Editing Nex Machina (section)

== Use By Practitioners ==
Possession of a corrupted piece of tech can be leveraged to extend the usual invitation to summon the Nex Machina to a particular target.<ref name=":8" /> With some power from the Practitioner, this can be made much easier than usual to trigger, making it easier to trick the target into the summoning. However, this tends to make the Nex Machina innoculated to the practitioner's methods, and it will generally turn on them if discarded.<ref>Summoning: The act of strategically releasing a Nex Machina requires a ritual that a target unintentionally participates in, as another active party.  Typically this requires that one have a node and then the means of transcribing or conveying a message central to the Nex Machina.  Even fleeting phrases conveyed to televisions or projected onto walls can be enough, if power is expended to push them forth from a node.<br><br>A Nex Machina summoned in this way is a hazard to the summoner, so care must be taken.  It may have multiple ‘lives’, where if rebuffed or defeated it fades away, returning to the summoner, who must then expend more energy than the last time to release them again.  While summoned however, they are dangerous killers with no need to stay rooted to one position.  If the summoner can’t pay the price in power to keep resummoning the Nex Machina, then it will turn on them, usually with an unhealthy (to the practitioner) acceleration of the enveloping effect and a fair bit of resistance to the techniques and powers that bound them before. - [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cwFiwUBPuDm4wV5THrv_dRfM7PuPHW6mCDxnPLvffV0/edit Bestiary: Nex Machina]</ref>

Nex Machina are mercurial and often fleeting, but favour gained with them can be used to summon them and/or request boons (with no guarantee of success), similarly to a [[god]].<ref>They can be used for divine power, but the Nex Machina is so mercurial and inconsistent in power level, prone to the vagaries and the rise and fall of the internet’s interest, that the act of building up the favor to spend on a greater act is often too risky. If successful, the Nex Machina may be invited to appear, swiftly enveloping an area with the power offered.  Oftentimes this is just faster than summoning, but with a steep and precarious price paid in advance (by way of the favor garnered). - [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cwFiwUBPuDm4wV5THrv_dRfM7PuPHW6mCDxnPLvffV0/edit Bestiary: Nex Machina]</ref> Favor could be gained by spreading the being's legend, and/or by killing people in imitation of them.<ref name=":9">The Nex Machina can be invited to be a familiar.  This often requires earning favor and propagating the message and device of the Nex Machina, and then inviting the Nex Machina to a scene that has been prepared for them - often an organized collection of bodies of those violently murdered in a likeness of the Nex Machina’s methods.  When the Nex Machina arrives, it may (or may not!) accept the entreaty, at which point the practitioner would be able to ask for a major act, and they ask for it to serve them as a partner instead.<br><br>Because the Nex Machina are so hard to predict and so mercurial, this is typically the province of madmen and the desperate.  There is never a guarantee that they agree to be a familiar or to do a favor.<br><br>As familiars, they may be similar to an internet friend, communicating by way of one or multiple handles, texting, or emailing.  They may appear to be human to others, but if they do, they will steadily cut off their master’s connections to others, simply as the effect of their nature.  While detrimental from a mental health perspective, may make pursuit or investigation of the master harder.  The master will gain technological ability and a perpetual ‘handler’, with the ability to unleash an attack dog on their enemies.<br><br>Whatever the result of the attempted summoning or establishment of a familiar, when the Master’s tenure is over, they will tend to be made out to be the perpetrator of the Familiar’s crimes. - [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cwFiwUBPuDm4wV5THrv_dRfM7PuPHW6mCDxnPLvffV0/edit Bestiary: Nex Machina]</ref>

Some unstable technomancers take Nex Machinae as [[Familiar]]s. To get the being to even consider this, they have to have built up enough favor to request a major boon. Such familiars may communicate with the practitioner via the internet, or take on human form; they often passively weaken the pracittioner's connections with others (which can be useful to protect against pursuit) and grant increased technical skill.<ref name=":9" />

Those who summon or serve Nosleeps tend to eventually end up blamed for their crimes, often post-mortem.<ref name=":9" />

A God in the Machine (see below) is valued as a power source by Technomancers, and there is an unofficial norm that the person collecting them cleans up the bodies.<ref name=":10">Variants:  There are a few variants of the Nex Machina.
<br>God in the Machine: The machine is worshipped, not the avatar/legend.  Groundbreaking tech, experimental ideas, and advanced computer programs with sleep deprived and disconnected staff working on them may provide the vehicle for a God in the Machine to come into being.  It has a vulnerable heart and isn’t as mobile, but more scope within its area of influence.  Will perform its deed and then go quiet, surrounded by dead bodies.  Massive power sources for the first technomancer to get their hands on it, with a standing gentleman’s agreement that they clean up the mess.<br><br>Ghost in the Machine: The Avatar is based around an echo, a ghost of a real person who died in a way that let the Avatar manifest, close enough to technology to connect to it.  Will manifest far more through technology itself and may simply be an obnoxious or frustrating force to be dealt with.<br><br>Memetic Dancer: As with all things Technomancer, there are dated versions of the current phenomena.  The Memetic Dancer is a type of Nex Machina that came about when music boxes, self-playing pianos, Gramophones and other automatic music players came into common use.  Centered around music, they are Avatars tied to haunting songs or pieces of music that one has never heard before.  They stick with the listener and urge resolution - often playing a piece until it can be replicated, dancing to it, or searching out the history behind a thing.  Either way, the music runs through a victim’s mind until it’s audible, they lose all connections to others as they slip into obsession or venture far from home in the search, and then manifest an avatar.  In some cases the ‘dancer’ is gentle, taking a ravaged or haunted victim into a warm embrace before killing or absorbing them.  In other cases the dancer is violent.  Other dated versions include Wrong Numbers and Voices in the Static. - [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cwFiwUBPuDm4wV5THrv_dRfM7PuPHW6mCDxnPLvffV0/edit Bestiary: Nex Machina]</ref>