How should I deal with my DM being an idiot?Ally.., Ally spirit issues...... Options

[Aqua]

I have a water mage I have been playing for a long time, over a year in real life. Of the group of shadowrun players we have together, he is the oldest constant character in use so not surprisingly he has accumulated the most karma. He has had no miraculous escapes from the GM-I've kept him alive when other characters have died with smart planning and being VERY VERY careful. I played other characters a bit but this guy has always been my real character. We've taken some slumps in playing time, but from all the runs this guy has been in he accumulated 32 karma. He is not a twinked mage by ANY means, he is a hermetic mage, a water elementalist. I have never spent any of the karma I have, I have been saving it up planning to either initiate with a group if the opportunity ever came along, or self initiate, or to summon an ally spirit.

I eventually decided to summon an ally spirit. I asked my GM if that was okay and since he did not know about ally spirits gave him a VERY brief rundown. He said it was okay, I even tried to have him watch me roll the dice for it so he knew I was not faking anything(when I rolled for the spell my spirit knew that I knew).... he got mass agony-though in retrospect this is not that useful of a spell, my mage know it at 6 but I never use it. His physical form is a naked human being pretty similar to that of my mage(I have him dress in clothes/armor and almost NEVER have him demanifest on runs).

I somehow missed the little initiation thing in the rulesd that would of allowed me to summon my spirit without loosing a magic point, I asked the GM if I could re-summon him with the initiation ritual since I did not know about it-my GM said no. Fair enough, that is okay-would of been nice but not a big deal.

OKAY so I have my force 3 ally spirit which I manage to summon and rest up a bit JUST before the run.

I give my ally spirit a set of instructions, written down and handed to the DM on a sheet with the intention of making it easy for the DM to decide what to do if my ally spirit is unsure.... as well a a few things the spirit should know, here is what i wrote:

-Do not abuse the freedom given to you to try and harm me in any way or to try to earn your freedom early.

-If I am incapacitated do your best to get me to safety and keep me alive

-Don't do anything to break the law or harms others unless I give instructions otherwise.

-The money you get is your money, the belongings you gain belong to you and I will not compel you to give them up. Do not get rid of the equipment needed for shadowrunning(I got our Johnson to pay my spirit for the run.... on the first run my mage did FAR more then the spirit, he got paid 50k new yen for basically ascenscing a few times and less then 10 aid powers.).

-I will never use you to take drain(Spirits HATE that, it hurts like hell) and I will not put you in harms way unless absolutely necessary.

-When I retire from shadow running, you will be set free.

-Think of yourself as an indentured servant, not a slave.

-Guard me if someone attacks me

-Tell me if you see meta-human awakened, and the nature of their powers.

-Don't tell people you are a spirit unless otherwise instructed by me


I then re-wrote the list and made it more thorough just to be sure... I however left off the first rule about not abusing the freedom, assuming since the spirit INHERENTLY is supposed to want to follow me it would not be an issue. Since I am giving it what is possibly the sweetest and most generous deal a master has ever given an ally spirit, it is not an issue. I think that my GM somehow thought that I wrote this list to prevent him from fucking me via the spirit... this was not my intention. I can't tell if this is what he thinks or not-if it is, I can't convince him otherwise. There was some confusion with this, I did my best to tell my GM and everyone else this was NOT the case. I did NOT make the rules to stop the GM from fucking me, I made them so if my spirit has to act and can't consult me, it has a guideline to go by... I don't think I was able to convince everyone but I adamantly explained this was the case.

EVEN IF it was so the GM could not fuck me(which I explained it was not) it should not make a difference.

I have not done anything even remotely cheesy or overpowered with the spirit, in most combat rolls it ends up just aiding power to me.

The spirit existed for 14 days between our first run and our second run. I had given my spirit permission to do whatever it wanted(within the rules I set down) when I did not need it. So... what does it do?

I didn't find out for a while.... our GM does not like having to worry about stuff between runs so I assumed whatever it was doing was harmless to me. Obviously I would have sense linked it from time to time while this was going on to ensure it did not get into trouble.

First it gets a job as a bouncer at the local main shadowrunner bar... and THEN I find out it formed a "political" group called "Spirits United" and this force 3 spirit somehow gathered 300 members to it in a week and a half. This group is for, in the spirits words, to work for spirit freedom. After much frustration and the DM intentionally making the spirit deceptive, I managed to drag out of the spirit that the groups goals was to pursue this cause, legally. He has no social skills and has existed in the game world for 2 weeks, he should barley have a personality at this point, let alone some how finding 300 spirits to join in some political movement he started.... "Spirits United".

I found out everything my spirit was doing all at once when my spirit told me(and my group) when I decided to tell the group he was a spirit.

My DM has rail roaded me to the extreme on this. I telepathically had a little chat with Steve(I named my spirit steve). I asked him to tell me about this group and he said that while some of the spirits are non violent they have been attracting a violent crowd lately. When I asked him if he thought this would likely put me in harms way, he said no.

...........

I asked Steve if he was working towards his own emancipation, I ORDERED him to tell me. The GM said, via steve "The money is good for now" and refused to tell me specifically. Every question I gave to try to figure out what was going on, my spirit gave deceptive half truths, intentionally trying to withhold information from me. Would an ally spirit who was treated well do this, do ANY of this? Would it neccesarily even want to work for its freedom, at this point should it not still be quasi mindless(without a personality)? This whole scenario sounds like something that happens after a mage has had a spirit for a LONG TIME and treated it poorly, that the spirit would rebel... this is a BRAND new spirit and could not have possibly been treated better.

If you think that my DM has some outside force causing this, I know he is not(though I suspect he may now magically invent one, on the off chance he reads this).

.........

Steve told me in so many words that if anything bad happened to him or that if I ordered him to do things he did not want to do, I could expect his spirit friends in his group to come down on me like a ton of bricks. Why the fuck is my ally spirit acting against me, openly?

There are a million logical arguments why all of this is impossible, the most direct of which is one of the rules I set down.....

Don't do anything illegal. Associating with force 8 spirits(somehow steve mystically recruited force 8's into his political organization), since they are above force 2, is illegal.


I kept going back and forth with my GM about asking Steve if he was serving me willingly or trying to backstab me to earn his freedom and he flip flopped on that. I asked him to resolve the situation, which I see is as follows:

An ally spirit HAS to follow orders. If it has been neglected and is of a decent age, it can look for loopholes in the order to screw the master. This is not the case, it is young and has been treated exempleraly.

An ally spirit can not activley work against their master-ever.

An ally spirit, if mistreated and of decent age could work against their master passivley. This is OBVIOUSLY not the case on either account, Steve is young, he SHOULD be barley sentient and has been treated exempleraly.

An ally spirit can not be deceptive from it's master unless it is of decent age and has been mistreated. It has to have sufficient real world age and have a motive for being deceptive, the usual motive being mistreatment-which is not the case.

An ally spirit activley WANTS to follow its masters orders if it has been treated well. The books make it pretty clear treating ally spirits poorly will likley come back to bite you in the ass, which is why I have been treating it well.


My GM tried to take a BS middle ground which does not exist, explaining how he did not think that making this group was working against his master or his wishes. I explained to Steve that this groups very existance was working against my wishes and putting my life in danger and asked him if he would willingly disband it. My spirit said no.

WE CAN NOT HAVE IT BOTH WAYS! Either he acknowledges my wishes that I do not like this group and that now that is has been explained, that this group is obviously a danger to my life(intentional or not) and he should WANT to disband it to protect his master(the inherant desires of the spirit and my orders to protect me) OR the GM makes it clear that Steve is betraying me. My GM is trying to tip toe through a middle grown which clearly does not exist.

My GM refused to even acknowledge the situation. Steve basically is blackmailing me. Shouldn't my spirit INHERENTLY want to work for me and follow the intention of my orders?

Our GM really hates dealing with the stuff our characters do between runs so I never had any time to deal with what Steve was doing. I confronted the GM with this and he said I "Should of read a newspaper to see what was going on"...... .....is it so unreasonable to assume while all of this crap was happening with him building a political movement of powerful spirits, I never used sense link to FIGURE THIS OUT and nip it in the bud while it happened? That my mage, whose sole goal in life is to gain more magical knowledge and power, would not be paying VERY close detail to his ally spirit, his newest toy who he has worked forward to making for a long time? My GM is punishing me for actions that did not happen.... and realistically should not have happened.


WAIT! It gets better.

One of the players who I am not sure has it out for my mage IC or not, told Steve if we could get a distraction for a part of the run with the help fo Steve's new friends he would reward him. Steve got force 8(against my mages desires, even though I did not order him to not bring them, I made it pretty clear I did not like it) spirits to cause some havoc for our enemies on a run.

At the end of the run the player goes to Steve on his own(I used sense link) and the player told Steve he would give Steve his freedom if he wanted, and kill my mage. The player asked Steve if he wanted to be free, to which Steve responded "The money is good for now."

..............

WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO???


I've treated my spirit with FAR more respect on our runs then I have treated the other players-though I never really mistreated any of them either. I have never even ordered him into any sort of danger, even when it could have saved my mage from damage-I had him sit back for concern of him.

My GM is rail roading me, he is having my spirit actively working against me and he knows it. Either Steve is working against me and he should declare it, like when I ordered him to, or Steve is working through a loophole in the rules I set down.... which he shouldn't do since it goes against the "spirit"(no pun intended)of my wishes. My spirits intelligence is 6, he would damn well know this political movement is a danger on my life, if he is persuasive enough to gather 300 spirits in his first 2 weeks of existence(He has ZERO social skills) then he knows enough about social interaction to know his actions are directly putting my life in danger-which no spirit should do, let alone one that is being treated great.

I have not done anything remotely cheesy with the spirit, i've treated him with respect and now the GM is fucking me with him. I have no idea why my GM is doing this, maybe he thinks it is funny? I don't and I made that pretty clear.



I have considered going to my GM and telling him to either resolve the situation somehow in a way that gets me back my magic point and at least half the karma I put into it or I am permanently done with shadowrun. I am REALLY REALLY pissed off but this is going to step on lots of social toes. I highly doubt he would resolve it. I have a feeling this whole thing is because I killed one of his previous character in a very embarrasing way but I am not sure.

Something in game is best, something that does not force me to directly confront the GM out of character but he can always railroad it(if he does do that I AM going to simply say "Fix this, or I am out."

Other possible solutions:

Order Steve to, to the best of his abilities permanently distance himself from the spirit group and tell him he is to stay with me at all times unless I say otherwise, to communicate with no one in any fashion unless I say otherwise. If any of his ex-spirit friends confront him, he is to lie to them as convincingly as possible that he can that he has decided he has put his master in danger. I'll have him explain how he does not feel like a slave, that his master treats him with great dignity and respect and he genuinley decided to leave because his master has treated him so well and he appreciates it. I've considered working in a mind wipe somehow(Pay some high level mage to do it... I have almost 200k new yen to burn from all the money I accumulated on the mages run).

Try to somehow integrate my mage INTO the spirit group "Spirite United". This is, insanley dangerous since most of the spirits involved are free spirits. If my GM was not rail roading me I think this might be viable-even interesting but with the theme he has had in this whole mess(Which seems to be "Fuck the water mage") I think any venture down this path is guaranteed to fail unless I have a great plan.

Banish Steve, loose the 40 something karma I have put into him(I raised him from force 3, to force 4 after the first run with him). Have spirits chasing my ass for eternity.

Now for the most sadistic scenario.... let steve try to emancipate himself through his spirit contacts, or sell him to any mage who will buy him for magical equipment equivelant to half the karma I paid. If I sell him to the spirits for self emancipation, I will banish him to regain the lost magic point, then self initiate and change my astral signature-making it IMPOSSIBLE for the spirits to indentify me.


Any situation I come up with is almost certain to fail. I can handle for the known factors but not for the unknown so unless I have a 20 page typed plan outlining EVERY possible scenario, my GM can still fuck me if he wants to.

I've come up with a ton of ideas, these seem like the best.

In any case I see no good solution for what to do with the other player. He will be very angry IC and OOC should I kill him but *HE* is the one who fired the first shot by telling my spirit he would take me out.... killing him should be easy if I had to, I can think of a dozen scenarios to make a synch. I could PROBOABLY take him out in direct combat, however i'd rather not have to do it in combat, planning it out of combat would make it almost a guarantee. My character knows this player is out for my players blood. He might not realize that threatening my character makes him fair game in turn, i'm pretty sure he will be VERY angry should I kill him, how the hell do I resolve this?



Any ideas on what the hell I should do, or even some way to turn this situation to my advantage, any way to get out of this without loosing my life, or all the karma I sunk into my spirit?


J, if you do read this *shrug*, tell our GM if you want, I don't care-maybe seeing it written down will let him know how truley pissed off I am by this.