Ah, I'm sorry that my previous answer omitted the Bestiary, I assumed you knew of it. It is a monster manual, and describes a few specific types of creatures that are "vat creatures." It doesn't have any discussion of vat creatures in general, or the capabilities of vats. The general sense is that vat creation is an extremely rare magical technology, possible at only a few ancient sites. These sites have become shrines or temples, and are both very secret and heavily-guarded by the priests that control them. The Temple of Ksarul has the most capability and knowledge in this area, and the Temples of Sarku and Hru'u have a little as well. I think only 3 particular types of vat creatures are described: Qol (humanoid, but with the heads of vipers and prehensile tentacles instead of arms), Hra (large humanoid undead, physically powerful, not too bright), and Vorodla (undead humans with leathery wings). The weird and distant city of Dlash, south of Livyanu, has vat creatures aplenty, see the novel Lords of Tsamra for details.
This kind of stuff tends to be highly variable and idiosyncratic. It's not like every Temple of Ksarul has a "Qol-o-matic Mark 2" in the basement. There may be only a handful of sites in all of Tekumel that can make vat creatures, and each site works somewhat differently, with varying degrees of success (ew...) and with greater or lesser comprehension of what they are doing. Information is not easily or freely shared even between temples of the same god in the Five Empires, so each vat laboratory is likely to be quite different, and all of them have limited capacity, as they are all cobbled together from ancient tech that can no longer be fully repaired or constructed, or even understood.
Undead are somewhat similar. The basic principle is the same: a recently deceased corpse is implanted with a magical energy source that restores at least some function to the intellect and body. However, the process is an art more than a science, and the amount of intellect that is retained, and the state and power of body, varies with the success of the process. For ease of play the Bestiary groups the Undead into 3 categories: Mrur that are shambling zombies with just a minimum of intelligence and little or no sense of identity, Shedra whose bodies are withered but who retain some or all of their intellect, even possibly spell-casting powers, and Jajgi, who retain their full intellect, whose bodies are quite life-like (some can easily pass for living as long as they remember to breath) and may have magical powers greater than they did in life. In "real" Tekumel the lines between the types are blurred, there are Mrur who still remember some glimmers of who they were in life, Jajgi whose physical preservation is not very life-like, etc.
The energy source that powers an undead draws power from a plane of reality controlled by the god Sarku. All undead are thus under His command. Some sorcerors of Hru'u and Ksarul can make Mrur, and the latter can make Vorodla, but the creatures are still beholden to Sarku, and a priest of that god can sometimes take control of them. Only the temples of Sarku and Durritlamish can create the higher forms of undead, and this is considered a blessing, a reward from the God.
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