| From: | Max Rible <slothman@*********.ORG> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Full of Life |
| Date: | Tue, 29 Jul 1997 10:24:50 -0800 |
>I would like to remove the "immovable object" problem from astral space. As
>it stands now, there are 3 types of astral things: astral forms (which can
>interact), auras (reflections of material things, which show information, but
>a non-tangible) and living beings, which can block and affect astral
>movement, but cannot in turn be affected from the astral.
...
>What I propose is removing the "middle category" and the special status of
>living beings. Something is either astrally active (and present in astral
>space) or it is not, and therefore is nothing more than an image in astral
>space. You can walk through a mundane person just like you could a wall or a
>car.
>But wait! you cry. What about astral security? Actually, it doesn't change
>much. You just need to make a small adjustment. Instead of covering the walls
>of a corp facility with normal ivy to create an astral barrier, say there is
>an Awakened strain of ivy that is dual natured, forming a natural Astral
>Barrier. The difference is, now you can fight the barrier in astral combat to
>break through it like you would any other. Same with FAT Bacteria. Make it
>astrally active. Not only does Strain-III then make more sense, but FAT Bac
>doesn't become an inescapable death-trap. You can fight it in astral combat
>or even ground a spell through it, if you like.
That makes FAB really impractical: suddenly, the mage that was entrapped by
something he couldn't deal with can now cast a trivial spell to destroy it
and leave. Physical security guards wandering through clouds of FAB are
suddenly vulnerable to area effect spells cast from the astral. Part of what
makes ivy-lichen combination walls so good is the fact that you can't affect
them from the astral. Make them dual-natured, and suddenly a mage can fly
up to a wall, blast it with a defoliant spell, and go right on in to support
the troops.
The existing rules work really well as long as you don't worry about FAB.
I'd suggest adding a clarification to astral forms by making them relatively
resilient with respect to impact on living things: if an astral mage walks
across the street and gets hit by a car, they'll probably bounce a lot but be
unharmed. Similarly, if they're in a crowd and suddenly people converge on
them, they'll squirt out like a watermelon seed. A bat filled with living
moss is good for sending an astral mage flying across the room, but it's not
going to hurt them.
For FAB, I'd suggest two variants: one that's useful for making walls out of
(FAB-I) and simply ignores astral entities and is not dual-natured, and
another one
(FAB-UV) that is repelled by astral entities. This means that if you squirt
a whole bunch of FAB-UV into an area and turn on the light, they'll outline
astral forms. Said astral forms can escape at a walking pace (which is how
fast the bacteria can move), but are now vulnerable to being targetted with
a "net" gun. The "net" is actually a big sticky sheet of FAB-I. When
the
astral mage-- who can be targetted by the FAB-UV-- is hit by the sheet of
FAB-I, they're trapped between the FAB-UV and the FAB-I with no place to go.
The FAB-I then sticks the mage against a living wall, and you have a mage
trapped.
>What about natural earth? Well, astral characters would be able to pass
>through the Earth, but they wouldn't necessarily be able to see where they
>were going, so I wouldn't recommend going too deep underground or you could
>get lost. Perhaps alchemy can also create materials which are dual natured
>(existing in both astral and physical space) to create stone walls which are
>also astral barriers.
This means that alchemy can *also* create marbles that can be chucked around
that mages can ground out area effect spells through. Very dangerous idea,
IMO.
--
%% Max Rible %% slothman@*****.com %% http://www.amurgsval.org/~slothman/ %%
%% "So, an Arisian, a Vorlon, and a knnn go into a tavern..." %%
