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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Chickenman <jaimie.nicholson@********.OTAGO.AC.NZ>
Subject: A thought
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 14:45:37 +1300
If cybercamera's work at the optic nerve, would they catch the astral
perception info? Is astral perception info converted directly into sensory
nerve info, and then it goes off down the optic nerve? And even if the
cameras work on physical light only, what about simsense? During astral
perception, is the physical brain picking up the astral info, or is only
the astral brain picking up the astral info? Why do I ask? Ice's
cybercamera. But I've been wondering for a while.

PLAYTHING OF A CRUEL GOD
JAIMIE NICHOLSON
Message no. 2
From: "Paul J. Adam" <plotd@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: A thought
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 02:05:42 +0000
In message <v01540b08b288fa3f1aff@[139.80.100.158]>, Chickenman
<jaimie.nicholson@********.OTAGO.AC.NZ> writes
>If cybercamera's work at the optic nerve, would they catch the astral
>perception info?

My (regretful) take is 'no'. Astral perception happens in the brain, not
the eyes. Cybercam recording and simsense is taken off the eyes, and
thus can't access magical perceptions (do the scientists even know where
those occur in the brain? I think not...)

I've got a vision quest or three I'd love to hit the list with, but I
don't see how yet other than by a long 'I saw this, then I saw that,
then I saw the other...' post.

>Is astral perception info converted directly into sensory
>nerve info, and then it goes off down the optic nerve? And even if the
>cameras work on physical light only, what about simsense?

I'd figure a cybereye cam recorded whatever your eyes really saw, not
the simsense. You close your eyes to jack a simsense chip, you get a
long black spell. You leave them open, you get a long view of a wall :)
Though for simsense it would (IMO) be easy to split the visual and audio
feed out of the recording to make an 'ordinary movie' for those who
didn't like ASIST.


Simsense IMHO works on the brain direct, not via the eyes or even the
optic nerve, and so cybereyes wouldn't routinely pick it up.


>During astral
>perception, is the physical brain picking up the astral info, or is only
>the astral brain picking up the astral info? Why do I ask? Ice's
>cybercamera. But I've been wondering for a while.

My take is that a cybercam sees the physical world only, and that astral
perception takes place wholly and entirely in the 'astral' mind of the
magician, in his 'soul' or 'avatar' or whatever you call the conscious
part. The cybercam's left behind with the meat.


According to Shadowbeat, nobody's managed to record simsense of astral
space.

--
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and
praiseworthy...

Paul J. Adam paul@********.demon.co.uk
Message no. 3
From: "Mark L. Neidengard" <mneideng@****.CALTECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: A thought
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 18:43:22 -3200
According to Paul J. Adam:
>In message <v01540b08b288fa3f1aff@[139.80.100.158]>, Chickenman
><jaimie.nicholson@********.OTAGO.AC.NZ> writes
>>If cybercamera's work at the optic nerve, would they catch the astral
>>perception info?
>
>My (regretful) take is 'no'. Astral perception happens in the brain, not
>the eyes. Cybercam recording and simsense is taken off the eyes, and
>thus can't access magical perceptions (do the scientists even know where
>those occur in the brain? I think not...)

I concur with Paul on this one...._but_, I believe that there _is_ a rather
sneaky way to capture experiences that one has while in a magically altered
state. See below:

>I've got a vision quest or three I'd love to hit the list with, but I
>don't see how yet other than by a long 'I saw this, then I saw that,
>then I saw the other...' post.

Ah....actually, if you remember the Redmond Riots, I was able to do precisely
that: show the results of an Astral Quest. It works this way: everything one
experiences, whether via Astral or mundane means, must get written into one's
memory. It may or may not stay, but the _point_ where stream of consciousness
enters at least short term memory must exist. By my lights, simsense
_recording_ cyberware should also go right about there, since at the higher
levels it must tap into just about all of the "binding" of the senses of
the simsense actor. Therefor, I postulated a contact for one of my
characters who is a mage (albeit one w/ a low Magic Rating ^_^) who has a
simsense recording rig installed. To figure out what it was that Thelienista
had experienced, he used a "replay memory" spell and recorded what he was
experiencing as simsense data.

For Quests and other mystical experiences that this person would experience,
themself, this should be aboslutely effective. If the above scenario has a
weakness, it would lie in the "fidelity" of the "replay memory" spell
used on
Thel. For the purposes of drama, I postulated that strong enough memories
remained (remember she had just been released from Possession) that it worked
"okay" for making something worth calling "simsense" (reasonable
bodily
sensation, etc.), though this efficacy could be highly variable in the general
case.

If one was _very_ slick, one could use a "share experience" spell (like
"replay memory" but working on the instantaneous stream of experience) to allow
a simsense-recorder-equipped mage to transcribe _another_ mage's experiences
as they were happening. This should at least guarantee much higher fidelity
results, provided one was all set up ahead of time.

>According to Shadowbeat, nobody's managed to record simsense of astral
>space.

Well, I hadn't known about this notation in Shadowbeat, but I can't think of
any obvious anti-munchkin reasons to prohibit the above scenario (after all,
it _is_ pretty weird and hard to set up....and most importantly the results
weren't ever disseminated outside AlexandriaN's task force). I would think
that the Magic Rating cost of having that kind of cyberware implanted alone
would dissuade most potential users of this method...
--
/!\/!ark /!\!eidengard, CS Grad, VLSI. http://psy-s.cjas.org/~mneideng/
"Fairy of sleep, controller of illusions" Maigo no Daigakuinsei, Cornell U.
"Control the person for my own purpose." "Don't mess with the Dark
Elves!"
-Pirotess, _Record_of_Lodoss_War_ Shadowrunner and Anime Addict

Further Reading

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Thwap!