So here's the issue. The team got a job to clean up some loose ends from a Renraku data theft. An intercepting data thief sniffered the feed and Renraku found out about it. The private hacker arranged a physical data exchange. The Courier was sent from Hawaii to Seattle, and decided to meet with the buyer soon after that.

The team decided to intercept the courier out to sea (on a cruise ship, lots of people, can lay low). After finding out the couriers identity and what ship she was on, they went to step 2. They chartered a private deep sea fishing boat and intercepted the cruise ship a full day away from harbor (roughly 550 miles offshore). They didn't disable the comm signature for the fishing boat, and were hailed to keep their distance. They did (though the team "Leader" cut the conversation with the cruise ship off midstream). Three team members (all Cybered kiling machines) swam to the boat and repelled/climbed the side to the first deck available to be stood on. There were some guards there (easilly dispatched, but not before one was able to tell someone and sound the alarm). The spider will download new skillsofts for combat and the Ship's mage will go about being nasty. Enough background:

They are in Tir waters. UCAS military would send an osprey equivalant with some teams of SEALs and a Hostage negotiation team in case of pirate attack. What would the Tir send? I want to have consequences for not planning the run. At the same time, I don't want this to be frustrating and have them quit and want t play something else. (They have a laundry list of Shadowrun failures.)

Help please.

Team composition:
Elf infiltration specialist/sniper (not very bright)
Dwarf melee grunt (new player, hasn't played SR since 1st ed came out)
Troll infiltration specialist/archer
Elf mage (manipulation, mind control)
Orc rigger (drone specialist, only a shotgun rotodrone and spy drones with him this time)
NPC Human Technomancer (who is as backseat an npc as I can possibly make him.)

550 miles off-shore they're very unlikely being in Tir's waters. What you might consider under what flag the cruise ship operates. Then pick your respective hammer to drop on them.

Ok, fair. What would be a realistic, but proportional hammer. Do you think I should drop the sledge or the ballpin?

If you want to punish the players, while still maintaining interest in the game I'd go with a response like this.

If you want to go with the sledge, there's always this.

This is a sligtly different situation from current piracy issues. The players are not attempting to ransom off the ship or it's cargo (I hope). They may be able to get aboard, secure the <plot device> and leave hours before any response will arrive at the ship. Even spec ops folks parachuting onto the ship (does the ship have clear deckspace to allow this?) would take some time.

Figure that any response will need the following steps.
1 Call for help goes out (done)
2 Situation is reported up through a chain of command until it reaches the person who can authorize action (from 20 minutes to several hours depending on beauracracy)
3 Decision maker has minions collect more data (from a few minutes to hours again, depending on the level of beauracracy)
4 Order to take action issued to response team. (Minutes)
5 Team and gear prepped for transport. (minutes)
6 Team is in transport (hours depending on distance) Even going by jet will likely take hours (transports that allow parachuting are usually lumbering and slow)
7 response team arrives on site.

Will your players still be on the boat? If so, it might be time to reset the game and have them make some new toons.

I was going to comment on the Tir waters thing. A quick look at Wikipedia indicates that based on today's general rules Tir waters would probably extend about 12 nautical miles from their coast and their economic zone would extend 200 nautical miles from the coast, which would put a ship at 550 miles offshore solidly in international waters. As Kliko says, that would make them technically under the jurisdiction of the nation under whose flag they fly. On the other hand, if you want the Tir involved, the ship could be flying Tir colors, or the ship's captain may have contacted them for help as the nearest 'friendly' nation.

Also, at 550 miles offshore, unless their is a military or para-military vessel coincidentally nearby or it turns into a long drawn out encounter, the ship is likely going to have to handle the attack with their own resources. Looking at the aircraft in SR4A and the real world speed of the Osprey (according to wikipedia) it would take at least two hours (probably longer) for any airborne response to get there from the Tir. Depending on your interpretation of how the Movement power works, that could help, if whoever is responding has such an option and chose to do so.

If you want to use a UCAS style response, just have the carrier group out of Seattle (or a part of it) happen to be cruising 'nearby'. I could easily see a cruise ship that thinks it might be getting boarded by pirates to put out a general distress call that a military flotilla would respond to. That could provide quite a set of 'deadlines' for the PCs. For example, if they don't get what they want and get off fast, they'll eventually be facing military response teams, and if they take even longer escaping could become a problem if they have to start dodging more aircraft or ships as the military ships enters the area to 'rescue' the cruise ship.

On the other hand, if I was running this, I'd probably rule that the challenges of finding a single courier on an alerted cruise ship (especially if it is a big one...those things can be fragging huge) combined with actions of professional security force that would be expected to be able to handle protecting the passengers in the event of exactly this sort of thing happening (given how far a ship can be from help) would provide plenty of tools to me as the GM to make getting that courier a never certain to succeed hell run.

I know. I just love the idea of a contracted security force hiding on the roof and then jumping into the water when help comes.

Also, given the amount of profit a 2070s cruise ship presumably generates, I think that option 2 of a trailing contracted para-military vessel is "realistic."

Also consider the Corp that owns the ship. Exterritorality and all. Vessels can be flagged as SK, Ares, Wuxing, or any other. Meaning the response may be corporate, not a nation state.

Another item to think about is an ares cruise ship with a Firewatch team on board for protection. They get a vacation light, sure they have duties but how often are cruise ships attacked by pirates 500 klicks from seattle. Not often, but does make it a good post major op, down-time mission.

Attacking a ship makes them pirates. Pirates are technically considered "Hostis humani generis" (enemy of mankind) in Admiralty law. As such anyone may respond to aid them and kill the pirates or arrest and try the pirates. In particular, the vessel that brought them is a pirate ship and can be sunk without warning.

This is likely not a survivable situation. They have made worldwide news. 90 seconds after the ship reports they are being attacked by pirates the UCAS Navy, the IJN, Ares and probably several other organizations will have high resolution satellites looking at the situation. Minutes later every military vessel in the area will steam towards it, long-range aircraft will launch towards it, and it will get progressively worse. Getting away is going to be really hard.

The fastest response might be from mages. As they have elected to play with the big boys they get to play with big boy rules. A couple of honking big spirits (like force 12+) would be on board in well under an hour, covered by astral military or Ares mages. The concealment power of big spirits really makes dealing with them a pain.

Unless someone uses a space-based platform to sink the pirate ship with a gigwatt laser or a small KE weapon, the next thing on the scene would be supersonic strike aircraft out of Seattle, LA, or an IJN carrier. Then tankers/recon, then a few hours later you'll get full up naval vessels. Including a full tier 1 assault team.

Or perhaps more fun, have a team already onboard after some post-op rest and relieve. Good skillset, make-shift gear, that kind of setup. Good tactics will nail a runner team anytime. It also depends on the scenario you want to run with. The ship's first priority would be to get everybody in a secure location. In that regard they won't mind that they can't trace one lost passenger.

Your team swims awfully fast though, given they were able to catch up with the cruiseship in the first place.

The similar idea that had occured to me, but might not be as 'obvious' was a Mitsuhama owned and operated ship. IIRC one of MCT's big areas of business is media/entertainment so I could see them running their own cruise line. Given their zero zone reputation, I could see the security on board such ships being very polite and very no nonsence and a rude suprise to anyone that tried to make a move on one.

I'm not certain extraterritoriality would come into play though. Though potentially owned by a mega, I suspect in most cases cruise lines would be their own corporations that are too far down the chain of ownership to receive true extraterritoriality. Might not make a lot of difference though. When it comes to protecting a bunch of passengers in the face of a pirate threat, as long as they didn't endanger their own passengers more than the pirates they are likely to have a pretty free hand (as mentioned by kzt).

-Double post-

I did some research and it looks like many companies and governments have suggested installing panic rooms onboard ships in danger of pirate attack. In 60 years, they probably have done something like this, making it nigh impossible to get the VIP and target data.

I feel kind of bad now.

at the right angle and high strengths these guys were at, I was willing to distribute some handwavium for the swim speed.

Thanks everyone so far for the help so far. It's an interesting discussion!

How many people are we talking about on this ship?

Is this a major cruise liner? If we're talking 2072, then the cruise liners of the time have to be at least as big as, say, the Freedom of the Seas, which is one of the largest cruise ships available today. You're talking about around 5,000 people on board a ship like that. It seems like the situation has gotten to the point where the whole ship knows of their presence. Whatever they tried to do to get the VIP and data has obviously gone wrong, so horribly so that, safe room or not, it's unlikely the team will be able to locate the courier.

There's no question of this being a hostage situation or not. There's no way a 6 man team can hope to control a ship with that many people on board. A six man team would mean only one thing, and that's terrorism. The assumption of security forces in this case would be that the attackers objective is to outright sink the ship. If there's no actual communication between the runners and the ships crew as to their intent, they're as good as done.

I think your runners have one and only one option, and that's to try to get the hell off that ship. This run is blown. Unless you intervene in some unexpected way.

One thing you might do is have the team get in touch with the command crew somehow. Perhaps the captain is greedy, and agrees to help them for a cut of the pay?

Ezz

It just so happens that officer John McClain of the NYPD is on board for a little R&R.

Just from looking at your team's composition, this could actually have worked. Just not the way your team tried it.

Get both the mage, the TM and maybe the troll on board unnoticed, locate the courier (TM hacks ship's cabin reservations), hang around until the ship reaches Seattle, mind control the courier to leave the ship with your team, rigger waits at harbour to drive you all away...
The key term here is of course "unnoticed". The moment the ship's staff sounded the alarm, the run had failed. Only chance they could still pull that off, is to somehow get lost between all the other passengers, stay low, deal with the increased security measures that will certainly be deployed and hope that the situation will calm down enough that they can still find the courier before the ship reaches Seattle harbor.

-CJ

I saw this movie, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Busy, Erika Eleniak...

Sick the cook on them.

True, it makes them pirates, however situations in our current time that involve piracy usually have long durations due to the pirates holding ships or cargoes for ransom (as well as the genrally slow spped of said ships) which allows for lengthy decision cycles. If the Op can be completed before the big boys can complete their first decision cycle, then the runners would only have to deal with on site security.



Satelite retasking is a major decision. Each Sat carries a very finite ammount of fuel that the thrusters can use to reposition the bird. In an era of privatized security and extrateritoriality, there would be less pressure on each government organization to expend their limited reasources on this type of incident. 90 Seconds is longer than it will take the person on the receiving radio to look up who to call and then get in contact with their immediate superior, let along reach the person who can have a satalite re-tasked.


If the standard response to 3 people boarding a ship is multiple force 12+ spirits, then you are playing a far different power level game than I am. Also seems like it would be different than the power level than the players since they are using a fishing trawler and not a fast attack sub. Force 12 spirits are very difficult to summon without doing real physical harm to the mage.



What are the supersonic strike aircraft going to do against the runner team that is already on board? Since the ship is off the Tir coast, it would likely be a Tir response (or possibly IJN). Do either of them have that kind of big time naval asset in the area.

The biggest problem that the runners have that I can see is "No Exit Strategy". If they have a clever plan on how to get away they might, might, be able to carry this off. They will be somewhat pressed for time to find the target, but not impossibly so.

I did like someone's idea about a security striketeam on board, decompressing after some heavy action. That is just the kind of "kill 2 birds with 1 stone" kind of reasource allocation that would make sense to a corp. Just remember that they need to have armament appropriate to the venue. Gel rounds and flechette ammo, no putting holes in the big expensive ship (or the guests)!

It is now. It's isn't when corps or governments can economically launch 50,000 ton solar power sats into Geo and make major money by selling the power to the 3rd world. Space access is cheap. Every Mega has significant sats. Every major government military (and megas like Ares with real naval forces) has real-time ocean surveillance systems and the sufficient orbital assets to provide the ability to rapidly observe developments without messing with planned operations. Hell, the target acquisition and tracking system on any orbital weapons platform will give them high res imagery in real time.


When a group of terrorists attack a ship full of rich people you get a significant response by organizations those mission in life is killing terrorists. You have to realize that the mages that support national level counter-terrorist teams are not 400 BP characters. They don't play to lose, they do this shit all the time and they are very good at it. The players are likely to never even notice the spirits until and unless the spirits act against them.

If you want to make the event salvageable from a gaming point of view, go away from the gritty answers and have some form of sea monster attack the ship. If you'd like, make it a spirit, or even a spirit using Possession on the sea monster. Now the PCs can try their mad plan while the ship is in danger of sinking around them.

Don't forget, rail mounted drones with gel rounds in an HVAR Assault rifle. Wired of course to the ships security spider (wired not wifi). Normally this track is used for guiding drunk passengers back to their rooms.

BTW-The teams plan violated rule #1 of running:Keep a low profile!! I would have a hard time giving the players a pass on this.

Good luck whatever you decide to do!

I would tend to agree with this part. By the year 2070 and the tech level that SR is at Geo-synced sats are probably everywhere and it is probably a couple of companies that have the planet covered completely at all times for surveillance. Those two (or three or maybe four) companies compete to give their services to governments and other companies that don't want to dabble in a field that they are not focused on and thus buy the service from others. I would agree here.





Here is where I would slightly disagree with your response/time and such. I would still see bureaucracies and response being the same or maybe even longer due to the legal responses having to continually be questioned. While your right that if they are pirates or terrorists then response can be by anyone/everyone, they would have to be termed as such first. I feel that with all the legal issues, and let us face it while the Corp Court is supreme I bet that the legal system of SR still is a buggered set of crap when it comes to the decision process to think about legal issues. So I would say that it still takes a bit (by a bit I mean at least an hour if not more) for a response. An emergency that is not expected takes longer then if someone has a strike team up and ready for quick response. If the ship operator thought that this was possible, or likely, then I would say that response time would be down to minutes.

The problem with that is that those 400BP characters are not likely to be much less than than those mages that support national level counter-terrorist teams (compare Tir Ghost leader to a 400 BP PC hacker). These 400 BP guys don't play to lose either, likely to do this shit all the time as well and by dint of they being alive, should be even better than those mages at it.

Sure, as long as you think that a 400 BP character plus 300+ karma is a like a 400 BP character. Remember the Ares mages who routinely cast heavy magic in a -10 void? They are a lot like 400 BP characters too.

There are a lot of mages in the military. There are not a lot needed in the most elite units. To misquote Colonel Hammer: "With 5000 of you to choose from didn't they think I could find a decent mage?"

I'd be interested to hear what your team and you decided to do in this siutation, so please post it up when its been run.

A Grunt mage, no matter how elite, is not going to be anywhere near a 400 BP character plus 300+ karma, using my previous example of the Tir Ghost leader to a 400 BP hacker as a comparison. We do not know at what Background Count those Ares mages are in, given that they are not in a void but in a space station with its own lower levels of BC. A Grunt mage, even an elite one like Ghosts/SEALs/etc, should not have bound Force 12 spirits and should be a lot closer to a 400 BP mage than a 400 BP plus 300+ karma mage.

With 5000 of them to choose from, you could find a decent mage, but odds are you are not going to find more than one that can confidently bind a Force 12 spirit. Much less one that can bind multiple Force 12+ spirits. People tend to reach for Prime Runners built with more than 400BPs when stating out their "big boys" when IMO it is the Rating 5/6 Grunts (Red Samurai/Tir Ghost equivalents) that, more plausibly, will be used instead.

I like the idea about that seamonster. It would be a classic .

I think there are alot of assumptions in here, but I could be wrong.

Space isn't cheap, without true anti-grav or a beanstalk it is expensive to get up out of the well.

I don't think Solor sats are in the 50,000 ton range, if they were they would be launched in many many seperate vehicles. What is the shuttle payload? 25 tons I think, even an increase by a factor of 10 (which is a reasonable increase for the time period) still puts a 50,000 ton space station as needing 200 launch vehicles. Solar power sats are big thin sheets, very light because they don't need heavy bracing against....never mind, its far off topic....

If you assume this level of satelite coverage, then every run the players do that takes them outdoors (and I mean even a parking lot will count) should be under the assumption that they are being recorded from space and therefore cannot get away. Just kill all the runners every time they cross any corp because they can never hide.

That's a luxury cruise ship... several thousands of rich people on board. LARGE crew, with a decent sized security detachment, with probably several mages, hackers and cyber-augmented mercs. Plus several dozen highly trained bodyguards for the VIP (more than probably several hundreds in fact). Plus probably some runners teams on board on mission or recreation.

Even with external help taking some times to come :

1- The runners are totally screwed fighting at more than 1 to 50.
2- Their getaway ship is probably already at the bottom, if not he will probably be very soon.

Luxury cruise ships are NOT easy prey, not in a so violent world as SR, not when it plane to go in contested military waters.

I would also have loved to ear how your guys, after swimming faster than the ship (how could they ? special implants ? a large ships isn't a slow ship, rather the reverse) mange to enter/climb it ? (Torning open several inches of flat steel while floating on water is definitely not a easy task).

I think you can wake up your runners from their sims-enduced fantasy and bring some dark cold reality numbers in play.

The cruise line company could have an astral rapid response force show up in ten minutes or so as soon as they confirm there is a serious problem.

And cruise ships having all those passengers threaten would make it worth the high expense.

I think ten minutes would be the minimum response time.



A couple of mages with a full stable of bound spirits could really help out the local security.

And I'm not even talking about a team with more than a force 4 magic rating.



The mages could do astral spotting and use the bound spirit services to help protect their side.

And at the right time even a force three bound spirit can do some damage.



Course bound spirits do cost and the astral rapid response force would be more interested in preventing a hijacking or a mass massacre.

So as long as they drive off the "pirates" and can look good for the Newies assets floating around, they will likely drop it as soon as the "pirates" leave.


Plus as pointed out above with a couple of thousand people, you are going to have a couple of awaken passengers. Plus if you even minor VIPs, then you will have some security there.

And security, military, and awaken personnel need to take a vacation too. And they have their families with them.

Most will just want to keep their heads down and protect their families, but if a runner gets too close....


Course you could always have them crash an Awaken cruise. Nothing like fifty awaken amateur spell casters/conjurers casting like crazy to throw a serious monkey wrench in some plans.



Military response will likely depend on how close any forces are to the cruise ship when the incident happens, how nasty the incident is, how close to real border (7 Miles out) the cruise ship is, and is it on going.

The Military likely wouldn't mind a little live fire training if the opportunity comes up but if it is obviously a shadowrun between corporations then they also wouldn't want to waste a lot of fuel and wear and tear on Megacorp infighting.


On the swimming over, like a German U-boat, you just have to get in front of the cruise ship and wait for it to come to you. Plus Cruise ships are crisscrossing from port of call to port of call and have a posted itinerary so you generally know when and where you need to be.

So we'll see on Friday. I have a bunch of ideas (thanks to you guys) on how to deal with the situation and a time-line laid out for response. I'll post after the session this weekend how everything went.

As for the boat, I really didn't think it was a big deal considering the distance and the angle that you could intercept the boat. A little triangulation and you can easilly just wait in it's path. They got on board with stealth suits and gecko tape gloves in combination with grappling hooks with stealth line.

As was mentioned: Their entrance was a decent idea, but botched by stupidity. They have no plan on capture and no exit strategy.

Monday's post will be interesting. I think I'll write it like a narrative so that you can enjoy the full comedy of what's about to happen.

Don't get me wrong, I don't enjoy watching my players suffer. I am a teacher by trade and I can't pass up such a "teachable" moment.

Thanks again, more to come.

Why would anyone outside of the cruise ship company get involved in this?

The its a piracy thing works to some degree, but in SR where every corp is its own country I think they are the only ones who would respond. Not saying it wont be a big response, but I don't see the UCAS or the Tir sending a satellite, a mage, or even a bouquet of flowers to mourn the dead.

So you are saying the best military mages, and the best firewatch mages, and the the best mges at Aztechnology are 400 BP grunts?

This is one ofthe YMMV moments depending on the GM.

IMHGMO, most beginning mages start at magic 1 to 3 and during their training work up to a 4. You won't run into these as they are not considered professionally competent. They account for 10 percent of a corps mage force. A professionally competent mage would be a 4. These would be about 60% of corp mages. For 5-6, these are the expereinced veterens wich account for 20
percent of the mages a corp has. The remaining 10% is for those that are initiated and have higher levels of magic. These typically range from 7 to 9, with most being a 7 or 8. Less than 1% of the corps mages would be above 9 in magic.

That being said let us look at the numbers based on those %'s and some % assumptions of a corps magical demographic.
Mega Corp A has 50 million employees. 5% are magically active in this population.
This computes to 2.5 million magically active people.
50% are magicians rather than physads, leaving us with 1.25 million mages,

50% of magicians are adepts and are not full blown mages. Leaving us with 750,000 full blown mages.

Based on the % above:
75,000 mages are being trained (ratings 1 to 3).
450,000 are professionally certified and working (rating 4).
225,000 are veterens (rating 5-6)
75,000 are high powered (rating 7+)

Of the high powered, At 0.5% of mages there would be 35,000 to call upon that would have a magic rating above 9.

Conclusion: Due to the large pool of magicians that a corp can draw from, the possibility of them sending in a mage with significant abilities to a highly visible terrorist attack is significant. PR is a great motivator here.

I worry more about the idea that the military DOESN'T have a large volume of high end mages at this point. No, they don't have the same faith level and trust that the Great Ghost Dance had, thus draining off to huge volumes of people, but I fear, utterly fear, the concept of a highly patriotic military man with the belief that he has to do whatever he must to defend the people of his nation, and is given a black ops budget.

We're talking about a person willing to die for their country or ideal, and is publically, and probably familially, supported in this idea. The idea of his getting a couple of nosebleeds getting the biggest, baddest spirit he possibly can being a deterent to him is rediculous. We're talking about the same militaries that made nukes, anti-infantry mortar shells in the form of ten-penny nails packed into an airburst case, and jacketed amunition. A full on military mage is not a wageslave, doing what it takes to make the buck and get some more knowledge, like at the corps, this is a person committed to doing nothing (when on duty, anyway, even military people are human... ) but making himself into a better weapon. He could be living a comfy life at a corp. He's chosen a different path.

Imagine the equivalent of a SEAL Mage. Now think about what kind of people a nation would send against an actual terrorist attack *today*. You can argue the beauracracy all you want about who might respond, and when, and with what international repurcussions, but the deployed HTR is going to be the equivalent of the SEALs, Green Berets, or Rangers. These people are *already* weapons with whatever they can find in their environment and a few minutes of time, if they even need that much. Now turn them into the weapon, literally? Initiated? Of course. 10+ force spirits, bound with a black ops budget's cash? Of course. We're talking governments. What's a few hundred grand? (Yes, the opposite side could be taken here, but remember, we're talking operational military budgets, not just government budgets. Truckloads of money simply fall off the damn boats to pay off cartels. They'll get the soldiers what they need.)

They'll have a pack of stim packs in a container on their side, where everyone else carries ammunition. Their targetting control will be incredible, but they'll also have practiced the magical equivalent of cover fire and becoming the human grenade for area clearing. They'll overcast to save a buddy in a *heartbeat*. They'll do it if there's even a risk.

And that's simply the *mage* on the team on the screamjet that's been sitting on the runway since this thing started up, gnashing at the bit, waiting to be deployed. He probably met the other 15 mages on similar teams, all doing recon astrally, and waved *Hi* to Bob and Judy, and reminded them not to be late to the Friday poker game. I fear the military HRT gunbunny just as much.

From my perspective, play with the timing and the corporate court and the legalities all you like to make the game playable, and perhaps in your game, feasible. That's half the reason you need to be *FAST* on a run, or completely undetected.

But, Pink Mohawk or Shades, the runners are not (usually) the biggest boys on the block. They just have skills the average wageslave doesn't even thing to get, so he can't join in, or usually defend himself. The military has the most intense of the people, the people not looking for the easy life and the corporate comforts. I love whenever my runners tell me they want to hit a military base (well, before they're prime runner levels...). I tell them to make sure they bring backup characters. A military HRT? It's a death warrant.

EDIT: To the above, yes, the average high end 'grunt' might be a 5/6. These are the best, of the best, of the best, to quote a horrible movie. They're 7 in skills in their specific areas. These are not 'grunts', they are a specifically trained strike force, taken from the elite.

I don't really agree with your numbers there.

50 million seems like a ridiculously large population for even an AAA corp. The corporations control most of the wealth and natural resources, but that doesn't mean they try to employ hordes of people; they prefer efficiency. Even 5 million seems like a lot for an AAA corp.
In that respect they're different from nation-states, which tend to think that a large population equates power (conscription, taxes), while a corporation sees a large workforce as a problem (salaries).

Second, your figures on Awakened population are a bit high;

How much is "a fraction"? Say 1/10th. Of which half would be adepts perhaps. So that means only 0.05% of the population is a Magician.

That leaves us 250.000 Magicians. I think Magic 3 is the norm here, because it's been said to be the norm for normal attributes too. While there is pressure to get a higher Magic, it's hard to train it. Magic doesn't work well with the machine-aided learning available for mundane attributes, and there are also things like differing Traditions and Mentor spirits to factor in.
Also, keep in mind that even Magic 1 is useful for things like Enchanting and other industrial (profitable!) applications of magic.

I'm assuming some numbers here in a clumsy attempt at normal distribution...

15% Magic 1 = 37500
20% Magic 2 = 50000
30% Magic 3 = 75000
15% Magic 4 = 37500
10% Magic 5 = 25000
5% Magic 6 = 12500
2.5% Magic 7 = 6250
1.25% Magic 8 = 3125
1.25% Magic 9+ = 3125

And that's numbers for a very large corporation with substantial magical assets, like S-K. Most of the 1-3 Magic range will probably be in industrial production jobs, like reagent gathering and enchanting. The Magic 4-6 are suitable for either research or for localized security; strong enough to fight off an enemy mage. Magic 7+ will be mostly in research and special ops.

So yeah, there are still sufficient high-powered mages available for counterterrorism, black ops and all that, but not the legions you suggest.

Well as I pointed out a Magician with only a Magic of four and a back of bound spirits can still be a threat.

Even after his spirits have gone in, a stun ball spell will help take out rival spirits and spotting is very useful.


Flip side, the limited pool of magicians is going to drive down standards so I expect that these guys are not going to be ex special forces.

They. like most security out there, are going to be doing a job.


So some huge awaken monster starts to eat a cruise ship and this guy is going to send in his bound spirits and then sit there and watch.

Not in his pay grade.

You don't understand what a megacorp IS. The scale is monstrous, with their fingers in every pie, from convenience stores to farms to banking to jet aircraft to electric power. Most of the megacorps have sales larger than the GDP of Japan, several would be larger then the GDP of the current US. Wallmart employs two million people in the US and it has net sales quite bit smaller than the GDP of the United States. If your net sales are larger than the GDP of China you employ a lot of people. Particularly when you consider things like the tens of thousands of Stuffer Shacks across the world is such a minor part of Aztechnology that most people don't even know Aztechnology owns them.

Alright, let's use Aztech as an example. Money is no object, you can afford the best, especially if you are one of the top execs of Aztech. You certainly have access to the "best" mages, afterall, you got enough magic talent to give you cyberzombies. It is not realistic that someone would take second stringers as his bodyguards if he has got that much money and influence, yet that is not so in terms of game mechanics.

So you are saying that Red Samurai and Tir Ghosts (Rating 5/6 Grunts) are not the best? Or the Rating 5/6 Red Samurai and Tir Ghosts are not Red Samurai or Tir Ghosts? If by "best" mages, you mean better than their equivalent in Red Samurai and Tir Ghosts, then of course, the "best" are not 400 BP grunts.

For the general population yes, for the corp--my opinion is not. Naturally, as all corp citizens are screened for talent at an early age, financial incentives to attract and keep mages. I'm sure there are other reason to work for a corp rather than freelance (licensing issues/having a "family" to back you up).

In any event, even using your numbers a corp might have at least a couple thousand high powered mages.

PS:Mega corps are huge entities. 10's of millions for the top 10 would not be too far off.

You would think that such a megacorp's top execs would rate a couple of these high powered mages for security.

Nah, they don't list mages like that in the core book, so they can't exist.

Sure but out of those thousands how many are combat oriented? How many of those combat oriented have details that don't let them hop on over to a cruise ship in trouble? The average mage response would likely not be super magic infinity force 12+ summoning monsters, but magic 5 guy with maybe an initiation or two under his belt. Still if the target is important enough, they would have there own magical security detail. And even if there is a somewhat powerful response by mages the response will be in hours. You fly what 6,000 KM an hour so travel time alone is 10-15 minutes and I'd guess at least an hour before he gets the order and that is a really fast response time for this IMO.

As long as they list mages like that in a book, they can exist. But alas, they are not as high powered as you think.

Let us forget, for a moment, the firepower that could be leveraged the way of the team in this scenario. Let us even assume that the response could be anything (THOR shot riding dragons, even). What needs to be considered is what the response is likely to be, and what it will be in a timely manner.

At least one person has already mentioned PR, but in in 'swoop in, whoop ass, look good way.' Quite the opposite needs to be considered.

If this is a nationally registered vessel (owned either privately, which is not likely, or by a smaller corporation), then military assets would be the considered response. A military answers to governments and politicians, as much as they hate to. That means that any response they give is going to be measured, and even if there is a `3-guys infiltrating a boat` SOP in place, the are going to need to run up and down the chain of command before doing anything. The Canadian Navy (as an example) maintains a single ship for each area of responsibility as Ready Duty Ship, which means the second someone accepts that shit is going down, they are scrambled and sent. If they are not at sea already the recall time is four hours. That is four hours from when the radio call is answered, verified, reported, and the green-light given. Why? You need a lot of people to set to sea, and they all have lives they are living. No one sleeps on ship unless they are drunk, broke, or duty.

If the vessel is mega-owned, then a response team would have less political constraint, but would have more PR concerns. Why? They don't care about the media they own, but oh boy you know their rivals have just as many media assets, and they love to use them to point out what the other guy does wrong. Heavy hands are great inside of your fully controlled environments, but they don't go over so well in the real world unless by cover of night or high explosives.

Either way, there would be slow ramp up time, authorization time would be entangled by politics, PR, or plain human sluggishness, and even when on scene the responders would have to act in accordance with passenger safety.

Yup, passenger safety. Sure, protect the living hell out of your ultra-rich passengers, have guards around, critters and spirits on call, and a rigger running the show. But if the word hostage is even a remote possibility, you had better be stepping lightly because everything is now eggshells.

That said, embedded security on the ship should be the challenge, not some massive external response (though a post-escape hunt could always involve bigger assets). The key here, though, is that the intent is to challenge the team, not bend them over the guardrails and feed them the hurt. Scale it to the runners, or else it's just 'haha you're dumb now roll new toons' time.

Remind me again what Knight Errant did at Cermak and Halsted, and what happened to KE in response?

That does bring up one question about mages responding to a cruise ship hijacking - How does a mage in the astral find a cruise ship 550 miles off the coast? I suppose the ships course and position would be known, but it's not like the mage can be astral and getting positioning data at the same time. I suppose at that kind of speed, the mage could do some sort of multiple pass grid search looking for a mass of life signs, but it's still a bit sketchy.

Get some Watchers and let them find the ship for you.

Back on the ship then:
I like the idea with John McLane and Casey Ryback.. but:
Assuming that ship has about 5000 to 6000 people on it, a part of the crew (maybe 30 to 50 nice big guys) will be trained to hold up order against drunks and other violent guests with non-lethal methods. They know the ship and they sure as hell will not stand around and wait to be shot by some runners. Give em Tasers and gas/Stun/foam grenades, give them superior numbers in combat, give them the element of surprise, give them the chance to disappear ...

Mages... there maybe even one or two on Board for the shows. Maybe not heavily trained with mind tricks or combat spells, but a few illusions can do the trick too. There is your seamonster

And if you want to use that "Die Hard" Scenario: some of that rich and famous guests might have some welltrained and equiped bodyguards on board.

At last a trick thats used even today: Close all the doors - it will slow down the Runners. All together that might be enough to get them of the ship.

Threshold of +[#kilometers away] is not a good look for a Search test.

Good point. Finding stuff from the astral isn't easy. I'm thinking the mages response time just jumped into the hours just for the finding it and getting there part of the equation.