how would a PC create a dragon undead?

[Wind4air]

My party recently took down an Old Red Dragon, and I've gotta get my necro on. My problem is that Create Undead (or greater) seems to only allows specific undead types, where as I'm looking to make more of a zombie dragon(acquired template).

so, any tips on how to go about this? some spell along the lines of Animate Dead without the HD limit, or some other way.

additional info: our casters include a 16th lvl cleric(evil) & 15th lvl wizard, and willing to hire for any npc spellcasting to get this done, and the DM has a "open book" policy, so any 3.5 book tatics are usually possible

[tyckspoon]

The Draconomicon has special Skeletal Dragon and Zombie Dragon templates for use with Animate Dead. They keep more of their special abilities, and (for your purposes, this is the really relevant part) make no mention of any HD limit, unlike the normal Skeleton/Zombie templates.

[Jack_Simth]

There's also the Fell Animate metamagic feat. Use Raise Dead on the beast, which puts it at 1 hp / hit die, then use a Fell Animate Fireball (or Lightning Bolt, or even Inflict Critical Wounds, really...) on him. He is now a zombie under the control of the caster.