Smoke and Shadows
The Campaign
The Campaign
A Consilium recovering from years of war is rocked by unrest, dark temptations and an old sin coming back into the light.
The city of East Bay has a checkered past. Situated on the American east coast it has a long history for American standards and its Awakened citizens have for most of it lived under the shadow of the Guardians of the Veil. Sixty years ago however a dangerous power vacuum opened the door for the Seers of the Throne and a long conflict resulted. After a particularly hot phase of the war that resulted in devastating losses on both sides, including the life of the previous Hierach, a tentative truce has been struck with the Seers and things have stabilized – on the surface. Tensions build as a generation that has known only war tries to cope with the idea of peace, evidence of left handed practices and other war crimes come to light and to top it all off whispers of an ancient boogeyman returned put fear into the hearts of the Awakened.
The City & Consilium
East Bay is a fictional city on the east coast of the united states. You can imagine it as a cross of New York, Chicago and Boston all rolled into one. It’s a harbor city and a river (the Lorn) is flowing through the city, cutting it roughly in half.
The Pentacle is represented through the Vinorium Consilium – nobody quite remembers where the name comes from anymore – one of the oldest Consilia in the new world. For a long time it has been dominated by the Guardians of the Veil, but in the last decades the Adamantine Arrow and Free Council have been the dominant orders as periods of warfare against the seers have dominated local events. A little bit less than a year ago a particularly bloody series of exchanges has weakened both the Pentacle and the Seers to the point that a truce was agreed upon. A young théarch going by the name Phoenix initiated the negotiations and claimed the position of Hierach as much through popular support as by skills in the duel arcane. Now the Consilium stands divided by those who favor the peace and those who feel that now would be the time to drive the Seers from East Bay – whatever the cost.
Due to the long wartime and the rather paranoid regime that preceded it the Cabal has become the cornerstone of Awakened life in East Bay, even more so than in other Consilia. Mages only trust a chosen few and for many that means only their Cabal. The locations of Sancta and Sympathetic Names are treated as serious secrets and the Rights Sanctuary and Crossing are treated very seriously indeed here. Outside ones Cabal the Orders offer a greater support network though through the constant warfare mages seldom gathered for Caucus and even more rarely for a full blown Consilium – too great were the risks. This lead to a fractured Consilium where every Mage only knew few others outside their Cabal. Only the Heralds and Councilors and a few other politically minded individuals have a broader overview of the Awakened population of the city. Now with Peace and an influx of new Mages seeking to claim a part of the rich supernatural landscape of East Port for themselves without the threat of war this might change, but for the moment Consilium is still fractured and paranoid – old habits die hard.
Outside the Pentacle there is a strong presence of Seers. There are few Nameless as the war has not been kind to those who lacked the support of cabal and order. However few does not mean none and in the hard times many had to turn to unsavory sources of power for survival. A gamut of other supernatural critters of every kind also exists as one would expect for a major city, though most know better than to meddle in awakened affairs.
The Rules
I already warned you: There will be quite a few houserules. I’ll post all of them here, but I can’t make any guarantees that I will think of every particularity right off the bat – if I feel the need to make a new houseruling I will announce it in the IC threat in a spoiler and add it to this sections.
Dramatic Failures: If a roll does produces ones and no die shows a six or higher it’s a dramatic failure. You will still get a beat if you produce a dramatic failure in this way, but they can not happen outside of chance dice (and player choice).
Legacies: Legacies are ancient wisdom passed on from luminous masters of the craft. Not any two-bit wizard can create their own. To create a new legacy a Mage must have a Gnosis of 6 aswell as have attained Mastery of both the primary and secondary Arcanum of the Legacy. To teach a Legacy you are a part of to another Mage you need to have unlocked the third Attainment of the Legacy.
I tend to give Legacies more leeway than RAW in their Attainments. You can take a look at my homebrew (signature) for some examples, but a good way to eyeball it would be that I tend to allow legacy attainments to have another reach.
Legacy Oblations give Mana in accordance with their grade of initiation into the legacy. Meaning you get Mana equal to the highest attainment unlocked, not equal to the dots in the primary Arcanum.
Legacies come with a Rote skill of their own, in addition to those unlocked by orders (to a total of 4).
Homebrew: I’m open to homebrewed merits and utility attainments. If you want to take something like that I’m certainly open to it, though I may tweak or veto stuff I’m uncomfortable with for any reason. Additional utility attainments beyond the first unlocked by reaching the appropriate Arcanum level can be purchased with 1 (lesser) or 2 (greater) xp.
Arcane Experience: Half of the price (round down) of purchasing another Arcanum or Gnosis dot must be paid in Arcane Experience. If you don’t explore the magical side of things you won’t develop your magical abilities.
Training Arcana: Arcana outside your Paths and Legacies ruling Arcana require a teacher to be increased, regardless of rating. Why derive ourselves of this storyhook?
Wisdom: Does not exist as a stat. The consequences of your actions are their own rewards. Paradox is contained with a Resolve + Composure roll (taking a -1 penalty for every Soul Stone you have created). The Mad still exist, they usually come to be when a Mage focusses on his or her obsessions to the exclusion of everything else.
Pattern Restoration: Certain (supernatural) conditions cannot be removed using Pattern Restoration. An example would be things like a Vampire using Dominate on your character.
Spirit Clash pools: Ephemeral Entities will use their Rank + Attribute for Clashes of Wills. This will make them quite more powerful in Clashes of Wills (as opposed to being ridiculously bad at it before, often rolling only their Rank as of RAW making even lesser Incarna pushovers for even Disciple mages), think twice about messing with Rank 3+ spirits, even if you are versed in the relevant Arcana.
Clashes of Wills and Mages: First off you do not ALLWAYS know when one of your spells clashes another spell/ability. This is a case by case thing, but the most important example for this rule will be veiling spells. If somebody uses a veiling spell to hide a door and you cast a spell looking for hidden compartments then on a failure on the investigators part he will NOT be aware that he just ran into an illusion he failed to penetrate.
Enhancing Magic with Magic:
Clashes of Wills: You can spend a wp to get the normal +3 dice and get the boni from duration and advanced potency, but otherwise the pool cannot further be enhanced by magic. No Prime/Fate Ruling or Perfecting spell can give you Potency dice or dice tricks on those.
Spellcasting: Fate or Prime (or with some creativity maybe other Arcana) spells can give you dicetricks for spellcasting (9/8 again for ruling, Rote quality at Perfecting), but straight up dice boni are out of the picture.
Reflexive Spellcasting: Will mostly not be a thing, looking at you there Exceptional Luck. I’m fine with it in some cases, like the Death Veiling spells that lets you play dead, so feel free to ask. But I’m going to say no in many cases.
Messing with Powerstats: Is a no. You can’t increase/decrease another Mages Gnosis by one with Prime Perfectign/Fraying, at least not really. Same for Spirit ranks, Blood Potency, whatever.
Surpassing the Dicecap: Can usually be done with a Mana and a reach, I will take this option out. Not really because it’s necessarily to powerful or anything, it just tends to lead to prolonged and completely unfun preparation fests (and forces me to consider NPCs doing the same which is a lot of really unimportant work I’d rather not do, figuring out the spells npcs would have running is a chore already).
Specific Spells:
Shifting Sands – The reach to travel back a whole scene can only be taken once.
Rotes:
Using a rote for a spell of an Arcanum you have mastered grants another free reach.
Sympathy:
Not knowing the sympathetic name of the target will (in addition to increasing withstand) reduce the effective degree of sympathy by one, resulting in weak sympathy being unable to establish a connection at all if you do not know the targets name.
Character Creation
You start out as established mages. Wether you’re a new arrival or a native, just finished your apprenticeship or have been around the block on your own for some time is up to you.
Who is your character? What are her Aspirations, her Obsessions? What are your goals ooc (if any), what would you like to see/experience in this campaign? What are the Associates (Acolytes, Friends, Family, etc.) of your character? What’s his or her history?
Rules wise use the standard chargen for MtAw 2nd Edition with the following changes:
Gnosis starts at two without any additional cost. You cannot trade in your starting Merit points for additional points of Gnosis.
If you want to start initiated into a Legacy you can trade one merit point for a Legacy Attainment.
The Cast
@Second Chances -
Beans -
Arcanist -
Nicolas Milioni -
gamora -
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