Magickal Style

Paul's magickal style has changed greatly since his awakening and Seekings. Whereas previously it was the teachings of the Virtual Adepts alone that shaped his ability to hack reality, his confrontations with his Avatar (see reference) have lead him to branch from even that society of loners. Whilst he is still considered a member of their tradition, he is constantly questioning whether he has more to learn from them or from others. 

His style at present works in part from his understanding of the Triat and the spirit world, and in part from an "object oriented" view of reality. He believes that the Wyld creates objects, but the Weaver locks them down into patterns. In the case of Life, the Wyld has more of it's freedom, and the patterns are more complex, and he has not yet been able to hack any of them. In the case of the Changing Breeds, the energy of the Wyld allows them to alter their own weaver-pattern, to a limited degree. 

His own ability is not to work with dynamic patterns such as this but to work with the more 'static' patterns of energy and matter. Each object's pattern contains a set of attributes that define that object. Some are public, accessible to anyone that can access any patterns. In general, only simple 'tag' bit-fields and location attributes are available to him at this level. It is through this that he works his Correspondence Arts. His ability to access the Private attributes of Patterns of Forces and Matter enable him to make much greater changes, but he still cannot totally rewrite fields or create new ones from scratch. 

All of this alteration is accomplished by complex programs vocalized or typed into his hip-mounted Trinary computer or his Trinary laptop. Another thing about these computers that marks him out from the average Virtual Adept is the fact that each requires a "spiritlink modem" to sufficiently interface with the patterns he utilizes. 

As his understanding meshes with the Corax worldview as he has been taught by many, he is at risk of deserting the Adepts entirely and becoming a kind of techno-Corax mage. Whether this would be a good thing or not remains to be seen, though he has started to collate a group of programs mimicking some of the Corax spirit Gifts that he can duplicate the effects of. These can be used, provided one of his Trinary decks is on, with little more than concentration, and maybe a single word or keystroke. It is entirely possible that he will find a way to surpass this in the future.

Avatar

Paul's Avatar is obviously an aspect of Raven, though with a cyberpunk twist to suit his more technologically-oriented style. Appearing as either a beautiful young woman in an ebony top-hat and tails carrying a silver tipped cane, with her left arm and eye replaced with sleek cybernetic replacements befitting Raven, or as a large, jet-black raven with one wing gleaming a metallic silver, and one eye replaced by a camera. 

Whilst his Avatar has not had a long-running involvement with him, whenever it does show up it signifies something major is going to happen. The raven-form is taken more in the Digital Web, where it matches Paul's own Icon, that of a half-cybernetic raven to the point where they could be considered mates. In this form it usually provides guidance in the literal sense, leading him to his goals. 

The form of the woman is taken less frequently, but is seemingly more significant. Appearing to him when he needs guidance of a more aetherial kind, she speaks mainly in riddles and single lines, getting him to think 'out of the box' for himself. The one time 'she' appeared for more than a few minutes was the Christmas before he moved to Kansas when she engaged him on a whirlwind romance, intending to prove that two seeming opposites could indeed meld and be stronger. Only since that Seeking has his worldview altered to mesh the techno-punk and Corax natures within him.

Foci

His most-used focus is a computer, obvious to anyone that knows of his V-dept heritage. He has one  Trinary decks that he uses, as well as a portable uplink to it. The actual machine resembles a slim line laptop PC,  with ports for mouse, VR gloves, and a transmitter base for his glasses. This machine is in inherently more stable than normal due to surge buffers and various hacks to it's Pattern. It can run practically any piece of software, triple-boots Windows, Linux and BeOS, and can read and write to floppy disk, optical disk, DAT tape, all forms of CD and DVD. It has all of the 'usual' features of a souped-up Trinary deck.

The remote uplink is his usual "fast action" deck. About the size and shape of a personal stereo, it has a bank of ten keys on it's surface, and a small transmitter for the gloves and visor he wears, abut the size of a small mobile telephone, and connected by a single wire. It is perfect for field work as it lets him keep in contact with his Trinary without actually endangering the main machine by exposing it to hostile environments. It's small size and shiny nature however, make it a prime target. It's input is usually either speech from the microphones in the glasses, or data straight from the virtual keyboards of the gloves. Most often used functions can be set to one of the five non system specific keys on the unit, usually encoded to local motion enhancement and deflection programs (Rotes). Output is via the speakers and video of the glasses, or built in speakers in the machine itself. It cannot however link with any other devices beyond the laptop.

His glasses, slightly bulkier than those of other Adepts, contain integral headphones and microphones, and have an internal video display which alters in opacity by subvocalised command. An experimental system to measure eye movement and use it as input is mounted on the inside, but only the laptop can make use of this. They communicate with their base unit by either radio waves or hard-wiring to the laptop. Paul is experimenting with other means of linking the glasses and seems to have a plan, but without further experimentation and assistance from someone more accomplished with the manipulation of energy his plan for Umbral linking must remain just a plan. Obviously, the glasses are just as unique as his computers and would cost about as much to replace.

His gloves look to be thin black leather gloves, with rigid parts around the tips of each finger and around the body of the hand. They act as virtual reality gloves for all intents and purposes, using standard gigahertz frequency radio waves to communicate with the main unit. Both the laptop and the remote deck contain software for a virtual keyboard, which allows him to input data to his machine silently by 'typing' on air. Said keyboard moves with his hands, and there is one 'side' of a standard keyboard per hand. They are often used when silent data entry is needed, or advanced programming is required in a situation when voice-activation would not be prudent.