[OOC] [Mage: the Awakening 2E] The Supernal Suburbia

[Caladriu]

I vote that anyone besides me who offers an in-character answer to Moonstone's Supernal riddle should get an Arcane Beat.

[Kvitebjørn Kong Valemon]

...well, that was tragic. It also strikes me that Lynx Awakened after the Deathstorm, since he's been Awakened for 4 or 5 days.

[rwknoll]

I vote that anyone besides me who offers an in-character answer to Moonstone's Supernal riddle should get an Arcane Beat.

Boomer was going to reply (she is actually philosophically minded) but my post was getting too long, haha.

[rwknoll]

I hope the posting format here isn't getting too confusing. There are a lot of questions and topics coming up in the conversation, but I hope the overall narrative flows well and makes sense.

[Caladriu]

It makes sense to me so far. I'm imagining this as an abstraction, like snippets of a longer conversation. Or maybe going through a dialogue tree in an RPG.

Thank you for taking the time to write long posts, I'm really enjoying being able to breathe like this. Your work is appreciated!

[Haberdasher]

Replied to the riddle in-character before reading the OC thread. Haha! I figured that Ragnar, being a scholarly type of a Catholic background, has probably considered the question of evil on more than one occasion, so he's filtering both the riddle and his answer through that lens.

I, too, am okay with the conversation format. It prioritizes intent over chronology, which I think is fine, given the medium of PBP. Characters are able to respond as they want to, and we're able to get a full picture of the conversation.

[Caladriu]

This isn't related to the current scene, but I'm thinking of buying a Goetic Familiar for Moonstone in the near future. There's a great section in the 1E supplement Summoners that talks about summoning from the Oneiros, calling up your own subconscious dreams and hopes and anxieties as goetia. I'll quote the relevant bits:

Morpheans
Morpheans are among the simplest of Astral
entities to call, provided that the mage wishes to
access her own dream-realm and not that of another.
These beings are almost formless, existing
only as insubstantial ephemera in Twilight; they
are incapable of manifesting, either under their
own power or that of another. Mechanically, they
function as spirits of the lowest order, being minute
fractions of the subconscious mind of a human
(or near-human) being. As it is not truly a spirit,
however, a morphean simply vanishes back into the
Oneiros of the individual who spawned it, when
reduced to zero Corpus.

A Morphean that successfully manages to use its
Influence upon an individual specifically manifests
exaggerated elements of the Oneiros out of
which it was drawn. For example, a mage who
summons a cabalmate’s unresolved enmity toward
his deceased brother will, if successfully targeted
by the morphean’s Sibling Rivalry Influence, forcefully
demonstrate the particular qualities of that
cabalmate’s anger and jealousy toward anyone
she regards as a brother or sister, while under the
Influence’s effects. Even if she is normally given to
subtle displays of vitriol, she might throw a punch
or swear vociferously, if that is the sort of reaction
that her cabalmate might evince.

And it lists some example entities, like the Oedipus Complex or Jimmy Fisk's Test Anxiety. These are 1E rules but the concept is the same.

What I specifically want to do is bind Moonstone's Fear of Alux as a Rank 2 Familiar, because it sounds badass and Mastigos as hell. As long as it's outside of his Oneiros, he's resistant to supernatural fear effects like Awe/Emotional Aura and makes his anxieties work for him. Here's what rwknoll offered as guidelines for Familiars earlier in the thread

Regarding the familiar:

I could've sworn the exact number of Attributes was in the book, but you're right. Weird. Let's go with 6 attributes and 2 Numina for rank 1, or 11 attributes and 4 Numina for rank 2. I will award bonus attributes and Numina as you gain experience, to reflect your familiar's growing strength through its own experience, which is why I would like to start just below median.

In that spirit, here's a draft of what Moonstone's Fear of Alux would look like.

Rank: 2
Attributes: Power 3, Finesse 6, Resistance 2
Willpower: 8
Essence: 15
Initiative: 8
Defense: 3
Speed: 15
Size: 5
Corpus: 7
Manifestations: Twilight Form, Familiar
Influence: Fear 2
Numina: Counterspell, Drain, Hallucination, Reveal Flaws
Ban: ?
Bane: ?

Moonstone's Fear lurks hazily in Mind Twilight as a human-sized and slightly more humanoid version of Alux. Toothsome, amorphous, light-consuming. Moonstone has nightmares that Alux can fly, and so the goetia can fly.

Counterspell: As it specifically represents a mage's fear of the Abyss consuming and nullifying his magic, this goetia can counter Awakened spells by injecting fear and self-doubt into the caster's Imago. When its bonded owner perceives a spell being cast in Active Sight, spend one Essence to activate this Numen, which recreates the Prime 2 "Universal Counterspell" Attainment. The goetia rolls Rank+Influence in the Clash of Wills.

Drain: As written. When used on its owner, the entity may choose to take only 1 success on its activation roll, effectively letting the mage steal its own Willpower- if they're at least minimally strong.

Hallucination: As written, with an eye towards fearful or nightmarish hallucinations drawn from Moonstone's subconscious.

Reveal Flaws: The entity draws a target's hidden faults to the surface, literally writing words such as "weak" or "greedy" or "liar" on their skin in Mind Twilight. This Numen costs one Essence, is resisted by Resolve+Composure+Gnosis, and lasts for a scene or until the target has made one contested roll. For each net success achieved by the entity, the target suffers a -1 penalty on its next contested roll against the entity or its owner. This includes the resistance rolls and Clash of Wills for the entity's other Numina.

Special: Goetic Struggle. As the embodiment of a specific complex drawn from its owner's mind, Moonstone's Fear can use its Influence to help its owner potentially resist fear. When its owner would otherwise be affected by a supernatural fear effect (such as Awe, Emotional Aura, certain Mind and Life spells, a Beast or Vampire's Nightmare powers, etc) it triggers a Clash of Wills. Roll its owner's Gnosis+Mind against the goetia's Rank+Influence. If the owner succeeds, the supernatural fear effect fails and its owner gains 1 Willpower. If the goetia succeeds, its owner is affected by the power as if the attacker rolled an exceptional success.

Counterspell and Reveal Flaws are adapted from Goetic Numina in the 1E book Astral Realms, Goetic Struggle is adapted from the spell of the same name in Mage 1E core. I think there will be updated Goetic Struggle rules in Signs of Sorcery, but until then, this seems reasonable and in line with the basic Clash of Wills.

I don't have a Ban or Bane yet, I'm taking suggestions. Here's some sample Bans for related goetia in Summoners:

The Positive Pole Oedipus Complex must always give its undivided attention to the individual out of whose Oneiros it was fashioned, if she is present.

Jimmy Fisk's Test Anxiety vanishes back into Fisk’s Oneiros whenever a test, of whatever sort, is successfully completed in its presence.

Christie Wu’s Hunger must consume anything that is deliberately offered to it as food.

Uther’s Bliss cannot abide the presence of genuine sorrow; it flees from anyone in the throes of despair.

Eco-Friendly may not take any action that will or might definitely disrupt a natural environment.

If Vocalization is forcibly silenced, it sustains a point of Corpus damage per turn, until such time as it can freely speak, once more.

Paranoia must check every hidden space in the location where it is summoned: behind doors and curtains, under couches, even inside boxes or briefcases.

Vindictiveness must answer any harm or slight in kind, preferably with a disproportionate response.

(side note: Uther's Bliss is one of my favorite examples of LGBT representation in this game, it's the Astral embodiment of a mage's happiness around his boyfriend. No horror or trauma at all!)

That section of Summoners also contains rules for summoning Dementias, goetic embodiments of someone's Derangement. Moonstone definitely has a Dementia and I would love to face it in-game at some point, either summoned or in his Oneiros, but it's probably Rank 3+ and too powerful to be bound as a Familiar.

[Kvitebjørn Kong Valemon]

Edited my post so it fits the flow of the conversation. I don't think "Legend of Zelda Item Obtain" stance is the right response to "We lost friends."

[rwknoll]

I don't have time at the moment to do a full IC post, but wanted to make a few short comments.

The Goetic familiar sounds like a neat idea! We can talk specifics later. We may need to make it more like fear of Gulmoths in general depending on when you go about getting the familiar, in case the thing is already dead and gone by the time you purchase the Merit. Of course, you can instead try to create or bind the familiar through magic instead of buying a Merit, but you'll need higher Gnosis first. And I suppose you can still have fear of Alux even if it has been vanquished.

Wanted to remind everyone because this has come up several times still, but unless I'm mistaken, you can't use Concentration Yantra on a spell casting roll unless it has duration longer than 1 turn. That means Moonstone's Divination roll fails unless he has another Yantra he could have feasibly used in this situation.

Miscellaneous: I find the info in the book on the Astral Realms, Goetia, and all that jazz pretty intimidating. I'll need more time to review it more thoroughly so I can understand how to run it as a ST. Similarly with temporal sympathy and still (to a lesser extent) regular sympathy. I need to do some more digging.

[Thorbes]

Player: Thorbes
Chronicle: The Supernal Suburbia
Shadow Name: Ouroboros Ophis
Sympathetic Name: Marvin Bates

STATS

Path: Moros
Order: Free Council
Cabal: The Stormborne
Legacy: None

Virtue: Estoic
Vice: Self-sufficient
Concept: Occult Physician

Attributes
Intelligence: 4
Wits: 2
Resolve: 2

Strength: 1
Dexterity: 4
Stamina: 1

Presence: 2
Manipulation: 2
Composure: 4

[5/3/4 distribution with extra dot put into Composure]

Skills (Asset Skills , Rote Skills)
Academics: 2
Computer: 0
Crafts: 0
Investigation: 2
Medicine: 3 (Surgery)
Occult: 2
Politics: 1
Science: 2 (Biology)

Athletics: 1 (Yoga)
Brawl: 1
Drive: 1
Firearms: 0
Larceny: 0
Stealth: 1 (Unobtrusive)
Survival: 0
Weaponry: 0

Animal Ken: 0
Empathy: 2
Expression: 2
Intimidation: 0
Persuasion: 2 (Acceptance) [one dot from Professional Training]
Socialize: 2
Streetwise: 0
Subterfuge: 0

Advantages
Health: 6
Willpower: 6
Defense: 3
Initiative: 6
Speed: 10
Size: 5

Gnosis: 1
Wisdom: 7
Max Mana/Per Turn: 10/1

Merits
High Speech: 1
Free Council Status: 1

Shadow Name: 3
Resources: 3
Professional Training: 4 (Physician*)
*Asset Skills: Medicine and Science + Persuasion, 9-Again
*Contacts (Doctors)
*Contacts (Patients)

Arcana: Death 2, Life 3, Matter 1

Praxes: Soul Marks (Death 1)

Rotes: Analize Life (Life 1), Body Control (Life 2), Knit (Life 3) (All Dice Pool 8 with Medicine)

Attainments
Death,Life and Matter: Counterspell
Death: Eyes of the Dead
Life: Improved Pattern Restortation
Death,Life: Mage Armor

Dedicated Tool
White Doctor's Coat

Nimbus

Long-term: Small life, like bacteria, is purged. Increasingly bigger life begins to weaken or leave the area, first no insects, then no vermin. Eventually no stray animals remain in the place

Immediate: Aseptic: everything seems artificially clean and quiet and the smell of disinfectant permeates the ambience

Signature: Places and objects seems like recently disinfected, like the usual procedure with medical tools

Tilt: +1 Stamina

Aspirations
- Find his missing wife (Long Term)
- Learn to reanimate the dead
- Prove himslef to Dante (solving the aparent haunting in La Grange Park)

Obsession
Reincarnate a soul

Experiences: 2
Beats: 2
Arcane Experiences: 0
Arcane Beats: 1

BACKGROUND

Background
Born the only son of a traditional bostonian couple that had suffered a couple of abortions, Marvin didn't seem long for this world. Sickly and weak since birth, the child managed to survive the first day of his life against all odds. Then he lived for a week. Then a month. Whether it was little Marvin's determination, the obsesive love of his parents, or something stranger still, the fact is that Marvin succeeded where his stillborn brothers couldn't and managed to grow up to became a child, then a teenager and finally a young adult that was the pride of his parents.

Although his health was always precarious at best, or maybe as sort of strange compesation of nature, Marvin demonstrated from an early age a vivacious ingenuity and a sharp intellect. Good natured, he decided to use his prodigious faculties to help those like him and so, with the blessing of his parents, he studied to became a doctor. His analitical mind and strong memory served him well and he graduated as the first of his promotion.

Now Marvin is growing old, his parents died not a couple of years ago and he visits their tomb and that of his stillborn brothers every week. Married to one of his younger colleages and co-workers at the hospital where he used to work they still have no child of their own. On one hand the job at the university consumes a lot of time, and Marvin secretely fears that he may be incapable of siring healthy children as happened to his parents. He doesn't want to visit more small tombs the weekends.

Awakening
Marvin Awakened only recently, barely a couple of years ago, during the last moments of his parents life. Loosing that emotional anchor made somenthing snap inside the mature doctor's soul which went through Stygia wraped up in the appearance of a gargantuan and barren hospital. His rational mind and sort of materialistic view of life took a 180º turn when he not only could no longer doubt the existence of souls and and an afterlife beyond the physical death of the body, but he could see prove of of it every single second.

Personality
Calm, cold and profesionally detached while at work, Marvin is warm and welcoming around his close ones. Despite not having children, or perhaps due to that, he is quite paternal with younger men and women, caring about their life and achievements. Back in Boston he used to have a close relationship with one of his patients that acted as a sort of foster son, Garrick Royce. He misses that kind of conection dearly. His great support used to be his wife, the love of his life and also one of the people that he most respects, both as a person as as a doctor. He has no qualms in pointing out she is the smartests and more talented of the couple, though you could hear her saying the same about him. They complement each other, despite their differences. All this went straigh to hell, when the two of them were caught in the Deathstorm and Melissa banished.

Daily Life
Marvin started to do a side job,more related to his newfound vision of the world. He is the man any supernatural can go for help of a medical nature, be it the diagnosis of an eldritch disease or the miraculous healing of griveous injuries of questionable origin.
After the loss of his wife, he focused even more on that aspect of his life, living almost 24/7 as Ouroboros Ophis, his magical Persona almost drowning his former self. He realizes this, but doesn't really know what to do to get out of the hole he's digged himself into.

[Haberdasher]

Nice to see a Libertine join the gang. Now all of the Orders will be represented. And I think Moonstone's really got a cool thing going with the Morphean idea. I'm toying with giving Ragnar some sort of Perfected material tool- maybe his silver knife?

[Caladriu]

I don't have time at the moment to do a full IC post, but wanted to make a few short comments.

The Goetic familiar sounds like a neat idea! We can talk specifics later. We may need to make it more like fear of Gulmoths in general depending on when you go about getting the familiar, in case the thing is already dead and gone by the time you purchase the Merit. Of course, you can instead try to create or bind the familiar through magic instead of buying a Merit, but you'll need higher Gnosis first. And I suppose you can still have fear of Alux even if it has been vanquished.

Wanted to remind everyone because this has come up several times still, but unless I'm mistaken, you can't use Concentration Yantra on a spell casting roll unless it has duration longer than 1 turn. That means Moonstone's Divination roll fails unless he has another Yantra he could have feasibly used in this situation.

Miscellaneous: I find the info in the book on the Astral Realms, Goetia, and all that jazz pretty intimidating. I'll need more time to review it more thoroughly so I can understand how to run it as a ST. Similarly with temporal sympathy and still (to a lesser extent) regular sympathy. I need to do some more digging.

Glad you like it! I might rework it as his Fear of Gulmoth in general as you say. What I would like to do is this:

Consilium/Order Status acts as Resources for buying certain Merits. You can buy a Merit equal to or less than your Status dots once per Chapter. You have access to it for the duration of the current Story.

Moonstone's Infamous Mentor Merit gives him effective Consilium Status 3. It also includes the Fixer Merit which lets him treat Status as 1 dot higher for Merit requisition purposes. So I can requisition up to a 4 dot Merit for one Story, assuming the Consilium has that resource available.

When the next Chapter starts, I want to requisition Familiar 4 for the current Story. Treat it like magical self-help that's not expected to be permanent (unless I buy it with Experiences.) Presumably a more experienced Mastigos with Mind 4 will combined-cast Goetic Summons + Familiar with a Duration of 1 month.

---

Goetia are definitely a bit strange. I'm running a game in the Los Angeles setting where Astral stuff is really important, so I've done a lot of homework on them. The most useful supplements about them are Summoners and Astral Realms, but in some ways they're new to 2E.

The quick and dirty version: ghosts are the echoes of dead people/animals/places that can't move on. Spirits are living things with their own ecosystem. Goetia are ideas. They're generic or specific figures from myth and pop culture, recurring characters from a person's dreams and nightmares, embodied Vices and Virtues and Aspirations of specific people. They're reflections of things that exist in human minds and culture. And occasionally, there are also predators and monsters and Left-Handed mages who stalk the Astral independently, preying on and manipulating those reflections of human imagination for their own ends or to manipulate human minds on a large scale.

Goetia don't naturally enter the material world in the way that ghosts or spirits do. They just lurk in Twilight using their Influences and Numina, they don't possess people or things unless a mage with Mind 4 has forced them into a body. If a Goetia is around in Twilight, someone has summoned it. Intentionally, such as by casting Goetic Summons, or unintentionally, such as by dreaming about a monster (or a new husband for a widow) until it becomes real.

For the Familiar I suggested: that entity doesn't have any kind of sympathetic or mystical connection to the real Alux. It's purely a construct of imagination that lives in Moonstone's mind. It's his own fear of that entity, which happens to resemble Alux, but it doesn't know anything Moonstone doesn't know. The tricky thing is that while you physically summon that Fear, it doesn't exist in his personality anymore, and so he's resistant to that fear. Some mages, like the Clavicularius, physically summon their Vice so it doesn't have as much power over them (and so they can inflict their Vice on others.)

I'm trying to think of good pop culture examples. Neil Gaiman's Sandman has a lot of dream creatures and embodied myths. In Harry Potter, the Patronus is like a goetia, it's an individual person's Hope embodied as an animal that can affect the physical world.

---

Sorry, keep forgetting about the Concentration yantra thing. I'll treat it as a failure, and make it a dramatic failure.

---

Haberdasher Perfected materials are cool! Find a Matter mage to bargain with for some perfected silver.

[rwknoll]

FYI, I have the day off, so I'm hoping to be more responsive about replying today.

[Caladriu]

These mini-Artifacts are really cool and flavorful! I love the imagery of using all of them, they feel like the kind of things you'd find in a book.

[Kvitebjørn Kong Valemon]

Okay, Moonstone is just wonderful. Loving that character.