>>>[A decker friend found this on Virtual Light and Magic's corporate Matrix site. Not knowing magic, he asked my opinion on it. It looks legit, and some of it is downright interesting. I've cut out all the dry magical theory stuff; anyone Awakened who's interested in working this out practically with me is welcome to contact me at ialdabaoth@shadowland.denver.ucas ]<<<
Ialdabaoth
In vita/non Pacem/Est

What, nothin'?

It sounds like VLM started their own LARP of some variety.
Crazy buggers. Maybe I'll have to rewrite their rules a bit.

~J

Well, sort of - it's a LARP for people who can actually *DO* this shit for real.

Basically, you have a bunch of Awakened people whose ENTIRE WAY OF DOING MAGIC is a derivative of copyrighted fictional works. VLM can either sue them ("By order of the District Court of Virginia, I order you to become mundane!") or recruit them. What's more cost-effective?

..............That's either amazingly brilliant or massively fragging stupid.
Either way, I now must definitely take the time to alter their rules.

~J

>>>[God help me, I never expected VLM to actually encourage their employees to follow that kind of ridiculous code.

I grew up in the City, and for those of you that don't know, VLM is centered in Marin County, CFS, just north of San Fran. It's the bottom end of the wine country, and is pretty much overrun - or was, when I lived there - with yuppies. VLM and its' people were sort of a 'public secret', namely just about everyone knew someone who worked there, but nobody ever really talked about it. It was just one of the local businesses, rez?

I'd always heard stories that there were some hefty magical types out there, but I pretty much stayed clear; when you're a student at the University of Fuchi California at Berkeley, you tend to be a tad overworked, especially if you're a science major.

If I scan this properly, they've been at this for a while - it isn't something new. This is just a formalization of their training process, once again proving that magic is only what you believe in, even if it's a retarded obsession with Star Trek Wars. And they've copyrighted every goddamn thing possible.

On behalf of magically active Californians the world over, I apologise. I don't know what they're smoking.]<<<
-Adarael
"There exists no excellent beauty which hath not a strangeness of the proportion."
-Sir Francis Bacon

>>>[I can tell you one thing, though: It works. Said 'decker friend' and his team just got their hoops handed to them by these guys. The video footage his drone sent back before it got geeked is something to behold... these three fourteen-year-old kids, decked out in soft wool robes, come spilling into the corridor, doing end-over-end summersaults and tumbles... they all land on their feet in a perfect samurai 'sword-ready' crouch, but no swords... then the little metal sticks in their hands light up.

The sammie pulls his gun from his holster, and one of the kids just calmly reaches his hand out, and the gun flies out of the sam's hand... then the gun-bunny behind the sam opens up, and these kids start DEFLECTING BULLETS WITH THEIR SWORDS. I hadn't even realized that level of fine-control was possible, especially not in teenagers who couldn't have been Initiated for more than a year or two.

So, the sammie pulls his cyberspurs and jumps in, and one of the kids just flips over his head, somehow twisting in mid-air and lopping his hands off, as the one of the other kids yanks the SMG from the gunbunny. Then the third kid uses a Levitation spell to lift the handless sam into the air, as the first kid lands face-to-face with the gunbunny and points the end of his glowing magic sword against his neck. Gunbunny surrenders, sam surrenders, jedi #1 steps on drone, video feed ends.

Knowing what I know about these sams, they're not that experienced or professional, so they shouldn't feel TOO bad about getting tossed by a bunch of kids... but damn, that's some hot shit they're teaching them.]<<<
-Ialdabaoth
"In vita non pacem est"

>>>{Bah! Any group of mundane gun bunnies without magical backup will get their heads handed to them every time when facing three spellslingers.]<<<
-Fortune
"Chance favors the prepared mind."

>>>[I strongly doubt they were spellslingers; that kind of speed and agaility is course de rigeur for physical adepts. And, not to cast any kind of aspersions on my more bookish compatriots, Mages and Shamans aren't exactly known for their physical prowess, most of the time. No, I would wager they were PhysAds with some kind of Anchored or Quickened backup powers.

If they're hard enough to block bullets with their 'swords', I'm gonna hazard a guess that they had some kind of wide-area barrier going on them; more likely than striking the bullets with their bars, they angled that spell-shield and knocked them away. That's not *so* unusual in the world of men who can run up walls - re: ninjas and physads.

Shoulda brought along a full magician of some brand, though. Probably would've caught them totally without recourse.]<<<

-Adarael
"There exists no excellent beauty without some strangeness in the proportion."
-Sir Francis Bacon

>>>[I'm not so sure. The telekenesis trick sure LOOKED like a spell, although the image quality was a bit grainy - and some of the technical documents I've got look a lot like Spell Formulae... wacked-out versions of Lightning Bolt, Magic Fingers, that sort of thing, but from a very bent perspective. I think this is some sort of subconsciously-motivated magical tradition, like that Australian "psychic" on the 'trid last year.]<<<

>>>[Yeah Right. Like you can 'make' someone a physical adept capable of casting spells. Last I heard that was still an unproved ability. Even if there are people who can sling spells and a killing hands with equal ease, you reckon VLM can find 'em? Nah. And I don't beleive even a corp can change the way someone does magic. You look at all the hermetic drop outs who went on to find out it was because they were actually shaman! Its a PR exercise, I'm betting. Sure maybe some of em MIGHT be phys-mages as I call em, but the majority will be straight adepts or spell slingers, betcha.]>>>


ooc: sorry for the OOC, but man, I'm so stealing all of that for my campaign! Ignore the IC criticism, Spotlite always was an idiot.

Some years ago a group of players here decided to do just this (though they aren't all physical mages) but with a group of dark jedi. One of them, in the course of other things, got himself put through the rite of progression and got made a Count (he was already the one below that through other means). his name - yep, Palpatine. It was all really cheesy to start with and I had major doubts, but its actually become quite fun when they occasionally get broken out to play with.

They all have to construct their own lightsabers, which is a unique enchantment each time (though they don't deflect bullets because of how the spell was designed), etc etc. And they also, more importantly, consider themselves the True Followers so this little corporate coup might divert them from their attempts to take over the Tir (which realistically they'll fail at, but it won't stop them trying) in order to 'deal' with these rivals. Joy! Two completely different IC approaches to the same OOC mechanic will make for some interesting battles and npcs...

Sorry. Back to the IC stuff...

I'm not sure if they really would hire that many psyads or just an attempt to make us think they do, but VLM is trying to improve it's public image. Ever since Newsnet described some of VLM's over agressive sec guards in the Altamont section of SF as "Storm Troopers" it's really rankled at the corp level.
I think they've got their ears on backward though. It wasn't the name that caused a drop off in visitors to the park, it was the images of the guards hitting a grandmotherly Ork , who they said didn't get out of the way fast enough, with a taser.

Now they are stressing look friendly and cheerful. Someone please tell me those guys at least have armored vests on under those dumb robes.
I've heard that the "jedi oath" really is binding becasue the ceremony includes taking a tissue sample so the Big Jedi have a serious hold over the lesser guards.

Hoy, terms. Figure I'd weigh in on this one...

I've not got any personal experience with these guys-all my data's friend of a friend. But, being an armchair theoretician is a Hermetic tradition (bad pun, I acknowledge).

I'd wager that you have a combination of phys-mages, phys-ads, and mages in this Initiatory group (although I have some slight reservations about that last...)

Scan this, chummers. Star Wars™ has been around for 87 fraggin' years! That's longer that a lot of the 'religions' out there (The Universal Brotherhood leaps to mind, but that was a bit different. The 'Fool-owers' on the 'Big D(ead)' as a Dragon totem have been around a much shorter time, and yet they're getting the ability to sling mojo from somehwere. Anyone see where this is heading?).

Classically, a generation's twenty years, so that's four generations worth of information-and possibly belief. I've scanned tera-pulses of data on how this old flick (pre-simsense, even-yeesh!) speaks to the collective psyche and keys into Universal Archetypes.

We Hermetics have a theory about a group of Entitites called Egregores. Thoughts have power and presence on the astral metaplanes. When you get enough people together, believing in the same concept, an Egregore forms-an astral being separate from the individual members of the group-things like the UCAS, or concepts like Liberty or Gaia. (Some of us theorize that that's where Totems came from...) You CAN use these principals to forge your own entities-the origin of most Servitors. Get enough of the right 'flavour' astral energy to coalesce and-Happy Birthday.

So, I figure these Jedi™ are cashing in on this century old egregore that's been kicking around in the collective sub-conscious for a good while now. In the Awakenings Download, Talon mentions that groups CAN guide the development of their members-which MAY actually limit some member's growth. I figure that might happen here, but since they've got almost a century of belief going, the Initiates may already have a natural inclination to develop along those paths and particular abilities, especially if their fathers/grandfathers 'believed'.

I figure most of these guys to be Hermetic, if the reports I've seen are accurate. Most of the PhysAds seem to follow the Silent Way (Awakenings, again), although I've heard rumours of a splinter group (calling themselves the Cyst or Xith) that may follow the Twisted Path.

But, I've got to wonder-what if these folks have manufactured their own Totem? From what I've learned of their philosophy and practices, it seems Shamanic. Maybe they follow an Ideal or Path (with soem Passion, I admit) like the Tir elves? The Xith splinter group could be Toxic shamans. The major flaw in this theory is-has anyone seen a Force spirit?

Scary thought-shouldn't there be Egregore for the Mega-Corporations? Thousands of SINners working for them, many 'believing'-now I'm worried. And if these MagaCorp 'Totems' can grant spells-frag.

R

>> I got into a bit of a spar with a couple of these bad boys, and it was no cake-walk. Even got a nice trophy, one of them saber deals, but no matter how much I try, I can't get it to work. Anyhows, despite the vast list of powers they are suppose to possess, their magic itself is weak due to a strong dependancy on their physical prowess, and none of the ones I fought had even half the powers listed. Looking forward to an encounter with a Master Jedi some day though.

Sphynx

>>The most important spells that the MegaCorp spirits grant are "Corperate Takeover," "Corperate Downsizing," and " Corperate Merger"

I don't trust these guys farther than I can throw them using the frotn bimpber of my pick up!
A few months ago I was in CFS, kicking back, spending some well earned and there was one of these guys in a bar. We talked, he was cute. We were talknig and He seemed really nice. I mean really really nice, like when he was smiling at me all was right with the world. Now usually i'm a lot more careful about guys in bars and all but thise was a nice safe friendly pr type, right?

Well someone distracted him, called out and he looked away. At that mommnet it was like a light shutting off. It wasn't that I was irritated some one had distracted him, it was as soon as his attention wasn't on me all that feelnig dropped away and I was back to being myself. When I realized what I was feeling it scared me. So much so that I must have been nervous, I just happened to bump into a passing waitress who dumped a whole pot of fresh soycaff onto his crotch.

Ooops!