[Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition] The Artifact Merit

 Out of Character (OOC):

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler

Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

The Artifact Merit

My comments are blue regarding my reviews of the system and my own personal recommendations for use in our Chronicle.  These are significant changes to the item merits.  As with other changes they are elegant and greatly mitigate the overpowered nature of the magical item systems.  Artifacts are still distinctly powerful, but the fact they cannot be manufactured by mages limits their proliferation.  

Sources: The Merit as written, straight out of the advanced "beta"  version of Mage: The Awakening  2nd edition.  The Artifact example I converted is from our current campaign and straight out of the Reign of the Exarchs sourcebook.

Additional explanation is in this font, when it helps drive the concepts home.  

Artifact (•••+, Special) Effect: Your character possesses an Artifact, an item from the Supernal World which is both a physical symbol of magic and a unique item independently empowered create to sorcerous effects. These items possess their own Mana stores, and have their own effective Gnosis and Arcana with which to generate effects. They can cast these effects when harnessed by an Awakened owner who has researched (or divined through Prime) the manner in which the item works.

• Determining usage - In general, this takes successes on an extended research action equal to twice the Artifact’s Merit dots.

• Dot Rating - To calculate the cost of an Artifact, look to its single greatest effect, and map it to a spell effect. The base cost is equal to the highest Arcanum used, or three, whichever is higher. Each additional effect adds to the cost, but only half the highest Arcanum used (rounded up).

• Utility Attainments - Including a Utility Attainment in a spell effect (for example, an Artifact that can cast at Sympathetic Range) increases the cost by one dot for each Attainment included.

• Mana - Twice item can store Mana equal to twice the dot rating.

• Effective Gnosis Rating - The item’s effective Gnosis is equal to half the dot rating, rounded up.

• Accessing Mana - An owner can access the item’s Mana as if it were her own, or can use it to fuel the Artifact’s abilities. The Artifact can also use its Mana as part of its own activation.

• Effective Arcana Rating/Reach - The Artifact has effective Arcana equal to the highest Arcanum used in its various effects.

• Reach/Paradox - Artifacts cannot Reach beyond the “free” Reach for their Arcana ratings on their own. If an Artifact risks Paradox, the user can spend Mana to mitigate Paradox (in any combination of her own or the Artifact’s Mana pool, up to her Gnosis-derived limits) and may choose to contain the Paradox herself. Otherwise, the Artifact automatically releases it.

• Triggering Use - Every Artifact will use its effects under different circumstances, determined when you create the Artifact. For example, an Artifact might cast its effect the moment it is first seen by human eyes, or whenever it’s dropped on the ground.

• Combining Ratings -If an owner accesses the Artifact’s effects, she may use her own Gnosis and Arcana, the Artifact’s, or any combination thereof.

• Path Tool Yantra - Every Artifact is also a Path tool Yantra worth +1 dice for mages of the Path of the Artifacts’ highest Arcanum.

The Ring of the Dethroned Queen  – (dots) Artifact (v3.0, Original 3 dot design in Reign of the Exarchs pages 22-25)

Description: Small golden bell to be rang by hand

• Bell clapper 9 inches in height with a bell at the bottom end that is 10 inches in circumference
• No dongle inside, must be struck against something to ring
• Handle made of some king of ancient petrified wood, very pale gray and sanded very smooth.  Made to fit a smaller hand.
• Handle feels cool, the gold parts a warm and soft
• Metal is soft and can be bent with bare hands but has remarkable elasticity and quickly returns to its crafted shape
• The gold seems more red-hued, like a sunset.  The reflections on its smooth surface seem to dance as if wreathed in flames.
• Inside the bell and written in rings around the inside are bands of writing.  They are True Atlantean and detail how to perform a special spell.  It’s an Inscribe Grimorie.
• Around the center of the bell’s circumference are a ring of round-cut precious gemstones about the size of a penny each in the following order: Diamond, Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire, Onyx, Amethyst, Moonstone, Amber, Jade and Aquamarine.  Centered below the Amethyst is what appears to be a High Speech Glyph but you cannot tell what it says.
• No one will recognize this name, many many shapes overlap.  Name of the Dethroned Queen.  Each mage sight adds a layer of dimension to the shape of the name, 10 dimentional name, full holy name of the Exarch herself.  Much like the great seals of the main Ministies except this is different from all of them.  Cass has seen the four names of the Father, General, Eye, and Unity and this is not one of them.  It glows brightest with Time sights.
• Each different mage sight makes its corresponding gemstone appear to blaze with that magic type.  Use the Ringsight table to see what gemstone flares for which sight.

Basic Stats: Durability 5, Size 1, Structure 6, Holds 12 Mana, 

Dot Rating - Spell: Emotional Urging OO (defaults to OOO) + Grimorie O + Orichalcum O + Ringsight O = OOOOO O (6 dots) 

As you can see here, I've added the Custom Orichalcum and Grimorie Merits in to the dot rating.  In this case they also add to the Mana it stores.

Mana Storage - The Ring stores twice its dot rating in Mana, it stores 12 Mana.

Utility Attainment - this item doesn't use any Utility Attainments.  The main effect, Ringsight, augments traditional Active Mage Sight.

Effective Gnosis - The item's effective Gnosis is three - OOO

Researching how to use it - this Artifact requires 12 successes on an extended research action to figure out what it is and how it might be used.

Effective Arcana/Reach - Since the highest rated spell on the Ring is 2, the Artifact's effective Arcana for all spells is two, OO.  It's Reach is two for Ringsight, and one for the inaccessible Emotional Urging spell.

Path Tool Yantra - This Artifact counts as a +1 Path Tool Yantra for a Mastigos.

Effects

Ringsight (Prime O) - Triggering the Effect:

• When struck against a surface of wood, plastic, metal, or stone spend a mana from the item or user’s pattern.
• Reverberates the holder’s soul with a bass-rich tone and it hangs in the air after it quiets as if the world is waiting for something. 
• Wisdom Check at a -3.  Playing god somehow…failure causes the target to lose an Wisdom point and gain the Condition: Paranoia (special).  See below for details.
• Closer inspection – A spell occurred.  Like a standing wave the resonation vibrates the pattern of the mage, holds a spell in the pattern for later (no idea what it does…)
• When Mage Sight is next activated by the ringer the effect occurs, altering the mage sight to use that Arcanum to look for something different… things that normally ping on certain sights don’t show up at all.
• The effect goes away with the first activation of Mage Sight and the spell/item needs to be recast to work.  It acts upon the next sight cast, doesn’t change existing mage sights that are currently active.  Must be cast for each Arcana sight used.
• The tonal sound wave brings the user in sync with a different level of reality and is able to perceive the hidden influences of the Exarchs directly.  This manifests as seeing a type of “taint” with the Arcana Unveiling / Ringsight aspect 

Unlike a traditional Artifact, the effects of Ringsight are automatic and cannot be resisted when activated.  Once the user ends their Mage Sight the effect goes away.  When activated it uses a point of Mana from its reserve.

• Prime Sight (Diamond) – see a “color” of resonance you have never seen before.  It is so foreign it can’t be described (Octorean?).  Scales from slight discoloration to overwhelming brightness and omnipresence.
• Mind Sight (Ruby) -  A phychic push or presence seems to hang over people.  In their presence you feel like its looming over them and you with increasing levels of scrutiny.  You want to turn and look behind you or up, into your periphery but are terrified at what might be watching.  Gods are watching.
• Space Sight (Emerald) – Bizarre warping of space around a person.  Ranges from slight tweaks to spatial distances to absolute swirling vertigo spiral emanating from a person.
• Fate Sight (Sapphire) – The threads of fate have a weight to them.  They are more tangible and heavy.  Those under the influence of the Exarchs appear to have puppet strings leading skyward.  The strings loop, snag, tangle, and pull.  More or heavier strings denote taint intensity.
• Death Sight (Onyx) – People under the influence have tags on ears or toes or fingers.  The writing is blurred, just slightly out of focus.  The larger tags or more writing, font, size, denote intensity of influence.
• Time Sight (Amethyst) – People, things and places significant to the Exarchs hold the shadow of the time of importance.  Young people may have the shadow of the elderly or old people have the shadow of the young.  None of these shadows depict people in the prime of their lives.  All are either infirmed by excessive age or youth.
• Spirit Sight (Moonstone) – People under the taint have multiple afterimages that trail behind them.  You can see a very unusual kind of essence that motes off of them and infuses them.
• Life Sight (Amber) – Tainted people have an aura around them commonly seen when they have a parasitic infection.  That is how it reads but you can find no trace of biological infection.  Ranges from a slight discoloration of the skin to a massive growth or parasitic infection.  Always one parasite.
• Matter Sight (Jade) -   Tainted people seem to have extra weight to them.  Gravity and mass seems increased around them and stuff pulls towards them ever so slightly.  Sometimes they feel like invisible chains pulling on the observer and the person, place, or thing.  The most tainted you can actually see distortions of the chains…
• Forces Sight (Aquamarine) – Around the tainted you can hear this hissing sound.  Whispers in varying tones and urgency.  Analyzing it, it sounds like someone talking through a wall.  Muffled and just barely incoherent.  The tone and volume of the whispers varies in intensity.
  

Emotional Urging Curse “The Precious” (Potency 21, Spellcloaked Opacity 6) (Mind 2) - Anyone who uses the Ring rolls their Resolve + Gnosis vs 5 (Reroll 9s).  Failure causes the target to gain the Condition – Fixated (Ring of the Dethroned Queen).  The effect is subtle and exploits Vices to make the user want to horde and protect the item from everyone.  Accumulated successes act as dice penalties to take actions to get rid of the Ring and can be ignored for a scene if a willpower point is spent.  This effect spends another point of Mana to activate. 

(Subtle Effects) The Lie of the Ring – The ring also has subtle effects on the mage’s psyche:

• Condition: Paranoia (Betrayal) - (Failed Integrity) If someone fails their Integrity check and they gain the Condition: Exarch Paranoia, you start seeing the people you trust most with the taint upon them and those under the true influence of the Exarchs are less noticeable. 

• Condition: Paranoia (Conspiracy) - (Use and Exceptional on Integrity check success, only lasts for a Chapter.) After awhile you start seeing what you want to see.  People you suspect of having the taint do.  People you don’t trust start pinging.  People you dislike the most give you a reason to hate them more.  They are all under the influence. 

• Orichalcum – One Dot of Orichalcum
• Malleability & Superconductor – 9s again on rolls using Orichalcum circuitry - doesn't really apply to this item.
• 9s Again on Rightsight and Emotional Urging
• 9s Again on casting the Rote version of Ringsight while holding the item

• Grimorie
• Can learn a one dot rote of Rightsight for any of the Arcana  for 1XP and can be bought for all 10 of the Arcana the mage understands at one dot.  The Rote uses the Occult skill and gains the 9s again quality if the Ring is held while using the Rote spell.