I have a couple of questions that I would appreciate being cleared up.

1. If you have a spirit, does that exist only in the Astral or is it dual natured?

2. What kinds of threats are there in the Astral world?

3. Is there anything that exists only on the Astral plane?

4. What are some good tricks to pull on players who use the astral plane a lot?

1. Spirits are generally not dual-natured. They exist in Astral and can materialise in the Physical.

2. Aside from spirits, check out Street Magic, pages 115-122. There you'll find alchera, astral shallows, astral rifts, background counts, voids, mana ebbs, domains, mana warps, mana surges, and mana storms.

3. Any Astral entity that cannot materialise, such as a Watcher Spirit, is Astral only. You could easily design a spirit that only exists in Astral.

4. Make an underground or underwater lairs. Earth and water is alive and counts as an Astral entity. It takes a lot of effort to astrally pass through living rock. See The Living Earth, Street Magic, page 114-5.

Wild Spirits (Street Magic, page 110) can make for an unexpected opponent.

You can only astrally project for Magic hours before the link between soul and body is severed. "Ghostbusters" could trap the magician's astral form in a mana barrier cage, or someone might kidnap his sleeping body while he is projecting. Unless the soul and body are found and reunited in time, the character is dead.


EDIT: Thanks for that question. I've been needing ideas on that myself!

1. It is either astral only or when it materializes it becomes dual natured.

2. Tons mostly various spirits, but also some terrain threats. Two big ones I can think of are Shedim(Sp?) basically spirits that will possess your body while you are out, and then astral warps or severe background count that causes damage to enter.

3. Yeah, I'm trying to remember them but I'm pulling up a blank.

4. Well on the basic level wards, awakened ivy, and FAB. There are a couple other one slike this. But wards generally stop astral traffic and if a mage pushes through or breaks the ward the creator knows of it and will likely show up with a spirit posse. Awakened IVY physically exists on the astral and physical world so you can only get through it by killing it which is visible on the physical plane. Fab has a variety of effects depending on the type some of which are nasty.

If you have it street magic pages 126-128 is a good read for astral security.