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Is there an astral "smoke bomb"

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DeathStrobe

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« Reply #15 on: <03-27-16/2116:40> »
Normal smoke grenades should cause shadows in the astral. Likewise, water isn't invisible and neither is clouds nor ice. Things don't need to be living to have an aura, just living things have brighter auras.

Marcus Gideon

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« Reply #16 on: <03-27-16/2249:43> »
Normal smoke grenades should cause shadows in the astral. Likewise, water isn't invisible and neither is clouds nor ice. Things don't need to be living to have an aura, just living things have brighter auras.
If that were the case, the Astral would constantly be opaque. Or you'd be seeing a lot more clouds wandering around.

Whenever someone is smoking a cigarette, you'd see an aura emitting an opaque blob every few minutes.
When someone eats too much Taco Bell, there would be an opaque blob following them to the bathroom.
When the lady in the mall tries to spray you with a sample of the latest fragrance, that too would be an opaque blob.

If you're saying "smoke is substance, so it casts a shadow" then everything airborne has some degree of substance.

Or... remember that the Astral plane is a magical realm, and not everything makes sense to our mundane minds. Life, thought, and magic hold sway over there, not physics. And something as transient as a randomly occurring puff of smoke is probably not going to manifest. Not when a more common sight is the cloud of gloom and dread hanging over cubicles on Monday morning when nobody wants to be back at work.
The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work…when you go to church…when you pay your taxes.

Blue Rose

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« Reply #17 on: <03-27-16/2316:13> »
The astral isn't so much about bodies and forms so much as minds, concepts, and spirits.  A building has some slight astral presence (and opacity) because it is a persistent concept in the world that has sustained itself over time.  Grow vines on the walls and they become impenetrable astrally because of the spiritual essence of the vines.

Have a pool of water and you can pass right through.  Have a lake, and it's utterly impenetrable, because it's a boundary of the gaiasphere.

Have a glass window?  It's no different than a wall.

Astral works differently from normal space and sight.

DeathStrobe

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« Reply #18 on: <03-27-16/2321:07> »
By that logic we shouldn't be able to see buildings or pools of water.

All physical things cast shadows in the astral, including air. The reason you aren't blinded by air's shadow is the same reason we can see through it in physical space, it's not thick enough to matter in most regards.

I agree that the astral is not physical space, so natural laws of physics with light don't work. For example you can't assense through glass and mirror's aren't reflective. But this doesn't stop things with matter from casting shadows in the astral.

The reason you can't see radon or other "invisible" gasses, is simple there isn't enough of it to significantly cast a shadow to be perceived by a metahuman. But if it was dense enough, it would. Or are we to believe that water is invisible on the astral unless it was ice?

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Have a lake, and it's utterly impenetrable, because it's a boundary of the gaiasphere.

That doesn't hold up as Cyberpirates had rules for navigating the oceans in the astral.

adzling

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« Reply #19 on: <03-28-16/0958:46> »
Blue Rose describes how 1e approached astral.

That's no longer the case (now you can astrally fly through vines and other living organisms like plankton in the sea etc, although you still cant see through them).