Mage: the Awakening
May. 17th, 2005 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiat_knoxOn the Mage: the Awakening Homepage on the White Wolf website, the first of the teasers for the forthcoming Mage: the Awakening game has been released.
The updates are here.
Mythic History
The sea of time grows murky as one approaches the distant past. Ruins, artifacts, cave paintings—all this evidence of history tells an incomplete tale. Even master mages cannot part the curtains of time so far back to see what truly occurred. The magical orders have a mythology about their beginnings, the legend of a fallen civilization and a war for the throne of reality. The names for that civilization are many, most of them lost over the years, but even the Sleeping know one of them and seek evidence of its truth: Atlantis.
In the far distant past, mortals suffered at the whim of monsters, hunted by spirits and preyed upon by bloodthirsty revenants. Beset by creatures stronger than they, culled by howling beasts whenever they migrated into territories whose borders they couldn't possibly perceive, mortals found it nigh impossible to advance above their need for survival, to envision ways of living outside of fear.
Then came the dragon dreams. Certain mortals, in lands scattered far and wide, began to dream of an island, a lonely land jutting from a windswept sea far from any known coast. A spire rose from the center of the isle, pointing at the pole star; it seemed to the dreamers that this was the axis of the world, the pole upon which the bowl of the sky turned. And upon this pole, at its apex, nested the dragons.
In the dreams, these great worms of legend would rise up into the winds, one by one, circle the spire with their beating leathern wings, and set off toward the infinite horizon, to places the dreamers could not imagine. No other creature stirred on the isle and no spirit hunted there; no being dared intrude upon the dragons' lair. As the dreams progressed, the dreamers came to realize that the dragons never returned. Each night, another dragon would leave, so that the remaining numbers grew small. Finally, the last dragon took wing and glided away, to the west, never again to be seen. The dreams continued to come, but now the isle was empty; nothing moved there. For many nights the dreamers saw the isle, abandoned and forlorn, and knew that it waited for them. The island had called to them, compelling them, seeking new inhabitants.
Following the lead of the dreamers, small bands of mortals set out to sea from many different lands, each following the vision given to them in dreams. They sought the island where, far from the lands of predation, they knew they would be free to forge their own destinies, unafraid of the night.
They came to the isle, following the pole star, and saw that it was exactly as seen in their dreams. Mortals from many lands, speaking many languages and following different customs, came together, and by silent assent settled in peace with no conflict, for they had traveled far fleeing from struggle.
And still they dreamed. The island sent them new visions, and showed them how they might learn to master the strange sights to which their sleeping minds had been privy. They began practicing the techniques of hesychia, the “stillness” or “incubation,” in which they retreated into dark caves and their bodies entered deep sleep while their minds traveled to far astral realms beyond the ken of other mortals.
There they met the Others, the daimons of their own souls, the hidden twin of each soul traveler. These judges challenged them to prove by what right they came on astral roads to the Realms Supernal, and set them to a series of tests. Many failed, sent back to their bodies in sorrow, unable to again journey forth in dream. But some succeeded.
These few returned with their souls aglow, lit by a celestial fire. They could see into the Realms Invisible and ken the secret workings of Creation, the principles and substances from which everything was wrought. Through the sympathy their far-journeying souls now shared with the Realms Supernal, and the knowledge they gleaned from studying realms visible and invisible, they could call down the ways of heaven, the higher principles that ruled over the lower realms of matter and spirit. They made their very thoughts real, imagination rendered into matter and flesh.
They had discovered magic.
The Awakened City
The loose confederation of immigrants to the island soon organized into a city-state led by the magi. They called it Atlantis, which in their polyglot tongue meant "the ocean spire." Over time, the enlightened founded separate orders to fulfill the roles of governance, from mystical militia to scholars to a priesthood of the Mysteries to guide them all.
The magi of Atlantis traveled once more to the forsaken lands whence they had come, searching for new clues into the Mysteries, the tantalizing yet obscure secrets that ruled over everything that was, is, and shall be. Mortals there witnessed their power, and word of them spread as rumors and legends. Many left their homes to seek fabled Atlantis, the island of the magi. Yet no chart marked its place, and the stars no longer guided mariners to its rocky shores. Only those who saw it in dream could find it.
Rumors came now and then of foreign sorcerers, men and women who had also attained the Realms Supernal on their own, far from Atlantis, but they were rare. These people more often than not destroyed themselves by misuse of their power or were killed by commoners who feared their wizardry. Only on Atlantis were the Ars Mysteriorum mastered and codified for others to learn.
The Celestial Ladder
Yet the power to warp the very skein of Creation soon outstripped the wisdom of those who wielded it. The hubris of the magi rose unchecked. Many generations after the first had established Atlantis, their legacy turned sour. Mage turned on mage, and so was born the first wizards' war.
The victors claimed Atlantis as theirs, and drove the losers to the far corners of the earth. Then, combining their power, they wrought a great spell and erected a ladder to the Realms Supernal. They spurned the traditional astral paths by which a sorcerer's soul could approach the higher realms, for they sought to walk the celestial reaches in their own bodies. They stormed the heights and claimed the thrones of the gods for themselves, ruling from on high. No longer bound to earth, even their petty dictates and whims became real, for they stood over the lower realm and influenced it with their very thoughts. The subtle veils were rent, and the higher and lower worlds came together. The pure mixed with the impure, and the universe trembled.
Spurred by the imminent destruction and corruption of the world, the exiled mages banded together and assaulted Atlantis, climbing the star ladder and wrestling with the celestial mages in their heavenly palaces. Their struggles were terrible. The two sides clashed in a chaos of realms, and the losers—sorcerers on both sides—were flung from on high back into the lower realm.
The Fallen World
At war's end, the celestial ladder shattered, leaving the victors beyond the reach of the earthbound mages. Where the ladder had been, reality cracked and fell into itself, creating a rift between the higher and lower realms, a terrible void that sucked life and energy into itself. The Abyss divided the realms once more, keeping the high, pure realm from the taint of the low. But this was no subtle veil, permeable to returning souls. It was a gulf of unreality, an aberration that was never meant to be. What was before a single world became two worlds—the Supernal World and the Fallen World, with a vast Abyss between them.
The veil between the worlds of spirit and matter hardened, becoming the daunting Gauntlet, a barrier impassible except through magic. Shaken by the reverberations of the ladder's destruction, the foundations of Atlantis crumbled and the island sank beneath the waves. The mystical place that had birthed the magi was no more.
Once again, the enlightened escaped to the far corners of the earth and there began the long, slow process of relearning what was lost. Hunted once again by monsters, their progress was slow, for the needs of survival came before the study of the Mysteries. What's more, those souls that had not already been touched by the Realms Supernal grew dim, like cold lumps of coal hiding dim cinders within. Many forgot their magical heritage and their souls entered a slumber deeper than they had known before.
This great decline was known as the Quiescence, the Sleeping Curse. Cut off from the higher realms, divided from their birthright by the Abyss, souls could not maintain their luminosity and so fell into Sleep. Worse—the gravity of the Abyss pulled on them and weighed down the lids of their inner eyes, causing them to refuse any vision of the higher world. The mages—those who remained Awake—could no longer work their magic before those who Slept without invoking the powers of the Abyss. Only a rare few in any place at any time remained Awake, tending the flame of Supernal knowledge, keeping the lore of magic alive.
The Watchtowers
With the Abyss between them and the Supernal World, the source of magic, mages' power began to wane. It became harder and harder to draw the Supernal energies across the void, and when they could be drawn, they sometimes arrived warped and twisted, with effects unwanted by their wielder. In a number of years, all contact with the higher world would be gone and all of humankind would Sleep forever. Then, one by one, the Watchtowers appeared, their flames sending beacons from the Supernal Realms across the vast night to the souls of the Awakened. Legends tell of five Atlantean kings, the mage heirs of the Awakened City who led the fight against the Exarchs. They climbed the ladder and dueled within the celestial palaces. When the ladder shattered, they had remained in the higher world and continued to resist the usurpers of the gods' thrones.
Realizing the danger the Abyss posed for the lower world, these Oracles broke off their fight and set off through the Supernal Realms. Using lore beyond the ken of their enemies—for they were royal heirs, privy to magical knowledge allowed to only nobles—they each erected by magic a tower in a single Supernal Realm, modeled after the tall spire that had guided the first vessels to Atlantis. Five towers from five kings. Each invested into their tower the virtues of their own souls and the sum of their magical knowledge, imbued into the very stones of the structures. The Watchtowers sent visions across the Abyss to mages in the Fallen World, calling to them as Atlantis had once called to their ancestors.
Those who interpreted the visions properly and remembered the old ways retreated to caves or secluded towers, sheltering themselves in the dark. They lay their bodies down and, following the lure of the Watchtowers, sent their souls onto astral roads long untrod.
Through harrowing journeys, some of them finally arrived in astral form at one of the five Watchtowers. There they carved their names into the foundation stones and awoke in their bodies. But they were no longer bound by the Sleeping Curse, for their names had been writ by their own souls. They once more claimed sympathy with the Realms Supernal, although each only in that realm in which her Watchtower stood.
Now, the pretender gods are largely forgotten. If they still exist, they remain unseen. If they act upon the world, they do so in ways that can be interpreted as the works of Nature or the whims of fate. No one remembers that their own kind had once become gods.
No one, that is, but mages.
I have more information to impart, though. The next White Wolf Quarterly, soon to be released, apparently contains a load of spoilers for Mage, a major taster for which has already been leaked out onto Shadownessence Forums in this thread here.
There you have it for now. More in a future posting.
The updates are here.
Mythic History
The sea of time grows murky as one approaches the distant past. Ruins, artifacts, cave paintings—all this evidence of history tells an incomplete tale. Even master mages cannot part the curtains of time so far back to see what truly occurred. The magical orders have a mythology about their beginnings, the legend of a fallen civilization and a war for the throne of reality. The names for that civilization are many, most of them lost over the years, but even the Sleeping know one of them and seek evidence of its truth: Atlantis.
In the far distant past, mortals suffered at the whim of monsters, hunted by spirits and preyed upon by bloodthirsty revenants. Beset by creatures stronger than they, culled by howling beasts whenever they migrated into territories whose borders they couldn't possibly perceive, mortals found it nigh impossible to advance above their need for survival, to envision ways of living outside of fear.
Then came the dragon dreams. Certain mortals, in lands scattered far and wide, began to dream of an island, a lonely land jutting from a windswept sea far from any known coast. A spire rose from the center of the isle, pointing at the pole star; it seemed to the dreamers that this was the axis of the world, the pole upon which the bowl of the sky turned. And upon this pole, at its apex, nested the dragons.
In the dreams, these great worms of legend would rise up into the winds, one by one, circle the spire with their beating leathern wings, and set off toward the infinite horizon, to places the dreamers could not imagine. No other creature stirred on the isle and no spirit hunted there; no being dared intrude upon the dragons' lair. As the dreams progressed, the dreamers came to realize that the dragons never returned. Each night, another dragon would leave, so that the remaining numbers grew small. Finally, the last dragon took wing and glided away, to the west, never again to be seen. The dreams continued to come, but now the isle was empty; nothing moved there. For many nights the dreamers saw the isle, abandoned and forlorn, and knew that it waited for them. The island had called to them, compelling them, seeking new inhabitants.
Following the lead of the dreamers, small bands of mortals set out to sea from many different lands, each following the vision given to them in dreams. They sought the island where, far from the lands of predation, they knew they would be free to forge their own destinies, unafraid of the night.
They came to the isle, following the pole star, and saw that it was exactly as seen in their dreams. Mortals from many lands, speaking many languages and following different customs, came together, and by silent assent settled in peace with no conflict, for they had traveled far fleeing from struggle.
And still they dreamed. The island sent them new visions, and showed them how they might learn to master the strange sights to which their sleeping minds had been privy. They began practicing the techniques of hesychia, the “stillness” or “incubation,” in which they retreated into dark caves and their bodies entered deep sleep while their minds traveled to far astral realms beyond the ken of other mortals.
There they met the Others, the daimons of their own souls, the hidden twin of each soul traveler. These judges challenged them to prove by what right they came on astral roads to the Realms Supernal, and set them to a series of tests. Many failed, sent back to their bodies in sorrow, unable to again journey forth in dream. But some succeeded.
These few returned with their souls aglow, lit by a celestial fire. They could see into the Realms Invisible and ken the secret workings of Creation, the principles and substances from which everything was wrought. Through the sympathy their far-journeying souls now shared with the Realms Supernal, and the knowledge they gleaned from studying realms visible and invisible, they could call down the ways of heaven, the higher principles that ruled over the lower realms of matter and spirit. They made their very thoughts real, imagination rendered into matter and flesh.
They had discovered magic.
The Awakened City
The loose confederation of immigrants to the island soon organized into a city-state led by the magi. They called it Atlantis, which in their polyglot tongue meant "the ocean spire." Over time, the enlightened founded separate orders to fulfill the roles of governance, from mystical militia to scholars to a priesthood of the Mysteries to guide them all.
The magi of Atlantis traveled once more to the forsaken lands whence they had come, searching for new clues into the Mysteries, the tantalizing yet obscure secrets that ruled over everything that was, is, and shall be. Mortals there witnessed their power, and word of them spread as rumors and legends. Many left their homes to seek fabled Atlantis, the island of the magi. Yet no chart marked its place, and the stars no longer guided mariners to its rocky shores. Only those who saw it in dream could find it.
Rumors came now and then of foreign sorcerers, men and women who had also attained the Realms Supernal on their own, far from Atlantis, but they were rare. These people more often than not destroyed themselves by misuse of their power or were killed by commoners who feared their wizardry. Only on Atlantis were the Ars Mysteriorum mastered and codified for others to learn.
The Celestial Ladder
Yet the power to warp the very skein of Creation soon outstripped the wisdom of those who wielded it. The hubris of the magi rose unchecked. Many generations after the first had established Atlantis, their legacy turned sour. Mage turned on mage, and so was born the first wizards' war.
The victors claimed Atlantis as theirs, and drove the losers to the far corners of the earth. Then, combining their power, they wrought a great spell and erected a ladder to the Realms Supernal. They spurned the traditional astral paths by which a sorcerer's soul could approach the higher realms, for they sought to walk the celestial reaches in their own bodies. They stormed the heights and claimed the thrones of the gods for themselves, ruling from on high. No longer bound to earth, even their petty dictates and whims became real, for they stood over the lower realm and influenced it with their very thoughts. The subtle veils were rent, and the higher and lower worlds came together. The pure mixed with the impure, and the universe trembled.
Spurred by the imminent destruction and corruption of the world, the exiled mages banded together and assaulted Atlantis, climbing the star ladder and wrestling with the celestial mages in their heavenly palaces. Their struggles were terrible. The two sides clashed in a chaos of realms, and the losers—sorcerers on both sides—were flung from on high back into the lower realm.
The Fallen World
At war's end, the celestial ladder shattered, leaving the victors beyond the reach of the earthbound mages. Where the ladder had been, reality cracked and fell into itself, creating a rift between the higher and lower realms, a terrible void that sucked life and energy into itself. The Abyss divided the realms once more, keeping the high, pure realm from the taint of the low. But this was no subtle veil, permeable to returning souls. It was a gulf of unreality, an aberration that was never meant to be. What was before a single world became two worlds—the Supernal World and the Fallen World, with a vast Abyss between them.
The veil between the worlds of spirit and matter hardened, becoming the daunting Gauntlet, a barrier impassible except through magic. Shaken by the reverberations of the ladder's destruction, the foundations of Atlantis crumbled and the island sank beneath the waves. The mystical place that had birthed the magi was no more.
Once again, the enlightened escaped to the far corners of the earth and there began the long, slow process of relearning what was lost. Hunted once again by monsters, their progress was slow, for the needs of survival came before the study of the Mysteries. What's more, those souls that had not already been touched by the Realms Supernal grew dim, like cold lumps of coal hiding dim cinders within. Many forgot their magical heritage and their souls entered a slumber deeper than they had known before.
This great decline was known as the Quiescence, the Sleeping Curse. Cut off from the higher realms, divided from their birthright by the Abyss, souls could not maintain their luminosity and so fell into Sleep. Worse—the gravity of the Abyss pulled on them and weighed down the lids of their inner eyes, causing them to refuse any vision of the higher world. The mages—those who remained Awake—could no longer work their magic before those who Slept without invoking the powers of the Abyss. Only a rare few in any place at any time remained Awake, tending the flame of Supernal knowledge, keeping the lore of magic alive.
The Watchtowers
With the Abyss between them and the Supernal World, the source of magic, mages' power began to wane. It became harder and harder to draw the Supernal energies across the void, and when they could be drawn, they sometimes arrived warped and twisted, with effects unwanted by their wielder. In a number of years, all contact with the higher world would be gone and all of humankind would Sleep forever. Then, one by one, the Watchtowers appeared, their flames sending beacons from the Supernal Realms across the vast night to the souls of the Awakened. Legends tell of five Atlantean kings, the mage heirs of the Awakened City who led the fight against the Exarchs. They climbed the ladder and dueled within the celestial palaces. When the ladder shattered, they had remained in the higher world and continued to resist the usurpers of the gods' thrones.
Realizing the danger the Abyss posed for the lower world, these Oracles broke off their fight and set off through the Supernal Realms. Using lore beyond the ken of their enemies—for they were royal heirs, privy to magical knowledge allowed to only nobles—they each erected by magic a tower in a single Supernal Realm, modeled after the tall spire that had guided the first vessels to Atlantis. Five towers from five kings. Each invested into their tower the virtues of their own souls and the sum of their magical knowledge, imbued into the very stones of the structures. The Watchtowers sent visions across the Abyss to mages in the Fallen World, calling to them as Atlantis had once called to their ancestors.
Those who interpreted the visions properly and remembered the old ways retreated to caves or secluded towers, sheltering themselves in the dark. They lay their bodies down and, following the lure of the Watchtowers, sent their souls onto astral roads long untrod.
Through harrowing journeys, some of them finally arrived in astral form at one of the five Watchtowers. There they carved their names into the foundation stones and awoke in their bodies. But they were no longer bound by the Sleeping Curse, for their names had been writ by their own souls. They once more claimed sympathy with the Realms Supernal, although each only in that realm in which her Watchtower stood.
Now, the pretender gods are largely forgotten. If they still exist, they remain unseen. If they act upon the world, they do so in ways that can be interpreted as the works of Nature or the whims of fate. No one remembers that their own kind had once become gods.
No one, that is, but mages.
I have more information to impart, though. The next White Wolf Quarterly, soon to be released, apparently contains a load of spoilers for Mage, a major taster for which has already been leaked out onto Shadownessence Forums in this thread here.
There you have it for now. More in a future posting.
