Mages of New Jersey

[Aiwass]

I'm smirking as I write this. It's the state that I'm based in, and I've been writing a setting for the nearby city of Philadelphia (which feels like a mini NYC, making it a bit easier on an ST newish to Mage)

What do you think ole Jersey might look like though? It's an industrial nightmare, seperated by super highways full of state troopers running through the pines, a polluted shoreline where local fauna is disappearing, crime by people surrounded in sheer ugliness, elitists hiding in the suburbs, not to mention Princeton... There's a lot that can be said, personally, I hate the place.

What might it look like to the Awakened? How might the Orders be spread out?

[Zombiecakes]

I could see the Seers having a solid foothold in several environments, but that's to your tastes, really. As for the Pentacle, I'm unsure. You would have to see what the city has that each Order looks for. Does it institutions of learning/local history/magical environment provide interest to the Mysterium? Do a large number of Awakenings in general/Scelestus activity/Seer activity attract the Guardians? Each Order's presence is not just for shits and giggles, but to serve a narrative purpose. You just have to find a valid subject for their presence.

[Dwight]

The "Shore" would be firmly be in the hands of free council, gym, tan, magic oh yeah!

[Umoja]

I suspect that New Jersey Consilia would likely face the problem that many ordinary people from New Jersey face, they are forced to deal with more powerful consilia in New York City and Philadelphia. I suspect that many of the Consilia would be close, and have some coordination between each other. I'd imagine for historical reasons there would be powerful Consilia in Morristown (descended from a Colonial Era group of European Mages who learned their techniques from the Algonquin), Newark (a consilium that has fallen from grace in recent years, and has ceded control over much of Jersey City/Hoboken which is more connected with the New York Consilium) and the Princeton Consilium (mostly run by the Mysterium who has been in a cold-war with the Seers for control over Princeton/Rutgers).

[Aiwass]

Umoja> Just for clarity, it was actually the Lenni Lenappe indigenous people who occupied Morristown.

[Umoja]

Nerd alert: I wasn't 100% sure if it was specifically the Lenape, so I just went with the more general ethnic group.

[salientmind]

I suspect that New Jersey Consilia would likely face the problem that many ordinary people from New Jersey face, they are forced to deal with more powerful consilia in New York City and Philadelphia. I suspect that many of the Consilia would be close, and have some coordination between each other. I'd imagine for historical reasons there would be powerful Consilia in Morristown (descended from a Colonial Era group of European Mages who learned their techniques from the Algonquin), Newark (a consilium that has fallen from grace in recent years, and has ceded control over much of Jersey City/Hoboken which is more connected with the New York Consilium) and the Princeton Consilium (mostly run by the Mysterium who has been in a cold-war with the Seers for control over Princeton/Rutgers).

I am running a W:TF game set in Newark right now, and I have been running games set in the NYC metro area for close to 10. New Jersey in my game is dotted with small Consilia dominated by powerful generation long alliances. They allow people in those small Consilia to maintain power where they are, but they never get large because of Philidelphia and New York. The cities closest to New York including Newark are technically a part of the NY Consilium. The area is very much out of sight out of mind, and a small number of mages use it as a place to hide out.

[Aiwass]

Umoja>I liked you're input, it did give me some ideas on how to map things out; I've been trying to sort out geographically the Aspirations and local Praxis of the Orders, whilst defining their relationships with Philly and New York.

I've read sonewhere that a setting for NYC will be included in one of the future Mage installments, and that we'll be seeing a connection between the Consilium of New York and Mages of New Jersey. Some of the details are fuzzy to me, but I'm really looking forward to connecting my work with Philly with some of the official stuff coming out to diversify my own setting.

Maybe I'll get a Skype game going, who knows?

[Umoja]

Salientmind >> I generally set my games in New York (even though I'm from the Newark area). I developed it a bit more for V:tR, (the All-Night City, aka New York, includes most of Hudson County out to about the Hackensack River and beyond that is the Bishophoric of Newark). Be interested in how your version of Newark worked.

Aiwass >> I think the next Mage supplement is going to detail NYC more. I also recall, maybe it was in the Silver Ladder book, that they give a few hints on what the structure of the NJ Consilia were.

[Dave Brookshaw]

Left Hand Path mentions it - te example nameless order is from NJ.

In "canon" (meaning you should discard it at your whim) the superConsilium of New York has jurisdiction over cabals from Princeton to Shelter Island - the NJ coast, NYC itself, and all of Long Island. But not, for reasons, Manhattan.

[DeimosMasque]

Do those reasons happen to be because of the seers of the throne?

[Zombiecakes]

Do those reasons happen to be because of the seers of the throne?

Long story short, Manhattan is a giant Mystery, and the Seers reneged on their "deal" with the Pentacle to gain control of the whole island.

[DeimosMasque]

Not going to lie I am so going to use that for my version of New York City

[branford]

Do those reasons happen to be because of the seers of the throne?

Dave provided a little more info on NYC in a post last month. As a Manhattanite and born and bred New Yorker, I eagerly await the release of Tome of the Pentacle and the complete write-up for NYC..

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/mage-the-awakening/114668-ask-a-simple-question-awakened-edition?p=970181#post970181

New York is the setting for Travis Stout's own Mage chronicle, and we've been dropping references to it since Left Hand Path.

It is the largest Consilium in the Western world, maybe in the whole world; its territory covers half of New Jersey, the Boroughs of New York City itself and all of Long Island. It has eleven Pentacle Order Caucuses (each Order has at least one full Caucus, most two, some three) and a functioning Nameless Order for the apostates who want to swap rotes but otherwise be left alone. The various sub-Consilia are working on Mysteries of their own, but the big one is that Manhattan is so charged with ley energies its evolving into something. Whole city blocks move, sliding around, but the changes are subject to Quiescence so only the Awakened and Sleepwalkers are aware of it.

After 9/11, Manhattan became an unexploded bomb. The Seers and Pentacle worked out a short-lived truce to deal with it, but the Seers screwed the Pentacle mages (including the Consilium's arch-Hierarch) over and somehow took control of Manhattan's Mystery. Now the island itself is hostile to Pentacle mages trying to set up shop there, so the Consilium keeps to the other Boroughs and the wider New York / New Jersey states, with some cabals raiding into Manhattan to try to figure out what's going on or recover lost treasures. The locals call what happened "The Folly".

Awakening second ed's chapter fiction is set in New York. It will get its proper writeup in Tome of the Pentacle.


EDIT: Other random facts:

There's a Free Council cabal of punk musicians called "Join The Seers."
The new arch-Hierarch is a thearch named Sheshat
The Interfector is called Outis, and his schtick is he accidentally prevented his own birth during a disastrous time-travel jaunt when an apprentice.
Various of the Brooklyn-Queens Silver Ladder Caucus have appeared in the Fallen World Anthology and M2e

[DeimosMasque]

Wow a lot of that write-up actually sounds really similar to some of the things I do in my New York City setting (at least back in 1e, still deciding if I'm going to make any big changes for 2e)

I guess there's something about New York City that just cries out "needs to be the biggest conselium you possibly can have."

Edit: I even have a cabal of Free Council Mages who are Punk musicians. Mine were called the Atlantean Bastards though.