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Murderbunny's Mage Setting
Topic Started: Apr 4 2009, 01:33 AM (205 Views)
Murderbunny
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Any human being, could, theoretically, become a mage. Most men and women in the World of Darkness, however, experience "lives of quiet desperation", mundane routines that sustain the body but starve the spirit. People live in fear: fear of poverty, fear of pain, fear of death... fear of the unknown. For most people, a brush with the supernatural is something incomprehensibly terrifying, and the mass of humanity shuts their eyes to anything they cannot comprehend, weigh and measure. Humanity sleeps.

Except for those who don't. When a human is aware and brave enough to embrace their supernal birthright, they Awaken and become a mage. Most mages experience a waking dream where mundane elements in the world take on symbolic meaning and where the mage embarks on a quest for the divine truth. Other mages become aware via lucid dreams or in a meditative state, experiencing an archetypal mythic journey. Either way, the mage Awakens, and his quest for enlightenment and power truly begins.

Mages often experience their Awakenings alone, the symbols in their dreams perhaps leaving clues for the mage to follow in their pursuit of knowledge. Shared visions or common elements bring different mages together, or sometimes Fate contrives to unite disparate sorcerers. A freshly Awakened mage, alone with the revelations that raise more questions than they answer, seeks out older, more experienced wizards for their wisdom... and their power.

The master passes on her techniques to the student, and the student eventually becomes a master to seek out protogés of his own. All over the world, schools of magic form, grow, die, and are later reborn as the next generation of willworkers digs through the remains to recover buried secrets.

Mages, in their attempts to rebuild their past, have come to believe that the first of their number build a great city or a civilization that was connected to the divine realms, also called the Supernal Realms. The oldest texts, tablets and other relics that any mage has ever been able to find have all been written in a single language that resonates with the mage's Awakened soul.

In the West, mages have called their ancient lost city Atlantis, but it could have been called Shangri-La, Avalon, Nibiru, Thule, or Mu. Mages hypothesize that all of these legendary lost cities are the echoes of the first city of mages, whose cataclysmic destruction shattered the world and seared itself into a universal unconscious.

No one can say definitively, but the strongest evidence that is accepted at large by mages is that the earliest willworkers were drawn to what is now called Atlantis by a series of moving and prophetic dreams, not unlike the ones that accompany the Awakening of any mage. Atlantis lay on the border of the material and the Supernal Realms, and here the earliest mages could connect with their divine heritage and unravel the mysteries of the world.

The mages grew in knowledge and power, and some would return to their homelands to pass some of that knowledge to their fellow humans. Mages also grew in arrogance, and some used their powers to be feared and worshiped by their "lessers." Worse, some mages were so consumed by their hubris that it wasn't enough for them to be prophets, wise women, shamans or even god-kings - they would become gods.

The would-be gods built what records describe as a "silver ladder" or a tower (the Tower of Babel?) that would lead from Atlantis into the Supernal Realms and allow the arrogant mages to claim the thrones of the gods. Who knows whether there was any possibility of success; it's a moot point since the tower shattered before it could be completed, and the ensuing cataclysm destroyed not only Atlantis but it shattered reality as well.

While once the physical and Supernal Realms were close, a rend in the fabric of reality, a chasm of unreality, a spiritual black hole, formed between them, and the psychic shock put humanity to Sleep.
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Murderbunny
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What is magic?

Magic is both a gift and a craft. The talent, general enlightenment and connection to the Supernal is represented by the mage's Gnosis score. Without Gnosis, a mage cannot do magic.

The craft and actual knowledge of magic is represented by the mage's Arcana (singular, Arcanum). Arcana represent the mysteries of the universe, the higher, Supernal laws that govern the real world as opposed to the Lie of the base physical world that most mortals experience.

A mage requires both enlightenment and knowledge in order to be able to influence the world. An unawakened mortal may try to learn the chants, draw the chalk circles and light the candles, and may be able to go through the motions of a mage's ritual perfectly, but the attempts will always fail because the sleeping mortal lacks true understanding. Likewise a very enlightened mage with no Arcana may possess unearthly understanding and intuition, but doesn't know how to focus or apply that intuition to influence the world.

Magic is when an enlightened mage, through sheer focus and willpower, bends the physical world according to his perception of Supernal laws.

What is paradox?

In the physical world, a man cannot fly. This is absolutely true. In the Supernal, a man can fly. This is also absolutely true. What happens when two things are mutually exclusive and yet absolutely true? A paradox.

When two realities come into conflict, sometimes the results are unpredictable. A mage struggles to keep focused, but sometimes the mage is not strong enough to control what he set in motion. Magic goes awry. Mages suffer hallucinations and madness and sometimes deformities. In the worst cases, the mage rips reality itself, creating a portal into the Abyss that sucks the mage in, or spits some eldritch horror out.

What is the Abyss?

The Abyss is the abomination of unreality that appeared when the destruction of Atlantis tore the physical from the Supernal. The Abyss is the emptiness that fills the rips and holes in the tapestry, and it is the peril of all mages. Mages dwell in the physical, but reach to the Supernal, they risk touching the consuming void every time they practice magic.
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