[Mage: The Awakening 2nd Ed] Fragments of the Time Before

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

Fragments of the Time Before

The following are fragments of what might be a vision of the First City: Mu, Atlantis, Ur, whatever you call it.  The Time Before.

Sources:

- Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition corebook

- Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition corebook

- Lost Legacy by Robert A. Heinlein
- The Atlantis Wikipage

For it is related in our records how once upon a time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, 'the pillars of Heracles,' there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in the fullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent.

But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.

That an island of such nature and size once existed is evident from what is said by certain authors who investigated the things around the outer sea. For according to them, there were seven islands in that sea in their time, sacred to Persephone, and also three others of enormous size, one of which was sacred to Hades, another to Ammon, and another one between them to Poseidon, the extent of which was a thousand stadia [200 km]; and the inhabitants of it—they add—preserved the remembrance from their ancestors of the immeasurably large island of Atlantis which had really existed there and which for many ages had reigned over all islands in the Atlantic sea and which itself had like-wise been sacred to Poseidon. Now these things Marcellus has written in his Aethiopica.

... And the island of Atalantes [translator's spelling; original: "Ἀτλαντίς"] which was greater than Africa and Asia, as Plato says in the Timaeus, in one day and night was overwhelmed beneath the sea in consequence of an extraordinary earthquake and inundation and suddenly disappeared, becoming sea, not indeed navigable, but full of gulfs and eddies.

... The ocean which is impassable for men, and the worlds beyond it, are directed by the same ordinances of the Master.

... In like manner the philosopher Timaeus also describes this Earth as surrounded by the Ocean, and the Ocean as surrounded by the more remote earth. For he supposes that there is to westward an island, Atlantis, lying out in the Ocean, in the direction of Gadeira (Cadiz), of an enormous magnitude, and relates that the ten kings having procured mercenaries from the nations in this island came from the earth far away, and conquered Europe and Asia, but were afterwards conquered by the Athenians, while that island itself was submerged by God under the sea.

Excerpt from Lost Legacy
by Robert A. Heinlein

Philip Huxley went to bed to sleep as usual. From there on nothing was usual.

He became aware that he was inhabiting another's body, thinking with another's mind. The Other was aware of Huxley, but did not share Huxley's thoughts.

The Other was at home, a home never experienced by Huxley, yet familiar. It was on Earth, incredibly beautiful, each tree and shrub fitting into the landscape as if placed there in the harmonic scheme of an artist. The house grew out of the ground.

The Other left the house with his wife and prepared to leave for the capital of the planet. Huxley thought of the destination as a "capital" yet he knew that the idea of government imposed by force was foreign to the nature of these people. The "capital" was merely the accustomed meeting place of the group whose advice was followed in matters affecting the entire race.

The Other and his wife, accompanied by Huxley's awareness, stepped into the garden, shot straight up into the air, and sped over the countryside, flying hand in hand. The country was green, fertile, park-like, dotted with occasional buildings, but nowhere did Huxley see the jammed masses of a city.

They passed rapidly over a large body of water, perhaps as large as the modem Mediterranean, and landed in a clearing in a grove of olive trees.

The Young Men, so Huxley thought of them, demanded a sweeping change in custom, first, that the ancient knowledge should henceforth be the reward of ability rather than common birthright, and second, that the greater should rule the lesser. Loki urged their case, his arrogant face upthrust and crowned with bright red hair. He spoke in words, a method which disturbed Huxley's host, telepathic rapport being the natural method of mature discussion. But Lold had closed his mind to it.

Jove answered him, speaking for all:

"My son, your words seem vain and without serious meaning. We can not tell your true meaning, for you and your brothers have decided to shut your minds to us. You ask that the ancient knowledge be made the reward of ability. Has it not always been so? Does our cousin, the ape, fly through the air? Is not the infant soul bound by hunger, and sleep, and the ills of the flesh? Can the oriole level the mountain with his glance? The powers of our kind that set us apart from the younger spirits on this planet are now exercised by those who possess the ability, and none other. How can we make that so which is already so?"

"You demand that the greater shall rule the lesser. Is it not so now? Has it not always been so? Are you ordered about by the babe at the breast? Does the waving of the grass cause the wind? What dominion do you desire other than over yourself? Do you wish to tell your brother when to sleep and when to eat? If so, to what purpose?"

Vulcan broke in while the old man was still speaking. Huxley felt a stir of shocked repugnance go through the council at this open disregard of good manners.

"Enough of this playing with words. We know what we want; you know what we want. We are determined to take it, council or no. We are sick of this sheeplike existence. We are tired of this sham equality. We intend to put on end to it. We are the strong and the able, the natural leaders of mankind. The rest shall follow us and serve us, as is the natural order of things."

Jove's eyes rested thoughtfully on Vulcan's crooked leg. "You should let me heal that twisted limb, my son."

"No one can heal my limb!"

"No. No one but yourself. And until you heal the twist in your mind, you can not heal the twist in your limb."

"There is no twist in my mind!"

"Then heal your limb."

The young man stirred uneasily. They could see that Vulcan was making a fool of himself. Mercury separated himself from the group and came forward.

"Hear me. Father. We do not purpose warring with you. Rather it is our intention to add to your glory. Declare yourself king under the sun. Let us be your legates to extend your rule to every creature that walks, or crawls, or swims. Let us create for you the pageantry of dominion, the glory of conquest. Let us conserve the ancient knowledge for those who understand it, and provide instead for lesser beings the drama they need. There is no reason why every way should be open to everyone. Rather, if the many serve the few, then will our combined efforts speed us faster on our way, to the profit of master and servant alike. Lead us. Father! Be our King!"

Slowly the elder man shook his head. "Not so. There is no knowledge, other than knowledge of oneself, and that should be free to every man who has the wit to learn. There is no power, other than the power to rule oneself, and that can be neither given, nor taken away. As for the poetry of empire, that has all been done before. There is no need to do it again. If such romance amuses you, enjoy it in the records, there is no need to bloody the planet again."

"That is the final word of the council. Father?"

"That is our final word." He stood up and gathered his robe about him, signifying that the session had ended. Mercury shrugged his shoulders and joined his fellows.

There was one more session of the council, the last-called to decide what to do about the ultimatum of the Young Men. Not every member of the council thought alike; they were as diverse as any group of human beings. They were human beings, not supermen. Some field out for opposing the Young Men with all the forces at their command, translate them to another dimension, wipe their minds clean, even crush them by major force.

But to use force on the Young Men was contrary to their whole philosophy. "Free will is the primary good of the Cosmos. Shall we degrade, destroy, all that we have worked for by subverting the will of even one man?"

Huxley became aware that these Elders had no need to remain on Earth. They were anxious to move on to another place, the nature of which escaped Huxley, save that it was not of the time and space he knew.

The issue was this: had they done what they could to help the incompletely developed balance of the race? Were they justified in abdicating?

The decision was yes, but a female member of the council, whose name, it seemed to Huxley, was Demeter, argued that records should be left to help those who survived the inevitable collapse. "It is true that each member of the race must make himself strong, must make himself wise. We cannot make them wise. Yet, after famine and war and hatred have stalked the earth, should there not be a message, telling them of their heritage?"

The council agreed, and Huxley's host, recorder for the council, was ordered to prepare records and to leave them for those who would come after. Jove added an injunction:

"Bind the force patterns so that they shall not dissipate while this planet endures. Place them where they will outlast any local convulsions of the crust, so that some at least will carry down through time."

So ended that dream. But Huxley did not wake, he started at once to dream another dream, not through the eyes of another, but rather as if he watched a stereo-movie, every scene of which was familiar to him.

The first dream, for all its tragic content, had not affected him tragically; but throughout the second dream he was oppressed by a feeling of heartbreak and overpowering weariness.

After the abdication of the Elders, the Young Men carried out their purpose, they established their rule. By fire and sword, searing rays and esoteric forces, chicanery and deception. Convinced of their destiny to rule, they convinced themselves that the end justified the means.

The end was empire, Mu, mightiest of empires and mother of empires.

Huxley saw her in her prime and felt almost that the Young Men had been right, for she was glorious! The heart-choking magnificence filled his eyes with tears; he mourned for the glory, the beautiful breathtaking glory that was hers, and is no more.

Gargantuan silent liners in her skies, broadbeamed vessels at her wharves, loaded with grain and hides and spices, procession of priest and acolyte and humble believer, pomp and pageantry of power, he saw her intricate patterns of beauty and mourned her passing.

But in her swelling power there was decay. Inevitably Atlantis, her richest colony, grew to political maturity and was irked by subordinate status. Schism and apostasy, disaffection and treason, brought harsh retaliation, and new rebellion.

Rebellions rose, were crushed. At last one rose that was not crushed. In less than a month two-thirds of the people of the globe were dead; the remainder were racked by disease and hunger, and left with germ plasm damaged by the forces they had loosed. But priests still held the ancient knowledge.

Not priests secure in mind and proud of their trust, but priests hunted and fearful, who had seen their hierarchy totter. There were such priests on both sides, and they unchained forces compared with which the previous fighting had been gentle.

The forces disturbed the isostatic balance of the earth's crust.

Mu shuddered and sank some two thousand feet. Tidal waves met at her middle, broke back, surged twice around the globe, climbed the Chinese plains, lapped the feet of Alta Himalaya.

Atlantis shook and rumbled and split for three days before the water covered it. A few escaped by air, to land on ground still wet with the ooze of exposed sea bottom, or on peaks high enough to fend off the tidal waves. There they had still to wring a living from the bare soil, with minds unused to primitive art, but some survived.

Of Mu there was not a trace. As for Atlantis, a few islands, mountaintops short days before, marked the spot. Waters rolled over the twin Towers of the Sun and fish swam through the gardens of the viceroy.

The woebegone feeling which had pursued Huxley now overwhelmed him. He seemed to hear a voice in his head:

"Woe! Cursed be Loki! Cursed be Venus! Cursed be Vulcan! Thrice cursed am I, their apostate servant, Orab, Archpriest of the Isles of the Blessed. Woe is me! Even as I curse I long for Mu, mighty and sinful. Twenty-one years ago, seeking a place to die, on this mountaintop I stumbled on this record of the mighty ones who were before us. Twenty-one years I have labored to make the record complete, searching the dim recesses of my mind for knowledge long unused, roaming the other planes for knowledge I never had. Now in the eight hundred and ninety-second year of my life, and of the destruction of Mu the three hundred and fifth, I, Orab, return to my fathers."


Huxley was very happy to wake up.

[Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen] Patient 5: The Quiet Man

Out of Character (OOC):

Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition

Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen

Story: The Asylum

Chapter 3 – Scene 6 "The Vacant Stare"

Storyteller: Jerad Sayler

North Dakota State Hospital 

Patient Case Study #5 The Quiet Man

The following is an excerpt is from an active play-by-post Story Plot starring Chimera (Hannah Nyland), Jack Bismuth (Alex Van Belkum), & Jerad Sayler as the Storyteller.  The Story is called The Asylum and involves the supernatural badness of the Jamestown State Hospital in Jamestown, North Dakota. This patient  was a Guardian of the Veil orchestrated transfer from the Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts provided by Zero-Zero at the behest of Dr. Leta Hush of the Blackwing Institute.  Chimera's clout and actions at the NDSH have been noticed by her fellow Famulus and many Guardians also rely on her spirit cultivating experience for use as spies.  She has effectively taken over Jamestown spiritually with the pacts of her spirit courts and recently managed to correct a major piece of God-Machine Infrastructure that was responsible for the majority of the Resonance issues.

Worcester State Hospital Patient File

Patient: Heron, John W

Attending Physician: Dr. Tucker R. Jenkins

Case Number: WSH-1354

Description and History

John Heron. 48 years old. Six foot even, 164 pounds. Mild asthma, wears glasses to correct short-sightedness. No other health problems. Mr. Heron was admitted to the hospital on March 11th this year, after having been released by the court on charges of Vehicular Manslaughter. The accident claimed the life of his wife and eight-year-old son. The patient suffered concussion and several broken ribs; the airbag saved his life, it seems. Mrs. Heron and her son didn't survive the accident.

The patient claims that he had recognized an individual who had been pursuing him for over a year, and attempted to run the man down. The only thing Heron hit was a concrete wall, head-on. According to the patient, the individual, who may or may not be called James Carver, has been a constant presence in Heron’s life since their first meeting, when the patient believes that he killed Carver. The patient is manifestly not a violent man, although he is, I think, an angry one.

The patient is suffering from clinical and severe depression (and I suspect, has done for some years, judging by statements made in interviews). He has himself wondered himself whether or not the figure, this “James Carver,” who has been causing him so much trouble is actually a delusion. I don’t know yet if this self-reflection is an encouraging sign or not.

Treatment and Results

Mr. Heron’s first few interviews have been rambling, and hugely detailed. He’s still grieving for his wife and child, and the guilt he feels seems to affect most everything he does. It seems that on February 14th two years ago, the patient had agreed to meet his wife, Madeline, at the home of Simon May, a friend. He’d had a bad day. In his own words:  “I could have died at my desk and no one would have noticed.”

He decided to walk, since his office was less than a dozen blocks from the office, and the weather was clement. He said that he needed to think. When asked if he could remember what he was thinking about, the patient said that he had no idea.

The patient was passing the Holy Trinity Episcopalian Church, which he attends, or at any rate used to attend, when, he heard somebody say something. Apparently, without even thinking, the patient acknowledged the person. A man had passed Mr. Heron on his right, which was the edge of the sidewalk nearest to the road. The man stopped and turned around. The patient describes him as being at some age between 22 and 25, about the same height as himself, fairly slim and dressed in a fashion the patient describes as “preppy.”

The patient suddenly conceived the idea that this individual was dangerous, and tried to apologize and walk on. The man barred his way and tried to start a fight. The patient describes himself as a physical coward.

Dr. Tucker Jenkins, tapes, Case 1354, Heron, John W; March 19th, transcription (Extract):

JWH: The man asked me what I’d said, a second time. So I said, nothing.

JWH: I’d just put myself in a weak spot. He knew that. He came up close and whipped out his left hand. And I grabbed his wrist, with both hands. Like this. Which was a bad thing to do.

JWH: Then he said. “I’m drunk.” Which was unnecessary. I could smell his breath. He said, he wanted cash for a cab. He asked how much money I had. Still holding tight on to my neck.

TRJ: Then what?

JWH: I said I didn’t have anything, and my voice was all high-pitched and I was obviously lying, so he slapped me hard and knocked my glasses off. He let me go, and I fell over.

JWH: And he’s standing over me, and saying get up, get up, and I can’t get up and then something in me snaps and I get on my knees and then I don’t get up, I barge into his shins with my shoulders and he stumbles, and I grab his ankle and pull and over he goes and then I don’t know how, but I’m on top of him, beating his face in. Over and over again. Just punching and punching and punching and screaming, bastard, you bastard at the top of my lungs. And then I noticed he wasn’t moving, so I got up and I kicked him again and again, five or six times until he just went kind of crack and coughed up blood, once, and then just went limp.

TRJ: Wasn’t there anyone around?

JWH: Not a soul.

TRJ: Didn’t that strike you as odd?

JWH: I was beating someone to death.

TRJ: Have you ever done anything like that before?

JWH: No. Why would you ask that? No! Of course no.

TRJ: So why him?

JWH: He took away my dignity. He made me cower. On my knees. I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

TRJ: Again?

JWH: It happened to me all the time as a teenager. I wasn’t a popular kid. When I went to college — I wanted to forget being a teenager ever happened to me.

TRJ: But you couldn’t?

JWH: It never went away. Sure, for the first couple of years after I left, I thought I’d escaped. But I hadn’t. I used to have nightmares, and it would be like everything was exactly the same as it was at school and I wasn’t ever going to get away and I’d wake up screaming and with the sweats and stuff.

TRJ: What was so bad? What happened?

JWH: Hardly anything you’d think important. Name-calling. A shove in the hall. My stuff getting stolen. Having no social circle apart from the other outcasts, who you’d only hang out with because there was no one else, and you’d loathe them for it.

JWH: You were in a team at high school, weren’t you, Doctor?

TRJ: Yes, I was, actually. Swim team.

JWH: And a frat at college?

TRJ: I never got round to it.

JWH: It doesn’t matter. You can’t know what it’s like. Every single day, year upon year. And knowing that it’s never going to go away. You can’t understand.

TRJ: This makes you angry, doesn’t it?

JWH: It doesn’t go away. I was at the mercy of so many other people then, and I’m still at their mercy. Sometimes I fantasize about what I would do to some of the boys I knew in high school if I met them again. I close my eyes and imagine meeting one of them, grabbing him by his hair and punching him over and over in his face until it caved in, until his nose was no more than a flattened concave smear. I’d imagine the blood going all slippery and sticky on my knuckles.

JWH: It stays with me every day of my life. Every little failure. Every acceptance that I’m at the mercy of the rest of the world. It just builds up, and it never comes out.

TRJ: Except it did —

JWH: And I beat a man to death.

TRJ: So what did you do?

JWH: I ran. I had his blood on my jeans. I can still see it. It was bright red. Like stage blood.

JWH: By the time I’d run a couple of streets, my legs were shaking so much that I had to stop. I sat on the sidewalk. On the curb. I had this knot in my chest, and it was so tight that I could no longer think or see straight or breathe. I nearly cried.

JWH: I sat there for a while, I don’t know how long, few minutes maybe. Got my breath back. And then I realized I couldn’t see. So I ran back to go looking for my glasses.

TRJ: To the scene of — the altercation?

JWH: I was panicking. I wasn’t thinking.


JWH: So I got back to the church, and I realized that I was actually wearing my glasses. I put my hand up, and I was still wearing them.


JWH: And outside the door of the church — there was no one there. No body. Not even a pool of blood. No blood on my jeans. No dirt. Nothing. He was gone. It was like it never happened.

JWH: Except I could still feel his fingers around my throat.


Dr. Jenkins’ report:
Although, unsurprisingly, shaken by this experience, the patient continued to the party, where he met with his wife. Here, it seems that he developed the conviction that the assailant had followed him. Talking with his wife, he explained what he had experienced. He remembers his wife’s reaction as being negative, which is likely to be significant. However, the patient and his wife continued to put on a face for the sake of the gathering. The host, Simon May, approached them, introducing them to one James Carver, who, apparently, was new to the area. The patient became convinced that this Carver, although not showing a mark and not showing any signs of recognition up to this point, was the man he had believed he had killed.

The patient and his wife made conversation with the man for a few minutes, who continued to behave as if he had never met the patient before and to make friendly conversation. The patient, concealing his reaction, became increasingly uncomfortable and eventually made an excuse for he and his wife to leave. On parting — Heron’s wife had gone to retrieve their coats — Carver, so the patient says, gripped him by the hand and whispered to him the words, “Just you wait.” The patient, unable fully to explain his discomfort to his wife, went home with her. They argued. The persecution appears to have begun the following day.

Apparently, the patient woke up, thanks to some intuition, and ran to his son’s room. He saw Carver standing by the baby’s crib, holding the boy in his arms. Mr. Heron snatched the boy back; Carver offered no resistance. The man smiled, and walked out past the patient. The baby began to cry, waking up Mrs. Heron. The patient, checking all available exists, found every door and window in the house locked. This precipitated another argument.

Dr. Tucker Jenkins, tapes, Case 1354, Heron, John W; March 19th, transcription (Extract):

JWH: It was constant after that. It never stopped.

TRJ: How do you mean?

JWH: He was everywhere. He was everywhere. Like I’d walk down a street, and he’d be standing around the corner. He’d smile, and vanish into the crowd, or be standing behind me and he’d say something about my wife. I’d get into the elevator going into the office and he’d be coming out of it, and he’d smirk at me and the doors would close, and I’d get up to the office and my desk would be re-arranged.

TRJ: Was anything missing?

JWH: No. But it was all moved around. And no one could see anything. Whatever it was he was doing, he was invisible. One time — I was at church, and it was the Eucharist. I was at the communion rail and glanced to one side, and he was there kneeling beside me. He just glanced at me, and raised one eyebrow, and then he spat in the chalice as the celebrant handed it to him. And then the priest wiped the rim and handed it to me like there was nothing wrong. And I drank out of it, even though his spit was in it. He got to his feet and went through the curtain that goes to the corridor that leads you out to the back of the sanctuary. I got up just a little too quickly but — TRJ: — he was gone?

JWH: Yes.

JWH: When I got home that evening, he was there. Danny was asleep in bed and Madeline was there, sitting there with him, drinking coffee. She’d been out with Danny and she’d run into the guy in the street and they got talking and she asked him back. Somehow she thought I’d enjoy seeing him.

TRJ: What did you do?

JWH: I sat down and I had a cup of coffee and I talked with him.

TRJ: What about?

JWH: Work. He was in marketing or something. And we talked about the weather. And politics. He was a Democrat, too.

TRJ: That’s all?

JWH: Yes. No. There was a moment where Madeline heard Danny stirring. So she went upstairs to see if he was all right. And he looked at me. The man looked at me — It’s like he was laughing at me. And I stared and stared like I was paralyzed. And then he said thanks, he’d better be going and we saw him to the door when he got his coat and then he went home. And I went nuts at Madeline. And she never figured out what for. And the following day, I saw him coming out of the elevator at work. And then I saw him every day after that. Every. Single. Day.

Dr. Jenkins’ report:
It seems that after two years of this figure’s constant presence, the patient snapped. While driving his family on the freeway on January 3rd this year, apparently at the beginning of a trip to see Mrs. Heron’s parents, the patient saw Carver standing in the middle of the road. He swerved. He admitted that he was trying to hit him. He lost control of the car. The results you know. This was the last time John Heron saw this James Carver.

Treatment and Care
Heron’s depression and his repressed memories of childhood persecution appear to have formed this imaginary figure, as I’ve been prescribing antidepressants, obviously. The patient’s issues with his childhood are going to need a long course of therapy.

I had thought that after his wife and son’s deaths, the delusional figure had gone away, although I asked him to tell me if the persecutor came back. Last night, it appears he did. I’m prescribing antipsychotics. Therapy continues. I’m not holding up a lot of hope.

Dr. Tucker Jenkins, tapes, Case 1354, Heron, John W; March 24th, transcription (Extract):

JWH: I saw him again last night. He came to see me.

TRJ: When was this?

JWH: About three in the morning. I woke up about three in the morning. The clock said it was three in the morning, and there was something on my bed, so I leaned over and turned the light on and it was him. He was sitting on my bed.

TRJ: What did he do? Did he say anything?

JWH: Yeah.

TRJ: What did he say?

JWH: He said, “Maybe you should go see your wife and son.”

Dr. Jenkins Report - Update: 8th of June 2018
I don't believe it.  Heron is to be transferred to the James River Correctional Center (JRCC) and out of my care effective 10 June. He will be also getting treatment at the North Dakota State Hospital and staying on their high risk suicide prevention ward but will be officially assigned to the JRCC.  I guess they share a border so that is convenient.   I wasn't aware they had new and experimental treatments for a patient with such similar symptoms and diagnoses, wasn't aware that they were a certified research institute in the first place.  The paperwork is all done and it happened completely under my nose.  Things are moving fast, I can only hope that their treatments work and Heron manages to salvage some aspect of his life back.  I am to submit my notes, reports and transcripts immediately. 

Notes from Zero-Zero:
Mr. Heron is being stalked and harassed but something we have since been unable to determine.  His mind does not show signs of Psychosis (schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder) that would cause him to hallucinate this nemesis.  He is now, however, he is suffering from PTSD from his experiences and his violent responses to this figure is also worrisome.  We have found no signs or resonance that would indicate this is a spirit or ghost that is haunting him.  We have never directly witnessed a visit from his enemy or observed any evidence that such a corporeal being exists on security footage or eye witness accounts.  We did not have the resources available to Post-Cog the events to see what is actually happening when he is visited by Mr. Carver.

[Mage: The Awakening 2e] A Vision of the Fall

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

A VISION OF THE FALL

As part of our ongoing Chronicle: The Dethroned Queen, the mages Chimera (Hannah Nyland) and Witness (Korri Smith) are the inheritors of a Lost Legacy. Both these characters have a custom Merit called Atlantean Highborn. Basically their daimons remember past lives all the way back to the Fall, their souls are royalty and that comes with some benefits and drawbacks. Regardless if anyone actually believes they were royalty in the Time Before, they do seem to have some real spiritual aspects to whatever is special about their souls. Vague memories of the Time Before are further amplified in clarity by the Ancient Echoes and similar merits.  The main thing is, where other souls take short or long trips through their cycles, they always reincarnate, but with no memory of who they were but for what their daimon feels fit to reveal to them.  You can read more about Atlantean Highborn Here.

So, in-game, we had our first real vision of the First City that actually provides relevant, personal and "factual" information. It was my first time as a Mage ST in over seven years were I gave something concrete on Atlantis, while it is still pretty vague. Since it's such an important milestone and provides my own opinion and take on a "true" vision of the fall, it seemed like something that had value and other people would be interested in it.  It is very much an amalgam of many things; hopefully the seams aren't too visible.  

We know that Atlantis is many things and there were many Atlantises across the multiverse.  But this is canon as the True Awakened City in our game universe which I have named: The Untold Chronicles, The Dethroned Queen being our current Chronicle.  The following are fragments of what might be a true vision of the One Awakened Nation: Mu, Atlantis, Ur, whatever you call it.  The Time Before.  The Age of Atlantis.

Additional Sources:

- Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition corebook

- Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition corebook

- Guardians of the Veil sourcebook for MtA1.0

- The Silver Ladder sourcebook for MtA1.0

- Tome of the Watchtowers sourcebook for MtA1.0

- Banishers sourcebook for MtA1.0

- World of Darkness (nWoD): Second Sight sourcebook

- World of Darkness (nWoD): Immortals sourcebook

Magpie

When Magpie arrives in the Shadow Sanctum that evening, Chimera has things ready. A fold-up table is placed in the center of the room, right below the bell. On that table is an old, worn chess board and its pieces. Chimera is seated on one side, toying idly with a dark wooden pawn that doesn’t match the rest of the set. Chesulloth is curled up at her feet, mandibles clicking and spindly legs twitching.

Distance is a negotiable concept here. The room itself, being the center of the Hallow, exerts a force of its own – an immense pressure on the lungs and the mind. It’s difficult to breathe or even think straight, and that’s before you start noticing the moving shapes in the walls, and the constant judgment lurking just behind you.

“Ever played this game?” Chimera gestures for her apprentice to take the other seat. Maggie has been in this room before, of course, but only for Oblations.

Magpie shakes her head, "I've never played Chess, but I've read about it." The child-mage takes a seat and starts learning.

Magpie constantly forgets to move, trying to describe what she has seen. "I've always had visions, even when I was rotten, this was just one that sounded like the tower to heaven you were talking about...."

Magpie takes white, Chimera black. She takes some time to be sure that Magpie knows how to play, taking as much time as she needs. Ultimately though, Magpies’ inexperience doesn’t matter; Chimera plays ruthlessly – and extremely poorly. Loss after loss. Piece after piece thrown futilely against her opponent’s defenses, often sacrificed for no gain at all, and at best only holding back an inevitable defeat.

“So, tell me about what you saw.” When Chimera's done, she asks Magpie for the vision again, in more depth this time, wringing every detail she can out of the spycraft training they’ve done. Despite her own careless moves, Chimera takes every loss like a blow as she listens intently. She lets herself feel it.

Because: that piece was Eos, lying gutted on the ground. This one was Jack, pledging himself to Death. Ritter, screaming as his leg is shattered at the knee, Magpie crying after the death of her dad. And then, letting Magpie’s vision of a silver road and the crossing tug at her memory, she reaches out for more faces, more names - the charges that she can’t recall but that they nevertheless failed to save, a long, long time ago, during the fall. Her daimon is cold to others now, of course; was she always that way? Or did pain change her?

But she and Maggie and Grace are more than just their losses. Magpie shares her vision first and details slowly emerge through the sharing of their consciousness.

***************

Everything is black except for the shimmering light of the path and the heat-glow of the supernal across a chasm of the void. On the shoreline two men watch the child and the angel.  An angel who fell and has finally found a way home after countless eons of imprisonment on earth.

The a tower that is a path.   A ladder of stairs into the sky.  Crystalline metaphysical steps of white path across the darkness.  A staircase to the gods.

They see the skyscrapers again and a pillar of light emanating from the top of one such building, one that towers above all others.  Maggie will try to describe the city and the building but its very hard for her when she lacks the right descriptors and the light of the path is very distracting and all important.

Donato's Tower

It's not Atlantis or the city of some bygone era though, cars on the street, people bustling around.  It's a real modern city.  Los Angeles.

But the skyscraper this ladder extends from is a place of Vice.  Pride is collected and stored here like fuel.  Demonic faces stare out from stone statues.  This place is built, and gathers power from the expression of that vice.

There are two men on the shore, watching the man in white, the angel and the boy as they ascend.  Magpie does her best to describe the faces of the three men... Chimera recognizes them as Donato, Fulgore and their former Cabalmate Nox.  And Donato's son holding the hand of the angel, the demon Agile.

***************

"You weren't evil even back then, just . . . compromised." Chimera says, moving a pawn into yet another bad position. "I don't know why you're seeing these things. It's not uncommon for mages to have weird dreams and visions, but I don't think I've heard of anything quite like this. They probably aren't nonsense; like you said, you're just lacking the context you need to make sense of them. Have these same people shown up in any other visions?"

"I've had other visions too.  I once dreamed of a man who walked the planets into heaven and came back.  But that didn't sound like a ladder or tower.  I don’t know if my visions are real Chimera, sometimes they are just nonsense or lack the context to even know what I am seeing..."

"I need to see a vision of my own." Chimera says, completing her preparation for her spell.  "It's been a long time coming but I figured something out.  She would show compassion to Grace.  She would agree and work together with her daimon the first time since Germany.  "Will you help me?"

Magpie frowned, but nodded.

Here, in the heart of Chimera's domain, with the spirit she shaped and the apprentice she taught, Chimera asserts her own Truth – raw and caring and angry - without hesitation. She and Magpie are both giving something, and she asks Grace to give the same in return.

Their story.

It is said that the royalty among the Awakened City hid among the peoples of the newly fallen world, just as the priests, warriors, scholars and spies did, and oftentimes stepped down into a position of service among the nascent orders.  But they could not truly disguise their true natures, the parts of them that were more than the common magi who now sought direction in a Sleeping world.  Their souls were marked by the greater understanding of truth that revealed them as the true rulers of a lost Kingdom, and because of this truth, their souls were somehow different and retain memory, authority and connection to their past lives.

Over the years, as the kings and queens of Atlantis passed from the world, their souls would continue to cycle through the eternal Wheel of Incarnation, being born again and again in the fallen world. Not all incarnations Awakened, and those that did needed the help of the Watchtowers, as all mages’ souls do. But when the Highborn’s soul did Awaken, it was strong, and the hidden truths of the first Lords of the Spire resonated within their breasts.

Some mages are said have stronger connections to the past than others. While many mages may eventually be able to track their ancestry back to survivors of the Fall of Atlantis, few have direct remembrances of actual experiences just before, during or just after the Fall. Some Mages can capture snatches of memories of life in Atlantis or other events of their past history in the Fallen World. They may reflect reincarnation or memories of the fallen.  Chimera was one of those few, Witness another.

Strength

Chimera draws Strength from the major Arcana of her Tarot deck to represent Grace, the totality of her soul's journey. The card symbolizes nature, soft power, purity, compassion, enduring despite setbacks.

And with that in mind, Chimera casts Past-Life Regression with the help of her apprentice, targeting Chimera as the subject of the spell.  It should allow her experience events in one or more previous lives, experiencing the events if they were there.  She the revelation of Magpie's vision of the Silver Ladder, her Chess Piece Soulstone and the game of chess itself as yantras and Chimera's own soul as an Atlantean Highborn as the final component. Chesulloth uses her Influence to strengthen the concept of Revelation as they finish casting the Spell.  As the spell takes hold, Chimera calls upon her Daimon Grace through the Ancient Echoes she feels to catch a glimpse of Atlantis, of her first soul.

Her process was throwing as much of herself into this spell as she possibly can, asking Grace to help fill in the blanks of her first life for her (because she cannot consciously past life regression that far back herself), and using the related revelations in Magpie's story to jumpstart that. Looking for when they were still royalty in Atlantis – and the truth of what happened there.  This is the first time she has ever showed compassion to Grace.

Suddenly there is no Grace or Chimera. They are one. They are the same person. Fragments of the past lives she's lived spiraling backwards in time.

Chimera reached back.

***************
And she remembered.  She remembered aspects of Atlantis itself with hallucinatory-like intensity. the memories are far more symbolic than literal, which makes it a frustrating affair to attempt to visualize Atlantis as it was. And the nature of her daimon is revealed.

There isn't one specific life or action that was truly pivotal in making Grace who she is. She is truly an accumulation of generations. The last three hundred lives she has had have worn away the soft bits and leaving the sharp edges, polished steel and rock-hard stability.

So much was fragmented and lost, but certain truths are evident. She’s been a wanderer, a traveler, a survivor. She was there at the very beginning, and she was royalty.  

Chimera saw the crystalline city with outer walls of Adamantine and endless spires and ramparts covering an entire mountain. An Island but the city itself is essentially over the peak of this sloping mountain.  She also sees herself on a floating continent in the clouds, sometimes in the stars looking down at the blue marble that was Earth.

The first life – a Queen – was a peerless healer, not just of bodies, but also of minds, souls, and more abstract divisions; she could cure a dysfunctional relationship or poisonous discourse as easily as a broken leg. 

Her court was not just a throne room, but also her clinic. Grace still remembers it well; deep, brilliant blue and purple walls, curved inward like an embrace and lined with row upon row of intricately carved game pieces and dice – tokens of conquest. A verifiable menagerie flanked her throne, a brilliant riot of color and sound. Many spoke, and were fascinating conversationalists at that; nature was both more inventive and generous back then. These were animals who she had lacked the heart not to take in after treating their injuries, for most had nowhere else to go.  

The room was held up by sturdy pillars of living trees and vines, magnificent in bloom. Most days, the place was packed with petitioners, human, animal, and things stranger than either; motes of light and starfire, sapient clusters of secrets, minds cocooned within animate metal shells, beasts who wore identities like masks and removed them just as easily. The price for her services was always a game, chosen by the patient. 

Tender-hearted, impish, and powerful, the Queen’s compassionate use of her skills put her in high demand. She was also fiercely competitive, constantly testing herself against her fellows in both sport and serious matters, though for the most part this was in good fun. There were unfortunate exceptions. A few saw her as childish. A few more found her dogged persistence irritating. She accepted any scorn with a smile; this was before the tiny speck of resentment in her heart grew into something ugly. 

Back then, only one of her fellow nobles was really capable of ruffling her – the Strategist. A brilliant, genius, abysmally unmotivated man. The whole court hated him, had long ago given up on him gaining the motivation to do anything. He simply didn’t care, only sinking further into apathy the more he was pushed to care. To the Queen, this was of course an irresistible challenge.

A more one-sided rivalry has never existed. Every hunt, tournament, feast, and festival, the Queen issues this same King a personal challenge or three, weathering his indifference the Court’s growing irritation at her stubbornness. Every trick she has, she throws at him with a vengeance, and when those fail, she learns new and better tricks that don’t work. Gloating would be more tolerable than his utter lack of reaction to his own victories. Being beaten, she can stomach; a worthy opponent is so rare. But having to bear witness to this much squandered potential?

Out of sheer frustration, the Queen looks for an injury she might heal, a fracture in his psyche that would explain the apathy that traps and isolates him. But it’s worse than that; he could be so much more, do so much good, and he simply doesn’t want to. Long after she realizes that fact, she’s still acting the part of his rival.

It’s the only way she can see to be his friend.  At that, she never stops trying. And she never succeeds.

As all the old game moves become played out and dull, the peace was beginning to fracture. Whispers of dissent, then a riot or two, weapons drawn at a celebratory feast, raised voices and infighting amongst her peers, the Strategist barricading inside his throne room. Anyone paying attention could smell the blood on the horizon. Even her usual cheer had soured. She commissioned a new game to drown her agitation in, whose name eludes her now, even as its memory does not.  

A large board of monochrome black and white, tokens and dice carved from obsidian. The tokens represented armies of generic soldiers. Players ticked the number on them down for losses in battle, up when successfully raising more soldiers from residential zones or court. And the dice helped determine battle outcomes and chance based events. The win conditions were highly malleable, changeable on a whim, but the default condition was simple: a player won when they had routed all of the opponent’s units and armies, or when they held all throne rooms simultaneously.

Mixing up the game were the commander units, represented by uncannily real figurines that were detailed down to the hair. They shifted and breathed, looking up to the player for their orders. Each one was named for broad archetypes, and bore a not-coincidental resemblance to an Atlantean King or Queen.

The Chevalier, an unflinching woman on a dark horse who fought with a glistening adamantine sword nearly twice her height. She cut down soldiers like wheat and came back laughing. Somewhere along the line, her chivalrous code had twisted into something ugly. 

The Orator wore vestments the color of wine and spoke with a voice laced with honey. He raised soldier units by the dozens. Troops led personally by him were enthralled, fighting with an almost alien strength and passion. He transformed ordinary men into something more than human.

The Warden, a woman who passed between darknesses, always watchful and wary. She saw things that others could not, and offered up her vigilance. While she shepherded an army, they became as silent and intangible as shadow.      

The Curator had a stern slant to their brows and held worlds within the many pockets that lined their robes. They dabbled in knowledge he perhaps should have shut away, and their help was unpredictable, cataclysmic, game-changing, destroying or transforming entire sections of the board.

There were many other commanders in the game of course, the Healer and the Strategist among them. 

And of course, the game was controversial. The resemblance between the commanders and Atlantis’ Kings and Queens was strong enough to be disquieting to many, especially in such a time of strife. The game earned her no friends. At night though, there were some who stole into her throne room to play it with her, and spoke of a great Ladder . . . 

The nature of Atlantis was shifting, and she felt rather than saw the direction that Atlantean society was taking: stratification unto death. Just as a human emperor worries over the loyalty of his people and the possibility of an insurrection, the priest-lords of the Awakened City grew to fear any upset in the social order. One mage might lead a horde of the unenlightened without fear of corruption, for when a human knows he has no equals he need have no fear of being overthrown. But a mage among mages is one among equals, and only the wise can resist judging her wisdom and strength beside that of her brothers and sisters.

To those without such insight, sympathy with the Realms Supernal and facility with weaving the Tapestry became a measure of status. Those were the mages drawn to mortal power and politics, who began to direct ever more of their energy into the offices, losing their drive to seek out and understand the Supernal Mysteries. Atlantis was an ideal society, unfortunately, there was a flaw in the gem, one that lengthened and deepened over the generations. All of her power could not heal it. 

When the first wizard’s war swelled on the horizon, she had informally allied with the designers of the Celestial Ladder. The noble Council was divided and proud. Many mages saw themselves as more capable leaders than the Council, their undeniable power feeding their hubris. Mages turned upon each other en masse for the first time, and the Orders collapsed upon themselves as the wise and the ambitious clashed. They called those loyal to the project power-hungry and cursed the integral architects of the forthcoming breach into the Supernal. She stood with those mages, she knew the good to come of overthrowing the old gods once and for all. For she had observed the nature of entropy; those she healed came back again and again, with fresh wounds and dysfunction to be set right. The status quo was not worth protecting, because it allowed no peace nor kindness to be permanent. She wanted a world where she wouldn’t be necessary.

Part of her motivation was less kind. Bitterness and petty spite had taken root and bloomed in her, her own form of hubris. She was tired of being bested by her peers, at her playful manner being taken to mean that she was no one to take seriously. Her new peers saw her worth - even as they wrought horrors on the world.  

Ultimately, she realized she had been betrayed. That they had used and twisted her loyalty.  The Exarchs claimed the thrones of heaven and she was forced to see that reality may be forever broken.  She left the city before the final battle and switched sides.  She exerted all her power to heal and protect the Exiles in the last day.

When the Fall came, the Queen was there, tending to her subjects. And when it ended, many of them were left utterly broken. As she so often had, she tried to save them, and for the first time, she found her ability to do so insufficient. Her magic squirmed in her grasp like a mutilated animal. With furious determination, she sought out the root of this harm and found the Abyss. But as she reached out to heal her enemy, the worst wound she had ever encountered, it saw her, and tore her apart.

The damage was so extensive that it persisted into the next dozen reincarnation cycles, but Grace was always there to help them mend, softly and patiently nudging them back towards their ideal self: the healer. There was not a single moment that changed that; it was the long grind of life after life, the pattern that kept reappearing. Because in the Fallen World, the daimon’s guidance - her encouragement of kindness, gentleness, trust, and mercy - kept killing them before they could reach their true potential.

Flickers of past lives pass through Chimera’s mind. A wandering pacifist who ended his own life, sick from betrayal by those he had trusted. A woman who braved the seas and spared the wrong enemy. A child prodigy whose sacrifice, in the end, meant nothing.

All of this suffering was watched with horror by a healer whose care brought more harm than salvation, a daimon failing at the only purpose she had ever known. It haunted her, and the slow realization, more than anything else, was what maddened Grace, molded her into something cruel, pragmatic, and vicious.

She became her own antithesis, trading a doctor’s scalpel for a knife; instead of healing others in their moments of weakness, she resolved to make sure that there would never be weakness to take advantage of. As someone whose role had made her intimately familiar with what vulnerability of all kinds looked like, she knew better than anyone where to sink in the knife to cut it out. She separated the wheat from the chaff. It was the only way to save them, and soon it was only survival.

Her incarnations changed as she did; hardened, warlike, more likely to demand or bully respect than to gently cultivate it. Lives flicker by again. A Scelstus pouring over his forbidden tomes, matching ugly means to ugly ends. A warrior with wary eyes and a jagged spear in her hands. A millionaire with noble aspirations and a nasty cruel streak, who would snap before he bent an inch.

And Chimera.

***************

Hygenia

Maggie was deeply unsettled.  One minute she and Chimera were playing a game and then Chimera cast a spell incorporating everything in the room.  Then she spaced out and starts acting delirious and confused, and saying things that don’t make any sense.

"Seven Islands, Ten Kings."

At a certain point, recollection lapses into unconsciousness and by then Chimera is too delirious to notice any difference. She dreams of chessboards, and hunger; Grace lurks in the shadows with a crown in her hands.

When she wakes up she’s on Anne’s couch, nursing the worse hangover of her life. Once she’s actually able to move, there’s a lot of explaining to do - to her terrified apprentice, who teleported her here after she passed out, and to Anne, who is angry with worry for both of them.

The shine of adamantine is burned onto her eyelids for days afterwards.

Once she recovered a little and came to her senses Chimera stared at the ceiling, reeling from the revelation. No.  She had been a Loyalist, not an Exile.  She had been worse than a Seer. Now he was a Queen without a Throne.

Was she also the Dethroned Queen?