Dead Simple here,

regardless of rules editions, is there any way to create a magical device ?

I'm thinking of a Vampiric football that is powered by a trickle of blood

it is essentially a sustaining focus for a pre-cast set of detection spells.

----

it is NOT for the PC's to make and while valuable will also be inherently dangerous to use or be seen using

"Hey George, that look like blood magic them 'runners be usin' over there?"

"A'Yup! ... let's get us a million Nuyen bounty!"

there's no "Technology" or matrix access involved, but inside it might not be inanimate..

I'm thinking a brain in a jar (a la Cybermancy)

a spirit laden object

or just some other device that happens to be powered by blood (I have an NPC magician that will create this item)

any ideas on legitimately doing this ?

At least SR3 and SR4 certainly had (somewhat vague) rules for "special enchantments" where the enchanted item received special properties on GM's discretion. One of the controversial examples would be that permanently active weapon focus katana during SR4 times that provided its bonuses even to mundane persons wielding that thing. Ultimately for any such enchantment "the sky is the limit" because unlike for spells there's no explicit limitation as to what magical effects can be achieved via enchanting with a boat load of "special" ingredients, enough time to create the required formula and the karma to pay for it. Even more so if ...



... it's originally created by a (mysterious) NPC.




Apart from the special enchantment rules you could go with a inhabiting spirit that has some form of power fading weakness unless fed with blood ... Even better just make it an inhabiting blood spirit and use the standard Essence Drain / Essence Loss power / weakness combo where Essence Loss replaces the Evanescence weakness due to the inhabiting ...

Thats perfect thanks

If your looking to do it in SR5, there's a table somewhere towards the back of the book that has enchanting difficulties for objects. The gist of it is that the more technological/artificial it is, the more difficult it is to enchant. I don't have the book by me so I can't give you the numbers. Sorry. :/

If you wanted it to be an actual spell then just use the regular rules for enchanting. If you want it to be some other effect then just use some GM fiat and handwave those rules. I don't think there's any rules for creating artifacts and whatnot but there DOSNT really need to be. That's mostly a GM thing.

SR3 actually, but wanted to keep it more Lore based than system based if that makes sense.

as noted, GM Fiat and all that, but I dislike too much handwavium as the players audibly groan and then decide to start to try and make stuff up as well.

Thus I need something rooted in universe without tugging on someone's suspenders of disbelief.

and also, leaving it as vague as possible so I don't end up having a PC "Trying this at home!"

Thanks again, I have several avenues to obfuscate them with..

I know they're reading this, so, fun times ahead boys be a bad time for the magician to be absent

You can also check out the published adventure Bottled Demon.

Thank you! I forgot about that one!

This is likely too late to be timely, but it sounds like you are describing an Anchoring Focus. The trigger is blood coming in contact with it and then detection spell(s) are activated. covered in MitS p70.