Dealing with your astral signature, Lest a forensic mage ruin your day Options

[mfb]

it'd have to be the same mage. yet another reason to shoot the mage first.

[A Clockwork Lime]

Astral signatures are obtained through assensing. A magician can impart an aura (or, logically, part of an aura such as a signature) of any that he's ever assensed for a Watcher spirit to track down. At least in my mind he should/could.

Otherwise, there's very little point in ever worrying about your astral signature. You wouldn't even have to mask yourself to protect yourself from a forensics magician or the like; just don't perform any magical activity in front of anyone you don't know first hand until the heat dies down.

If it was that easy to get around it, why should altering your signature require so much effort?

[BitBasher]

I was completely wrong, there is on fact no way to directly link an astral signature to an aura. My bad.

Then an astral signature is in fact just like a fingferprint. you can leave them behine but that doesn't help anyone pick you out of a crowd of random people.

[Moon-Hawk]

That's how I've used them in the past, as well.

[A Clockwork Lime]

I don't know. If you get a fingerprint off someone, you can send a smart-frame ("Watcher spirit") to search the Matrix/datastores ("astral plane") to find the fingerprint ("astral signature"). It's pretty much on the same level. You have the data you need, you have a means of searching for it, and you have a place to search for it.

If you can't use it for anything worthwhile, why bother worrying about your signature anyway? It fades within a couple of hours, so unless the exact same forensics mage is at every crime scene you're a part of, and they somehow find a way to use it to find you (which, apparently, isn't possible), it's a moot point.

Seems odd that something so relatively useless is so difficult to change and time consuming to erase.

[Moon-Hawk]

I'm not sure that's an entirely fair comparison.
What we're saying is: IF it's true that the signature can only be left behind my magical activity and cannot be assensed from the subject's aura, then sending watchers to search for them will only be effective if the person is using magic at least semi-regularly. Furthermore, if the person is not using magic, then watchers will be ineffectual.
However, not all agree about the initial supposition. I believe that the signature cannot be assensed from the aura, but as far as I'm concerned the jury is still out on that point.

[A Clockwork Lime]

The way I see it, an astral signature is left behind when you perform any magical activity. Just like a fingerprint. But, just like a fingerprint is still a part of your physical body and can be detected by a quick scan, your astral signature is a part of your aura and can be detected by a quick assensing test.

And like fingerprints you leave behind on a crime scene, you either have cut off your hands and get some new ones or otherwise get rid of them. The same is true with an astral signature; if you leave one behind, you'll need to obtain a new one if you don't want anyone to find you. "Masking" your hand with a pair of gloves won't help you if you get scanned, just like masking your aura won't help you if you get assensed.

[BitBasher]

[A Clockwork Lime]

Like I said earlier, I couldn't find anything that said as much one way or the other. The only thing I could find was information on the Assensing Table (SR3 p. 172) where you can detect additional astral signatures a person has on them and what they represent (ie, what kind of spells you have sustained or quickened on you). But that's the equivalence of finding fingerprints on your gear as opposed to looking at your actual fingerprints.

[Moon-Hawk]

Which is perhaps where the fingerprint analogy breaks down. But I'm not sure.
For all you just joining us, let me sum up:
The relationship between the astral signature and the aura, is it:
1) Like a fingerprint and a finger. Left behind, but also viewable on the original source for anyone to see, or
2) Like the balistic print on a bullet. When a gun fires a bullet, it leaves a unique pattern of scratches on the fired bullet, as an artifact of the barrel, rifling, mechanism, etc. Ask raygun or others for a more complete description. You can't practically figure out what this pattern is by looking at the gun. The only way to practically see it is to fire a bullet out of the gun, and look at the bullet - the aftereffect. I say practically, because it may or may not be theoretically possible to figure out what the print would be, but it would be ridiculously complicated, require supercomputer simulation, and no one would ever do it.

So we continue to search for any canon references or maybe even a quote from some "canon" fiction to figure out which of these metaphors is more appropriate.
Personally, I vote for #2.
Clockwork Lime votes for #1.

I hope I have done the discussion justice.

[Zazen]

I'm a #1 kind of guy. I figure anyone should be able to see it by looking at you.

Then again, I also say that anyone who's been to magic college knows the right way to write one down. I'm a big believer in consequences.

[Kakkaraun]

OurTeam, thanks for pounding that nail in, I couldn't ;).

Now, this is my analogy.

An astral signature is a fingerprint. A watcher can be sent out to match that signature to an aura, the same way, you could, say, go out and take fingerprints from random people on the street (not that that's actually done, and I never said it was, so don't bitch at me for it, Lime...I know you'd like to, but just don't). However, you're not going to take off someone's gloves (Masking), unless you're specially trained (Initiated, or is it initiated w/ masking? I lack bookage) to do so.

That's me perception.