[Mage: The Awakening 2nd Ed] Goetics & Dream Entities

Out of Character (OOC):

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition, Beast: The Primordial
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum

DREAM ENTITIES

The following is lore known by the Begotten and those Awakened who tread the in-roads of the soul. The Primordial Nightmare, The Bright Dream, The Horizons and the Mother's Land are occupied by dream entities, avatars, actors, horrors and powerful Geotic beings.  Here lies a quick run-down of those beings and how they interact with Beasts and Mages.

Sources:
- Beast: The Primordial, corebook
- Beast Players Guide, sourcebook

- Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition, corebook

- Astral Realms, sourcebook for Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition

- Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition corebook

HERE BE MONSTERS

The Primordial Dream and its adjacent astral worlds aren’t empty. Horrors, Dreamborn, and Actors all move through the dream worlds as natives.  Beasts, Mages and other supernatural beings all have reasons for exploring, too.

Dream Actors

The majority of beings found in the heavily populated areas of the Bright Dream (Temenos) and Day aren’t full Dreamborn, but instead mobile parts of the scenery, which Beasts call Actors. They’re the background extras in the Bright Dream’s crowd scenes, the press of humanity in the astral streets. Actors ignore travelers or treat them as part of whatever story they’re playing out, and if killed reform quickly. They are unfortunately unsatisfying fare for a Horror, who need something with a little more psychic “meat.”

Systems: Actors have the three simplified Dream Form traits of Power, Finesse, and Resistance, plus a Dream Health rating. They have no further powers, and if killed reform at the end of the scene. They do not provide Satiety in any way, and aren’t fully sapient, ignoring anything that doesn’t fit into the theme of the dream realm that spawned them. Travelers attacking Actors add their Supernatural Tolerance Trait as a weapon rating, in addition to any weapons they’re using.

Goetics: The Dreamborn

Goetia are entities of pure thought and concept. Some dwell within the shared consciousness of humanity, birthed from ideas and beliefs of the people of the Fallen World. Others live within the mind of the individual itself — daemons and figments that make up the psyche. The home realm of Goetia is the Astral Realms. Rather than explicable titles and systems of Rank as for ghosts and spirits, Goetia come in a near-infinite range of powers and potential, based more on how central a concept they embody in the layer of the Astral that birthed them than on any true hierarchy. The daimon of a high-Gnosis mage is higher Rank than that of her apprentice, a popular television character may be higher Rank than a forgotten god, and a fearsome nightmare may pale next to a subtle but long-lasting trauma.  

A traveler’s Oneiros creates the people, places, and things she needs to act out the scene at hand. Most of these are weak Goetia, but a mage’s daimon, or embodied “higher self,” is stronger and more insightful. Sorcerers raise personal Goetia here, or examine the Imagos of their Rotes.  In the Temenos, stronger concepts also possess guardians. These Goetia don’t depend on an ideal being popular, though this helps. Goetia also play the parts of gods, celebrities, and other personified ideas.  Figments are the Oneiros version of Dream Actors and they are even less substantial to their Temenos-dwelling relatives.

Inhabitants of the Bright Dream and Mother’s Land, Dreamborn (also called Goetia) are the true natives of the astral. They vary wildly in power depending on their importance to the collective soul and the individual realm they’re in, from Dreamborn corresponding to an obscure literary character or named characters in populated areas, barely more than Actors, to the mighty astral reflections of gods and fundamental concepts.

For mages, the manipulation, creation, summoning and use of Goetic entities is the core of their Goetic Sorcery, a sub-specialization of the Mind Arcanum.

Systems: Dreamborn use the rules for spirits found with a few exceptions:

1. No matter where they are in the astral worlds, Dreamborn regain their Rank in Essence per day.  Also, within the Astral Realms, Goetic entities do not require Manifestations.

2. If they somehow escape into the material world (perhaps through a Primordial Pathway) Dreamborn have a unique state of Twilight separate from those of spirits, ghosts, or angels. They may be sustained by the presence of suitable resonance in the manner of a spirit, and bleed one point of Essence per hour if not.

3. Dreamborn speak human languages, not spirit tongue; those originating in the individual soul speak whatever their host speaks, those from the communal Temenos (Bright Dream) speak anything appropriate to their concept, and those from the Anima Mundi (Mother’s Land) speak any language ever known by a sapient being.

4. Unlike spirits, ghosts, or angels, Dreamborn do not have Manifestations other than Twilight Form, and although they do have Numina they may not reduce their Influences to buy extra Numina above those provided by Rank. 

5. Goetia do not have an Integrity trait, Virtue, or Vice. They regain one point of spent Willpower per three points of Essence they consume.  

Daimons (Goetic Subtype)

Of all the Goetic natives in a mage's Oneiros, the daimon is most infamous. Why it exists is a mystery: does the daimon have some urge to better the one who dreams it, or does it derive a sadistic joy from pointing out personal flaws? Or is ascribing the daimon intent and self-motivation an error? Isn’t the daimon nothing more than an aspect of the dreamer’s unconscious? And then, can that unconscious have desires separate from its dreamer? The questions go on.

Daimons appear to be a cross between a person's Id and Superego, this is, of course, a Freudian oversimplification.  It is an idealized self that is unshackled by a person's inhibitions.  They also can be very much an evil twin or shadow doppelganger to the morals and conscious desires.  They also are very much a representation of the totality of the unconscious self. They are here to teach us lessons about ourselves and frequently act as a spirit guides, revealing truths that the mage seemingly has no reason for knowing. But they must have gotten it from somewhere, right?  They can be moralistic manipulators and beneficent guides at the same time.

Daimons take on any appearance necessary to do their work when their dreamers come to visit. A daimon acting openly as a dream guide is identical to the dreamer, touched up to bring the dreamer’s attention to his flaws. A person who feels quiet guilt at not being charitable meets her daimon with a look of angelic kindness on its face. The daimon of a man once a bully appears just larger, with the tension of restrained violence and a smear of blood on its knuckles. Daimons, in their role as  interrogator, are non-persons to scenes that they occupy while guiding their dreamers; this lets daimons pose pointed questions to the dreamer and foment introspection. Daimons may replace dream actors, usually the most important in any given scene, to better influence the astral traveler.

A daimon has the same general abilities as its dreamer, plus the ability to manipulate this dream space in pursuit of the daimon’ goal: improving the dreamer. Mages’ daimons have power over the same Arcana as the mages themselves, though only within Astral Space. The daimon’s place is dream space, where the daimon can expose its dreamer to allegories in full force; not a few express discontent at being constrained to the dream space when making a point to their dreamers, but none truly regret it.

All daimons have influence over their native Oneiros (starting with Influence: Oneiros 3 regardless of lower Rank, Rank is based on Gnosis). This Influence is limited to their native Oneiroi, meaningless unless a daimon somehow accesses a foreign Oneiros. With this Influence, a daimon navigates the Oneiros, directs its dreamer into dream sequences intended to  highlight certain flaws or failures and tweaks scenes to better influence the dreamer.

Daimons have innate senses of their dreamers’ emotions, desires, weaknesses, fears and such. The higher self is an aspect of the person that stands apart from the person itself and judges without condemnation or emotion, then acts to strengthen the person — it’s something like a consultant hired to examine employees and business practices and improve the company so it doesn’t fold. This innate sense informs the daimon on how best to aid the dreamer, which the daimon implements in a manner appropriate to an aspect of the dreamer: a lazy dreamer has a lazy daimon, or one as fantastically busy as the dreamer wishes she were; the daimon of a dreamer suffering ennui knows exactly what rouses the dreamer’s interested, or trumps his ennui so strongly it spurs the dreamer to action out of pure annoyance. These are only extremes; daimons take on any of a dreamer’s many natures. What a daimon does with this sense varies. A person who represses a need to improve herself develops a busybody daimon, one that sticks its nose into the dreamer’s business whenever the daimon can. Other daimons stick more to the role of dream guide, leading an astral traveler through her Oneiros and serving as foil to her questions and denials. A mage who develops a healthy and friendly relationship with her daimon reflects that in real space: she looks at her virtues and flaws without obscuring emotions and is freer of denial and self-doubt.

No daimon acts as a dream space immune system, though a very few break this rule at the side of their present dreamers. The daimon is too important to the person’s complete psyche to put itself in danger like that. The daimon is much more likely to hide (something its Influence over the Oneiros lets the daimon do well) and direct goetic demons and nightmare creatures toward the threat until the daimon must save its Essence for its own defense.

Though daimons’ (and other dream creatures’) statistics are those of a spirit’s, they do not naturally fall under the Spirit Arcanum. Daimons are affected by whatever Arcanum appears to best apply. A daimon that transforms itself into a vampire to play a part in its dreamer’s recurring nightmares is subject to Death rather than Life until the daimon changes again. That daimons have supplies of Essence is a source of mystery to mages, as this Essence represents energy drawn from the astral connection within a mage’s soul or unconscious.

One can destroy one’s daimon, but the consequences are painful. Observe the analogy of killing a railway engineer: doing so makes it easier to get the train off the tracks; on the other hand, you know what happens when the train hops the tracks. A mage who destroys his daimon lacks a sense of uncertainty and never second-guesses. The small voice in the back of our head, the doubt before making decisions, seems to be gone.  He has eliminated his interrogator and doesn’t question his impulses or reexamine his plans. 

Systems:

1. Killing your daimon manifests as a persistent Mental Condition (or derangement). Daimons within the Oneiros after a number of days equal to the character’s Resolve + Composure. Permanently destroying one requires the daimon to be bereft of Essence when its Corpus hits zero. Destroying one’s daimon (on a temporary or permanent basis) is an act of hubris (at current level) that mages of Wisdom 4 or less ignore; the same is true of destroying another’s daimon.

2. Daimons all share the same Ban: a daimon may not physically harm its dreamer (harm which, in Astral Space, manifests as Willpower loss, Mana loss or Wisdom loss); one that inadvertently harms its dreamer drops to Rank one for a real-space duration of one month.

Goetic Demons: (Goetic Subtype)

Introspective mages don’t need to call across vast dimensions to summon infernal allies. More dangerous “inner demons” torture willworkers from within, lurking within a mage’s psyche. "Goetic Mages" gain insights into horror by contemplating the dark corners of their own identities. They become more powerful by overcoming their own weaknesses, gaining insights into evil by contemplating the flaws within themselves (or strengths, from another point of view). Some human students of magic have found variations on this practice, but none quite resemble those of a goetic sorcerer.

Mages lacking formal training in this occult art can still remember incidents from their own past in which baser instincts were revealed — moments that elicited feelings of shame, helplessness or misery. By meditating on the failures of his past, the goetic mage hopes to gain power over forces within that led to breakdowns or incidents of outright abuse. This introspection is not an easy or pleasant practice, and is not without risks. When a goetic mage fails to conquer his own weakness, he may unleash his inner demons on the world. His darkest dreams become empowered by his magical acumen, carrying out the impulses he has repressed for so long.

Experts in the occult sciences insist that inner demons exist either in the Temenos (the collective unconscious) or in a mage’s Oneiros (his personal dream space). They represent aspects of the occultist’s own identity, not just sin, but failings or denied emotions. In the case of the Temenos, they may represent collective aspects of identity or the identity of the being they were created by.  The simplest ones to understand represent the self-destructive or vainglorious side of a mage’s personality, a doppelganger to his civilized self. An inner demon can be empowered by the depression that seizes a mage in the middle of the night, by the jealousy that consumes him when he doubts those who love him, or by the shame that surfaces after he fulfills his desires. Before inner demons are given form and power, they are merely repressed thoughts and emotions. When they escape, they resemble the likeness of the mage, twisted by his self-loathing and hatred.

There is a goetic demon for every little thing the mage hates about himself. Most are petty demons, formed from petty hates: they are Rank 1 and unsubtle, born of guilt at ignoring the beggar on the street or that stupid urge to punch the annoying guy at the office. Petty demons imitate their betters by trying to seduce astral visitors (primarily their dreamers, but the demons will latch onto anyone). They react to failure as they’d like their victims to act. A minor impulse of assault lays into the traveler, while the urge to lie for no reason starts misleading the traveler.

Greater goetic demons arise from a person’s darker urges, the ones that don’t just go away. One is always his Vice, which often spawns others, more specific and sometimes petty; some are unrelated. Someone with the Vice of Gluttony has several along that vein: his brand of Gluttony personified, a face for the recurring urge to steal from a friend’s stash and one for the lure of sneaking some out of those incredible busts his cop friend’s always making; there’re also demons for that constant wish that he could abandon his invalid mother and for the need to break into his upstairs neighbor’s apartment and burn the model trains that she runs all hours of the night, even though neither is related to his Vice.

Greater demons are cleverer, stronger and all-round more influential. They want nothing more than to drag the dreamer down to their level, to make him like them, make him be them. Some mages believe that falling prey to a goetic demon’s urging allows the demon to express control over the mage’s body, giving the demon access to a real world full of opportunity for indulgence, but no demon admits knowing of or desiring such a thing, even under harshest interrogation. They only want people (especially the dreamer) to give in to the desires they have but deny. Goetic demons look as the dreamer would under that demon’s influence. The quiet urge to punch someone in the teeth  appears as the mage but with a slight sheen of sweat, a glint of madness in the eyes and bruises and teeth impressions on the knuckles. A demon of murder or Wrath has blood on the hands, the mage’s favored weapon (looking well used) and an immense look of satisfaction on its face. The demon of abandoning one’s ward looks free and happy, has extra cash (that wasn’t spent on the dependent) and nicer clothes; the train-arsonist has soot on its hands and arms, smells of kerosene and looks as if it’s gotten a damn good night’s sleep.

Systems: Of goetic demons, the one founded in a dreamer’s Vice is the strongest. The demons have Influences based on the most appropriate Vice: petty demons have Influence 1, greater demons have Influence 2 and the demon of Vice has Influence 3 and their ranks track to the Influence levels. A person with a specific obsession separate from his Vice may have a goetic demon that rivals or even exceeds the demon of his Vice in power. Destroying one’s inner demons subdues those urges for a time, but they never truly go away. Even one reduced zero Essence and then killed re-forms once the dreamer begins harboring those urges in his conscious mind again.

Goetic Sorcery: 

By summoning or calling forth demons into consciousness through magic, a mage learns how to subdue dark aspects of his psyche, whether they be Vices, character Flaws or derangements. If he succeeds, he asserts his own identity and becomes more powerful, gaining Willpower. By confronting the dark corners of his soul, he gains strength.

At higher levels of power, the goetic mage can manifest these inner demons into ephemeral form in the material world. They are not spirits, as such. The mage can be a gateway to allow the escaped demon to gain access to the Twilight Form Manifestation. Other Goetic spells can give physical shape and form to aspects of his psyche. Once given form outside the dreamscape, the demon can bend others to the mage’s will, preying on the same weaknesses the goetic mage has mastered. The goetic mage can inflame others to act on their darkest impulses (indulging in the Vice or weakness they both share). By this art, goetic mages gain power, influence the weak, and control the soulless. Like many paths to power, this practice involves sacrifice… and considerable risk.

When manifested, an inner demon only vaguely represents the mage who summons it, perhaps in a form that the mage would assume if he abandoned all morality. The demon might look like a mockery of a loved one — a lover or friend as seen through a mirror darkly — or simply appear as someone the mage would envy or lust after. Imagine a lustful sorcerer summoning a supernaturally beautiful succubus (or incubus) to enact his dark desires. In its ephemeral form, the inner demon is ready to perform the bidding of the mage who summoned it. in Twilight, it can actively escape the notice of ordinary people, clouding their minds and judgment with the dark emotions the summoner has conquered. When it chooses to reveal itself, it is an avatar of sin made flesh.

A master of inner demons bends Sleepers to his will by manipulating them with the same dark emotions he knows intimately. A person possessed by a goetic mage’s demon often displays the Vice and derangements of the mage who controls the entity. Scientific mages claim that modern techniques of psychotherapy can permanently cure a person who is possessed by a mage’s inner demons. Religious ones rely on old-fashioned exorcisms. Physically gifted mages swiftly subdue and restrain the goetic mage’s manifested minions. Since goetic magic is an ancient practice, some mages have also discovered Atlantean seals that bind and contain inner demons. Once a goetic’s creations have been destroyed or bound, his rivals must find a way to prevent any further summoning from taking place. Only an insightful cabal can trace the inner demon back to the goetic mage who conjured it.

When mages finally hunt down a corrupt goetic mage, they should be careful to make sure his creations are destroyed as well. Killing a goetic mage while his inner demon is at large releases that evil into the world. If the mage who controls the puppet is destroyed, the inner demon only needs to answer to its own desires. It roams freely, looking to corrupt whomever it encounters. Mages who have researched the goetic mage who created it have a greater chance in finding it, especially if they can sympathize with its hideous desires (for example, they share its emblematic Vice). Mages can then use their magic to sense the inner demon’s failings, faults, emotions and motivations.

That is the form of goetia a mage practices from without, calling up the worst of himself from deep within and either conquering or freeing it. Such magic lacks precision; it latches onto the mage’s very worst impulses but cannot summon his lesser evils. Within dream space, all the mage’s foul urges have form in the goetic parts of the soul.

Goetic Nightmares (Goetic Subtype)

This is the catchall category for goetic things that aren’t dark urges, higher selves or harmless roles in dream sequences. Generally, nightmare creatures are things born of the dreamer’s fears given life and strength in her subconscious. When the picnic-perfect sky clouds over and the astral traveler follows her cues to discover the corpse in the culvert, and the corpse reaches for her, that is a nightmare creature whereas everything before had been a dream actor.  Nightmare creatures vary in strength according to the depth of the fear in the dreamer. 

Small fears are little more than annoyances. They stem from fears such as being late for work or getting caught with pot and having it confiscated. They are equivalent to Rank 1 spirits at best. When they show up in dream space, they look like the park ranger who doesn’t care about the drugs but has to take it or the guy in front of you driving too slowly.

Rank 2 fears have greater consequences, greater reality or a deeper founding in the character’s psyche. These include the corpse the character discovered as a youth, half-rotted by sewer water and swarming with insects, the anxiety that the character is a single woman in a first-floor apartment and there was a break-in down the street last week, that terrifying daydream of being jostled just before the subway train arrives and falling into its path. They manifest as strong nightmare creatures: a decaying thing with a strong grip that wants others to drown as it did, a shadowy male figure with a shining knife and loud, rasping breath or a pair of hands and elbows bumping astral travelers into coincidental dangers.

Horrors

Deep in the Mists, the larval spawn of the Primordial Mother find nests in Chambers faded from the dreamscape after their migration through the Cave. Once bonded with a Chamber, the Dreamborn transforms into a nascent Horror and gestates, slowly building the power needed to open a Primordial Pathway to a suitable host and perform the Devouring. Unless its Beast becomes Unfettered, a Horror is unable to leave its Lair after it sheds its formless larval nature, but by superimposing that Lair on other realms (even material reality) through Primordial Pathways, the Horror feeds.

Left to their own devices, Horrors instinctively seek out the most potent source of food for their particular Hunger — the individual soul of a human being who is dreaming of a suitable narrative or experiencing one in the waking world. To dreamers fed from in this way, the process feels like a particularly vivid night terror, and unlike a normal dream the memory of it doesn’t fade after waking. To those fed on from within while awake, the situation that provoked a Horror’s attention seems all-important and terror-inducing. It looks, to onlookers in the waking world, like the victim is suffering a panic attack.


Horrors usually die when their Beasts do, leaving the former Chambers of their Lair vacant and fading back into the Mists, where they may become Hearts to new larval Horrors entering the Primordial Dream. Some Begotten believe themselves heirs to ancient Horrors, or find evidence in their Lairs of prior occupation. Beasts argue about whether a new Horror entering a Chamber that was once in a Lair naturally takes the shape of the former occupant, or if Horrors can somehow survive the death of their Beast and Devour a new one.

Some larval horrors don’t take on the shape of human fears by joining with a Chamber, but instead Devour a host while still in their Primordial state. Beasts call the resulting monsters “the Insatiable,” avatars of the Hunger and danger of the Mother’s Land without the focus of a Family.  They are also known as the Unsated and rather than reflecting fears of predatory monsters they represent cold environmental terrors called Moments that plagued mankind when they lived in caves.  These Moments  run the spectrum from frozen hells to clashing faults.  

Systems: 

1. Larval Horrors still in the (Anima Mundi) Mother’s Land or in the Mists before finding a Heart are Rank 2 Dreamborn with Influence over their associated Beast Family’s type of fear. 

2. After they find a Heart, they develop into true Horrors, losing their Influence, Numina, Essence, and other Dreamborn traits but gaining Nightmares, Atavisms, Satiety, a Hunger, Lair and so forth.

3. For rules on the Insatiable (as they are no longer isolated astral entities) can be found in Night Horrors: Conquering Heroes