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xanthan posted:Can some please tell me more about these cultists? Everything I hear about mage makes love it more and this sounds like a pretty interesting chunk of it. The two factions I referred to are the Hagalaz and the Archarne, respectively. The Hagalaz are made up of a few other groups, but they all focus on the rejection of modern Christianity and its virtues in favor of going back to, well, ODIN! There's necromancer berserkers, Loki worshipers who use traps and tricks, and worshipers of Freya that use rune carving and what not. The problem is that they're dangerously close to being declared bararbi due to how a large number of them made the mistake of going "You know what? Nazism has a few good points!" during WWII. The Acharne are an off-shoot of the old Hellfire Clubs and believe that it's only when you've been broken down completely that you're free to rise back up and become more powerful. It's a mystery cult that only accepts men, and the only way to join is to survive the initiation (which normally involves losing someone close to you) and branding an Omega on your dangly parts. They're heavily in the S&M culture because, to them, submission and dominance are two sides of the same coin. They also tend to play really terrible mind games with folks and get in to brawls with one another - their nickname is Durdenites for god's sake, and they're known for their mental and physical fortitude. One of their issues is that their cult has been infiltrated by rear end in a top hat Euthies who get them to do some really bad poo poo if they're not careful. That said, the Acharne tend to react... violently to anyone that doesn't get consent. Basically, the Cult keeps these two groups (and the Aghoris, an Indian offset that's all about body mortification) around because when you absolutely need something destroyed, these three groups will do it. And they will enjoy it. I think there's a line in the book that explains it as "sometimes you need people who view atrocity as a sacrament to face the atrocities of the world". They all reject the various Codes that the Cult adheres to regarding moderation, so they're basically treated as the creepy uncle that shows up at Thanksgiving up until you need them. At which point the rest of the Cult hides in a closet somewhere with their fingers in their ears until the screaming dies down. citybeatnik fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Dec 11, 2014 |
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Dec 11, 2014 22:07
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So since the Sabbat chill in Mexico City, do they have any luchadores, Nossie or otherwise?citybeatnik posted:another is "Fight Club meets Eyes Wide Shut meets The Ninth Gate".  Go on...
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Dec 14, 2014 07:00
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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DeusExMachinima posted:So since the Sabbat chill in Mexico City, do they have any luchadores, Nossie or otherwise? EL DIABLO VERDE, a Nosferatu, takes part in regularly bouts on Extreme Wrestling World (EWW), a program put out by OmniTV (a Pentex subsidiary). Some of his more regular opponents include a Redcap and two Assamite antitribu. But for the most part the Sabbat seem to hate fun and they tend to be written up as 3edgy5you. DeusExMachinima posted:
That'd be the Acharne. Like I said, Hellfire Club offshoot - got started in London when some high society folks took part in the Greek War of Independence and ran in to some weird Greek rituals and what not. They brought it back and started up a secret society while doing their damnest to keep the more hosed up parts of their group (such as the sado-masochistic aspects of it and the cruelty they'd inflict on new members/those they consider to have failed in some way). Basically, by the time the Cultists figured out just how depraved the group was (usually focused at the members of the society itself, mind) it was too late - they'd already become part of the Tradition. One of the chapter narration of the revised Tradition book has someone killed because they're a member of the group and their activities finally got too far out of hand. Their week might include a day-long drug fueled orgy, a discourse on philosophy, a satanic Black Sabbath rite where you get off on the blasphemy, appearing at a philanthropic gala, a torture session that would make the Boltons from GoT pause, showing up at the opera, a blood-drenched bare-knuckle brawl, a high society function where you're wine-ing and dining with some local politician, and being locked in a dark empty room for days at a time. All in the same god drat week. They're not very nice people. citybeatnik fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 07:45
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citybeatnik posted:EL DIABLO VERDE MASTER OF THE SQUARED CIRCLE! Also, not actually Sabbat. They're the ones that embraced him, yes. But as it turns out, giving a heavyweight champion luchador super-strength and a reason to hate you is actually a bad idea. He... objected to the usual welcome to the Sabbat greeting of a shovel to the head and having to dig your way out of a grave most strenuously. There were no survivors. He normally stays out of the usual politics, preferring to keep to his wrestling, which between merchandise rights and fans willing to be fed from meets his needs perfectly well. But if pushed into acting, he'll generally just go with whichever side is anti-Sabbat.
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Dec 14, 2014 08:49
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Stroth posted:MASTER OF THE SQUARED CIRCLE! He also has Appearance 3 when wearing his mask!
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Dec 14, 2014 08:52
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Stroth posted:MASTER OF THE SQUARED CIRCLE! Any of the other groups like mages or werewolves got someone who essentially went "gently caress this" to the bullshit and kept going as normally as possible?
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Dec 14, 2014 08:54
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xanthan posted:Any of the other groups like mages or werewolves got someone who essentially went "gently caress this" to the bullshit and kept going as normally as possible? A lot of mages of a mystic persuasion go their own way, moving between Traditions as they see fit and doing their own thing independently of the Ascension War. Unlike other "splats" in the line, being a member of a Tradition in Mage is more of a clubhouse than anything else. You may look like an indecisive idiot if you join more than one in a lifetime, and some Traditions have a sufficiently insular organization or paradigm that permanently breaking ties is difficult (being a Euthanatos death mage is not something you just dabble in before moving on to try something else), but you aren't born into a Tradition the way you are in the other oWoD games. The only mechanical penalty for being a mage with no Tradition (an "Orphan") is that you have to pay full experience cost for all Spheres (9 times current rating), rather than getting one at a discount from Tradition membership, and you don't have the Tradition's network of teachers and contacts at your back. There isn't even really a social stigma attached; guys who really buy into the whole old-school Victorian-era magic-as-an-old-boys'-club thing like the Order of Hermes might mock a given Orphan, but the average young mage isn't going to think twice about it. With werewolves, things are tougher. Werewolves are, as one would expect, pack animals, so even a werewolf who genuinely dislikes being one instinctively wants to hang out with other werewolves. Depending on their tribe, they also may have all sorts of other things keeping them as part of werewolf society, such as family ties or ancestral spirits. It's difficult to fit in with normal human (or wolf) society after the change, because now you have a stat called Rage which gives you significant anger management problems. Even a werewolf with a low Rage score and high Willpower is going to put normal humans on edge around him, because on some level, they always feel like he's about to snap. You also have a stat called Gnosis, which is a connection to the spiritual realm that's impossible to ignore or disbelieve in. For all those reasons and a few more besides, it's nearly impossible for a werewolf to simply ignore the whole thing and go back to what they were doing. It's possible for a werewolf to voluntarily leave a tribe and join another via a special ritual, although it is not done lightly. For example, a few Get of Fenris septs are crazy sexist, so they'll lose an occasional lady werewolf to the all-female Black Furies tribe. The term for a werewolf that doesn't have a tribe at all is a Ronin, and they're rare. The most common way to become one is to screw up just enough that your tribe or sept exiles you, but not so badly that they kill you. There's an example of one in the Outcasts splatbook who was exiled from the Fianna for being a heroin addict. Once you're Ronin, you're cut off from Garou society and you begin to slowly go nuts from the isolation, until you either make up for what you did, join another tribe, or get killed. You're considered a major catch by the Wyrm because you're not under the relatively protective umbrella of Garou society; it turns out a lot of the day-to-day poo poo you do as a werewolf actually helps keep you from getting casually corrupted. There are two more ways to end up as a Ronin, sort of. One is to be a Skin Dancer, which is a ritual that lets a Kinfolk sacrifice the pelts of five Garou to become a full-blooded Garou himself. You end up with the shapeshifting and Rage, but have no Gifts, no tribe, no spiritual protection, and unless they somehow got five Garou's skins voluntarily, are at eight points of Corruption on a ten-point scale. Most of the Skin Dancers go absolutely crazy with grief once they finish the ritual, and the guy who came up with it--good old Sam "Now An Ashtray" Haight--has been dead for a few years now, so the ritual's incredibly rare. The other is to be one of the once-a-generation throwback werewolves, who through some quirk of spirit or genetics go through their First Change and become what are basically White Howlers: the ancient Pictish tribe of werewolves that were corrupted into the Black Spiral Dancers. A throwback White Howler has no tribe by default, since the Howlers are all either dead or Dancers, and is under an instant all-or-nothing death sentence from every Black Spiral Dancer in the hemisphere. They usually end up dead or corrupted into Black Spiral Dancers, but the once-a-generation thing is a fairly irresistible plot hook. Wanderer fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Dec 14, 2014 |
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Dec 14, 2014 10:03
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The Technocracy may need to model their magic as Enlightened Science (and they do, all their stuff works on some kind of scientific principle, however much they cheat) but there's nothing stopping a techno that's been thrown out an airlock from using some of the experimental telekinetic techniques that the neurology team have been working on. It's just something that's not done often. In fact, a Technocrat probably has a number of ill-defined low profile devices that can be hand-waved into all sorts of "non-locality effector field" bullshit implanted in his body. They'd just trigger paradox if a normal, un-Enlightened citizen saw them, unlike his super-gun or scanner drones.
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Dec 14, 2014 10:40
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wiegieman posted:The Technocracy may need to model their magic as Enlightened Science (and they do, all their stuff works on some kind of scientific principle, however much they cheat) but there's nothing stopping a techno that's been thrown out an airlock from using some of the experimental telekinetic techniques that the neurology team have been working on. It's just something that's not done often. In fact, a Technocrat probably has a number of ill-defined low profile devices that can be hand-waved into all sorts of "non-locality effector field" bullshit implanted in his body. They'd just trigger paradox if a normal, un-Enlightened citizen saw them, unlike his super-gun or scanner drones. Every Technocrat in a tight spot turns into MacGyver.
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Dec 14, 2014 12:25
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It's basically the difference between Indiana Jones and Batman. A smart Technocrat is going to carry around, as you say, several devices for multiple uses or specific occasions, and if he knows he's going to be in space, he'll probably have something for the off-chance he ends up outside the ship, whether it's an implant, some nanotech, an actual device, or what-have-you. If you get thrown into space without any of your usual toys or after you get hit with an EMP or something, then you're screwed. A Tradition mage doesn't have to be quite so prepared unless said mage's paradigm requires it (i.e. a Virtual Adept without his computer). As an upside, however, a lot of Technocratic Devices get to skate by Paradox on the basis that a mundane observer may go "I didn't know people had that" as opposed to "wait, nobody can do that." It's one of the advantages to their paradigm, that they can whip out stuff from twenty minutes into the future in full view of God and everybody and not get smacked down for it. Really, though, the point being made by the whole hard-vacuum thing is to illustrate how big a role simple belief plays in both the setting and the magic system.
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Dec 14, 2014 23:37
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I think even VA can get by without their computers - their magic runs off of math, and you can still do that with a slide rule and a pad of paper if required. It'd just take for loving ever. That said, Tradition mages -can- eventually move beyond the need for a foci for their magic effects, or take a slight penalty to difficulty in casting them... unless they're a technothaumaturge, such as the VA and the SoE. This is a weakness shared by the Union, which isn't surprising since both those two groups were originally part of it.
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Dec 15, 2014 00:16
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citybeatnik posted:I think even VA can get by without their computers - their magic runs off of math, and you can still do that with a slide rule and a pad of paper if required. It'd just take for loving ever. Actually, for the Tradition technomages it just takes them longer to wean off of foci- technocrats literally can't, ever, barring a paradigm shift so fundamental that they reject the Technocratic Union's way of thinking entirely.
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Dec 15, 2014 00:22
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Mechanically, for mystically-oriented mages, you get to go focus-optional for one Sphere for every dot of Arete you have after 2 (Arete being a 10-point stat that determines how many dice you get to roll for a spell effect). This allows you to use that Sphere without your ritual tools/behavior if you have to, but you get a bonus if you use the focus anyway and the character will likely be more comfortable using it. For Sons of Ether and Virtual Adepts, you have to use foci until Arete 5 and up, which means you're on the high end of the playable-character power curve. For Technocrats, yeah, it's always the Devices and the Science. citybeatnik posted:I think even VA can get by without their computers - their magic runs off of math, and you can still do that with a slide rule and a pad of paper if required. It'd just take for loving ever. The stereotypical VA is going to need a difference engine of some kind, which means they could theoretically build a steam-powered old-school computer if you stuck them in a foundry or something and use that for magic. One point that should be made--for laymen reading this, not you, obviously--is that there's an enormous degree of flexibility and versatility built into Mage, so when you generalize like this, you're basically just talking about some theoretical stereotype of a given Tradition. An Adept may be a straight-up hacker or may use all sorts of mystical rites in conjunction with a bit of magical technology. The important thing about a Tradition is that they all agree on a given central fact, but how they actually go about doing stuff may differ dramatically from individual to individual. Wanderer fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Dec 15, 2014 00:37
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So are there mages who just go "Huh, there's a whole buttload of poo poo that wants to kill me here, my magic is less dangerous to me in space, I'm out" and go live on Mars or something?
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Dec 15, 2014 00:41
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Revenant Threshold posted:So are there mages who just go "Huh, there's a whole buttload of poo poo that wants to kill me here, my magic is less dangerous to me in space, I'm out" and go live on Mars or something? Yes. Lots, actually! A lot of mages with the means to leave that way absolutely do gently caress off to the far reaches of the universe and go on awesome space adventures for the rest of their lives.
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Dec 15, 2014 00:49
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Revenant Threshold posted:So are there mages who just go "Huh, there's a whole buttload of poo poo that wants to kill me here, my magic is less dangerous to me in space, I'm out" and go live on Mars or something? There are colonies and chantries all over the solar system that are populated largely by mages, their families, and their allies, most of whom are Sons of Ether or Void Engineers. Unfortunately, once you go live in space, you're trading the dangers of Paradox and human society for occasional raids by the Nephandi, Marauders and various Deep Umbral critters, which means you're now playing a bizarre hybrid of SPACE: 1999 and Call of Cthulhu. There's also the Copernicus Research Station, or the COP, which is a functioning Dyson Sphere in the Deep Umbra. The Technocracy would like people to believe they built it. They found it, and have no idea who or what caused it to exist. The COP is a popular place for Progenitor experiments, since there's no Paradox and very little gravity. You get all sorts of cool evolutionary adaptations that way.
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Dec 15, 2014 01:05
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And very high Arete and/or Sphere Mages, who start suffering from ambient Paradox. No idea if it's an enforced rule or way around "there is a literal God around somewhere, and you can talk to them" problem that might come from fluff.
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Dec 15, 2014 02:38
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Couldn't sufficiently powerful technocrats effectively bypass the need for foci with the appropriate mentality? Say they have access to a personal hyperspace shunt with the code sequence embedded into their DNA.
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Dec 15, 2014 02:41
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Cythereal posted:Couldn't sufficiently powerful technocrats effectively bypass the need for foci with the appropriate mentality? Say they have access to a personal hyperspace shunt with the code sequence embedded into their DNA. I think the problem is that the could, but they don't want to. The creed at the base of every Technocratic mage who knows about consensual reality is that humanity deserves to have the sort of power normally wielded by mages, and to grant them this power humanity must collectively believe that they can control these forces using science and technology. A high-powered Technocrat could therefore leave their foci behind, technically speaking, but to do so would also abandon the rest of humanity and therefore cease to be a Technocrat. What is the point of going beyond foci, after all, when your philosophy is all about devising foci which anyone can use? Again, though, this is only for Technocrats in the know. For the most part Techno-mages don't even realize that they're casting magic through foci and instead think they are using advanced technology developed to do extraordinary things.
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Dec 15, 2014 02:55
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:I think the problem is that the could, but they don't want to. The creed at the base of every Technocratic mage who knows about consensual reality is that humanity deserves to have the sort of power normally wielded by mages, and to grant them this power humanity must collectively believe that they can control these forces using science and technology. A high-powered Technocrat could therefore leave their foci behind, technically speaking, but to do so would also abandon the rest of humanity and therefore cease to be a Technocrat. What is the point of going beyond foci, after all, when your philosophy is all about devising foci which anyone can use? I would think that the logical Technocratic end goal is to advance consensual reality to the point that people don't need foci because humanity has sufficient mastery of science and technology. Make for what is all intents and purposes magic through spatial manipulation, probability mechanics, and the like. Invent magic through science and technology, and only a handful of people know that it really is magic. But it's simultaneously not because of the world view that the Technocracy has constructed. Make it something anyone can do, because humanity is now a class one on the Kardashev scale or has mastered practical applications of quantum mechanics.
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Dec 15, 2014 03:00
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Most Technocrats' end goal doesn't involve consensual reality because they don't know it exists. Most Technocrats don't know they're Mages.
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Dec 15, 2014 03:10
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So wait, could the Technocracy have decided to just study magic and create some underlying theory that would let anyone do it instead of going the technology route? Like, do such and such thing to get 1 unit of mana or something then do such and such thing for X effect where X is something normally magic like throwing a fireball. Basically could they have instead just created an rear end load of rituals and rules for nonmages to do "magic" and essentially boil it down to a science that mages can cheat and ignore the rules of? Fantastic Alice fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Dec 15, 2014 03:11
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Cythereal posted:I would think that the logical Technocratic end goal is to advance consensual reality to the point that people don't need foci because humanity has sufficient mastery of science and technology. Make for what is all intents and purposes magic through spatial manipulation, probability mechanics, and the like. Invent magic through science and technology, and only a handful of people know that it really is magic. But it's simultaneously not because of the world view that the Technocracy has constructed. Make it something anyone can do, because humanity is now a class one on the Kardashev scale or has mastered practical applications of quantum mechanics. Still, if an individual mage gets too far ahead of the curve, they become less useful when it comes to helping the collective to Ascension, which is a step-by-step process which currently requires numerous foci in order for a human to use what used to be considered magic. They're working on reducing and removing these foci--miniaturization and standardization has led to smart phones which can perform tasks which once required entire roomfuls of electronics--but we're still some distance away from claiming "Nanomachines, son" and just enacting our will on the universe. The funny thing is that both the Technocracy and the Traditions want to accomplish the same thing: to bring all the world to an Ascended state. But when either side gets too much power, they lose sight of that goal. In the Middle Ages the Traditions had too much power and so wizards lorded it over villages of simpletons rather than teach those villagers to unlock their own potential. Now the Technocracy is in power, and while they've done a remarkable job of advancing the human condition (at least in some parts of the world), the individual branches are so wrapped up in their private agendas that they've all but forgotten the greater purpose which allowed them to defeat the Traditions and take over in the first place. It doesn't help any that the folks in charge rarely tell their underlings the truth, either.
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Dec 15, 2014 03:12
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xanthan posted:So wait, could the Technocracy have decided to just study magic and create some underlying theory that would let anyone do it instead of going the technology route? Like, do such and such thing to get 1 unit of mana or something then do such and such thing for X effect where X is something normally magic like throwing a fireball. Yes, but then they would have been called Order of Hermes.
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Dec 15, 2014 03:20
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Cythereal posted:Couldn't sufficiently powerful technocrats effectively bypass the need for foci with the appropriate mentality? Say they have access to a personal hyperspace shunt with the code sequence embedded into their DNA. That's not what foci are, mechanically or in lore. Foci are, simply enough, ritual tools or behaviors. For a mystically-inclined mage, it's your spellbook, wand, candles, and rituals you conduct with arcane materials at exactly midnight at the right celestial moment. For a Technocrat, they're technologies and devices. It is entirely possible for a Technocrat, who would most likely be a member of Iteration X, to embed a variety of useful devices into their body so they'll never be without them: artificial eyes, nanomachines in their bloodstream, weapons built into hollow bones, subdermal drug reservoirs, you name it. (Too much "cyberware" will cause problems with Paradox, but if it's invisible to the naked eye or you're willing to work around it, it's totally doable.) It's also possible, if a little metagamey, to design a mage with a paradigm that does not involve any physical objects, so all his foci are dances, songs, tattoos, mantras, meditation, or other things/behaviors that cannot be conveniently taken away. All of this does not "bypass" anything. You still need foci to work magic; you're just working out-of-game to minimize their potential disruptive effect, which is a problem that Mage's designers had from the start. Your character is firmly convinced that she needs these items or behaviors to work magic, because that's how magic works in her individual paradigm. With practice, she could learn to do without, but she will always be more comfortable using those tools to invoke effects and will probably use them if she can. For Technocrats, this is way too much like magic for them to feel at all comfortable with it. A lot of them will freely admit that what they practice is "Enlightened Science," which isn't at all accessible to the layman (yet). Science is its own system, however, and it goes hand-in-hand with a Technocratic mindset to not be able to forsake that system. Thus, you still need tools to work. A naked Technocrat with no body mods, handcuffed to a drainpipe in a bare room, basically is not a mage at all. xanthan posted:So wait, could the Technocracy have decided to just study magic and create some underlying theory that would let anyone do it instead of going the technology route? Like, do such and such thing to get 1 unit of mana or something then do such and such thing for X effect where X is something normally magic like throwing a fireball. That is exactly what they did. The early Technocracy, the Order of Reason, slowly shaped the collective human consciousness to insert new ideas, and because those new ideas were generally agreed upon by everyone who saw them, they became laws of the universe. This allowed them to build atop that foundation and gradually introduce technology to the masses. If you were in the World of Darkness and time-traveled to Europe 1200 AD with a hunting rifle, that hunting rifle would be an absurdly powerful magical item, wielded only by mages in the Order of Reason and useless in anyone else's hands. Nowadays, any dickhead with $400 can pick one up and use it. It's no longer "magic"; it's just a fact of life. The downside to that is, of course, that they shackled themselves to a gradual technology curve. You can't just jump the queue and go straight to spaceships; you have to give the unenlightened masses every stop along the way from points A to B, and you're getting fought every step of the way in the marketplace of ideas.
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Dec 15, 2014 04:01
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Wanderer posted:That is exactly what they did. I think his question was more in the lines of "couldn't this group of wizards be more wizard-y and just admit what they were doing was magic?" There is actually a group of wizards like that and they are Order of Hermes. For those who are unfamiliar with them, they are the guys who are all about elaborate rituals, drawing sigils, numerology, astrology, True Names, High Speech and all that good stuff. They believe magic can and should be studied as an intellectual pursuit and they meticulously categorize and write down everything they 'discover'. And despite the Technocracy's dominance among the masses, there are hedge mages who just ape Hermetic rituals and do 'magic' despite not being Awakened themselves. That said, there is an ideological difference between the Order and the Technocracy, because quite frankly the Hermetics are a bunch of smug assholes. They are not much interested in sharing their hard earned knowledge with the unwashed masses, and if the world was somehow on fire they would rather party it up far and away in their Doissetep chantry deep in the Umbra. Technocrats want you to use that gun; Hermetics would laugh at your face for your miserable attempt at reciting from the Secret Grimoire of Trithemius and expecting something to happen. The seal of Heptameron should have been completed during the 3rd new moon of the year if that was going to work, moron... fspades fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Dec 15, 2014 04:48
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And if the Hermetics were slightly less smug assholes, the proto-Sons of Ether wouldn't have split off from them to join the Order of Reason. There's a part of me that approves of the notion that, when the rear end in a top hat wizard doesn't help your village or is using folks for experiments, the response being not to put up with it but to load the cannon and fire at his tower until he's dead.
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Dec 15, 2014 05:41
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Cythereal posted:I would think that the logical Technocratic end goal is to advance consensual reality to the point that people don't need foci because humanity has sufficient mastery of science and technology. Make for what is all intents and purposes magic through spatial manipulation, probability mechanics, and the like. Invent magic through science and technology, and only a handful of people know that it really is magic. But it's simultaneously not because of the world view that the Technocracy has constructed. Make it something anyone can do, because humanity is now a class one on the Kardashev scale or has mastered practical applications of quantum mechanics. They're doing something like that, but the problem is that if you show off techno-wizardry that's too far advanced from what consensual reality believes is possible, it either won't work or generates paradox. You could, for example, create vat-grown replacement organs and "surgical glue" that removes the need for stitches, but trying to run fully-independent AI androids wouldn't fly.
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Dec 15, 2014 05:42
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Wanderer posted:There are colonies and chantries all over the solar system that are populated largely by mages, their families, and their allies, most of whom are Sons of Ether or Void Engineers. Unfortunately, once you go live in space, you're trading the dangers of Paradox and human society for occasional raids by the Nephandi, Marauders and various Deep Umbral critters, which means you're now playing a bizarre hybrid of SPACE: 1999 and Call of Cthulhu. Post Anima Storm, a lot of those far-away sanctuaries were destroyed or cut off from the rest of humanity. That's why the leadership of the Technocracy are gone, and it's why the Void Engineers have grounded everyone else and are incredibly overworked fighting Threat Null.
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Dec 15, 2014 06:37
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wiegieman posted:Post Anima Storm, a lot of those far-away sanctuaries were destroyed or cut off from the rest of humanity. That's why the leadership of the Technocracy are gone, and it's why the Void Engineers have grounded everyone else and are incredibly overworked fighting Threat Null. Another great entry from the oWoD metaplot! Good job everyone. We wouldn't want Mage games to become too weird and creative.
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Dec 15, 2014 07:17
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Threat Null (the result of too much of the Technocratic leadership falling prey to the natural results of being way too far from Earth for far too long) is actually a really cool villain overall, but yeah, it's one more reason why the Avatar Storm was a stupid idea. (I actually forgot the Avatar Storm is a thing when I went all spergado on those posts.) I'm convinced it was a brute-force method to bring Mage's general mood down around the "you're hosed" atmosphere of the other games and/or a cheap method of making an apocalypse scenario for Mage feasible. While the solar system would not enjoy the loss of Gaia, there are enough assorted colonies and chantries off-planet that it would take a lot to wipe out the human race pre-Avatar Storm.
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Dec 15, 2014 08:08
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xanthan posted:Basically could they have instead just created an rear end load of rituals and rules for nonmages to do "magic" and essentially boil it down to a science They did. It's called science.
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Dec 15, 2014 09:12
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So, this may have been answered in the previous posts but I didn't see it directly addressed. Do technocrats see themselves as mages? Like, are they thinking "okay, so we're going to introduce this technology next which will allow us to practice this certain type of magic in the open now?" Or is it more of a unconscious level of magical ability that they've deluded themselves into thinking that is advanced science or some such. Like, for example, a technocrat with the Life sphere concocts a vaccine that cures any human disease. Instead of consciously thinking that it's magic he just hand waves it and attributes it to stem cells or something? I guess the answer could depend differently on technocrat mages who were around since the Order of Reason and some dude who just awakened, or whatever it is that technocrats do, last week or something.
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Dec 15, 2014 12:51
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DankRhymer posted:So, this may have been answered in the previous posts but I didn't see it directly addressed. Do technocrats see themselves as mages? Like, are they thinking "okay, so we're going to introduce this technology next which will allow us to practice this certain type of magic in the open now?" Or is it more of a unconscious level of magical ability that they've deluded themselves into thinking that is advanced science or some such. Like, for example, a technocrat with the Life sphere concocts a vaccine that cures any human disease. Instead of consciously thinking that it's magic he just hand waves it and attributes it to stem cells or something? This is something that a lot of people who are new to the system have a hard time with, and it's something the creators have had to drop the pretense and address a couple of times. Basically, magic(k) and hyper-science are the same drat thing. It's all blatant reality manipulation through force of will. The difference is that magic is, virtually by design, exclusionary; it's a system of belief that is often unique to an individual practitioner, because a lot of mystical schools of thought, in and out of this particular game, use magic as a tool for the gradual perfection of the self (I've mentioned it before, but Mage owes a lot to the occult concept of the "invisible labyrinth"). Technology, by Mage's version of reality, is democratized magic. That said, the Technocracy would actively reject that label. What they do is Enlightened Science, which acts to reinforce and protect the existing Consensus--what everyone agrees to be real and possible, thus what is real and possible--so they can slowly move it forward into an idealized science-fiction future. This is why they call everything from Tradition mages to vampires "reality deviants," as they're all creatures that don't adhere to the Technocracy's script. The most self-aware among the Technocracy will readily admit that they can do things with their Enlightened Science that are well beyond what's technically possible. They know that going beyond what's currently acceptable in the Consensus will cause "software glitches," outright hardware failure, or backlashes. It's simply an unfortunate consequence of the Consensus they've manufactured and now maintain. To use your example, Bob the Progenitor sits down one day and decides he's going to make a vaccine that will cure a human of any imaginable disease. Mechanically, this is a Life 3 effect with the vaccine as a focus; Bob rolls his Arete rating and the number of successes determines how efficacious his vaccine is. (One success would probably take care of the sniffles; four or more would cure AIDS. This is not a low-powered system.) However, Bob is a capital-S Scientist. He's not just going to throw things together over the course of a slow afternoon and come up with a cure-all. He's going to start with a hypothesis, do some testing and simulations, inject some lab animals, and maybe test the vaccine on a volunteer or two before he calls it done. Bob might base the vaccine on previous projects that he's worked on, or that he's read about in certain Technocracy-only medical journals. However he ends up doing it, Bob will have a vial of serum that will cure just about any disease. Bob has come up with this through Science, and thus, Bob thinks of himself as a Scientist. Mechanically, out-of-game, Bob just used a magic spell to do this; lore-wise, in-game, Bob used a particularly advanced form of science, and techniques that are only available to him because he is an Enlightened Scientist.
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Dec 15, 2014 13:18
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So whats the role of a Technocrat's Avatar then if they're basically just deluding themselves into performing their version of 'science' that is reinforced by consensus? Would they even need to Awaken if the science->consensus->science feedback loop supported them enough?
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Dec 15, 2014 14:29
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A Curvy Goonette posted:So whats the role of a Technocrat's Avatar then if they're basically just deluding themselves into performing their version of 'science' that is reinforced by consensus? Would they even need to Awaken if the science->consensus->science feedback loop supported them enough? Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was his Avatar. It's also easy to side with the Techies over the Traditions because, well, they're the guys out there doing things like developing vaccines for diseases or artificial limbs for veterans/accident victims. The problem is that this is the World of Darkness and if you're the person in a position of power you're an rear end in a top hat. Iteration X are all becoming soulless automatons that all-but-worship a machine planet. The New World Order are Men in Black that use blackmail and history rewriting right out of 1984 to control the future. The $yndicate encourage conspicuous consumption, massive debt, and allying with Pentex all in the name of living the sort of lifestyle that brought about the LIBOR scandal. The Progenitors fall in to some really bad traps involving eugenics and human testing. The Void Engineers are underfunded and weakened severely due to the Avatar Storm. WW kinda screwed the pooch with making the Union the "bad guys" because the problem isn't the evils of science, it's the conflict of free will verses conformity. Taken to its extremes, the Union encourages mindless drones that are safe and secure and living very, very boring lives.
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Dec 15, 2014 15:01
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citybeatnik posted:WW kinda screwed the pooch with making the Union the "bad guys" because the problem isn't the evils of science, it's the conflict of free will verses conformity. Taken to its extremes, the Union encourages mindless drones that are safe and secure and living very, very boring lives. The logical counterpoint would be that free will taken to its extremes is just as bad. See Somalia for an example of what happens when law and order break down.
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Dec 15, 2014 15:50
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Yep! Which is why the Order of Reason formed to punch Gandolf in the face in the first place.
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Dec 15, 2014 15:55
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citybeatnik posted:Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was his Avatar. It's interesting that you listed severe flaws for all the factions except the void engineers, whose problems aren't their fault. Are they the only Technocracy faction that are mostly not run by assholes?
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Dec 15, 2014 18:50
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UrbicaMortis posted:It's interesting that you listed severe flaws for all the factions except the void engineers, whose problems aren't their fault. Are they the only Technocracy faction that are mostly not run by assholes? If I recall correctly, yes. They're the ones that are most likely to think of the Traditions not as enemies but as rivals - almost cheerily so. Their interactions with the Sons of Ether would be a prime example of this, since the biggest problem the Etherites have with them is their denial of Ether theory and not what they do. The group is also the most Utopian as a whole, since their primary interest isn't so much in getting folks to follow the party line as push back the boundaries of human understanding (they got their name because their goal was to fill in the "here be dragons" parts of maps and the like) and shoot at Lovecraftian horrors. The Union's response is typically to slash their funding and refuse to give them permission to do stuff if they don't behave. Basically, the Traditions can be seen as "nominally good guys, with horrible assholes popping up" and the Union as "nominally bad guys, with idealists popping up."
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Dec 15, 2014 19:04
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