Immortality Factor

by Ashelock (woneal@infoave.net)

I’ve given a lot of thought to the question of immortality in Shadowrun, going back to 1990 with the release of the original Harlequin adventure. Since then I’ve come up with three forms of immortality. I’ve classified them, giving them my own “genus” names if you will, for ease of reference. Since this topic seems to come up a lot, I’ve posted the info I’ve collected. These are purely my own thoughts and speculations on the matter, so take it all with a grain of salt (or better yet, check it against the books :).

Class III Immortality: “Parasitic Immortality”

This classification covers immortality brought about by infection of a parasitic organism. HMHVV falls into this group. The virus infects and lives within the host body, altering the host body for it’s own needs. In the process the host body is granted immunity to a variety of things, including aging. The parasite keeps the host body alive primarily to maintain it’s own existance.
Any beneficial effect of this infection is secondary to the nature of the parasite. There may be other parasites in Shadowrun that have this effect on their host beyond the HMHV virus, but presently I am unaware of any such.

Class II Immortality: “Symbiosis”

In this form of immortality, usually one astral and one physical, merge their life essences to make each stronger. Hence the term “symbiosis”. There are several examples of this in the Shadowrun universe. The earliest I am aware of is the Hidden Life power of certain free spirits. This granted immortality, among other benefits, to an animal or (meta)human the creature hid it’s life essence in. Later, insect spirits were introduced and we saw another example.
Human hosts who had a “good merge” still appeared human, although the insect spirit was now in control. The important point here is that the aging process in the host body seems to have been halted, a result of the two life forms merging. Drawing on various examples I’ve further split this category into two sub-groups, Friendly Merges and Hostile Mergers (or Devourings).

In Friendly Merges the astral entity and the physical entity share their existance without either being dominant. This might be the case with a free spirit and an (meta)human that had a strong friendship. The merge would make each stronger. However, it has it’s drawbacks, if either partner dies, so does the other. Their life forces are linked and can no longer be seperated.
Friendly Merges would be rare, especially among shadowrunners. What spirit would choose to hide it’s life force in a person who risks their life regularly as a career?

Hostile Merges or “Devourings” are the more common type, and usually result in the Astral entity destroying and consuming the essence of the physical host. Insect spirits are the best known example of this. They enter the host, destroy and consume the host’s essence and use this “energy” to emerge into the physical world as either a flesh form or a true form. It is interesting to note that strong willed individuals usually become flesh forms, and exceptionally strong willed individuals seem to almost survive. That is their form is unchanged or nearly unchanged and their memories and skills survive, albiet now under the control of the insect spirit. It seems to indicate that perhaps a person with a strong enough will might manage to survive the merge intact or even turn the tables and consume the spirit’s essence. Spirits seem adept at hostile merges, however, I would speculate that it is possible for a (meta)human to merge with a spirit and devour it. This would almost certainly require special preparations involving a ritual of some sort to enhance the Will of the (meta)human. What effects this may have are unknown, and would be up to the individual Game Master to work out. I would speculate, that immunity to age, toxins and pathogens would be the advantages almost certainly gained.
Other additional powers might be gained depending on the nature of the spirit consumed. If the astral entity were a powerful free spirit possessing special abilitites, perhaps some of these abilities might be gained as well. However, I would also speculate that the stronger the spirit, the more dangerous the attempt would become. In short, powerful spirits would provide more “energy” and thus potentially more advantages, however, because of their strength “devouring” these spirits would be increasingly dangerous.

Class I Immortality “True Immortality”

I called this class True Immortality because it was the only form that had immortality as it’s sole purpose, and the only form that involved no other life form. The best known examples of this are the Immortal Elves. However, there are other examples. In the Aztlan sourcebook we are introduced to at least one Shapeshifter that is immortal. And we can’t overlook Dragons. Their lifespan is unknown and perhaps part of what distinguishes a Greater Dragon from a Lesser might be immortality. The real question is how these beings gained their immortality. There are two camps or schools of thought on this. I’ve tried to outline both below.

One school of thought says that True Immortality is a genetic trait, you are either born with it or you aren’t. This genetic trait would have to be a metagene that becomes active in the presence of sufficient mana levels, turning off the biological clock. Once the biological clock is turned off, nothing turns it back on and thus the indivudal becomes “ageless” or immortal.

The second school of thought say that True Immortality is the result of a here-to-fore unknown magic ritual which makes the individual immortal. This school of thought believes it has nothing to do with genetics and that any individual subjected to the ritual would become immortal. While a certain mana level is required to perform the ritual, the changes caused are self-perpetuating (and might express genetically coincendentally). That is, once you become immortal, you don’t need magic to sustain it. Think of it as a sort of permanent health health spell (only infinitely more complex), that makes a permanent change. Once the change is made it doesn’t need to be sustained and no further magic is needed.

I personally belong to the second school of thought for a number of reasons. First I’ll deal with my reasons of game balance/logic. Frankly the genetic theory smacks of deus ex machina to me and I hate that as both a player and a game master. In my own games, the rules apply equally to everyone, PC’s and NPC’s alike. That being true, if an NPC can be born with a genetic trait for immortality, why not a PC? I point this out because if I followed the first school of thought I described above, my players would ask me that very question. I suspect other game masters would face similar questions. For me (and I don’t think I’m alone in this), this was one of the main problems with the entire Immortal Cabal concept. It wasn’t the fact that they were immortal, that part was interesting. It was the fact that this Cabal seemed to have anything they wanted, could do anything they wanted, all without any explanation as to why or how. Their exploits went so far into the unknown and the unexplainable they became alien. We couldn’t accept them into the “game reality” because they just didn’t fit, they were too powerful, too bizzare. Most of all the Immortal Cabal commited the Great Sin of Deus Ex Machina, they seemed to get everything for free. In a game where most players are struggling to survive, throwing seemingly omnipotent beings that got everything for nothing was like a slap in the face. Maybe if we’d seen them struggle for things, watch them face opponents that threatened their existance, maybe then we could have accepted them because on some level they would have been like the rest of us, just on a larger scale. But enough of my ranting on that.

Now on to my reasons for following the second school thought, reasons within the game universe. From what little we know of the immortal elves, we do know that they are immune to age, toxins and pathogens (as per the Harlequin’s Back adventure). A simple genetic trait that turns off the biological clock alone won’t explain this. Why are they immune to poison and disease as well?
My personal belief is that they employ a magical ritual. After reading the Earth Dawn rule book, paying particular attention to the part on Core Pattern Items, I started to theorize that perhaps this unknown ritual somehow reinforced the individual’s Astral Pattern (or True Pattern as it’s called in ED). My logic goes something like this, the ritual links the physical to the Astral in such a way that the Astral governs and maintains the physical. Since the Astral does not age, neither does the physical. This would also explain the immunity to toxins and pathogens, physical poisons and disease do not affect the astral thus the physical is no longer affected (however such an individual would still be vulnerable to astral infections, see the Threats sourcebook for some ideas on that). Assuming the Core Pattern theory holds, this also means that destruction of the physical body will not destroy the immortal individual, because the astral was not also destroyed. Assuming Dunkelzahn was such an immortal, and assuming my theory is right, this would explain why his assassins used both a physical explosion and a magical attack to destroy him. They destroyed both his physical body AND his astral form. If they had destroyed only his physical form, according to the ED rules regarding True Patterns, his “True Self” would had have caused his physical form to reform over a period of time. ED gives several examples of how this might come about, and I think with an immortal it might happen through anything from spontaneous reformation (“poof” I’m back!) to reincarnation (their astral self inhabits a fetus and starts over, oh joy potty training again!). This also seems to mesh with some other arguements Ehran and the others have had over elves reincarnating, following Paths, etc. Perhaps only those whose astral pattern has been Strengthened in some way will reincarnate, the rest of us are out of luck. This explanation also fits better into my own game world and I find it much more palatable. If a player asks me why a particular NPC is immortal, I have an answer. If they want to become immortal themselves I have the info I need for them to persue it. This isn’t to say that I’ll make it easy for them, or that they will even achieve it. The point here is that it is possible, what differentiates the immortal NPC from the mortal PC is a now a matter of knowledge, skill and achievement. The NPC earned their immortality in some way, it wasn’t a freebie. That’s a whole lot easier to accept.

Well, that the long and the short of my two bits on the subject (okay… maybe that was four bits, I do tend to go a bit :). I hope my thoughts are of use, comments are welcome as I’m sure I’ve probably missed something somewhere.

Ashelock