I've been thinking a lot about the LOS or material link requirements of Shadowrun. It is my understanding that Shadowrun magic is supposed to flow rather seamlessly from most modern day occult stories and such, but I was having trouble accounting for stories - especially but not exclusively involving twins - where one suddenly knows that another is hurt or some such. Then it suddenly occurred to me that a ritual link is just a piece of tissue containing DNA of the target. Has anyone ever played with a PC or NPC that was a twin? Did ritual magic get involved? How did you play that? By the wording of text, I'd half to say that identical twin samples could link to either twin. Would you rule that a very close relative could have enough DNA from someone to link to them through ritual magic? Could a busybody mother keep tabs on her "little babies" through the DNA in her own blood? Similarly, could someone track you by grabbing a sample of a parent/child/sibling? I think it would be more interesting if this was possible (though with a penalty to the linking test). All the more reason to keep your relations a secret.

Simply based on the importance of twins in ED (reading Mother Speaks atm), I would definately say that they could be used as a material link to the other. as for the mother, I would say thats pushing it.

Twins don't have identical fingerprints, right?

So one could argue that their astral...print...things are different. While it is their DNA in the tissue, its also part of them, and would have their astral print. So I would say you could grab one twin and use him to find the other.

It rule that you could do it, if you had the Symbolic Linking Metamagic, with growing penalties for how far removed the relative was. Identical twins would have a token penalty (+1), but a 2nd cousin would be as high as +8.