Sympathy for the Sinister [Mage: The Awakening]

Mage: The Awakening, News, Open Development

When You’re Evil

Mage is well served for antagonists. The game has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to opposition, and many of them are close to my heart. There’s just something satisfying about a good antagonist.

So let’s take a look at the bad side of the road.

Before we even get to the Antagonists chapter of Awakening Second Edition, there’s plenty of enemies available. The Pentacle contains great numbers of ruthless sorcerers, some of whom subscribe to heretical or unpleasant versions of the Orders, but most of whom simply have Obsessions diametrically opposed to the player characters. What do you do as a junior Silver Ladder mage when your Deacon has spent years working on fostering a Sleeper Mystery Cult that’s hurting people you care about? When Mystagogues try to “reclaim” an Artifact in your lorehouse? When an Arrow mage who you’d otherwise count as a friend has sworn an oath to support someone who wants your Hallow? When a Libertine column goes decidedly “off-message” and tries to provoke Awakenings by engineering stress in their prospects? Mage can tell all those stories without any special rules, and keying this back to last week’s blog mage society is designed around the idea that this kind of thing happens all the time.

The next major antagonist for Awakening are the Seers of the Throne, the treacherous Order who serve the Exarchs in exchange for temporal power and the possibility of Ascension. Unlike the other antagonist mage-types, Seers are truly the counterparts of player characters – they’re a full Order, with their own Order Tools, their own “perk” Merit (Prelacies, as explained in the Orders blog post) and their own history and culture. In Awakening second edition, the Seers are at the front of the book alongside the other Orders, as although the game never assumes that you are playing Seer characters, there’s not really anything stopping you, either.

The Pentacle and Seers alike call Legacies they disapprove of “Left-Handed” (although the three Sects often differ in just who they think the term applies to); praxes that mark the practitioners as decidedly unmutual. Some cling on inside Orders, either in secrecy or protected by colleagues who value their quiet contributions. Others can’t manage that and exist as apostates or solitaries. The very largest Left-Handed Legacies, those that have survived outside of the Orders for centuries, eventually develop into Nameless Orders themselves.

Then there’s the myriad array of beings and monsters that mages can encounter while exploring the Mysteries. The Abyss is, strictly speaking, more like an extremely hazardous law of nature than an antagonist, but individual manifestations of anti-reality can take the semblance of ephemeral entities. These Gulmoth (when they manifest in physical or ephemeral worlds) or Acamoth (when they manifest in the Astral) can even be summoned by accident of malfeasance. Aside from them, mages routinely deal with Ghosts, Spirits, and Goetia, both in the material world and when exploring the Underworld, Shadow, and Astral. And finally, whether they’re summoned deliberately, drawn to a mage who uses her Mage Sight for too long, or encountered within a Demesne or Supernal Verge, there’s the Supernal Entities. Fae, Shades, Demons, Angels, and Beasts are the namesakes of Fallen beings, but aren’t the same as them, any more than an angel that looks like a Lion is actually a Lion.

Apart from the expected, while exploring the stranger corners of the World of Darkness mages can come across genuine oddities. Not-quite-human beings clinging to existence in ruins of the Time Before. Sentient places, often mistaken for Spirits or Goetia. The experiments in creating life lurking in an archmaster’s chantry, or the living spells fashioned out of archmages’ souls. The bizarre and destructive Acathartoi, inhabitants of millions of fragile not-quite-real universes mages collectively call “the Lower Depths,” of whom the host of the Inferno are the most sane and relate-able. The neverborn Cthonians, crawling through the deepest, darkest layers of the Underworld. Any and all of them can be Mysteries in themselves, enigmas calling for mages to understand them despite the dangers.

These beings – from the simplest ghost to the most terrifying Ochemata – are part of Awakening‘s setting, though, and we’ll go into them in a future blog. So what’s actually in the Antagonists chapter? Mages who – if opposed to the player characters – act like mages normally act and follow the same rules as player characters are covered by the entire rest of the book. As hostile as a Seer or an Austere can be, they’re still fully mages, still walking the tightrope of their Watchtower’s call to the Supernal and the dangers of the Mysteries.

Awakening second edition‘s antagonist chapter is about those mages who’ve sidestepped or fallen off the Path, figuratively speaking. Many of them have mechanical differences to “regular” mages, or perspectives on the Fallen World that even a Seer would find objectionable or incomprehensible. Each of these groups represents a failure mode for an Awakened mage, falling prey to hubris and obsession.

As antagonist groups driven by their obsessions even more than other mages, these guys aren’t suitable for player characters except in truly specialist chronicles—playing a Seer of the Throne is a walk on the dark side, but playing a Banisher or Mad One is like playing a Slasher.

Use these antagonists as cautionary tales, twisted counterparts to the protagonists, and omens for the future. Many of them have rare and specialized knowledge that tempts other mages to approach them—there’s no better expert on souls than a Reaper or a Mad One who fell from Wisdom experimenting on them.

You’ll recognize many of the names, but the first important thing to say here is that these are categories. Not all Mad Ones lose their Wisdom through the same means. Not all Banishers have the same mechanical differences from regular mages. Not all Liches follow the same means of attempted immortality.

The second thing is to admit, right here months before the corebook’s release, that we simply don’t have room in the book for full game system breakdowns of these Antagonists. Sinister Stew Wilson, who wrote them for second edition, has given brief descriptions of how they might differ, but we can’t fit anything more than that in. And as Left Hand Path (the sourcebook covering them,) was the final book for first edition, we’re not likely to see space for them in a book for years.

To square this circle, I’m planning to take the unusual step of issuing an errata sheet containing the full second edition rules – but no descriptions! – as one of the first things after second edition is released. If you want more details on what their organizations, beliefs, and habits are than the corebook provides, Left Hand Path and Banishers are still available from DriveThru, but this way you won’t have to convert their rules yourself.

The Mad

The Mad are mages who’ve degraded their Wisdom or suffered such esoteric injuries to their soul that they’ve hit rock-bottom: Wisdom zero.

Mad Ones have such overpowering Nimbuses that they leak magic, true spell effects (even ones the Mad One isn’t capable of consciously casting) manifesting around them. Each Mad One replaces her Virtue with one of her Obsessions, which becomes her Fault; an act she’s compelled to carry out, a spell she can’t stop casting, or a Mystery she can’t resolve but has to keep vying at. If she doesn’t work toward her Fault, or is prevented from doing so, she manifests spell effects (called “Tulpa”) that force the issue. The Mad Ones’ ambient magic also serve as a form of camouflage – their presence triggers Sleeper’s Quiescence, so that they fade from memory, and they become increasingly Occluded until they indulge themselves as the pressure to carry out their Fault builds.

Mad Ones often have savant-like abilities concerning their Fault; great personal insights and flexibility with magic that other mages don’t. One might gain Exceptional Successes on three successes when following his fault, another might be able to cast a particular Practice using any Arcanum, even ones he doesn’t know.

Mages who don’t know any better, or don’t have any other option, seek out Mad Ones for their knowledge. A bare handful manage to hide within the Pentacle or Seers, aided and abetted by cabalmates or apprentices who try to manage the risks they pose. Even if a Mad One tries to behave socially, it’s a conscious effort on their part – their broken souls rob them of human empathy and even bar them from the Temenos. And, no matter how much a Mad One might want to stop herself, if she doesn’t follow her urges her Tulpa will make her. Some Mad Ones go so far as to lose their grip on their own bodies, inhabiting their Tulpa as disembodied creatures of magic.

The Mad’s theme is consuming obsession, the drive all mages have turned into a monster that consumes everything else in a Mad One’s life.

Banishers

Mages call any mage who turns on her own kind to act like a hunter a Banisher, but like other antagonists the term covers a number of different phenomena. Some mages fall to trauma or insanity through the dangers of magic and decide that it has to be stopped. Certain Left-Handed Legacies consume or destroy magic to power themselves, like the Timori and Logophages. Finally, some mages’ Awakenings go wrong, leaving them with the Integrity Advantage instead of Wisdom—which means they experience magic, even their own Peripheral Mage Sight, as pain or fear, and lash out to make it stop. What’s worse is that some forms of Banishing are contagious under conditions the Orders don’t understand—friendly contact with a Banisher, even well-meaning attempts to turn them around, sometimes results in once-doctrinaire mages turning Banisher themselves.

Most Banishers commit suicide or are quickly killed by other mages. The exceptions justify their own magic use to themselves as necessary evils, or accept that they’re damned while fighting the damnation of others. Without an Order’s training, most Banishers can’t learn rotes or learn the Arcana outside of the instinctive Arcane Experiences-driven limits of their Path. The handful of hypocritical Banisher Legacies maintain their own twisted lore, recruiting newly-Awakened mages before they have a chance to experience the wider magical world.

The original core had a one-line mention of the Banishers being, in some way, like an Order—that they fit into a symbolic niche from Atlantean society, and are therefore as eternal as the Pentacle. We’re dropping this notion – the Atlantean “template” of the Diamond Orders is something they work at, just as the Seers serve the Exarchs and the Free Council draw magical tools from human culture. If the Timori have any Supernal “weight” and symbolism they can use in spells, it’s no different to any other Legacy.

The Banisher theme is rejection of the call. Mages are constantly aware of the Mysteries the World of Darkness has to offer, tempted by the promise of power and further understanding. Banishers fear and hate their own insight, fear and hate magic, and fear and hate other mages for their fearlessness.

Liches

A lich is a mage who has survived beyond the limits of her mortal lifespan by Left-Handed means. Immortality is difficult in Mage, and the various options aren’t palatable for most Awakened. Indefinite Life or Death spells are the easiest, but least secure – you’re one dispellation away from a painful and sudden demise. Some liches forcibly transplant their minds and souls into younger bodies, some work on permanent transformation into ephemeral entities, usually via a Legacy that turns them into a Ghost, Spirit, or Goetia while retaining their consciousness and capability with magic. “Morpheans,” (one example of which is one of the Mastigos signature characters) are astral liches, stalking the Temenos looking for Mysteries of the inner worlds. Some mages cast spells to bind their own ghosts into their bodies, becoming unaging corpse-things devoted to a magical task, like the Barrow-wights of old Catalonia, who emerge once every few centuries to astrally-project themselves in search of Atlantis. Most Pentacle Convocations even go so far as to class ghost mages as liches – most ghost mages are simply ghosts, like any other beyond a tendency to high Rank and Influences that sometimes resemble the Praxes and Attainments of the mage they’re formed from. A minority, though, are free-willed, clear-minded and retain all their powers, the mages’ mind and soul somehow staying attached to the ghost instead of vanishing upon death.

Liches represent fall from humanity—Awakened mages sometimes decry their humanity, or believe themselves better than Sleepers, but liches have crossed the line separating a mage from a true monster. That line isn’t always clear, and the Orders argue about how far from human makes a mage a liche, while those Legacies who shape their physical forms past humanity who don’t survive beyond death have to make their status as not-liches exceedingly clear at Convocation.

Reapers

A Reaper is a mage who commits the ultimate crime—stealing and destroying human souls. Although it requires only middling ability with Death (it’s a Fraying Practice spell to sever a Sleeper’s soul, and an Unmaking one to remove a mages’), the Orders regard Reaping as a taboo subject – to the Pentacle, it denies the victim the chance to Awaken and condemns them to rapid, degenerative insanity. To the Seers, it robs the Exarchs of a slave.

Unfortunately, souls are useful. In theory, a mage could use a soul to access any of the Subtle Arcana relating to the victim—some Reapers consume the Fated good fortune of their unwilling donors, enhance their own minds using souls as fuel, or absorb them to bind the ghosts of victims as slaves.

Reapers are the greatest act of hubris, mages who think their intended purpose is more important than the eternal spark of their victims.

Tremere

The Tremere Legacy were in the original corebook, and greatly expanded on in Left Hand Path. They’re a both Reapers and Liches, and effectively a Nameless Order with far more members than the Orders suppose. Tremere consume souls to maintain a semi-vampiric state that stems from the transformation of their own souls in what’s hinted to be Abyssal corruption. They hunt other Reaper groups and absorb them as “Houses” within their own ranks – the Seo Hel, Nagaraja, and more. Failed Tremere become cannibalistic monsters called Pretas, who serve the Tremere as ghoul-equivalents. In their own twisted beliefs, the Tremere are striving for a grand unified theory of the soul, a Seventh Watchtower that will reject the false Paths and lead them to Ascension.

Scelesti

A Scelestus is a mage who uses the Abyss in his magic, deliberately calling on its anti-symbols or summoning entities from it to further damage the Fallen World. Like Reapers, the Orders are horrified by Scelesti, even the Seers, although Scelesti have infiltrated all of them to some extent.

Scelesti motives for calling on the Abyss range from well-intentioned extremism or martyrdom, seeking the power to control Paradoxes for the greater good, to a desperate need for freedom from reality’s constraints, to outright destructive nihilism. The Orders recognize four main signs of Abyssal corruption in a mage, and not all Scelesti follow all of them. First and least are mages who corrupt their own spells with Paradox deliberately, gaining more power for the spell at the risk of becoming addicted to the process. These are the ones who can, in theory, kick the habit and become redeemed, but they’re also the most numerous—the Orders don’t tell new students, but any mage can do it if they know how. The second and most wretched kind turn away from their Paths to rebirth at an abyssal “Ziggurat”, an anti-Watchtower that corrupts their Path Yantras and Oblations but leaves them with rudimentary control of Paradox. The third and most visible kind join Legacies that deal with the Abyss, and the forth and most dangerous bargain with the Abyss’ astral reflection for command over its forces, allowing them to direct Paradox at will and cause other mages’ spells to twist against them.

The Scelesti in all their forms represent nihilism, the desire to do away with the Supernal and Fallen Worlds entirely. In the end, the Abyss will consume all of creation, including them.

Progress Update!

Awakening itself is still creeping along through writing and redlines, but I do have an update on the Fallen World Anthology, the short story collection that’s going to come out ahead of the core. The anthology is now redlined and in second drafts, and features four old favorites and seven new stories, ranging from an Eleventh Question mage called out of retirement in the Mage Noir era, an unwelcome encounter in a back alley in New York, and Khonsu (the Obrimos signature character, seen in several previous tales) investigating a series of murders with himself as the victims.

Next Week!

We’re getting into another busy period on other books, and I won’t have time for a proper update. So as is usual for a fill-in week, we’ll see another splat page. But now that we’ve seen the Orders, we have a choice.

So… Obrimos or Adamantine Arrow?