves a lot differently than HMHVV-I.

I really, really, really want to do something about that sidebar. Like erase it from the timestream.

The infected eat people or drain their essense given them rights and the protection from the law means they can feed. When they feed they harm or kill people and most likely infect them as well.

Yeah, I think you know where I stand on this noise by now....


Yeah, that's going to happen a lot....

Their image in popular fiction notwithstanding, most vampires aren't wealthy, and Essence revitalization is expensive (275,000 nuyen and ten months to restore ONE point of Essence). Not the kind of thing that most vamps, banshees, et al, are going to have handy.


They're better networked than a whole lot of people, not just other Infected. That said, it doesn't mean they've necessarily got the better PR machine.


No, HMHVV-II is a loup-garou apocalypse waiting to happen. Okay, it's really not; Jarka-Criscione isn't that bad in terms of infection rate.

People keep bringing up the ghoul apocalypse rules, and I think that's a bad thing. It's not fair to Bobby, who wrote the thing and has since admitted it (the Contact vector) was a mistake. I don't know if it's on the current list of changes, but I don't think it is. I know it's been submitted as an errata item. I, for one, would be pleased to see this particular meme die off.


Actually, we don't have to guess. It started in Bug City, developed by one Tom Dowd, and written (according to the credits page) by Robert Cruz, Tom Dowd, Mike Nystul, Diane Peron-Gelman, and Christopher Kubasik. Ghoultown starts on page 96. Talk about Tamir Grey and Blaine Hammond, movers and shakers in Ghoultown, start on page 150. Knock yourself out.

I'm not going to dignify the remainder of this with a reply.

actually, the cellular repair pretty specifically says it can restore essence loss from the essence loss power, and it is 15k nuyen with 1 week to 2 months. The faq also says that it works with hmhvv infected draining people then restoring their essence with it. The essence revitalization gene treatment is basically made for those with essence holes from ware

Well...that's bullshit. Gonna have to do something about that, because it's a pretty damn stupid thing.

Individual rights end where other people's rights are inhibited. So if access to proper nutrition requires you to violate another person's right to live, though luck.

However, most Infected (meaning both "most varieties" and "most of their overall numbers") don't need to kill or harm people, they can and in most cases do get along on corpses. In a world where nobody gives the dead beetlehead in the gutter another look and bodies are regularly sold for parts, that's not really outrageous. Not that consuming parts of dead persons actually is that unusual in human history, mummy powder was still considered some sort of miracle healing at the begining of the 20th century...

There was a lot of debate about reversing Essence loss in general.

Strictly speaking, it doesn't.
Giving them rights could as well be restricted to the right not to be killed by bounty hunters while they starve to death.

That's not how it seems to be handled (though it may sometimes turn out like this in practice), but your argument is still invalid.



Strain II and III infected don't have to harm anyone.
Strain I infected don't have to kill anyone.
None of them infect anyone by feeding, except Strain I infected who drain a victim completely (which they don't have to).

So yes, it is perfectly possible to give infected civil rights while making it a capital crime if they infect anyone.

Kill em all and let Glod sort them out. Failing in that; take off, and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

As has been pointed out, they got their own discount essence regenration therapy to make this possible - the exemption of essence drain power damage from Revitalisation and cellular therapy makes no sense as a design choice otherwise - Essence always has been a special attribute and should have remained separate from other attribute regeneration therapies, if regeneratable at all.

So yes, by the rules, it probably is.


What about the Ordo Maximus and it's clout? They DO have their own PR machine.


Typo, my bad. It should have been III.

As for the Ghoulpocalypse, since a scratch is sufficient (or a bite), injection is, too. It worked for Romero's zombie apocalypse scenario, after all. I don't understand why the curability of HMHVV III was retconned away. It was the only sound reason why this hadn't happened in developed countries.

As for a question: Can ghouls subsist on a diet of Ghoul?


There would have to be enough beetleheads for that, and people would have to be willing to tolerate a Shedim threat. Since (if I remember correctly), with YotC, cremation has become even more common than it already was in SR, I doubt there will be. And with the danger of magicans abusing tissue samples, it is conceivable (though not a must) that there is significant pressure to destroy medical waste ASAP, too. And even if all medical waste and arms removed for cyberarms, and all dead squatters, gangers, and even every dead, were dumped to the ghouls - with a growing population of them, that would not work for long as sustenance.


As a fringe movement by populist liberal politicans, which turned sour rather quickly. Politically, it seems the Carbini refuge experiment was a failure, even though it did follow the leper colony lines that have already been discussed.

Also, Tamir Grey and Blaine Hammond both propose Ghoul Rights, and have a Martin Luther King and Malcom X kind of relationship in their views - one firey radical who wants to fight back, one who wants coexistence. But apart from terror groups who supply them with weapons, nobody else seems much interested in supporting them.

What I am wondering is why Ghoul Rights all of a sudden are supported by a majority and by strong political backing. Where did that come from?

But you're right, there was flavour text like this in Companion 3, too. Still, the sudden jump from fringe cause for PETA like people to mainstream cause backed by 'significant political support' is baffling. RC brushes this off as "it came to be in recent years", which is rather cheap for such a massive change in perception. It's not orcs and trolls after all - who are not wired to hurt people to stay alive, and even they had a hard time and it took what, 60 years for them to get where they are in 2072. And the Infected aren't essentially harmless to humans, but cannibals and, in case of strain I, soul suckers. It's hard to see such creatures get any more support than to be settled in some sort of leper camp. And, the only source for anyone considering segregating the Infected I find is that ill-gotten sidebar that, it seems, everybody wishes would be swallowed by a wormhole or something. Again, if the leper camp solution is mentioned elsewhere, a pointer would be nice. Well, Carbini Green might count, though setting up a leper colony downtown without containment is a bit strange.

Also, do cannibal infected have to consume 1% or 5% of their body weight in metahuman meat each week?


Strain II and III have to eat metahuman flesh, and it seems agreed that bioware or vat meat won't suffice. So yes, they have to hurt, since there won't be enough freebies there (even considering human behavior changes towards dismissing the corpse as a meaningless husk instead of the burial rituals we have had going for the better part of 100.000 years, which I don't consider very likely).

Strain I can suck out half the life of someone, then patch them back up and drain them again. Okaying this would mean it also should be okay to skin a shapeshifter every few days for a pelt, since it grows back. I don't see this happening either. And that is assuming the Strain I Infected can restrain itself, and is a hemovore; it's hard to see how the physical damage done by a Goblin, Dzoo-Noo-Qua or Wendigo done to a body would regenerate as fast as cellular therapy would cure their aura, so we'd also deal with someone being eaten alive bit by bit every few weeks.

They don't nescessarily kill when feeding, but harm they always do. And there're not enough people with a corresponding fetish to go round for every of them.

But yes, the infection needn't nescessarily spread. It is doubtful it won't at least with Type II and III, though, especially Loup Garou with their annual rage phase.


Strictly speaking, sustaining themselves would be included in the basic human rights package. Though I can see the starve to death angle be on politicans' minds, all it needs is a shrewd lawyer and a precedent case, and the government might be eligible to find them people to eat and/or drain because human rights demand it to feed it's citizenry. Since I haven't found any reference for the infected to get some sort of special limited sort of human rights (correct me if I'm wrong), this is a very plausible scenario (and would be set to generate an enormous backlash).

Those guys certainly do not want to be seen as vampire friends in public. Sure, they could pour some money into astroturfed organisations, but that will still not have the same influence as lobbying by people who used to be friends, relatives or neighbours and don't suck anyone dry...


Unless the guy who scratches you has Infected blood on his hands a scratch is harmless. Same applies to bites (assuming HMHVV is not present in the salvia)


Given that most people do not carry a thermite charge linked to a heartbeat sensor, the Shedim scare seems to have died down somewhat. Sure, there are new regulations for handling bodies, but there are also laws making a SIN mandatory...

And it's not like ghouls need one corpse a day, that single beetlehead can feed a whole gang for a week.

No, just eat you, turn you, and smell like a carrion eater.

And who says they have to go the bleeding heart liberal civic action group way? Thwey could work the media to portray Vampires favourably, amass wealth to subsidize cellular repair programs for Vampire essence drain slaves, support Goth culture and generally Vampire worship and whitewash the vampiric lifestyle, all the while suppressing anything terrible about their kind (like the sucking out souls bit, whcih makes their thralls commit suicide or go mad eventually, cellular repair or not). Feed the people Twilight, and Ann Rice, and the romanticism of death and all that.


That depends entirely on what of the Infected fluid is infective. That saliva isn't is conjecture at best (and since HMHVV III is not sexually transmitted but by biting, it flat out makes no sense the Virus isn't). Blood will carry in any case. And ghouls aren't known for their hygiene. How long does HMHVV III linger after being exposed to the air?

Not saying it is a nescessity, but saying it doesn't has no basis.


And that is still not enough to nourish the Ghouls. A Beetlehead (roughly 60 kg total, because he isn't the most well-fed of people) contains around 60% edible meat and organs, if you're being generous. That's 36 kg. A Ghoul - on average weighing 70 kg themselves - that's 3,5 kg of Beetlehead per week he needs. So unless you're talking about some really small 8 Ghoul gang, he isn't going to last even a week. And even Beetleheads won't die one a week per every 8 Ghouls.

Assuming the usual 10% SINless population in developed countries, and 1% ghouls, they'd have eaten all the SIN-less in a couple weeks. Then what?

And even if the total population would all sign over their deceased to ghoulish consumption -which I still cannot see happening - it would not work over any period of time, as has already been discussed back when Feral Cities came out. It just doesn't work out that way.

Well I didn't read thread 1 and I read most of this one so I'm not sure if someone mentioned it before...


Its a great idea to play infected in Shadowrun, in fact its been done before!
(The following is rumor)
See there was this GM named Mark who was running Shadowrun 1e and all his players got infected. He was then at Gen-Con telling this Tom guy about his Shadowrun Vampire game. Tom mentioned that he had always wanted to make a system like Shadowrun but used d10s. So Mark and Tom decided to work together on a new rpg...

Not necesarrily. It depends on the country were talking about the United States had a view of rights more as a freedom from goverment interference. Europe on the other hand view rights as something the goverment should provide. Which is why in England they can be so restrictive about privacy rights and no one has legal recourse. While certainly it can be argued that a goverment has to provide for its citizens. It can slo be argued that the goverment just can't interfere with its citizens right to provide with themselves. In the former your interpretation is correct the goverment would have to provide victims for its ghoul population. More than likely in such a scenarion the promise to feed its citizens would be predicated on military service i.e. ghouls operating as shock troops on the battlefield then eating the dead. However in the latter scenario the infected has a right to feed so long as it doesn't violate another persons right not to be eaten.

Eat you maybe after you are dead, although I guess Ghouls don't eat relatives for the same reason humans don't eat their pet rabbits.
Turn you? Not really, unless you get a blood transmission
The smell? Well, not worse than everybody else in the barrens. And for the higher-ups, there are options like the Clean Metabolism bioware.


Obviousy, and to make things even worse the infection vectors are known to be screwed up. Since something without contact vector that is transmissable via saliva somehow does not make too much sense to me, I am just assuming similar infection vectors as HIV.



A ghoul just needs one percent of his body weight in human meat, so our beetlehead is good for 50 ghoul weeks (wonder when that will become an SI unit...). And just 10% SINless but a full one percent ghouls? In the UCAS it's more like 33% without SIN, and I doubt Infected are more populous than mages...


PS: And seriously, I still wonder how people even get the idea that human rights give anyone the freedom to ignore another person's rights to life and physical wellbeing...

Good point, though it should be noted that a) England is, at best, european fringe, and b) you would never get away with such a total surveillance on the continent - Germany is looking to ban or at least seriously cut down Street View. However, I fully agree that the idea a state has to feed it's population is firmly rooted in my European background, and Americans think differently.


Well. This seems a bit odd to me, so I will reply on what I think you are getting at; correct me if I'm wrong.

The Army argument fails for any army that is not the Warhammer 40.000 Imperial Guard, which is always at war somewhere. The UCAS Army hasn't seen much action beyond black ops since the Ghost Dance War. It is possible to feed Ghouls with dead enemies, if you choose to ignore the Geneva conventions, but what if the Army is not engaged in total war somewhere? What to do with them when you have non-war things at hand?

The 'american', if all Americans will excuse this wording for the moment, please, variant, that a Ghoul has a ight to eat so long as it doesn't infrince anyone's right not tobe eaten is ... weird. How else shall the Ghouls feed themselves? That would only legalise browad schale hunting and crippling (hey, you're not eaten if you only miss arms and legs, are you?) and all other kinds of nastiness that will certainly not go well even with a freedom of state intervention minded populace, I imagine. Or do you refer to Ghouls claiming any corpse at gunpoint? I can see trouble there in America, which is far more religious than Europe, even in SR, too ...

Because there are no feral Ghouls? Besides, I don't know about your neighbourhood, but I am not a relative to any of my neighbours. And please. Ghouls have been well documented that they help victims die before they eat them. It's not like they are in any way known to paitently wait for someone to drop dead out of more natural causes.


That still is conjuncture at best. HMHVV is no veneral disease, so it has no reason to concentrate in the gonades. A vector like Rabies makes far more sense. Which is bite and blood. I therefore maintain a bite is fully sufficient. It is much more congruent with current canon, mess that it is, that way, too.


That would be more expensive than a Vampire regenerating 6 Essence, since it will have to be Deltaware?


According to the sidebar made of fail. The text later says 5%.


Numbers are what I remember from different sourcebooks - 33% without SIN in the UCAS is a very high estimate, care to explain? Also, the Ghouls are roughly half the "other" listing in demographics indexes, which usually is around 2%.


Since the Infected cannot sustain themselves if they do not, and the human rights guarantee them life and sustenance ...

True about the army but two points. First as far as UCAS and the CAS are concerned the never actually signed the geneva convention. 2. I like the idea of a black ops ghouls you can remove the bodies by eating them leaving no trace of your whereabouts.

Second I was probably too obtuse about the rights argument. 1. Ghouls have a right to eat. 2. I have a right not to be killed and eaten, or maimed or have my soul sucked out of my body by a filthy bloodsucker. In terms of legal rights 2 trumps 1 because it doesn't immediately interfere with anyone elses rights.

p.s. I completely agree with you that the official policy of the infected for all goverments should be wipe them out. But the fluff is what it is and were left to attempt to justify it.

In the Sixth World, it is legal and socially acceptable to buy organs for transplant.

Therefore vampires and ghouls do have a legal way to get their food. Even if grown organs do not work for ghouls, they can still buy dead bodies and there are legal ways to do so.

That leaves the vampires need for essence, which begs the following question. Is it known that by the general population or governments that vampires must drain essence? If not than they can legally buy the blood required, while secretly draining essence from groupies.

If the vampires choose drug using groupies, than the missing essence can be blamed on the drugs.

My uncle lives next door...but anyway, I doubt ghouls will feed people they have some emotional attachment to, unless they absolutely need to.


The feral ones, sure.


HIV isn't a VD, either. And rabies are transmissable via smear infection, ie contact vector under SR rules.



Delta is only required for Infected with regeneration, ghouls can cyber up as much as they like (yup, even if it brings their magic down to 0)


And the old Target: UCAS

Shadowhelix says so (the DS wiki has no numbers)...and seriously, 90% of the population happy, law-abiding SINners? That's not the 6th World I know...


And human rights grant their would-be victims a right to live, tough luck Mr. Ghoul. If I desperately needed an organ transplant that still wouldn't allow me to put on my safari hat and look for potential donors...

That isn't a better source than any random netbook, sorry. And yes, 10% is less grimdark, but then again, SR is not 40K, even though especially among German players, this tends to be forgotten.


Then giving them human rights makes no sense, which is my point. However, the RC says otherwise, so there has to be some way to feed them. And an even greater problem would be Type 1 infected.


So you have a positive emotional attachment to all your neighbours? Do you live in some sort of magical place?


Of course it is. Sure, blood transfusion infects you more effective, but that goes for nearly any disease. The Virus developed around sexual transmission, not (naturally not occurring) blood transfusion. And yes, Rabies would be contact, but the main contraction is infected bites.


And since when are old edition rules relevant? Sorry, but we'Re discussing 4th edition playable infected here, not 3rd Edition playable Ghouls?


Hello, Unnecessary Retcon #10, pleased to meet you.

----


Sure is.


Cloned and/or type-O vat grown organs, NOT organs that used to be in someone else. Tamanous is an underground criminal organisation, not a Medicorp.

ad. 1: Source?
ad. 2: That won't fly because a) they cannot eat the larger bones, b) breaking up a body is a literally bloody mess you cannot clean up so easily as is required for Black Ops.


then why give them human rights at all, if they won't have a chance to live them? Why encourage them and make this infected problem an even bigger mess?


Or state it sucks and why it does.

I do not recall anything in a Shadowrun book that implies buying organs from the dead—or even whole bodies—is illegal. It would just require a deal with whomever has the legal rights to the body.

Organlegging exists because supply and demand makes stolen organs cheaper than legally acquired ones.

Buying maybe, but what would the Ghouls pay with? Fingerbones?

Listing 1-2% "Others" in every major sprawl (with the exception of Lagos, where "others" clock in at a whopping 5%) always seemed odd to me.
Taking a look at the total worldwide numbers for sapient critters given in RC and the estimates for total worldwide number of infected in RW only reinforced my doubts as to whether these numbers are correct.

According to RW, the global ghoul population is "probably" somewhere in the tens of millions.
Worldwide.
This includes Asamando, as well as rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa and India, where Krieger's syndrome spread most widely.

1% ghouls in every major sprawl seems extremely unlikely under this assumption.

Of course, no sapient non-metahuman species comes anywhere close to being as populous as ghouls.

Like i said, any noteworthy percentage of "Others" in a sprawl with several million inhabitants hardly makes much sense.


Regarding the whole "right to eat" argument :
Jus take a look at how organ donors work.
No country in the world is obliged to kill somebody to get enough organs for transplantation, or to force anybody to offer one of their kidneys up for transplantation.

I don't see why infected rights should be any different, because outside of the more disgusting aspects attached to it and the case of ferals, it's just the same thing.

You have a bunch of severely diseased people.
They need human organs to survive.
If there's not enough organs due to a lack of voluntary donors, the victims get on a waiting list.
People regularly die while waiting for a donor, because there's never enough organs around.
That's it.

This is Shadowrun. Vampirism is just one more incurable disease.

The only debatable issue is whether health insurance would cover the cellular repair treatment for Essence donors, or cloned/cybernetic limbs if you give your old ones to the ghouls.

I'm quite sure the numers are taken from SoNA, maybe somebody with that book at hand could check it...? Also, SoE says the ADL has 23% without SIN, hard to believe that the numbers are lower in a place where even today, with a functioning government, the idea of just registering your place of residence with the government is unheard of.


Because Ghouls can't do something they absolutely don't need to do, giving them human rights makes no sense? Mr. Non Sequitur called


Hell no, but the ones who can kiss my rear wouldn't stand up for my rights anyway, so...


Still the determining factor is the transmission of body fluids, and not just sexual intercourse. Sex also is a great way to catch a flu, that doesn't make it a VD


Waidaminute, you are the guy who is CONSTANTLY lamenting about retcons (like, in the next sentence of this very posting), and now the old edition rules are irrelevant? Mr. Consistency is on the other line...



PS: And I'd also be interested to in the source for the statement about about the Geneva Conventions, the question of how many of the laws of warfare still are in effect has always interested me.