Here's another silly spirit idea.

Given that there are lots of free spirits out there, and surely some of them can be bought--if paid enough karma, or favors, or whatnot--why are the really rich not all immortal?

Is there any reason for Damien Knight to allow himself to grow old and die, when he can send dozens of initiated mages out to the metaplanes to find a spirit willing to cut a deal? Karma? He can make any number of people rich in exchange for their karma. Money? Yeah. Favors? He's got a small army of mages. So, a Formula Pact (and maybe a Life Pact, too) in exchange for taking care of that bug problem leaking into your metaplane?

And if he can do it, where does it logically end?

Spirit Pacts for immortality, plus leonization for the wealthy means that the downtrodden shall forever remain under the well trained heel of the modern immortal overclass. Not just in the metaphorical sense, but the literal sense. Even corporations, as legal entities, are immortal in a sense beyond that of the employees who form them.

Are you talking about the Immunity to Age from the Formula/Spirit Pact?

If so, I can see a couple of reasons as per pg 108 of Street Magic.

1. You can now be used (or use yourself) as the spirit's formula for any purpose.

Depending on who that spirit has fragged off.... you might become a high profile target for someone wanting to use the spirit.

2. Ending the pact without the death of one or both participants usually isn't possible..... <snip> Anytime a character and a spirit have a pact, either party may be used as a sympathetic link to the other or to astrally track the other.

Umm... dunno about you, but it sounds like it could turn into a really bad deal to me - especially if its an initiatory group that gets ahold of the spirit.

I thought this thread was going to be about ghouls.

The title got my hopes up...

"Millions wish for immortality that don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

Ahh, but a Formula Pact is forever (as noted, for better and for worse), so there's nothing to be maintained... just a one-time transaction with a spirit.

And yes, there are risks involved... but there are risks involved for *breathing* if you're rich and powerful. If done intelligently (additional quests to hide the link, disguise the "branding" in the aura, intelligent selection of a spirit unlikely to cause "problems", etc.), those risks can be more or less managed.

Again, this is something that the rich or well-connected (or mages with a *lot* of free time for metaplanar legwork) would be doing. But would the costs ever really outweigh the benefit of agelessness?

And yes, a cabal of 20 mages could get it for all of them, if they manage to swing the deal that way.

One additional note... the most likely spirits to cooperate, I'd think, would be the very weak (low Logic, low Social, more likely to be swayed by a couple dozen karma), and the very, *very* strong (as in, strong enough to beat down a great dragon if it tried to call it down and bind it), who could afford to "sell" pacts to a number of parties at relatively low risk.

Left unchecked, aging will without a doubt kill you. Even a fairly onerous deal with a fairly malevolent spirit becomes fairly attractive as you close in on the point of no return. Leonization is far from perfected, after all.

Positive Quality: Spirit Pact (1). Formula Pact.

There are worse things than death in this world, worse by far.

Leonization is far from perfected it has only been around for about thirty years. I am sure folks with ALOT of money make sure that research in perfecting the process is always pushing forward.

Even with the GM imposed limited number of times Leonization can be done, if technology keeps pushing forward, a wealthy person who does it only every 50 years should only have to go through it twice before some form of sustainable Unaging is discovered.

And this doesn't even include the Elves. Given their lifespans of 'hundreds of years', Leonization should be perfected before they hit middle age.

If I were immortal I'd make a Deus Ex mod. No shit!

If I were immortal I'd try to pull some really shady real-estate speculation. Like say, buying up the rights to the kupier belt (after all, no one is using it right now) and any other parts of the solar system I can swing. I would go for something like the Astroid belt but it has much more foreseeable economic uses and so some people might catch on.

Actually this might make for a good 'run idea. Some Immortal Elf hires some runners to cause the opposition to his buying up parts of the solar system to go away, via any means necessary. Mmm... I like it already.

Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky.

One could also assume that the spirits offering these sorts of pacts are exceedingly rare or hard to find. Maybe they require you do something to gain their notice. Of course, if you can't find the spirit without doing this thing, you won't know what it is you need to do to have it notice you. Magic is fickle. That's why pacts aren't a substitute for leonization.

Typically, people who seek immortality are generally done in by their own hubris, one way or the other. (Of course, its possible the legends were written by disgruntled people who were jealous of the spirit pacts.) But it's hard to imagine a SR game with a timetable that would be affected by immortal creatures, or that a timeline with immortal creatures would really be all that different. I don't think immortality would automatically make people any more competent or any less short-sighted.

It's also extremely likely that there already are a few powerful corporate heads out there who have gone ahead and made spirit pacts, they just aren't advertising it.

I would think that since the spirits have only been around long enough for one leonization to really be necessary that people very well may have spirit pacts it just isn't showing yet.

Chris

All of this of course assumes that this freed ally has an interest in or ability to enter into all of these pacts. Correct me if I missed something in Street Magic, but the rules don't say that every free spirit is, by their nature, able to enter into any pact. In fact, since pacts can take almost any form, not merely those listed, I would say it varies quite a bit from one spirit to the next which pacts they can enter. Or even if they can at all.

That's my source of game balance here. The ability to convince a spirit that a pact is a good idea is half the job. The other half is finding the spirit you need.

And, in terms of flavor and style, I prefer the idea of the spirit who approaches the person with the offer. But that's a personal preference.

You are correct, but a little extra karma after being freed will allow the spirit to initiate and pick up powers it didn't have access to as an ally. Even Karma Drain is possible, albeit a *much* less useful version than what you would get from a muse or succubus.

Immortality that works *forever*, or just through the Sixth World? Do you get to keep the benefits during the low-magic Seventh World?

(shrug) NPCs seeking immortality might be good patrons/employers for Shadowrun. But how many SR PCs actually get played long enough to be affected by aging?

How do immortal elves feel about Leonization? Do any of them see it as competition and wish it to become unavailable?

If I happened to own a Leonization clinic, I'd add some psychotropic conditioning to the process. Influential, wealthy people are my *favorite* subjects for post-hypnotic triggers!

Good novel on life extension technology and social effects: "Buying Time" by Haldeman.

Well can't you trade a dream pact with a spirit for immortality? I mean hells if its a high force spirit you are pretty much truly a 24/7 corporate machine. Anyways remembering that elves live centuries, and have been around for years at this point, some corps already have officers that are pushing sixty, and still out doing the junior partner.

Just as an aside, I don't think the Immortal Elves like Harlequin were elves at all, I think they were free spirits. The Harlequin and Harlequin's Back adventures said they had Essence 8 and they had all kinds of spirit powers, including some sort of teleportation that looked suspiciously like astral metaplanar travel. All this is easily explained if they were free spirits instead of high-initiate mages. Of course, maybe there's a level past initiation (ascension?) that transforms the initiate mage into a free spirit.

deus ex machina...

Earthdawn spells cover most of it, but not sure on the essence, maybe they're bodies are just easier to heal (as it never says he has 8 essence just that you treat him as such).

"Ray, when someone asks if you're a god, you say YES!"

The teleporting is a Lightbringer power from Earthdawn, no?

Apart from him being a high-end double-digit mystic adept with dozens of vanilla metamagic, spells, and adept power, pretty much all the special powers that Harlequin shows in HiB may be recognized as Lighbearers powers. It was a Fourth World high-power crusader mystic adept magical group which specialized in fighting Horrors and drew power from the life-force of Earth. No need whatsoever to think of him as a free spirit (and even if it were, a mystic adept with millennia of experience could easily have all kinds of free spirit powers from standing spirit pacts).

Combining Dream Pact with another Spirit Pact with the same spirit, if at all possible, is a very clever thing to do, since it provides a nifty way to provide for all the Karma needs of the spirit (except for the Life Pact costs, which are mandatory) and reap goodwill at zero cost for the mage, plus giving the mage a powerful bodyguard. The only issue is that the character will occasionally have to deal with the messes created by the spirit's lack of familiarity with metahuman issues.

I'd hypothesize that an immortlaity sustained by a spirit pact might lose effectiveness during the low-mana parts of the Cycle, as free spirits typically retreat from Earth, but it's not a sure thing. Some especially powerful free spirits were known to roam Earth during the downcycle (e.g. cfr. Thais, the half-Horror entity that taught Native Aremicans the original Ghost Dance in the 1890s). It might well be that such Pacted immortals go into hibernation during the downcycle like dragons. As a matter of fact, I were to run such a case in a story (e.g. a Fourth World magician NPC sustained by a spirit pact), I'd probably use the hibernation solution.

Anyway, it may well be that in the future of the Sixth World, the combination of advanced genetics and advanced thaumaturgy will be able to crack the secret of the immortality gene which dragons, and their hybrid dragon-metahuman progeny have. We know it works during the downcycle, too, so it is not magical in nature.

So to play SR4, in addition to learning SR3, we have to learn Earthdawn too? Blech.

only if you want to play a SR2 adventure using SR4 rules

that is, if i got my editions right.

still, you dont really need to learn any of the older versions to play. its just that they help when it comes to the frame of reference the writers where working under. and you only need that if you require a explanation for why things are like they are, rather then just accepting that they are that way.

First and foremost, if Free Spirits are anything, it's arcane. The motives of even the most human-ish spirit are fairly unclear. If they ever enter into an immortality pact, it's for shady scheme that even magicians would probably have trouble conceiving.

Second, I get the impression that Free Spirits aren't exactly "common-knowledge". The extent of the average Sixth Worlder's magic knowledge ranks in somewhere around "It exists and I see it on trideo during primetime!". Now, if you figure that corporations have a more developed, albeit functionally biased understanding of magic, then you still have a very small pool of people that know jack about Free Spirits.. much less how to subjugate one.

And there's bound to be some mage who goes onto Shadowland during the '40s or '50s and says "Hay gusy, I'm immoral now!" and proceeds to brag about how he did it.

Oh, I'm certain that individual would rapidly discover that immortality is not the same thing as invulnerability... but all it takes is for the knowledge that it can be done to get out on the DDH, and you'd never get the genie back in the bottle again...