All righty then! Players have been begging for a zombie apocalypse game for a while, and I've decided to treat them with one. They know that there will be ghouls, and that it will be dangerous. Oh, and it's a street level (350 bp, 6 availability max, 4 max skill 2 max skill group) game. That is all. I am, however, in need of help with a BBEG. I figured a (or maybe a group of) ghoul mage(s) with a possession tradition with spirits told to "follow the followers, inhabit their bodies should they fall."
Now, I have a history of creating NPCs and making them.....well, ridiculously powerful. I figure the group is in enough trouble dealing with the Zombie Apocalypse in the Barrens (which have been quarantined) so I should keep the BBEG down to "Potentially deadly, use extreme prejudice" instead of TPK. Any help would be appreciated.

Zombie movies rarely have a BBEG at all.

Do you even need one?

Bye
Thanee

Isn't that a bit too low? I'd go to level 3 in skill groups at least (professional level).

Anyway, for BBEG inspiration you could try out Ravenloft. Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead has a lot of add-on options for customizing zombies to be unpredictable and therefore dangerous.

What really makes zombies scary? When they become intelligent and coordinated. Maybe some "zombie lords" can control the rest through a sort of hive mind, allowing the zombies to ambush the PCs.

First you let them get used to the dumb zombies; they can actually run circles around them and get away with it. Then suddenly a zombie lord gets near and the zombies start using tactics and working together. No need to make the zombie lord extra strong; he just makes all the other zombies dangerous. Maybe even lets them use tools. As long as he's within a 100m or so, he controls the rest of the zombies.

The group plans on having these characters for a while, so it's nice to have a REASON for the zombies. Sure, as a one-shot it'd be great....but if it were a one-shot, I'd just drop a bunch of 400 BP characters (probably military experiments, all) into "The Hive" and let them rock out. However, this is not the case, as it started off with a few ghouls deliberately seeking to infect people....both subtly and overtly (bleeding on door handles, scratching from hiding, biting, spitting, etc. etc.). All starting with the "noble" cause of ending the "double standards, corruption, and hatred." The PC's will (hopefully) wipe out the ghouls before the Barrens are overrun (and earn some bounty with which to trade....there's a smuggler who wishes to be payed in ghoul bounties that they will trade with for weapons, armor, etc)

I think Shedim are the traditional cannonical way of going about a zombie apocalypse in SR. They're pretty much Corpsemen from ED, if you need more background on them.

Their presense should have been fairly world changing, but i think they just got a brief treatment in MitS and YotC. I think they overthrew Tehran and then everyone worldwide "changed their burial practices" so it wouldnt be a problem anymore. in reality, I think they would be a major worldwide problem in any poor or rural area, and a significant nuissance (popping up on the street and in hospitals occasionally, or being found trying to blend in to society) in more civilized areas.

The Shedim thing even comes with your "big bad" option, with the more powerfull ones controlling the lesser ones, and gating in more of themselves from their home metaplane. the PCs cant solve the worldwide problem, but they could stymie the local problem by whacking the bosses.

turning people into ghouls through HMVV or whatever doesnt actually make them braindead and slavering, does it? ghouls are still basically people, they are just slightly essence inhibited.

So it is more of a local situation?

Zombie Apocalypse kinda implies a worldwide problem, that is basically impossible to keep in check.

Bye
Thanee

More than one writer has used corpses being animated with technology (or nanotechnology) as the basis of their zombie hoardes, and this seems like something a malevolent rogue AI might do. As an alternative to magic.

Plus, nanites might be transmittable in bites, giving you your infection vector.

One of the CMP's has the beginings of a zombie apocolypse in it.

The zombie virus would make alot of sense as a new strain of HMVV. It could effect each metatype and metavariant differently so you could get your various types of zombies (trolls to tanks, fomori to boomers, dwarves to jockeys, humans to shamblers etc...), or some such thing. I like the HMHVV route because it already exists, is simple to understand, and easily replicates the effects of zombies.

Cyber Zombie Apocalypse?....*Shudder*

But nanozombie borg assimilation has its charms too.

The problem with Shedim is that they're really pretty powerful, a bit too much for a normal zombie apocalypse scenario.

You could go both, HMHVV and technology. Think Umbrella from Resident Evil, some scientists are trying to pick apart HMHVV, manage to tinker it a bit, and oops! Looks like some got spilled on Ed over there. Ed bites everybody, or maybe as Patient Zero he does something else, like releases a spore, and that rockets through the vents, next thing you know the whole facility is infected and running amuck.

Of course as it infects and interacts with different genes (metas, awakened, TM's) that typically are out of bounds for studying due to their magical qualities, it does drastically different things than usual. The only reaction that is possible is quaratines, martial law, and other things ripe with hilarity.

This would keep HMHVV in. It was also bring in what I consider a crucial element for alot of zombie movies: We brought this shit down on ourselves. Mankind's endless quest for tinkering with things that ought not be tinkered with. Whether it starts for noble reasons (say trying to find a cure/treatment for HMHVV) or a way to harness it as a weapon, or for profit (Umbrella), the end result is the same. It's our fault.

Going a bit differently, I've thought of doing this, too, including working up amounts of things inside the quaratine. Food, bullets, guns, and survivors for those oh-so-painful grey areas when you might have to turn aside some kid whose dad just turned, or even put down said kid before they turn. As a kindness.

I hope you do a cyber-zombiepocalypse. Although this might consist only of some astrally projecting mages with their meat bodies locked in a safe-room, killing all of them.

Yeah, I've just been playing System Shock 2 again, so please forgive me for posting in Audio Log format.

*****
Ok, I hope someone finds this...before it's too late. I...my name is...Dr. Louis Cornwall. I'm...somehow responsible for this mess. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to... Please Lord, forgive me.
See, I am...I was...head of the research team they sent here for the Shedim they had captured. You might have heard about it, but whatever. Sure, I was sceptical at first, but it was in the barrens and security was good. Yeah, and it was my chance for a big breakthrough. So, for a whole week I was probing this thing astrally, always feeling like I'd break through its defenses any minute now yet not making any progress at all. So frustrating. Sure, I know now that it was just toying with me. But when I discovered this astral trail conecting it to the metaplanes, I jumped right at it. Hoped to get its "true name", as they call it in pop science.
But then this...this thing...latched onto me as soon as I accessed the metaplane. It was all so quick and blurry and I...I only...regained consciousness when all was over. There were the corpses of the guards but they were moving...coming together...fusing...twitching and moaning all the time. Like some orgy...
Didn't stick around to see how this would turn out. But now all hell has broken loose. I can see these things in the astral, like tiny jellyfish, and they are everywhere. Kind of beautiful, actually. But they can animate the dead just like the big Shedim, and now walking corpses are filling the streets. Nowhere to run anymore...
Ok, individually they seem weak. The little Shedim can't be more powerful than your average watcher spirit. But there seems to be no end to them. And it looks like they're growing...
Alright, I think I know what is going on now. This...big thing I brought over...it must be some kind of mother Shedim, having come here to give birth to its young. That's what the little jellyfish are - baby Shedim.
I'm going back now. Someone's got to stop her before she floods the whole planet with her offspring. It's all my fault. If you hear this, please come and help me. Please! We can't run from this...
I just pray that they don't throw a nuke at us like Chicago...

*****

This is exactly what I want to end my Denver missions campaign that's been on hold for a while. It works nice as as the last and unexpected swing of the plot pendulum. Best thing is: its gonna happen on the player character's hospital. They built it by asking loans form the Tamanous (they aren't very sure they are working with them, but aren't completely ignorant either: voluntary blindness). It...just...fits...perfectly... -Cue evil cackle-

Sounds good to me. No deal with Tamanous should go unpunished... -joins evil cackle-

Okay, so I might use shedim....but the problem with that is I don't have any stats for them. What book are they in?

I think they first showed up in Year of the Comet (and maybe the dragon book?), and there are rules and background for them in Street Magic (i miss spoke before when I said Magic in the Shadows, I always get those two mixed up). I think they are in the "magical threats" section of Street Magic, or whatever its called.

Like everything in shadowrun, nobody thought about how much it would reshape the world before they wrote it. It would be like Land of the Dead with those things roaming around. They'd be infesting every rural area, barren, and z-zone on the planet. I could level the same complaint against things like astral projection and spells like "influence" but its probably better not going there.