potatocubed
2012-03-21, 06:11 AM
On Monday I started playing in a game of Mage. Today, I start telling you lot all about it.
The Ocean is Hungry for the Shore
Our past is an ocean, dark and deep. Whole civilizations have been swallowed by its depths, their secrets lost to the ages. Most of us are happy to rake the shore for crumbs of wisdom, but there’s caches of hidden wisdom waiting for those willing to take the risks. This world is far stranger than you could ever imagine, full of danger and wonder in equal measure. Let’s go diving.
Magic is a mystery; it surrounds us but it’s almost impossible to see. It behaves like it has laws and rules, but those can be upended in a moment. Like Icarus, we gain powers beyond any Sleeper but risk being immolated in the fires of our ambition. Answers can be found in the wisdom of the ancestors, the ruins of ancient civilisations, the things that lurk in shadows and in the soul of humanity. Seek the secrets of the world, the truths of ancient magic, the abyss lurking beneath the everyday world and the secret heart of magic itself, and find the truth for yourself.
The Cabal
The as-yet-unnamed cabal live - as of maybe two days before the chronicle's start - in a tall, narrow house in Soho, in central London. Because most of them haven't even finished moving in yet, wizardly matters like the Great Rights and the cabal's sigil remain undecided. The house comes complete with a rooftop garden, which is also a hallow attuned to accelerated city life.
Takeshi is a Mastigos Silver Ladder, played by yours truly. He's a Mancunian just arrived in London, a computer geek (but not a sedentary one - he goes running several times a week and is no stranger to the gym), an advocate of the open source movement, and a transhumanist. Although it's not clear to him right now, he's joined the wrong order: although he agrees with some of the Ladder philosophy, his methods are much closer to the Free Council.
Nobel is a Moros Free Councillor and disgraced academic in the mould of a Victorian alchemist. He does science to things. He and Takeshi share a similar sort of merging-of-science-and-magic approach, although they come at it from different angles.
Aura is an Obrimos Adamantine Arrow, a magical prodigy discovered at a young age in India and raised by a family of proximi in full knowledge of her magical nature. She's the only member of the cabal who's even remotely handy in a fight, but is a bit socially awkward.
Indra, a Thyrsus Free Councillor, is also from India. She came over with her family and studied hard to be a doctor, before abandoning medicine for club DJing. Since discovering her magical powers she's become something of a modern shaman.
Korrigan is an Acanthus Mystagogue who seems like a cross between Indiana Jones and Dirk Gently. He reads a lot of books and hunts for ancient secrets using synchronicity and happenstance.
--
1.1: Clocking On
It is late morning in London. In the narrow house in Soho, the cabal are occupying themselves with morning things: Takeshi is in the living room playing Final Fantasy XIII on his Xbox. Aura and Korrigan are in their rooms. Nobel is in his attic laboratory making new and unnecessary materials. Indra is 'about'. The phone in the hall rings.
...the phone continues to ring.
Eventually Nobel, the person furthest away from the phone, comes downstairs to answer it. On the other end is Adler, one of London's heralds. Turns out she was getting the train out of Waterloo and, upon using a minor bit of magic to tell if it was on time or not, got nothing. Since she is engaged in the business of catching said train, she delegates investigating the matter to the cabal. A chance to 'prove themselves' to the London Consilium.
Nobel calls a meeting in the living room. Indra hunts down Korrigan (who has to be pried away from his book) and Aura (who is upside-down on her bed, also reading) while Takeshi hunts down a save point. Once they're all together there is a brief discussion of how to get to Waterloo station and a hunt for a spare Oyster card, since Aura doesn't have one. The two cabal members who are most skilled at Time magic - Takeshi and Korrigan - make some practice divinations, establishing a) that auguring the future in general works just fine and b) that it will rain later. Umbrellas are procured.
Continuing their practice divinations, the cabal set off for Waterloo on the tube. It's at the underground station of Embankment that predicting the future ceases to function - whether or not eating at the Burger King in Waterloo station will give you food poisoning remains uncertain. The cabal do the rest of the journey - which is basically just crossing the Thames on one of the many convenient bridges - on foot, examining their surroundings with a variety of mage sight spells active. Aura and Korrigan pick up the giant 'shielding bubble' over the area around Waterloo; it's about 2 km across, covering a decent chunk of the local area. Further examination reveals it to be a massive version of the well-known Shield of Chronos spell, which blocks temporal scrying on a location. The implication is that somebody's up to something here that they don't want anyone knowing about later.
Nobel stands in a lab with a young man in a lab coat. From their demeanour it is obvious that the traditional roles of teacher and student are reversed.
"The thing to remember," the young man says, "is to always armour up before going into a dangerous situation." He produces a long knife from inside his lab coat and grins like a shark. "Ready?"
Nobel reminds the cabal to raise mage armours before pushing on, so they take some time on the steps of the station to do so.
Thus protected, they cross the threshold. It's simple for Aura to track the emanation of the bubble to its source - the other side of a door marked 'staff only', on a busy concourse. Takeshi takes a seat at a nearby coffee shop and conjures a "minimap" spell - a conjunctional Mind and Space effect which allows him to get a perfect overview of his surroundings and track all the thinking beings moving within it. After filtering out all the rats and pigeons he finds another way into the staff area in a quieter section of the station. After leading the others there he tries to magically read the keycode from the lock but can't hold the spell in his mind correctly; Aura uses a more direct approach and just scrambles the electricity inside the lock, making it pop open.
Side Note: Reading the keycode and glitching the lock are both effects in the same arcanum (Forces) at the same level. The different approaches Tak and Aura take to the door says something about their characters.
A bit of poking around in the staff area uncovers a store room which has been cleared so that a ritual diagram can be sketched on the floor in charcoal. In the centre of the diagram is a broken clock. Nobel videos the whole thing on his phone and sends the video to Adler. Then he calls her. Meanwhile Takeshi uses a combination of Space magic and his eidetic memory to make sure he can reproduce the diagram if called for, then Indra and Aura clean up. Takeshi pockets a piece of the broken clock before they do.
Adler and Nobel have something of a fruitless conversation. It turns out that the ritual circle has served its purpose and the shield is now anchored by runes at its periphery that match those of the ritual diagram. Having cleaned up the mess the cabal scoot off - guided by Takeshi's Space magic - to start de-anchoring the shield. The first periphery rune is charcoaled in along with the graffiti behind Temple station to the north, and easily wiped off by Aura.
"Wait. Are you sure it's not going to explode or anything?" - Nobel
"Divination isn't normally explosive. It depends on which kind of entrails you use." - Aura
There is a brief pause while the cabal thinks about that, then decides as one to let it pass unremarked.
The second periphery rune is trickier - it's on a boat on the river, connected to the shore by a locked gangplank. While Takeshi, Indra and Nobel discuss subtle ways of getting to the rune; Korrigan and Aura stroll down the gangplank, climb the gate, and start searching the ship. Nobel ponders the practicalities of walking on water, Tak and Indra discuss clubbing and music - Indra has a gig that evening - and Korrigan finds the rune carved into the side of the boat just above the waterline. Aura makes short work of it with the knife which she always carries.
The gang reconvene on a nearby bridge, only to be alerted to a new problem. Now the shield is failing, the crime against reality that it was erected to cover becomes obvious to their magical senses: something bad is happening near the London Eye (not far from Waterloo) and making a clear-to-wizard-ears sound like Big Ben's evil twin. The cabal rush back across the Thames, heading for the eye. Takeshi falls slightly behind while he casts his senses over to the Eye: he sees a small black clock at its base - with every tick it unmakes more of the surrounding area, vanishing litter and small unattended items, and making the Eye itself groan with sudden material stresses. He shouts this to the others, and everybody sprints for the Eye.
Aura picks out a short woman in a pinstripe suit sitting calmly nearby while the London Eye staff start evacuation procedures. Mage sight reveals that she's got the sparkly aura of a mage. Aura changes course to confront her, Nobel scurries over to the Eye and starts using Matter magic to shore up its crumbling superstucture, and the other three hang back and try to think of ways to make themselves useful.
Aura and Pinstripe have a brief chat, Pinstripe establishing herself as being extremely impatient to do something but not really willing to explain what it is. Aura refuses to let her near the little black clock, so Pinstripe whips out her pocketwatch and casts a spell that accelerates her movements - vulgar magic, in public. Only the distraction of the creaking London Eye prevents the tourists all around from crushing her under the weight of their disbelief. Aura whips a truncheon out from somewhere but can't land a decent hit past Pinstripe's layered Time defences. She is joined moments later by Korrigan, flailing wildly at the time mage with a bag of books, and a pair of aggressive seagulls called by Indra.
Nobel shores up the Eye some more with his magic, then decides to go after the doom clock - which by this point is eating history at a rate of one week per tick. Some covert matter magic renders it as fragile as an eggshell, and Takeshi's shoe finishes the job. Problem solved! Pinstripe, seeing the clock reduced to little bits and pieces whirls her pocketwatch over her head...
...time bends, jumping back just a few vital seconds...
...and just as Aura, Korrigan and seagulls converge on her position Pinstripe flickers over to the doom clock and sends it away with a fast spell. Instead of fighting, talk breaks out.
It turns out the woman's name is Horologia, and she couldn't allow "her handiwork" to be damaged. Since none of the cabal remember the aborted time stream where they stomped the clock, they have no idea what she's talking about. Nobel has another fruitless conversation with Adler, who seems quite blase about all the vulgar magic in public and the potential destruction of a major London landmark, not to mention the unravelling of time. Horologia, meanwhile, keeps talking and makes little more sense - she claims she has other places to be, and keeps looking at her watch. There's a sanctum below the Eye, apparently, that she wants to get into - she proposes that in exchange for the cabal helping her get into it, she'll take first pick of the stuff down there.
The doom clock was also part of this plan, but exactly how it helped I'm not sure.
The cabal decide this is not a good deal. On the other hand, since they're not willing to just start a wizard fight in broad daylight - at least, not without probable cause in the form of a doom clock to stop - they can't prevent her from going down there. So they decide to follow along anyway.
--
And that's the end of the session!
What lurks beneath the London Eye?
What does a clock-obsessed mage of questionable sanity want with it?
Can we produce any reaction from Adler beyond mild interest?
Tune in next time for the answers!
The Ocean is Hungry for the Shore
Our past is an ocean, dark and deep. Whole civilizations have been swallowed by its depths, their secrets lost to the ages. Most of us are happy to rake the shore for crumbs of wisdom, but there’s caches of hidden wisdom waiting for those willing to take the risks. This world is far stranger than you could ever imagine, full of danger and wonder in equal measure. Let’s go diving.
Magic is a mystery; it surrounds us but it’s almost impossible to see. It behaves like it has laws and rules, but those can be upended in a moment. Like Icarus, we gain powers beyond any Sleeper but risk being immolated in the fires of our ambition. Answers can be found in the wisdom of the ancestors, the ruins of ancient civilisations, the things that lurk in shadows and in the soul of humanity. Seek the secrets of the world, the truths of ancient magic, the abyss lurking beneath the everyday world and the secret heart of magic itself, and find the truth for yourself.
The Cabal
The as-yet-unnamed cabal live - as of maybe two days before the chronicle's start - in a tall, narrow house in Soho, in central London. Because most of them haven't even finished moving in yet, wizardly matters like the Great Rights and the cabal's sigil remain undecided. The house comes complete with a rooftop garden, which is also a hallow attuned to accelerated city life.
Takeshi is a Mastigos Silver Ladder, played by yours truly. He's a Mancunian just arrived in London, a computer geek (but not a sedentary one - he goes running several times a week and is no stranger to the gym), an advocate of the open source movement, and a transhumanist. Although it's not clear to him right now, he's joined the wrong order: although he agrees with some of the Ladder philosophy, his methods are much closer to the Free Council.
Nobel is a Moros Free Councillor and disgraced academic in the mould of a Victorian alchemist. He does science to things. He and Takeshi share a similar sort of merging-of-science-and-magic approach, although they come at it from different angles.
Aura is an Obrimos Adamantine Arrow, a magical prodigy discovered at a young age in India and raised by a family of proximi in full knowledge of her magical nature. She's the only member of the cabal who's even remotely handy in a fight, but is a bit socially awkward.
Indra, a Thyrsus Free Councillor, is also from India. She came over with her family and studied hard to be a doctor, before abandoning medicine for club DJing. Since discovering her magical powers she's become something of a modern shaman.
Korrigan is an Acanthus Mystagogue who seems like a cross between Indiana Jones and Dirk Gently. He reads a lot of books and hunts for ancient secrets using synchronicity and happenstance.
--
1.1: Clocking On
It is late morning in London. In the narrow house in Soho, the cabal are occupying themselves with morning things: Takeshi is in the living room playing Final Fantasy XIII on his Xbox. Aura and Korrigan are in their rooms. Nobel is in his attic laboratory making new and unnecessary materials. Indra is 'about'. The phone in the hall rings.
...the phone continues to ring.
Eventually Nobel, the person furthest away from the phone, comes downstairs to answer it. On the other end is Adler, one of London's heralds. Turns out she was getting the train out of Waterloo and, upon using a minor bit of magic to tell if it was on time or not, got nothing. Since she is engaged in the business of catching said train, she delegates investigating the matter to the cabal. A chance to 'prove themselves' to the London Consilium.
Nobel calls a meeting in the living room. Indra hunts down Korrigan (who has to be pried away from his book) and Aura (who is upside-down on her bed, also reading) while Takeshi hunts down a save point. Once they're all together there is a brief discussion of how to get to Waterloo station and a hunt for a spare Oyster card, since Aura doesn't have one. The two cabal members who are most skilled at Time magic - Takeshi and Korrigan - make some practice divinations, establishing a) that auguring the future in general works just fine and b) that it will rain later. Umbrellas are procured.
Continuing their practice divinations, the cabal set off for Waterloo on the tube. It's at the underground station of Embankment that predicting the future ceases to function - whether or not eating at the Burger King in Waterloo station will give you food poisoning remains uncertain. The cabal do the rest of the journey - which is basically just crossing the Thames on one of the many convenient bridges - on foot, examining their surroundings with a variety of mage sight spells active. Aura and Korrigan pick up the giant 'shielding bubble' over the area around Waterloo; it's about 2 km across, covering a decent chunk of the local area. Further examination reveals it to be a massive version of the well-known Shield of Chronos spell, which blocks temporal scrying on a location. The implication is that somebody's up to something here that they don't want anyone knowing about later.
Nobel stands in a lab with a young man in a lab coat. From their demeanour it is obvious that the traditional roles of teacher and student are reversed.
"The thing to remember," the young man says, "is to always armour up before going into a dangerous situation." He produces a long knife from inside his lab coat and grins like a shark. "Ready?"
Nobel reminds the cabal to raise mage armours before pushing on, so they take some time on the steps of the station to do so.
Thus protected, they cross the threshold. It's simple for Aura to track the emanation of the bubble to its source - the other side of a door marked 'staff only', on a busy concourse. Takeshi takes a seat at a nearby coffee shop and conjures a "minimap" spell - a conjunctional Mind and Space effect which allows him to get a perfect overview of his surroundings and track all the thinking beings moving within it. After filtering out all the rats and pigeons he finds another way into the staff area in a quieter section of the station. After leading the others there he tries to magically read the keycode from the lock but can't hold the spell in his mind correctly; Aura uses a more direct approach and just scrambles the electricity inside the lock, making it pop open.
Side Note: Reading the keycode and glitching the lock are both effects in the same arcanum (Forces) at the same level. The different approaches Tak and Aura take to the door says something about their characters.
A bit of poking around in the staff area uncovers a store room which has been cleared so that a ritual diagram can be sketched on the floor in charcoal. In the centre of the diagram is a broken clock. Nobel videos the whole thing on his phone and sends the video to Adler. Then he calls her. Meanwhile Takeshi uses a combination of Space magic and his eidetic memory to make sure he can reproduce the diagram if called for, then Indra and Aura clean up. Takeshi pockets a piece of the broken clock before they do.
Adler and Nobel have something of a fruitless conversation. It turns out that the ritual circle has served its purpose and the shield is now anchored by runes at its periphery that match those of the ritual diagram. Having cleaned up the mess the cabal scoot off - guided by Takeshi's Space magic - to start de-anchoring the shield. The first periphery rune is charcoaled in along with the graffiti behind Temple station to the north, and easily wiped off by Aura.
"Wait. Are you sure it's not going to explode or anything?" - Nobel
"Divination isn't normally explosive. It depends on which kind of entrails you use." - Aura
There is a brief pause while the cabal thinks about that, then decides as one to let it pass unremarked.
The second periphery rune is trickier - it's on a boat on the river, connected to the shore by a locked gangplank. While Takeshi, Indra and Nobel discuss subtle ways of getting to the rune; Korrigan and Aura stroll down the gangplank, climb the gate, and start searching the ship. Nobel ponders the practicalities of walking on water, Tak and Indra discuss clubbing and music - Indra has a gig that evening - and Korrigan finds the rune carved into the side of the boat just above the waterline. Aura makes short work of it with the knife which she always carries.
The gang reconvene on a nearby bridge, only to be alerted to a new problem. Now the shield is failing, the crime against reality that it was erected to cover becomes obvious to their magical senses: something bad is happening near the London Eye (not far from Waterloo) and making a clear-to-wizard-ears sound like Big Ben's evil twin. The cabal rush back across the Thames, heading for the eye. Takeshi falls slightly behind while he casts his senses over to the Eye: he sees a small black clock at its base - with every tick it unmakes more of the surrounding area, vanishing litter and small unattended items, and making the Eye itself groan with sudden material stresses. He shouts this to the others, and everybody sprints for the Eye.
Aura picks out a short woman in a pinstripe suit sitting calmly nearby while the London Eye staff start evacuation procedures. Mage sight reveals that she's got the sparkly aura of a mage. Aura changes course to confront her, Nobel scurries over to the Eye and starts using Matter magic to shore up its crumbling superstucture, and the other three hang back and try to think of ways to make themselves useful.
Aura and Pinstripe have a brief chat, Pinstripe establishing herself as being extremely impatient to do something but not really willing to explain what it is. Aura refuses to let her near the little black clock, so Pinstripe whips out her pocketwatch and casts a spell that accelerates her movements - vulgar magic, in public. Only the distraction of the creaking London Eye prevents the tourists all around from crushing her under the weight of their disbelief. Aura whips a truncheon out from somewhere but can't land a decent hit past Pinstripe's layered Time defences. She is joined moments later by Korrigan, flailing wildly at the time mage with a bag of books, and a pair of aggressive seagulls called by Indra.
Nobel shores up the Eye some more with his magic, then decides to go after the doom clock - which by this point is eating history at a rate of one week per tick. Some covert matter magic renders it as fragile as an eggshell, and Takeshi's shoe finishes the job. Problem solved! Pinstripe, seeing the clock reduced to little bits and pieces whirls her pocketwatch over her head...
...time bends, jumping back just a few vital seconds...
...and just as Aura, Korrigan and seagulls converge on her position Pinstripe flickers over to the doom clock and sends it away with a fast spell. Instead of fighting, talk breaks out.
It turns out the woman's name is Horologia, and she couldn't allow "her handiwork" to be damaged. Since none of the cabal remember the aborted time stream where they stomped the clock, they have no idea what she's talking about. Nobel has another fruitless conversation with Adler, who seems quite blase about all the vulgar magic in public and the potential destruction of a major London landmark, not to mention the unravelling of time. Horologia, meanwhile, keeps talking and makes little more sense - she claims she has other places to be, and keeps looking at her watch. There's a sanctum below the Eye, apparently, that she wants to get into - she proposes that in exchange for the cabal helping her get into it, she'll take first pick of the stuff down there.
The doom clock was also part of this plan, but exactly how it helped I'm not sure.
The cabal decide this is not a good deal. On the other hand, since they're not willing to just start a wizard fight in broad daylight - at least, not without probable cause in the form of a doom clock to stop - they can't prevent her from going down there. So they decide to follow along anyway.
--
And that's the end of the session!
What lurks beneath the London Eye?
What does a clock-obsessed mage of questionable sanity want with it?
Can we produce any reaction from Adler beyond mild interest?
Tune in next time for the answers!