Reality Zones and the Umbra

[Dataweaver]

This was inspired by a discussion in a recent thread about “The Technocracy and Star Trek”, which veered into discussing Disembodiment/Void Adaptation and how “primal mages like Dreamspeakers and Verbenae” got to hang around in the Umbra much longer than anyone else before Disembodiment set in. I expressed an issue with “primal mages” getting that sorry of an edge without any drawbacks, and was challenged on it. With that in mind:

Actually, my problem isn't with primal mages having a free advantage in the Umbra. I mean, I do have something of a problem with that; but it's not my main problem. My main problem is with there being an Umbra, singular, with a consistent set of rules that applies across the board. I could see the idea of the “middle Umbra” being a sort of home turf for mages who have an animistic or back-to-nature bent to their Focus, and thus being able to hang out there for long stretches of time without any fear of Disembodiment. But should the Astral and Dark Umbrae be as accommodating to them? Shouldn't other kinds of Foci, such as the ones supported by Hermetics and Euthanatoi respectively, get that benefit in the Upper and Lower Umbrae? And then there's the matter of Etherspace: shouldn't the likes of the Sons of Ether be the ones who have no problem staying there for long stretches of time, rather than shamans and witches?

The idea that it's always the witches and shamans who get this benefit no matter what the environment is like? That's the real issue.

And related to that is the notion that all magic is coincidental in the Umbra. Again, this is a case of treating everything with the word “Umbra” in it as a monolithic block, when clearly different parts of the Umbra have their own characteristics; and it isn't until you get out into the Deep Umbra that the character of the environment is that it is undefined.

Still, I'm not one to completely throw out what's come before; I'm more inclined to rework it into something that hews as closely to the original as possible while making more sense to me. So let me propose this: there is a universal characteristic that holds throughout the Umbrae that distinguishes them from Earth. But it isn't that all Magick is Coincidental; it's that there are no Earthly Foundations.

In this take on the Umbrae, there Reality Zones in the Umbra as well as on Earth. Without a human presence or Earthly Foundations, they can be much more fluid than their Earth-bound counterparts (easier to change, and less restricted in how they can change) and much more permissive (on average, fewer things are Vulgar in an Umbral Reality Zone than in an Earthside one); but they're there. If your Focus is one that's largely aligned with the Umbral Reality Zone you happen to find yourself in, then you don't have to worry so much about Disembodiment; and of course, you also needn't worry so much about Vulgar Magick, as your Magick is almost certainly not Vulgar.

The only place that doesn't have Reality Zones is the Deep Umbra.

Thoughts?

[Erinys]

I'm coming at least partly from a Werewolf cosmology/unified WoD perspective, once firmly centered on Earth, and I admittedly have a hard time understanding consensual reality. I admit that I am totally biased against the Technocrats. So this may or may not make sense to anyone who had the good fortune to be able to play Mage.


The way I see it, the Technocratic paradigm is a lie and always has been. Not because their technology is a lie, but because they lie about everything else not existing. So Paradox does what it does now because the Technocrats have utterly screwed up the sleeper consensus with their lies. In the Umbra, reality is still what it always was: fluid, magical, alive, and spiritual. It's muted and weakened and sickly compared to what it was millennia ago, maybe due to the stupidly thick Gauntlet, but it's still fundamentally spiritual. There are no ignorant humans out there to lie to about the way reality works, and spirits can get in your face and remind you that they do exist. It's my understanding that in the distant past, when the Gauntlet was a lot thinner and quintessence/vis/gnosis/glamour was a lot more plentiful, there wasn't really Paradox in the material world - that the Scourge started some time in the Dark Ages or Sorcerer's Crusade time as a result of the growing dominance of Christianity, but it didn't exist before that.

Sort of like how the growing Banality of humanity has slowly strangled a lot of the glamour out of the Autumn world, but the Dreaming is still made of glamour. The spirit worlds are magic and spirit, that's what they're made of. They can't be forced to deny themselves. Not even in the Abyss. Even the Gauntlet and the Shroud are ultimately unnatural - they were violations inflicted upon a cosmos that was once whole, and wholly spiritual.

What do exist are the rules or laws of each Realm. Don't try healing magick in Malfeas if you don't love cancer. Don't try to create permanent static magic in the Radiance. Don't try to set things on fire underwater in Umi, the Dragon Kingdom of the Sea. Don't do things against the rules in the Grand Hall, even if you don't know the rules. Don't try to use your fancy computer in Pangaea. Don't try to create a big light source down in the Abyss. Don't do... something in the Underworld.

There are also things that become the equivalent of chaos magick. Like Entropy in the Underworld, or explosions in the Shade Realm of Forces, or sensory deprivation meditations in the Abyss.

But denial? No, I don't think flat denial about the spiritual truth about reality and magic's existence is possible in any place that hasn't been cut off from the spirit worlds by the Gauntlet and Shroud, and splattered with centuries of Technocratic propaganda, especially in the fluid "space" between Realms. Probably in Dystopia and the Scar, magick does best to be flavored towards technomagic, but it still doesn't have to obey the artificially narrow rules of Technocratic consensus technology. I think that only in places utterly under the control of Control would the Technocratic paradigm actually replace the true, magical nature of reality.



I like your idea that Verbenae are protected from disconnection only in the Middle Umbra, and other mysticks would have an easier time in some other Umbra instead, depending on their paradigm (or whatever it's called in M20). So Hermetics and Singers and Cultists and Akashics in the High Umbra, Euthanatoi in the Underworld, Etherites in Etherspace, Virtual Adepts in the Digital Web of course, Dreamspeakers in whichever Umbra is home to whatever spirit(s) they're closest to. Kinfolk are safe in the Middle Umbra, and maybe Kinain are in the Dreaming (but the Dreaming has its own rules I guess). Anyone with the advantage of a familiar or a totem or a merit is golden. That said, I think any Spirit-using paradigm should be equally OK in the Deep Umbra. And I personally think that disconnection should be faster in the Realms of Mind and Spirit, and never happen to anyone in the Realms of Matter and Life.

But of your idea seems to raise a problem: if someone is protected in whatever part of the Umbra is most in tune with their paradigm, the Horizon Realms should be one of the last places that a mage disconnects (if they're in their group's Realm).



But the reason I challenged you was my question about game balance: is it a bad thing if mysticks get some unique advantages? Aren't Technocrats automatically strongly advantaged by the setting? They sure look like they are, but I'm asking if my impression is correct. I tend to root for underdogs and dangit, the Technos are the ones who created the Avatar Storm. On purpose! So part of me just says they deserve to get burned by it, more than other mages. Not that there is anything resembling cosmic justice or fair karma in the WoD. But, er, I am in favor of game balance.

[Dataweaver]

I'm coming at least partly from a Werewolf cosmology/unified WoD perspective, once firmly centered on Earth, and I admittedly have a hard time understanding consensual reality. So this may or may not make sense to anyone who had the good fortune to be able to play Mage.

The way I see it, the Technocratic paradigm is a lie and always has been. Not because their technology is a lie, but because they lie about everything else not existing. So Paradox does what it does now because the Technocrats have utterly screwed up the sleeper consensus with their lies. In the Umbra, reality is still what it always was: fluid, magical, alive, and spiritual. It's muted and weakened and sickly compared to what it was millennia ago, maybe due to the stupidly thick Gauntlet, but it's still fundamentally spiritual. There are no ignorant humans out there to lie to about the way reality works, and spirits can get in your face and remind you that they do exist. It's my understanding that in the distant past, when the Gauntlet was a lot thinner and quintessence/vis/gnosis/glamour was a lot more plentiful, there wasn't really Paradox in the material world - that the Scourge started some time in the Dark Ages or Sorcerer's Crusade time as a result of the growing dominance of Christianity, but it didn't exist before that.

Sort of like how the growing Banality of humanity has slowly strangled the glamour out of the Autumn world, but the Dreaming is still made of glamour. The spirit worlds are magic and spirit, that's what they're made of. They can't be forced to deny themselves. Not even in the Abyss. Even the material world, the Gauntlet, and the Shroud are ultimately unnatural - they were violations inflicted upon a cosmos that was once whole, and wholly spiritual.

What do exist are the rules or laws of each Realm. Don't try healing magick in Malfeas if you don't like cancer. Don't try to create permanent static magic in the Radiance. Don't try to set things on fire underwater in Umi, the Dragon Kingdom of the Sea. Don't do things against the rules in the Grand Hall, even if you don't know the rules. Don't try to use your fancy computer in Pangaea. Don't try to create a big light source down in the Abyss. Don't do... something in the Underworld.

There are also things that become the equivalent of chaos magick. Like Entropy in the Underworld, or explosions in the Shade Realm of Forces, or sensory deprivation meditations in the Abyss.

But denial? No, I don't think flat denial about the spiritual truth about reality and magic's existence is possible in any place that hasn't been cut off from the spirit worlds by the Gauntlet and Shroud, and splattered with centuries of Technocratic propaganda. Maybe in Dystopia and the Scar, magick does best to be flavored towards technomagic, but it still doesn't have to obey they artificially narrow rules of Technocratic pseudoscience. I think that only in places utterly under the control of Control would the Technocratic paradigm actually replace the true, fluid nature of reality.

I could definitely see many Dreamspeakers thinking this way; it's a very Spirit-centric view of things, where spirits and spirituality are the ultimate truths and everything else is judged against them. I wouldn't present it as the ultimate Truth, for the same reason why Mage hasn't described the Technocracy as pawns of the Weaver in ages; the idea that technology is of the Weaver is a Werewolfism, and not something that Mage takes as an absolute: in Mage terms, it's what the Garou believe; but that doesn't make it true. Heck, Mage has long since moved past the idea that the Weaver is Stasis; in Mage, Stasis may very well be more fundamental than the Weaver is. And Technocrats aren't even beholden to Stasis these days; the few references to them being devoted to it are holdovers from the earliest edition of the game, and great efforts have been made to downplay and reinterpret them in less of a “pawns of the Weaver” approach. Which doesn't keep the Garou from thinking that they're pawns of the Weaver; but Werewolf doesn't determine what's true in Mage.

As well, Technocratic Reality Zones make a lot of things Vulgar — as do most other Reality Zones. It's just the way of things: to believe that some things are possible, you almost have to believe that other things aren't. (There are some exceptions to this, such as the eternal mission of the Etherites to gradually expand the bounds of what's accepted as possible until nothing is left out; but that's more aspirational than something that anyone has actually accomplished). But with that said, Paradox isn't a human creation: per the Earthly Foundations, there are certain things that tend to cause Paradox even if the locals sincerely believe in them. And among the examples given of Earthly Foundations is crossing the Gauntlet. The Union has sought to strengthen the Gauntlet; but it didn't create it; as far as anyone knows, the Gauntlet has always existed. Paradox has been called other things over the centuries: the Straits in Victorian times, the Scourge during the Sorcerers Crusade, Backlash in the Dark Ages; but it's always been there for as long as there have been mages. And no, it wasn't created by Christianity: Ars Magica has something in it about the Divine Realm of Power interfering with the Magical, Faerie, and Infernal Realms of Power; but that's not something that was ever ported over to the World of Darkness, beyond perhaps the powers of True Faith. And even that isn't a Christianity-only thing: True Faith has been around as long as there have been people who believe in something greater than themselves. Certainly, it's not responsible for Paradox.

I like your idea that Verbenae (and Kinfolk?) are protected from disconnection only in the Middle Umbra, and other mysticks would have an easier time in some other Umbra instead, depending on their paradigm (or whatever it's called in M20). So Hermetics and Singers and Cultists and Akashics in the High Umbra, Euthanatoi in the Underworld, Etherites in Etherspace, Virtual Adepts in the Digital Web of course, Dreamspeakers in whichever Umbra is home to whatever spirit(s) they're closest to, and maybe Kinain in the Dreaming. Unless they have the advantage of a familiar or a totem or a merit, in which case they're golden. That said, I think any spirit-using paradigm should be equally OK in the Deep Umbra. And I personally think that disconnection should be faster in the Realms of Mind and Spirit, and never happen to anyone in the Realms of Matter and Life.

For what it's worth, there are many who would argue that the Digital Web isn't a spirit world. One of the points that supports this is that Disembodiment simply isn't a thing in the Digital Web. As well, when the Avatar Storm struck, it did nothing to interfere with access to the Digital Web. There may be, and in fact probably are, other “otherworlds” that aren't spiritual in nature, either; a case could be made that the Dreaming isn't, for example.

More generally, the whole idea that everything otherworldly centers around the Umbra is another Werewolfism. The Virtual Adepts, for example, view the Tapestry through the notion of the Hypersphere, where the Correspondence Point is at the center of everything; the physical world and most of the otherworlds (including the Umbrae) exist on the “surface” of the Hypersphere; and Virtual Space (which includes the Digital Web) is what connects the Correspondence Point to the rest of the Tapestry. The Alder Bole, which spiritualists say is the center of reality, is viewed by the Virtual Adepts as merely the spirit world's representation of the Correspondence Point. I'm not saying they're right; but I wouldn't say that they're wrong, either.

But of your idea seems to raise a problem: if someone is protected in whatever part of the Umbra is most in tune with their paradigm, the Horizon Realms should be one of the last places that a mage disconnects (if they're in their Tradition's realm).

Normally, that would be true. But the Avatar Storm screwed things up; and for its duration, nobody got more than three months anywhere in the Umbra before they Disembodied.

I'll address the rest in the original thread, because it doesn't really have anything to do with this thread.

[tasti man LH]

On principle regarding Reality Zones/Paradigms onto an Umbral Realm? Yes.

There is definitely a limit to how much you can get away with Effects and just claiming they’re all Coincidental ‘cause Umbra realm.

We technically already have a precedent with the Digital Web in that if you explicitly try to pull any Effects from a mystical Paradigm are immediately considered Vulgar.

Or to be more direct: yeah I would think trying to create a permanent, ever-cold glacier in the Realm of Fire would be Vulgar.

[CajunKhan]

I think the reasons they made Technocrats disadvantaged in terms of Umbral survival are mainly practical: if Technocrats were not so disadvantaged, wouldn't they just build a massive empire in the Umbra? Dreamspeakers and Verbena aren't going to do that. It simply isn't in their nature, nor their numbers. But the Technocracy?

Same reason they created the storm: to keep earth important.

[Dataweaver]

Two points: first, the malleability of Umbral Reality makes it hard to keep an advantage there; easy come, easy go. Second, the Technocracy didn't create the Avatar Storm; at least, not deliberately.

[The Nilbog]

We technically already have a precedent with the Digital Web in that if you explicitly try to pull any Effects from a mystical Paradigm are immediately considered Vulgar.

Minor point of order: by default, the Digital Web doesn't prohibit mystick praxis itself, but rather, all effects require a visible and readily discernible source. A Hermetic shooting a fireball from a magic wand would actually have an easier time than a Black Suit attempting to mind controlled people with rhetoric alone. Granted, technomancers generally run into this issue less than mysticks, but that's not technically where the divide lies.

This doesn't hold true everywhere, of course. Zones can be formatted by just about anybody with the knowhow to operate on whatever "Consensus" the creator wants.

[Ambrosia]

For what it's worth, there are many who would argue that the Digital Web isn't a spirit world. One of the points that supports this is that Disembodiment simply isn't a thing in the Digital Web.

Welllllll....
The problem with the Digital Web there could be something as humble as a lack of observed data in that regard.
Unlike most ways of traveling to the Umbra, the Digital Web is more or less majorly traversed by ways of sending your mind there while the body remains in normal meatspace. So not only is the way of traveling there quite different, (which miiiiight account for a lack of Avatar Storm mechanics), but also it might account for most Mages involved with the digital web simply *thinking* that disembodiement is not a thing over there - after all it is hardly possible to spend more than a few *days* there by most means of DIgital Web travel without starting to run into serious health problems in meatspace. Not even speaking of, uh, hygiene problems that take a way shorter amount of time.

TL;DR: The ways to run into the problem of possible disembodiement on the DIgital Web are severely limited or impossible in the vast majority of ways of normally accessing it.

[Dataweaver]

(Heh; Ambrosia said that there's a lack of data regarding the Digital Web…)

The rules for access to the DW allow for three levels of access: sensory visitation (which doesn't require any Magick at all), Astral Immersion (Corr/Data 2), and Holistic Immersion (Life 4, Forces 2, Corr/Data 2). That last one is roughly analogous to Stepping Sideways in that you fully enter the DW and interact with it as if you were physically in an otherworld; but it's described more like a transformation of a Life Pattern into a digital pattern. Holistic Immersion is only “rare” to the extent that VAs with Life 4, Corr/Data 2, Forces 2 are rare; Life isn't a Sphere that one typically finds in a VA arsenal. But it's common enough that there isn't a shortage of VAs whoo do the Tron thing of digitizing themselves to visit their Reality 2.0 in person.

In essence, it would be like the rules insisting that one must transform into a spirit in order to physically enter the Umbra. So Disembodiment isn't an issue in the DW because you're already “disembodied” when you arrive. Except that you don't suffer any ill effects from it and can easily reverse the process.

[Ambrosia]

In essence, it would be like the rules insisting that one must transform into a spirit in order to physically enter the Umbra. So Disembodiment isn't an issue in the DW because you're already “disembodied” when you arrive. Except that you don't suffer any ill effects from it and can easily reverse the process.

Well, true, I guess there is a certain share of holistic immersers...the question is if, of the share that *do* this, any noticable amount actually do it for months at at time.

But *if* some do and it works well without losing oneself ( ...or are those that are staying there for JUUUUUST a bit longer already disembodied without noticing...? Fragementation is a bitch... ), then the reverse approach might be true - a voluntary and controlled turning into Ephemera when traditionally sidestepping might avoid disembodiement the same way.
This calls for...

SCIENCE! (And alternative mystical experimentations akin to such things)

[Dataweaver]

Well, true, I guess there is a certain share of holistic immersers...the question is if, of the share that *do* this, any noticable amount actually do it for months at at time.

DW2.0 had something in it about how there had one been holistic immersers who had basically immigrated to the DW; but then the White Out happened, and everyone found out why it's not yet a good idea to do that.

In short, the problem isn't Disembodiment; it's that Reality 2.0 isn't stable enough yet.

But *if* some do and it works well without losing oneself ( ...or are those that are staying there for JUUUUUST a bit longer already disembodied without noticing...? Fragementation is a bitch... ), then the reverse approach might be true - a voluntary and controlled turning into Ephemera when traditionally sidestepping might avoid disembodiement the same way.
This calls for...

SCIENCE! (And alternative mystical experimentations akin to such things)

That's only true if the situations are analogous. My point is that it appears that the similarities between them are only surface deep.

[Erinys]

Edit: See, my difficulty with Mage consensus cosmology is that it seems to say nothing is true, or everything is equally true. Then we can't say anything definitive about anything. But yet there have to be definite game rules.

I could definitely see many Dreamspeakers thinking this way; it's a very Spirit-centric view of things, where spirits and spirituality are the ultimate truths and everything else is judged against them.

The spirit worlds collectively are a heck of a lot larger and deeper than the material worlds, so it's hard to argue that the material world is more fundamental. Being a place of spirit-less matter, the material world is the odd duck out. Or the material world and the Shade Realm of Matter. Assuming the former isn't somewhere inside the latter.

I wouldn't present it as the ultimate Truth, for the same reason why Mage hasn't described the Technocracy as pawns of the Weaver in ages; the idea that technology is of the Weaver is a Werewolfism, and not something that Mage takes as an absolute: in Mage terms, it's what the Garou believe; but that doesn't make it true. Heck, Mage has long since moved past the idea that the Weaver is Stasis; in Mage, Stasis may very well be more fundamental than the Weaver is. And Technocrats aren't even beholden to Stasis these days; the few references to them being devoted to it are holdovers from the earliest edition of the game, and great efforts have been made to downplay and reinterpret them in less of a “pawns of the Weaver” approach. Which doesn't keep the Garou from thinking that they're pawns of the Weaver; but Werewolf doesn't determine what's true in Mage.

The science+technology = Bad concept wasn't a good design choice for either game, really. I have a friend who loves the CofD but can't stand the cWoD because of it, and I can't really blame her.

But the Technocracy are also all about control, about limiting possibilities and options, about censoring knowledge as a weapon to remove things from reality, and about explaining everything in reductionistic ways that eliminate spirituality, souls, intuition, and lots of other details that they know do actually exist. Those goals are also Stasis. (In Werewolf terms, Stasis and the Weaver would be the same thing. By definition, nothing but the Almighty Creator can be bigger than the Weaver because it's inherently 1/3 of all reality.) If Dynamism, Stasis, and Entropy are each 1/3 of reality in Mage, then the same is true: you can't have something bigger than Stasis, except for God/the One.

Edit: And how can the things Technocrats tell the 'Masses' not be lies? They say magic is impossible, that "reality deviants" and spirits don't exist, but they know all three are real and do exist. They insist there is no spirit world, but they know it exists and how to enter it. They censor scientific discoveries that they don't like.

I wasn't saying the Technocrats created the Gauntlet or Shroud, of course. They appear to be making the Gauntlet thicker, but both barriers would have been created in prehistoric times, like the Stone Age or even earlier. Wraith seems to say the Shroud was created by the fear of death. Werewolf says the Gauntlet was created by the Weaver. In a unified WoD, or in Mage, humans couldn't know because they have no recorded history (oral or written) old enough to tell them anything about that time period. No Mage craft or Tradition is that old, so how would they know what happened then? Let alone claiming to know how the universe was created - humans didn't exist then so how would they know? Some spirits could know, but most mages don't talk to spirits, and some spirits could be lying. And if a spirit says "this god created XYZ" to an atheist mage, the mage'll just ignore what it said.

You mentioned Earthly Foundations several times. Is this some term from the Technocratic paradigm, or an OOC game term? I have the same question about "Reality Zone", too.

As well, Technocratic Reality Zones make a lot of things Vulgar — as do most other Reality Zones. It's just the way of things: to believe that some things are possible, you almost have to believe that other things aren't.

I don't agree, at least not in an absolute sense. Maybe in Mage that is the case, but in terms of worldbuilding a plausible fantasy setting it isn't necessarily true. Some magic may require a higher level spell but that isn't the same as being absolutely impossible to do. It's possible to invent an internally-consistent fantasy magic system in which absolutely anything can be accomplished.

Paradox has been called other things over the centuries: the Straits in Victorian times, the Scourge during the Sorcerers Crusade, Backlash in the Dark Ages; but it's always been there for as long as there have been mages. And no, it wasn't created by Christianity: Ars Magica has something in it about the Divine Realm of Power interfering with the Magical, Faerie, and Infernal Realms of Power; but that's not something that was ever ported over to the World of Darkness, beyond perhaps the powers of True Faith. And even that isn't a Christianity-only thing: True Faith has been around as long as there have been people who believe in something greater than themselves. Certainly, it's not responsible for Paradox.

Thank you for clearing up my misunderstanding.

For what it's worth, there are many who would argue that the Digital Web isn't a spirit world. One of the points that supports this is that Disembodiment simply isn't a thing in the Digital Web. As well, when the Avatar Storm struck, it did nothing to interfere with access to the Digital Web. There may be, and in fact probably are, other “otherworlds” that aren't spiritual in nature, either; a case could be made that the Dreaming isn't, for example.

More generally, the whole idea that everything otherworldly centers around the Umbra is another Werewolfism. The Virtual Adepts, for example, view the Tapestry through the notion of the Hypersphere, where the Correspondence Point is at the center of everything; the physical world and most of the otherworlds (including the Umbrae) exist on the “surface” of the Hypersphere; and Virtual Space (which includes the Digital Web) is what connects the Correspondence Point to the rest of the Tapestry. The Alder Bole, which spiritualists say is the center of reality, is viewed by the Virtual Adepts as merely the spirit world's representation of the Correspondence Point. I'm not saying they're right; but I wouldn't say that they're wrong, either.

The Virtual Adept paradigm is one I've never been able to understand. The Virtual Space has to predate computers to be the center of the universe. But if it isn't made of data and websites, what is it? I guess it must be made of thoughts, if it used to be the Qutb network. But in that case how is it different from the Astral?

[Ramnesis]

Depending on VA in question, the correspondence point isn't even a *real* thing so much as a mathematical model of a specialized point that has a near zero distance from every possible point. It's more of a mathematical model or thought experiment. You don't have to view the VA world view as something only possible with computers.

[tasti man LH]

Edit: See, my difficulty with Mage consensus cosmology is that it seems to say nothing is true, or everything is equally true. Then we can't say anything definitive about anything. But yet there have to be definite game rules.

Because WoD cosmology is a mess and doesn't make sense if you try to line up all of the gameline's cosmologies together, yes.

[Dataweaver]

I'll get back to Erinys' post later, when I have more time. But for the time being, what tasti man LH said. In fact, Ascension addresses this directly with its Fractured Cosmos theory, which posits the idea that there isn't a single World of Darkness but several of them that exist in parallel and resonate with each other. In essence, one per gameline. In the Werewolf cosmos, the Triat is indeed supreme as the Garou imagine them to be; but in the Vampire cosmos, you don't even have Garou, let alone the Triat; you have “lupines”. And so on. It's basically the watsonian version of “the World of Darkness is whatever your Storyteller says that it is”.

And in true Mage tradition, it's not presented as an absolute Truth either. Just a theory.