With the remote service and good intel, elemental make relentless assassin's. Depenant on force their intellengence can be higher than most humans and in some cases very high IQ's.
For mundanes the fear of such spectral killer must poses some threat and apprehension.
How do you think this would manifest on the street?
In slang? In culture? In practice of the mega corps and the mage societies? In the minds and actions of mundane runners?

Playing a mage character, I doubt I would send off an Elemental on an assassination mission.

There's too much of a chance it would be captured or otherwise lead the target back to me.

"If you're going to kill someone, stick your sword in him." ~ Belgarath the Sorcerer

Risky and expensive, for most mundanes the threat of elemental assassins won't be significantly greater than the risk of ordinary assassins (for a couple thousand nuyen you could probably hire a ganger to off most ordinary Joes). More important people already have to be protected against mages, so they're already protected.

~J

don't summoned spirits carry the astral sig of their summoner?

Yes.

~J

isn't there a way to offset that? can masking help?

I'm not sure. Changing your signature when you initiate might be able to, if you summon the elemental prior to initiating.

~J

I'm wondering what leads you to believe it's possible to rule that way.

As for your example, why no? Not only is it not worry-free (unless the possibility of failure is totally unworrying), it's hideously expensive—it means giving up a significant guaranteed benefit at initiation for a variable-value gamble.

~J

err... don't have my book in front of me, but isn't there a 'Flexible Signature' metamagic in the core book that makes your aura/signature appear different, as well as making astral signature go away faster?

edit:sorry, SR4

While it's a scary possibility, I don't think its anymore likely or scarier than mundane assassination.

One, mages willing to be assassinate are probably at least as rare as mundane assassins.

Two, I don't see why their intelligence is important. IMO, it's not like elementals can or like to problem solve in the mundane plane as they have no familiarity or interest in human affairs. I don't imagine an elemental doing anything with tact, if that's what you mean.

Three, as mentioned, there is also the issue that elementals always give away the person who "hired" them.

could you not order the killing, and then order them to erase the signature and leave?

A high Intelligence in an elemental assassin isn't neccessarily a good thing.

Remember that spirits aren't the most willing of servants. An elemental with a high Intelligence is likelier to use that high Intelligence to pervert the intentions of its orders, or to cause complications for the summoning mage. A lot of that may depend on how the summoner treats his elementals, of course.

It might matter how a summoner treats his spirits or elementals if the spirits or elementals were independent beings, but they are not. They are merely manifestations of the summoner's will, and as such, disobedience from them indicates nothing more than disorder in the summoner's own mind.

Damn "spirit rights" activists.

~J

It's ongoing death/emotion/magic use that creates background count. (Except for very large does of one of these, which create a permanent background count.)

So all you need to do is stop killing people, stop any bystanders from screaming or carrying on, stop using spirit powers. Summoning a (somewhat powerful) spirit might, if you're a pain in the ass GM, cause a brief background count of 1. A spirit hanging around, or a spell simply being sustained, does not.

What can't be Cleansed under SR3 rules is a site with ongoing emotional output - a torture chamber with living victims, a prison with inmates, a hospital with patients, a particularly soulless and grim cubicle farm with wageslaves at work.

I didn't say elementals weren't well-equipped for combat. I still don't think an elemental would do a crafty job killing anyone. Just move in astrally, manifest, do the job and depart ASAP. Elementals are supposed to be very single-minded.

If subtley is an issue, this is also important. A mundane assassin may kill the target discretely in any manner or a mage could cast spells at a distance, but an elemental has no choice but to make an obvious appearance and use violent means.

And while a mage could sit back in a corporate enclave while their elemental does the dirty work, if any magician is present at the scene then the summoner's signature at the time is known and they can still be traced back to the enclave. Even if the mage isn't indentified personally, it may be more obvious what group is responsible while a good covert operative may never be identified at all.

There's also the issue of astral barriers, which spirits just can't get around without alerting someone (if they jump metaplanes, that's an extra service so they have to attack on a remote service).

I'm not saying elementals don't make good assassins. They do seem like they would be rare and lack subtlety.

Umm..

I thought cleansing removed background counts, and you had to use sorcery to remove your astral signature?

I don't have MITS on hand to be certain, but I seem to recall the two being different. Or at least, I vividly recall my GM saying that they're explicitly different.

And even if they aren't -- why would cleansing leave any residue behind? It's the act of cleaning up a background count. Saying it creates one is counter-intuitive. Picking up a mess creates one?

I see I need to be more specific. Think not in the terms of the shadowrunners using elementals as assassins but rather elementals being sent to kill a mundane shadowrunner.
Direct and lacking in subtly but that dosen't matter where the SINless barren living runner is concerned.
My question relates to the effects this tactic would have on the street slang and culture.

Sorry, you did say runners... I was actually thinking corp vs. corp. I would be a scared little street sammie to wake up with an elemental in my bedroom. :eek:

Except for the fear factor. Shadow runners are usaed to shooting people and being shot at. They are less used to fighting living flames that wish to burn them alive.
Or am I being simplistic?
Also the standard rate for wet work is ten thousand, so an elemental would cost at most six thousand and bit for the mage would it really be cheaper if you hire talent comsumate to the challenge?

Using an elemental as a trigger-thing would be a vicious card to play, and one that only the Awakened would traditionally be in the least prepared to resist. Being engulfed by an Elemental would be the sort of thing most runners would hope only to experience in simsense horror. It'd be brutally effective, nigh-impossible to resist and, if done properly, chances are the body won't be found before the astral signature has worn away. It's not like you'd need a force-8 fire elemental to reduce Bob the Samurai to a small pile of ash. Also, it doesn't have to be the summon, engulf and eliminate route every time- with a little planning and forethought on the part of the summoning mage and care given in the issued instructions, almost any method available to the physical assassin is available to the ethereal one, with the added advantage that there will be a reduced or non-existant level of physical evidence remaining. And how many police departments (normally understaffed and overstretched at the best of times) are going to be able to get an Awakened detective or forensic specialist on the scene in short order?

As to its place in the vernacular: Ghosted? Wizwhacked?

-JH.

Thanks Blaze your first person to actuial post a reply to my question.
Perhapes "having a demon on his tail" might be entered into the vernacular.

I try.

I note also that nearly everyone has assumed assassination must go down the pistol-to-the-back-of-the-head route. Or sniping, or cleaving in half with a fire axe- you get the idea: overt killings. In my book, a successful assassination is one where two and two aren't put together for hours, days or weeks (or, hopefully, never). Elementals have their uses for this- gas main explosions? Sudden freak subsidence? Unexplained windshear? Catastrophic aircon failure leading to suffocation? Drowning due to sudden density changes in water?

-JH.

Nothing like a sub-two-minute worst-case response time. I can see how Lone Star got their contract.

~J

So even though my GFSotE can cleanse the area in 12 complex actions its own signature will still be glaringly obvious when the astral detective comes projecting to the scene of the crime. Shame. Looks like the GFSotE might need a Watcher Attack Pack ™ entourage.

Watchers on their own are very easily killed but when you have a normal spirit (whether that is an elemental, a spirit of the elements, or an ally spirit) and you know it's going to be in astral combat, you can summon your maximum number of watcher spirits and send them along with the primary spirit to give an insane Friends in Combat bonus to the primary spirit.

In this case the idea was to ambush the astral investigator and beat him to pulp with the GFSotE, with the watchers providing Friends in Combat to make sure the SotE wins each round.

It's a cheap trick, and one that can easily provoke the dm into having a retaliation watcher pack follow you around astrally and smash you every time you perceive or project.

Perhapes I should of used the term hit instead of asassination. My thought was this was more to send a message tactic than to be subtle, though with the right worded instruction this is possible approach. "Kill him/her when she is alone etc"