Thank god you're here!

~*BOOM*

If you're in the barrens, few will care.

~J

Duck tape the victim to the inside of a solid rocket booster's exaust nozzle the night before a shuttle launch, while he is still alive.

Or just threaten the police cheif into forgetting about it.

"Hi. You're going to call off your rigorous investigation. You're going to publically state that there is no underground group. Or... these guys are going to take your balls. And send one to the New York Times, one to the LA Times press release staff. Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we drive your ambulances. We connect your calls, we guard you while you sleep. Do not... frag with us. "

Well sometimes that star will not care, there are times when they will care, or there are times that there are high up corps involved and they will care.

Summary:

Fire Elemental Engulf till the body is incinerated:
Thoroughness: 10
Difficulty: 6 (have to have a hermetic mage or conjurer, not always available, need to summon with force = body)
Traceability: 1 (remains are pretty much just ash which are not identifiable or trackable.)

Incinerator/Drop in metal foundry:
Thoroughness: 10
Difficulty: 9 (not easy to get access to these facilities)
Traceability: 1 (remains are pretty much just ash which are not identifiable or trackable.)

Turn to Goo and tub
Thoroughness: 10
Difficulty: 8 (not a common spell)
Traceability: 1 (remains are disposed of, but there could be trace in the pipes, and residue DNA, but not enough to track. If a Sterilize spell was used in conjuction it would be extremely effective)

Dump in the Barrens
Thoroughness: 2
Difficulty: 1 super easy
Traceability: 7 (if the victim is not important, no one will notice. If the person is connected it is relatively easy to find)

Feed to pigs
Thoroughness: 7
Difficulty: 8 Unless you know a really corrupt pig farmer.
Traceability: 5 (the bones and teeth will be left to identify)

Dissolve with Acid or Base
Thoroughness: 10
Difficulty: 9 (extremely to get the quantity and molarity required, is dangerous and will destroy the tub, and takes a long time.)
Traceability: 1 (Very little trace evidence.)

Drop in Ocean
Thoroughness: 3
Difficulty: 3 (Not everyone has a boat, and cement)
Traceability: 4 (Unless executed extremely well the body will rot and eventually turn up)

Organ Leggers
Thoroughness: 5
Difficulty: 3 (should be available through fixer)
Traceability: 4 (face it people blab, parts can be traced, records have to be kept.)

Ghoul Colony
Thoroughness: 5
Difficulty: 3 (would require a contact or knowledge of a colony)
Traceability: 3 (face it people blab, parts can be traced, bones are still left)

Drop from high place.
Thoroughness: 5
Difficulty: 3 (requires mage with levitation)
Traceability: 5 (just makes a huge mess)

Summary:
1. the person has to be missed by someone important, or nothing will be investigated.

2. spells/special facilities/materials are not readily available to people on the street. Preparation is required.

3. Unless body is destroyed, they can generally be tracked, ritually or by spirits.

4. Most methods leave traces of DNA, but not sure if the samples can be tracked

You forgot one:

Have Earth Elemental/Nature Spirit use Movement power to bury remains deep underground:
Thoroughness: 10 [edit] make that 7 or 8 [/edit]
Difficulty: 3 (requires magician, not always available)
Traceability: 3 (remains probably won't be found by anyone short of an industrial strip mining team; however, once found, the remains will be fairly identifiable still)

Can you ask an elemental or spirit to take the body to a metaplane of fire?

If you have to bring it in because you owe a service you do not have a choice. And I would have thought that a metaplane of fire would be like the elemental plane of fire in dnd. burning the corpse to a crisp in very short order.

I still have to go with my original idea. Making communion wafers out of a human corpse would totally rock. Especcially if the corpse died of a drug overdose, and the drugs in his body got mixed into the wafers as well.

If you read the description of the "common" astral gateway power, it just lets people project, their meat stays on earth. It would take a free spirit with the more powerful (not in the SR3 books, not sure about 1 or 2) version of the power that hauls the whole critter into or past the astral.

I think this one was overlooked.

Break into an abandoned hospital to use their incinerator. Or just to dump the body in their morgue or elsewhere on the premesis. Abanadoned hospitals are freakin' INSANE, yo.

Nyxll, how much research went into your list? People suggested problems with turn to goo, and from what I understand, feeding to pigs shouldn't leave teeth.

It's more likely to leave the teeth than the bone. Dental enamel is the hardest part of the human body, and that will probably remain true with metahumans. It's a solid chunk that is always exposed to low amounts of digestive acids without the benefit of being able to regrow, so I doubt the teeth will be significantly damaged during a brief trip through a digestive system.
On the other side, some animals eat the solid part of bone as well after finishing off the marrow.

I googled some of the items, relied on some forum feedback for others, and talked with a chemist.

I lived on a farm and owned pigs. They will eat just about anything. It takes a while before they finish off meat, but they will not eat bone. They do not even get all of the meat off the bone.

Creatures that are strict carnivors like crocs and lions etc will chew on a bone, after everything else is gone, if there is nothing else. The yield of nutrients is very low. Pigs and even chickens will clean an animal down the bones but no further.

Edit: The problem with turn to goo is that it is sustained. The material turns back to solid form after you have stopped concentrating. So the problem could be that it would clog the pipes after washing down if you have not dissolved it enough with water. (then you are talking investigation after the plumber finds a huge mess of human material jammed in the drain)

Think "abandoned" as in "Redmond Barrens". And of course, it's not going to have power still routed to it. Either you need to do some creative routing, or bring a generator. Or just dump the corpses in the hardest to get to spot...

From my misspent youth, I worked for a few months at a crematorium. Once the oven is hot (an hour) it takes about 3 1/2 to 4 hrs to turn its majority to ash. The oven is a medley of ash, so leftover ash is a combination of many clients remains. Typically, a larger "chunk" is left over about the size of a large pot roast that was the chest area that requires a slightly longer time to burn. Once done, the ashes are swept out with a broom to use in the urn, however, the urn is substantially smaller than the ashes, the rest typically stays in the oven. SAweet jesus I never thought I would ever have to relate this information in an informative manner. As far as access, nobody spends a lot of time past work hours at a crematorium, unless they are also preparing a body for a funeral. There was no security other than a keyed lock for access to the furnace, and simplicity itself to turn it on. Gas use might be noticed, but hardly a one body variation would be noticed on a short term basis. The only problem here would be cyberware, as metal items dont burn down, such as hip replacement parts and such. Also, in theory, the ovens are large enough to accomodate 2 - 200# bodies if properly oriented.
Funeral director contacts would be awesome, but they make a lot of money as it is, so they would be tough to bribe.
The best way to do it would be cremate, sweep, collect ashes, ashes either dumped onto a dirt road or rinsed down the drain/sewer. Chuck the metal stuff inside the fence of a junkyard or into the ocean/lake, no-one will ever know what they are there.
If you have a issue with crematory access, the second best is as suggested, find a open hole at the cemetary, dig down another 2 feet, bury, and re-cover. Open holes at the cemetary are to be used the next day for the funeral. Construction sites pouring foundations are another good spot.
For water disposals, perforate the lungs and bowels prior to dunking.

That's what submachinegun fire is for. Depending on the target, of course, you may need AP.

haven't read the whole thread, yet, but anybodymention Mel's Hole?

This Mel guy must be a real asshat, if we are thinking about disposing bodies by stuffing them into his hole...

Tell your earth elemental to take it with him down to the center of the earth.

Short of a ship graveyard, where are you going to go to harvest rust?

There's rust all over the place. Worst-case scenario, get some iron filings and make your own.

~J

It is a little more difficult since you can't use red rust, which consists of Fe2O3. You have to use black rust, FeO. It is more commonly found in steel rather than on iron. Harvesting it generally requires grinding steel bars.

Either way, the roll-your-own solution still applies.

~J

Disposing of a body? Now granted, as a rightetous servant of the Monkey, I've never had this problem, HOWEVER, if I did.

I don't imagine it's gonna be really hard, that's the joy of shadowrun, all you gotta do is get the body to the Barens. Go to the Heart of Puyallup or Redmond, into a Z zone. No chance any cops will find the body now that it's in a Z zone and really, the Z zone will provide everything else you need.

Scavengers will pick the body clean if you leave it in the right place. If the kill is fresh enough and has cyber, you can try organ leggers or second hand cyber dealers. Devil rats, ghouls... making a body disappear is pretty easy, least in a Z zone, where no one cares =)

Sunday

Please tell me Mel's Hole is some kind of construction dig . . .

And what about stashing a body someplace that no one in their right mind would go for it? Toxic zone? Crash zone in the Redmond Barrens? Glow city? Sure it may be identifiable, but how well can ritual tracking work with all that background count anyway.

Mel's hole is a supposedly bottomless pit, from which the sounds of hell can be heard.

Bottomless hole? Thats crap.

Actually, it's perfectly possible. Due to the fact Earth is an orb, and tunnel that cuts through its surface without having a dead end is technically a bottomless hole.

No one specified the tunnel had to be straight

True. But making a tunnel a perfect loop with no openings to the surface is just cheating.

So you could bury a U-bend pipe with two holes sticking out of the ground and it's a bottomless hole?