I have a NPC that needs the help of the shadowrunner PCs to fake her death and conceal her in every way, longterm.

How can the players hide a mundane person’s aura from being found by a mage that is actively looking and is familiar with that aura?

I thank you in advance for any constructive feedback.

Cardboard box. (Not for the long term, of course, but fully effective.)

Mage hunt '72

Spirit pact, inhabitation or possession of a free spirit with masking? I can´t think of other solutions.

Are we assuming that just killing the mage isn't an option? Much easier.

stand in some very deep background count with a lot of people and plants around you. There are more modifiers to assensing in Street Magic. It's not masking, but astral hiding. Sitting in a strong ward helps against Ritual Magic.

The mage is part of an investigator unit that work for Aztechnology... so, no it's not easier to kill the mage

Assuming no astral links to this person exist, I'd suggest moving very far away, to a very crowded new city. I've often had players try to use astral sight to find people whose aura they are familiar with, and the unfortunate part about that otherwise brilliant plan is that they're still looking for a needle in a haystack.

Say this woman is from Seattle. If you move her to a random suburb of Tokyo, there's no easy way for the mage tracking her to know where she is unless he has a ritual link. Even if he finds out she's "in tokyo" he still has to spot her. This is akin to flying an invisible, intangible helecopter around Tokyo looking for someone wearing a bright green jacket: it's doable, but unlikely.

really, just being someplace else is often good enough, unless the tracker knows where you live.

Plant those awakened lilies, etc.

I dunno, Jizmack. It's all about planning. Trick the mage into some kind of vulnerable situation. Be creative.

Actually, let's not say "any random city". Let's say "Hong Kong", because Hong Kong had wangtastically bizzare ley lines that make magical tracking a bitch.

be/get a runner mage with Masking. Copy the aura of the asset. set up a trap.

Just remember, when the character leaves, to burn the building they lived in. Astral Links can be made from a lot of things, and if the mage does know where the character lives, may be able to get it from almost anything if skilled enough (though a body part would be a lot easier to work with)

Metaplanar quest--Go out into the deep unknown, hide it, and come back. Enemy mage has to go out to the metaplanes and undertake a quest of the same difficulty to find it. Downside is that while hiding, the NPC mage cannot use any magic.

Huh? Since when can an awakened grab someone's aura and hide it in the metaplanes?

Astral Concealment (Street Magic, p. 132) You aren't taking the aura there, you are moving the link so if someone tries astral tracking, it has to go to hell and back.

This was one of the methods discussed for Jane in DOTA3, but they opted for the amulet instead. Likewise, a unique enchantment with a Rating 12 mana void on the person would probably hide them--but keep them from having any access to their magic/abilities.

Except that only works for a link that someone might follow. It doesn't help any against an aura being recognized.

I'm sorry, I presumed the runners at least had the intelligence to take him somewhere no one would ever think to look for him. My solution is designed to stop ritual tracking, not the mage being ID'd while buying soynuts at the Stuffer Shack.

Edit: If you are still dealing with someone seeing him, then cosmetic surgery, preferably with phenotype changes, genetech for Masque or a full genewipe, and a brand new SIN, with the other being burnt. Also, buy a Hacker to maintain the Erased quality for the rest of the NPCs life.

Presumably the NPC doesn't want to spend the rest of his/her life in a safehouse and/or doesn't want to have to move to some distant city.

Search for the amulet the great dragon Dunkelzahn left to an ork called Craig Sanchez in his will. According to the adventure "What's in a name?" in Blood in the Boardroom, pp. 84-86, the amulet "can make any person's aura look nondescript, meaning that a heavily cybered person could use to appear as unaugmented on the astral plane. Treat thus as if a Grade 5 Initiate with a Magic of 11 were deliberately masking the wearer's aura. Also, treat the amulet as a unique magical item, meaning that it does not require bonding and cannot be dispelled, attacked astrally, or ground through (unless the gamemaster so desires), nor will it stop the wearer from walking through astral barriers."

For the full story, in 2033, Dunkelzahn forced the free spirit Buttercup into occupying thirteen-years old Craig Sanchez body for a year and a day, to teach it was metahuman's life was like. That's only after this experience that Butercup actually initiated pro-metahuman policies at Yamatetsu/Evo. The thing Dunkelzahn did resulted in Craig Sanchez knowing Buttercup True Name (well, instead of "knowing", it would be more appropriate to say that piece of information was somewhere in his head). So, to protect him from Buttercup after his death, he had the Draco Foundation handing him the amulet.
The aforementioned adventure is about the runners searching for Sanchez during the 2057-2060 Corporate War, as Buttercup located him in Seattle when he lost the amulet. It ends with Buttercup choosing to keep Sanchez alive and hiding in Singapore (so the PC can keep the amulet if they want to). Note that in Corporate Guide suggests Craig Sanchez is dead, while he elven daughter Julia (born from an ork and an human, or adopted ?) became Buttercup secretary.

Unless I'm forgetting some Metamagic, finding a person with a known aura requires the same effort as finding a known face in a crowd. So keeping in crowded places seems like a good start, the concrete wasteland of a typical wageslave settlement should also provide some Background Count.

Putting holes in an aura via cyber probably also makes it harder to recognize. And if even that is not enough, HMHVV or Cybermancy give the aura a complete makeover, with some _minor_ side effects.

I'm pretty sure, that masking isn't even needed. Spirit and vessel become a composite entity which obviously is different from either the vessel or the astral spirit. As such the aura should be different as well.
Both methods however have their drawbacks as the vessel is (at least temporarily) not in control.

Is the NPC a Twilight fan? Just tell her HMHVV will make her sparkly. Problem solved.

I doubt the NPC is into classical literature

Twilight classical? Literature? SCNR

Well, in 60 Years, it may be a classic, but it will never be Literature...

I doubt that "Twilight" will ever become a classic book. Whether it is literature I cannot judge as I have not read it.

Highly doubtful, but you never know. I certainly would not put it in the same company as Tolstoy, Steinbeck, or Shakespeare. Even my wife, who loves Vampire Fiction, absolutely hates these books. Quite Funny, actually.

Vampire Fiction? AFAIK it was about fairies. Vampires don't sparkle. Period. And for that matter SR mages don't either, no matter what SR4A tells us.

Heheh... Can't argue that one...

I'm sure some sparkle. If there can be a shamanic mask that appears as gouts of flame, I'm sure another sparkle's like Tinkerbell's fairy dust.

Besides, think of the revenue you could get for a glitterdust-like spell...

Perhaps classic wasn't quite the right word, it just sounded better than 'really old book'. Is there a term for that besides classic? I don't think ancient or antique quite fits either.

Edit: Nor dated, as that generally implies that it is outdated as opposed to simply old.

Hmmm. I think the phrase you are looking look for is "old crap"

While accurate, it wasn't quite what I was looking for.

*Ding Ding Ding*... We have a winner...

Sorry to derail the thread but not only magic users with a shamanic mask can sparkle as of SR4A. Contrary to SR4 the mana becomes visible during casting, no matter how invisible the effect of the spell is. In previous editions the mundanes could only see marks of strain/concentration on the magician during casting.
This sentence was added in SR4A, it is not in SR4.

And yet, it is an OR statement. I tend towards the disturbance in the Air. Hair begins to float, or the hairs on your arms and neck stand up, or a tingling sensation all over your skin as the mana converges (Kind of like the effects surrounding Charlie in the movie Firestarter). You know, that sort of thing. Can the effect be glowy and visible, sure, but that is the easy way out. I would leave it up to the caster as to how their magic appears when they cast. My wife had tiny tinkerbell-like sound effects that manifested when her magic was used. I tend to like the flavor that that generates MUCH more than just the generic Sparkly Glowies effect...

The point is not whether it is sparkles or some other visible mundanely detectable sign. My point is the mana itself should not be visible. Sure you can see that the mana forces sweat on the magicians brow or that the mage has to gasp for air as he casts a powerful spell, but mana was never visible perceivable before in SR and I like it that way.

Making it visible makes it easier to justify the ridiculously low perception threshold though.

[Edit]Made it clearer that may statement was not limited to the visusal sense[/Edit]

I agree. Mana shouldn't be visible, other then the affect it's causing (and potential secondary effects on the caster or minor manipulations as the caster weaves the spell, unless they usually have a mask) The Fluff, even in SR4 tend to support this, and the low perception threshold can be justified by a growing familiarity to magic in the world, too.

I get it... I always understood the effect to be a Result of the gathering Mana, not the Mana itself. No worries though. Thresholds are what they are.

According to a local store it's Teen Self Help.

... Suuurrrreeee

Does "It's noteworthy how awful this is." count?

Well, I'm sure a lot of them read about Edward then spend some time "self helping".

Fair enough...

Well, they do. And I have to say I do like the rule. It is easy to use and it puts an end to the question: Does the guy realise if I am raping the the mind of his boss.

You could buy a Rover 2068 for 25k nuyen, equip a ram plate, and flatten him. The difficult suddenly becomes easy when you can dish out a 26 DV attack while only having to absorb 6 DV with body + armor.

As far as seeing mana itself, I think of it like when there's a lot of electricity in the air: hair will stand on end, things will smell and feel funny, etc. But at no point are you actually seeing the electricity.

But we're derailing the thread. What's wrong is that there's essentially two questions we're trying to answer: how to disguise a person's aura, and how to protect a person from ritual sorcery. The OP didn't specify if Aztechnology had a ritual link to the mundane in question, so I'm going to focus on auras.

AFAIK, there's no way for a mundane's aura to change naturally. There are ways to make your aura less visible on the astral plane, like using stealth and hiding in crowds. But the aura itself doesn't change, it's just harder to spot it. The trick here is, an aura is like someone's face: you can't find someone if all you have on them is a description of their face. At best, you can describe it to others, but there's no guarantee they'll get it right. Assuming they didn't get a Kirilian photograph of the aura (highly unlikely), and since there's no equivalent of a police sketch artist for auras, only the person who saw the aura will recognize it.

So, the best thing to do in the situation described is stay away from the mage. I gather that the mundane in question lives in a big city, so he should be fairly safe-- accidentally encountering the mage isn't likely to happen. Even if he does run across the mage, it's like spotting a familiar face in a crowd. It's possible, just not extremely likely or easy. On top of that, if the mundane's in public, it's highly unlikely that the mage will actually do anything: how often do you approach a stranger just because they look familiar? Let alone attack them on sight?

There might well be a police sketch artist for auras. But it doesn't really change the scenario.

You know, if you hide for a few weeks/months, the mage is unlikely to continue looking, especially if he's a corp mage. Looking for a runner is not exact ally profitable. After the mage stops actively looking, it's much the same as hiding from someone who knows your face.

Exactly. You can't ritually track someone from seeing their aura, is the basic point. Knowing someone's aura won't help you track down someone, it'll just help you identify them when you narrow your search through other means.