The Words of DaveB (relating to game-lines) I find a lot of DaveB’s comments about gamelines most illuminating, however many don’t really

know where to look or how to look to find his comments (learn how to use Search Engines guys,

they’re really helpful), so I collated the helpful ones from the last year and a bit into this document.

Hell, even in just making this I found a whole load of extra stuff I hadn’t read before.

Enjoy, and praise be to the Ministry of the Komodo!

4chan Comments

Sun 16 Apr 2017 01:21:29 “Yeah, so Luna doesn't have Arcana. She's a Spirit. In the absence of actual rules for the Royal

Influences, though, you can approximate them by treating her *as though* she had "The Madness

Arcanum" and "The Moon Arcanum" and "The Shapeshifting Arcanum", etc, at very high,

archmasterish levels. But she's still a Spirit and she's still using an Influence, so doesn't need a

Quintessence or roll Paradox or whathaveyou.

But she's capable of driving anyone insane, or inventing new shapeshifter types (like werewolves!) or

creating lesser spirits, or makng Royal Avatars for herself, or - yes - driving everyone on Earth insane

if she cared to.”

Mon 20 Mar 2017 10:10:03 “I think, absent Quiescence, that most people will see mages as cosmically-overprivileged narcissists

who don't live anything like normal lives but have the power to do whatever they want. But still

*human* with it.

Judging by world politics, the Seers of the Throne would achieve their vision of open global slavery in

two days flat.

And that's without the Exarchs assuming direct control once there's nothing stopping them from

dropping Ochemata everywhere.

TLDR - no Awakening "masquerade," everyone's fucked forever. Join the Seers.

This is something I've put some time into thinking about, right? Cause my last house chronicle - Soul

Cage - ended with a "years later" flashforward to the Abyss closing. My current chronicle's overplot

concerns an archmaster refugee from that future coming back to try desperately to avert it, because

boy does it turn out to suck for anyone without a Prelacy.”

Fri 10 Mar 2017 19:29:55 “Relinquishing safely is extremely taxing, and diminishes the caster (which is why it reduces your

Willpower) but you can recover from the effort.

Relinquishing *unsafely* is in the game to give mages another method of being irresponsible pricks,

but mainly so that we can finally define what happens to a mage's spells after they die - when you

kill a mage, all of their spells get relinquished unsafely, so killing the mage that cursed you will not

end the curse. It'll just make the curse go slowly wrong with unpredictable results.”

Fri 03 Mar 2017 08:04:27 “Strix look way more like the demons in Supernatural than they do owls.”

03 Mar 2017 01:27:18 “Yes. In fact, you have to, because you can't as shit touch someone through a scrying window.

So - "counts as remote casting" does not mean "counts as using sympathetic range", though the two

often go together. It means that you're casting on something you can't see in real time in front of

you, which costs an extra Reach. Using a scrying window is no different to casting on someone you

can see over CCTV.”

Fri 03 Mar 2017 01:23:22 “>DaveB, if you're still around, would it be possible for a mage to have 2 shadow names?

Yeah, just buy the Merit multiple times

> How much Space would it be required to alter a Shadow Name and/or confer an additional one?

Making? Dominions? Entities?

Wouldn't say Space. A Shadow Name's just something you call yourself - the Merit represents it

starting to resonante Supernally over time, such that you can use it as a Yantra. I would say Prime.

Possibly archmaster-y.

>Talking about Space, if I wanted to cross to another dimension (earth-1 to earth-2), do I need Time

as well? What level spell would this be?

Like, alternate timeline dimensional travel? Find an Iris, or have Time 7 to make one.”

Mon 14 Nov 2016 08:59:12 “The trauma from witnessing the Supernal is immediate. Quiescence is the human mind's defence

mechanism - the best you'll manage is being able to dictate what their changed memories are if you

take an active hand in shaping them. The reverse - reinserted the memories after Quiescence - just

results in another Breaking Point and forgetting again.”

Mon 14 Nov 2016 00:41:54 “An Idigam is a spirit from the void beyond Earth's Hisil, shapeless and chaotic until they choose to

coelesce.

A Maeljin is one of the ruling entities of the Lower Depth known as "Inferno", from the book of the

same name. They're like corrupted, souped up, God-rank spirits of Vice.”

Thu 06 Oct 2016 05:09:25 “Yeah, we're taking that Lasting option out of them. That way an Amalgam will fall apart when the

materials making it revert, and there's a point to making the material the old fasioned, laborious

way.

Or by having a Legacy with Hone the Perfected Form as one of its Attainments. Like the Forge

Masters do.” (Suggests that Legacy Attainments can be made Lasting)

Thu 01 Sep 2016 05:47:25 Mages can't do anything to the radiation of Disquiet. They *can* make a spell that Clashes any

supernatural mind-affecting thing that influences their subject's emotions, though, which will

protect whoever they cast it on, assuming the mage's Gnosis roll beats the Promethean's Azoth roll.

Fri 10 Jun 2016 The "Tass" Prime makes with Platonic Form and Eidolon is, more accurately, Mana behaving the way

it does when it's inside an object as Tass despite not actually being inside an object. A Platonic Form

crowbar is what a tass crowbar would be if you took the crowbar away and somehow kept the Tass.

Mon 06 Jun 2016 “Also, my favorite Path are Thyrsus, not Acanthus”

Fri 20 May 2016 05:22:30 “Nah, the God-Machine is the half-aborted stump of the mechanisms that ran the world before the

Abyss was summoned between Supernal and Fallen; it's like a lizard's tail that's still twitching after

it's been lopped off.

#magesupremacyforlifeyo”

Fri 13 May 2016 10:49:18 “The Daksha are based on certain Victorian and Edwardian magical traditions, that mixed European

alchemy with badly-translated Indian practices.

The ancestor of the Daksha's Lemurian form is the alechmical rebis, which crops up a few times in

Promethean. And is central to Mage: The Ascension's second-edition metaplot.”

Tue 03 May 2016 21:51:12 “And one of the changes in second ed was to bring the Gnosis requirement for Legacies down by one

and give lots of alternate things to spend Arcane XP on rather than just Gnosis, dragging it back

down to somewhere close to the other games' power stat expectations.

Your typical elder Mage still has a higher Gnosis than an elder vampire has Blood Potency, as he's

still got Arcane Beats going for him, but it'll be *less* high in 2e than 1e.”

Tue 03 May 2016 10:45:45 “And if you're a Mage, Wards & Signs, or having Life 4 will help with being zapped. But Mage Society

has always been the very perculiar sort of formal interaction you get when everyone involved can kill

one another with their minds.”

Thu 21 Apr 2016 03:08:10 “It's a supernatural power you have to turn on, so it pings mages' Periphery.” (On whether activating

Mage Sight triggers the Peripheral Mage Sight of other Mages).

Fri 08 Apr 2016

“The story goes (in 1e's core, and in a few other places) that before the Fall mages didn't need the

Watchtowers to Awaken - instead Sleepwalkers would go on Astral Journies by meditating in the

"natural" Demesnes found on Atlantis (which were formed by "dragon bones" (later retconned as

Sariras) instead of soul stones). The Astral didn't cut off at the Abyss pre-Fall; a prospective mage-to-

be meditated into the Supernal and marked it.

So, while they weren't archmages as we know them, pre-Fall Awakened were more like the Fallen

World's archmages than regular mages; they certainly didn't have Paths.

How much of this is true, along with everything else about the universe pre-cosmic upset, is

Mysterious.”

Wed 30 Mar 2016 Well, it's *either* the LIbertines being right and as humanity's concepts become refined the

symbolism of the Realms updates, or the Oracles are busily constructing the Towers behind the

scenes and the Diamond and Seers are right.

Could be either! Could be both! (On why the Watchtowers look different over time)

Wed 30 Mar 2016 08:32:21 Mwuhahahahahaha.

So, you know the Ocean of Fragments?

It used to fill the entire Underworld, with the dead clinging to islands. It drained.

Should a Geist 2nd ed get approved and written, you might even find out why.

Fri 25 Mar 2016 05:13:42 Technically, they're their own category "beneath" the Fallen multiverse (I really cannot stress

enough how even places like the Underworld and Astral Realms are "The Fallen World").

Different Lower Depths, though, are missing different foundational aspects of reality, and some are

more void-like than others. The deepest, darkest Depths where thin beings that cannot be said to be

alive in any conventional sense swim through the membranes between worlds, are completely

inhospitable to anyone not capable of bringing their own universe with them (so... archmasters).

Nearer Depths, like Inferno or the empty place the most powerful Strix go to when they use their

Shadow Potency 10 power, are survivable for short visits, but mages might find that in a Depth

absolutely lacking a particular Arcanum their Mage Sight and spells of that Arcanum fail; there's

nothing to see and nothing to work with.

We'll hopefully get to a detailed description of the Depths in the next few years, assuming they fit

into a sourcebook

Mon 21 Mar 2016 21:25:14 Things like the Chains of Pandemonium; environmental things that only affect mages of that Path

using their Sight, because they only exist in that Supernal World.

(Manifestations of the Supernal World that affect Mages in Active Mage Sight, which makes the

current list Acadian Thorns, Primal Wild Song Lines, Aether Storms, and Pandemonium’s Chains).

Thu 10 Mar 2016 08:43:42 The Supernal World laughs at Science, until Science hides in the corner and cries.

See also, the Death Arcanum having shadows and cold in its purview, despite those really only being

the absence of something else. *You* tell the Moros he can't summon shadow assassins and wade

through Lava without Forces.

Onyx Path Forum Comments

05-16-2017, 08:42 AM Artifacts have the Reach effects for their spells built in, the way Attainments do - and can't exceed

that given by their Arcanum rating. They can risk Paradox by casting an obvious spell in front of a

Sleeper, or other means of gaining Paradox dice on a spell, but automatically release it unless the

weilder chooses to spend Mana to buy it down and/or Contain it in herself.

04-09-2017, 04:25 AM Only humans (and select exhuman beings) have souls as mage defines them; animals don't.

Yes, animals appear within the soul of the world / anima mundi. Yes, mages are aware of this

apparent contradiction. Most interested mages go for "nonhuman life shares a communal spiritual

element, which we can't perceive in the Fallen World because it surrounds us" and Obsessed mages

make plan about reaching other planets or lifeless Lower Depths to try to make external

measurements.

04-08-2017 (Scelestus Spoilers) We haven't had time yet to 2e the Scelesti mechanics beyond the one-line description of first

initiation everyone's talking about. You can, if you know how to, attempt to control how a Paradox

manifests, but the process is extremely addictive and runs the risk of you becoming a second-stage

Scelesti (a Nasnasi), where your Path symbols are corrupted by their abyssal antitheses, your ability

to summon supernal creatures is replaced by one to summon Gulmoth, and your nimbus is

poisioned.

Third initiation Scelesti are just those with Legacies, some of which require you to be a Nasnas.

Fourth Initiation Scelesti are those who bargain with the Aeon of Paradox for the ability to mess with

the Paradox roll, not just how any Paradox appears. Their powers require the most work.

The thing that we're noodling about, playtesting when Scelesti come up in our games, is to replace

Wisdom for Nasnasi-and-up Scelesti to represent their fucked-up natures. Scelesti probably become

Qliphoth instead of Mad Ones when they completely go off the edge.

Oh, right, yeah. A Qliphoth is a mage who is a walking Iris to a Annunaki, spawning Gulmoth

wherever they go. They're in the "way too powerful for even most mages to do anything other than

run" category along with Exarchal avatars and archmasters.

Yeah, so my version currently calls it "Joining" after the original name for the second initiation from

back in Tome of Mysteries; it goes up where Wisdom goes down. 0 Joining you turn back into a

normal Mage with Wisdom 1 (it was always canonical that nasnasi could, in theory, go cold turkey

and return to normalcy), 10 Joining turns you into a Qliphoth, the trick to being a Scelestus is to fuck

your Path's symbolism just enough but not too much; to draw on your linked Annunaki without

being consumed by it. The experiments are in what causes it to go up and down; what's a "sin" for a

Scelestus?

It's a parallel to Tremere, who in the protoype 2e notes replace their Gnosis with "Hollow", the trait

that lets their Gnosis consume the soul currently attached to it as fuel, gives them Houses instead of

Legacies, and so on. The Tremere are the most complex fallen mages because they're both an

altered template , a group of not-exactly-Legacies and an Order, and it's figuring out what parts of

them are inherent powers, what's the various Legacies they've consumed being turned into Houses,

and what's the Tremere-Order-Status-only Merit equivalents to Egregore, etc that's the trick. But

Tremere *do* use Wisdom.

Sure. So, a brief lexicon of the Scelesti

Scelestus - a mage convicted of dealing with the Abyss. The Pentacle recognises four main

classifications ("initiations") of Scelsti, in order of severity.

Rabashakim - first initiation Scelesti, guilty of casting Befouled spells. The only form of being a

Scelestus that doesn't carry a death penalty in most gold laws, though some Consilia will kill you for

it anyway.

Befouled spell - a spell where, mechanically, you then roll Gnosis to direct how any Paradox reach is

spent. Rabashakim can only cast Befouled praxes or rotes, and they can't make the rotes. Each

Befouled spell cast worsens the addiction to the practice, which if unchecked can lead to the mage

becoming a Nasnasi

Antominian spell - another term for a Befouled spell

Nasnasi - second initiation Scelesti, whose Path has become corrupted by a Dur Abzu, inverting their

Path symbols, turning their natural Summoning Gulmoth-wards and doing weird things to their

Wisdom. Can cast Befouled improvised spells and write Befouled rotes. Technically rehabilitatable,

but most Consilia won't bother, they'll just kill captured Nasnasi out of hand.

Dur Abzu - the abyssal "Paths", centered on antisymbols the Nasnasi call Ziggurats instead of

Watchtowers.

Shedim / Autarch - third-initiation Scelesti, guilty of organizing and recruiting others of their kind.

Beyond the point where good intentions and addiction can excuse the Scelestus' behaviour.

Technically speaking, a Shedim has created a Scelestus Nameless Order while an Autarch has created

a Scelestus Legacy, but it gets confusing and the Pentacle often treat them interchangeably.

Baalim - A Scelestus who has achieved control over Paradox itself, being able to shape and direct it.

Usually gained by bargaining with the Other. The highest crime on the Pentacle's books.

Elder Diadem - the abilities of a Baalim

Acamoth - an abyssal entity formed from corruption in the astral realms

Gulmoth - an abyssal entity formed from corruption in the physical and adjacent worlds

Annunaki - an abyssal world/being

Qliphoth - a mage who has become hollowed-out into a walking gateway to an Annunaki

The Other / the Old Man - the Aeon (rank 7 Goetia) that represents Paradox in the Anima Mundi,

and acts almost like the Annunaki's "ambassador" to the Fallen World. Bears a striking physical

resemblence to Voormas, the metaplot villain of Mage: The Ascension.

Aswadim - archmasters who promote the Abyss as part of their intended direction for the Fallen

World. Stand apart from the heirarchy in that they usually weren't Scelesti before becoming

archmasters, and use the others as pawns. Meet using the Other's astral domain as neutral ground.

Well, where the Tremere (sorry to keep on at this comparison) are an Order with their own legends,

foundational beliefs, etc, most of the above is imposed on the Scelesti instead of being owned by

them. A Baal won't call himself that, but a Consilium that captures and tries him will. The Diamond's

reaction to mages who willingly harness (or try to, anyway) the antithetical nature of the Abyss and

reject Meaning is to damn well stamp Meaning all over them, and put them in a linguistic box

marked "Nasnasi" or whathaveyou.

The Abyss contains everything and nothing. Theoretically, some things in it could be "better" than

what's real, but they always come with a generous side serving of Zalgo. That Aswad in Imperial

Mysteries is, remember, trying to very carefully isolate one single abyssal symbol and then use his

archmastery to make it all work out okay. Less advanced dabblers in the ways of the Annunaki don't

have the tools Imperial Arcana give you.

For example, I could easily see a foolish mage attempting to find someone who'd died (or at least, a

version of them where they hadn't) in the Abyss, because anything Not Real is in there, and getting a

human-shaped thing from the Prince of 10,000 Leaves that resembles their goal. they keep the thing

locked up safely, but eventually notice that all children born within a mile of it have carnivorous

fangs or something.

Gulmoth aren't evil spirits. They're coding errors in reality.

Reactions also vary by Order - a Silver Ladder mage who casts a Befouled rote once to achieve a set

goal and never touches it again is a badass if he gets caught, a Guardian of the Veil who does it will

be lucky to walk away with intact frontal lobes.

Part of the reason the Orders dress Befouling up in Babylonian terminology and make Rabashakim

out to be different, somehow, is that they don't want neophyte mages knowing how easy it is.

But just as abstinance is the worst sex education policy, making abyssal magic more Mysterious than

it is just means those who find put about it and experiment with it do so without a safety net AND go

hardcore quicker. you get way fewer Rabashakim, but more of them blow up into Nasnasi.

Again with the Tremere side-commentary, but the major fallout of the Tremere's banishment is that

well-meaning Legacies who have extreme longevity or immortality among their practices have to

hush it up in polite company, and the modern Pentacle knows way less about Souls and how they

work than their ancestors from a few thousand years ago, because Souls were the Tremere's "thing".

Consilium isn't government. It's a Legal System for deciding arguments between mages, that often

serves as government-substitute. A Heirarch is not a Prince.

03-28-2017, 05:05 AM What do Ladder do when they've signed up and believe in an Assembly? They get stuck into making

"we take democratic vites on everything!" work, including a legal system more nuanced that mob

justice, advocacy for loners, and throw themselves into the "make Sleepers lives better" part of their

beliefs.

03-24-2017, 06:34 PM They (Free Council and Silver Ladder) were the closest allies among any Pentacle Orders. At least

until the Free Council fucked it up. And that only happened in America.

03-24-2017, 01:41 PM It's a typically... I don't know exactly what it is, but there's a big honking assumption that the

"Western" mages conquered other Awakened with blood and attack spells. If India, Arabia, and

Northern Africa count as Western in your assumptions, because the native mages of those places

were Diamond a couple of centuries earlier than, say, Britain, but that's a digression.

Is it because of Mage: The Ascension, which linked the movements of its factions to colonialism as a

process and tried to link its based-on-90s-club-subcultures factions to "losing sides" in history to give

them a sense of background?

Fuck that. The Awakened are made of sterner stuff. When you habitually deal with things that aren't

there but are more True than the common matter around you, and you gained your powers through

a brainbending encounter with a Supernal World, another wizard who happens to dress funny is not

going to give you pause.

The Diamond Orders started out when mages of disparate cultures noticed that they had common

threads while cooperating to follow their Obsessions. After their formation, another culture having a

different-in-some-ways-but-with-common-threads culture is not going to send them into a fit.

Over time, some Shona mages would join Orders, others would be what later mages would call

Nameless. Over more time, the natural processes of "if you're in an Order, you get all this cool stuff"

shrank the latter and grew the former. By the modern day, Zimbabwean and Mozambiqan

Awakened who try to reconstruct "authentic" Shona magical practices are probably in the Free

Council, while the rest are in the Diamond or tiny Nameless Orders. Just like everywhere else.

03-17-2017, 08:26 PM “2. What a person is currently thinking plays out in the central realm within their Oneiros. For mages

meditating into their own souls, this looks like a stilled, quiet reflection of their own concept of

"arrival", because that's what they're thinking about while meditating. Go into someone else's

Oneiros, though, and it'll reflect whatever's going on with them at the present moment, in real time.

Their thoughts when they're awake, and their dreams when they're dreaming.

3. Kill a thought, and the thought will die. Summon a Goetia out of someone's soul, and they lose the

part of themselves it represents while it's out. The Oneiros is so fast-changing that it "heals" though

the process of change; you can devestate a person's dreams, but when they wake up, that realm will

vanish to get replaced by their waking thoughts anyway. You can dig into the Oneiros' far reaches

and perform Inception-style actions; lock a memory's representation away in an Oneirc vault, and

the victim will repress it.”

03-13-2017, 05:43 AM Pantechnicon are based on oppression through making the masses reliant on technology they

cannot maintain or control - they're the assholes patenting drugs, walled-gardening devices, and

putting the interests of a few creators ahead of the populace. That's the Chancellor's symbology.

Part of their problem is that Mammon, the Ministry of making people only care about the material,

is also the Chancellor's symbology, and the Exarch appears to prefer Mammon. As much as the

Exarch appears to prefer anything. How much of Mammon's success compared to them is because

Pantechnicon have every Libertine in the world having a hate-boner for them specifically versus how

much is Exachal favor (and really, to Seer philosophers, how capable human minds are of telling the

two apart!) is a grey area.

If the two Matter Ministries could sort themselves out, they'd almost certainly replace one of the

existing Greater ones.

03-01-2017, 04:34 PM Essence naturally moves, so a compelling spell is all that's needed to direct that flow. Mana doesn't -

absent an external force, it just sits there. Channel is Weaving because you're Weaving the Mana to

stop being tass and start being mana in your pattern. Channel Essence is Ruling because Essence

moves all the time, so it's like controlling where water will flow.

02-25-2017, 04:30 PM It's the Willpower and XP that's the draw of Praxes; you can't do more with them than you can with

a regular spell (they don't add dice or give more reach) but they keep your character fuelled. Rotes

are for pushing your limits. Praxes are for the things so comfortable they're second nature.

Also for helping design your Legacy.

02-21-2017, 02:41 PM You know the bit in one of the mid-period Dresden Files when Harry goes to the bar and all the

minor hedge-magicians hush, because he's a White Council Warden and therefore like a shark in a

swimming pool?

That's how a community of Second Sight-ers would feel about their local Adamantine Arrow....

02-17-2017, 02:21 AM Ectoplasm (or, more often, "Plasm") is created when a ghost's Manifestation ends. It's a rapidly-

vanishing goop.

02-16-2017, 05:49 AM For the same reason archmasters are banned from holding political offices in the Pentacle: They, like

liches, are sufficiently removed from the human experience that they look at mages like mages look

at Sleepers. Both sects in the Pentacle hate that. For different reasons.

Remember also that the Diamond had a growing-pang war with itself when one of the Orders (the

Tremere) turned out to be soul-eating liches. After a certain point, distrusting mages who prolong

their lives is like not being able to call yourself a Socialist and get anywhere in American politics.

Archmasters' peer pressure is aimed at not letting them interfere with one another's work using

their world-breaking spells, not at turning up to Consilium and saying "you guys are meritocratic,

right? Anyone else abe to cast a Dynamic spell? No? I'm in charge"

After all, the Seer archmages do have command positions in the Pyramid. Other archmasters only go

after them for breaking the Pax when they flagrantly cheat on behalf of their Ministry.

No, the Silver law about the Pentacle's titles having a cap of Master is because of the *well

documented and understood* tendency of Imperial wizards to treat everyone else like chesspieces

at beat and raw quintessence at worst. After the first few hundred cases of an archmaster putting

more priority on their lofty cosmic Obsessions than reality itself, the Pentacle wised up. No one

driven enough to seek the Imperial Mysteries is your friend.

The Silver Ladder just assumes that any archmage who does have it on her to act as a Sage toward

lesser mages will do so by proxy or in disguise of being a master.

02-15-2017, 05:50 AM (Duat) Just as mages call Duat a Lower Depth, that being a descriptive term used for it based on its

characteristics but basically also an admission of ignorance, Arisen contextualize the Awakened into

their worldsview as imposing ma'at (in the predynastic sense of "cosmic-imposed order or direction"

without the later connotations of justice it picked up after item) from Aa'ru.

In other words, according to the Arisen, starry Aa'ru is the Supernal Realm.

Which raises all sorts of questions about the never-answered open question of what happens to

souls when they die.

Not all; Lower Depth doesn't mean "I dunno, but isn't it cool?" - it means "not in the Fallen Worlds,

and consumes some aspect of reality to sustain itself". Mummies sacrificing the world's Sekhem in

the form of relics to the shan'iatu is, in Awakened terms, like Infernally-tainted spirits eating human

vice in service of the maejlin or the hounds of anwwn eating patterns. That Sekhem isn't an Arcanum

doesn't matter.

The world of the CofD is full of odd dimensions and worlds, that mages explore with gusto when

they can and study secondhand and from afar when they can't. "Lower Depth" is a classification for

*some* of them, and Duat qualifies.

01-31-2017, 05:59 AM Getting technical about it, you can use strings of fate to put someone into a high-stress situation

where they come up against the Lie.

But *Awakening* is, mechanically, an act of Imperial magic cast by the relevant Watchtower,

according to their own unknown criteria and conditions. You can't predict their actions, you can't

make them choose someone.

All the Awakened can do is increasingly-elaborate versions of causing car crashes to see if someone

survives as a Moros. Archnasters can, in theory, reproduce what the watchtowers do in granting a

Path, but the results almost always end up as Banishers.

*However*, once an Awakening experience gets underway, it's like banging a gong in the Supernal

World of the corresponding Path, and although it's probably not a good idea many mages try to

insert themselves as characters in an in-progress Mystery Play. You have to have the right Path and a

loose enough grasp of morals to invade someone elses' one direct contact with Truth. The results

can be enlightening, or tragic, or tragically enlightening.

01-23-2017, 08:12 AM Yeah - in 2e, Tremere are a modified Template that alters how their Gnosis works and gives them

their other powers like not-Torpor and burning the soul currently attached to them for life. The

Houses are their equivalents of Legacies.

01-18-2017, 02:38 PM You want disquieting? I'll give you disquieting.

Where exactly did you think the whole Dragon symbolism motif came from, anyway?

(That's right! The Diamond got it from the Tremere!)

01-18-2017, 04:20 AM I assume that there are Changeling Experts in the Orders, probably Mastigos or Acanthus, who do

explore the Hedge, deal with Freeholds, and patiently explain to apprentices that "Arcadia" is a

Greek word misapplied to both Faerie and the Supernal Realm of Time.

It's just that without a crossover section in a book, we haven't written about them. They've fallen

into the comfortable Venn centre of "the terminology is *just* this side of confusingly similar", "the

Hedge doesn't have the immediate use of the Underworld, Shadow, or Astral" and "Changeling 2e

still isn't out so it's not worth writing about".

01-17-2017, 02:35 PM The Diamond is named after the Silver Ladder Diamond Precept - "the Awakened are One Nation".

There have been, at various times, six, five, and four Diamond Orders. It fluctuates through history....

(Silver Ladder, Guardians of the Veil, Adamantine Arrow, Keepers of the Word, Pancryptiates…

Tremere)

01-12-2017, 06:09 AM Manhattan's Mystery is that the city rearranges itself, but the changes are covered by Quiescence so

noone remembers that their building used to be three blocks over, etc.

The Seers figured out how to control it to some extent (there may be some intelligence behind it,

like the mother of all Genius Locii).

Pentacle mages can go into Manhattan and cast spells just fine. But the Hallows refuse them Mana,

and attempts to establish Sancta are literally fought off by the city itself.

01-12-2017, 04:44 AM Well, you're half right.

Most Strix are from the material world. Their mechanics include how they reproduce, and they've

been around longer than the clans have.

That said, there is that one power that opens a shadow to somewhere else, and there's the story in

Requiem for Rome about the Julii's founder entering the Strirges' world to make his deal with them.

Vampires' writers' bible says that that world is what mages call a Lower Depth, but whether it's their

home, or just somewhere they can move to after they become Potent enough, who knows?

When we talk about the Lower Depths in mage, we prefer to invent new ones. When we do bring up

Depths created outside Mage, we tend to go for the Inferno, as that's less likely to upset touchy

vampire or mummy fans

01-02-2017, 05:42 PM The lethal damage from Scouring is resistant. You can't heal it with Knit.

12-20-2016, 02:44 PM Get an archmaster to weld you a new Wisdom trait together. Otherwise, no.... (On recovering from

Mad-ness)

12-12-2016, 10:18 AM No. (Does the Nimbus affect the Owner?)

12-06-2016, 02:32 PM Panopticon has only been a Greater Ministry since the 1950s.

11-30-2016, 04:46 AM Acanthus are both terrifying and uniquely useful to changelings for the same reason they are so to

Demons: With sufficient Fate magic, oaths, pacts and contracts become optional.

Need a friend who can no-sell an enemy changeling's contracts, or rewrite a soul pact's terms? Go

get an Acanthus. But they can do it to you, too, so it's a last resort.

11-22-2016, 08:30 AM Hey, things in Shadow still die. Reserve your pity for a Thyrsus in the Underworld.

11-07-2016, 12:45 PM Beasts have kinship with posthuman or prehuman monsters - anything like them. As the Beast

corebook says, this even leads to a two-tier thing where creatures like werewolves are more Kin

than more tangental cases like mages. Demons are sufficiently not-human to not be Kin.

If an Unchained Demon, a machine-mind pretending to be human, isn't valid for Kinship, then a

bundle of poisionous anti-symbols shed from a still born alternate world definitely isn't.

10-28-2016, 05:50 PM I think "everyone with Integrity or Wisdom in, those with Satiety a deep and special relationship to

one far-flung corner of it, everyone else is a visitor" is a reasonable definition of "human" for

purposes of what is sufficiently human to contribute to creating the Temenos.

Again, though, you can visit if you're a person using Cover and have the right Exploit, or if someone

with Satiety opens a Primordial Pathway around you no matter what integrity trait you use.

There are many possible definitions of "human". What matters for the Temenos is whether you have

a human soul.

10-28-2016, 03:07 PM

Werewolves don't have souls. They're part spirit. They've never been depicted having an Oneiros,

but do have a connection to the deepest Astral layer somehow.

Changelings have damaged souls from the thorns, when the state of them is mentioned at all. They

do not have an Oneiros and are literally incapable of entering the Temenos, as per Dancers in the

Dusk.

Your "Correction" about the Temenos falls flat because of the difference between being an active

participant in making it (ie, being human, or a Beast) and being someone who doesn't have that

inherent connection but intrudes into it with a power (like Demons can). That's what I was saying

about "having a Temenos"; werewolves don't have human enough souls to participate in it, so

barring unusual gifts would just skip right past it. Or quite possibly have an entirely different astral

realm all their own, before joining up to the humans again in the Anima Mundi.

The Temenos doesn't belong to everyone. It belongs to humans. The Anima Mundi belongs to

everyone.

Think of it as branching trees

( humans ) ( werewolves )

Oneiros Oneiros Oneiros Oneiros Oneiros Oneiros Oneiros ??? ??? ???

\................. / .........\............. /............ \............. /........... /.......... \ ....| ..../

.\................/........... \ .........../.............. \ .........../........... /............ \... |... /

..-------------------------Temenos ------------------------------------ .......--?????-

................................\ .................................................. ..................../

.................................\................ .................................................. .. /

....................................-----------Anima Mundi----------------------------

If Werewolves have an astral within whatever it is they have instead of souls that permeate their

entire spirit/flesh hybrid bodies, it might have analogous layers to Oneiros and Temenos, but a

realm-of-an-individual-werewolf's spirit would not be an Oneiros, and a realm of all Werewolves

would not be the Temenos. As far as we're concerned, the question-mark realms don't exist, and

werewolves just go straight from their dreams to the Anima Mundi. But again, if you want to invent

strange new worlds to explore, go for it.

10-26-2016, 06:09 AM We will mention the two Orders in the history chapter of Tome of the Pentacle (because hey - for

the majority of its history the Diamond *did* have five members), but I'm pinning my hopes on Dark

Eras 2 to finally give them separate splat pages.

Remember what the Corpus Mysterium is about: Neither Order had the tone statement the

Mysterium does of "magic is alive", because that was her Noumenon.

The Keepers believed that they safeguarded *knowledge*, and had both proto-Athenea that didn't

have the religious traits modern Athenea have, and a Guanxi-like economy of information. They

thought that they were the last bastions of civilisation in a chaotic universe, and their internal

disagreements were about whether it was better to influence Sleeper affairs by sharing technology

and culture the Sleepers had lost versus preserving it for future need. They were like a cross

between the Mysterium, Free Council, and Silver Ladder, with almost Seer-like leanings. Their tone

statement could be "magic has worth" - both a price to be paid and value if taken from others.

The Pancryptiates were smaller, weirder, and much more gnostic. They believed Sleepers actively

damaged the world by existing, and sought to either remove themselves from the world and society

or build bulwarks where the Abyss had less sway. The Keepers regarded all knowledge as at least

partially magical - the Pancryptiates would be outraged by a Keeper storehouse keeping roman crop

management manuals alongside the grimoires. They built demesnes, summoned supernal entities,

studied the Abyss, explored Emanations and sought a way *out* of the Fallen World. They were like

a cross between the Mysterium, Guardians, Arrow (they relished self-sacrifice for the cause, like

becoming savants or jettisonning all mortal ties) and, in some ways, Tremere - they were deeply

interested in the soul, and thought the world was evil.

In a medieval setting, the Keepers would be monasteries and the Pancryptiates hermitage-dwelling

poor friars.

10-20-2016, 06:50 AM Transformation sequences are reoccuring thing in the source material, especially the superheroish

edge like Guyver, Blue Beetle (based on Guyver), Hulk, etc.

The way we're currently handling it is not to have a supermode like Demon and Changeling2e;

rather, there will be a variation that supresses other variations while active, along with their scars.

When that power turns off, your true form reppears.

Or, put another way, Bruce Banner does not have a Variation of "grow big and green when angry".

Hulk has a Variation of "turn off size increase and strength increase, with their associated beserk

rage and inhuman appearance scars, as long as you remain calm."

Which is a fine difference, but an important one for our themes. (Deviant)

10-20-2016, 03:23 AM Emanations aren't actually in the Supernal - they're pockets of material reality heavily influenced by

it. If a demense is, say, 90% Fallen and 10% Supernal, an Emanation is closer to 50:50. As Mage

*says*, every Emanation has a rip to the Supernal in it. Which kills anyone using it, because the

Supernal does that unless you're Ascended or have the ability and know-how to create a Lustrum

and interpret it into an experience its safe to comprehend. This is exactly and deliberately like the

gates to the Supernal found at the end of archmages' Godlen Roads.

10-18-2016, 08:02 AM Yeah: vampires, changelings, sin-eaters, prometheans, etc don't have Oneiros or Temenos. And

Beasts only do because they have a Lair in the Temenos instead of both.

The only supernatural beings weird enough to not have Integrity but human enough to have a

human spiritual landscape are mages. And even then there's differences - the Oneiros of a mage is

far more dangerous than normal.

09-28-2016, 03:37 AM Plasm also counts as Open for ghosts, so if one ghost possesses something and gets it covered it

gunk then leaves, another ghost can have a go without building up the Conditions.

(The plasm in a Sin Eater is already being used. By their Geist.)

The two spells in mage that produce "ectoplasm" are, yes, making Plasm as in the Bound fuel trait.

Mages are just sufficiently up themselves to not shorten the word.

09-26-2016, 03:33 AM It's not a metaphysical law of the universe, it's a legal convention shared by the Pentacle and Seers -

one's Soul Stone is so important that holding on to one you've filched is dirty pool (or bad cricket, for

us Brits).

So... Depends on the indulgence of the owner, or how liable the local Lex Magica they're a member

of is to look poorly on them just smiting a Sleeper. You could luck out and get the stone of a Thearch

or Libertine, or you could be up shit creek and have the stone of a hardcore Mystagogue or Seer.

The law's for people. How much does the mage think of Sleepers...

09-19-2016, 12:02 PM I'm keeping sourcebook ideas close to my chest (other than the game's Guide to the Technocracy /

Book of the Deceived / etc equivalent) because I will have to talk to Rich at some point about which

ones are stretch goals and which we're gonna do regardless.

(On Deviant’s splatbooks)

09-15-2016, 03:50 PM New York is the setting for Travis Stout's own Mage chronicle, and we've been dropping references

to it since Left Hand Path.

It is the largest Consilium in the Western world, maybe in the whole world; its territory covers half of

New Jersey, the Boroughs of New York City itself and all of Long Island. It has eleven Pentacle Order

Caucuses (each Order has at least one full Caucus, most two, some three) and a functioning

Nameless Order for the apostates who want to swap rotes but otherwise be left alone. The various

sub-Consilia are working on Mysteries of their own, but the big one is that Manhattan is so charged

with ley energies its evolving into something. Whole city blocks move, sliding around, but the

changes are subject to Quiescence so only the Awakened and Sleepwalkers are aware of it.

After 9/11, Manhattan became an unexploded bomb. The Seers and Pentacle worked out a short-

lived truce to deal with it, but the Seers screwed the Pentacle mages (including the Consilium's arch-

Hierarch) over and somehow took control of Manhattan's Mystery. Now the island itself is hostile to

Pentacle mages trying to set up shop there, so the Consilium keeps to the other Boroughs and the

wider New York / New Jersey states, with some cabals raiding into Manhattan to try to figure out

what's going on or recover lost treasures. The locals call what happened "The Folly".

Awakening second ed's chapter fiction is set in New York. It will get its proper writeup in Tome of the

Pentacle.

EDIT: Other random facts:

There's a Free Council cabal of punk musicians called "Join The Seers."

The new arch-Hierarch is a thearch named Sheshat

The Interfector is called Outis, and his schtick is he accidentally prevented his own birth during a

disastrous time-travel jaunt when an apprentice.

Various of the Brooklyn-Queens Silver Ladder Caucus have appeared in the Fallen World Anthology

and M2e

09-15-2016, 03:32 PM Signs won't. Tome of the Pentacle will. (On whether future Mage splatbooks will have alternative

settings).