HYPERTECH
Description: There’s mundane technology, and then there’s the stuff that technomages command. This latter tech is not, of course, “magick” – perish that thought! Still, its principles transcend the limited understanding of the Masses and their convenient little world. The advanced principles employed by the Technocracy, Virtual Adepts, various mad scientists, and even the technomancers of other, more traditional pursuits all range outside everyday sciences. These arcane technologies – nanotech, Trinary computing, extradimensional travel, and so on – seem mysterious even to many of the rank-and-file who employ them. You, however, understand how such things work… and through such understanding, you can modify existing Devices, create your own, or employ machines created by other technomancer mages.
At Ranks 1 and 2, a character with this Skill understands only the principles behind her own group’s Devices; an Etherite, for example, can puzzle out the workings of a colleague’s contraptions, but she would wind up stymied by, say, an Iteration X Device. At Rank 3 and above, however, that same mag… I mean, scientist could decipher the odd perversions of scientific truth behind such alien Devices – and, by extension, could use or even modify them. In game terms, this means that a successful Hypertech roll would allow a technomancer to employ a tool or Device that would not normally work for him due to its secure or unconventional design. If you’re running a Technocratic operative, this is a pretty big deal; the warped confections of mad scientists begin to make a practical kind of sense… which means, of course, that you can now convert those insane Devices to more sensible purposes.
Your Hypertech rating cannot be higher than your rating in the Technology Skill. If you don’t understand the basics, after all, how will you wrap your head around the big stuff? As with the Computer Knowledge, your ability to focus Sphere Effects through hypertech may be limited to the dots in your Hypertech Trait. For details about technomagickal practices, see the Cybernetics, Hypertech, and Weird Science entries, and their associated paradigms and instruments, in the Practices section of Chapter Ten.