[oWoD Mage] Contract/Pact Magic ?s

[Audious]

Hey, rolling up a new dude for a Mage: the Ascension game I'm in. The guy is a lawyer in his sleeper life, and a relatively-newly awakened mage. He doesn't have a very strong avatar and is pretty jealous of other mages. He's just recently joined an investigation agency headed up by the new supernatural council in Boston.

Ultimately, I want him to become kind of a puppetmaster/behind-the-scenes type of guy, so he'll use contract/pact magic.

Question #1: I'm figuring it's Correspondence, Entropy or Prime, but I'm not sure what sphere to actually bind someone to the terms of the contract. I don't want to use Mind to force them to follow through with it, because, often times I'll want them to mess it up.

Question #2: What are some good examples of bureaucratic cruelty that I can pull off on people?

[stainboy]

Spirit can do basically anything. If you can't figure out how to do something with Mage spheres, summon an unspecified spirit to do it for you.

Even the intended uses of spirit fit well. Binding spirits with contracts is a common fantasy trope.

[Caliphbubba]

Hey, rolling up a new dude for a Mage: the Ascension game I'm in. The guy is a lawyer in his sleeper life, and a relatively-newly awakened mage. He doesn't have a very strong avatar and is pretty jealous of other mages. He's just recently joined an investigation agency headed up by the new supernatural council in Boston.

Ultimately, I want him to become kind of a puppetmaster/behind-the-scenes type of guy, so he'll use contract/pact magic.

Question #1: I'm figuring it's Correspondence, Entropy or Prime, but I'm not sure what sphere to actually bind someone to the terms of the contract. I don't want to use Mind to force them to follow through with it, because, often times I'll want them to mess it up.

Question #2: What are some good examples of bureaucratic cruelty that I can pull off on people?

What sort of penalties do you want the contract to have?

I'd almost say it would be like Correspondence+Time+Life/Spirit/Mind conjunctional effect. Time to hang the effect in contingency, correspondence to alert you to the breach of the contract, and Life or Spirit or Mind to anchor it to the person depending on how you want to do it. Throw in Entropy or Forces whatever if you want it to DO something to them like bad luck

[FreelanceAngel]

Sounds like you'll end up being a Nephandus once the demons hear about what your mage is doing. ^_^ Awesome.

As for contracts, the best combination I ever used was-

Prime- to involve the person's essence in the forging of the contract; this also ensured any effects of said contract would be only on this person and not easily shifted to someone else. (Prime Sphere level 3, I think, was what my Storyteller and I agreed on.) Life/Mind won't quite work because they're general spheres- it's Prime that can code onto a person's very soul and ensure that the contract sticks to them.

If you write it properly, you can tie your own essence into the contract- still using Prime- in order to alert you to whatever the conditions of the contractg are. I would use Entropy to try and keep it balanced- gotta have that luck on your side- and then whatever sphere is needed for the effects of the contract's fulfillment and breakage.

Example- You're arranging a contract with a lesser mage to give them a bit of your own ability with Time. They're supposed to pay you a monthly dose of dross- I think the term for Quintessence in a physical form like a coin or pen is the same as it is for Changeling's Glamour- in exchange for this. So you use Prime to write the contract into both of you, Time and Mind to shift some of your learning over to the person and you use Life to create a trigger where if you don't get the payment required, the person becomes Belkar with the activated Mark of Justice or something of the like.

It'll probably cost a pretty hefty does of Quintessence to write a contract like that, but you'd need it from both parties. (Faith/Glamour/Gnosis/Quintessence are all essentially the same thing, so you shouldn't have any trouble if you're writing a contract for a demon, changeling, werewolf or other mage.)