[Mage: The Awakening 2nd Ed] Sariras: Relics of Ascension

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

Relics of Ascension: Sariras

My comments are in yellow and are regarding my reviews of the system and my own personal and Storyteller's perspective recommendations for use in our Chronicle. 

Sources: The following text, as written in grey, is straight out of the Mage: The Awakening 2nd edition open development for Signs of Sorcery posted 19 January 2017 by Dave Brookshaw. Additional information comes from the Imperial Mysteries sourcebook.

In our first chronicle (Mage: The Horsemen), some of the Horsemen Cabal actually encountered a Sarira that appearsed to be the crystal bones of the god-king Marduk in the Temple of Sin in 2012.  Some of the characters may still be hanging on to the bone parts.  If so, these Artifacts are now revealed to be more powerful than merely crystallized mana in the form of Tass human remains.

In our current chronicle (Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen), we just finished a story in which the characters encountered Relics of a long dead Archmage.  While she didn't Ascend, the Cold Smile created multiple Soul Stones in the form of the Swarming Heart (a crystal heart full of living flies) and the Splintered Sight (stone eyes) that resemble Sariras in many ways...

Ascension affects mind, body and soul:

Every part of a mage Ascends. Some Ascensions appear to leave bodies but these are actually Sariras: discarded Resonance, condensed into physical form. Sariras may be identified by their unusual characteristics such as hearts of glass and pearl-like objects embedded in the flesh. Besides the body, Ascension withdraws aspects of the soul or mind that were divorced from the mage, including magically duplicated minds and soul stones.

A whole Sarira may be a potent Artifact, but it’s even more valuable when it’s cut to pieces and traded to multiple clients. This is a purely economic decision; the whole body will always possess more magical power. Many ancient Sariras only exist in fragments: hands, eyes, femurs, and fingers.

Some willworkers believe that when a mage Ascends, her soul discards her body for the Supernal Realms, but dedicated scholars know that Ascension takes body and soul. An Ascension might appear to leave a body behind, but it’s actually a Sarira: a duplicate made of solidified Resonance and traces of the departed mage’s Nimbus.

Although it resembles a lifeless physical body, the Sarira is not a corpse, but the solidified Resonance of a mage’s physical form influenced by her nimbus and magical style.

Death magic cannot affect a Sarira and most of them do not decompose, but may exhibit strange changes over time. Male bodies have turned to female. Skin has turned to gold. Every Sarira possesses other signs that it is no ordinary body. Concentrated Resonance takes the form or pearls and gems embedded in the chakras and other magical energy centers. Crystal bones and Atlantean tattoos manifest.

Occultists liken the Sarira to a caul, a remnant of birth the Ascended casts away to enter true life. Not all Ascended mages leave Sariras behind, but they manifest often enough to be identified by educated mages. An Ascended mage’s order usually preserves her Sarira as an object of veneration and guards it, because Awakened thieves love to steal them.

A Sarira doesn’t look exactly like a corpse. Its bones turn to crystal. Its former Path or strongest Arcanum influences its appearance, so that an Ascended Obrimos might faintly glow, and an Acanthus’ hair turns into thorny metallic vines. Jewels decorate its chakras. A Sarira might take the form of a weathered granite statue or humanoid tree. Tellingly, it doesn’t decompose and can’t be affected by Death or Matter spells. Despite its solidity and appearance, it registers as a bundle of potent Resonance, not a corpse or inanimate, material object. Many believe Sariras explain myths about crystal skulls, incorruptible saints’ relics, and Atlantean “dragon bones.”

A complete Sarira possesses the powers of a 10 dot Artifact as well as the following systems, which may change or override the usual rules:

Supernally Incorruptible: 

No spell, Attainment or supernatural power can directly affect a Sarira or its Resonance. The sole exception consists of spells that can siphon Mana. These can withdraw Mana from its Tass-like matrix but can’t replace it. Supernaturally triggered or enhanced external phenomena function normally. You can conjure a ball of fire to throw at it, but can’t make it spontaneously combust.

Divisible: 

Despite their resistance to supernatural powers, Sariras can be chopped into pieces and even destroyed with steady hands and sharp tools. An intact Sarira possesses Structure 50, Durability 5. Each dot of Artifact power maintains the same Durability, and 5 Structure; a 3-dot portion possess Structure 15, for instance. A piece’s power and relative toughness isn’t related to its Size, but its symbolic importance. A leg might be less potent than a petrified pineal gland.

Every 5 points of damage reduces a Sarira’s Artifact powers by 1 dot, and releases its Mana portion per dot (see below) back to the Supernal Realms.

Separating a Sarira into pieces in any methodical fashion requires a successful Dexterity + Occult roll, with a risk of Dramatic Failure, for a process that requires one hour of careful work. Dramatic Failure inflicts 5 points of damage, with the aforementioned consequences. Successes scored indicate the maximum Artifact dots that can be separated, with an absolute limit of 5, though the mage can opt to cut away something with a lower rating of her choice. Having at it with an ax, a prayer and no dice roll, automatically inflicts 5 points of damage and the attendant consequences over the course of an hour, and separates a piece as powerful as the Storyteller wants it to be. (By default, roll a die and halve the result, rounding up. The piece has that many dots.)

Chopping up a Sarira is a Low Act of Hubris. The mage mars a physical sign of Ascension and risks destroying it.

Dynamic Artifact: 

As noted, an intact Sarira possesses the powers of a 10 dot artifact. If divided into portions with lesser dot ratings or damaged, the Sarira’s powers change to accommodate the new dot rankings of each surviving portion. The altered Sarira will manifest powers as close to their original forms as possible. For example, a Sarira with two five dot powers split into two five dot parts might transfer one power to each part. If one of those parts is damaged and reduced to three dots, the power might change to one from the same Arcanum. The Sarira’s powers usually emulate the personality and magical specialties of the Ascended one who left it behind.

Calculate the inherent Gnosis of a Sarira separately for each component part, based on its current state and powers.

Body of Mana: 

A Sarira resembles Tass, and its matrix binds Mana. Use the following guidelines instead of the Mage core’s rules for Mana in Artifacts. Each Sarira dot encompasses 10 points of Mana. An intact Sarira accumulates 1 point per dot per century. Once the Sarira has been divided or damaged to the point where it loses 1 dot or more of value, this process ceases. Spending an Artifact dot’s “share” of per-dot Mana eliminates the dot permanently, and part of the Sarira crumbles or evaporates. Dot loss halts Mana accumulation permanently. Mages interested in preserving a Sarira avoid using its stored Mana.

Resonance: 

Each dot value in the Sarira possesses one Resonance Trait linked to the Nimbus and character of the Ascended mage it represents. This Resonance can’t be magically suppressed or altered, but can be used when the mage siphons Mana from the Sarira or makes bare-skinned contact with it.

Supernal Tool: 

A Sarira provides the benefits of dedicated magical tool for any mage who belongs to the same Path as the Ascended, but doesn’t require attuning or impose a closer sympathetic connection. Consequently, as the manifestation of another willworker’s Ascension, it cannot be dedicated for any additional benefit.

Sariras in the Chronicle

As material evidence of Ascension, Sariras assure mages that it’s real, attainable — and mysterious. They also signify the fleeting nature of truth in the Fallen World. Use one, and it diminishes, eventually vanishing forever. The fact that they can be split up tempts sorcerers to compromise them for selfish or politically-driven reasons.

Examples:

The King Who Is a Throne (10 dot Sarira)

Structure 50, Durability 5, Size 5, Gnosis 5, Mana 200

One of the few intact Sariras known to exist, the King Who Is a Throne sits beneath an apartment complex in Ordos City, China. Before that the King stayed in Nepal, in a cave reserved for ascetics who practiced body-warming yoga. The Mysterium explorer Yang Zenli sensed its mighty Resonance, gathered a team to acquire it and overcame… Nothing. It was just sitting there. That scared the shit out of him, so he dumped it in a place he figured nobody would look, in a

neighborhood built by real estate speculation but devoid of inhabitants except for security guards and maintenance workers. He now owns that corner of Ordos. Most days, he tells himself he’ll build an Athenaeum there, and develop a community where the Awakened can study in peace. Of course he can’t, because he doesn’t know what to do with the fucking King. He’s read the right scrolls. He’s interrogated monks and archeologists at length. They say that a thousand years ago, the King decided to take the path the Buddha refused and become a Chakravartin, or universal ruler. He became the power behind the Pala Empire but vanished after promising to return with divine weaponry and a plan to bring the world to heel. After 108 days, his servants found his Sarira, seated on a stone stool.

Yang worries about the many, many people who’d kill him for the intact King, but he’s also terrified of attracting the interest of the Ascended being itself. For all he knows the King is an Exarch, or plans to come back, just as he promised.

But he found the King performing a humble service, as a seat for the odd yogi to relax in between periods of exercise. The King Who Is a Throne has fused with his stool. He sat up straight, hands on his knees but elbows out, and he was a big man, too. Throw a cushion on there, and he’d be quite comfortable to sit on. Yang’s research uncovered a history of petty occultists and feudal lords who used the King this way for special occasions. Many of them burned to death. So did their palaces. So did forests and farms surrounding the palaces.

The King has a skull face with sapphires for eyes but he’s a muscular man. Lines of iron trace yogic nadi (energy channels) across his body. This flows into the black scale armor covering his torso and thighs and a spiked crown unlike anything an Asian potentate would wear.

The King Who Is a Throne possesses the following Resonance Traits and their associated keywords: Ambitious, Bright, Burning, Crackling, Domineering, Martial, Raging, Terrifying, Tempestuous, and Thunderous. 

It possesses the power to cast: “Celestial Fire” (Prime ••••), “Psychic Domination” (Mind ••) and “Transform Energy” (Forces ••••). The King was an Obrimos, and lends his Supernal Tool benefit to members of that Path.

The Green Scepter (5 dot Sarira)

Durability 2, Size 2, Structure 10, 48 Mana

When the Thyrsus Kirtimukha Ascended, his flesh turned into moss and earth. His hair became vines. His bones turned into emeralds, and it is said that his true power lay within them. 

Thyrsus elders say that the full skeleton could create new species, but only one femur remains. Ferocious panther-monkey fusions stalk the Nepalese forest near the cave where this Green Scepter lies. Thyrsus Masters have added many defenses over the years, including carnivorous plants and guardian spirits, but mages only visit occasionally to contemplate Ascension or perform high rituals using the Sarira as a tool. 

The Green Scepter’s wielder may cast: “Transform Median Features". In addition, the Sarira acts as a dedicated magical tool for Thrysus.  It's other powers and abilities are as yet, undiscovered.

[Mage: The Awakening 2nd Ed] Demons in LA: The Dream Factory

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

Los Angeles: The Dream Factory
Demons in the City of Fallen Angels

Adapted from source material in Demon: The Descent "Demon Seed Collection" sourcebook and Demon: The Descent "Interface" Anthology.

((Most of the following information is not considered common knowledge to the Awakened.  Instead, think of it as a good setting guide for running the Demon (The Unchained) side of the strangeness of LA.  Mages have a historic tendency to get the Unchained Demons and Angels of the God-Machine mixed up with other types of demons (such as evil spirits, supernal beings, Geotics and beings from the Lower Depths.  Infrastructure of the God-Machine is hard to delineate from ruins from the Time Before.  Further obscuring the truth of the matter further, the energies produced by the Ring of Fire appear to be almost Azothic, meaning that the angelic Qashmallim aren't far behind either.))

Los Angeles City Building Posts:

LA: A City on Fire

LA: City of Dreams

Demons in LA: The Dream Factory

LA: Downtown

LA: Hollywood Extended

LA: North & South Downtown

LA: Old LA & Diversity District
LA: The Ring & The Fridge

Los Angeles is a deeply weird place. Hollywood, America’s movie-making capital certainly sets the stage for the city’s most obvious oddities, but their roots go deeper. The very atmosphere of the sprawling city and its suburbs exists in a dream logic, where time seems to move differently, nostalgia reigns, and people hold outrageous religious ideas as gospel. All these things are either because of the incredibly high incidents of Astral incursions that mages study here or as a result of these same Mysteries.

L.A. is the literary and cinematic birthplace of the Private Eye archetype. Here, everybody is a detective, and their dreams are the cases they’re each trying to solve. Little wonder that L.A. is a popular haven for Geotics, Infernals, and more powerful Demons. The constant current of young stars and stars seeking entry into the golden gate of fame and fortune provides a multitude of opportunities to form Pacts with healthy young bodies, and the perfect Covers — Hollywood producers and directors — from which to pick and choose the cream of the crop. 

The city’s moniker — the City of Angels — rings true in that, yes, there are lots of mysterious angelic beings here, but they are working at projects that even experienced demons are hard-pressed to decipher. In Los Angeles, as in all places, the God-Machine has been at work. In this region, Machine has taken an approach that favors immediate utility over long-term elegance or functionality. An immense amount of Infrastructure has been built over the last hundred years, but most projects were to address an immediate need. Per the Machine’s instructions, they have been abandoned, forgotten, or allowed to go haywire. Occasionally, this results in seismic disturbances, wildfires, cryptid attacks, mudslides, or other disasters. Presumably, this haphazard approach to Infrastructure serves the God-Machine’s purposes somehow, but none of the Unchained have been able to figure out how. Even the two angels who have been active in the city almost continuously for the last 50 years are unsure. The Curator and the Machinist have been putting out fires, often literally, for decades. They receive the information that they need as they need it, and unquestioningly follow commands of the God-Machine.  The Angels are seeking a comprehensive solution to the city’s Infrastructure problems. Other powerful Angels guard key pieces of Infrastructure, or toil away on Occult Matrices centered on Hollywood.

The is a suspected connection between LA's seismic activity, the destruction of both the former Assembly and Concilium and the massive amounts of Infrastructure and Occult Matrices built on top of each other throughout the city.  If Awakened brave enough to live and study this Mystery today they aren't sharing their results.  

The strangeness of the city may not have been caused by the God-Machine’s machinations, but it certainly facilitates them. All of its programs seem to be aimed towards a goal that the city’s demons are desperately curious to uncover.

Sub Rosa
The birth of Hollywood and the movie business marked a key point in developing the technologies of propaganda. A small number of individuals could manufacture dreams and sell them to a desperate and willing public, hypnotized by the big screen visions of heroes and villains, glitter and grandeur, comedy and tragedy. Little wonder that the God-Machine was there from the start, along with the Free Council of Assemblies, the Panopticon Ministry and a vampire organization known as the Carthian Movement.

While Hollywood is a place where imagination flowers, it’s also channeled into profit and restricted by genre conventions, strict scriptwriting rules (three acts, one page equals one minute of screen time, etc.), and guided by impersonal mass opinion polls designed to make the product palatable to the widest demographic. Behind this shallow spectacle, churn the gears of occult influences. Movies, as the twentieth century’s main form of mass entertainment were an important arm of influence over humanity, a subtle but important means of directing people how to think, behave, and perform its mysterious objectives.

With the advent of the Internet and video gaming in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the locus of American dreams has seemingly moved elsewhere, making the greater L.A. area a fading power, a Sunset Boulevard of the soul, where the city sits alone in the dark and continually replays past glories. The angels are still here in Hollywood, but there are fewer of them. Once-important Infrastructure now stands abandoned, often claimed by demons, and the ongoing operations are even more enigmatic than before.

Demons came early to Hollywood to exploit its potential for Covers, Pacts, infiltration and sabotage. A very perceptive stigmatic cineaste might be able to chart the secret war between demons and angels through the movies produced by Hollywood from the 1920s through the present, but it’s nearly impossible to say who won or lost with any given film. For instance, The Wizard of Oz was not a huge success when it was first released. It only gained its hold on the hearts and minds of a generation once it began playing on television. Curious then, that it was that generation that started “looking behind the curtain” to see who was really running things, a mode of anti-authoritarianism and deep questioning culminating in the Watergate scandal that brought down a President. But  whose victory was it? Demons or angels? The end result is a deep cynicism about politics and an inability to change anything. Is this the liberating road to Hell or a circular prison of angelic’s making?

Los Angeles is more than just Hollywood, of course. Other parts of the city have also had a huge impact on the national psyche by way of entertainment. More than one demon has tried to claim credit for the west coast rap scene; although those demons also have to admit that corporations free from demonic influence have sponsored the acts that have had the biggest global impact. Is this cultural appropriation on an industrial scale a program of the God-Machine, or are human beings just becoming sufficiently advanced to look like it?

Local Agendas:

Inquisitors: The puzzle of Los Angeles and its complex cultural and subcultural makeup has drawn many Inquisitors over the years... but many have been distracted by the bright lights and the cameras. How does mass entertainment seed the behaviors desired by the God-Machine? How does the God-Machine plan out the intricate chains of causality that turn a piece of schlock filmmaking into a template for a complacent population? L.A.’s Inquisitors are deeply involved in deciphering the cultural codes that program humankind. 

Integrators: The romance of L.A., as depicted in movies and even detective novels, is a place where, no matter how down you are, no matter how deep in the gutter you’ve fallen, you can “be discovered” and raised up to the ranks of the Elect (i.e., movie stars or the incorruptible shining knight detectives). Perhaps these stories are also the God-Machine’s way of offering amnesty to those who wish to redeem their errant ways.

Saboteurs: While Inquisitors wrack their brains trying to decode the God-Machine’s mysterious ways amidst L.A., Saboteurs get their hands dirty by making movies — competing on the God-Machine’s own turf. They’re the directors, screenwriters, actors, and even special-effects geniuses who fight the system from within to derail it.

Tempters: L.A. attracts more Tempters than any other Agenda. The place is thick with them: Hollywood producers, rap stars, YouTube sketch groups — anyone who builds an entourage and millions of fans. It’s so damn easy to attract and manipulate the legions of wannabes who come to L.A. that the Tempters easily become the tempted, so eager to build their entourage they fail to miss the operatives who infiltrate them. It’s not a leaked sex tape that will take them down, but that single angel who shows up one night amidst their crew.

Demon Agencies 

ARC: The Arcturus Ascendant

Begun in the 1950s by the stigmatic Norman Castle as a UFO cult based on revelations he claimed to receive from “intelligences from Arcturus,” this religious group, ARC, has survived long past its founder, some still listen to his audio tapes as holy scripture. His wife led the ARC into the acid-drenched ‘60s and beyond, building a large following; helped in no small part by the fact that she was a Psychopomp. Although Shirley Castle eventually chose her own successors and passed away, every single one of them has been a Cover identity of the Psychopomp who calls herself (among demons) the Starchild. 

ARC Temple in Hollywood Hills

ARC has many human members, but the inner circle consists of stigmatics and demons. Norman Castle was himself a stigmatic who had somehow received a vision of the God-Machine’s long-range plans for the city and the world. He did not fully understand these and mistook them for Arcturan space transmissions. The Starchild has spent years wrestling with the recordings of these visions, trying to interpret them and figure out how they pertain to local Infrastructure. Her demon allies use her gleanings to identify and sabotage a number of angelic operations.

The Arcturans believe that L.A. is the epicenter of a master operation that is a linchpin for a multitude of God-Machine plots. If they can decipher it, they can hijack it for their own ends. This isn’t sabotage, inquisition or integration — it’s cooptation. Their aim is to supplant the God-Machine.  The ARC temple is headquartered in an old mansion high in the Hollywood Hills above Franklin Canyon Park. 

Subrufa: A demon member of Arcturus Ascendant and a true believer in the visions of that Agency’s human founder, she has spent as much time as the Starchild deciphering their meaning. She can be found in odd places at odd times, confirming strange premonitions or intuitions she’s received from her study of the cult’s prophecies. She sometimes shows up just in time to save a demon from an angel, but has also attracted angels at inconvenient times for those demons she interacts with. She’s a synchronicity magnet, attracting meaningful coincidences. 

The Moguls

Perhaps the most temporally ambitious demons in L.A. are a group of demon movie producers who influence movie studios in order to marshal their vast resources for their own ends. They tend to be mostly Tempters, many of whom are also Messengers. They have huge portfolios of Pacts and Covers waiting for them in case they are found out. 

Cannes

They each follow their own individual goals, working together only to combat common enemies or resistance to their collective power. They often clash with one another, especially when their pet projects are at odds. Instead of overt violence, they orchestrate minions to move against each other’s interests until one side cries “uncle.” They use much the same tactics on each other that their human competitors use against them – drawing away talent, undercutting funding, and so on.

But when angels are on the move or key Infrastructure is identified, grudges are put aside to deal with the more important threat. If need be, the producers temporarily flee town to “visit a location shoot” somewhere else, or to spend time on their yacht in an undisclosed locale, or to wine and dine at Cannes.

An honor code among them demands that when one of them has to forego her Cover and replace it with a new identity, her empire still remains in her hands. While thrusts can still be made against rivals at such weak moments, it is considered bad form to try to crumble a rival’s assets until her new Cover can reconsolidate them.

Discreet Distance, LLC (D.D.)

The Bradbury Building

D.D. is a demon-run private eye firm that caters to entertainment companies and other large, entrenched businesses. That however, is only its public front. Its real goal is identifying Infrastructure and selling that information to demons in a position to do something about it, such as sabotage or infiltration. With offices in the famous Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles (most well-known for its appearance in Blade Runner), D.D. hires freelance demons to run down leads and spend tedious hours spying on targets. 

Most of its detectives are humans who believe they are being hired to spy on Hollywood stars or to collect blackmail on executives. And they are. Their demon bosses — mostly Inquisitors — then sift through their findings and flag whatever catches their eye, whatever stinks of the God-Machine. Most of D.D.’s work is dull and never leads anywhere, like most detective work. Still, its demon owners feel it is necessary. So many false leads and dead-ends, and yet, sometimes, pay dirt: secret Infrastructure, and even a revealed linchpin now and then.

Surviving as long as it has by keeping a “discreet distance” from its own demon detectives, should an angel or other agent of the Machine catch one of their freelancers, they are difficult to tie back to the agency. Still, it has happened. The former offices were destroyed when an angel, pretending to be a freelance demon, traced back his employers. The firm changed its name (to its present D.D. configuration), moved to the Bradbury Building, and started over.

The Freaks

The Freaks, a hot rod club curated by demons, often face shunning for their flashy “hobby.” They specialize in truly bizarre tricked-up cars with paint styles inspired by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Their racing feats have become legendary to a degree where everybody thinks they’re just telling impossible tall tales. These stories actually record the weird capabilities of hot rods made from discarded Infrastructure: bursts of jet-engine speed, leaping low-riders, stop-on-a-dime brakes, lightning bolt-casters, and arrays of almost cartoonish weaponry.

The Freaks dare to recover abandoned Infrastructure and repurpose it for use in their custom cars — even though they often can’t predict the results. These are usually one-use vehicles. The club goes for a wild night out, engages the Infrastructure, and then abandons it as the angels come winging in to eradicate it. It should come as no surprise that most of the Freaks are Psychopomps and Destroyers.

Notable Personalities

The Pool Man: 

An angel disguised as a pool cleaner to the stars, he dutifully and diligently cleans the pools of actors, producers, rock stars, and studio execs, although they all ignore him. He’s strictly background material, set dressing. Many a demon has fallen prey to the trap of ignoring the pool man while they’ve talked openly about demon matters, and then couldn’t figure out later how the God-Machine was able to find them.

Subrufa: 

A demon member of Arcturus Ascendant and a true believer in the visions of that Agency’s human founder, she has spent as much time as the Starchild deciphering their meaning. She can be found in odd places at odd times, confirming strange premonitions or intuitions she’s received from her study of the cult’s prophecies. She sometimes shows up just in time to save a demon from an angel, but has also attracted angels at inconvenient times for those demons she interacts with. She’s a synchronicity magnet, attracting meaningful coincidences.

The Silent: 

This unnerving entity was once an angel but was somehow left behind when an operation reached its completion in the 1920s. Not Fallen, he simply remains, discarded, forgotten by the God-Machine (an Exile), and trapped in the Cover role he once played, a silent film star. He cannot speak, he wears a 1920s style suit, and his face is covered in white pancake makeup. He still tries to sabotage demons, but cannot summon help from angels. A demon once realized that damaging or trying to destroy the Silent draws the attention of angels (although they ignore the Silent), so word has gotten out: avoid him and do not engage. Some have speculated that loneliness drives the Silent, and that just the right amount of attention at just the right time might be enough to make him Fall.

Edith Stone: 

A Hollywood stuntwoman and a Destroyer demon, she likes trouble and thinks she’s invulnerable. That means she can be hired freelance by just about any demon to help them in dangerous situations. She acts like she’s got a death wish, but has no actual desire to die. Her risky lifestyle enhances her sense of being alive, of her disconnection from the damnable Machine, but to keep that going, she now has to keep chasing the next high of near-death experiences.

Locations

4 Clover Lanes

An old bowling alley that serves as a watering hole and meeting place for independent demons. L.A.’s true sport isn’t football or baseball but bowling. There are much higher-class bowling lanes than the 4 Clover, but few with as much nostalgic flavor. It is a relic from the 1950s, not a recreation. It was once angelic Infrastructure in the ‘50s but sat abandoned through the ‘70s and 80s. Demons claimed it in the ‘90s before the city could tear it down. It still slowly leaks Aether, so there is always the danger of angels coming back to reclaim it, but that risk attracts the particular kind of demonic clientele who hang out here, looking for a righteous fight.

Chupacabra

A trendy nightclub with a seedy atmosphere — the spiritual heir to the Viper Room and can also be found on the Sunset Strip. Recording artists and movie stars mix with L.A.’s underground, as well as with the demons who call this place their home away from home. It’s a good place to hear rumors from across the class spectrum and from all over the map; parties begun here might adjourn to a star’s mansion in the Hills, where the night can get really wild. 

Update: Since the year 1994, a brood of Beasts has come and gone for periods of time, staking it as their hang-out.  Thus far, the demons have made themselves scarce when they appear.

The Home of the Unknown Star 

Home of the Unknown Star

An example of just how strange L.A. can get without setting off anybody’s weirdness alarm. This house on N. Roxbury Dr in Beverly Hills but doesn't have an address anymore. It is from the era when many famous stars lived along this street. The house is now vacant but somehow always looks well kept, even though nobody ever sees anyone go in or out. It appears on many Maps of the Stars and on star-gawker tours, but the celebrity who once is lived here never named. And yet, nobody seems to notice this absence. They “ooh” and “ahh” just the same as they pass by, feeling like they’ve brushed against past glory as they move on to the next home of the stars. So, just what is this place? Old Infrastructure? A glitch in reality? Was the movie star the Cover for an unremembered angel or demon? The mystery has yet to be solved. 

The Lesser Wall of L.A.

A counterpoint to the Great Wall of L.A., the famed citizen mural that illustrates the history of the

city. The Lesser Wall is an urban legend, with most people who mention it never exactly sure where it is. It seems to change locations, sometimes in a dry culvert of the L.A. river, sometimes on the side of a building in Venice Beach, and then on a sidewalk in Monterrey. Its murals change with each appearance, and demons believe they convey coded messages about God-Machine Infrastructure and operations. Some have opined that it is the work of urban spirits, trying to warn others about God-Machine infiltration, and one demon even claimed it is a rogue intelligence created by the God-Machine but never released into the world; it has nonetheless figured out a way to bleed its code into reality.

Mt. Wilson Observatory

The observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains and the nearby antenna farm are both active —

Mt. Wilson Antenna Farm

although aging — Infrastructure. The antenna farm beams much of the city’s radio and television entertainment out into SoCal and beyond. Either the broadcasts or the antennae array itself are important to the Machine, and an angel called Gnomon is on constant guard to ensure no malefactor tries to interfere with the flow of communications. There are conflicting demonic urban legends about the antennae farm. Some say that the farm is somehow tied into a global communications Infrastructure and that a successful hack here could affect worldwide operations. Others say that, with the rise of the Internet and satellite communications, these old broadcast arrays are nearly irrelevant. And yet, the angel remains. Is he just biding time, waiting for a new mission elsewhere, or is there still a purpose at play amidst the antennae and microwave transmitters?

[Mage: The Awakening 2nd Ed] Los Angeles: City of Dreams

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

Los Angeles: A City of Dreams
The Astral Mystery of LA

Adapted from source material in Mage: The Awakening Second Edition

Los Angeles City Building Posts:

LA: A City on Fire

LA: City of Dreams

Demons in LA: The Dream Factory

LA: Downtown

LA: Hollywood Extended

LA: North & South Downtown

LA: Old LA & Diversity District
LA: The Ring & The Fridge

Los Angeles is a vast sprawling city with a population roughly equal to New York City’s. However, while New York City is dense and compact, Los Angeles is a vast, sprawling metropolis of disparate neighborhoods that covers almost 5,000 square miles. In many ways, it is a diverse collection of cities and suburbs connected by vast stretches of crowded freeways. It contains the United States’ second-largest and busiest port, neighbor-hoods that are home to millions of immigrants from all across the globe, hundreds of celebrities and multimillionaires, and of course the various corporations that own and control vast multimedia empires of music, film, television, and electronic games. Here, the poorest residents live on the streets, competing with coyotes for food and shelter, while the wealthiest residents dwell in ostentatiously lavish splendor. Sleepers call LA the City of Angels, but many mages know it as the city of dreams. For as long as mages have known about the Los Angeles area, it’s been more connected to the Astral Realm than almost any other portion of the material world. Visions of the Temenos appear as shimmering mirages, and some Sleepers and Sleepwalkers become involuntary (often unknowing) channels for Goetia.



Astral Intrusions
Occasionally, objects from various portions of the Temenos become visible in LA. Everyone can see these manifestations, and they do not cause Quiescence. Mortals can remember them as clearly as mages. However, most attempts to photograph them result in blurred, largely unrecognizable images. These manifes-tations are entirely non-corporeal, and most are nothing more than mirages of fantastic buildings or a brief image of a mythical creature slinking down an alley. The majority never reappear. Many long-term Angelinos have heard of the city’s strange mirages. One Astral manifestation has appeared dozens of times. Known in local urban legends as the Lesser Wall, it appears as a large mural that regularly changes in appearance but is always roughly the same size and always includes at least one iconic image of LA. Mages in LA have seen it in several locations, in-cluding on the concrete walls of the dry culvert of the LA river, on the side of a building in Venice Beach, or on a sidewalk in Monterey. The Lesser Wall is of special significance to mages, because sometimes it includes cryptic messages written in an-cient languages, including High Speech. On a few occasions its images are prophetic, like the images of looting and burning buildings in Hollywood that appeared on the Lesser Wall five months before the 1992 Rodney King riots.


Astral Possession
Goetia possess people in LA, in defiance of their usual inability to do so without aid; whatever causes the mirages also allows them through into the material world, and gives them the power to take over weak minds (Open Condition). Hundreds of Sleepers and Sleepwalkers randomly make transitory connections with various portions of the Temenos when they are drunk, high, delirious from illness, or otherwise seriously mentally impaired. In this state, these people say (or sometimes shout) random phrases. Most often they repeat advertising jingles and popular songs, but occasionally they also speak ancient secrets, passages from lost texts, or even deeply personal information about someone they know nothing about. Examining these people with Mind Mage Sight reveals that they are actually asleep.

Other individuals become temporarily possessed by individual Goetia. These possessions always occur when the person becomes intoxicated or when she falls asleep. Some are possessed by a different entity each time; others are always possessed by a single Astral entity, often one associated with the person in some way. A disturbing number of celebrities have even been possessed by entities that are Astral embodiment of their own legends and public images, leading to spirals of exaggerated behavior that often end in tragedy. Many Sleepers are never aware of their Astral visitors, except as reports or videos of them sleepwalking or talking and acting strangely at parties; they remember nothing of their experiences. However, some Sleepers and all Sleepwalkers who become possessed by Goetia retain at least fragmentary memories of the experience. 

The majority of these people, termed “dreamers” by the local mages who study them, believe these episodes are symptoms of some form of mental illness and seek spiritual or psychological help, making it easy for clever mages to locate them and study them, under the guise or treatment or spiritual aid. Others retain some awareness while they are possessed and are able to ask the entity questions. These people often learn how to both invite the entity to possess them and evict it when they wish the possession to end. Some believe they have ghosts living in their heads; others think that angels, demons, or even aliens are speaking to them. 

Most dreamers seek out similar individuals and encounter a variety of cults and spiritual organizations, including those that are now part of abandoned Labyrinths. Others believe themselves to be specially blessed and start their own cults. A few of these cults have become quite popular and now have one or more mages as members (like the Dream Center). Mages join so they can study the possessed individuals. One particularly inexplicable feature of these possessions is that they seem tied to the city’s total population. As LA’s population grows, the number of dreamers increases in proportion. When this phenomena was first discovered in the early 1900s, there were only a handful of people possessed. Now that the city’s population has grown by more than a factor of 100, almost a thousand people are regularly possessed by Goetia.


Temenic Visitations 
In addition to Goetia possessing people in Los Angeles, attempts to visit the Astral Realms from LA are easier, but also less reliable. Visiting the Astral Realms in LA using a Hallow for access costs less Mana (one less point). However, LA is also surrounded by a degree of Astral turbulence that makes entering the Temenos less reliable. 

Mechanics: When mages first enter the Temenos, a mage must make a Gnosis roll. Any degree of success on this roll means that she enters the realm she expects to. However, failure or dramatic failure on this roll means that she is in a different realm, typically one that has some association with Los Angeles, or one that is currently appearing as a mirage. 

Los Angeles also has a significant presence in the Temenos. Portions of and elements from LA can be found throughout the Temenos, and an Astral version of the city can be found in the Temenos realm known as the Metropolis. Some of the murals and mirages that appear in LA also show up in portions of the Temenos associated with LA, but they only show up at least one day after they first appeared in the city.


Mage Politics (Before the Great Conflagration) 

LA is sufficiently vast and diverse that it defies all forms of order and organization, and this disorganized sprawl applies equally well to mage politics but conformed poorly under one banner. It was one of the most famous cities where mages from all four of the Diamond Orders had dual citizenship in both the local Assembly and Concilium... and in large numbers. The LA Assembly was a true rival to the LA Consilium. In response to numerous Diamond mages joining the Assembly, the local Consilium began actively recruiting members of the Free Council. The presence of two different mage political bodies was an enduring artifact of how Los Angeles has grown and changed. 

In the early 1900s, when LA was beginning to become a major industrial and agricultural city, the Assembly arrived, drawn by reports of strange mirages and odd behavior. The newly recognized Free Council looked forward to LA being one of the first cities where one of their Assemblies held sway. Thirty years later, LA’s population had grown by almost a factor of 20. It was now the capital of the motion picture industry and had become one of the centers for wealth and power in the United States. 

Both the Seers of the Throne and the Guardians of the Veil began taking a major interest in Los Angeles, and additional Diamond mages were drawn by the increasing Astral activity produced by the city’s rapidly growing population. Although the Assembly and the newly formed Consilium cooperated against the Seers of the Throne, the Libertines and other mages in the Assembly had no interest in giving up their power to the newly arrived Consilium. Instead, the two groups agreed to divide up the rapidly growing city. Each group claimed to speak for and represent mages in Los Angeles, each group is powerful and diverse, and unsurprisingly the two groups do not get along all that well. 

In practice, the Assembly and the Consilium did their best to ignore one another. Doing so was often relatively easy; while mages belonging to each group were free to live anywhere in LA, most mages who belong to the Consilium lived on or near the coast, in relatively wealthy locations like Orange County, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Thousand Oaks, or Oxnard. In contrast, Assembly members mostly lived inland, in locations like South or East LA, Hollywood, Whittier, Burbank, or Glendale. While the two groups continued to work together to defeat Banishers and new efforts by the Seers, they guarded their research and the possessed humans they were working with quite closely, and there was little cooperation beyond working to defeat mutual foes. 

However, individual mages from each group regularly interacted and there were several cabals with members from each group. In local stereotypes, members of the Assembly were poor or working class, held radical political and social views, and had no respect for magical traditions, while members of the Consilium had wealthy, socially and politically conservative, and held all of the Diamond’s traditions to be sacred truths. Like in San Diego most Nameless were recent immigrants or the children of immigrants who belonged to one of the city’s various insular ethnic enclaves. A few know no other mages, but the majority are part of small organizations which reject contact with outsiders. Those that live in LA now tend to be easy prey for groups of Banishers.


Cults and Control
Los Angeles has been a center for personality cults, spiritual seekers, and eccentric religiosity for most of the last century. As a result, both the Seers of the Throne and the Guardians of Veil still thrive here. Some mages work as magically assisted charlatans who enrich themselves on the hopes and well-fed delusions of their wealthy and middle-class followers; others find the various cults and spiritual movements to be useful tools to help them perform various esoteric endeavors. The majority of cults in LA with a supernatural influence have a non-Awakened source such as a Vampire coterie.  


Dealing with Astral Mysteries
The local Assembly and Consilium agreed to divide up the city’s various Astral mysteries. Each group claimed various Demesnes, and they also secretly claim individuals who are either sources of Astral knowledge or who are regularly possessed by Goetia. Then The Burning came.

Some mage will either have day/night trips into LA or have no qualms about living there in the aftermath of the 1994 Earthquake.  All exploring these Mysteries are interested in keeping  careful track of individuals who have a connection to the Temenos. They also want to make certain that they have the opportunity to question the hosts when they are possessed. The generally accepted protocol among investigating mages is that the mage (or cabal) who discovers such a person has the option of “claiming” her. However, to make this claim, the mage must observe the dreamer, determine the basic parameters of her connection to the Temenos, and then report his findings to the organization he belongs to. 

The first step in this process is monitoring the dreamer when she is intoxicated or asleep. Many dreamers simply randomly spout bits of information she could only have learned from the Astral Realms and rarely change what she says in response to questions. Mages sometimes plant listening devices in dreamers’ homes, to see if any of them say anything potentially interesting or useful, but rarely bother to do more than that. However, a handful of individuals are able to answer most questions about the Temenos if asked when they are intoxicated or asleep. 

Mages are also exceedingly interested in individuals who are actually possessed by Astral entities, especially the rare individuals who are aware of and can communicate with the Astral entity that periodically possesses them. Once a mage (or cabal) has “claimed” a person he wishes to monitor closely, most use a mixture of magic and conventional persuasion to convince the individual to join a particular cult or support group, begin seeing a specified counselor or therapist, or even just hang out with some new friends. The goal in all of these cases is to gain access to the person so that the mage can question and observe her when she becomes possessed. Except when the individual is aware of the entity possessing her, mages are expected to not reveal anything about what is actually happening to the person. Simply kidnapping individuals with Astral connections is frowned upon by the research Cabals involved and may go out of her way to liberate them. Among the Diamond Orders Mages that dare to travel to LA to pursue this mystery there is an expectation that all information they obtain from dreamers should be recorded. They should also immediately turn over any information that reveals large-scale threats or opportunities to their organization’s leaders. The leaders are then obligated share this information with the leaders of the other Orders if applicable. Otherwise, mages are free to pursue any information they uncover from dreamers, but are asked to turn over any information that they are not interested in or able to pursue to their organization’s archives.  In exchange they may consult with the body of knowledge already present.

Update: In Hollywood and the surrounded area (covered in Hollywood Extended), grant both the Begotten (Beasts) and Heroes special bonuses because of the area's Astral bleed-over. As a result, Nightmare powers gain +2 to their activation rolls and Heros usually get +2 static bonuses to certain aspects of their Gifts. Mages may notice that their Mind magic becomes more effective near Astral Verges and Irises (Environmental Yantras for Mind magic).

Threat: Banishers
Banishers are unusually common in LA. Many mages believe that the local Astral anomalies either cause more people who Awaken in LA to become Banishers, or subtly attract Banishers from elsewhere. In either case, most local Banishers are also interested in dreamers. Some care only about hunting other mages and simply observe dreamers, waiting for mages to approach them. Others fear people acting as channels to Astral entities almost as much as they fear mages. The majority of these Banishers hunt down and kill dreamers, but a few attempt to convince or threaten them to leave Los Angeles in the hope that the dreamers’ Astral connections will fade once they have been away from the city. 

The Producer

The most dangerous Banishers are a small but deadly cabal who work with a young man named Hector Jefferson. Hector is regularly possessed by a Goetia known as the Producer, a creature made from LA’s dreams and legends of personal power. The Producer loves LA, but distrusts mages and fears that they will disrupt its city and disturb other dreamers, who it considers to be its “Stars.” It forbids the Banishers it works with from interfering with any of these “Stars” and keeps in close contact with more than a dozen other possessing Goetia, either in the Astral Realm or while they are possessing Sleepers. The Producer hopes to eventually be able to entirely break down the barriers to the Temenos in Los Angeles, so that any Astral entities that wish to do so are free to possess humans, animals, or electronic devices, and thus transform LA into a city ruled by Astral entities. 

The Producer keeps the Banishers it works with from learning anything about its goals and instead uses its powers to help them identify and locate other mages, so that the Banishers can find and kill them. The Producer also warns these Banishers if it learns anything from the Temenos about mages attempting to hunt them down. However, it sees these Banishers as nothing more than a means to an end. It does not hesitate to try to make certain that its pawns are killed rather than captured by other mages, so they cannot reveal any information about the Producer. It also secretly betrays any Banishers who ask too many questions about its plans and goals. 

Threat: Seers of the Throne

The Seers of the Throne are present in LA.  Their primary interest in LA is as a center of power and control, and several Seer pylons have connections to various important figures in the entertainment industry. In addition to their more typical tools of bribery, blackmail, and covert alliances, the local Seers also maintain several cults specifically designed to attract members of the entertainment industry as a means to obtain information and influence various projects. Rivalries between these cults and similar cults occasionally become sufficiently heated that celebrity gossip magazines periodically carry stories about animosity between wealthy and powerful people in rival “spiritual organizations.” Cults run by the Seers of the Throne also commonly use threats of lawsuits and similar forms of intimidation to attempt to prevent journalists or bloggers from posting any remotely negative information about them. 

In the last six months, a Pylon that controls one of these cults was contacted by the Producer. These Seers are currently negotiating with the entity to work out a plan to work together with the Producer and its Astral allies to alter the balance of power in the Astral Realm in order to greatly increase belief in the Seers’ cult. In return, the Producer asks that it and several other possessing Astral entities become major figures in the cult. It hopes to use this cult as a means to both encourage Sleepers to worship it and, if possible, to increase the number of people possessed by Astral entities as a step toward its goal of weakening the barriers between LA and the Temenos. One difficulty in these negotiations is that the Seers must keep them secret from their superiors, since both senior Seers and the Exarchs strongly oppose dealing with Astral entities as equals.