So if you have a corp full of mages, why can't that corp provide water to LA by summoning water elementals?

OK. I can just think of the trauma happening to kids as they realize they're driving the magical equivalent of the Kool-Aid Man.

This would depend on your opinion on what consitutes a spirits body or its attacks and how this reacts against the rules of magic.

Manifestation doesnt give the spirit a real body made of a real substance so it is unlikely to be counted as actually water, more likely a spirt body with the properties of water. Its a fine line I know but manifestation does not actually give them a body just lets them project their astral body into our world.

Elemental attacks are a tricky one depending on if you believe they make a actual real manifestation of a element. Given that even the best mages cant make real items directly out of mana I cant really see it being real water in the form of something that days or weeks later could be drinkable by a person.

The understanding I have always had was the body of a spirit just disappears after it is destroyed or banished without leaving anything behind further reinforcing the idea that it isnt a real body just a manifestation


Now in some instances I dont see a problem between a water like spirt substance and real water, if you were firefighting then it doesnt matter if it is real or not as it will do the same job which is to remove the heat and block out the air. But giving fresh usable water to people in LA, you would be better off with a sterialise spell.

I might be wrong but I would think that if this was viable it would be mentioned in some of the Chicargo write ups as it would make a mage very valuable if they could just whistle up clean water from a spirit (it does mention steralise but thats a limited spell really not a magically produced supply of pure safe water).

I know that this is an Innovative Idea, but why not just use the Spell "Clean [Element]" and aspect it to Water? I mean, really, that is what the spell is actually for, after all...

That was the one I was thinking of, but checked with Feral Cities as I remembered a comment in it and it was for sterialise instead.

Will be a limited solution though it takes quite alot of magic to clean something from what I remember

Yeah, can't you just clean the water? Don't even need magic for that. I mean even today it is not that hard.

For brackish water it is pretty simple

Salt water requires other membranes and higher pressure

And I guess if you can summon spirits as pump-slaves or generally considering the amount of energy used in SR, then desalination shouldn't be much of a problem.

Mundane is always best and easiest in my opinion... but there are magical solutions as well...

Arsenal says water spirits can provide drinking water for, IIRC, [Force] people per day for a service.

If the salt water is also chemically toxic and radioactive, the cleansing may be a touch more difficult.

That'll be a lot of powerful spirits then, Xahn Borealis. Good catch.

I was going to quote RC to explain why it wouldn't work, but Xahn Borealis actually makes a very good point. Anyway, in the beginning of the section on Free Spirits, RC states that spirits aren't actually made of what they appear to be made of. An iron earth elemental is not magnetic, a spirit of man materialized as a human will not sunburn, etc. That means that water elementals themselves aren't actually made of water. But it seems that such elementals do indeed have the ability to control the elements that they appear to be made of. So yes, pattyhulez, the idea itself is sound. THe only problem is that there is no such thing as a corporation full of mages. Mages are still too rare for something like that to happen on an efficient scale.

But I can see a small group of charitable (spit-take) shamans providing water for a small neighbourhood of squatter communities in this way.

Just do it like New Dawn Environics did it: conjure some toxic spirits to absorb all the poisons and radiation from your water! You get 100% pure water for the small price of going crazy and increasing the power of toxic spirits!

Bah, sanity is overrated.

Spirits can also be a boon in the desert. An air spirit’s service
can provide a cool, sand-free breeze for a day. Water spirits can
provide enough water to sustain a number of characters equal to
their Force for one day with a service. Other spirits can use their
Guard power to protect characters from sandstorms and may, if the
gamemaster allows it, be able to point the characters in the direction
of an oasis.


Found it


Ok, now to me that doesnt say that they make the water just they can provide it. Makes sense to me that a water spirit can call some water up from the earth but it does break alot of the concept of magic for them to create it from scratch.


I would go so far as to say that in a toxic and polluted area a water spirit would have trouble finding clean water themselves - Could even be a fun way to corrupt a spirit into a toxic by forcing it to deal with to much nasty water.



The way I see it if you could just magic water out of nothing by using a spirit someone would have already used that plan to make a empire somewhere that water is needed. Clean water is a very expensive resource in some places and if you had the power to make a almost limitless supply you could be rich. The fact no one has set themselves up as a water seller by using magic backs up the 'it cant be made with magic' stance

The way the servce is worded, it would actually provide less water in a society that's adapted to less water consumption. Dune's fremen would get a few thimbles to have 5 people persist on it, modern westerners would get two gallons to sustain the same ammount. Why? Because it's magic!
Also keep laws of supply and demand in mind. A man selling limitless water in the desert would see prices deflate soon.

A single mage could get fairly far though. A single force 3 spirit would likely have 3 services owned, and cause little to no drain for runner-level mages. That's 9 people watered per spirit. It just boils down to how many spirits one can summon in a day.

Don't forget that Runner-Level strength Magicians are downright rare. They're the powerhouses of the group, along with Corporate Security Mages.

The rest of the Magicians in the world aren't nearly as powerful. Some can barely bring up enough power to work as a Special Effects guy for Trids.

Of course. Still, a corpsec mage that's on staff anyway might as well spend his time in a useful way when not keeping up wards and bound spirits. This small bounty actually ending up in Pueblo citizens? No way.
There might be one or two street shammies willing to hood it out like that though, and keep some SINless folk alive. Selling this "magic water" bottled might give one or two actual SINners a nice selling angle to the ultra-rich as well. Good chance they'll be scooped up by some corp soon though.

Not much of an empire. You can only hydrate around 5-6 people a day.

A 3-all-around shaman could easily do far more, let's look at the averages:
Summon a Force 3 spirit, roll 3+3=6 dice vs its 3, get one net hit, so one task.
Roll 3+3=6 dice to resist the two drain that caused, soaking both.
Water 3 people.
Rinse and repeat. (though rinse with sand, to prevent water spoilage)

Water-creation isn't described as an action, though assuming it's a complex one, this process takes one combat turn.

For the occasions that drain does occur (around 1 out of 9 times, as I'm too lazy to do more precise math), he could either save up 2 boxes of stun damage, then powernap for an hour -on average healing both-, save up 9, then rest until healed (making the summoning net hit less likely), or just have a first aid kit nearby, with preferably a decent doc. 3+3+3(medkit) will provide 2 net hits on average, healing two stun as well. Of course supplies will run out.

Still, assuming 1 out of 9 chance for 1 drain getting through, and forgetting about wound modifiers for ease's sake, he could summon 49 spirits, before hitting 9 stun damage. that's 147 watered people in just under 3 minutes, leaving the rest of the day to sleep it off and do other useful things.
Still not much of an empire to be sure though.

Obviously, for a runner level summoner, these numbers would vastly increase. Also for summoners being satisfied with F1 spirits. Chance of drain would be negligable. Just time and focus would limit that.

Let's do a little bit of math. Water intake in a desert is (very roughly) 1 gallon/day/person, so I will assume an invocation can generate [Force xService] gallon. But it's drinking water only. An average urban resident use up something like 30 to 40 gallons a day.

Supplying water for 100.000 person (and your typical sprawl has more resident that that !) would require about 1 million services from Force 3 spirits a day...

With numbers like that, I don't think large-scale magical water supply is an economically viable business in 2070.

But, if it does work despite not being economically viable...

It would probably mess up a whole lot of those pesky, physics related things, like gravity, tidal forces, ocean currents, heat handling properties, global water levels. If it's water conjured up out of thin magic anyway. Of course, physics + magic = headaches.

And no. The service doesn't provide water for doing dishes and laundry. It provides "enough water to sustain a number of characters equal to their Force for one day". Sustaining 100k people would require 33.34 F3 services. Frak their laundry.

I wasn't trying to show its viability to sustain a city, though. But I could definitely see a small corp or merc camp living off it. Or for that matter someone branding 'Aqua de Mana' for prizes comparable to mid class champagnes, and finding a definite market there. It might also even be a source for distilled water in a rush. It supplies water, after all, not trace minerals.

Or are Insect Spirits cheating again.

Now I'm going to have to sent a high force water spirit controlled by a chaos mage through a wall at my runner team, crying out "Oh Yeah!"

In any case, I'd have to agree that while their are magical methods of cleaning water, they are not a large scale solution. I think it's only like .5% of people are magicians, and most of those will never get more than a couple points of magic. Sorcerery, even weak sorcerery, is to draining to use over an extended period of time, and I imagine that consistent use of water spirit water might constitute spirit abuse.

I could however see some awakened flora being used in the water purification process, augmenting a technological solution, but only augmenting.

Fact is, we allready have the tech in 2011 to distill virtually any water, and by 2072 I imagine we'll have improved the technology quite a bit.

Maybe spirit abuse, but it almost might appease the spirits for getting rid of toxicity and bringing down the chances of twisted spirits.

And we have the technology today... After The Crash and Crash 2.0, who knows what was lost?

Asking a bunch of spirits to wee in a cup once a day would hardly constitute abuse IMHO.
Also, "today" as such never happened in the SR universe.

One bright side... The Twin Towers are still standing.

I know, I was exposing why IMHO the answer to the OP's question is "no, it won't work".

It won't work...

Without cheating.