Sheer Perfection [Signs of Sorcery] [Mage: The Awakening]

Mage: The Awakening, Open Development



Welcome back, faithful readers!

Mage‘s errata is being incorporated, and the second edition core will soon be off to have an Index added. In the meantime, now that we have a stable ruleset, I think it’s high time to get back to Signs of Sorcery.

Our topic tonight is the Perfected Metals, one of the lesser-known pieces of Awakening lore. They showed up in a spell (“Forge Thaumium”) in the 1st ed core, and of course in the names of some of the Watchtowers, but it wasn’t until Legacies: The Ancient that they were explained. Essentially, the seven classical metals of gold, mercury, silver, tin, copper, lead, and iron had Perfected, magical forms . Gold, for example, became orichalcum, which when alloyed with lunargent (silver) and hermium (mercury) in a spell became Thaumium. Legacies: The Ancient gave a few lines of notes about what those metals did when not alloyed together, and launched a dozen fan theories and rules expansions in the process.

When Signs of Sorcery was but a glint in a Developer’s eye, I knew I wanted to finally take a look at the Perfected metals. I knew it with such certainty that we cut Forge Thaumium from second edition’s corebook in order to revisit it properly in Signs.

I asked my writers to give rules for all seven metals (only four had them in Legacies: The Ancient) and to give more alloys than just Thaumium. They spun off from there, taking in things like Perfected fire, Perfected water, Perfected flesh. It’s a shortish section full of plot hooks right at the start of Signs’ chapter on Crafting, and it’s available for your reading pleasure here.

As always, this has not been to an editor. Pointing out spelling mistakes is just denying the editor the satisfaction of their job.

I am particularly interested in whether or not the spells involved should keep the ability to make them Lasting.

Those of you trying to convert the Crasftmasons. Yeah, they probably have Hone the Perfected Form as an Attainment.

(NB: Yes, Apeiron here is different to the substance described in Imperial Mysteries, which used its name to refer to the ultimate expression of Matter magic. If we ever revisit archmasters’ mechanics, that’ll be getting a name change, in the same spirit that Platonic Forms and Eidolons are no longer called Tulpa because that’s what Mad Ones’ Arcana manifestations are called, and goetic entities are called Goetia to distinguish them from Pandemonium’s natives. Mage has a vast lexicon, and every now and again we come across two things sharing a name like this.)