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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Immaterial Material Link

Posted by: Karayan Jul 23 2006, 12:16 AM

The character of a friend of mine recently had a bad run in with a mage that left said character with a major chip on her shoulder (for good reason) and the NPC mage with a body part of hers. Namely, a finger. Obviously his having that substantial an amount of DNA is not good, but neither my friend nor I have much experience with ritual sorcery. Is there something the character can do to protect herself from this, either rendering the material link unviable, or at least do something to hamper the mage in using ritual sorcery on her? Through her team, the character has the help of a couple of other mages, including an initiate, though I don't know what metamagic techniques he has use of.

If there's nothing to be done, at least the mage believes the character dead. For now.

Thanks for any ideas.

Posted by: Ancient History Jul 23 2006, 12:20 AM

In SR3, you could use the Severing metamagic to sever the magical link.

Posted by: Catsnightmare Jul 24 2006, 01:12 AM

You can also use reverse ritual tracking and find where the finger is and then backtrack to the finger and most likely the enemy mage for some payback.

Posted by: Snow_Fox Jul 24 2006, 02:01 AM

It just shows, you gotta be careful to whom you give the finger.

Posted by: Karayan Jul 24 2006, 05:44 AM

QUOTE

In SR3, you could use the Severing metamagic to sever the magical link.

Just what I was looking for, thanks! I tend to forget SOTA:2063 had new metamagic.

QUOTE

You can also use reverse ritual tracking and find where the finger is and then backtrack to the finger and most likely the enemy mage for some payback.

At this point the team knows where he is, as he doesn't realize they know what he did to the character in question. It's on the complicated side all told, but he was a supposed ally of the group, got hold of the character unbeknownst to the others, and got rid of her in such a fashion he thought she'd be dead. She wasn't, but she's being extremely cautious to keep the illusion up. If the mage does go to ground somewhere though, good to know of a way to track him.

Thanks for the help, guys.

Posted by: hyzmarca Jul 24 2006, 07:16 AM

Here is an interesting question. Say that you are a tetragametic chimera, two faternal twins fused (Dragonball Z style) in the womb to form the fully functional you. Say that a magician gets a sample of one of your two different DNA lines. Could this DNA be used use ritual magic against you as normal, would the magician suffer penalities, or would the magician only be able to cast against those parts of your body that are made from that DNA?

Posted by: Ravor Jul 24 2006, 02:06 PM

Well, I'm not sure if its covered in the rules anywhere, but personally I'd rule that no, if the whole and living you that makes up your Aura/Soul has multiple strands of DNA, then anyone of those strands works equally as well for Ritual Magic.

Posted by: Tiralee Jul 26 2006, 01:10 PM

Regarding the severing of material for ritual links - isn't there a quick'n'dirty way to simply "reverse-engineer" a ritual link through the target (Ie, the person missing the finger?)

For a recent run, my players quickly realized that if someone is going to make a multi-million Nyuen bioware device, they're going to retain enough material for a viable ritual link.

A quick panic-attack later (They'd been removing various bugging devices for the last hour, driving around Seattle and keeping to the "Z" zones as much as they could) and they had called in every favour they had with any initiated mage they knew to slap together an anti-track spell.

The ritual actually went off without a hitch with the main spellcaster punching through the protective wards (ouch) and sustaining a force 4 fireball (for 20 minutes) before getting the hell out of dodge, Cleansing and Sanitising as they go. (Thank F%ck for backgound counts)

If you have enough mojo and a disgruntled guinea-pig, why not plan for something similar? Or simply have the local vampire lesbian stripper ninja assassin pirate blow a hole through the head of the NPC mage with a Barrett?

-Tir

Posted by: Bodak Jul 30 2006, 11:55 AM

QUOTE (Karayan)

the NPC mage with a body part of hers. Namely, a finger.

Thanks for any ideas.

Here's my suggestion, for what it's worth.

You'll need:
1 spare mobile telephone
1 Cybersurgery Kit
1 shiney black car
3 Men In Black suits
1 good fixer/decker

Your team shouldn't attack the mage at home, because he'll have all sorts of security measures set up. Instead, find out where he works using the decker / fixer's contacts. Then get one of the team to phone the target's pocsec while he's at work and spout cryptic garbage at him. This will serve as a distraction. Suggest that he throw himself out the window. At this point, three members of the team dressed as Men In Black stroll into the office pretending to be Lone Star and make their way to the target's cubicle. He'll get fed up with the inane nonsense coming from his pocsec, run to the corner office and hurl it out the window. Who needs encryption and a mute button when you have 34 storeys and a plascrete road?

Some time later, the MIB team bundle the target into their glossy black car and drive to a safehouse for 'questioning'. One member of the team flicks through a dossier which details plans to poison the target's guinea pig and burn down his tree-house. At this point the replacement phone / pocsec should be close to hand. The target will surrender at the sight of one of the runners breaking out the Cybersurgery Kit, saying, "You can't scare me with this gestapo crap! How about I give you the finger... and you give me my phone call?"