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Message no. 1
From: "J.W.Thomas" <cm5323@***.AC.UK>
Subject: FUTURE WAR
Date: Mon, 23 May 1994 17:10:17 +0100
What is your vision of the war of 2050?

They have given glimpses of the stonewall MBT, banshee's and
panzers,the EFA and other military vehicles,but what is war like?

Because in a magical world, one good mage can kill a tank
division...
Picture this... Lance of 10 MBT's break through the defencive
line,powering for 3CI HQ....
A lone mage in a bunker a hundred miles away straps on his
robes,flight suit, webbing,checks his weapons and comlink...
A orbital sat hisses down-well the tanks coordinates... and the
mage goes astrial...
In Astrial space he soars high,moving faster than any jet... his
weapons follow him in a flaming arc, hissing... over the
battlefeild in seconds,he tells them...'Kill the people in the
vehicles' and his full CHA limit of fire elements fall
earthward, passing through the tank armour like it wasn't there
and manifesting on the drivers...
For above , the mage see's the tanks jerk and carreer out of
control...and smiles.

There must be some form of defence against this...but what?
living tankshells? a mage in every tank? a unit shaman to run
spell defence? defencive elements on the tank?
The astrial plane is the new frontier in war.. Air superiority
used to be the goal,now the astrial is the key, as you can't
strike back unless you're magically active.
So the battlefield is a place of tanks, soldiers, drones, spirits
, elements,free spirits,dual nature creatures, and Magic users
of all races... (human, meta, dragon, totem, horrors from the
metaplanes, each side pulling out the stops to get the magical
upper hand)
Top Gun for combat mages
Military spells deveploped on demand

IT TAKES 10-15 YEARS TO GO FROM NEED TO PRODUCT IN USE FOR THE
US MILITARY NOW...MAGIC SPELLS ONLY NEED RESEARCH...
so it'll escalate into spell / counterspell / countercounterspell/
new spell as the military mages try and outthink each other...

And some of this stuff will reach the street,and players...

CHOPPER
It's a wonder i can sleep at night
Message no. 2
From: Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@***.NEU.EDU>
Subject: Re: FUTURE WAR
Date: Mon, 23 May 1994 19:36:02 -0400
>>>>> "J" == J W Thomas <cm5323@***.AC.UK> writes:

J> Because in a magical world, one good mage can kill a tank division...

In a magical world, a tank division is going to have it's own mages.
Remember, much of the military in the 2050s is fielded by corporations or
corps controlling the government.

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== Rat <ratinox@***.neu.edu> WWW Page: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ratinox ==
== Carpe Joltem! (Seize the Caffeine) --Me ==
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Message no. 3
From: Luke Kendall <luke@********.CANON.OZ.AU>
Subject: Re: FUTURE WAR
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 16:54:34 +1000
I couldn't think of any way that the mage's body (in its flight
harness) could be made to follow the astral body; let alone,
send signals to the weapon systems to target or fire.

In short, I don't see how it could work.

luke
Message no. 4
From: sabrina <sabrina@******.MED.NYU.EDU>
Subject: Re: FUTURE WAR
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 03:44:21 -0400
This concerns that message about the mage v. Tank Division...

A number of my players had sort of noticed the same possibility so I came
up with a quick solution. For a long, long time in my campaign, there was
a little device that security and law enforcers would use called a Mage
Hood. Basically, the thing was a bioengineered hood that they'd put on a
mage's head. It allowed oxygen to pass through it although it looked
something like opaque, dark colored cellophane. In my campaign, I'd also
pretty much said that a mage's astral projection my must leave through
her head.

Result: a way for Lone Star (for instance) to shut down a mage once she'd
been apprehended.

It's basically a plant lifeform so it doesn't eat except through
photosynthesis. The humidity created in it's interior while worn is
generally enough to water it... although an eye dropper full every day
would suffice if it is unused.

Milspec Hardened Targets get armor so permeated. Photosynthesis is
impossible so the Milspec version requires a pint of a special solution
every day (that can be dehydrated) that is fed to the plant via a special
distribution network within the skin of the vehichle. In a 5 gallon can,
you can carry a year's worth of the stuff in dehydrated form.

I've never really had a need to define this stuff any further. Indeed, I
think I've only actually included it on one vehichle in my whole campaign
since 1989 (the party was attacking a military convoy because they were
greedy and figured they could swipe some DPU ammunition at the time...)
and it didn't really make a difference then. The mage was smart enough to
say, "If I stick my ass up there, I'll get my head blown off."

Sabrina
Message no. 5
From: Micah Levy <M.Levy@**.UCL.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: FUTURE WAR
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 11:40:10 +0100
If there are mages on one side, it seems very likely that there'll be mages on
the other. Even if there aren't enough mages to go around (quite likely), the
thingy in the novel Shadowplay seems quite likely where a layer of amoeba
orsomething forms an intermediate layer of vehicle armour or something like
that, leaving an astral barrier. Remember that the more techy things are
harder to affect with spells but I agree that the military with ridiculous
budgets can afford to develop pretty devastating spells. Maybe this could give
rise to a new class of ex-military spells. Formula cost would be very high
though, or reverse-engineering it would be very tricky but yeah, I like the
idea.

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|| Micah Levy ||
|| Department of Computer Science ||
|| University College London ||
|| ||
|| http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/people/malevy.html ||
|| M.Levy@**.ucl.ac.uk ||
|| GCS d--@ -p+ c++ l(!) u++ e+ m- s n+ h* f g+(-) w t+ r++ y? ||
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Message no. 6
From: Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@***.NEU.EDU>
Subject: Re: FUTURE WAR
Date: Tue, 24 May 1994 13:04:34 -0400
>>>>> "Luke" == Luke Kendall <luke@********.CANON.OZ.AU>
writes:

Luke> I couldn't think of any way that the mage's body (in its flight
Luke> harness) could be made to follow the astral body; let alone,
Luke> send signals to the weapon systems to target or fire.

His "weapons" are elementals which manifest and do damage. Then get
grounded through because they're dual-natured beings to do more damage.

Assuming that the tank company doesn't have magical defenses, a really bad
assumption in 2050.

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== Rat <ratinox@***.neu.edu> WWW Page: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ratinox ==
==...kcab nrut ,kcab nrut ,kcab nruT .ton si emit tub elbisrever si cisum ehT==
== "hgiH nO eriF" ,OLE-- ==
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Message no. 7
From: Luke Kendall <luke@********.CANON.OZ.AU>
Subject: Re: FUTURE WAR
Date: Wed, 25 May 1994 14:11:47 +1000
Stainless Steel Rat:

> His "weapons" are elementals which manifest and do damage.

Ah.

But what a can of worms, eh? Can you imagine the sort of things
that could conceivably be developed by using military-scale
research budgets for magical armaments?

`Incoming mage sighted from meta-plane of Snake, Commander. ETA 12
seconds. Replicating Asterial cloud deployed.'

Hey, maybe _that's_ the source of the astral virus that's been consuming
magic down in Puyallup lately...

luke
Message no. 8
From: "C. Paul Douglas" <granite@*****.NET>
Subject: Re: FUTURE WAR
Date: Wed, 25 May 1994 10:33:22 -0400
On Tue, 24 May 1994, Luke Kendall wrote:

> I couldn't think of any way that the mage's body (in its flight
> harness) could be made to follow the astral body; let alone,
> send signals to the weapon systems to target or fire.

Let's see now....You could have a watcher or elemental controlling the
harness and maybe have some sort of thought link between the mage and the
elemental..Using clairvoinace or something new...this might work..Of
course I wouldn't do it but it could work....
------------------------------GRANITE

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