Mage: The Awakening

Mage: The Awakening
	Mage: The Awakening cover
Designers	Bill Bridges, Conrad Hubbard
Publishers	White Wolf
Publication	August 29th, 2005
Genres	Personal Horror
Systems	Storyteller System

Mage: The Awakening is a role-playing game based in the World of Darkness. The characters portrayed in this game are individuals able to bend or break the commonly-accepted rules of reality to perform subtle or outlandish acts of magic. These characters are broadly referred to as mages. Mage: The Awakening is loosely based on a prior White Wolf product, Mage: The Ascension, which had similar game mechanics though the terminology differs widely. The setting of Mage: The Ascension has been completely replaced, however.

Background and Setting

As with the other games in the 'new' World of Darkness the history presented in the game provides for some ambigiuity . However the "origin" story of magic and mages is les ambiguous (or at least more widely accepted) than that of the nWoD Vampires or Werewolves.

In the mythic past, a mysterious island existed with a single tower encircled by dragons, and it called to sleeping humanity. Over time the dragons left, and the tower continued to call. Some humans answered the call and sought out the island to see what it promised them. The humans who moved there discovered the first secrets of magic, and through magic they created a mighty city called Atlantis.

But Mages were filled with hubris over what they could achieve and created a Celestial Ladder to reach the heavens and attain greater mastery over the world. Once the ladder was finished and mages began to climb it, there was a conflict over how best to lead the world and over the course of the battle, the ladder shattered. This separated the Earth into the Fallen World and the Supernal Realm, with the chasm of the Abyss in between. The Fallen World is the world of the everyday, and mages have come to understand that it is a Lie.

The Supernal Realm is the truth of reality and the origin of magic; it is ruled by the Exarchs, powerful mages who had successfully climbed the ladder and took control of the Supernal Realm. The Exarchs wish to snuff out the memory of Atlantis and knowledge of magic so they will remain the supreme masters of reality. They are opposed by the Oracles, a small number that also climbed the ladder but opposed the Exarchs' plan to rule reality. They use the power of the Watchtowers to call to humanity in the Fallen World. Fragments of the organizations, artifacts and writings of Atlantis survive to the present day, and mages hope to use this knowledge to further their various causes, though as a whole they hope to gain a stronger connection to the Supernal and oppose the Exarchs' rule.

Characters

Mages "awaken" to the ways of magic. The setting states that it is unclear whether this is mostly accidental or as a result of a person's nature or understanding. The process of awakening can be slow or fast, but there are two major patterns. The Mystery Play is when the potential mage experiences a sort of hallucination full of symbolism and meaning, like a waking dream. Mortals can play a part, though they won't remember acting strangely afterwards. Then there are Astral Journeys, which occur when the potential mage dreams, and common for those who might deny the call of Awakening. Astral Journeys can be very dreamlike, with strange settings, objects, people, and animals that don't need to obey any sort of rules, and can appear, change, or disappear instantly. Each of these two types of Awakenings lead to an encounter with a Watchtower. In a Mystery Play, the Watchtower might be anything: a skyscraper, a phone booth, or a grove. The potential Mage asserts his destiny by writing his name on the watchtower (or carving it, or willing it). In a Mystery Play, this may be in actuality writing his name in a hotel ledger or on a statue's plaque.

Paths

There are five Paths of Magic that have a sympathetic connection to one of the Five Watchtowers, each with a particular style and focussing on certain Arcana.

Acanthus: Scions on the Path of Thistle work with luck, intuition and destiny. Arcana: Fate and Time. Connected to the Watchtower of the Lunargent Thorn in the Realm of Arcadia.
Mastigos: Warlocks on the Path of Scourging work with perception and inner demons. Arcana: Mind and Space. Connected to the Watchtower of the Iron Gauntlet in the Realm of Pandemonium.
Moros: Necromancers on the Path of Doom work with death, mortality and material things. Arcana: Death and Matter. Connected to the Watchtower of the Lead Coin in the Realm of Stygia.
Obrimos: Theurgists on the Path of the Mighty work with the divine energies infusing the world. Arcana: Prime and Forces. Connected to the Watchtower of the Golden Key in the Realm of the Aether.
Thyrsus: Shaman on the Path of Ecstasy work with all aspects of the natural world. Arcana: Life and Spirit. Connected to the Watchtower of the Stone Book in the Realm of the Primal Wild.

Orders

After awakening, a Mage typically joins one of the five Orders, although some choose to remain free of political connections, or remain outside of mage society due to ignorance, and are called apostates.

The Five Orders are united in their opposition to the Exarchs. Four of the Orders claim a heritage going back to Atlantis.

The Adamantine Arrow: warriors and masters of conflict, who claim a heritage going back to Atlantis' armies. Currently, the Order of the Arrow could perhaps be described as a cross between militia and Shaolin, as they conduct intensive physical and mental training, honing the minds and bodies of volunteer "troops" into deadly weapons which magical society may then wield against its perceived enemies (such as vampires, werewolves, Seers, and so on).
Guardians of the Veil: spies and conspirators who claim traditions of the spies and enforcers of Atlantis' laws. Currently, they bear a resemblance to a combination of many alleged occult conspiracies, such as Freemasonry, organized criminal Satanism, Thule, and others. They obscure their activities and identities even from other mages, and act as a black hole of information, falsifying and obfuscating everything they learn through an elaborate honeycomb of lies and mis-directions colloquially known as "the Labyrinth."
The Mysterium: dedicated to pursuit of magical lore and the acquisition, cataloguing, and study of mystical and occult knowledge and artefacts. They continue the ancient heritage of the scholarly and intellectual elite of Atlantean society. Currently, they resemble a scaled-down and much more eclectic version of Academia. They gather, catalogue and maintain items of all types of magical and historical significance, which are collected and stored in museum-libraries known as "Athenaea", which vary in size from private collections to massive storehouses that must be physically hidden by magical means. Unlike non-magical Scholastics, however, which entertains the notion of openness and transparency, the Mysterium maintains that knowledge (and by extension, power) must be limited as much as possible to the truly gifted and trustable. As such, they tend to limit access to their own membership, who risk themselves in the procurement of such vitally important items, as well as a very select few others for whom such knowledge is imperative (i.e. leaders of other Orders or special circumstances).
The Silver Ladder: dedicated to ruling mages and reshaping the world in the same manner as their forefathers, the viziers and senators of Atlantis.
The Free Council: modernists who wish to create new forms of magic, a union of mages who have discovered ways of using magic that do not adhere to the Atlantean methods.

Magic

Magic is simply the ability of a mage (or "willworker") to impose her will onto reality. Mages are able to do this because of their sympathetic connection to the Watchtowers in the Supernal Realm, because their names are inscribed upon it, and because they realize the Fallen World is a lie.

A mage's power, or level of awakening and understanding the depths of the Lie, is called Gnosis.

Arcana represent the understanding a Mage has over particular facets of reality, and govern her ability to affect those aspects.

The 10 Arcana

Death - The Arcanum of decay and death, capable of removing souls and affecting or creating undead.
Fate - The Arcanum of luck and destiny, capable of defining the random and forcing the hand of Fate.
Forces - The Arcanum of energy and kinetics, capable of creating flames and stopping bullets.
Life - The Arcanum of creatures and plants, capable of healing wounds and creating impossible hybrid beasts.
Matter - The Arcanum of inanimate objects and inert elements, capable of transmuting materials and enhancing mundane objects.
Mind - The Arcanum of thoughts and dreams, capable of reading thoughts and controlling thoughts and emotions.
Prime - The Arcanum of pure magical force and structure, capable of enchanting items and manipulating pure Mana.
Space - The Arcanum of distance and separation, capable of creating overlapping dimensions and allowing teleportation.
Spirit - The Arcanum of Spirits and their Realm, capable of summoning spirits and forging links through the Gauntlet.
Time - The Arcanum of the passage of time and aging, capable of manipulating the flow of time and jumping over periods of time.

Ghosts and Spirits

This system makes a strong distinction between ghosts and spirits. Ghosts are summoned, communicated with and manipulated via Death magic. Spirits are summoned, communicated with and manipulated via Spirit magic. The two may interact, but have little relationship otherwise, and spirits are not the souls of deceased humans, but rather the native inhabitants of the realms beyond the Gauntlet.

Antagonists

Seers of the Throne - The Seers are Awakened who have sworn service to the Exarchs. They claim to follow the will of the Exarchs and seek to crush magic and strengthen the Lie. They believe that the Exarchs are godlike, and that it is futile to struggle against the will of godlike beings. As such, they believe that the Exarchs cannot be wrong, as in the instance of a divinity, reality must inevitably come into accordance with the divine being, as opposed to the opposite state of affairs for mortals. In this way, the Seers believe that the struggle of the Atlantean mages for ascension will be fruitless, and that the only viable path to enlightenment and a true mindfulness of reality is to prove themselves invaluable to the Exarchs' divine hierarchy. They are not evil, but disagree so strongly with the protagonists that conflict is nearly inevitable.
The Banishers - Some mages do not take their Awakening gracefully, and instead become fearful and angry. Banishers use their new found understanding to hunt down and eliminate other mages. They often mistake their own use of magic for something else, psychic powers or a miracle bestowed upon them for a divine purpose. They often operate alone due to their distrust of anyone using magic, though some form groups and are especially dangerous. Viewed by some gamers as similar to the Imbued as portrayed in Hunter: the Reckoning in the old World of Darkness setting.
The Mad - The Awakening can be a taxing experience, and sometimes it is the final straw that breaks a fragile mind. The mad lack any wisdom or morality and use magic in accordance with their own demented worldview. They operate under strange motives and have little fear over the difference between vulgar and covert magic.
Acamoth and the Scelesti - The Abyss is not an empty void, but an unknown and hostile realm. The Acamoth are natives of the Abyss and seek to increase the power of their realm. They have no direct power in the Fallen World and instead make infernal pacts with Mages to gain greater access into the world and further their schemes. Mortal mages who serve/worship the Acamoth are known as 'Scelestus', "Accursed". They are considered heretics and abominations and are hunted with extreme prejudice by all other Mages, even those who themselves would be considered somewhat less than virtuous.
Tremere Liches - An ancient Vampire bloodline known as the Tremere once believed that the supernaturally infused blood of the Awakened, when consumed as part of certain rituals, would grant the ultimate release from the curse of Vampirism by filling a vampire's black heart with the spark of the divine. Instead, it destroyed them, but the mortal mages themselves were not unscathed: their souls having been annihilated in the transfer, the so-called 'Tremere-inflicted' Liches now haunt the Awakened world. Trapped in a state between life and death like spiritual vampires, they steal and consume the souls of others to supplement their own lacking life-force, and pass on a terrible dark "gift" to those they consider to be truly worthy of the secrets of eternal "life".
Goetia - Mages who call upon or summon the darker halves of their own natures, 'Goetic Mages' are deeply versed in the raw, sinful, animal side which humanity strains to deny. They are masters of their own psychology and routinely treat with their inner demons and project their most twisted desires into the psyche of others in order to become masters of themselves. Unlike Mastigos 'Warlocks' who pry at the flaws of others and struggle to master themselves by conventional means, Goetic sorcerers prefer not to have the hassle, and instead, they utilise forbidden magic to force others to live out their own despicable desires so that they themselves may become free. Primarily they resemble the stereotypical depictions of "witches" and "heathens", maliciously cursing others with madness or ill-behaviour and intentionally bringing about demonic possession.
Witch Hunters - Mortals who seek out and destroy mages.

Differences between Ascension and Awakening

This revision of the game is not simply an update to the rules. The differences between the old and new Mage games include:

Mechanics and terminology

"Traditions" have been replaced by five "Orders" and five "Paths", plus numerous "Legacies" which are extensions of the Orders or Paths.
"Arete" has been replaced by the less restrictive, "Gnosis". (As a note, the term "Gnosis" signified the spiritual power of the Garou in Werewolf: The Apocalypse.)
"Rotes" are a more established mechanic, and play a stronger role in the game.
"Paradox" has been codified and represents the Abyss striking back at a Mage for daring to alter reality via Supernal power
"Consensus Reality" and "Paradigm" are essentially gone. The Atlantean system of magic has been designated as true. Belief is no longer the driving force of Awakened Magic. Knowledge takes its place in that regard. (e.g. In Atlantean cosmology shadows are more than just the absence of light, they are an active force that could be controlled with "Death" magic. There is no debate about it, that is simply the way it is.)
Starting characters have lower attribute scores by default.
"Spheres" have been replaced by "Arcana", which are not as inter-dependent (e.g. one dot of any Arcana can be used to detect the presence of magic). There are also 10 Arcana, where there were previously 9 known spheres (however, there was always rumors of a missing tenth sphere in the original storyline, which this may be a reference to). In particular, the Entropy sphere has been separated into the Death and Fate Arcana.
"Quintessence" has been replaced by "Mana", which is required for many complex spells.
All Mages can now heal themselves whether they know "Life" magic or not.
Mages, like all characters in the new World of Darkness, are now subject to a morality system. The specific morality scale applicable to Mages is called "Wisdom;" it measures how far a Mage has fallen into hubris.

Background and setting

Almost all of the original Mage: The Ascension background has been replaced; aspects such as the traditions and the Technocracy have been replaced by new, often lower-key versions. The default origin story of Atlantis replaces the "consensus reality" of the prior edition, although (much like in Werewolf: The Forsaken) it is not necessarily the truth. However, the prevelence and phrasing of Atlantean terminology makes it difficult to discount such backstory, and has served to alienate many potential players who had played the previous iteration of the game.

There have been heated arguments among fans about the nature of the new setting, and whether or not it is appropriate as a successor to The Ascension.

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