The case of the coconut bomb, Or what to do if you get real horses Options

[Demerzel]

Okay, say you’ve got two empty halves of a coconut, and choose to use one as a ritual link to the other. Place the other half in your luggage and send it off on a flight. Then a ritual team slings a force 12 Fireball down the ritual link, and blows the hold of the aircraft, wham, coconut terrorism.

You think it’s bad that you can’t take more than 3oz of aftershave on a flight in this day and age, sheesh…

"I'm sorry sir, you're not allowed to take half of anything into the terminal, you'll have to leave the sandwitch with us."

[Moon-Hawk]

What? Isn't that kind of like grounding? I think you'd just blow the $#!% out of the coconut, leaving the aircraft okay.

[Demerzel]

I don't think so, the coconut isn't astral, the ritualists aren't astral. They are targeting the coconut via ritual targeting, but via the FAQ they don't need LOS to anything around the coconut that takes the AOE damage...

It started bothering me from the other thread about the ritually triggered suitcase nerve gas dispersion device. Makes me wonder what airport security looks like in 2070 considering what we deal with today.

[BishopMcQ]

There was an example of something similar to this in SOTA:63. The PI took a chip of a brick building and placed it in someone's bag. He then used the building as a link to the piece as a role reversal of piece to whole.

My only question would be how long the other item maintains viability as a ritual link/sample. We have rough guidelines for organic matter like blood and the like, but what about coconuts and bricks?

[Austere Emancipa...]

In SR3, a simple Force 6 Ward raises the target number of a ritual magic linking test to 13 when you don't know exactly where the target is, meaning that, together with the linking test taking 12 hours (for a Force 12 spell) to complete if you just manage 1 success, an attack like this would be extremely difficult to manage. At a cost of ~5,000-15,000 nuyen per aircraft (depending on size) per month, I figure that's what every major air liner does.

I have no idea how effective such a defense is in SR4. Much less so than in SR3, I imagine.

[NightmareX]

Well, organic materials like coconuts decay, so the rules for blood etc could be applied. Bricks on the other hand appear to have no limit. Kiss those planes goodbye!

[Wakshaani]

There's a notation in ... hrm. Suddenly blanking on which book, ack.

At any rate, about an underwater facility of a megacorp and how they'd managed to take some samples off of mice, which were then sent in as lab animals... they used the material links from teh mice to channel in an air-destroying type spell, doing just all KINDS of damage down there.

Kinda neat, but also terribly spooky.

[BishopMcQ]

target Wastelands maybe?

[Moonwolf]

AE: You can't ward planes unless you don't want them to move. Wards cannot be moved from the physical position they were made in.

[Moon-Hawk]

[BishopMcQ]

Moonwolf:
It was originally possible to ward vehicles etc. in SR3, which is where AE is pulling his reference from. I believe that many people are also using the variation that DemonseedElite offered which utilizes a metamagic technique to allow for vans and vehicles to be warded.

[Fortune]

[Demerzel]

Um, it's in the FAQ.

[djinni]

so take a piece of the plane.
the only way a piece of luggage is getting on the plane is when it has a passenger already boarded. if you go to that much why not just have that person take a piece of the plane while he's there, or take his blood sample before he goes through security.

[hyzmarca]

Go into the restroom and drink some of the tap water from the sink. When you get on the plane cast the spell using the water in your stomach as the ritual link. Simple.

[Ravor]

Well personally I'm not sure I'd allow an Indirect Spell to be used via Ritual Spellcasting according to RAW then it seems that the inside of the most likely terrorist targets, such as planes, buses, ect will have the heaviest Wards the company can afford, and if you are trying to cast it on the Plane itself then you have to deal with the Object Threshold.

So all in all, I imagine that the occasional terrorist attack that does get through your security measures whether it is Wards, Chem Sniffers, Cyberware Detectors, ect is written off as the 'cost of doing business' in the Sixth World, and that most of the measures are fairly invisible to the average person, after all you don't want to scare away paying custimors by strip-searching or hassling them, at least until they trip one of the hundreds of scanners in the building/plane...

[Demerzel]

I guess an important question is how long is the average flight in 2070 in hours?

A semiballistic suborbital from Seattle to London may be only a few hours. That would severly limit the time you have to cast a ritual spell. If you tried to start it eairly you'd have the astral link forming visible from the astral and security would probably tag it before you boarded.

[Thane36425]

It wouldn't have to be a powerful or even damaging spell. You could always cast a lower rated sustained area affect spell, like orgy. That should make for a memorable flight. More cruelly one could cast agony. For an annoying flight, a low level stench spell. Flying is bad enough without smelling, say, rotten vomit the whole time. Trust me: I was flying a storm once and these college girls who had gorged themselves at the cookie shop in the Atlanta airport all threw up all over everything.

Even without destroying any planes you would be forcing the airlines to increase their security and that would cost them lots of money.

[RunnerPaul]

[Thane36425]

[Kesslan]

[PBTHHHHT]

[James McMurray]

You could just levitate up there and slap a barrier in front of the plane, or have a spirit do it for you. Weather control can knock down a plane without having to contend with object resistance. You could research a Smash Plane spell and get really high damage for really low drain.

Splattering aircraft with magic isn't new, doesn't require a ritual link, and doesn't require a suicide bomber.