So, as far as I understand, the Infected that consume parts of metahuman bodies do so not only for the mundane sustenance, but also for consuming a part of the Essence of the victim. This is why their hunger can't be satiated with a Nutrition spell, for example.
Now, that raises a few questions. Are the Infected satiating their hunger when they eat

1) a dead body?
2) vat-produced cloned meat?
3) each other?
4) metahuman-like metasapients like pixies, shapers or great dragons in metahuman form?
5) transgenic animals (like the pigs that Chicago ghouls got - were those a real deal or all the taste but none of the fill)?

As far as I know:

1) Yes (ghouls, for example, are said to frequent graveyards and mortuaries)
2) Yes (cloned parts cost no Essence for implantation, and full clones have no special reductions or penalties regarding Essence)
3) Yes (helps explain the lack of a zombipocalypse of ghouls)
4) Probably, 50/50 on this one
5) I wouldn't think so (else a ghoul could get by on something like steak tartar)

Oh, note for number 4, don't forget that pixies fade away when they die. Only way a ghoul might be able to eat part of a pixie is while it's still alive, and even then it's possible the body part fades anyway.

And to add a question of my own, what of infected adepts with the Sustenance power? Would they be able to get by with one third of their dietary requirement?

You're conflating two different mechanics, Fatum, but you're not the first to do so.

There are two major Infected "sustenance" hurdles: Essence Drain, and Dietary Requirement.

Dietary Requirement is just what it sounds like - something that must be a part of your diet, or you slowly waste away and die. The most common examples are Metahuman Flesh and Metahuman Blood, but there are others as well. There is absolutely no connection between Dietary Requirement and Essence. The Infected's body requires the substance for some biomagical reason, but Essence is in no way involved with the consumption of that substance.

For example, Ghouls require Metahuman Flesh to live, but they can readily feed on dead bodies that lack Essence. They cannot eat clonal human flesh, because ~Magic!~, and the clonal flesh, while genetically and physically metahuman, does not magically count as metahuman. (Interestingly, they also cannot eat bones.) Similarly, a Vampire requires Metahuman Blood, but can drain it from a corpse or procure it from a blood bank.

If you sill wonder about possible ties between Metahuman Flesh or Blood and Essence, look no further than the Alternate Infected, where certain Vampire variants have Dietary Requirements for things like Vinegar or Salt instead of Blood. Since you can't get Essence from either of those things, clearly Essence isn't connected to one's Dietary Requirement.

Now, the need to consume Essence applies only to those Infected which possess the Essence Loss and Essence Drain powers. These consist of the various "Vampire" strains which result from HMHVV I: Vampires and Nosferatu for Humans, Banshees for Elves, Goblins for Dwarves, Wendigo for Orks, and Dzoo-Noo-Qua for Trolls. For ease of reference, these Infected are typically referred to as the Special Infected. Their Essence slowly decays over time, so they need to consume the Essence of others to replenish their own.

There are a few restrictions to Essence Loss and Essence Drain. Firstly, one can only drain Essence from sapients, that is, either Metahumans or creatures with the Sapience power (in some books and printings erroneously referred to as the Sentience power). Secondly, one cannot drain Essence from a resisting victim - they must be either willing, or helpless to resist. Thirdly, one can only drain Essence in the presence of strong emotion focused personally on the one performing the draining. This final limitation is interesting and important to note, because it means a victim must be awake and able to understand their situation - a Vampire cannot drain Essence from an unconscious victim, for example.

In the case of Special Infected like the Vampire and the Wendigo, it is possible to both feed and drain essence at the same time, but it is not required, and the two actions are separate and do not influence each other directly. Both creatures can consume blood or flesh from corpses to meet their Dietary Requirements, but their Essence needs can only be met by draining living, conscious sapients.

As for "Infected Cannibalism", yes, they can consume each other, because they're all still Metahumans, so their Flesh and Blood still counts as such.

Non-Metahuman Sapients are useable for Essence Drain, but not for Dietary Requirement.

As for transgenic animals and Dietary Requirements? That depends entirely on magical theory, and whether the flesh counts as "metahuman" for magical purposes.

~Umi

*grabs some Doritos and a Dr Pepper and sits back to watch*

Besides you, Umidori, who refers to Type I as "Special Infected"? I almost never see that term outside of this forum, and I'm curious why people think it's a common term of reference. Not being snarky; I'm genuinely, and in this case professionally, interested.

Umi's post and Runner's Companion don't actually contradict each other, the wording just needs to be clarified. (Sorry if this comes across as running roughshod over you, Umi.)

Dietary Requirement and Essence are two distinct needs, and both are required for an Infected's survival, but there's no direct connection between them; that is, you don't automatically fulfill one by fulfilling the other. Not all metahuman flesh contains Essence, so eating metahuman flesh for the Dietary Requirement doesn't necessarily fulfill the Essence requirement at the same time - hence why ghouls die of "Essence starvation" if they only eat vat-grown metahuman flesh. Likewise, if a vampire were to use their Essence Drain power on a spirit they would be able to offset their Essence loss, but there's no metahuman flesh involved, so they could still die from not meeting their Dietary Requirement. The reason there's so much emphasis on "eating people" is that it's the most convenient way for the Infected to feed; they get Essence because the target is a living sapient and metahuman flesh because the target is metahuman.

If it helps, think of the two needs as similar to the metahuman needs for air and water. They're "connected" in that not getting either one of them will kill you, but you aren't automatically rehydrated by breathing, nor are you automatically re-oxygenated by drinking water.

Minding that Running Wild speaks of the need for essence as a part of dietary requirements, and in the next sentence states they can be partly satiated with cloned meat, I am doubting your line of reasoning in that part.

But presumably, when getting blood from a bloodbank they have to make sure it's not clonal blood, for the same reasons as with Ghouls. IOW, they have to make sure it's actual, donated-by-a-metahuman blood.



*cough* Simsense recording *cough* ...

Heh, I'll start taking the "Escaped Clone" quality, and play a clonal street meat character. "Can't eat me, I'm a clone!"

And how long is dead good for the essence? I haven't read that ghouls and the like must be eating a metahuman while said metahuman is still alive to get their dietary requirement. I mean, once you're dead your essence is gone and then therefore worthless to feed upon, right?

@Patrick

To be honest, I actually picked up the Special Infected term from Dumpshock, so I'm afraid I don't have much insight on it. It cropped up often enough and with clear enough context in the threads I was interested in that I knew without any real hesitation what it was being used to mean and to refer to, so I assumed it was just common parlance. Until you made your comment, it honestly had never occured to me that it might not be so common after all.

I find it a useful term, because it clearly delineates those Infected which display "vampirism" from the rest. They are "special" in that they have an additional mechanic in play - the management of Essence via their Essence Drain power and Essence Loss weakness. These Infected also tend to have more and greater powers available, and also have higher BP costs. In most every regard, they are more complex or "advanced" than the other "regular" forms of Infected.

EDIT - Also, googling around a bit, I have a theory that perhaps the term stems from a similar usage and meaning originating from Left 4 Dead. There, you have your average zombie hordes, and then you have the "Special Infected" which are the iconic mini-boss types that are more powerful than the mindless drones. Hence the usage in SR - you've got your ordinary common infected like Ghouls, and then you have the more powerful and rarer "special infected" of the vampirism straing. (Loup-Garou and Fomóraig are so rare and regional as to be easily folded in with the similarly powered Ghoul population.)

@Fatum

Regarding your first quote, it doesn't actually mention Essence - it mentions auras and mana. What, if any, interaction there is between those and Essence is not explained anywhere I'm aware of. As for your second quote, it is referring to clonal flesh as regards Bioware, not clonal vat-grown meat. Basically it's saying that yes, you can eat Bioware out of a corpse. This is because bioware bits are still parts of people - they're infused with the metahuman aura or whatever that makes the physical flesh satisfy the magical needs of the ghoul's diet.

Vat-grown flesh, however, doesn't work. Just ask Dunkelzahn. In his will he bequethed a large amount of money to the first party to successfully develop a metahuman flesh substitute that ghouls could successfully live off of. The challenge has yet to be met and the reward remains unclaimed. Presumably, the reason vat-grown clonal flesh doesn't work is that its never been part of a living metahuman, and thus it lacks a metahuman aura. Such flesh knitted together from spare proteins is merely genetically human, not magically human.

@SpellBinder

Clonal flesh and being a clone are two different things.

Meat grown in a vat is just proteins. A cloned person is still a person, though. They still possess a metahuman aura and they have whatever mystical MacGuffin that is required to count for magical usage.

~Umi

To clarify what I said from before, I had a brain fart and forgot that ghouls can't subsist entirely on clonal meat (I think). Everything else I said about the separation of Dietary Requirement and Essence Loss stands.

I had a bunch of ideas on how to decide whether naturally grown vs. vat-produced biomatter was considered "metahuman" or not, but I'm going to leave them out, because I'm just getting myself tangled up with the definitions.

Just for clarity's sake, Ghouls don't actually suffer Essence Loss. They just need meat that's been suffused with metahuman aura. Essentially, their Dietary Requirement is just very picky about the flesh being both physically and magically human.

To recap, a ghoul can eat living people, dead people, and bioware that is grown as a part of a person. They can't eat flesh that has never been part of an actual metahuman, and they can't eat bones. Or rather, they can eat it, but it doesn't satisfy their Dietary Requirements.

~Umi

You know, this reminds me of a discussion I saw somewhere about whether cybereyes are considered "technological rendering" for the purposes of targeting spells. The conclusion was that spells could be targeted via cybereyes because the character had spent Essence to have them installed. (I'm pretty sure it was in one of the books, but I can't find it right at the moment.) Could the same principle apply here, in the sense that if metahuman flesh was either naturally part of a person or had Essence spent to be installed in a person, it provides nourishment to the Infected?

Heh, now I feel sorry for the ghoul that tries to eat the metahuman that's 99% bioware.

Uh, any source on that?


The effect your Essence has on your aura is mentioned in the Assensing table - and what magical auras and mana can we be talking about for mundanes if not for it?

It refers to clonal flesh, including (in addition) bioware. It is worded pretty unambiguously to me: "Cloned metahuman flesh and blood, including bioware".
Besides, the next sentence in the source is: "Force growing immature clones may provide an expensive but viable mid-term answer to the need to segregate HMHVV-positive individuals".
Is this new in Fourth Edition, then?

Are you sure?

(Edit: Never mind.)

From what I can see from the discussion so far, the evidence is that anything genetically modified doesn't count as "metahuman" for the purposes of ghoul food. I'm not sure where dead bodies stand on that, though, simply because of the sheer volume of references to ghouls being able to eat the dead (almost anything involving Tamanous, for example).

... "Logic", that's my source.

If cloned flesh != sustenance for the Infected, then cloned blood should be similarly limited. "Look, a DIET blood! All the flavor, NONE of the sustaining properties!"


"within a few generations" and "hoped" woudl tend to mean that, yes, s/he can be 100% sure that the prize for a definite RIGHT NOW solution has not yet been claimed.

I don't see what that has to do with anything. Yes, your aura is affected by your Essence. So? A ghoul can still eat the meat from a super-cybered street sam (what little is left), not because the ghoul somehow drains Essence, but merely because the meat is magically metahuman - id est, it is connected to a metahuman aura. Whether the aura is the product of the Essence, or whether lowered Essence damages or negatively affects the aura is irrelevant.

Remember, Ghouls don't actually drain Essence. Mechanically speaking, they don't have the Essence Drain power. Their Essence does not increase with feeding, and their victims do not lose Essence from being fed upon. (Assuming they survive - if they die, their Essence presumably becomes 0 and no longer matters anyway.) There is no change in the Essence of any of the parties involved.


Perhaps the problem we're experiencing is language based.

The key differences are the method of cloning and the exposure to auras. The most commonly familiar form of cloning is organism cloning, or reproductive cloning. This is where you produce an entire new organism which has the same genes as the original. In the case of a metahuman, this new metahuman is sapient, has a metahuman aura, and all the rest. Consequently, you can feed such clones to ghouls if you like, and Tamanous does exactly that (among other really horrible things).

But you can also clone parts of a person. You can clone tissues, or even just cells. This is what I refer to when I talk about vat-grown meat. Such tissues are never a part of an entire person's being. Consequently, they are never exposed to, or infused with, a metahuman aura. Chemically and genetically, it's human flesh - but magically it's not.


Creating immature clones and harvesting their flesh is organism cloning. There's already a black market for such flesh, but it's pretty morally reprehensible. The clones are still sapient metahumans, so it's essentially no different than eatting non-cloned infants. That said, it does have a metahuman aura, so it is useable as ghoul food - in fact, that's probably the primary market for it.

To the best of my knowledge, yes. I've read the annotated version of Dunkelzahn's Will, and unless something has changed since that was last updated, the challenge should remain unmet. I can dig up a link to the will if you like. If you can find any source that suggests things have since changed, please let me know.

~Umi

Technically, blood could even be considered a form of liquid flesh. It's a bunch of cells in a fluid suspension. So is meat, albeit with different ratios of solid particles to liquid, and different structures and forms.

~Umi

So, what if you make a test tube baby without a brain to begin with but everything else? Or start with a complete being, but remove the brain for a jarhead early on and continue growing the rest for later? Or a cloned brain that was vat grown with nothing else?

If it hasn't been marinated in delicious, delicious people aura, it ain't ghoul kosher.

~Umi

The difference between a cloned piece of tissue and the same tissue as a part of a whole organism, far as I understand, lies in that very presence of the Essence as a holistic category. If you think it is not required, do you think Nutrition spell will feed a ghoul?

How is "cloned metahuman flesh and blood, including bioware" referring only to whole-organism cloning, and not tissue-cloning as well?


We can presume that the rule is the same for flesh and blood, of course, minding that blood is basically a type of flesh for the sake of the Infected food (just like bones are for some other variants).
The problem is that we have a quote from the rules saying specifically that cloned flesh can partly satiate the dietary needs (or at least, that's how I'm reading it), so the evidence to the contrary can't be logic alone.

To me it means that even in the 60ies when the ghouls acquired the pigs there was a biotech company perilously close to solving this problem, and it wasn't even one of the leaders in the field.


{citation needed}

Fatum, let me sum up a few things you still seem to be missing out on.

Ghouls cannot fulfill their dietary requirement with vat-grown meat. It has been that way for a long time, and while it's always been said that it "was being worked on", I've never come across anything stating a solution was ever actually found. Unless you can cite a source suggesting that this fact has changed, I consider that aspect of the matter closed.

So we know that vat-grown meat doesn't work. Now, why doesn't it work? What difference is there between vat-grown meat and normal human meat? Physically, none. Magically, auras. It's that simple.

Now, as to the matter of "cloned metahuman flesh and blood, including bioware, can satisfy some of these dietary requirements". How to parse this? It's awfully wishy-washy, with phrases like "can" satisfy and "some" requirements.

I'll give it a liberal interpretation, with the benefit of closely observed context. The line comes from the section on Dietary Requirements, and that sidebox is speaking about all of the Dietary Requirements as a whole - including requirements for things other than blood or flesh. Thus, "can satisfy" I am willing to equate to "does satisfy", and "some requirements" I will take to mean "those certain requirements for blood or flesh".

Restated in full, I would phrase it thusly: "Cloned metahuman flesh and blood, including bioware, will satisfy Dietary Requirements for metahuman flesh or blood."

However! In keeping with the context of the entry, I must necessarily view the next line in the entry - regarding the forced growing of immature clones - as a direct indication of the kind of clonal flesh the entry is talking about. This refers specifically to harvesting flesh from full organisms.

Why do I keep making this distinction? Well, we've already established that vat-grown meat simply doesn't work for ghouls. The question, then, is why? If eatting a cloned metahuman fulfills the requirement, why doesn't eatting vat-grown tissues? They're physically identical. The only other possible difference that could explain this disparity is magical.

Please note the line you yourself quoted:


That clearly spells out that a metahuman aura is a vital component of meeting a Dietary Requirement for flesh or blood. It also happens to perfectly explain the difference between meat from organism cloning, and meat which is vat-grown, and why one fulfills the Dietary Requirement while the other does not.

~Umi

Ab out teh bioware angle, I'd thnk that the requirement would be fulfilled by bioware that's been isntalled into a person. Uninstalled bioware would lck the aura, but acquir it once imlated into a person. So before implantation, no use. After implantation (and probably some delay to soak in the aura) it counts as meathuman flesh.

Indeed, that's how I see it as well.

~Umi

So, the solution seems plausable, just really, really disgusting.

Hire people to work as aura factories. You biograft onto them, probably on their backs, some enormous hunk of flesh whose only purpose is to be as dense as possible and soak up that delicious, delicious people aura. Once it's marinated for however long is necessary for it to be magically part of them, carve it off, toss the slab to the ghouls, and graft on a new slab of ExtendedPork™.


And by "Hire people," I expect that to mean "Kidnap SINless and keep them out of their minds on BTLs all day, hooked up to IVs to provide them with the sustenance they need to continue making that aura." Nevermind the fact that keeping a people farm working would probably cost a lot more and be less productive than just paying them to go about their company-approved primary jobs whilst lugging a slab of EPork around on their backs, this is Shadowrun! If it's not 120% reprehensible, it's not trying hard enough.

Clones in Shadowrun are typically put through an accelerated growth process, which as aside effect prevents development of the brain. Wimps are not just non-sapient, they are effectively all born with anencephaly (lack of a developed brain. If anyone wants to google the term, you may find the resulting images slightly disturbing).

Still, as it is written in RC such meat would fulfill the Dietary Requirement of ghouls. Which makes no bloody sense at all, hence I consider that sentence an oversight similar to the contact vector for HMHVV III. Move along citizen, nothing to be seen here.


PS: What should also be kept in mind is that ghouls need to eat more than just their Dietary Requiement. Satisfying the requirement means getting the necessary "special vitamins", but eating 1% (or 5%) of your body weight per week is not going to provide sufficient calories. Let's say a 75 kg ghoul needs 3000 kcal per day, that's 21,000 kcal per week. If his only nutrition were the 5% of his body weight (3.75 kg) a week, then human flesh would have to provide 21,000 kcal /3.75 kg=5600 kcal per kilo. Even Americans can't provide that

I'll be getting back to my Doritos and Dr Pepper presently, but I wanted to pop back up and say that I'm enjoying this. It might be twisted, but I'm enjoying it.

It's also a subject that's part of my Long List of Things to Clean Up About the Infected. This is a longer process than some people might think.

Damn! We're working as a think tank for free.

I did not see that coming.

And you've been doing so for longer than you might realize.

Ghoul bodies are magically efficient. Not too hard a stretch, considering we already accept that they are created with a magical retrovirus.

Sengir's right, though, and it's stated pretty clearly throughout most of the literature that ghouls have to eat, just like the rest of us. A portion of it has to be metahuman flesh for them to survive, but they still have to get their calories from somewhere. They are not magically efficient, sad to say.

I have done so already, and I am still waiting for you to provide anything explicitly stating they do not. Repeating that we know that time and time again does not sound like strong evidence to me.
Please make no mistake: I am not attacking your position because it's yours, simply because I want to build a well-informed opinion and your arguments have so far been lacking in definitive canonic proof.

I'm reading it as "it satisfies the requirement, but not quite as well as the real deal - like leaving the Infected still feeling hungry, if not in risk of actual starvation".

Can't see what in that entry indicates that the flesh and blood discussed necessarily belong to full clone discussed later on.
To use a (clumsy) analogy, "four wheels on a frame satisfy can some of your transport requirements, a car can satisfy all of them" - no indication that those are necessarily car wheels we're talking about :ь

The only problem with that line of reasoning is that it doesn't explain a few of the cases mentioned in my initial post in this thread, like eating dead bodies or transgenic animals.

"I'll have a steak and eggs, with a side of Troll-Cheeks. Steak rare, eggs over easy. Cheeks from the top, not bottom"

I've gotten a lot of use out of this annotated version of Dunkelzahn's Will. Here are two excerpts I'm citing. In each, the bolded text is the original text of the will, the regular text is the annotator's explanations, and the italicized text is the sources cited for those explanations.

So that's four or five different books for you to check, if you want to read the actual source text.

As for your own citation, I'm not finding anything except your RC quotes, which I've addressed. I have, however, realized you failed to quote another important section of the Dietary Requirements sidebar.


Aha! Yakashima again. And again we're told their attempts have yet to produce anything useable as of 4E. And this is in a key rules supplement, not just a story or fluff collection. And there's even more evidence suggesting the vital concern is regarding auras.


That reading is effectively no different than the liberal interpretation I provided, so I consider this aspect of the matter to be on roughly common ground.


In full, it reads:


When referring to clones, one is necessarily referring to entire organisms. No one would refer to cloned tissue as "clones". Just the usage of the language, I'm afraid.


I cannot speak on the matter of transgenic animals, as I've not read up on them, but I can make a logical inferment about corpses. We know that ghouls can eat corpses. We know they cannot eat vat-grown meat. We know that corpses are exposed to metahuman auras, and that vat-grown meat is not. The big question one might ask is "does a metahuman corpse lose its aura when it dies?". Based on the fact that ghouls can consume such corpses, I would say no - once living flesh is suffused with a metahuman aura, that aura (or perhaps merely traces of it sufficient to meet the Dietary Requirement?) remains, either for an unknown period of time or indefinitely. Presumably said aura decays when the flesh does, and a preserved specimen of flesh might carry with it a preserved aura or signature.

~Umi

Point of note, being non-Sapient doesn't necessarily matter for Dietary Requirements (although it surely does for Essence Drain). All that matters is the presence of a metahuman aura.

Unfortunately, we have no information I am aware of on how a person gains an aura, or on what factors are necessary for an aura to manifest or be present. Being braindead might not impede the development of an aura.

Consequently, this need not be an oversight, and ghouls might indeed be able to eat wimps and the like.

~Umi

Welcome to my world, by the way.

One would refer to cloned tissue as "cloned metahuman flesh and blood", though.

I mean those very same Yakashima pigs, or, say, the pharmanimals corps are using to grow replacement organs instead of vats (for an example see Corp Guide, the chapter on Evo).

But can all other kinds of Infected?

Yes, any Infected with Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh) can eat corpses and satisfy that Dietary Requirement. Dzoo-noo-qua were, at one point, described as carrion eaters just like ghouls, in fact, and so share most of the dietary habits they do (which is where they get most of their caloric intake). Wendigos prefer it a bit fresher than most garden-variety, find-them-in-a-cemetary corpses, but if they had to, they could survive on it.

Hemovores have it a little rougher in that regard, since the blood tends to break down fairly quickly compared to the flesh.

Yes, linguistically speaking, this can be so. Be that as it may, we know that vat-grown tissue cannot be eatten. So this must necessarily be referring to the other types of "cloned metahuman flesh and blood" - namely flesh and blood harvested from clones, and the clonal tissues which make up implanted cultured bioware. (Both are directly mentioned in the Dietary Requirements sidebar in connection with being viable, while vat-grown meat is directly mentioned as not being viable.)


Again, I'm not familiar with materials on such animals, either I have not read them or I have forgotten them, and thus I can offer no opinion at this time. I do not have access to the Corporate Guide text, and so cannot comment on its EVO chapter either.


If corpses fulfill the Dietary Requirement of Metahuman Flesh for Ghouls, why wouldn't they do the same for any Infected which has the exact same Dietary Requirement of Metahuman Flesh? If it counts for one, it counts for all.

~Umi

How can we know something, if it directly contradicts something written in the rules?
No, I mean, from a purely out-of-universe standpoint, I can see how it's important to maintain the status quo with the Infected, so obviously we're not seeing something like "Yakashima full success, the Infected can stop eating people now" any time soon.

I've supplied numerous sources that spell it out Commandmant-From-On-High style. The RAW God said, Let vat-grown flesh be insufficient for a ghoul's dietary requirement: and it was so. That's just how it is. Synthetic metahuman flesh does not work, because the rules say it does not work.

That matter aside, I personally fail to see any sort of contradiction. The source you cite is using a blanket term that merely can - but does not necessarily - include vat-grown flesh alongside full organism cloning and cultured Bioware. Only by insisting that it is being used in the broadest possible sense can one create any sort of contradiction of terms. By taking the (perfectly linguistically and logically acceptable) interpretation of "cloned metahuman flesh and blood" referring to those cloned tissues and beings which have been in contact with or possessed of a human aura, everything is quite neatly and reasonably explained.

On to the matter of transgenic materials.

"Metahuman-compatible" is not the same thing as being inherently, magically metahuman. Cyberware is "metahuman-compatible", but no one in their right mind would say that a hunk of metal is magically metahuman. (Although if Ghouls could eat metal, maybe the exposure to a metahuman aura once implanted would allow the 'ware to be eatten! )

In the case of animal-farmed human organs, I would treat them just like cultured Bioware. The flesh itself may be physically metahuman, but before implantation it hasn't been exposed to a human aura, and consequently is not magically metahuman. After such an organ has been implanted and taken on a metahuman aura, only then can it fulfill the Dietary Requirement.

~Umi

We do not know where the threshold to gain a metahuman (for purposes of ghoul food) aura is. But what we do know that cell cultures definitely do not make it (else the whole problem would be moot), even though single-cell organisms have auras, and that a wimp is nothing more than that.

That's not strictly true.

When you clone tissues, you effectively are inciting the cells to divide and multiply. This is done outside of a host organism, in a vat or dish or similar recepticle. The dividing cells are given the necessary physical nutrients required to keep growing, but they are no longer exposed to an aura-rich environment.

In contrast, when you clone an entire organism, you follow one of two different processes. The first (as I understand it) involves implanting a nucleus from an adult donor cell into an egg lacking a nucleus, inciting the egg to divide as if it had been fertilized. The second involves splitting an embryo during maturation. In both cases, the new organism develops inside of a living "parent" organism, be it the original parent or a surrogate.

Now, I'm not entirely sure on the details of wimps. It may be that they develop inside of a surrogate parent organism, which would presumably be quite sufficient to imbue them with a metahuman aura. In contrast, they could instead be "test tube babies" that develop outside of a metahuman body. This may mean they do not receive any sort of aura, and are functionally not metahuman for magical purposes.

However, the primary purpose of creating a wimp is to produce spare parts for a customer in case they lose or damage some of their original ones. These parts are therefor meant to be implanted - and since implanting a clonal organ exposes it to a metahuman aura, it may be that implanted wimp flesh fulfills the Dietary Requirement while non-implanted wimp flesh does not. Consequently, a Ghoul could eat someone who has had most of their body replaced with clonal flesh of their original body, but if the Ghoul busted into the fabrication lab and ate the wimp while it was still developing or in storage, it would not fulfill their Dietary Requirement.

Of course, there's one other possibility to consider. It might also be that auras are somehow intrinsically tied to reproductive cells. Thus, for example, clonal muscle tissue grown in a vat would possess no aura, but a cloned egg raised in a proverbial test tube would. This is purely speculation on my part, however, and I personally prefer the former option I discussed above.

~Umi