I've done a quick search on this topic, but haven´t found much information, so I will post this as a separate question:

1. If you know a ritual sample exists, but don't know its current location, can you use the person as the material link and target the sample?
2. Is the sample considered "non-living material" and therefore can only be affected by physical spells?
3. If the sample indeed is non-living material, what would be its object resistance? 1, as in "natural object"?
4. If the sample would be located inside a mana barrier, the object resistance of the sample would be increased by (Force of the barrier)/3, rounded up, right?
5. To destroy the sample, would 1 DV be enough?

Thanks for suggestions,
mielikki

Well ,a quik look into Stret Magic gave me not much extra information, so what follows is more my feeling about that rather than RAW.

1) Probably yes. This reverse the rules of Material Link, you use the whole to track the part. Actually locating it (rather than simply targeting it) would be subject to the usual Astral Tracking rules.

2) IMHO yes

3) I would say 2 rather than 1. While not "manufactured" in the usual sense it has been carefully collected and preserved (either by a spell or by being deep-frozen)

4) IMHO yes

5) This depends of the size and nature of the spell. The optimal choice would probably be Sterilize.

Be careful about something though : people storing material sample (particularly if the intend to use them to coerce or punish he donor) are likely to expect something like that and to have take actions to prevent it, or at least making it less easy than it may appear.

Among other things, ritual magic takes time to "build up", during which it can be noticed and tracked back to the caster(s) for some payback.

Also I think that things like a mana coffin or "living walls" will interfere with ritual targeting of spells (at least -2 to dice pool, further lengthening the process).

Well, in-game this is an attempt to save butt of one of the characters who is an ex-Lone Star officer with LS on his back - so yes, countermeasures are expected, but it can probably be done easier this way than by breaking and entering into LS vaults!

The only physical spell available to the PCs at the moment is fireball, which is not the best option in the world, but I am thinking that a small explosion (as in F1 spell) in the storage room in the middle of the night might not attract too much attention too soon. And force 1 spells are hard to notice, as the extended test to notice the build-up of the mana needs (20-force) hits!

Don't forget that depending on the character their may be more than one sample out there so doing this could produce false positives. For instance if the character has a high enough level DocWagon contract, IIRC that involves giving them a sample which might qualify as well. I'm away from my books, so I cannot remember if there is something 'special' that is done to a ritual sample that is collected with that intent vs. other material that could be used in ritual sorcery, but wasn't specifically taken to serve in that manner.

The targeting sample is destroyed in the process of using the spell on the target. If you use the target to find a tissue sample of his, this would be a stupid idea as it would kill the person to destroy the tissue sample.

The other problem is the question whether the person or another tissue sample still is "an integral part of" the original tissue sample.

All DocWagon contracts require a tissue sample and a payment, nothing more nothing less.

Easier to drop the character down a mine shaft for a few weeks or in a room covered in awakened ivy. Once LS burns out their small amounts of material link he's safe.

Does awakened ivy count as ward? could you put your Magic lodge into a room/house covered with the plant?

Why would a mine shaft work? the shaft has an opening at the surface. AFAIK ritual spellcasting does not have to go in a straight line from the ritualists to the target and earth does not hinder ritual spellcasting it just makes travel very slow and difficult.

Both were points made in some other thread, I haven't had a chance to look into either claim.

That is quite a silly assumption to make. You have but to walk up to him and pluck a single hair from him and then you have another sample.

That said this is not the means you would want to go about doing this. You would first use the subject to astrally track down the ritual sample. Then once found you would use ritual sorcery with the tracker as the spotter. The GM could very likely also allow for a bonus due to the ritual sample. And if you cannot find it through astral tracking that would mean the target is well protected and ritual sorcery would be very unlikely to have worked either.

As I asked before, is the hair "integral part of" the other tissue sample? I doubt that.

Is this just to get around the normal astral tracking rules for targets that are possibly far away?

Might I suggest finding an alternative. Something like staging the characters death, that way LS has no reason to come after them. In any of my games if you broke into LS (or other similar company) to steal your biological sample you had better make sure that you leave no trace to yourself; otherwise they will definately be after you in force.

This means erasing the digital record so that they don't know what sample was targetted. This means making sure there is no astral signature to track back to you. And I garuntee it, in any game I run, if you lobbed a fireball, even a small one, into their biological sample storage room, they would be on that astral trail faster than you can say, "that might not have been a good idea." Cops, even corp LS cops, generally don't like criminals. However, they take it very personal when criminals target them! Don't believe me? Just look at what happens when an officer is attacked. An attack on biological samples is an attack on them as well.

If what you want to eliminate one connection LS has to the character, but to make sure LS never stops looking for the character (and by proxy the rest of the group) there are easier methods. In fact, you could just shoot every LS officer that gets near the character; same net result, but a lot less difficult to pull off.

There is one major problem. In any ritual sorcery, you must have a spotter who can see the target somehow (either physically or astrally). Sure, you can track that sample down, but you're still going to have to go on a run to break into Lone Star's vaults to get a spotter in there (might as well just steal the sample while you're in there).

NO. See Advanced Magic Rules / Material Link in Street Magic p. 28/29. The link replace the spotter, which makes the method a nice tool for occasions where the astral spotter would be too noticeable or can't access easily to it's target..

If you initiate and take the Sympathetic Link metamagic (p. 58 of the same book), you can even use an item the target used (the less connexion the harder) or even a purely symbolic item like a picture. It can quickjly become really difficult to pull out, but possible...

Those are just the rules in the BBB. Street Magic introduces material links and that, if you have one, you don't need a spotter.

But in this case, your "Material Link" is the person from whom the sample was taken (you are using him/her to track down any samples collected)... I would say that you could not use a 2nd Sample to track down a sample, it would lead you to whom the sample was taken from... and since your material link is consumed in the process,... yeah, don't see the person volunteering for that anytime soon...

Keep the Faith