So, why did *your* mage hit the streets? Options

[Wakshaani]

So, in THIS corner, you have a six figure salary, stock options, job security, PHYSICAL security, access to cutting-edge spell formulae, lodge and binding materials, and opportunity for career advancement, plus all the corporate honey you could ask for.

In THAT corner, you have drekky food half-warmed up, a matress that could highlight a medical journal, an itch from a bullet wound that never has healed right, three warrants for your arrest, and your friend on the team offered to set you up with that Ork in the lobby ... pick up the tab and everything!

So what makes it all worth while? Why does your mage keep at it when going corporate is so rewarding.

[Bugfoxmaster]

I've played two magicians, and have one in the group I'm currently GMing. I'll answer for them all.

The first magician I played had a serious attitude problem. He really, really hated the SYSTEM and everything about the SYSTEM. He also was, if you couldn't guess, vaguely anarchist and couldn't stand not being in charge of everything. EVERYTHING. As a result, he sort of went about micromanaging things in his team and about his jobs, but at least he was in control. He just couldn't stand the idea of being a part of something that controlled his actions.

The second was much more interesting - he was a disillusioned musician and romantic whose girlfriend disappeared during the crash. He looked around for her, but never could find her, and assumed she'd ditched him. As a result, he sort of became a loser drunk and didn't really USE his magic for anything, eventually becoming the bartender at a random runner bar, and he got picked up because the team adept (with Astral Perception) noticed that the drunken sot of a bartender happened to be a Magic 6 Magician. From there he improved, but really, he never thought about ditching the team, especially after the Adept's death and his thus becoming the team's official leader. Eventually, though, he did just become rich and powerful enough to retire, and he did - he never really wanted to BE a runner, it sort of found him.

My current team's magician is a psychopathic serial killer with a deadly temper and a like for keeping trophies of his kills. Only he doesn't like killing with a spell or gun - he likes making people kill themselves with Control Actions, while they're still able to watch and pay attention. Yeah, he's a bit fucked up. He's probably gonna die from SOMETHING, though. But you can probably see why he wouldn't fit into a corporate environment...

[LurkerOutThere]

So, in THIS corner, you have a six figure salary, stock options, job security, PHYSICAL security, access to cutting-edge spell formulae, lodge and binding materials, and opportunity for career advancement, plus all the corporate honey you could ask for.

In THAT corner, you have drekky food half-warmed up, a matress that could highlight a medical journal, an itch from a bullet wound that never has healed right, three warrants for your arrest, and your friend on the team offered to set you up with that Ork in the lobby ... pick up the tab and everything!

So what makes it all worth while? Why does your mage keep at it when going corporate is so rewarding.

Because it's the cheap path to power in magic run, 10 BP's for the ability to do EVERYTHING? Sign me up. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

/RUNS!

[Kesendeja]

My current mage used to work for the Tir Military doing very sensitive work at Crater Lake. Durring a hostile extraction attempt by Aztecnology she learned that the new security team had orders to kill her if it looked like the extraction would work. They didn't succeed, but after she escaped (with help) from Aztecnology she figured it was safer in the Seattle shadows than going home.

She hasn't sold her info yet because who would believe her, and she still holds a bit of loyalty to the Tir (not the government or military).

[LurkerOutThere]

Why would aztechnology let her free after going to the trouble of getting her out of there?

[CanRay]

The only Magician I've made is Pup the Dog Shaman, who was dropped off at a Catholic Orphanage in the Puyallup Barrens. He wouldn't get his SIN until he was of legal age and kicked out by the Nuns.

Let's just say he's a very, very angry man and has problems with authority.

[Kesendeja]

Why would aztechnology let her free after going to the trouble of getting her out of there?

She escaped with the help of a runner team sent and containing her half brother. It's the one she runs with now.

[suoq]

The problem with corporate work is that it requires mental stability and the ability to see their version of reality as valid...

IRL, I have a hard enough time dealing with neurotypical people as it is. I don't want to imagine the difficulties of being corporate while having the ability to see things that are really there. Living a life where your prized possessions are the bowl of concert stubs and a pair a shades a friend gave you makes sense to me. I can see choosing that over the corporate world you describe, especially if someone has had a taste of both and realizes which one they're comfortable in.

Pegs like the holes they fit into.

[KCKitsune]

My combat medic mage is running the shadows because the system is not trying to help find his sister. The shadows and those that run them are his best bet in finding her. I have already decided that if my character finds her, he's retiring from the shadows.

[CanRay]

No one would hire a male magician whose first name is "Sue"?

[TheOOB]

In a ritual with a dark spirit to gain more power he accidentally killed fellow a MITT student and love interest. Now runs away from his past.

[Hagga]

The very first one I ever played refused to step aside for anyone. Ever. Anywhere. Regardless of situation, figuratively as well as literally. (He died when he refused to step aside for a team of Red Samurai). Not a big corporate thing.

The last one because he was a very old man who was around during the original Awakening and never cared enough to join a corp and was much happier being the Shadowrun Wandering Jew. Why give up the freedom to go anywhere and be anything he wants for a regular bed?

[Wakshaani]

Digging through mine (From the 320 point challenge), what do I have handy?

Lord Prometheus, MASTER of flames, is, in reality, sixteen year old Corey Stewart, a pimply-faced, voice-cracking nerd of a magician who fancies himself the king of all matrix chatrooms and future Archemage of Philadelphia. Corey has a fairly normal middle class lifestyle, living at home in his Cave of Transcendence (his room) and holding a part-time job as a clerk at Kwikee Burger, where he just moved up from janitor to fry-flipper. He's a sophmore in high school, where standardized testing missed his magical talent when he was younger due to Crash 2.0 wonkiness. Indeed, he's only recently come into his magical skills, having blundered into them a year ago during a chance encounter with a free spirit. Napoleon stumbled into him during a training excercise and hired him on the spot ... sure, Lord Prometheus is a geek and a magical newbie, but, he's still a magician, painfully rare in the shadows, and one young enough to be easily molded. He was terribly easy to rope into something as cool as Shadowrunning, with a few neat toys and promises of adventure a golden lure.

Corey himself is a fairly typical, if geeky, teen, dreaming of getting a car, a girl, and beating up the school bully with one lucky punch, not neccesarily in that order. He's a chatterbox online, hopping into dozens of conversations, but isn't elite by any stretch, often biting off more than he can chew. His last COmmlink got fried after he torked off an actual hacker who trace-and-burned his machine, but Napoleon got him a better one, which he's now starting to use. Napoleon even tossed in the latest Virtual Girlfriend from MCT, which has gone over quite well.

Corey tends to rely almost exclusively on fire elementals for spiritual backup, wears fire-themed clothes when possible, colors his hair red ... you could say that it's a theme. His contacts are cosmeticly enhanced to glow red, which is so much more wiz than his usual brown eyes that he rarely takes them out. His fake driver's liscense is tied to his real SIN, not his fake, and lists him as 18 years old.

Corey tends to be a bit loud and obnoxious, driven by his hormones more than he should. He lives at home with his mom and rebels against all those rules, but, well, his parents are his parents, so he doesn't go much beyond bemoaning the unfairness of life or slamming his door. His personality is basicly a brash teenager, a bright kid that's deeply geekenated, with a sort of recklessness that only the immortality of youth can bring. He's got a crush on Princess, and has recently found out that getting a buzz and passing out is quite cool.

Frankie Jay's an Untouchable... a Shadowrunner who got caught, tagged, and went to
prison. Not jail, jail's for parking tickets... no, he went to Lone Star baton-in-the-ass
prison. Ten years of lockdown is enough to drive any magician to the edge, and, while
in the pen, he broke, rolled over on some old friends to get out of the extreme level of
restraint that magicians are forced into, and wound up being beaten so badly that he
wound up losing an eye, his left hand lopped off as a warning. By the time he was out,
Frankie was a broken shell of a man, and life hasn't gone well for him since.

Born Frank Jelinek, Frankie Jay gave up his street name after his release, hoping to
get a fresh start under his real name. He found that the real world was unforgiving of
his time as convict while teh shadow community was unforgiving of his snitching and
wary of being 'tainted' by someone who'd been enprisoned. He turned to metal to
mend his injuries, adding more chrome as his magic bled away, hoping that the
next little piece would be enough to make up for his weakened mojo, drifting down
the path of the burnout. A lifelong drinker, Frankie's depression over his situation
turned to the start of alchoholism, unable to face his own daily demons. As he lost
touch with his mojo, he further turned to occasional doses of Deepweed, to try and
touch the untouchable.

Frankie's desperate at this stage, at the end of his rope and bank account. He'll
take almost any job, figuring that he's got no further to fall, and still has enough
magical talent to help a team out... and magic's a rare enough commodity on the
street that there are those who'll overlook his many, many shortcomings to have
his help. It's been enough to keep him in booze and whores, if only just, and a
roach-covered roof over his head, but, if something doesn't happen to break the
cycle, he simply won't end well.

(Frankie Jay was a stab at the old "Burned Out Mage" concept. Oh my lord, was he hard to build!)

A third (Not written up in full yet) was simply a Corp Kid on the mage path but who went to college, got to experimenting and wound up slipping into the environmental movement, ditching her corporate ride through university to hook up with EcoRebels. The corp keeps an eye on her, convinced it's "Just a phase" and that she'll come back as soon as the first Shadowrun goes sour. They'll be there to bail her out and sweep her back home, where she belongs.

[Tyro]

Mephistopheles ("Call me Faust") is a religious fanatic from an anarchist cult - God (All gods of all pantheons, but they're from CalFree) is the Big Bad Authority Figure™ and must be fought. Since He/She/They/It can't be fought directly, members of the cult attempt to destabilize the world, Fight Club style, in order to weaken Him/Her/Them/It by upsetting the status quo so the oppressed masses (demons, devils, fallen angels, you name it) can mount a revolution and overthrow the tyrannical dictator(s). Yeah, they're a few fries short of a basket. (Mystic Adept face)

the Behdin Adel (A Behdin is an ordained Zoroastrian priest, and Adel is Persian/Farsi for "Righteous") is a Zoroastrian soldier in the war against the forces of Chaos. Zoroastrianism is a monotheistic faith which teaches that the world is order which was formed out of chaos, and that any action, regardless of motivation, affects the balance between those two forces. He belongs to a sect which is a bit more proactive than most, favoring explosives and sabotage to further the cause. When he's not blowing up corporate assets, he teaches history part-time at a community college. (This despite the fact that he has demolitions 4, magic theory 4, spellcasting 4... he likes to teach, and it's a good cover). He has a legal SIN, so he's very careful not to leave evidence behind. (Full magician & demo man)

[CanRay]

"Are you going to tell Coyote that he can only have a half-hour for lunch?" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Summerstorm]

Eh, always depends on the magical type and meta-status... also depending on mentor-spirit or religion etc.. There are plenty of reasons for being a runner, as a mage.

My old character for example:

"Pain" just tapped into newfound magical powers after he was infected and became a vampire (Pretty much only to be tormented by a demented psycho). He was a courier before that... and a bad one at that too. So yeah, no SIN, no training, AND NEEDS TO EAT PEOPLE... not really career material... so he runs around and guts people with his silver-lined wristblades for money *g*.

[Doc Byte]

Why does your mage keep at it when going corporate is so rewarding.

Because he has no desire to return. His parents worked for SK and went from Hamburg to Seattle when he was 5. He didn't like Corp-life and when they wanted to put him into SK's bootcamp for young mages he ran away at age 13. He ended up joining a biker gang and hanging out at a talismonger shop, starting to date the owner's daughter eventually. His future mother-in-law taught him how to use his powers. At the same time he met a fixer and got his first little jobs. (Nearly being killed in the course of the first real run, what set him on the course of going cyber, but that's another story.) He managed to survive about 15 years in the shadows (almost never running for AAAs in the premier league) and moved only recently to New Monaco, where he founded a salvage company for historical wrecks and treasures. Today at age 32 he's part-time runner, married according to at least one of his SINs, owns a comfortable livestyle in New Monaco, has a sweet Ford Mustang waiting in the garage and enjoys his sailing yacht. - Why should he even think of returning to the Corp-world? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Machiavelli]

Karma, Black-Magic user, joined the shadows after a spontaneous Surge-Event that transformed her looks completely into a "vampire-like" being. The university she worked as an archeologist and anthropologist was very conservative and dropped her to save his reputation.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

"Are you going to tell Coyote that he can only have a half-hour for lunch?" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Gotta love the old books, eh?

[Fortinbras]

No one would hire a male magician whose first name is "Sue"?

Really? Not even "Art of War" author Sun Tsu? No one from the Sioux nation? No assistant head chefs? An overly litigious class action suit? Johnny Cash?

[DireRadiant]

So, in THIS corner, you have a six figure salary, stock options, job security, PHYSICAL security, access to cutting-edge spell formulae, lodge and binding materials, and opportunity for career advancement, plus all the corporate honey you could ask for.

That is my Mage character background! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Raised in a corp creche, identified as a Talent, along with psych profiling and moved into Corporate Security Counter Intel ops group and teams.

Then there's some kind of massive screw up. And the corp Terminates you.... Job security is a myth, the streets are where you can stay alive easier then the cut throat competition of corporate wars.

[CanRay]

Gotta love the old books, eh?

Oh do I ever. I wish I had been able to game in those days.

Or today for that matter. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Really? Not even "Art of War" author Sun Tsu? No one from the Sioux nation? No assistant head chefs? An overly litigious class action suit? Johnny Cash?

Maybe Johnny Cash. Of course, he's not around in 2070 for some reason...

[AStarshipforAnts]

Cassandra grew up the youngest child of a 'kept' magic-heavy family to another family of corporate bigwigs. Predictably, someone got envious and greedy, and Cassandra's parents and older siblings were framed for a crime and sent to jail--leaving her uncle's nuclear family the recently-vacant proverbial Place in the Sun. The trauma of the event caused caused late-bloomer Cassandra to awaken. An hour before a snatch squad appeared at her university dormitory, the kindly Old Man of the Crossroads gave Cassandra a tip off. The young woman went to ground, and found all of her legitimate assets, including her corporate scholarship, frozen.

Three years later, she's rather disillusioned and disappointed by what's happened. She's also been dipping her toes into the shadows just to make ends meet, and find a way to a bit of petty revenge.

[CanRay]

Damn, but Magicians get the best background reasons for Shadowrunning! Much better than the typical, "I wuz born SINless an' I had ta 'Run to feedz muh famblies." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[AStarshipforAnts]

IMHO, background is most important. I usually start out with a character, then stat them out later.