I recently had a rather interesting idea for a character: the son of a Renraku Wage mage who's enough of a bastard to try to make as many magically active babies as possible so that he can either rope them into service with Renraku (and get promoted because of it) or failing that, sell them to underground slavery rings. So essentially what he was doing was magical selective breeding, finding various female metahuman magicians who also work for the Corp and one way or another (if you get my drift) getting them pregnant and then blackmailing them into not telling the higher ups and keeping the resultant kid.

Now where does my character come in? Well he's not a full-fledged magician or adept (not even an aspected one)-he's merely got a spirit knack. Needless to say, this pissed my dad off-he saw me as a waste of an investment of time and resources. So this character has grown up with no mother and an abusive, manipulative, and resentful father-and the only thing he really has to be proud of, and the only reason why his father doesn't toss him out on the streets is because of his minor magical talent. As such, he's grown to treasure his relationships with Spirits of man, and to treasure his own gift-meager though it may be. The thing is that he wants more than that-he wants to be a "real mage". Not only to make his father proud (in some twisted way he still craves that-after he found out they were related), but because he can't stand it anymore in the stifling and boring atmosphere of the Corp.

So as we all know, there is no normal way for a character with a Knack to raise their magic above 1. What about other, more esoteric ways for my character to grasp at power? I guess what I'm asking is for evocative and interesting ideas on how he could go about "making his old man proud".

harnesing a free spirit that has energy drain (magic). making a unique enchantment/device from fab to steal magic.

nothing by the book that i can think of.

Of course, the offspring of two magicians is no more likely to be Awakened than the offspring of two mundanes. There's no muggle genetics in SR.

That might be true, but I'd certainly imagine that there are numerous superstitions amongst less-informed mages and shamans about "magical families" that might lead a desperate individual to do something like what my character's dad is trying to do.

Spirit pacts? If his trick is Spirits of man, he could find/summon a really powerful spirit of man, or get hold of a spirit formula for a free spirit of man or something, and make it create a spirit pact with him to give him more power, or if one was a greatform spirit, he could have it endow him with its power(s)... Or he could bind (can you bind if you have only a spirit knack?) a spirit of man to him to cast spells or powers or whatever on him and sustain them... Or maybe he could resort to blood magic, toxic magic, or insect spirit inhabitation, seeing as I have no clue what those things' limitations are. He also could have a possession knack rather than a materialization knack, allowing him to take the spirits into himself, making him more powerful, andI think he could use their powers (though I'm not sure of the possession rules).

Does any of that help?

What if it's not a Knack but a Latent Awakening? Or perhaps he's a full-fledged mage with just serious geas issues?

The idea of a spirit pact to get him more power is an interesting one-are there any by-the book ways for a spirit to grant him additional magic, the ability to cast spells or both through a spirit pact? If not, what interesting in game ways could you suggest for him to achieve these things?

Technically Spirit Pacts can do whatever the GM likes. Personally, I'd suggest sending him down to the Aleph Society to make a Pact with the Black Moon.

Yes, there's a spirit pact in Street Magic that does exactly this and is -surprise!- called Magic Pact.
It's on p.108 of Street Magic and means that you can temporarily boost your Magic attribute, whereas the spirit gets to use your Edge.
Directly below this, you'll find the rules for Power Pact, which grants spirit powers in exchange for the spirit being able to use your spells.
Which won't work with your character, as he doesn't know any spells, but there's always the option of the spirit just accepting karma as a payment.

Read this one a little closer. See that "if any" in parenthesis after "one of the character's spells"? Giving the spirit your spell is not a requirement if you have none to give.

Fantastic-that'll work as a temporary solution, but I see my character as wanting the whole shebang permanently without loss of his faculties. This isn't an attempt to get something for nothing on my part, but a part of the character-I see him as someone who might (as he grows more desperate) do practically anything in order to become a real magician.

Maybe you could simply buy the Magician quality, along with Magic at a low rating and a middling-low summoning skill, then say that maybe, subconsciously, he resented his father's attempted manipulations, and thus limited himself. And later on, perhaps he will be able to overcome this mental block to become the full magician that he had the potential to be all along. Maybe a somewhat self-serving free spirit will offer him power, for a price, seeing that his limitations are mainly self-inflicted, and easily done away with by suggesting that he has been "granted power".

Sorry, worded that one a bit unclear.
Just trying to say that the spirit would not get the usual benefits out of the pact, but could still offer the pact in exchange for something else.
Karma likely being the preferred currency.



If your character is an ork, there is an option to retroactively gain the Magician Quality during gameplay...it involves white fur and rather extravagant culinary preferences...it also turns him into a monster, if it doesn't outright kill him, but it works.

Just go find a wendigo and convince it to infect you.
Odds are, the wendigo will convince your character of almost anything instead (being a mind-controlling monstrosity has it's advantages) and turn him into it's slave, kitchen aid, dining companion/cult member and later into it's lunch, but that's the most likely prerequisite for becomming a wendigo anyway.

Well, many prominent sixth-world scientists have speculated about the evidence of the "magus gene", though no one's found it. But the existence of mana-sensitive genes that result in the expression of the different metatypes does lend some credence to the theory. So it's concievably possible that a character could believe that they could produce mages (or at least a higher possibility of producing mages) with some selective breeding.

Agreed. Just about every SR campaign I've played in have operated under the assumption that genetics had some impact on the likelihood that a child would ultimately be Awakened. Having mage/adept parents in no way guaranteed that a child would be Awakened themselves, but did seem to make it more likely. With metatypes being inherited it makes sense that their would be some genetic aspect even if it doesn't follow a clean pattern and comes out of the fuzzy world of metagenes.

Oh it's there, allright.
It's just in Fluff. One of the Novels basically has this as the main Plot Device.
The only one really good for rigger-fans to boot. dear Air. Which i seem to have lost.
*wild cursing ensues here* -.-

Is that really a known fact? Got any reference to cite? I'm just curious.

By the way, does anyone know roughly how (un)common it is to be awakened in the sixth world? I recall reading that its very rare, yet it seems like every odd security outfit and military unit had a mage of some sort included, not even getting into runnes where vitually every team got adepts, mages or mystic adepts to the left and right. I'm gonna run a campaign where i wanna try and convey the feeling that magic is something rare, wonderous, strange and really frightening to the average (or smart) person. Therefore I'm looking for some hard numbers on the relative quantity of awakened metahumans.

In ED, close to the peak of the magic cycle, magic is of course much more common and everyday occurance. It seems like everyone with the proper mental mindset and talent can learn the strict code of an adepts path and therefore use magic (in ED the term adept includes all type of "awakened" characters, like hermetic mages etc). Do you think that when close to the magic peak every metahuman is awakened by default, but only the most talented are selected by a master to begin adept traning?

1% of the populace is awakened.
That includes EVERYTHING
From Spell/Spirit Knackts over Adepts up to full blown Magicians.
And it's simply not predictable.
If two mages were to get children with each other, the probability of these children awakening is a bit higher, but it is not hereditary in the meaning that they WILL awaken.
They could just as well get Arcane Arrester or something that prohibits them from utilizing magic

No, it's not predictable. And from an out-of-character perspective, we know that two magically active folk having a child doesn't significantly impact the odds of the child being magically active. But that doesn't mean that someone wouldn't believe it in-character. I think the motivation that the OP posted up is perfectly legit.