Problem: I play an so-often-mentioned darkmage and have finally found an old chapel that strangely works as an aspected domain rating 4 for me. Great thing after all, but the church is a ruin and i want to renovate this thing without somebody noticing it (just the underground levels). Unfortunately the only spirit that has an approbriate skill, is the task spirit, but it is not available to my tradition. So i am looking for an alternative (and don´t ask if I want to do it myself...no, i am a dark-mage. I don´t make my handy dirty).

Quite often the people tell about "earth-spirits that dig holes etc....but unless you give him a shovel, i see no powers that let him do so. Does somebody have a solution for me?

Spirits can Materialize. Then they can act on and effect the physical world. It can punch you, pick things up, carry things around. They can be used to help wipe after you've visited the toilet.... You don't need a Power to have it do something. So having it clean things up as a task is perfectly fine. Now, this won't give it the skills and knowledge to fix things properly, so if you need civil engineering skills it certainly won't have it, but if you know what to do, you can supervise it closely as it performs a task for you.

p. 177 SR4 "Spirits in physical form can also perform any physical task
as a service, as appropriate to their form, of course."

Learn Shape Earth.
Ally Spirit with inherent Spell Shape Earth.
I still don't know why Elementals and Spirits of the elements don't get the appropriate shape element . .

I think it is one of the things everybody takes as granted. An air-spirit that cannot make a breeze would be odd. But acc. to his powers, he can´t unless he gets "elemental attack". Weird. Shape earth isn´t exactly what i need, because he would have to fix broken stones, stone-walls etc. Too much spells needed for that (shape earth, shape stone....my GM would be creative with that) An task-spirit would be great. Is there a possibility to choose optional spirit powers that are not listed to the spirit?

One way to get a spirit outside of your tradition set is to Banish and then Summon the spirit of some other magician. Have a magician who can summon a Task Spirit summon one, and then you Banish it and Summon it. Of course, if you know a magician who can summon Task Spirits, they could simply lend it to you anyway, just like if you already know the spells, you can cast the spell yourself.

Shape earth covery anything from fine grain sand on beaches to house sized boulders of differend minerals.

There's also creative ways to use existing powers. A Spirit of Beasts could use Control Animals to get all those lovely chipmunks to go around taking out the trash, or do interior decorating.

If i would know somebody, I wouldn´t ask him because this way he would know of my little secret place. This is the only reason i don´t ask some craftsmen to to the job for me. I am a strenght-1 black mage that doesn´t know which side of the hammer is for the nails, so i won´t do it by myself. Spirits would be the only option. I know that you can learn metatechniques from other mages that are not of your tradition, so i thought it should also be possible to learn how to summon their spirits.

Nope, no dice. That's the thing with Traditions nowadays.
As long as a street has been ripped up allready, it doesn't matter what the street was made of.
It's now considered Rocks and lose Soil

A few ideas:
Control Thoughts, Erase memories etc - mental manipulatons, blindfold persons, drag them there, have them do your bidding. Not the cleanest solution but one to consider.

Similarly the tech equivalent: meat puppets with skillwires and programed loyalty - I'm sure one of the crime syndicates has something like this for skilled slave labour that doesn't complain and is unable to talk to the feds once the "conditioning" has been removed

Free spirits - find one that has the skills and powers you need, bargain with him for services or find his True Name and bind him to your unholy will. Spirit pacts to seal the deal and make his interests yours? Or just go shiv him in the Meta-planes once its done.

And I like the bansihing re-summoning trick. One of the few good uses for banishing. Problems is you need to find someone who has summoned and approprate Task Spirit for your needs. Raid a contruction site that is using Task spirits? Doesn't seem worth it since you are trying to keep a low profile.

Why dn't you just hire some discrete refurbishers, stipulating in their contract that they are to work on site, then when it's all done to your satisfaction simply do away with them in a manner appropriate to a Dark magician. IE: dope them up and sacrifice them to another Dark free spirit for bonus power/spirit pacts or maybe even bind their spirits to your unholy will.

I mean, isn't that what a Dark magician is all about anyway? Otherwise, simply summon up an Earth elemental.

If you are particularly generous give out a round of laes at the end of the day. One supervisor would have to retain his memories though, that one's memory you could alter with a spell, or just off him.

Many spirits have Influence and Confusion. Easy enough to get the spirit to get other people to do the work.

Nothing like that crew of Habitat for (Meta)Humanity congratulating themselves on job well done they did the past weekend wherever it was they can't remember anymore.

construction drones are cheap, and probably even legal. you seem to be going rather out of your way to be dark, in my opinion.

He really wants to avoid a papertrail or people who know about his lair.

But keeping it dark is half the fun *insert supervillian manic laughter here*

That said, I hadn't even thought doing something "legally" to make a dread magical lair with little to no paper trail... I think this makes one of us a weirdo.

I think it's me. MWAHAHAHA!!

I should go read the Evil Overlord list again to avoid any more hubris. I'll go do that now.

Can I have a copy too? Is that the one advising things like "I shall not have my minions wear face masks so that the hero cannot disguise himself as one of them to infiltrate my lair."?

http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

You are funny...even if I am the darkest mage on earth, i still have a GM to obey. Hiring people and killing/mind manipulating them always leaves a track and even if the people have little power, they can cause a lot of trouble. Black mages are not well liked, and I don´t want to cause any unneeded attention. If shape earth will work at my GM´s decision, i would take this solution first hand. If not....i have to see. The constuction drone could be a solution, but how expensive is something, is it intelligent enough to do what i want etc.?

the mesametric beaver comes with construction tools built in, and costs 4k nuyen. oddly enough, it doesn't come with an appropriate autosoft, but that's only an extra 600 nuyen [edit: for rating 3, the highest it can use without upgrades. you may also want to consider an appropriate knowsoft so you can tell if it's doing a decent job].

i wouldn't trust it to design a new house for you or anything, but basic repairs, maintenance, and such should be well within it's limitations.

I will try this, thank you.