Necromancy?

Author's note: I appear to have written myself into a corner of sorts, I've rewritten this explanation of a zombie army a few times and am not sure I like it still.

"Wait wait wait, back up, someone CREATED A ZOMBIE ARMY!?! Who? When? How?!"
"Please, do not speak aloud of such things."

John calmed down slightly. "Don't worry, anyone who overheard will just think it was a video game, or something." "But just to be sure..." John went over to his bed and pressed the button under it, making the room soundproof.

"There, no one can hear what we say unless there's a recording device somewhere in here. Now, please explain."

"Well...Firstly, these 'zombies' are not your modern interpretation movie zombies. They looked and acted mostly like normal humans, but they didn't have free will - they would perform as programmed, if you will. Only someone with The Rulebook could make them, at the time - and mostly since - due to the complexity of programming a human brain without free will well enough to pass as human. With The Rulebook, much of the complex details were handled 'behind the scenes', with the author simply writing what they wanted the zombie capable of. At the time, The Rulebook was held by the rulers of a small territory, and passed to the male heir when they took the throne. The former rulers had all been fairly careful about their use of it, slowly expanding their power and never doing anything that would attract much attention. In fact, it was the first of this line who wrote Prime Rule 1.
However, the latest one was a bit different. He wanted power, and he was impatient with the slow strategy his predecessors had employed. At first his advisors thought to distract him with the things The Rulebook could give him, a teenage male - a massive penis, a perfect body, and a harem of zombie 'women' created to worship and pleasure him - for years he'd be content just fucking the day away.
This worked for a time, but after about a year his desire for power overcame his desire for pussy. It helped that the 'women' in question were essentially sexbots, without initiative sufficient to make things interesting. He had to think of all the new things to try, and that only went so far.
He knew he couldn't kill his advisors, as among them were the military leadership, and Prime Rule 1 wouldn't allow getting around things that way. But he realized that if he could create 'women' to his desires, he could create 'soldiers' also. He'd never been interested in combat or war, so he didn't realize how important initiative could be in some situations. In his mind, a **** of guards and soldiers utterly loyal to him were an obvious solution.
Ironically enough, his methods of taking control were calculated, slow, and steady. He set up a secret location outside his territory borders, creating small groups of zombie soldiers and directing them show up to hire on as soldiers. His first attempt was a dismal failure, as his 'perfect soldiers' were unable to meet the requirements. Simple loyalty and ability to fight well are not enough, when a candidate appears too stupid to follow complex orders. A few adjustments and tests later, and he had barely acceptable soldiers being hired. He kept improving things, and a few years later about a third of the military was made up of his zombie soldiers.
But no officers. He didn't know enough about how to fight a war himself to program competent officers, and was unwilling to spend the years to learn, so he hired some of the more corruptible ones from amongst the existing officers of his military to lead his zombies After a few more years of this 'his' forces were the majority of the military, and shortly after this point he launched what was essentially a coup. His officers became the military leadership and advisors, and the others either died or fled, often with large numbers of troops loyal to them.
This was his downfall, in the end - it took 5 more years, but the officers who fled convinced enough of the neighboring kingdoms he was a threat (and some others of the nature of the threat) that an alliance against him formed. At that point his military **** had grown to a point that would threaten them in normal times, and even with the collective military might of the allied kingdoms they could not match his numbers. But what neither they nor he knew was that other powers exist in the universe, and while they do not rival The Rulebook, they are powerful.
You might think of them as 'mages', or perhaps 'wizards', although they did not. The analogy is apt, however. I am unable to tell you how their abilities work, due to another dormant rule. But the nature of their powers prevent them from directly using The Rulebook, which is probably a good thing.

Suffice it to say that with the behind-the-scenes aid of these mages, better military commanders, and troops with initiative, the superior numbers were swiftly eliminated, and the would-be conqueror was captured.
He hadn't thought to protect himself from mages, and they were able to prevent him from accessing The Rulebook. But he was still the author, and they could not use it to reverse what he'd done. Utterly loyal zombie soldiers and even the occasional harem girl tried to set him free repeatedly, and the nature of their creation meant they would never die.
The mages were unwilling to wait over a hundred years for his perfectly healthy body to finally die, if it didn't take longer, so they made a deal. If he would write a rule exactly as they described, they would let him go free.

John sat in silence for a few moments, before thinking "What was the rule?"

"This is another thing that I don't have access to. The only information I have is what The Rulebook calls it - "The Hidden Prime."

"That likely means the Rulebook allowed another prime rule to be written, and even allowed it to be hidden from even those authors who make it through the first day without violating the first 3.", thought John. "It must have really liked that rule."

Frustruated, John asked Aidea if she had any other information on this "Hidden Prime" rule.

"No, I told you everything I have access to."

"So, there are magic users and potentially more hidden rules out there? Are they my enemy? Can they get around the protection rules I wrote?"

"The magic users are humans, and so susceptible to the same failings any human is - some will wish you ill, and others not, depending on what rules you write. If there are more hidden rules, they are also hidden from my knowledge - you may find them by encountering references to them like this one. And no, they cannot get around the protection rule - especially that very blanket one."

John considered the story he had just heard...well...thought-heard? Nevermind.
"It probably prevents creating people without free will, to prevent anyone from creating another zombie army, or other human-appearing creations that have no free will."

"That is a reasonable conclusion."

"So I could create a sentient entity with a body without limiting their free will? Or a body with no...mind, for lack of a better term? And transfer the consciousness into it?"

"Yes to the first, although without a history of experiences to draw upon, they may require much therapy and time to adjust. And they might want to hurt you, or any number of things you don't expect.
As for the second - you could, but unless you word the rule perfectly, there would likely be issues - the human mind is biological as much as mental, and without the neuron connections of the old mind, the transferred entity would have issues.

For that matter, if the entity you're transferring doesn't have a body to begin with, a whole range of other issues arise."

"Well, I think I'm going to let this discussion stew a little, we can come back to it later. For now, I have some magic software to check on.