E-Talismans, Geasa for the technophile Options

[hyzmarca]

Victor Delmonte was an idiot. But at least he had enough sense to hire the best security firm in Seatle. Sure, Lone Star was bigger, but it can't provide the same personal touches that small firms like B&J can. It is doubtfull that any Lone Star decker would have had the skill or presence of mind to intercept all E-mails routed into and out-of seatle, filtering them for mentions of Delmonte's name. No, Lone Star would never have found the E-mail communications between the still annoymoys Johnson and his hired assasin. They wouldn't have known that Victor Delmonte was being targeted by a magician. They wouldn't have provided magical security of the same caliber of David and his crew.

David wishes that Delmonte did hire the Star. A person too stupid to cancel a public appearance when there is a contract out on him deserves to have his brain exploded by a powerbolt.

David hated the waiting more than anything, he has been in numerous magical battles. Once, years ago when he was still green, a Toxic shaman had gotten the jump on him and melted his arm off with a wave of acid. The pain, David decided, was more pleasent then the hours they spent waiting for the ambush to come. Today was just like that day. Too calm, too innocent. He knew something bad was comming but there were no hints suggesting where it would be comming from.

No one really cared about Delmonte's announcment except Delmonte himself and whoever hired the assasin, so there wasn't a large crowd. There was a blond female dwarf reporter covering the announcment for some small newspaper. A quick assensing revealed nothing unusual about her other than fake breasts. There was a male teenager with a datajack was sitting in a corner scribbling something on his Pocket secretary with a stylus. The aura around his head was solid black. He was probably a decker of some sort. A group of men in business suits, all mundane with some headware, stood taling in the middle of the room.

There should be something by now.
The elementals guarding the entrances haven't reported anything. No one was tired to crawl through the ventilation shaft. Astral Patrols have come up empty. The only magically active being in the building, other then the security mages and their elementals, was a 10 year old girl scout with some adept powers. David made her family leave as a precaution.

The second Delmonte steps up to the podium David hears his teammate Mark through his mindlink "Dave! Someone is attacking out shielding."

Adrenlin begins pumping through is veins as David scans the room again, looking for some concealed place that could give a magician line of sight. It is then that he sees it out of the corner of his eye. The astral space around the young decker ripples slightly as he rythemicly taps his pocket secretary with the stylus. "It's the decker! He has masking!", Dave yells in his mind as he rushes toward the teenage assasin with way too much headware.

David casts a stunbolt at the the assasin but the astral energies dissipate harmlessly against the initiate's own shielding. David reaches the assasin in less than three seconds and punches the teenage initiate with all of his might, sending the kid tumbling to the ground, his pocket secretary flying out of his hands. Knowing the potential power of this magical assasin Dave doesn't stop there. He continues kicking the teenager in the head with his steel-toed boots untill the boy stops moving.

As the adrenlin wears off Dave begins to hear screaming and the smell of burning flesh. Mark and Sarah watch helplessly as their charge's lifeless body smoulders. On the pocket secretary a black and white video clip of a man being burned at the stake continues to loop.



-----

The E-talisman is a new form of geas for a new age. It is an attractive alternative to the standard geas for some technophile magicians because it more easily meshes with their ideals. E-talisman is something of a misnomer. The E-talisman geas is in no way related to the talisman geas.

An E-talisman is an executable file containing a digital version of a spell formula. The exectuable can be anything from a complex spreadsheet program to a dedicated media player. Usually, it is the latter.

To create an E-talisman a programer integrates the digital spell formula into the source code of an executable. This requires a programing test with a TN equal to 1/2 the force of the spell requires (force)hours (reduced by successes). This can be done by any competent programer.

An E-talisman can only have 1 spell formula. A programer can integrate multiple formulas into an executable but it would be of no use to a magician.

In order to fufill the E-talisman geas a magician must run this program whenever he casts the spell. He must have a seperate executable for every spell he can cast (Edit: and for every spirit/elemental type that he can summon). And the executable must contain a digital version of the same spell formula the magician learned. If this condition is not met the geas is broken.

The program can be ran using any method available to the magician, through datajack, manualy, through voice command. If the magician is decking he can even fufill his geas with E-talismans on a remote host. This doesn't let him cast magic in the Matrix, nor does it negate the TN penalities for interacting with the real world while decking.

The magician must have a way to know that the program is running. Usually this is he sight, sound, or simsense feedback of the spell formula being displayed. It can also be a chime or cue unrelated to the spell formula. If the magician does not know for a fact that the program is running then the geas is broken.

There are many advantages and disadvantages to E-talismans. If an audio cue and voice recognition are used then a magician to fufill the gease so long as his computer is within voice range but everyone will hear it. The executables are easily transfered and copied between computers but doing so might infinge on spell formula copyrights. If all of a magician's e-talismans are lost then he can't just buy a new computer, he also has to have more talismans custom programed.

Edit: Because there is no such thing as a spirit formula except for ally spirits, a magician can have any image, sound, text, or sense recording that represents that spirit type in the magician's mind incorporated into a summoning E-talisman. Mages usually use scans for their summoning libraries.

[fistandantilus4....]

Very neat idea. I see that being used by chaos mages especially

[Lady Door]

Ooooh... more fun things to put into my game. Thanks, H.

[Aku]

so is having a display link and a file playing from headware memory allowed? If so, that could, in my opinion, be easily abused. Also, is there a minimum file size/play time for the media? or could i have a single frame "flash" movie that has the whole spell formula? Again, another potential abuse, as i'm sure i could fit a whole lot of spell formula's on 100MP if each one was a looped single frame.

[hyzmarca]

That's why it has to be an exectuable file instead of a simple media file. You can't run it from headware memory unless you have something with a processor and an OS that you can run it on. You can connect to any external computer, including a deck or a pocket secretary, via datajack but that isn't any more abusable than the talisman geas.

The only way to abuse it is to get a cranial cyberdeck. Considering the essence cost of headware memory and a cranial cyberdeck you'll need more than one geas to make up for the magic loss.

As for size, it is just the size of the executable plus the size of the media file. There are no limits on the size of the media file because there are no limits on the size of a single spell formula that I am aware of. I don't see this as being absuable. A magician can get but with just a single talisman wristwatch that he has dozens of copies of in his closet. It is no more unbalancing to have a single pocket secretary to hold all of is e-talismans with dozens of optical chip backups.

I suppose the most efficient way to abuse e-talismans would be to have a pocket secretary installed into a cyberforearm. Still, it is a much greater investment than the toe ring of +1 magic.


At any rate, all house rules (and all canon rules are that matter) are subject to GM interperation. If the GM feels that that a particular set-up is abusive then the GM should disallow it.

[Aku]

erm, sorry, captain dumbass here again... sorry, thats what i get for reading when i wake up... nothing to see here, cool idea

[frostPDP]

Hyz, VERRRYYY clever. Its nice!

[viggo]

I like the story setup too :)

I'll let my DM know about this.

[Ol' Scratch]

I've used something almost exactly like this before in the past. :) Another program I came up with for the same character created complex hermetic circles out of meticulously placed mirrors and various colored laser projectors.

There's nothing at all abusable about either aspects -- at least no more than any other geasa, fetishes, or stylistically choices -- as they're there for pure flavor. I never even bothered coming up with special rules or anything else for them, and used all the standard prices. Even Computers (Programming) wasn't a requirement as the process by which the chaos magician coded the "programs" totally defied conventional coding anyway. :D

[nick012000]

A physical adept character I'm playing has a talisman geas of "music playback unit, with a wolf's head engraved, playing 'fight music'". She also has an incantation geas (singing along). :cyber:

[mfb]

one thing i'm curious about: what happens if someone else picks up the computer and runs the program? does the mage automatically cast the indicated spell?

[Ol' Scratch]

Dunno about hyz's, but the version I came up with just had the program as an aid in spellcasting just like any other fetish/focus -- the magician just couldn't cast the spell without it.

[hyzmarca]