In a game I am planning for I have a rather interesting idea. I want to make a powerful force within the magical community that represents the rapid growth of technology within the mortal world. My initial idea is that a moderately able mortal, either just under or over the power level of a sorcerer, who before his talent manifested was raised in a very tech savy family. When using new gadgets become difficult he set out in order to change this. Over months of work and a newly built computer that has as much magic runes and groundings as it does circuitry. And this he now has a computer within that works within his presence. From here he designs a program that will allow him keep track of his own magical discoveries and information. He then decides to super power the computer by binding spirits of intellect(cousins of bob) and lightning into it. During the ritual, somethings goes wrong and causes a city block blackout. This will gain the attention of my players.
When they investigate they will find the charred corpse of the sorcerer and the computer unplugged and undamaged, the magical radiation oozing out of it. When they turn it on it will run like a normal computer(without being plugged in). If they open the program, it will bring to life a new being, a spiritual child in a sense of the guy who made it and the spirits he tried to bind to it. What i have planned is as other stories go on, this program will function much like bob, except its learning everything and keeping track of it. It will also desire things from the players, except instead of romance novels, it asks for information, mostly cds and movies. Up to a point the computer wont be connected to the internet, it wont have inbuilt wifi and will likley be at the wizard players house. However it will start asking to connect. If the players ever let it, it will leave the computer in a sense and go wild on the net. From there I was thinking that being a spirit of information, the more information it has, the more powerful it becomes, and since it will be in a sense the first magical being able to interact in direct metaphysical way with technology it has free pickings of the internet and everything connected to it. I have ideas of it growing and to the point of being able to manifest outside of the devices it inhabits and go into the never never to claim its own territory. I think it could start reproducing in a sense by there spawning magical sub programs from is self as it grows or by making 'viruses' that can infect spiritual beings and converting them into lesser tech spirits. To reflect the rapid rate technology changes and expands in our own world, this minor spiritual being will grow to fey queen size extremely quickly, within months to years. It create a territory of the never never thats connected with and reflects the internet, phantom city, a hybrid of tron and bladerunner in appearance, where viral entities lurk in dark alley ways or disguised as helpful spirits, strands of random programming running amoke, playful spirits who lock the souls of mortals into eternal games, buying and sell of memories or other insubstantial things all through the computer screen. Antiviral spirits run around trying to bring order to the city to no avail.This all ruled by the first of its kind, a king/queen of hardware and software. I love to see order and established, set in its ways, systems thrown into chaos, and have a being come into rapid power and stealing away portions of the never never, and changing the fabric magic seems like a nice way to do this. So...thoughts, ideas, criticisms?