“I have seen the hidden flows of the Arcana and understood their self-evident truths. And like the answer to a riddle the inconsistencies point to another answer, one that like the solution is self-evident.”
“I believe now that there is a machine… a machine beyond ancient. Did it come from the future after all entropy has taken place? It sits in the heart of the Supernal Realms, beyond the veil of them, in the highest of high. The Crown, the Keter. It also exists throughout the Tellurian in deep space outside our Galaxies. I found the writings of Marcus Singe… some of his mad ranting ring with a dread current of truth. This machine created the first children and started things off, the first age. We have met several clockwork servants and have chased the Omega Clock throughout time and space. I believe it was used by the True Gods of the Supernal during the times of Atlantis, the third age of man, the gods I seek to restore. The Exarchs did not create it; they only understand it enough to alter physical reality. This infinite machine projects reality, it generates The Lie like a hologram or like a program running in its internal memory banks. If the God-Machine could be accessed and used it could free humanity, the Imperium. For that to happen the Exarchs would have to be subverted, if they truly exist at all.”
“But the omega device exists; it may be the only thing that really exists. It is an alien thing older than time since time times infinity. At the end of everything it sits and could be said to consume the universe slowly through this entropy, the clock running down. After the heat death of the universe it consolidates the vibration of strings that like a standing wave define matter and creates another Big Bang and sets everything off again. How many cycles has it done this? What is it trying to learn from the program it runs? The Exarchs are not the hidden masters of reality; the machine controls them through them controlling it. The more power they get the more chained to their thrones they are.”
“The God-Machine is the control mechanism for the Lie. It generates it and regulates order. But the Exarchs didn't know how to use it properly, and when they wrested control they broke reality. They created the Abyss, the fallen reflections of the higher realms we know, the ruined the true cycle of souls, and the created the Lie. Now fragments and projects of the God-Machine’s machinations are revealed where they would normally be layered outside of all perception. Reality is flawed; the inconsistencies I have found mount up in the hundreds. Parts of the machinery which operate our hologram can be found anywhere in the Tellurian. They can be found and used within the lens of own rules and reoccurring themes. It is the key to travel to parallel worlds, making Ascension easier. It is the KEY to the unfound door. It is the Heart of Darkness and the Dark Tower at the center of everything. It IS.”
“But the world is more broken than the corrective protocols can keep up with. The Abyss, the Anti-reality, what Prodigy calls ‘The Three AM’ is pushing the cracks in our walls apart. Magic is dying. My Cabalmates, we must reach the center where the world tree of gears lies. We must resist reality and break through.”
“You must flee from its angels; no magics will help against the agents of the machine. Maybe there are no Oracles, only men like me… and now I am dying...”
- Archmaster Casstiel, The Bridge of Souls
http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/890471-what-is-your-god-machine-truth-why-is-it-doing-the-things-it-does
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/god-machine-chronicle-portents-of-the-god-machine.688335/page-8
http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/mage-the-awakening/504716-the-god-machine-the-awakened
- It came from the Singularity, born from the Technocracy in a future or alternate timeline.
- Cthoton from Exalted lore... look up
Magic and Machines
In a world where both the God Machine and the Awakened exist, what happens?
Mages, curious about the greater truths of the Supernal, Fallen and all the worlds in between will inevitably discover evidence of the God Machines machinations. They are not equipped to directly detect Infrastructure or the occult matrices before they have occurred, but they can investigate their existence and effects. Time, Space, Fate, Forces, perhaps even Spirit and Prime, all could help facilitate learning more about the many woven parts and conspiracies that make up the existence of the God Machine.
The God Machine is preoccupied with its greater machinations now has yet another annoyance to tend to. Demons run amok, Angels and cults need to be coordinated and its plans must move forward. As a machine it responds to other Supernatural investigation probably the same way it does with mundane ones. Misdirection, intermediaries, and force if necessary or expedient. It can create Angels for these purposes or call upon cults and other stranger resources or design Infrastructure and occult matrices to thwart interference.
These are the general answers to the question of coexistence.
Capabilities
It's stated the God Machine is very sensitive to probability especially shifting or toying with its state in dramatic ways. Would it be sensitive more to manipulations of Fate and Time, able to focus or hone in on Magi who utilize those Arcanum more then others Magi? Or does the Supernal nature of said manipulations override its ability to sense it? Does the potential Abyssal quality cause 'static' or 'noise' towards its vision of reality?
Furthermore, the God Machine can rewind, split and determine fates and time. It can contend with many of the most powerful Spells in a Mages arsenal if its desire was to do so. Mages themselves cannot directly detect Infrastructure through purely magical means as of current. This being the case, hiding and advancing Infrastructure could far easier to orchestrate until it was right under their metaphorical noses and the occult matrices were ready to fire.
Angels as well can be equipped with Numina suited to their tasks, and originally in 1e Numina could replicate Spells. If that stands in 2ed Mages are in for a tough haul when or if Angels are brought in. To what end though? Extermination, interrogation or integration?
Mages have the Arcanum on their side, literally anything is within their power given time and dedication. How far though can Mages gaze into the workings of the God Machines and comprehend or predict its plans? Is it beyond even them? What are the consequences of trying? Is their Supernal truth to be found here or only madness?
Can Fate sense the workings of the God Machine? Or is the God Machine's plans beyond notice of the Arcanum?
What are your thoughts?
I've thought a lot about these kinds of questions. I think the God Machine is a terrifying antagonist, and an amazing force to be contended with. It fits right up there with other Mages as a powerful reality warping force. It seems only natural for the hubris and inquisitive nature of a Mage progressing along their Souls path to encounter the God Machine at some point, but then what?
Do they turn away or engage, and how does the God Machine respond?
An even better question though is, how does it respond in the context of the two settings of the God Machine Chronicle (or Demon) and Mage: The Awakening Second Edition?
I have a few theories about the God Machine, one of which is that It is the Monitor of the Fallen World whose job is to maintain stability, correct any system errors, reformat corrupted data and quarantine hostile programs and viruses.
In Mage terms, it is responsible for base Paradox Risk. Even when there are no Sleeper witnesses for magic, the Fallen World itself is treated as a witness. The God Machine can tell when a "system error" is about to occur.
If there are Sleeper witnesses, the Disbelief kicks in and the Sleepers forget what they saw. This is the God Machine quarantining the foreign "program", disabling the error and reformating local programs. This also suggests that Paradox effects can be seen as a form of anti-virus.
05-06-2015, 08:36 AM
In my chronicle, the God-Machine is THE fallen god of the Aether, corrupted since the Fall to become an obsessive entity of order for order's sake. To the God-Machine, Fallen Reality is inherently flawed and must be corrected. It must be ordered and safe. Without a steady (and probably massive) source of mana, the God-Machine developed a system of occult matrixes, in order to feed from its influences and to build more complex magical workings. It cannot return to the Supernal Realms, maybe it doesn't want to anymore. Mages are no more special in its eyes than any other mortal. Subverting fallen reality to its mechanisms is its prime directive.
Some archmasters, more than two thirds of them tetrarchs, know about the God-Machine. The thing is, the Exarchs do not want it to return, but they don't know it anymore than anyone else. And that scares the Seers in-the-know, yet for now it helps to reinforce the status quo, which is a relief of sorts? But who's using who? Some Seers are commanded to do surveillance tasks and containment for the most egregious of the God-Machine plans, but that's as far as they can go without violating direct orders. What is the ultimate goal of the God-Machine? Are the Exarchs aware of its plans already, or are they using Humanity as a bargaining chip in their unfathomable deals?
And the Pentacle? Mainly it depends on the individual cabals and mages, but there are some general trends too.
There are some Mysterium caucuses that obsessively hunt any occult matrix for observation and study, but few can keep up with that MO without flat-out antagonizing God-Machine cults and its angels. Demons too suffer from their scrutiny, but most often is the other way around: the unchained are the ones coming to the Mysterium looking for answers or in search for occult lore, though both parties come up with very little gain for too much trouble.
The Silver Ladder believes Humanity should not bow down to any god, be it fallen or supernal, but in practice is much more pragmatic, waging a subtle war of influence against God-Machine cults and sometimes believing they are another tool of the Exarchs. Some caucus, however, have started to think that maybe they could use the God-Machine as a weapon against the Exarchs. But what could it mean to help the God-Machine achieve its goals and reclaim its seat in the Heavens? Would not that mean just changing one tiranny for another?
The Guardian of the Veil have a conflicted relationship with the God-Machine. On the one hand, their Labyrinths clash with G-M cults, trying to subvert each other for its own purposes. On the other hand, the few epopts that believe the God-Machine is a fallen god become obsessed with the potential of occult matrixes, for it could mean a way of protecting supernal magic from paradox by using occult matrixes as "paradox dissipators" that could safely discharge paradox energies through the matrix. Demons and Guardians clash often when they both work surveillances on the God-Machine agents, but the result of those clashes is entirely dependent on their particular circumstances.
To the Free Council, the answer is evident: Destroy the Followers of the Lie. The God-Machine is an inhuman intelligence using humans as pawns in its occult games. It's clearly another tool of the Exarchs. However, the few libertines that have studied the G-M have found out that the Seers are no more knowledgeable or prone to protect the God-Machine than any other faction, so that gives them pause. Is there another faction fighting against the tyranny of the Heavens in the Fallen World? Is the God-Machine "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" as the saying goes? Or it's just another tyrant waiting for its turn? Some libertines that know about the unchained believe the latter though, and help them wage guerrilla war against the God-Machine agents as often as they can afford it.
The Adamantine Arrow sees the God-Machine as a worthy challenge, but less so than fighting the Exarchs. Being the consummate tacticians that they are, however, sometimes that put them alongside thearchs who think of using the God-Machine as a weapon against their enemies, but just as often they think the effort is not worth the trouble. Angels, on the other hand, are a concrete and measurable menace the Arrows can put their strengths against, especially when some of them try to manipulate an arrow family and friends.
In Tome of the Watchtowers, in the Obrimos myth about their Oracle, it's implicitly told that the God-Machine (although he's never called by that name) lives in the Aether or even he's the Aether (Aether is described as a giant mechanical living machine).
Of course, that can change in 2nd edition, or probably is just a myth, created by some mage who heard about the GM and tried to reconcile it with his cosmological view of reality.
I don't think the idea is necessarily to conflate every machine metaphor with the God-Machine. The idea of divine order represented through machinery makes sense for the way the Obrimos were fluffed in the first edition, and I think it might be worth considering it a call-out to that idea. The God-Machine seems to be both a reference to that mechanistic perspective on divinity plus a bunch of other ideas about human systems overwhelming the human, but I wouldn't necessarily consider it the one stop shop for that idea.
Except, in that fluff, not only is the Watchtower of the Golden Key described as a vast, pre-existing machine that the Oracle there only needed to turn on, but it is explicitly called a God-Machine. Directly spelling, all the hyphens and Important Capital Letters in place. Before, that would have been a nice nod to some of the other stories out there- now it can be a story hook or even something more. An Obrimos wanting to see the divine as a gigantic universal mechanism pushing for order would be better served by physics or mathematics than analogies to machines or computers.
My personal take is that the God-Machine has a cursory alliance with the General and the Father- it supports their interests marginally so long as the God-Machine gets in on some of the massive quantities of Essence generated by the Supernal symbols those two represent and rule over. In other words, the God-Machine is exploiting the Aether for fuel, which would make a lot of sense.
n our games the god-machine is one of the few entities that managed to survive the fall but little else is known about it. The god machine believes that reality is broken (which it's true) and it's obsessed with repairing it and bring it back to before the fall where its power was absolute, no matter what.
The problem is that the god machine itself is badly damaged with multiple holes in its memory and constant glitches and bugs, demons are one of the many results of its damaged mind. As for its relationship with mages they are simply more pieces of the machine that it's reality no more no less.
It's aware that the seers where responsible for the fall and it spies on them but little more. This is because both the god machine and its agents are trapped in the fallen world, it has no means of reaching the seers. The seers know about the god machine but they believe that it's no real threat so they ignore it for the most part.
The god machine is bidding its time and once reality is fixed and its whole again, the god machine will wipe out the seers and claim its title as the one and only master of all reality.
The god machine seems thematically un-needed in a game where the Exarchs do almost exactly the same thing as it does but with a closer connection with Mages.
Honestly I don't think Mage plays well with crossovers with other WoD stuff at all.
Certainly, if you're going to include the GM in Mage, you should at least consider what if any relationship it has with the Exarchs. Servant? Ally? Rival?
Master?
My first idea was this: Terrible unknown.
Awakened from the Orders and the Seers, they all have their theories. It's a manifestation of the Exarchs will, or the lost God Machine of the realm of the Aether. Any of them could be true, but what really matters is that it's real.
The Exarchs seem to exist through the lens of the Seers. They seek out their supposed Artifacts and knowledge, build their temples and conduct their machinations. Some claim to be guided by them, visions, just as all Mages have connected with a Watchtower.
The God Machine is real in a different sense then this. It's an uncaring machine God. It might be broken, or it might be beyond comprehension. It doesn't work like the Exarchs, it doesn't require the Lie to be enforced or maintained.
It's just there.
A God Machine, with the power of the Exarchs claim is theirs. The power to distort or reshape reality.
It probably rivals the Exarchs if they do exist, but not directly. Else their forces would be far more aware of its existence and mustered against it.... right?
See the neat thing about the God Machine in a Mage Chronicle is that Mages don't know. It can do what they can reality distorting wise and perhaps better when it comes to the Fallen World. Does it matter to the Supernal though? Does it matter to humanity? The Orders? Oddly enough... no. Not really.
That's a bit terrifying. There are Gods among us in the World of Darkness. They live not just in Arcadia or the Lower Depths, but right here.
And we don't know why.
If we take the view that all watchtowers are really, on some level, the same watchtower (that is a symbol of the supernal) and that the various paths are merely a point of view, then the reality here is that the obrimos are the only ones that are close to realizing that the god machine is just another symbol for the mechanism that controls the idea of reality. Tap into it and you can bend it. push at it too hard and it might push back, etc. In the right game, it could be that mages are tapping into the god machine directly and against it's will, like hackers going in through a back door. Young mages are script kiddies: using their rotes without any idea of why they work. Archmages are like top level programmers: they have a better idea of how things work on a fundamental level, but mostly they just know a lot about their field. Almost nobody really *knows* how computing works on a grand scale. they get the idea, but i've never met anyone who knows all of it 100%. And that's just the computers we have, not the god machine.
So the most important thing about the God Machine, IMO, are the themes. Unknowability. A problem you can never solve. A question you can never answer. That should drive mages nuts. Mages are built such that given enough time and motivation they can know just about anything.
But the question then is: what purpose does the God Machine serve in a mage game, then? If you run (as I think I'm about to) a mage game where the God Machine is the primary antagonist, what's the end game? Because unless you're tossing the themes out the window, the endgame isn't beating it ... not entirely. And it's not figuring it out because it's unknowable.
So it's what? Maybe figuring out a part of it's plan, thwarting one of it's agents, etc?
Maybe you find a chunk of busted God Machine code that needs to be repaired and force your way in to fix it. As a result, reality gets a little bit nicer somehow? That's not a terrible goal, especially if you start with a bad premise (like awakenings are broken or XYZ is not as it should be).
Well, less that (I'm perfectly capable of keeping my players from uncovering secrets), but more where does that game go? When you open a story (any story) with "here is this great mystery" the payoff seems like it ought well be "solve that mystery". In this case, it's not really an option, is it? Not without sort of killing the theme. So what's the payoff to that opening?
Also, I was taking a look at this. it's a nice little chart and I dig it, but something about it hurts my brain. If we want to say that the god machine is tied to the Aether (and it makes sense that if it was tied to some realm, that would be it) then hoe does that track with the inferno and demons attached to the mastagos? Clearly the author of this image is not 100% right about the exachs (though it probably worked for the story he was telling and I dig it). So do we say that the exarchs in this image are replaces by angels and the God Machine? And if so, what about the demons of pandemonium/the inferno? I get the feeling this image came out before Demon. But one of the big themes of pandemonium IS demons, so how does that track in your minds? (I admit, I'm not mostly farming for plot ideas)
Nah, that Chart isn't accurate.
The God-Machine is explicitly stated in several places to be wholly rooted in the material world and has much less (if *any*) truck with parts elsewhere. Like, it's a major reason for Psychopomps to Fall - many of them rebel because they spend their existences carting ghosts and spirits to gateways to the Underworld and Shadow, but no angel ever actually goes *through* them.
In my Ascension/Awakening mashup, I've placed the God-Machine in the position of being a patron of sorts to the Exarchs, and having been responsible for the prior attempt at Technocracy (it collapsed around the turn of the 20th Century, much as in standard Awakening, albeit for a lot of different reasons). It's surprisingly useful in this role.
Yep. *eg* I use it as a mix of ally and master, partly because the Exarchs would never acknowledge any entity as their master, but mostly because the God-Machine doesn't care. As long as the Exarchs and Illuminati do their job, it doesn't need to micromanage them. It still sends Angels to keep an eye on things, but for the most part it's content to let its servants deal with anomalies in their own way, as long as they don't create more.
If the God Machine is your primary antagonist, I'd argue that you're not really playing Mage anymore, and you should view everything through the lens of GMC themes (not Demon); Mages are just better investigators than your average human but they're not significantly different. That means jettisoning Mage themes of power and agency and the dangers and responsibilities thereof in favor of inevitably and attrition against an implacable foe that can only be slowed down or diverted, not stopped. You can totally keep the dangerous addiction to knowledge and insatiable curiosity bits though.
If you want to use the G-M as a foil to the campaign rather than a direct antagonist to be beaten though, you can highlight the way it functions as a cautionary tale about seeing everything as tools to be manipulated to particular ends, something low Wisdom mages can easily fall into. There's a commonality between infrastructure and supernal symbolism in how they reduce down concrete tangible and important things with unique identities into abstract concepts to be moved around at whim.
Ehh, I think there's room for both. The Exarchs are symbols representing a very human-dominated (or at least, comprehensible to humans) understanding of tyranny and oppression. The God-Machine doesn't seem to care about humanity either way, other than as a possibly useful element for its own, unrelated plans.
As for what it does in the game I play in, as far as I'm aware (OOC) the God-Machine is an entity of the Fallen World, and (at least since the Fall, which it may predate) it's working on a macro-scale to maintain Fallen reality. Reality is fundamentally broken, and the G-M, by imposing its own uncaring form of order, is working to make sure it doesn't break down completely. Of course, "maintain a World of Darkness" may not be a good thing...
yeah, I'm still toying with the idea and trying to find a way to make it fit. I LOVE the iddea of the God Machine, I just need to sort of let it rattle around on top of the idea of mage till it fits in my head. One way is to rework the cosmology (go the God of the Aether route). Another is to have the God Machine be a thing that runs in tandom. It's an unstopable force that has something wrong with it and the PC's are mages who might have the chance to set things right down the road and for now they need to dodge angels and what not.
Something about it still feels off, though, and it may be what you said. To dive into the themes of GM i lose the themes of mage. Mage is about having a ton of power and figuring out what you're willing to do with it. GM is about having no power and trying to do something anyway. They mesh poorly at first glance.
Then the theme becomes, "I can do all of this, and still fail." I would play up the versatility of Mages, dropping hints, bits of lore, weird phenomenon, etc and let them play and experiment with them let them exercise as much control as they want/is possible only to inevitably have it ground in the teeth of the gears.
Let's go with a scenario: The characters discover brainwashing infrastructure in a soap factory. They decide that's a problem for whatever reason. They manage to figure out how it's being done, what the triggers for the conditioning are, they can even remove the programming. They fix all the victims they can find and blow up the factory, job well done.
It turns out the infrastructure survived though and now there's an angel grabbing people to be brainwashed because they no longer have a soap factory to just draw in employees. Or a new facility gets built somewhere else, or the GM changes its tactics.
You just get the players to do everything they can to solve the problem, really encourage them to go all out and then you pull the rug out from under them.
In storytelling it's called "You succeed, but..."
Yes and no.
I mean, remember that you see the setting from the eyes of essentially a diety(or at least a well versed archmage), privy to tons of info that in setting are closely guarded secrets. For example, the Orders guard their secrets from one another. It is just that most players read thise books and assume their knowledge reflects their players. Same extend so Vampires, Werewolves, Mummies or other beings. Mages are aware and might know scaps, but they don't have the actual source books in front of them (though I personally hold that the Orders probably have info to the degree of the primary sourcebook, such as the fact that there are 5 clans and certain sects of the Vampire cultures).
The reason I make that point is that short of having your game go into Archmastery, most of your interactions that deal with the bigger elements (i.e. not the Vampires but the curse, or not a particular mummy but the Duat) aren't going to need you to "solve everything". Mages are going to be looking into whatever they can, sure, but they are often going to be starting at "I know there are vampires in the city, some who use blood magic... I wonder how it relates to our own magic." Even if you start with the Vampires leaping out and attacking the characters, the characters aren't going to know more than what they can find out or their orders taught them. If you want to make the Vampires an enemy in your story, and turn it into a hack and slash to rid the city, that is fine. But then you are moving away from the theme of mage. Even the AA is going to study through Vampires to figure out exactly how their enemies tick, and in those studies I (if I was the ST) would seed plot hooks into exploring the Mysteries of Vampires, Death, the Strix, etc.
In fact, a good part of your game is going to be your characters just trying to figure out that there is a God Machine and what its Infastructure is or does, never mind delving past that to what it actually is. How does he make the Angels? How is he related to the mythology of God(s)? How does his power work on the world? How does infastructure work? Could we tap into it? How does it relate to the Supernal? The Abyss? The Lower Depths? And how can this help me? Talking about beating or understanding the God Machine would be like running a chronicle saying that Mages are going to revive Father Wolf or destroy the True Fae: it is missing the point of what mage is supposed to be. Even in their own setting, if you focus on the Abyss or Exarchs as things to be beaten or completely explained, you have turned this into a game of D&D where everyone rolled a Wizard or Druid and forgot to bring any die beyond a d10. The GMC is the same type of antagonist as the Abyss: it is a force that is too large or powerful for a mage to ever fully comprehend, but it doesn't mean that a mage can't learn some of its secrets and counter it and it's agents. Even if your players see it as something to beat or have their characters act as if they see it as a threat they can win against, don't actually have that as the goal of the story (unless your players want that type of game.)
Mages exist for Mystery. They explore the Fallen World. They fight the monsters of it. They dream of knowing it all or being all powerful, but that is the same as nearly any other person. The games focus, no matter what you have as the central source, should never be the end goal of "beat this guy" or " answer everything". It should be "what have I learned? What new mysteries have I uncovered? How can this fit with what I know? How does this reveal the Supernal?" And even if you focus on the politics and maneuvering, there should never be a win and go home objective (you're heirarch now? How are you going to keep it? How will you use that power? etc.). Any line can be used to help a mage explore that, from seeing the nature of the soul and death by studying a Geist, to investigating life and spirits by roaming with werewolves, to investigating fate through changelings, etc.
The GM is one of my favorites, because it is so ineffable I can always draw on it for more stories. I have never once given my players an exact insight into what it is or its true purpose, or how it fits into the mage cosmology. I have my notes and ideas of what I think it is written down, so I don't contradict anything outright, but I keep things both distant and vague enough to avoid them feeling like there is nothing more to learn. Considering the Demons and Angels don't even really know what the GMC is, it means you can pull a lot of their lore and GMC stuff in without ever having to give a definite end to a chronicle. Plus, even if the GM is a central theme, it doesn't mean that all the other elements of the mage world disappear: Mages still have their politics, the Abyss is ever present, Mad and banishers are around (heck, Mad work amazingly well with GM), and Seers always are happy to mess with a group of Pentacle mages who may be getting too nosy or powerful.
A player of mine describes the Mages as the PhDs of the Fallen World. They know a lot, but are constantly studying new things and uncovering new secrets of the world around them because they know that no matter how much they know they know only a small piece of the infinite cosmos. And sure, they get into scuffle and save the world, but so did Dr. Indiana Jones
So TL;DNR: Mages love Mysteries. The GMC is one of the biggest, which means he can in fact be one of the best ways to draw mages in and keep their story of exploration. The GMC doesn't perfectly fit the Atlantean ideal or Supernal Mythos, so Mages explore it because it gives them new insights into the world. Don't make the goal "fix, beat or solve the GM." You can't (heck, I don'teven know if an Archmage or Ascended being could do much). Focus instead on exploring the Mysteries of the GM as they help you mages grow in understanding of the world. Even if it is an antagonistic force in your game, treat it like the Abyss: a powerful cosmic force that you can glean info on but is too vast to ever fully comprehend beyond the most rudimentary descriptions.
I'm happy for the GMC to exist in the Fallen World of Mage and I agree with all of that awesome stuff about how it's a cool ineffable mystery for Mages to look into (it is!) as long as we don't indulge in aany rubbish about it not being affected by Mage spells, or made up of things with a reflection in the Supernal, because that always felt like a really cheap "TOO MYSTERIOUS EVEN FOR MAGES?!?!" kind of deal.
Which I realise is rather ancillary to the subject (not much more need be said past Freemind's post there I think!), but it's a personal aggravation of mine.
This is a good point and i'm going to use the Abyss as an example. if the big antagonist source in your game is "The Abyss" then no, usually defeating it is not the endgame, but probably overcoming a powerful acamoth would be. So maybe here we're looking at an angel or some GM process or both.
Basically, it's the Wolfram and Hart model. You never see the wolf, the ram, and the heart (or the powers that be, for that matter) but you feel their impact. You can take down the law firm and you do what good you can and that's a win, but the real wins are character driven.
I don't think that's what we're talkig about. IIRC from what I saw, mages can't detect the god machine's machinations unless they're actively happening, but that's exactly the same as other supernatural powers, too. A mage can't tell my werewolf HAS a gift, but they can tell when I use it, etc. A mage can blow up a hallway full of cogs and gears, but the god machine has more. A mage can affect the god machine with magic, but not really unmake it or destroy it just like a mage can target the ground, but not destroy the earth. Too big.
Oh yeah, the GM can still be vast in scope and infinitely fine in complexity, but that's true of stuff like a planetary ecosystem as well. Point is, the GM should be something where a Mage can look at an Angel and go "hmm that's a weird confluence of Arcana X, Y and Z, clearly not human" but not be all "oh my God Supernal magic cannot comprehend such an entity!" Sure it can. The Arcana, between them, cover everything in the Phenomenal universe. The exceptions are stuff that are explicitly anti-Supernal (Abyss) and Pyros, and I'm typically a bit suspicious of the idea that Pyros gets to be ineffable and beyond the purview of the Arcana's at that.
Like I said, I agree with everything that Freemind said. I just think that the GMC should be something understandable and malleable by Mages just in the way that, I dunno, the planet Earth is. Yeah, it's massive and incredibly complex and you're not doing anything notable (from something with the same scale of perspective) any time soon, if ever at all, even for Archmages. At the same time, it's not like the Earth is a mystery beyond Supernal understanding. The GMC should be the same, but massive in scope, ineffable in purpose, subtle beyond mortal comprehension and so on.
Is it that simple, though? I mean, a person is not just a confluence of life, mind, and matter, right? When a mage looks at them with life sight, they see that the life in them is made up of the stuff of magic and that it can be acted on, but that doesn't mean that all they are is life magic. I don't think those two concepts are the same. Mages are seeing the world in a very particular way, and that way may not be literal. Just because a mage using matter sight sees that nothing is really solid and that it's just power holding itself together doesn't mean that he's literally correct. It's just what he sees. He sees the potential he has to enact change on it.
I think it's fair to say that a mortal is a very complex magical confluence, as you note. I am suggesting that a Mage can look at creations of the GM and be able to determine information about them and such in the same manner that a Mage can look at a mortal human, is all. I definitely think the GM should be incredibly complex and it's creations equally so, I just dislike the idea that the GM is not part of the Mage's purviews in the same way that Pyros and Mummies and so on are claimed to be (because I don't actually think any of them should be, to be honest.)
If I was playing a Mage game and the GM was in it and I was told that no, this isn't your grandpa's mysterious entity, this is something outside of what Supernal Magic can understand or alter! then I'd roll my eyes so hard that they'd probably drop out of my head. The Arcana cover the buildings blocks of reality pretty comprehensively, stuff doesn't just get to be external to them. Anything external to them should be, like, the only thing that's external to them, and incredibly freaky and weird, and it should be something the ST makes up themselves IMO.
In the backstory for my game: for countless iterations of reality the God-Machine, then fused with Principle, acted as a guardian of the material world, enforcing it's laws and warring against the gods and monsters who would twist the cosmos to their whims; when things would get beyond even the God-Machine's great power It would reset reality, because unique among Its cosmic peers the God-Machine would remember and take steps to ensure It's victory in the new iteration. And it was good...mostly.
Two things led to the God-Machine's downfall: first, as reality was rebooted again and again the newer iterations would suffer from greater flaws and corruption, leading to more and more conflicts that the God-Machine couldn't handle and thus even faster reboots. The God-Machine might have eventually found a solution to that, if not for the Exarchs deciding to usurp It as the overlords of the material world. The God-Machine was embroiled in the greatest war it had ever seen, mostly because it was the first to span multiple iterations of reality, and eventually the Exarchs sundered it into two (leaving the Principle behind) and, unable to destroy It completely, locked It in a sterile Heaven and plunged that Realm into the Abyss.
If it were to rise again, one of the greatest forces against a newly unleashed God-Machine would be the Seers of the Throne.
I agree for the most part. My point was more that you have a being that is wholly fallen yet seems capable of imperial level effects using mechanisms that seem outside the normal means of altering the world as mages understand. The outcomes and effects are understandable through arcana, the why just isn't easy to figure out for mages. They can see the outcomes of the infrastructure, and can get past concealment if they manage to pierce it with Mage sight, and can even sense an Angel falling with Fate. Angels look like other spirits, but they can't be controlled even though every other spell works(the GM has its hooks too far in for anyone short of an archmage to get in there) . I don't remember the rules for demons and cover though. Anyway, my point was more: this thing is weird, it isn't anything like what we know based on our cosmology, let's study it! You know, like mages are wont to do.
I will point out that short of Pyros, every splat can eventually be effected directly. It is just that it requires Archmastery to get into that level of it. Mages can study and explore everything about each splat for the most part, they just cant get to the intrinsically elements until imperial practices. This may seem weird, but even their own stuff (paths, arcana, awakening itself) all require that level of power to mess with even though we know for certain they fall under the purview of the Supernal. There is a difference between "nope, not Supernal" and "nope, you can't mess with it... Yet". Yea, putting it at the level of Archmastery is putting it outside most games, but it does also mean that those things are under e purview of the Supernal, you just need a much better understanding of the respective arcana to really get into it.
As for Pyros, mages can study it but not really control it. I am fine with that since the basis of it is an unrefined chunk of soul energy. IM does suggest something that exists above the Supernal, the pure basis what defines reality and is not divided into the arcana (and is possibly the source of souls), so maybe Pyros is stolen from there. That said, an Archmage probably could mess around with some Omens if he absolutely needed to edit a Promethean. And you can obviously just make it under the purview of prime for your own game.
If I were to put Pyros into the Arcana it would require Forces, Prime, and Life. It's the vital spark that elevates a soul beyond mere mechanism, in its most literal application.
(I could see tossing in all the other arcana, if you wanted to emphasize the soul aspects. In 2e, it probably ought to get Death, as well.)
There are many other options besides "easy", "needs archmastery" and "can't", after all.
You know, I think some of the problem here stems from of out of game knowledge that there's an overarching 'thing' that is the God Machine. Unless you're a Demon, that's not really how it'd appear in setting.
Just incorporate individual infrastructures. Don't include the GM as a distinct thing at all. Use repeating patterns in those infrastructures so that your players can piece together that maybe there's some connection between these events, but don't go any further than that. And don't make it an antagonist, though individuals wrapped up in the infrastructure can be, so much as a weirdness that plays off of the other themes you're going for. Alternate with more Mage centric concerns, and use the G-M stuff as counterpoint to the player's actions or reinforcement for a particular theme. So the weird city block where no one gets sick, but blood sacrifices have to happen every year; you do that after a story where difficult choices had to be made to protect a loved one, where those choices had unintended consequences. The antagonist is just this weird guy that's feeding people to gears. He doesn't really even know why, but if he stops, it'll wreck the neighborhood, and oh, by the way, that infrastructure was also stabilizing some natural disaster waiting to happen, so now that they've stopped it, half the city is in danger of being destroyed. It's too big a problem to solve simply with magic, but mages are clever, so maybe they can find a middle way that avoids both disasters. Or maybe they decide feeding the gears again is the best course of action.
That kind of thing lets you keep agency and mostly keep to Mage themes. Each infrastructure is unique and it's own separate set of concerns. Don't try to force them into a more coherent form that can even be given a name. Treat the God Machine as just an aesthetic layered over these individual encounters - the gears and rust and blood and weirdness - and not as a being. If your players start to look at the pattern, that's fine, but there's nothing in particular to discover except more and more infrastructure with increasingly large consequences to messing with it. This isn't Demon, so there should be a level of neutrality about what that infrastructure is about; neither good nor bad per se, merely there and serving some purpose. Players should be given reasons to defend infrastructure as well as attack it, to weigh the consequences of interfering in either direction, and you can amp up aspects of paranoia and obsession with trying to make sense of all this, or obsess over trying to find those repeated signs in everything; paranoia from too much knowledge, but it's not the work of some discrete consciousness or conspiracy, it's more like the number 37 keeps showing up all over the place in ways that are clearly coincidence, but also too specific to be random.
You shouldn't rely on the God Machine for an end game, using it like this, unless your players are okay with that end game being madness and death. You should focus on mage concerns with this sprinkled in as flavor if you want something a bit more triumphant.
I think there's a bit of msreading of each other here; I more mean casting spells on the individual elements of infrastructure you see in front of you. Yeah, the GM as a whole is off limits below the Threshold, just like the Vampiric condition or whatever. That said, I'd totally let a Mage use Life, probably with an infusion of Spirit, cast magic to mess around with an individual Werewolf, although their nature as a Werewolf is probably reflected in a powerful and difficult to shift Supernal Symbol of Werewolves which is why they'd get to resist with their Primal Urge! Similarly, the GM's infrastruture is nothing inherently particularly special as far as objects of the phenomenal go, it's just that it's connected to this immense entity with, as you say, incredible Archmage-like power, which exists in the Fallen World.
Oh, yeah. Totally agree you can effect them with spells. Infastructure is in fact easier: per dave, it is I'm and of itself completely mundane. In fact, that is in part why mages often miss it, since there is nothing that makes 4 clock towers stand out to mages (unless their creation/architecture screams supernatural, or uses magic to hide them). It would only be after the purpose gets activated or something weird happens involving them that the mage would likely start to look into it.
You know, I think there's a strong implication, even in Demon, that the G-M isn't an immense entity that infrastructure is connected to, but rather that it's an emergent property *of* all the infrastructure and new infrastructure is a self reinforcing feedback loop from existing infrastructure. There's really only infrastructure, in the way that a person is really only cells. So even as an Archmaster, there isn't a specific thing to attack; much like a Demon would, you can go for a cascade failure by breaking exactly the right infrastructures, and as an Archmaster maybe you can see enough of the bigger picture to get a sense for the consequences and lynchpins of the entire system (though, honestly, probably not. Archmastery doesn't give omniscience. Even Ascending wouldn't necessarily give you that kind of global awareness, though certain concepts of Fate might get you close), but there probably *isn't* a God Machine Supernal symbol that you can write out of existence.
Edit: tl;dr version, it's not just infrastructure that pings as completely mundane, the G-M itself is completely mundane, and not a supernatural entity, but a result of the existence of Infrastructure and natural law.
Agreed. The infrastructure IS the God machine. A part of it, at least.
05-16-2015, 01:21 PM
"It's the emergent self awareness of the magical symbolism of human systems" is pretty unambiguous on that point, I think.
Edit: to clarify, yes, the God Machine is just an emergent property. But whether there was something behind the creation of humans, the magical symbolism of their systems, or the universe itself, that's down to whether you believe in God; if there is something behind creation, it isn't the God Machine. The universe existing as it does, the God Machine simply arises from nature the way that birds self organize in fligh
So just to clarify, to check my own understanding:
The GM is the product of the metaphysical components of human infastructure, which has gained self awareness and now perpetuates itself to become more and more powerful and secure.
So it is essentially the magical equivalent of the Singularity. Except instead of existing in digital space and relying physical components such as servers/chips/Networks, it exists in a metaphysical aspect of our physical world and relies on Angels/Infastructure/Occult Matrixes.
So the only way to destroy the GM would be to destroy every piece of infastructure, every angel, etc. as well as every potential piece of human system that it could adapt into infastructure... Yeah, that doesn't seem good.
I think it's even possible to read this as: as long as humanity and the metaphysics of the universe exist as they do, Infrastructure will always arise.
Well, there is the solution: destroy humanity, and you destroy through GM. Guess I am going Aswadim.
It would be quite the Omen for an archmaster to alter the symbolism of "human systems." Who knows, maybe the God Machine is/was a working of an ascended mage, and since realty changed, the God Machine always existed. The Abyss could even be parts of the previous realty without the benevolent, yet totally unfathomable, guidance of the God Machine.
I'm now more curious about the magical symbolism of non-human systems, and the brave or foolish mages who delved into such a dangerous mystery.
Originally posted by branford View Post
It would be quite the Omen for an archmaster to alter the symbolism of "human systems." Who knows, maybe the God Machine is/was a working of an ascended mage, and since realty changed, the God Machine always existed. The Abyss could even be parts of the previous realty without the benevolent, yet totally unfathomable, guidance of the God Machine.
I'm now more curious about the magical symbolism of non-human systems, and the brave or foolish mages who delved into such a dangerous mystery.
Well, IM does drop a line hinting at a faction, the Alienated, proposing such a thing and hinting one was already built. Specifically:
Strategy: The archmaster seeks out Old Ones, entities that were born in the Supernal Realms. She enters the service of a single god or pantheon as a high priest or loyal advisor.
Starved of rightful Supernal power, the gods hunger. While Alienated could simply reap souls to feed their patrons, this is actually the least effi cient method. Founding a religion is challenging, but channels human spiritual power in a more refined, potent fashion. It might also be possible to secretly change the world into an occult engine for a Fallen God: a Mystery Play that returns it to power. The ententes believe at least one such “God Machine” already exists.
To be fair, it is more a theory and mage story hook then explanation of what the GM is, but it is an interesting idea.
What if, like, when the Exarchs hurled the Supernal Gods to Earth, that included the burgeoning Supernal God of Infrastructure.
The GM is a Supernal Fallen God which has gone native. It has grown roots in the Fallen World, where the very Infrastructure that it is symbolic of exists. That''s why it has not specific Supernal reflection, it already is it's own Supernal reflection! It's not a Mystery Play to return a Supernal God to the higher realms, it's the expression of a Supernal God who has started to really like it here, in this Phenomenal world!
I suggested no such thing.
The ambiguity I am highlighting is whether the emergent property and intelligence of human systems known as "the God-Machine" is a designed or organic development. The ambiguity is where the God-Machine ultimately comes from.
The Machine has influenced human society for a span of time that is by nature difficult to concretely describe, and it is deliberately unclear whether the Machine dwells in human systems because It was born from human activity or human activity was cultivated into systems that support the Machine's perpetuation. It is likewise ambiguous whether the Machine's presence in parts of the cosmos humanity at large has not touched is a result of expansion outward or inward relative to the human sphere, and whether the Machine's "mind" is solely Its own concern or if it is the sensory-motor apparatus of some extradimensional observer present or long-gone.
You're in a thread talking about the ways this entity interacts with the playable supernatural group who truck with a realm of pure symbolism postulated to have already consigned at least one civilization to the world of mythology. "Did something otherwise undetectable in the programming code of reality create this entity whose programming code exists in reality?" "If not, how did it come to be?" These are not irrelevant questions.
I don't believe Dave's statement about what the God-Machine is in practical scalar terms is meant to render every bit of speculation about how It interacts with the endemic supernatural mythology about ancient cataclysms fundamentally changing humanity's relation to the supernatural, or the Unchained's implicit possession of some of the qualities of the Machine in miniature or the Cipher's relation to the Machine on the level of macroscopic cosmology, an extracanonical flight of fancy. I don't need to make comparisons to Fallen for any of that stuff's canonical ambiguity to be important.
Well the fact that one of the storylines in GMC is the G-M deciding humanity has outlived its usefulness, I think it's safe to assume that the G-M has a back up plan.
Neo - You won’t let it happen, you can’t. You need human beings to survive.
The Architect - There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept. However, the relevant issue is whether or not you are ready to accept the responsibility for the death of every human being in this world.
I like the Matrix as Demon inspiration (and I love that scene!) but I feel that the Machines are a poor stand in for the GM because, well, the Machines are actually sentient and self-aware, and I don't think the GM really is. We know it's just the sum total of all of the integrated infrastructure that is encountered in the Fallen world, but I doubt it has any kind of actual intellect in the way that we would recognise it.
The GM probably does have a back-up plan for the destruction of humanity, in the sense that the GM probably creates plans for loads of different eventualities just out of pure instinct. If humanity is annihilated, the GM might survive, it's got systems in place to try and ensure this, but I doubt it really thinks about things in any way. The purpose of the GM is to ensure the continuance of the GM.
Also I am pretty sure that a lot of Archmages are so far gone that their answer would be along the lines of "yes, I am absolutely prepared to accept that." Didn't DaveB once make a post on how Kadmon is one of the most powerful Archmages there is, and if it came to annihilating humanity and replacing them with his own specifically bred form of humanity, then he'd be totally okay with that?
Anyway I think there's a lot of things the GM could be (in terms of origin) but let's. in true Mage style, run through what a Cabal of Mages looking at it could reasonably assume it isn't.
Arcana used to scan some Gears will reveal that those Gears look suspiciously normal through Mage sight. They aren't Supernal manifestations, because otherwise that'd be incredibly clear. They aren't Abyssal, because of the same. They aren't of Shadow or Underworld origins, Thyrsus and Moros would detect that instantly, or indeed anyone with Death and/or Spirit. They seem to be working entirely within the Fallen World. They don't seem to be subject to the Lie in any way (I think?) so they are probably here naturally, where they should be (metaphysically speaking), and they don't seem to just absorb or hunger for Supernal power like something from the Lower Depths would.
Which is pretty fascinating, if you're a Mage. Like, for Mages, all of the weird shit and mysteries tend to come from somewhere else (Shadow, Supernal, Lower Depths, Astral Realms etc) and intrude here, but this crazy ass shit seems to be entirely native. Does GM infrastructure have a Shadow reflection? I forget... if it doesn't, then that's also weird, but at the same time kind of human in a slightly disturbing way, in that there are no spirits of humans, only spirits that are created by human emotions, and Gears (just as an example) don't have feelings.
So here we have a basement full of weird machinery that clearly isn't just weird machinery (no "weird machinery" essence), but isn't from anywhere else. It kind of has the same impact in the Fallen World as a bunch of humans standing there, thinking about absolutely nothing at all and doing nothing at all but just continuing the mechanics of their own existence (breathing, heart beating and so on).
Creepy
This. This is why GM is such a fun thing to pull in to your story. it is just so... different.
You know what's super interesting? If the God-Machine isn't a coherent entity (which is the most widely supported interpretation, Dave says its canon, and I personally like it a lot), but an emergent property...then isn't it essentially a kind of magically powerful symbol? Like the spiral in Uzumaki, but much wider spread and more powerful yet subtler? If you want to have 2 mages investigating the GM, that's definitely something to work with given how important symbols are to them.
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