Magemasks and VR-prison wouldn't disallow projection; so kids would still have a way to "escape." They'd have to be coupled with something painful to bring them back to their bodies if they were taking unscheduled excursions.

Or otherwise disassociated with magic. Hopped up on so many stimmies that they can't use their abilities, with the added side-effect of making them more susceptable to brainwashing.

Or jacked in. It could even be a 'virtual camp,' with the poor kids being spiked by some non-attacking form of Black IC that refuses to let them jack out.


How's that for a kicker? Not only does the rescue involve storming the camp, but it also involves a drek-hot decker jacking him/herself in to do battle with Black IC to free the kids. Because, y'know, Dumpshock is a royal bitch, and probably just as hard on the kids as the brainwashing.


Of course, if they're going to do that, they may well go all the way and use Psychotropic IC, unless the operation manager dosen't know of such things, or is unable to get ahold of it.


I imagine you'd have some colourful characters coming out of that rescue. I imagine a 14 year old Awakened kid who now has a datajack in his/her skull would be an interesting contact. Magic AND Decking in one package, hehe. (Though I suspect he'd really rather use a 'trode than the jack...)

Heh, you could also have it such that the camp really is doing some good... like the kid is posessed by some spirit and the person that hires the team to take them out of it is working with/for the spirit.

Garland: A couple of dual-natured guard animals would sort that out. Not only do they serve duty keeping the kids in, but unwanted things, both Astral and physical, out.




But then, CAN you Project while your mind is being flooded with ASIST signals?


Or they could just use a nonlethal Black IC loaded with wiz-hot Killjoy on a 10-rated Node. If the kid fails to respond to his "awareness" check, the machine assumes he's projecting and fries him unconcious. I imagine that would be unpleasent, even if his Astrally projecting self survived.


You could also build the camp somewhere with a background that makes it 'unpleasent' to project astrally. A battlefield would do nicely, I imagine.

ShadowDragon, you again amaze me with an outside of the box ideas.

That is a <i>damn</i> good way to get a decker in on the fun, aswell as an interesting torture system. Yes, this will do nicely for my run...

Well... dual-natured guard animals would serve primarily to alert the staff about travelling astral forms. Hellhounds or whatever couldn't chase kids who were having a little astral pow-wow session about 50 feet off the ground. You'd need elementals or something, and that would mean the de-magicking camp had a mage working for them.

I think you can project while jacked in. It's just not really useful. There's a special section on it but I can't recall where.

The background count is also a good idea. The presence of the camp itself might even be unhealthy for the astral. Not to mention that having a big background count makes it harder for magic intruders to cause trouble.

And from the GM perspective, it's great because one of those kids being rescued could have been warped into a toxic shaman or whatever by the trauma and filth in the astral. More trouble to dip the player characters into.

Hmm, if you are a corp, this sounds like the perfect wage slave recruiting ground. All of your recently rescued mages have a reason to be greatful to the corp for rescuing them, are unlikely to want to go home, and are in a conveniently pre-brainwashed state already. Send in some runners to pick up all those potential employees, pronto.

Keep in mind, they've figured it's not one, but several different genes working in unison that allow for magic. If they are reasonably sure about one part of one combination, couldn't they make a nanotech injection that could (relatively) safely 'treat' magic in some cases?

Thanks, Supercilious.


I just like the phraise "Jack in to do battle with Black IC."

I mean, think about it. What better way to make heros out of your Shadowrunners than having them invade someplace with dual-natured astral guardian beasts, and a few armed (if not entirely competent) guards.


The beasts and the guards will provide fun for the Slaughtering Sammie and his PhysAd pal, who will go through them faster than a French-Canadian lumberjack uttering the battle cry "Mon canard est en fue!" can go through butter with a chainsaw. But the run's not even over yet. They have to rescue the kids, and they can't just pull the plug with the Black IC spiking them.

They'll probably need to get the camp's deckmeister to release the kids - but aww crap, you killed him in the way in. He was the guy with the LMG.

So now you need your Decker to jack in and do battle with the Black IC. Once it's done in, the kids are free to leave. Heartless runners will leave the ones they didn't come for, evil bastards will simply kill the ones they didn't come for, but you're not DMing for that sort, I hope.

So you saddle the Runners with them. About 12 or 16 or so Awakened kids ranging from 9 to 17, all in various states of neurosis from their tramautization. I imagine few of them will want to return to their parents/legal guardians. So the runners should now be trying to find kindhearded mages and shamans to take them in.

You could even have some who idealize and hero-worship the Runners who saved them, and want to stay with them, learn their craft.

And some that were warped and toxified by the experience. Don't forget that.

Even better, then you can have the runners raided as a cult.

Besides, most SR players are not interested in watching a French-Canadian lumberjack go through a stick butter with a chainsaw.

I wonder what would happen if say a Otaku were going to help a friend pulled into the "pool". Id hate to think what sort of psychotropic conditioning they would be feeding mage kids to convince them they're powers were satanic ect. That could create some nasty self hate scenerios and other psychosis. Kids start to cut themselves if they feel the urge to go astral or cast a spell ect. Maybe kids might think at they're core they're very evil. Thus when they use they're magic they're going to do so as if it were something "horrible". You could get kids who's psyche starts to fracture. Maybe they feel the only way to save the "world" is to show them how evil magic is? Maybe they develop dissassociated types of psychosis where they become serial killers. They intern hone they're dark gift so they can show the world just how evil magic is. They would be perfect fodder for dark spirits to manipulate.

Imagine the kids from Columbine. They felt like they were outsiders and outcasts. What would happen if kids felt the same way but they realize that magic was the cause for they're exclusion in they're community. That's a great source for toxic shamans. Folks who are less screwed up might get cybered up. Kids with deeper psychosis may get delusional fantasies about fixing the world ect? What if the child realized that they're parents were to blame for they're curse and "purify" the family in a fireball hunting down they're entire family tree so to make sure the poison that is they're blood line no longer pollutes the "community". What would happen if they tried to talk to "God" and in they're perspective "God" talked back....Turns out it's a nasty dark spirit.........

Psychosis + Magic seems like it would be a nasty combination.

But I wonder why the lumberjack is shouting "My duck is on fire!" as his battle cry...

I don't see de-magicing camps being to popular as magicing camps where middle to upper income parents send their children every summer in hopes that the patented "Awakening exercises" will pay off.

Magicians can make alot of money.

I also have a character treading the Christian mage path - or rather, Christian shaman in this case, following the Dragonslayer Idol in the guise of the Archangel Michael.

I think I remember I saw something like that on the A-Team. Where they made a flamethrower out of stuff from a barn and then Hannibal got his boots back.

Back on the original track, I'm running the De-Gaying camp rescue as we speak.

I've decided to combine all the plots. It's a de-anything camp, degaying, demagicing, whatever the parents want brainwashed out or into the kid, they'll do it. And yes, it is a cyberprison.

Who's running it? Jerry Falwell Jr, the (toxic) christian shaman?

I haven't got that far, yet. Mostly I've been running it off-the-cuff...

It dosen't matter. My friend has stopped to pick up some jailbait elf in a coffee shop, so that should keep her busy for hours.

That reminds me of the Who's "Tommy".
What was that track....."Tommy's Holiday Camp"...the best part is the ending that evil "WELCOME"......I could just imagine what they could do to those kids.

Come to Uncle Tommy's Camp of Purity and Light,
Don't pout don't put up a fight.
What ever your game, we'll get rid of the shame,
Mom and Dad don't fear we'll get rid of the.....
If your child is addicted we'll get rid of the afflicted
Come to our house, we let all the bad out.....
Tommy's camp there's no need to pout..........

I use to smoke crack, BTL's, you name it I did I'm getting all A's and on the Varsity Swim team...Gosh mom and Dad I love you......I love you sooooo much.......[Everyone duck he's got a gun....blam blam blam...stop filming....stop film cut cut cut.....BLAM....shhhhhhhhhh]

What would happen if an OTAKU got loose in they're system.....That could get "Interesting" especially if AI found out one of they're followers needed it's help...........

I would imagine something like that would be so horrible it would be sweet. Imagine bright colors, security guards dressed as toy soldiers, nurses dressed as balerina's, something like the old 60's series the "Prisoner".....Even better if they had all the kids hooked into a augmented reality stream so that's what they did see only that the reality was bleak and cold. Hell something like that may be hosted in a very inhospitable outside environment to keep anyone from even trying to break into the facility. I could imagine they'd have some very high profile children of politicians and corps. IE kids who don't "Fit in".

(I think that pretty much includes a sizeable chunk of gaming community....)

Why yes, yes I have.

Ookay, had some unexpected developments here.

I need some mundane and technical means for a de-mage-ing camp to fight magic powers. Most of these security measures should be built with the goal of containing Awakened children, but they should be enough to prevent a Shaman in the party from rampaging the camp.

I also need to design a system for the Decker to defeat in order to jack the kids out.

I'm thinking a Background count and some dual-natured paracritters, but what can the guards equipped with SMGs and long rifles and shotguns do to combat magical threats?

I want to give the party a challenge, but they're not attacking a Corporate interest here. I want them to win, but I want them to work a little for it, not simply run shodrough over the guards.

Doublepost, my bad.

Well, it all depends. How anti-magic are they? Anti-sorcery? Anti-sorcery+conjuring? Anti-above-plus-anything-astrally-active? Anti-anything-that-exists-because-of-mana-levels?

~J

They could also have some Strain III ready, just in case, and some ELDAR rifles and/or a mortar for delivering it.

Okay, let's see..

First, I want to go over the target zone. They're not engaging a Megacorp here, or even a relatively minor corp. This is a brainwash camp. The guards are usually armed only with a truncheon, though they have got rifles and shotguns as a course of living in the boonies. It dosen't pay to be unable to survive if a big ole' bear (magical or otherwise) comes calling.

Their objective is to brainwash Awakened kids into Mundanes. To do this, of course, the have to first make trying anything magical a Bad Idea. I'm thinking a background count, but what, exactly, does that do? Raise the TNs by the number?

It does. It's also not something you just go out and do—the easiest way to do it would be to introduce a source of significant radiation into the area. Second-easiest is to spend a lot of time slowly torturing people to death and causing similar emotionally charged circumstances. Let it be noted that a few people madly in love could also stick some nasty background count in there—nothing restricts it to negative causes if caused by emotion, only background count caused by environmental destruction is consistently negative. Any area where anyone who could reasonably be called a true believer worships would also have some background count thereafter, regardless of what they believe in. The kids are probably going to generate their own background count too—first from fear, and later from reverence.

Either way, though, it probably won't be placed consistently or strategically. Even if it is, the patterning will be somewhat haphazard.

~J

Suggestion: just have someone go to the camp and get really pissed off.

Though there should be a background count present constantly simply because of allthe bad shit going down.

Two Words: Mana Static.

Adds a nice element of hypocristy too.

Personally, I was thinking of putting the camp somewhere there was already a background count. A murder-spree site, or the location of a battle.

But yeah, the kids themselves, their emotions and the way their mana is being tortured with cyberware and a few choice drugs, would certainly crank it up.

How about one of Jarman's old concentration camps?

Jarman?

A concentation camp site would work perfectly to generate the kind of background count they want, as would it's physical defenses (walls and stuff.)

I think that might be a bit too harsh, though.

Is this in the CAS? If so try a civil war battlefield (Fredericksburg springs to mind) or prison (Andersonville is cut out for this kind of work). I doubt the background count would be terribly severe but you could probably get away with one or two points.

Seattle, baby. Or near enough it to be accessable by a prop-plane ride with suitable forged IDs and a truck at the LZ.

My bad, I thought I had caught the letters CAS somewhere earlier in the thread.

That aside, you could try ...

--An indian burial ground?
--A old toxic or chemical waste site (very cheap real estate)
--Somplace Saito has been if you are willing to drag them across two borders and drop them into a war zone
--Using the spell mana static quickened to the area - as recommended above. This creates mostly localized background count but might still serve your purposes.

Ahhhhhhh...

That might be a bit too harsh, but it's something to consider.

Actually, I know just the place...

I'm thinking of the atomic bomb test sites. The old ones from 1945, so the BGC should have diminished to something low (as well as not having a really dangerous rad level.)

But they seem to be in the Ute Nation, and I know little of that...

Hmmmm. Any other suggestions?

Arkham Asylum. It's on the East Coast.