Falling Down

Mage: The Awakening, Open Development

Okay, so, “the Fallen World” won by a landslide.

As most of you have noticed, the Chronicle Books are all named after the story catalyst in their respective games. Not necessarily the antagonist, but the thing that upsets the apple cart, disrupts the lives of the characters and causes a Story. The Strix throw the All Night Society off kilter and into chaos, the Idigam are an Outside Context problem the tribes aren’t properly equipped to fight. The God-Machine sends angels to do its inscrutable bidding, no matter who tries to get in its way.

When this book was not-exactly announced, but we’d made it known that Werewolf and Mage had both had proposals, the old forum saw a lot of speculation as to what the Chronicle Book would be. The Exarch Chronicle. The Seer Chronicle. The Lower Depths Chronicle. The Tremere Chronicle. The Bound Chronicle.

From the day I proposed it two years ago, it’s always been The Fallen World Chronicle. Here’s why.

We imagine that the world we can touch and see is real – more real than pure concepts. The abstract only exists to define the concrete.

It’s a Lie.

Everything in the universe is loaded with meaning, abstract properties, and magical symbolism, which modern metaphysics calls Universals and Plato called Forms, but which Mage just calls ‘symbols’. Two cats share the symbol of “cat”, the symbol of “animal”, the symbol of “furred” and so on. One might be “black” and another “white”. Both might be “male”. That’s a physical, real creature with just a few of its’ symbols. In the World of Darkness, some symbols are less well recognized – cats “see the unseen”.

Plato talked about concrete phenomena being impure reflections of the Forms they embodied. Modern mathematicians work with imaginary numbers, and concede that while you can recognize something as triangular, and even conceive of a triangle, nothing in the physical world is a perfect triangle – there’s always a tiny flaw if you look closely enough. Human beings are all “human”, but everyone’s different; no one person embodies the complete idea of “human.”

Plato, riffing on how smart he was, led his students on an extended metaphor about people chained up in a cave mistaking the shadows cast on a wall for reality, and how one might break free, interact with the objects casting those shadows, and maybe even take a trip outside to look at the sun before returning back, trying to educate his fellows and being seen as a madman. He was not-very-subtly pointing out that philosophers were much smarter than everyone else, and if people react badly to their wisdom it’s just because they’re still consumed by regard for the world of the senses. He didn’t mean it literally – although he thought that the realm of pure ideas was more “real” than the physical, you can’t see symbols.

Mages can. They call them “The Supernal World,” and the concrete universe around them “Fallen.” They exist in a liminal state, aware that the World of Darkness is a corrupted image cast by the Supernal’s near-infinite layers of magical symbolism and occult meaning, warped by the Abyss into a Lie. They only have to concentrate to see the Supernal World – every symbol relating to their Awakened Path revealed in the surroundings. If they concentrate their magical awareness even further, the world seems on the brink of turning into a Supernal Realm – Obrimos see the energy barely contained within everything, Acanthus see Time and the push/pull of Destiny – and even glimpse the inhabitants of the Supernal out of the corners of their eyes. Despite their Gnosis, however, mages are trapped in the Fallen Word. They can look at the Supernal, but not touch, and the mind-blowing vistas of Supernal glory some mages Awaken to remain frustratingly out of reach. They can see how the symbols of the Supernal inform the Fallen World, but they can’t become those symbols themselves, and experience the universe as pure magic. Not without Ascending.

Trapped halfway between Supernal transcendence and comforting, ignorant, Sleep, mages often feel like their lives are journeys – they can’t go back, so they must go forward. They call the symbols they have affinity with their “Paths”, and describe the Mysteries with imagery of labyrinths and prisons. By meditating on imaginary journeys, mages can shut the physical World of Darkness out and shift their consciousness inward, exploring Astral landscapes made of the human soul. Even the Astral Realms are Fallen, though – the Supernal remains past the limits of astral exploration.

One hard rule of magic: it can’t be fully learned without being experienced. Magic leaves the practitioner transformed, and the journey of encountering the mysterious and exploring it is as important to a mage’s development as whatever rush they feel at the end of the trail when something’s been pinned down and understood. Old, European magical societies started calling what a mage experiences when chasing magic a “Mystery Play” – a story with a symbolic moral at the end. Every Mystery solved is a miniature reminder of the Awakening, when the mage first saw through the Lie.

And the World of Darkness is teeming with Mysteries.

Mages can’t shut their Gnosis off. Once your soul is opened to the insights of a Path, it’s always there. Every supernatural event, from the least ghost using its Influences to the greatest cosmic Mysteries, stands out to a mage without trying. They feel an itch, or a faint aura, or a sense of someone walking over their grave.

Constantly.

Other supernatural inhabitants of the World of Darkness can pretend that the world’s still “normal” despite their now being a vampire, or Changing. Mages know that the supernatural is nearly omnipresent. Even if they try to live a normal life, they’d soon be provoked by their own sense for the uncanny.

A rare minority can’t take it. They become Banishers. Most are made of sterner stuff – if they didn’t have a need to know they wouldn’t have Awakened in the first place. Their Paths call them to face the unknown, to understand it, and grow closer to the Supernal. With increasing insight, their powers grow, allowing them to reach for more difficult Mysteries, despite the very real risks.

A typical Vampire story includes feeding, and asks what you’ll do to make it to tomorrow.

A typical Werewolf story involves hunting a threat to the Pack’s territory.

A typical Mage story starts with the characters sensing something. Everything else – the obsession, the hubris, the conflict between rival Orders, the danger of whatever they’re investigating – builds on that. A mage, using her magic to follow a Mystery, risking her sanity and the safety of others in exchange for power.

Mage isn’t about the Exarchs, the Oracles, Atlantis, or even the Supernal World. Mages have one true obstacle in the way of their ambitions, and it’s the way magic is hidden in the world. The way they’re forced to hunt for power rather than simply grasping it. The way the world isn’t the Supernal Realms, but a material, Shadow, Astral, and Underworld that’s vast, complicated, infuriating, and the only world they’ll ever inhabit bar Ascension. A world they explore and encounter even as they try to find a way out. The common element linking every Mystery, catalyst to Awakening stories.

The Fallen World.

Next Week, let’s look at one of two topics that follow on from this: Mage Sight, or The Lie?