I was toying with the idea of rigging up some sort of monowire loop o' decapitation, anyone think that this might work? Also how it might work, I was thinking maybe a called shot, grapple, some combination of the two perhaps? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
*Edited to comply with numerous suggestions*

This has been discussed a little. By definition, a wire that removes the target's head is probably not a garrote. This has some of the debate.

Yeah I wasn't sure what to call it though, thanks for the link.

Also, its gonna be a lot harder to use then you would think... how do you hold it? if your fingers slip at all, if theres a struggle, you lose body parts =P

It would be very very messy and no more efficant than a peice of piano wire. You'd end up covered in the other persons blood and the only real advantage is you could cut through any neck armour that happened to be present.

Oh I agree that there is no real advantage to such a ridiculous contraption, I just thought it would make an interesting visual.

Oh, it's more efficient than piano wire, given that the latter only slits throats and this takes off heads. But, yes, everything else said here's pretty much dead on.

Alright, its a stupid idea, I admit it. Sorry for wasting everyones time.

Eureka! Maybe if you were to attach a plastic bag...or something...somehow....nevermind.

Actually there's at least 1 decent reason to use monowire over piano wire.

Shapeshifters! After all, a slit throat is a minor cut to one of them, but a removed head is, by default, massive damage to the central nervous system and kills instantly.

Or better yet, a Thermite garrote. Wrap it around the guys neck, ingite, and enjoy watching him try to pat it out before it burns his entire head away.

I'm not sure how helpful a...shall we call it a Tag'n'Bag™?...would be to a 'runner. But i could see it being a big hit in meat processing plants.

EDIT: I stand corrected, Moonstone Spider seems to have come up with a use.

P.S. Have you been watching Kill Bill Vol. 1 on continuous loop for the last 36 hours straight or something? No reason, just asking.

Aberrant (White Wolf's Superhero game) had such things.

Basically how they did it was two rings were connected to each other, they were held together on the side and when seperated, one side performed as the anchor, and the other ring was a spool of retractable monowire thread.

Attach one ring on each hand and pull. Monowire garotte.

And yes, it was a garotte in their system due to the way they explained the superpowers (basically subconcious control over quantum physics, and as a buckyball tube is thicker then quantum scale, those with the "brick" archetype powers could resist it).

That's a good way of doing it. Just that such a weapon would not have a hell of a lot of uses, though there are a few potential situations (one already mentioned) where it could prove useful.

Hell, garrotes themselves aren't terribly useful. They're quite concealable, but if you can get a knife and can get full access to your target, the garrote's not really more than a liability. A knife to the kidney with your other arm over his mouth and kneck should do the trick much more quietly and with much less fuss. Or, hell, classic slit throat, though that's noiser.

A monowhip would do, as long as it has some sort of locking mechanism so you can just unreel a foot and a half or so of it instead of the whole thing.

The books state that monowire comes with loops for fingers to begin with, I think. Anyways, a monowire garrote also has the benifit of not needing to get it over their head first. Just get behind them, spread the hands apart with the neck between, and push.

I've both seen and used characters that make extensive use of monowire. Great stuff.

One thing that I've thought about on it. Many corps use it as a top to their fences. This means that somebody must be using some kind of kit to install it. A goal of one of my characters: get a hold of one of those kits. Then just go to any random corp, and start taking the monowire off the fence and keeping it. Security won't realize right away that your target is the fence, not the stuff in the building, so it's pretty easy to get away with it. With that kind of street index and availability, you'll be sitting pretty real quick.

Big Knobi Klub has some more fun uses for monowire here:

http://www.intercom.net/user/logan1/engfun4.htm

I think it's worth pointing out that while it's deadly sutff, it's not as potent as it is portrayed on that site, and takes more than a breeze worth of force to do anything but very superficial damage, if that. Still, don't let that make you think it's not very, very bad.

I gotta admit that the booby trapped emergency exits is rather tempting...

Hell, running lines of it anywhere in an urban setting (how about a dusty stairwell with poor lighting?) is nasty. At leg level, most of you will be falling down the stairs. At head level, most of you will be rolling, some of you will be bouncing. It's ability for instant, unsuspecting kills goes a bit too far, really, both in terms of believability and playability.

Oh, I was talking about real life....

very very few places would use monowire across fences considering it's 3,000 nuyen per meter. That money can go a LOT farther in other ways for defense.

It's in Sota2063 for that purpose. I think it's in the corp security handbook too.

I saw Johnny Mnemonic last night, and one of the Yaks used his whip for a garotte. Classic!

Ah, memories

Moonstone Spider:

I believe that the U.S. military has had something like this for several years. It's known variously as Detcord or Primacord, and is essentially a high-grade twine with an explosive core (usually RDX (Cyclomethylene trinitramine), also known as Cyclonite or Hexogen), the basis for such plastic explosives as C-4 and Semtex.

A well-known terrorist tactic is to build a package bomb, using Detcord as the "string" with which the package is tied--the detonator is concealed inside, and the parcel looks harmless unless examined very closely.

There was a TV movie--a spy spoof-- released in 1981 called THE BILLION DOLLAR THREAT. The protagonist received, as part of his mission equipment, a rather innocuous-looking pack of dental floss. I don't recall what it contained (either Thermite or some sort of corrosive, I think), but it cut through steel like the proverbial hot knife through butter.

The protagonist used it to escape from a holding cell (weakened the bars, so that he could bend them enough to leave by the window), and later to defeat a musclebound adversary with an artificial arm who was in the process of strangling him with the prosthetic limb (he cut the guy's arm off just below the elbow and beat him unconscious with it ! ) .

Just thought you might be interested. What you're suggesting sounds workable.

I recall reading a piece of SR online fiction (the Blackout storyline, over on deckerm's page, http://www.shadowrun.lucidblue.net/ , but the site was down when I checked), in which a character had a monowire garrotte built into a wristwatch cellphone--I suppose that it could be considered the 2060's version of the wristwatch garrotte used by Donovan "Red" Grant (Robert Shaw) in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE.

--Foreigner

One thing to keep in mind. Cost to purchase is usually higher than cost to produce. Pretty much always higher when megacorps are involved. So something that has a price tag of 3000/meter might cost 300/meter or less to actually produce (advertising, shipping, and other costs raise the effective cost to sell). This makes it more affordable to wire your facilities if you can produce the wire.

This is a great idea. That's probably why it exists, I believe in State of the Art: 2063. I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure I'm not.

Monowire has to be able to be attached to something somehow otherwise it has no practical uses at all.

And in an age of trolls, cyber nightmares and worse, an easily concealed, highly dangerous weapon which, although it requires an element of surprise to use, can be exceedingly effective.

My fondness of the weapon comes from the "Alien Legion" series, but I'd imagine an animal control officer's stick-choker device would be quite interesting, coupled with molly wire.

And yes, there is an ick factor for decapitation and the resulting blood, but still...

-Siege

Home made lightsaber...

I don't see why a monowire cutting tool wouldn't exist as a logical extension of the tech.

It's more reasonable than my laser cutting torch (hand-held variant of the laser tool cyber eye).

If you want extra spiffy points, implant a light source in either your monosword or the molly wire for the flashy-glowy saber effect.

-Siege

That is why the plastic bag addition seems like an interesting possibility. Well actually the name Tag'n'Bag is what i like about it, the neck stump is likely going to splater quite a bit anyway.

Hoo boy, you have no idea the kind of mess you'll be getting into. The plastic bag was a joke. Would not do the trick. This is why garrotes are specialized weapons while real field work will almost always be done with a knife. Monowire just makes things worse, though it allows you to hurt tougher things.

Would an acid stream take care of the blood? It does say that it eats away organic material. Some other spell perhaps?

Btw I'm throwing this one out there more for the sake of amusement then anything else.

Just tag the guy with the Acid Stream. What do you need a garrote for if you've got that?

It was more of a joke than anything, I was just curious if anyone with a stronger grasp of shadowrun magic had any better ideas.

*Slams a dictionary down onto the table* This is the word, and the word is LAW!

~J

Postscript: monowire loop o' decapitation gets the idea across pretty well too...

Aieeeee! *Head exPLODES!*

~J

Flowbee! Thats brilliant!

It's not just about evidence, though. Even on the short term, taking down a guard can be done many cleaner way that get them out of the way without the unprofessional mess, which will screw you not only with any investigation but within the next 10 minutes.

Could always heat the monowire, cauterize the cut as it is made.

Along a different line, how about a grenade type weapon that flings monowire about in a whirlwind of death around it? Could even build ina time to retract the wire and a basic proximity senor to have it go off again if someone gets too close after the initial firing (spoon of grenade would act as a remote to turn it off). give it a basic photovoltaic cell to recharge teh whirlie, retracting and sensor gear adn you have a nice present to leave with the corp of your choice.