ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

These are a few rotes primarily for Technomancers, leaning heavily towards the Technocracy, but some of them may be useful to Virtual Adepts and Sons of Ether. A lot of these lean very heavily towards the New World Order but would be relevant to the other Conventions as well.

Spy Beam (Corr. 2, Time 2, any other Spheres needed)

This allows spies to monitor targets, ignoring barriers coincidentally (the old laser on the window trick, or the infinity transmitter hooked up to the phone, or "good thing they picked the suite with the bug in it!") and even allowing them to scroll forward and backward in time to monitor events that have happened ("It's already in the CD-ROM, we've been taping this room for nine months.") or events that might happen (statistical probability projection complete with spiffy graphics). Other Spheres make the read-outs more complete (Life, Matter and Forces are particularly useful).

Foci for this effect: Rifle microphone, infinity transmitter, laser-scope microphone, little sophisticated bugs, a van chock-full of complicated electronics and spies dressed up like waiters or even a camcorder hidden in the closet.

Data/Subject Compression (Corr. 4, Forces 3, Life 4, Matter 3, Prime 2)

This sophisticated effect is useful for transmitting objects from one place to another. You can either transform existing patterns into patterns of electronic information and store it on disk, or actually transmit it to other locations. This is simply a sloppier, dirtier and more annoyingly complex method of teleporting through a portal, but it also serves to make unwilling participants into readily transportable forms. A reverse-type scenario allows you to travel to places through phone lines, modem hook-ups and satellite dish reception.

Three successes are required to transform an existing pattern into data, and the amount of successes needed to transmit them somewhere are based on distance.

Foci for this Effect: Super-sophisticated laser-scanner with molecular disassembly feature and telepod link-up (see the re-make of The Fly for an idea of this), supercomputer, an unsual looking phonebooth.

Unified Thinking (Corr. 2, Mind 4)

Using this effect, large groups of operatives can be linked together. In fact, they can even receive and transmit sensory data to and from one another, thus allowing individuals to receive advice from the group.

Mind 4 is necessary to forge a semi-overriding link to several different subjects, though complete control is taken. Correspondence 2 allows sensations to be colocated so that perceptions for each team member can be stacked. The Storyteller should allow groups operating in this fashion something along the lines of a +2 dice to all alertness tests (provided at least one of the group can see it), +1 die on initiative and the ability to pool suggestions and knowledge to quickly overcome simple problems. It may be necessary for every member of the group to have Mind 1 in order to improve their ability to deal with multiple perceptions, but Storytellers may rule that an implant like those of Iteration X's helps handle the effect.

Foci For this Effect: Headsets with audio-video linked to a command station, walkie-talkies, expert-system AI controller giving advice based on data from helmet cameras.

Crowd Control (Mind 2)

This effect can be used to pacify large groups of people and make them effectively ignore the activities of official-looking people. They go about their business and do their best not to notice what is going on elsewhere. It is, in effect, Somebody Else's Problem.

Enough successes must be garnered to effect everyone in the vicinity, otherwise gawkers may still be attracted. If enough successes are received, magickal effects can be considered to have no witnesses, and no one will be able to accurately describe anything that just happened. Correspondence may be required to affect truly large areas.

Foci For this Effect: A crowd of men in black trenchcoats ordering people to go about their business, a subsonic aversion signal generator, big guys with guns, lots of yellow tape marked "Government Crime Scene: DO NOT CROSS".

Marauder/Nephandi Early Warning Scan (Corr. 2, Entropy 1, Time 2)

This program scans data from thousands of sources, analyzing discrepancies typical of Paradox generated by Marauders, Nephandi or carless Tradition mages. This allows strike teams and squads of men with large weapons to be rapidly deployed for maximum effect.

Essentially, this is a justification for the Technocracy arriving quickly on the scene, fully-equipped to deal with any sort of problem. Note that their information is frequently false, and they get a lot of false alarms, which may serve as hooks to get characters of any kind interested in what's going on.

Foci For This Effect: A supercomputer hooked into a vast network, lots of sweaty informants in phonebooths, entropy sensors scattered throughout a big city, someone watching the evening news.

Deprogramming/Reprogramming (Entropy 5, Mind 4)

This is an extensive process of torture, drug therapy, and VR indoctrination designed to strip away a victim's belief system and restructure it according to a more correct way of thinking. The process takes days or weeks and is quite brutal.

This is an extended contest between the subject and his reprogrammers. Each day of reprogramming, the subject rolls a Willpower test (difficulty 8) and the brain scrubbing crew rolls their Arete with a difficulty of 8. Each week of captivity subtracts one cumulative die from the subject's tests. A botch on a test by either side blows all their accumulated successes and they must start over. The first ones to 25 successes win. If the subject loses, his mind is shattered and can then be manipulated easily into accepting new things (There are five lights!). If the subject wins, he is deemed too strong to be effectively deprogrammed and is probably just killed instead.

Foci for this Effect: Guys in white coats with rubber gloves and lots of needles and/or helmets full of rats, VR torture/information station, a big muscular guy with the rubber hoses, hot irons, textbooks on tax laws.

Advanced Information Gathering (Corr. 2, Entropy 1, Forces 2, Mind 1)

This effect allows people to monitor a vast amount of information and sift it quickly and thoroughly for relevant data. Newspapers can be fed into scanning machines that dump the data into a computer, circuits can listen in on radio and telephone conversations, informants supply information, etc. The search parameters are proscribed, and the effect begins.

Correspondance allows the search to be virtually worldwide, Entropy shifts you towards more relevant stuff, Mind allows quick search of multiple documents and Forces lets you listen to just about any kind of communication. With Mind 3, this can include people's thoughts. Each success on the test should be considered like a research roll, evaluating trends, triangulating on victims, etc.

Foci For the Effect: Newspaper clipping service, a trip to the local library, a CD-ROM network, a supercomputer hooked into telecommunications relays, bugs on communication satellites, sweaty guys in phone booths.