[Lorebane24]

So I've just about go the skeleton of my the first arc of a campaign hammered out, and it involved the Halloweeners' leader (who is going to be a master shedim inhabiting Slash-N-Burn's corpse) trying to gather the Page cards from the SWT, hoping to use them summon a great form spirit that he in turn hopes to use to open a rift to bring in a fuckton more shedim.

But is there any way, RAW, for a spirit to actually pull this off?

[Marcus]

Ok a general rule of thumb shadowrun magic, if you want to bring a spirit in you need someone form this side to do it. Astral Gate Way is really for letting non-astral folks to do stuff "in" astral, keeping in mind that is that force things to there be dual natured.(See SG page 194). But that isn't to say, something from outside (Say a Shadim) can make a spirit pact offering something like immunity to Age, any of a long list of powers to said Caster in exchange from them to summon in all help they could want.

Summoning up a great form spirit to make that pact with could still make a lot of sense, and if it's not mass summoning thing exactly that's what's happening, it would take character some pretty decent Arcana to know it wasn't strictly true, and they would still understand the massive nature of the threat, even if it wasn't exactly what they were told.

 

[firebug]

So, okay, the plan is to have a Master Shedim use Invocation to summon a Great Form Spirit?  What type of spirit?  If its anything other than a Shedim, it probably cannot open an Astral Gateway to anywhere the other Shedim are--  Spirits can only use Astral Gateway to make portals to planes they can visit (pg 194, Street Grimoire).

Not to mention, Master Shedim can't use the Conjuring group, so...  Unless the SWT Pages do something huge I'm not aware of (I don't know what they are) this doesn't sound like a possible plan.

[Jack_Spade]

Well, it has to be the classic tale of temptation: Make a human mage do the summon for the Shedim. There are quite a lot of ways to achieve that - which provide good plot hooks to get the players to stop it.

[firebug]

Well, it has to be the classic tale of temptation: Make a human mage do the summon for the Shedim. There are quite a lot of ways to achieve that - which provide good plot hooks to get the players to stop it.

That's kind of the basic MO of Master Shedim now.  Rather than the Astral Gateway stuff, they just literally find mages they can tempt and teach them how to summon Shedim (Forbidden Arcana, pg 44, "Spirit Expansion: Shedim") with the hope that the small chance the Shedim have to break free every time they're summoned (works better if you use the Spirit Leash rules with my houserules, IMO).  It also says that they can use Summon Great Form Spirit to summon additional Master Shedim.

It also implies that a lot of the time, the Master Shedim claims they're teaching "necromancy" since an ignorant summoner only knows they're summoning some kind of spirit that can only possess the dead.  So if you ever want a "necromancer cult" as a group of bad guys, have it be a bunch of ignorant (and probably just corrupt) conjurers who are under the tutelage of a Master Shedim possessing someone.

[Lorebane24]

Well, in Book of the Lost, there are rituals that can be performed with certain sets of cards.  If someone can snag all four Page cards they can use them in a ritual that will summon a great form spirit.

[firebug]

Like, a specific great form spirit?  Or is it like a "Free Invocation use" that works without knowing the metamagic?  Either way, unless it's basically a dark god (not impossible I guess...) it wouldn't be able to help the Shedim.  Who says it'd even want to?

[Senko]

They could always find a desperate/controllable mage and go with the old stand by of "I have your parents/child/boyfriend/large piles of cash, summon a few little spirits for me and you can go on your merry way with them." They could even hold up their end of the deal and after a few dozen/hundred shedim are summoned let the mage go with their huge piles of cash/parents/children/SO. Or not depending on their need for future Shedim afterall kidnapping/bribing a mage to summon lots of Shedim could be a lot easier if you can tell the mage "You see X, X co-operated and now not only is X home with their family safe and sound but we're not even using X a second time, if your a good little mage the same will apply to you." All the way till you have enough Shedim summoned to take over the criminal gangs in the local area. I'm sure if you looked hard enough you could find a mage you could work with.

[firebug]

That's not a totally unreasonable plot hook, though I don't believe there's really any Master Shedim who are independently massively wealthy.  They didn't used to have to be so long-term and so it's not like there's Master Shedim who've spent 20 years as a manager and went to business school.  At least I don't think so.

Of course, a Master Shedim who is simply telling a lie is always possible.  Maybe he pulls an Emperor Palpatine thing.  "Well no, I can't do the thing I was talking about.  But if we work together, it'll totally be possible!"  Like, telling the runner that together they'll make two million nuyen or something.

[Senko]

Given this one's a gang leader the "Luke I have your insert X here" is more likely of course finding a mage able to summon great form spirits you can threaten does admitedly present its own . . . problems.

[Marcus]

Not that Shedim would above extortion or blackmail or anything,but they have really amazing powers to offer. Spirit compact have lots of solid options. The issue with running extortion or blackmail, is sooner or later your target is gonna call your bluff. It's way simpler and more productive in the long run simply to find some very old but powerful initiate who's not really at peace with dieing for whatever reason and make a deal for Immunity to age. You get a powerful ally forever. Who can summon the all the spirits you want slowly over time.
 

[firebug]

I don't think "old but powerful intiate who's close to death and is willing to make a deal with dark spirits for immortality" is the kind of person you can just find on craiglist.  I highly doubt Shedim expect that to be an option you can go looking for.  Especially when they're kind of in a desperate position they are now, where they're basically just struggling not to go extinct on Earth.

Not that you shouldn't do such an NPC in any game (it'd be decent for a powerful archenemy behind a series of events) but it's hardly so common that other strategies for Shedim are less likely.

[Marcus]

I don't think "old but powerful intiate who's close to death and is willing to make a deal with dark spirits for immortality" is the kind of person you can just find on craiglist.  I highly doubt Shedim expect that to be an option you can go looking for.  Especially when they're kind of in a desperate position they are now, where they're basically just struggling not to go extinct on Earth.

Why not? statistically there have to be a couple old powerful initiates ready to make that deal, but that said young Ambitious, and wishing to be immortal would work to. Magic Folk lore is packed with such Faustian Bargains. Given meta-human nature, I'm willing to bet at-least a percentage of any MIT&T graduate class would be willing to consider such a deal.
 

[Lorebane24]

So I guess here is themost important thing for me.  It's a sixth world tarot game, so I am looking to involve the cards in the first arc.  When I saw that Nightmare has one (confirmed as the Page of Blades in Dark Terrors), I thought the Halloweeners could be fun villains for the first arc.

Anything beyond that is "what would he cool/fun?"  I came across a theory on reddit that nightmare is a shedim, and that sounded cool so I figured I'd run with it, and figured that a master shedim would want get more shedim.  They have astral gateway, but what if Nightmare wants to open something bigger?  Like something the size of the Watergate Rift, but in Glow City.  Does it have to involve the page of blades?  Not really.  It could be chamges to something else, but I figured since its mentioned im DT, I would start with it.

So the Page Cards can be used to summom a great form guardian spirit with a force of at least 7 (10-12 is more likely) owing a few services.  So what I really need to find, and maybe I should have been cleaer about this, is some way for Nightmare to open a rift that he needs (or at least wants) a great spirit to assist with.

[firebug]

I don't think "old but powerful intiate who's close to death and is willing to make a deal with dark spirits for immortality" is the kind of person you can just find on craiglist.  I highly doubt Shedim expect that to be an option you can go looking for.  Especially when they're kind of in a desperate position they are now, where they're basically just struggling not to go extinct on Earth.

Why not? statistically there have to be a couple old powerful initiates ready to make that deal, but that said young Ambitious, and wishing to be immortal would work to. Magic Folk lore is packed with such Faustian Bargains. Given meta-human nature, I'm willing to bet at-least a percentage of any MIT&T graduate class would be willing to consider such a deal.

I'm looking at this from a different angle.  So first we need someone who's been a magician for decades, and is very powerful.  That's really really not common.  A full mage is 10 out of every 10,000 people.  So that's...  What, .1% of the population who were born after 2012.  Now remove everyone who was born less than 50 years ago, which considering it's been 78 years, is about 5/8th of the full mages.  Now, none of those remaining are explicitly powerful magicians.  An accomplished mage is probably what, top 10 percentile?  So that's 90% of those mages gone.  Now, with our very, very specific magician target existing, let's consider other potential hurdles.

Someone who's been a magician for decades and is very good at their job is not lazing about waiting for a Shedim to pop in and say hi.  They're busy, they're deep into whatever corp hired them, or they're an old-ass runner.  Regardless, they are inevitably very aware of the Watergate Rift and what happened.  Similarly, they aren't ignorant about Shedim, they know how dangerous spirits can be, and they know how dangerous a spirit pact can be.  This isn't an ignorant, reckless youth after all.

If, despite knowing about Shedim, the rift, spirit pacts, and so forth, they are still willing to take a Shedim's offer (instead of a different way, or even finding a different spirit with Immunity to Age, which they have the resources and skill to try and do), the Shedim has to find out they exist at all first, and then find a way to get to them.

This Shedim doesn't automatically become aware of all magicians on the Earth when they arrive, they'd need to go out of their way to learn about them, then contact them somehow.  I don't know if a Shedim can use AR while its in a body, but I suppose they could get someone else to do it.  They'll probably have to meet up somehow, unless this old, powerful mage agrees to some kind of mystical pact with a stranger he met online.

Suffice to say, it's all technically possible and so works for a singular Big Bad Evil Guy, but seriously this is not Plan A for Shedim.