((Out of Character (OOC) Document:
Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Chronicles of Darkness - Mage: The Awakening (Fallen World Chronicle)
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Borrowed & Edited from Original Posting on September 2nd, 2014 by Dave Brookshaw of Onyx Path Publishing.
Comments and implementation guidelines by Jerad Sayler))
The Future of Legacies
As mages interact with the Mysteries, their gnosis grows, deepening their understanding of magic and developing into a unique style. In game mechanical terms, exposure to Mysteries earns Arcane Beats and Experiences, which you spend on traits relating to your character’s personal grasp of the Mysteries — Arcana, Rotes, Praxes, supernatural Merits and Gnosis.
If Order represents what a character believes the purpose of magic is, and Path provides the foundation of a broad magical style and a set of symbol-association, then Legacy is the combination of both, Gnosis, and Praxes – the capstone on the pyramid of your character’s traits, their specialization as a mage. They also fulfill a social role within the setting — emphasizing the mentor/student relationship, as iconic to sorcerers as creator/childe bonds are to Vampire fiction. Your character doesn’t have to join a Legacy (maybe he wants to create his own!), but they’re important to Mage‘s world; sources of interpersonal contact outside of the confines of cabal and Order for young mages, and the framework for Mentor and (once your characters advance) Student Storyteller Characters.
Ancient Legacies reflect belief structures that have rung true for some mage for centuries, and even contemporary ones represent a very specific worldviews developed after careful reflection and self—examination.
Those who share a Legacy belong to an elite and highly specialized clique. Some consist of hundreds of members scattered across the world like members of an especially esoteric social clique. Others boast only a few dozen mages with a belief system others among the Wise find inexplicable if not outright objectionable. For those within one, a Legacy offers a specialized network of social contacts that understand each other better than any other mages do.
Foundations:
To date, 94 Legacies have been published and at least 14 more mentioned but not statted in Mage: The Awakening‘s game line, including two books which are nothing but Legacies (Legacies the Sublime and Legacies the Ancient.)
Prerequisites:
Path, Order or Praxis: All Legacies possess an originating Path, and many (though not all) are connected to an Order—Pentacle, Seer or Nameless.
Praxis: Normally, your mage must either belong to the Legacy’s Path or Order. However, it is possible for a mage of any Path or Order to join a Legacy if she learns a Praxis that duplicates the Legacy’s first Attainment, and utilizes one of the Legacy’s Yantras (see example) She develops the understanding to join without other requirements. If your character learns an Attainment duplicating a Praxis (whether she used it as an entry method or not) she receives a full Experiences refund for the Praxis' cost (Attainments cost 1 XP, Praxis spells cost 2 XP so you come out ahead). In this way, characters are encouraged to “train” for their future Legacies by specialising in the spells that will become Attainments, or develop their own Legacies out of their personal styles.
Arcane (and Other) Knowledge: Before initiation, your mage must possess at least two dots in the Legacy’s new Ruling Arcanum. She must also possess two dots of Gnosis unless she’s founding her own Legacy, which increases the requirement to three dots.
Legacies also require other forms of knowledge based on their respective theories and beliefs. This normally takes the form of two or more dots in a particular Skill, but Storytellers and Legacy founders may specify additional requirements.
Indoctrination: Finally, each Legacy demands that prospective pupils perform tasks, endure ordeals and otherwise encounter the Legacy’s perspective through direct experience. Even a self-founded Legacy can’t be invented with a mere idea—the mage needs to explore its Mystery through action.
Legacies and The Soul
Mages say Legacies change their souls, and this is true after a fashion, but they don’t do it by altering the soul itself. Instead, they alter a sorcerer’s Gnosis and concomitantly, her magical identity. If the mage’s Gnosis is a vessel that holds the waters of her soul, a Legacy changes the vessel’s shape—and the soul changes to fit.
This is an important distinction to note, because this is why soul theft cannot permanently deprive a mage of her Legacy. If a mage loses her soul, any replacement capable of supporting Awakened magic will take the “shape of the vessel,” returning her Legacy’s benefits as soon as she can use magic again.
If removed from its owner, an Awakened soul is not so liquid as to lose all marks of its Legacy. This makes it possible for soul thieves to learn Legacies from stolen souls and soul stones without the owner’s consent.
Initiation
Tutelage by an existing member (who must have at least the third Attainment) is the most common way to join a Legacy, but mages can also found their own, study a Daimonomikon (a special Grimoire that records Legacies) or study the soul or soul stone of an existing member. The various initiation methods are only required to join the Legacy, not progress in them, although continuing education from a mentor brings other rewards, such as a steady supply of Arcane Beats for both mages.
In a change from the previous edition, all Attainments now cost Experiences, with the type of Experience varying according to how you were initiated. We’re still going back and forth about whether forming your own Legacy should require higher Gnosis than joining one you encounter, as it does in first edition, or should be the same Gnosis but have a higher cost.
Legacies and Sympathetic Magic
Legacy members form close ties in part due to their sympathetic bonds. Every Legacy mage serves as a Symbolic-rank Sympathy Yantra (Translation: A Known Sympathetic Connection (base penalty -4) for every member of the same Legacy, and all daimonomika and soul stones belonging to that Legacy. Members versed in Space or Time find it easy to communicate and gather, as well as track down errant pieces of their tradition. On the other hand, kidnap a member or steal a book, and you can do tremendous damage to a Legacy.
These bonds can be suppressed with Veiling magic, but it takes Unravelling magic to eliminate them completely.
LEGACY ADVANTAGES
The benefits of initiation are many, from a connection to other Legacy members to the magical advantages of an altered Gnosis.
Yantras: Initiates learn the Legacy’s Yantras. Most require one turn to deploy and adds +1 to spellcasting rolls. A few add +2 but either impose a disadvantageous Condition or require rare materials, extra time or special care. The required effort is part of the Yantra so sidestepping its disadvantages (by eliminating the stupor created by a drug used as a Yantra, for example) reduces its bonus accordingly.
Oblations: Each Legacy also teaches Oblations that reflect its philosophy and legends. Unlike ordinary Oblations, the mage does not need to perform Legacy Oblations at a Hallow—her soul becomes the “sacred place” being drawn upon. However, a mage away from a Hallow cannot gain more Mana per day than her dots in her Legacy’s Ruling Arcanum.
Ruling Arcanum: Initiation into a Legacy confers an additional Ruling Arcanum, set by the Legacy’s creators. This normally raises an existing Common or Inferior Arcanum to Ruling Status, but in some cases the mage already possesses the Legacy Arcanum as a Ruling Arcanum. In this case, he develops an especially strong understanding of the “doubly Ruled[JS5] ” Arcanum’s Mystery.
Notes from the ST: The cost of increasing that Arcanum is reduced by 1 Experience per dot rating (The 2nd dots cost is -2 Experience). There are no retroactive refunds when an Arcanum gets the doubly Ruling status. Make sure your are using the cost tables covered in "Magic is Hard."
LEGACY ATTAINMENTS
All Legacies teach special Attainments. The mage invokes them from her reshaped soul instead of reaching into the Supernal. Thus, Legacy Attainments provide the following advantages:
Atypical: Legacy Attainments generally operate according to the Legacy’s traditions, which may slightly limit or expand their scope. For example, a Legacy of fire worshipers may be restricted to heat and fire-based versions of Attainments based on Forces spells. These adjustments shouldn’t make Attainments significantly more or less powerful than they otherwise would be.
Automatic Activation: In most cases, a Legacy Attainment can be activated with an instant action and do not require die rolls. If the Attainment requires spell factors, it automatically confers factors that would impose a penalty up to the mage’s dots in the Attainment’s highest prerequisite Arcanum. If the Attainment would require a measurement of its successes, it automatically scores a number of successes equal to the mage’s dots in the highest prerequisite Arcanum.
For example, if a fire-summoning Legacy Attainment requires spell factors and requires Forces 3, a Legacy member with Forces 5 harnesses spell factors that would normally impose a -5 penalty to die rolls—though remember that you don’t actually have to roll dice.
Immune to Countering and Supernal Dispellation: Legacy Attainments cannot be attacked with countermagic or Supernal Dispellation using the Prime Arcanum. They can be undone based on the specific effect they create, however, but are considered no different than natural phenomena. Forces can snuff out fire made by a Legacy Attainment as easily as it could suppress a similar ordinary fire.
Legacy Wisdom: Using a Legacy Attainment is never considered an act of hubris; the mage’s mystic self is completely attuned to their use.
Mana Break: Legacy Attainments issue from the mage’s soul instead of the Supernal Realms, so Mana is only used to reinforce her will, not channel power from beyond. When adapting Attainments from spells, reduce any Mana cost higher than one point to one point.
Optional Effect: Some Legacy Attainments include an additional or alternate effect if the mage possesses dots in an additional Arcanum equal to the required Legacy Ruling Arcanum. This additional Arcanum is almost always a Ruling Arcanum from the Legacy’s originating Path.
Transient Stacking: Legacy Attainments may stack with spells, but only for a short time, and doing so eradicates the spell, as the Attainment’s intuitive, personal nature unravels the spell’s Supernally charged imago. Stacking a Legacy Attainment with a spell causes the spell’s duration to end, as if cancelled, after one turn per dot the mage possesses the spell’s highest Arcanum. For example, if a Perfected Adept with three dots of Life casts a spell that increases his Strength by 3 dots for the day, activating his Attainment to add another 3 dots of Strength increases it by 6 dots, but his spell disperses after three turns.
Transient stacking can only be performed on spells lingering within the mage’s own Gnosis (i.e. those that impose penalties for being actively maintained) and not spells cast by others, relinquished, or bound to enchanted items of any kind.
Notes from the ST: It is also worth noting that in our game Attainments are Never Vulgar. The one exception to this would be if you Reached for more Spell Factors than you are normally able to have.
Learning Legacy Attainments
A mage may either develop Attainments according to the orthodox teachings of her Legacy, or invent novel Attainments based on her personal approach to the Legacy’s doctrine.
Rather than the three tiers of Attainments in the first edition, second edition Legacies provide five tiers. The first attainment (based on a 1-dot spell) comes with initiation, although most characters buy the second attainment at same time;
Table for our Venue: Arcanum Dot of Attainment / Required Gnosis
1/ 2
2/ 3 - Founder may learn first and second Attainments at this level
3/ 4
4/ 6
5/ 8
6/ 10 – This final Attainment is considered an Ascension spell as covered by Imperial Mysteries
Notes from the ST: As well as their Arcanum requirements, some attainments require additional skill dots or other prerequisites but these should be limited to one extra requirement for a given attainment as a Maximum.
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