I've actually thought of a tradition to do with rock music!

Tools and Trappings obviously include sheet music for libraries, and instruments for foci. Spells would come out as riffs. Here are some ideas for those who choose to follow such an unique tradition:

• Geas - must sing and/or play guitar when casting spells
• Centering of playing guitar or singing is always popular as well
• Geas of "Must have practiced guitar for at least 3 hours in the last 24"
• Sheet music would make great spell formulae and an excellent thesis
• Playing at clubs would make an excellent Night Job Flaw (Like a Day Job, but at night!)

Anything else? What could be put into a magician-rocker's lifestyle? I think that a trid subscription ought to make sense. (So many music channels!) And I'm trying to see what parts of Sprawl Survival Guide I can put in. This can be adapted for rap!

Hmmm...I still wanna see some entirely new and odd magical what-not come out of some sort of Egypt sourcebook. I mean, FASA/FanPro hasn't paid NEARLY enough attention to the place! It's always had a reputation of being a mysterious place, and has anyone paid heed to that in SR yet? NO! This must be rectified!


...Sorry. Probably random. But it seemed related at the time...

Seems like there's room for necromancy. Maybe just for the NPC's (blood and toxic magic). Then again, most of the typical "undead" things in SR, really aren't undead (just infected). Ah, screw it... forget I posted.

Here's one I came up with...

The Jedi

[IC] The Jedi Knights are a relatively new group that arose within the last fifteen years. Two groups arose at more-or-less the same time, but merged peacefully. While some believe that the Star Wars movies are the literal truth, most simply believe that George Lucas merely stumbled across a philosophical truth-- that magic is merely an expression of the Force. Using these truths, individuals were able to access their magical abilities, making them into Jedi.

[OOC] All known Jedi are Adepts of the Magician's way. They are unique in being the only known public group that caters to physical mages exclusively. It is unknown if physical mages are drawn to them, or if they are merely extremely effective at recruiting physical mages-- ultimately, it doesn't matter. Their training highly emphasizes "Using the Force"-- as such, they tend towards Detection and Healing spells, as well as Control manipulations.

Like Psionics, they find it very hard to cast spells that cannot be put into terms of the Force-- for example, due to their beliefs, very few can cast Elemental manipulation spells unless they are in a killing rage. A good number of them are functionally the same as Fire-Bringer shamans, dedicating their lives to a cause with great zeal. There are an estimated two or three hundred Jedi worldwide.

As conjurers, Jedi can summon nature spirits, but are incapable of summoning Spirits of Man. Instead, they can summon what appears to be a variant of Ancestor spirits, that always appear in the form of ancient Jedi masters. In lieu of the normal paraphernalia, Jedi require three items of significance to the Jedi Master they wish to summon-- generally, an item handled by one in a movie will suffice. The Jedi Master spirits are identical to Ancestor spirits in every other way, with the possible exception that they always have the Divination power. There are no known Free Jedi Master spirits.

Jedi do not require libraries as such, but they do need to have Star Wars related items to learn from. By studying these items, they gain further insights into the nature of the Force. Treat these items as equivalent to a Hermetic library in hard copy for the purposes of availability, street index, and cost; the only benefit gained is that the items are completely legal.

Jedi do not use circles; they instead use consecrated areas, dedicated to the study of the Force. Treat this as the equivalent of a Shamanic Lodge.

True to form, the Jedi have developed a weapon unique to them-- the lightsaber. The Jedi's lightsaber is a monowire line suspended in a tube of electromagnetic force. When the weapon is activated, the monowire is automatically extended to approximately 1 meter length, and is automatically retracted when the weapon is deactivated. In practice, this weapon functions identically to a monowhip, dealing a base 10S damage, and with the same penalties on a full miss. The only difference is that a lightsaber has a maximum reach of +1, as opposed to the normal +2 of a monowhip.

To date, no one else has managed to replicate their lightsaber-- this is partly due to the fact that the lightsaber is regarded almost holy to the Jedi, and they do not teach their secrets to outsiders; also, it is due to the fact that their weapon is not any more effective than a normal monowhip, is significantly louder and more noticeable when in use, and has less reach. What makes it especially deadly is that the Jedi tend to use their lightsabers as either weapon foci or fetishes for many of their spells-- in particular, they use it as a fetish for a Deflection spell, allowing them to seemingly deflect bullets with their blades.

While the Jedi are similar in many ways to Psionics, they are a unique tradition unto themselves. As such, they may not participate in Ritual Sorcery with non-Jedi or Psionics. Attempting to "translate" a spell from any other tradition into Jedi terms will be penalized exactly the same as if a Psionic were attempting it.

The Jedi Order itself operates as a set of Initatiatory groups. That is to say, there are actually many smaller groups that are loosely joined. Jedi who travel cannot always initiate with every other group, but most are members of several. Their known strictures are Fraternity, Oath, Exclusive Membership (Physical Mages only, Force-believers only), and Exclusive Ritual. While they ultimately answer to a single head of the Jedi order, Jedi are mostly free to improve the world as they see fit.

You forgot to mention how they all have an innate geas that they must attend every Star Wars conventions they know about or else spend a day watching all the episodes, both Ewok movies, and an assortment of lesser videos before they can use magic again.

I built a satanic mage once. Very awesome, he was. The rules were hermetic, but the flavor was most certainly not.

If they didn't have belief in the first place, they wouldn't be able to cast spells or conjure, as that is the basis of their magic system.

Wait, you're suggesting that there be a magical tradition that suffers less from essense loss? Hell, sign up every munchkin on the planet. I mean, magicians path adept *and* less effects from cyber? And I'm not even touching lightsabers.

I can see path of the magician, and I can see foci swords, possibly with a light spell anchored on them, but lets not break anything here.

I agree on not being able to conjur, but there are some effects that can only be duplicated by spells. Magic fingers would be a neccecity, and a force push may be duplicated by either manabolt or a custom spell. And for the dark-siders (and Yoda), force lighting.

I think one of the weaknesses would that all jedi have the same powers, and, when you get right down to it, not so many of them, just at different power levels.

If we're talking about a force-related power with cyber, I'd advise against less of a cyber penalty. Instead, use some of their strictures also as geasa. For example, their powers don't work correctly if they havn't meditated about the force within the last 24 hours, or if they havn't read a star wars book in the last 24 hours, they aren't using their light saber, etc. Even heavilly cybered Vader had problems fighting less-cybered Luke.

Edit: Another geas could be that they must make some sort of extended speech before fighting

I made a reformed blood-mage NPC once. Essentially he learned an entirely new way of performing blood magic, by sacrificing of himself. He could use no magic unless he had at least 1 box of physical damage, but normal wound modifiers were reversed for him, the more physical (NOT stun) damage he sustained, the lower his TNs for magic activities became.

No, vader had just initated many times more, while Obi wan just enjoyed sitting back at home, not exercising his powers.



Another tradition that was actually mentioned in Dunk's Big Book O' Goodies but hasn't been fleshed out anywhere would be a tradition based around Tarot cards. Obviously, it would be very small tradition in 2064, since Miles Swinburne was the first as far as he knew to summon Tarot spirits. Obviously, this tradition would be centered around tarot decks. Each card, or the deck itself, could be used as reusable fetishes, or foci. Tarot magicians would focus on using the tarot spirits. Tarot sprits would have powers associated with their card's meanings...which means, every spirit would have two personalities (for those of you who don't know, tarot cards have different meanings based on the direction they get laid down.). In keeping with the random nature of Tarot, it might be that the 'primary' and 'reversed' version of the spirit appearing would be random. As far as spells, tarot magicians should be able to cast any spell normally. Of course, there are so many types of cards, it might be that only the 'major' cards be considered for full sprits, and the others be on the level of a slightly more powerful watchers or ancestor spirit.

Of course, one ability that all tarot spirits would have unique to other sprits is divination. Tarot magicians could do a "divination summoning". It would be like laying out tarot cards, except much more accurate and powerful. The spirits summoned would be random (ie, GM picks to suit story) and each type of spirit that appears would tell one part of a premonition. Of course, the clarity of the premonition would be better with a higher force level, but that would also be more draining on the Tarot magician. For the purposes of the spell, the summonings would a multiple summoning (one after another, but none appear until all summonings have been successfully made). Since they would give only one service (the divination) you could probably reduce the final target number by a point. Of course, you should use the correct number of 'draws' to finish the divination. Here's a listing of the number of draws that this person does depending on the topic for divination (irl): Tarot Spreads (numbers and patterns of drawing)

I'd personally love to play this, but tarot spirits (both regular and 'reversed' forms) would need to be fleshed out quite a bit. I'm sure some would mimic spirits already in existence, but some would be entirely new. Either that, or you could use some sort of great form watcher spirit as a base for the primary cards, add a special power based on the card, and go from there. Nothing quite comes close to a Death Tarot sprit, slowly approaching a sec-guard. Can you say "innate spell: death touch" ? (granted, Death means change and not literally death, but what the hey.) Hmm...I really should flesh this out myself. If not you, who, they say

i would be considerably more worried about the Tower, or the Devil, than death, death just means change in tarot readings...

-Mike R.

The Tower, Devil and Death. "The Tower was the Mansion, Lupino was the Devil, and Death was me, coming for him." -Max Payne

Actually, I very nearly did. Later I ended up making an adept that followed adversary that had some serious similarities, but I decided in the end that I wanted to go with connotation of medevil sorcerers being labeled as 'in league with the devil', and they were all very hermetic. As a matter of fact, they were one of the key groups referred to as hermetic, after Hermes.

Some enthusiasts, myself included, believe that "reversed" readings for Tarot cards are a minor abomination only used by people who don't know how to shuffle. If you shuffle your cards right, you never get reversed readings.

Making this "canon" for any homegrown ruleset easily halves your workload, if you're so inclined.

Or, since only a clumsy shuffler gets reversed readings, maybe reversed spirits are what you get if you fail to meet a success threshold on your conjuring test.

That is, 1 or 2 successes, you get a reversed Tarot spirit. 3 successes gives you an upright Tarot spirit with 1 service, 4 successes gives you two services, etc.

I like the idea of not knowing which Tarot spirit you're actually going to get when you summon one.

Y'know, there really isn't any reason to come up with alternate rulesets involving spirits for Tarot divination. The standard divination metamagic available to any initiate who cares to take it covers such things quite nicely. My Viking sorcerer doesn't summon rune spirits to tell him the future when he casts runes... he just looks at the runes.

That's true. A Tarot magician could learn that particular metamagic through a tarot deck. When I thought of the summoning of spirits, I was thinking it would fit in along the lines of how Hogans can connect with their spirits through summoning, or how on astral quests you can consult spirits for great knowledge. This would just be another way to do it, and would not require metamagic.

Great Form Ancestor spirits, IIRC, have Divination as a power. I always thought that was spot on as to myth and such.

I created an Insect totem for Butterfly. The shaman conjures the Queen into her own body, but creates no other spirits. The Queen can create other Queens but require only the most beautiful hosts...

Vader was a twisted-way physmage.

Well, as they say, it's all in the dice. All luke needed was one good swing. Can anyone say, "Oops!"

Vader may have been using the Emperor as a power conduit, much as burn-outs use Gaf. The Emperor simply withdrew his support for Vader during RotJ... Plus Luke tapped the Dark Side as well during that fight.

Another interesting sci-fi tradition would be the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. If I had more time I'd make them up, I'm thinking mainly detection and thought manipulation type spells, maybe physical adept powers for the weirding way...

Or the Fremen Fredaykin Death Commandoes!

I can just see it now: "Join the Freydakin they said. Ride an Old One they said. See the desert they said."

I've got another one: The Tokra. Must have Bioware. Hey, I like Stargate SG-1.

Edit: Why not add the Mentats as sort of Mental Adepts! Small Unit Tactics up the wazoo!

To drag my topic back on to topic, I want to see more traditions. I want to see the tradition's name, how it works, tradition and tools and Trappings. Think MITS.

I'm in the middle of doing some research on Maori culture for some background on a magic using character from Aotearoa. Unfortunately it seems to be turning out that they'll probably just be a standard shaman with some local trappings overlaid. Which is annoying. :/

After reading this thread, I'm re-inspired to back and finish the black magic tradition I started writing up for an unfinished hermetic character.