Right, so I am planning out my Technomancer for a future game, and so I decided I had better get Unwired for all those nice shiny new Matrix rules. One, Unwired is a horrible, horrible book ( ) and two I cant get my head around Linking. The rule is written out in a ... confusing manner that doesnt actually seem to mean anything to me.

Linking (Long -Term Registering)
A compiling technomancer can semi-permanently script
a registered sprite to a task or set of tasks (so called linking) by
paying Karma equal to its rating. Once linked with Karma, the
sprite no longer counts against the technomancer’s limit for
registered sprites, and any remaining services are lost. The linked
sprite will remain at its final service 256 days, unless decompiled
or disrupted, in which case it will return to its duties after 16 days
minus its rating (see Crashing Sprites, p. 154).

Right, OK, I get that I pay the Rating Karma Cost and that it does stuff to that Sprite. I understand the registering rules just fine, and I get that this essentially registers the Sprite to me for 256 days. Its that bit in the middle that escapes me. I can see that having an extra Sprite following me about with no regard to me current registration limit can be handy as hell (Whee, one more Paladin to keep my mushy, mushy head from being fried) but what else does it do?

Does it essentially give me a Sprite without a task limit? And when it says Services is that just a syntax error and it means task? Help me Dumbshock-onobee, your my only hope!

You lose the registration and it just performs the last task you've asked of it for 256 days. This is unchangable.


Okay, so I've been historically proven to be a bad communicator. Let me give an example that's coming up in current game. I am, goodness forbid, playing a Techno (ick, I feel horrible all over). One of my teammates has Gremlins II and the GM has interpreted this as meaning the guy has extremely intermittent AR, which really annoys me (my character wears AR clothing over a boring jeans+tshirt combo). I've compiled and registered a Rating 1 Machine Sprite - it rolled a critical glitch on its registration test so I got 8 services out of it (GM ruling). I've since expended a task for it to continuously use Stability on the Gremlinsed guy's 'link.

When I get some karma (I'm going to get some for writing up the obnoxious Data Haven threads my character generates) this character will Link the Machine Sprite to its current task for 1 karma. I strike the Machine Sprite off my sheet (wasting the 7 remaining tasks) and it continues to use Stability on the guy's commlink for 256 days. I can't tell it to go do something else, and if a person logs into the 'link and attacks the Sprite then it does not respond. Like, at all. It dies and respawns in 15 days, then continues to Stabilise the 'link.

Makes sense...

Note that for a normal registered sprite, the continual use of a power or doing one thingy uses up 1 task for every 8 hours it spends doing said thingy. Which makes spending karma very very nice.

My TM has spent 1 karma to put a rating 1 sprite in the biomonitor hardened stealth tag on the group's adopted kid. Sprite monitors the biomonitor and communicates via resonance instantly if any of the info goes out of normal limits (which really bums out the 13 year old boy; imagine what happened the first time we assumed an adrenaline spike meant he was in danger and a group of 4 Shadowrunners armed to bear burst in on his date...).

Ah right, so its the exact same as the Street Magic "Long Term Binding" ... wait a moment, its just a copy and paste of that rule! The horror!

It was the use of the phrase Services that was throwing me off I think, thanks for the help.