I am currently in need of NPCs with interesting (read dangerous) ways of dying, preferably still moving after death. I looking for new ways to create a "zombie" that isn't cybermancy or voodoun. This is psychological impact more than uber-monster creation. Something really freaky, something that looks normal and on the whole something cheap.

I posted an idea in an earlier post that starts as a recipe and combines sentry gun/autopilot/skillwires. What else can you suggest?

And before anybody mentions it NOT SHEDIM!

The animate spell on a corpse. It would be tricky to do unless the NPC has a mage buddy, or is willing to go to the trouble of making a complicated anchoring/sustaining focus. Still, low-levels of the animate spells add the herky-jerky-ness associated with grade B zombies.

Good, got any solutions that are magic poor?

I would go with some kind of drug cocktail that increases the number overflow boxes, keeps the dosed character conscious while in overflow, increases physical attributes, and of course is highly explosive when the body begins to break it down, taken via an external autoinjecter perhaps.

Shedim (or do they count as magic?)

Silly question and one of the more learned souls might be able to answer - would electricity still cause muscle twitches and spasms in a corpse?

If the corpse comes in contact with exposed electricity, that might account for the twitching - although the smell might be a tad complicated.

-Siege

Not sure how long the corpse needs to stay up, but an explosion could throw objects and corpses. A corpse could get up and do a little death dance for a second or two if there was heavy combat going on and an explsion blasted one up out of a trench. Along this same line some of my friends told me when they shot Vietcong sappers in the wire the bodies could get hung up and from a distance you couldn't tell if they were up and moving or just stuck on the wire.

Electricity will make a corpse move. A corpse being electrocuted is sometimes stuck to the source as well.

Air escaping from the chest cavity makes a corpse breath sometimes. When you move the body. Rats in the cavity make the corpse move as well.

A magnet could be used to make a corpse appear to stand up or move if it had cyberware in it.

Underwater a corpse could float. Even partially submerged a body could float and bob giving the effect of movement.

Magic can animate a corpse easy. You could cast use or magic fingers or levitate.

A spirit could have the manifest power. It manifests into a suit of clothing or armor that the target had worn and might be able to animate the corpse? Maybe it's orders were to walk the body down the hall and climb into the dumpster before returning to the astral plane if the evil experiment failed?

If there is time to prepare the body you could just drill anchors into the skeleton and run wires and suspend the corpse from a control point. Maybe run electrodes also to the muscles that you need to use. You could make the corpse smile or frown etc..

With more information on the situation it would be easier to come up with what you want.

For a more technological method, one idea I've alway been fond of is using skillwires to effectively "rig" a person. In place of a skill chip you put a reciever like a drone might have. A little more advanced version might have a specialty piece of 'ware that combines skillwires with a simrig, giving you both input and output. At that point you can incapacitate limbs and body parts,but pretty much only massive neural damage will actually stop the thing from moving at all.

I might not be understanding the question, but how about that magical compound that gives Regeneration....

Try a nasty germ like 28 days later....

You could give them Improved Senses, and Improved Reflexes with a moderate allergy to sunlight. I hate slow moving, moaning, shot me in the face, type zombies. Plus, it can be contagious!!

ls

For a clever way to kill a PC through sabotage: have on of their new toys (espeically a peice of cyberware) have radioactive material planted in it. It could go unnoticed for months, slowly poisoning the character.

Sargosso, you disturb me with many of your thoughts. lol

Heh. For an alernate version, let your gun nut PC find a great contact who provides him with cheap APDS bullets, as many as he wants. Heck, let your gun nut buy whole shipping crates at once. Oh, did I meantion the contact gets the APDS round cheap because they're archaic depleted uranium rounds, and selling them on the black market is cheaper then paying for proper toxic/radioactive waste disposal?

One idea would be to have the main bad guy be an initiate mage and enchanter.

All his henchmen has Sustaining Foci (or magical tattoos) with Animate (or why not a Physical Control Actions spell that can be cast on dead objects) so he can control them - both before and after death. A sustaining focus with a Preserve spell each, or regular castings of Makeover to keep 'em looking (and smelling) fresh.

The problem comes with controlling more than one of them at a time...

Ya know, I don't see that as being a problem.

In fact, a lot of gangers would love you for it.

DU rounds...they'll kill you if you hang on to them for months. On the other hand, it'll make a helluva impression on that LS patrol car.

-Siege

Sounds about right for a Hell's Kitchen gang

Though, I had one NPC who didn't wuite make it to that part as one PC shoved a spray-foam grenade in his mouth and detonated it...