This thread is my collection of questions that reading SR generates, mostly fluff-related. If people have answers, woohoo.

First up: Shedim. Oh, Shedim. Street magic, pg 155: "Since metahumanity has responded to the shedim presence by changing their death rites and protecting cemeteries, crypts, and even morgues with astral defenses such as wards..."

Things that make me stop and go screeching to a halt mentally:

While plenty of religions are...incredibly insistent on the burial of the dead as opposed to cremation (Catholicism at the least frowns upon cremation, but kindasorta allows it; the Eastern Orthodox ban it; Islam and Orthodox Judaism are both incredibly opposed to cremation and mandate quick burials - and ban autopsies, something that's been a plot point in innumerable eps of, say, Law and Order.), this sentence presents two ideas that make me stop and go "bzuh?":

First, that people have changed their death rites. Okay, I could see that, but it begs for more elaboration somewhere. Do people still bury their dead? Are burials banned as a public safety measure? Are they allowed? It says people have changed their death rites, but nothing of this is mentioned earlier in the book, or anywhere else. There's nothing that says how things might have changed, or gives any hint to it.

Secondly: Magic is pretty damn rare in SR, I thought. So where the heck are the magicians being found to protect all of the innumerable cemeteries, crypts, and morgues in the world?

If I had to guess, there might be a few religious rituals that actually protect the dead from possession after death. Certainly, if someone is buried in 'holy ground' that might be enough. I believe there was mention of the Sedlec Ossuary in europe being something of a giant shedim killing trap, but I don't exactly remember WHERE that was mentioned (probably in the SR3 europe book). stands to reason that other cathedrals and holy places would protect the dead by their very nature.

Of course, not everyone actually gets buried in those places either. And therein lies the problem.

The biggest and easiest way to do this would be to ward the "holy" places used for burial... as mentioned in the Street Magic Book... this would be the easiest and most attainable way to protect the dead other than Cremation...

And given enough reason, even those religions that mandate burial might opt to change to cremation (think the Black plague or other world wide catastrophe) for a time... and the Sedlic Ossuary is a very intriguing place indeed...

Keep the Faith

you could also try finding a way to embalm corpses with some variant of a FAB III strain. Then put the body in a nice sealed coffin. Shedim finds the corpse, animates it and then the FAB III eats them before they can even being to claw thier way out of the ground.

I'd imagine that most religions are large enough that they would have quite a noticable number of mages practicing said religion. It isn't too far fetched to think that one such mage goes to all the local cemeteries and puts up wards free of charge as a donation to the church, maybe even accepting a full time job from the church to drive around the state/region/country and ward them all over the place.

It could also be that the government provided mages to run around to all graveyards and put up wards as part of a government mandate to prevent the bodies being used. (Churches are except from taxes, get free wardings on their grave sites, etc etc etc)

I also think that the major religions would have special groups/priests/holy men/women who's only job would be to ensure that the rituals and rites protecting the sanctity of the dead had been followed. probably comprised of awakened ordained/sanctioned types, with occasional backup from other combat or support personnel.

well ok...maybe not JUST the graveyards but I could see the vatican having some sort of supernatual 'hit squad' on call to deal with various threats from the metaplanes.

They do. We call them the Order of St. Sylvester, or the Sylvestrines.

On top of active magical protection, any burial ground should have some background count because of all the sadness there or be aspected towards the place religion. That's enough to keep the weakest shedim at bay and it helps fighting the others.

ooo! good point, I hadn't thought of the aspected/background count angle.

I hadn't thought of that - it is entirely possible to have 'holy ground' if enough emotionally charged religious ritual has taken place over centuries to create a reasonably strong aspected background count. That has possibilities... especially if awakened clergy of whatever religion are aware of such 'holy ground'. Also possibilities for the more intelligent shedim who are aware of said holy ground, and object to it...

On a slightly different track, I imagine that if bodies started clawing their way out of graves, all but the nuttiest of churches would quickly drop their objections to burning bodies.

or you bury them in zinc coffins or concrete coffins.

Well, yes. In the Christian churches, there's a standing exemption for public health reasons (and so forth), formulated in various ways, at least among those that still frown upon or ban cremation. But it's really, really dogmatically important that bodies be buried in most of Christianity, as to cremate them for the heck of it may be construed as denying the physical resurrection of the dead.

Islam, to my recollection, however, has no such exemption...and neither does Orthodox or Conservative Judaism.

What I don't get about the shedim is, why can they only possess corpses? If I was a shedim, and I bore some kind of grudge against metahumanity, I'd be trying to possess the UCAS President and then go about using scorched earth tactics. Goodbye, metahumanity.

you could wait for someone to get a shot off at the president, and then possess the body before it hits the floor.

Judaism is the most likely of all religions to adapt in order to survive. The only rule they are actually FORBIDDEN to break is to willingly murder another human being. Anything else can be broken and will be forgiven if the cause is good enough. If you are starving, and the only food available is pork, you can eat the pork.

They can also posess a mage's body while he is away on the astral or metaplanes IIRC. Which is why you want a friendly spirit or mage guarding your meat while you're away.

Well, technically, an empty body is "dead" in astral terms, so it's still the same as a corpse to a shedim.

So then we need an Awakened UCAS president, and the shedim catches him while s/he is out to lunch, so to speak.

But I just wonder why the shedim can't posses a living body using the Possession or Inhabitation powers? I'm sure it's because the shedim would be even creepier and more powerful than they already are, but are there any fluff-based reasons for it? Do they find the metahuman spirit to be an annoying bedfellow, like the dorm-mate that ALWAYS brings his girlfriend for a sleepover on the bunk right below yours while you're trying to sleep and ohdeargod you want to stab knives in your ears?

I think it's just a matter of 'Property must be vacant', i.e. they're kinda like squatters, this may change as the mana level rises. We'll just have to wait and see.

As for the roommate in question, I'd suggest an MP3 player so you can sleep and a hidden camera and a showing at the dorm's 'movie night' to make them fuck at her place. If there are any legal problems steming form that, just put up a sign on your door beforehand that says "Warning: these premesis under 24 hour video surveilance. All footage is the sole property of the surveilance device's owner, entering constitutes acceptance of the owner's right to record you at all times". If it works for department stores, it should work for you, it's not your problem if your roommate and his gf can't or won't read. Hehe. While you're at it, send a copy to her parents. They may stop paying tuition. God it feels good to be evil.

Perhaps allergies to certain flavours of astral space? Catholic Magic aspected astral space acting as a severe allergy to HMHVV infected?

It does also say that the Shedim treat Astrally Projecting people's bodies as prepared vessels. I imagine if there are ways to prepare a vessel for possession and inhabitation there'd be ways to make it... uncomfortable for a spirit to do the same, to corpses at least.

However something to consider before you start your own little porn studio is whether or not doing so will get you in trouble with your college...

Still, it seems to me that with alittle imagination one could make the dorm very unpleasant for anyone having sex...

For the record, the dorm-mate thing was an extended metaphor that got out of hand, not an actual RL experience. Sorry 'bout that.

Yeah, I knew that even while typing. Sorry, bad joke. I made me laugh though.

Well the only requirement to be able to make wards is astral perception. So Adepts could do it also. Or some powerful mage just summons bunch of spirits to do the work.
With the BC even lowstrenght wards would stop lot of nasties.
And there could also be people with Astral Sight -Quality guarding the most important places. They probably couldnt do much against spirits, but they can alert more powerful mages to the spot before shedim start to mess with the place.
According to fluff there would be much more of these people than full mages.

I don't know about the others, but the official Catholic dogma is that cremation is equal to a normal burial as long as it does not serve to deny the belief in resurrection.
Also, you have to consider that with all the plagues and wars in the Sixth World, religions have probably become far more tolerant towards cremation, because oherwise they'd have to tell people "all your loved ones who were cremated after the latest VITAS outbreak went straight to [insert equivalent to Hell here], sorry".



New cemeteries need to be consecrated anyway, so integrating some sort of warding ritual into the procedure should not be too difficult. And even without any magic, a cemetery should qualify as a rating 3-5 Domain, plus Earth itself acts as a barrier, so weak Shedims should have a hard time even getting to the buried corpse.