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So, I've been looking into starting a new game lately and, for a while, I've wanted to set a game in Australia. I've managed to get the base setting concept down but I'm still struggling with the rest; looking for ways on how to tie it together. For once, I'm sort of out of ideas; there's something critically missing from the setting and so I thought I'd see if anyone else had any better ideas.
In brief, the setting such as it is consists of about 50 Mages in the province of New South Wales, with the prime Consilium in the region being the Shorewind Parliament, centred in Sydney. Of that fifty, there are about twelve Seers, twelve libertines, five each of the Diamond Orders, and a handful of solitaries. These are rough numbers all around, since I will inevitably tweak them as-needed. All six Orders (Pentacle + Seers) have Caucuses in the region, and there's about five or six cabals.
There are two big Mysteries in the setting; the People of the Path and the Drinker. I also need to apologize here to any native Noongar language speakers; I am going to be butchering your language a bit.
The Drinker, or the Gallang Gallang (Cicada), is a posited cosmological necessity. The ley lines of Australia are unlike those found elsewhere in the world; they are "thin", carrying their resonances too quickly across the landscape to allow them to settle and well. In the rare few places they do well up, they inevitably form rivers or oases, and such places are often seasonal. Hallows are rarer still; Mages are lucky to find one, yet alone enough to sustain an entire Consilium. And when they do appear, the Awakened often have... Competition.
This fast-running flow is also tied to the fact that the ley lines appear to converge somewhere off the eastern coast of Australia, between it and New Zealand. No-one has yet found where they converge - they appear to do so underwater - and all attempts to go seeking it usually return empty-handed, if they return at all. Given that attempts to divert the ley lines away from this point often result in violent disturbances that return them to this balance - coming with associated disasters like dust storms, droughts, and forest fires - the Awakened have named this seemingly intelligent phenomenon The Drinker. Aboriginal Mages, of course, have dealt with the phenomenon far longer and come to a similar conclusion; naming it the Gallang Gallang after the way cicadas suck at the roots of trees.
The People of the Path, or the Bidee Noongar, are something of a result of this phenomenon. In the few places Hallows do occur, they frequently coexist with Astral or sometimes even Supernal Verges. Within such places dwell creatures that are not quite spirit nor goetia nor flesh nor anything else. Most Awakened believe them to be some form of lesser Bound, as these entities have manavoric natures; devouring the Mana from the Hallows greedily as soon as it is formed. Even the weakest such creature is also frighteningly potent; few Mages are willing to risk direct confrontation for the prize they guard. Instead, Mages broker deals with these beings; service and protection in exchange for Mana. These patron spirits will often even provide direct boons for particularly useful servants. Finding such beings is difficult, though, and the oaths of service they extract can be quite burdensome. Still, they are free with their Mana once appeased and cabals which strike such deals can often share it out in the form of tass to others; something that only adds to the power gained by binding oneself to a patron spirit.
---
The political landscape has, at its heart, a Consilium called the Shorewind Parliament, which is more or less a mouthpiece of a predominantly Ladder/Mysterium cabal called the Noble Scales of the Black Adder. The current Hierarch is White Sands, a Malay woman of the Mastigos Path, and the Deacon of the local Ladder Caucus. If a Convocation is ever called, she will likely be appointed to the Magisterium.
The Adders are one of the foundational cabals in the region. They arrived in the early 1800s, veterans of the Nameless War, looking for a fresh start. The initial cabal was called the Brotherhood of the Adder's Tongues; the name itself derived from an epithet that they turned into a badge of honour. If the Nameless would call them snakes, they would make snakes into a symbol of nobility.
(Of course, that wasn't what the libertines were calling them; adder's tongue is a name for an herb that acts as an emetic. The libertines found swallowing the speeches of the Adders as pleasant as eating the herb.)
The cabal became the Noble Scales of the Black Adder shortly before the 1920s, with the admission of its first female members. The cabal has always had a reputation for rigid but generally fair application of the law, backed up by a small armory's worth of magic. It brought with it a handful of artifacts and a small library of grimoires when the initial cabal arrived from England and has used its superior access to training and resources as a bludgeon to allow it to maintain its position of primacy ever since. That it controls perhaps the only Hallow in the region not claimed by one of the People only adds to its prestige. It's said the Sydney Opera House was constructed at the cabal's insistence predominantly to try and anchor some ley lines in the region and, thus far, they've managed to not stir the Drinker's ire.
The other major cabal in the region, meanwhile, are the Swamp Padfoot; often simply called the Dogs. Primarily libertine, their founding goes back to before the first Consilium, when the region was undeveloped and full of Nameless cabals which lived in relative anarchy. The Padfoot are ascendant largely because they live out in the bush; away from the institutions that protect and enforce the will of the Adders. What they lack in practiced talent, they make up for in their numbers, lack of fear towards the use of violence, and the eponymous Padfoot, their patron. Padfoot is the Dingo, or simply the Dog; protector of Man, hunter of prey, creator of rocks and ochre. Padfoot is a wise but violent patron, who demands the enforcement of his Law through violence. For that reason, the Swamp Padfoot have a reputation for rough justice; chasing down abusers and punishing them for their crimes. This extends to the Awakened as well, with the Padfoot always seeking to make a show of enforcing their law. Importantly, not Consilium law, but the law of Dingo.
The Padfoot also frequently end up adopting children who show an interest in the supernatural. This adoption can extend from simply mentoring kids who need an adult presence in their life to outright kidnapping the child. Since the kind of child who would end up sneaking around in Padfoot territory is probably not the sort being raised in a stable home to begin with, this is easier than one might think.
---
The biggest recent magical kerfuffle was back in the 1960s, in something called the Vendetta Incident. A cabal of Mages known as the White Maws had accepted the patronage of Dembartmungah; Old Man Fish Trap, the greatest of Great Whites and father of all sharks. Dembartmungah is a bane of all Mages in the region; ancient, enormous, and seemingly able to appear wherever he likes, he is the likely cause why so many expeditions to find the Drinker fail. The White Maws, however, had earned his patronage; using their roles as lighthouse keepers to pick out victims for sacrifice. It's unknown how long the cabal was feeding blood and souls to their bloody god but, eventually, they got too greedy; conjuring a storm and sinking a ship seven miles off the coast that led to the deaths of at least fourteen people. When a Guardian informant (a Sleepwalker with a sensitivity to ghosts) aboard the H.M.S. Vendetta came across the wreck before the evidence could be destroyed, they quickly informed their masters and, before long, the White Maws were caught.
The White Maws were captured, tried, and sentenced to death for their actions. To silence the ghosts of their victims, they were taken out to sea, tied to an anchor, and thrown into the shark-infested waters.
To this day, the Guardians are bitter about the whole thing. There are only four Guardian Mages in the whole state. Recruiting is damned near possible. They need more resources to ensure something like this never happens again. They're also less than happy with the system of chiminage that exists between many Mages and the People.
---
So, that's a reasonable summary of the major details of the setting. I have more on most of the Orders, but that's as much as I feel as is needed to get a proper view of the landscape. There's meant to be a kind of country mouse/city mouse tension going on, but that's just a tension, not an open conflict.
What I need is conflict. Something for the Awakened to be fighting over reasonably regularly but without quite bringing it to open war.
I also need other ideas for the People; patrons for the cabals.
My players are interested in a game with cabal rivalries and Artifact hunting, so anything on the latter category would help too. The Astral is likely to feature prominently in this, as the People of the Path are blatantly derived from the idea of the Dreamborn in the Dreamspeaker Legacy.
So. Suggestions?
In brief, the setting such as it is consists of about 50 Mages in the province of New South Wales, with the prime Consilium in the region being the Shorewind Parliament, centred in Sydney. Of that fifty, there are about twelve Seers, twelve libertines, five each of the Diamond Orders, and a handful of solitaries. These are rough numbers all around, since I will inevitably tweak them as-needed. All six Orders (Pentacle + Seers) have Caucuses in the region, and there's about five or six cabals.
There are two big Mysteries in the setting; the People of the Path and the Drinker. I also need to apologize here to any native Noongar language speakers; I am going to be butchering your language a bit.
The Drinker, or the Gallang Gallang (Cicada), is a posited cosmological necessity. The ley lines of Australia are unlike those found elsewhere in the world; they are "thin", carrying their resonances too quickly across the landscape to allow them to settle and well. In the rare few places they do well up, they inevitably form rivers or oases, and such places are often seasonal. Hallows are rarer still; Mages are lucky to find one, yet alone enough to sustain an entire Consilium. And when they do appear, the Awakened often have... Competition.
This fast-running flow is also tied to the fact that the ley lines appear to converge somewhere off the eastern coast of Australia, between it and New Zealand. No-one has yet found where they converge - they appear to do so underwater - and all attempts to go seeking it usually return empty-handed, if they return at all. Given that attempts to divert the ley lines away from this point often result in violent disturbances that return them to this balance - coming with associated disasters like dust storms, droughts, and forest fires - the Awakened have named this seemingly intelligent phenomenon The Drinker. Aboriginal Mages, of course, have dealt with the phenomenon far longer and come to a similar conclusion; naming it the Gallang Gallang after the way cicadas suck at the roots of trees.
The People of the Path, or the Bidee Noongar, are something of a result of this phenomenon. In the few places Hallows do occur, they frequently coexist with Astral or sometimes even Supernal Verges. Within such places dwell creatures that are not quite spirit nor goetia nor flesh nor anything else. Most Awakened believe them to be some form of lesser Bound, as these entities have manavoric natures; devouring the Mana from the Hallows greedily as soon as it is formed. Even the weakest such creature is also frighteningly potent; few Mages are willing to risk direct confrontation for the prize they guard. Instead, Mages broker deals with these beings; service and protection in exchange for Mana. These patron spirits will often even provide direct boons for particularly useful servants. Finding such beings is difficult, though, and the oaths of service they extract can be quite burdensome. Still, they are free with their Mana once appeased and cabals which strike such deals can often share it out in the form of tass to others; something that only adds to the power gained by binding oneself to a patron spirit.
---
The political landscape has, at its heart, a Consilium called the Shorewind Parliament, which is more or less a mouthpiece of a predominantly Ladder/Mysterium cabal called the Noble Scales of the Black Adder. The current Hierarch is White Sands, a Malay woman of the Mastigos Path, and the Deacon of the local Ladder Caucus. If a Convocation is ever called, she will likely be appointed to the Magisterium.
The Adders are one of the foundational cabals in the region. They arrived in the early 1800s, veterans of the Nameless War, looking for a fresh start. The initial cabal was called the Brotherhood of the Adder's Tongues; the name itself derived from an epithet that they turned into a badge of honour. If the Nameless would call them snakes, they would make snakes into a symbol of nobility.
(Of course, that wasn't what the libertines were calling them; adder's tongue is a name for an herb that acts as an emetic. The libertines found swallowing the speeches of the Adders as pleasant as eating the herb.)
The cabal became the Noble Scales of the Black Adder shortly before the 1920s, with the admission of its first female members. The cabal has always had a reputation for rigid but generally fair application of the law, backed up by a small armory's worth of magic. It brought with it a handful of artifacts and a small library of grimoires when the initial cabal arrived from England and has used its superior access to training and resources as a bludgeon to allow it to maintain its position of primacy ever since. That it controls perhaps the only Hallow in the region not claimed by one of the People only adds to its prestige. It's said the Sydney Opera House was constructed at the cabal's insistence predominantly to try and anchor some ley lines in the region and, thus far, they've managed to not stir the Drinker's ire.
The other major cabal in the region, meanwhile, are the Swamp Padfoot; often simply called the Dogs. Primarily libertine, their founding goes back to before the first Consilium, when the region was undeveloped and full of Nameless cabals which lived in relative anarchy. The Padfoot are ascendant largely because they live out in the bush; away from the institutions that protect and enforce the will of the Adders. What they lack in practiced talent, they make up for in their numbers, lack of fear towards the use of violence, and the eponymous Padfoot, their patron. Padfoot is the Dingo, or simply the Dog; protector of Man, hunter of prey, creator of rocks and ochre. Padfoot is a wise but violent patron, who demands the enforcement of his Law through violence. For that reason, the Swamp Padfoot have a reputation for rough justice; chasing down abusers and punishing them for their crimes. This extends to the Awakened as well, with the Padfoot always seeking to make a show of enforcing their law. Importantly, not Consilium law, but the law of Dingo.
The Padfoot also frequently end up adopting children who show an interest in the supernatural. This adoption can extend from simply mentoring kids who need an adult presence in their life to outright kidnapping the child. Since the kind of child who would end up sneaking around in Padfoot territory is probably not the sort being raised in a stable home to begin with, this is easier than one might think.
---
The biggest recent magical kerfuffle was back in the 1960s, in something called the Vendetta Incident. A cabal of Mages known as the White Maws had accepted the patronage of Dembartmungah; Old Man Fish Trap, the greatest of Great Whites and father of all sharks. Dembartmungah is a bane of all Mages in the region; ancient, enormous, and seemingly able to appear wherever he likes, he is the likely cause why so many expeditions to find the Drinker fail. The White Maws, however, had earned his patronage; using their roles as lighthouse keepers to pick out victims for sacrifice. It's unknown how long the cabal was feeding blood and souls to their bloody god but, eventually, they got too greedy; conjuring a storm and sinking a ship seven miles off the coast that led to the deaths of at least fourteen people. When a Guardian informant (a Sleepwalker with a sensitivity to ghosts) aboard the H.M.S. Vendetta came across the wreck before the evidence could be destroyed, they quickly informed their masters and, before long, the White Maws were caught.
The White Maws were captured, tried, and sentenced to death for their actions. To silence the ghosts of their victims, they were taken out to sea, tied to an anchor, and thrown into the shark-infested waters.
To this day, the Guardians are bitter about the whole thing. There are only four Guardian Mages in the whole state. Recruiting is damned near possible. They need more resources to ensure something like this never happens again. They're also less than happy with the system of chiminage that exists between many Mages and the People.
---
So, that's a reasonable summary of the major details of the setting. I have more on most of the Orders, but that's as much as I feel as is needed to get a proper view of the landscape. There's meant to be a kind of country mouse/city mouse tension going on, but that's just a tension, not an open conflict.
What I need is conflict. Something for the Awakened to be fighting over reasonably regularly but without quite bringing it to open war.
I also need other ideas for the People; patrons for the cabals.
My players are interested in a game with cabal rivalries and Artifact hunting, so anything on the latter category would help too. The Astral is likely to feature prominently in this, as the People of the Path are blatantly derived from the idea of the Dreamborn in the Dreamspeaker Legacy.
So. Suggestions?
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