So the idea is a Mage character with a (you guessed it) Free Spirit as a contact. I personaly don't have much of a problem w/ taking contacts that are mostly for flavor but I was wondering if this concept could work.

From the ground up, there are numerous problems:

1) Modes of contact. Would this thing have a cell phone? Could I use Watcher Spirits to set up the meet?

2) What type of info/support could this thing provide?

3)Do you guys think its good idea?

The background is the mage fell in love w/ another magician and she's one of the Corrupted/Darke wannabe/generaly bad person (haven't decided which). She manages to involve the PC in "bad things" and eventually this led to a showdown in which she is killed (no she isn't ). The Free Spirit, formerly her Ally, show up and warns the PC that she is in fact alive and really interested in having a short (and violent) conversation with said PC. There's a whole backstory between the three of them (no Dikoted threeways, you sickos ) but it doesn't really matter here.

The point is I'd like to keep the relationship between the PC and Free Spirit going as I hope that the Ex-chic will reappear and adventure will ensue...

Thoughts?

Damn! I say again DAMN!!!
Talk about comlicated. Upkeep via good karma, projection into the metaplanes to make contact, YOUR HATED ENEMY KNOWS IT'S TRUE NAME!!
Other that that, s'cool. Seriously it sounds like a really neat idea aside from the drawbacks mentioned above.
Info I would reasonably expect it to know would be mostly magical in nature and narrowly focused on the activitys of it's former mistress. however if your GM is the cruel and malicious type(is there any other?) then this is a good way to introduce the crazier aspects of the universe.
Have fun

It's fine to have Free Spirits as contacts. The GM needs to make sure that Karma (or other) payments to the spirit are high enough that the character isn't getting anything (information, gear, resources, spells, whatever) for free.

The last Free Spirit we had as a contact had a Personal Domain. We could generally find it there, but if it wasn't we had no way of contacting it.

Remember if you are playing a mage(or shaman) PC, you can donate at a 1:3 rate. 1 of your karma gives the spirit 3.

Free Spirit contacts are great - if used lightly. They can have phones, own bars, be police officers, and any number of normally metahuman things, though not all do.

If the characters know it is a spirit, it may keep them at arms length to prevent them from learning its true strengths and connections. That reduces the desire by them to bind it - hey spirits can be paranoid, too.

If they do not know, it may insist (though nonchalantly) on meeting in areas with background count or other astral activity to prevent easy identification.

MitS p 113. "Note that a magician must learn the free ally's true name (see Free Spirits below) in order to basnish it..."

It also doesn't gain a true name until it goes free.

One of my players once had a free spirit as a contact. From a storytelling POV it's great - a whole new world of plot hooks and information that can be given. If he wanted to talk to it, he had to go find it, looking in all the places he knew it might be, and just hoping it would be there. It never had any trouble finding him, when it wanted something in return .

In a general sense, this isn't a bad or broken idea. A free spirit won't do anything more for the PC than a contact of a similar level will. They may be able to do different things, but it's not horrid. For a really powerful Free Spirt who's willing to do a bit more, I'd require the equivalent of the "Friends in High Places" edge.

Just to add my 2 ... I had a character with a Free Spirit contact. It was a Hearth spirit that had been summoned repeatedly by a Korean/Amerind shaman working for the Yaks and had gone free when its summoner was killed in the Korean purge that formed the Seoulpa Rings. It had a personal domain where we could always find it and it worked like a regular contact with an unusual area of expertise. It worked out well for my character because it had the astral gate power and my character was an aspected conjuror, so when he absolutely needed to do something on the metaplanes, he could get there. In return, he gave the spirit some karma and usually had to do some dirty deeds against the Yaks. Those requirements made sure its powers weren't abused too much (I mean, how many times could I screw with the Yaks before they started really screwing me back?). But it still added a lot of flavor to the game and was pretty useful as a contact.

Anyway, any free spirit could use a phone if it wanted to, but you could always set up a meet through Watchers (as long as the free spirit hasn't gone home to the metaplanes for a while - but I don't suppose the metaplanes get very good celullar service either. And just think of the roaming charges!). I've already given examples of the kind of services it provided to my character, but the possibilities are many. I think its a great idea, as long as its reasonably kept in check. Especially with your backstory, it sounds like a natural idea, so go for it.