Out of Character (OOC):
Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum
Of Beasts & Mages:
Crossover Guidelines
The following are rules and descriptions of how Mages from Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition interact with Beasts from Beast: The Primordial. Some things are extrapolated, others are stated from the books.
Sources:
- Beast: The Primordial corebook
- Beast: The Primordial corebook
- Beast Players Guide sourcebook for Beast: The Primordial
- Night Horrors: Conquering Heroes sourcebook for Beast: The Primordial
- Astral Realms sourcebook for Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition
- Astral Realms sourcebook for Mage: The Awakening 1st Edition
“My Mastigos buddy told me a real doozy the other day. There he is, traversing the Temenos, minding his own business, when he runs across what he thinks is your run of the mill nightmare goetia. He figures he can handle it. Boy is he wrong! It traps him in its web and scares the shit out of him, ‘til he spills all his secrets. Stuff he’s never told anyone. He said he’s never seen anything like that monstrosity, and he thinks it’s still following him around even now. He thinks it’s an acamoth and the Abyss is seeping into the Astral, but the way he said it…it sounded kind of familiar. Like I’ve had that dream before, you know? Maybe we all have.”
The mage who originally told this story was either confused or he lied. Horrors do not normally enter the Temenos. The story itself, though, is true: The Mastigos somehow found his way from the Temenos to the Primordial Dream in his Astral travels and encountered the Unfettered Horror on its home turf. His assumption that it was an Astral native cost him the victory, as his magic didn’t function like he thought it would. The Horror didn’t like what it learned from him there and stalks him from Twilight afterward. His body was never found.
Under the gaze of a Mage, the Begotten may initially resemble another mage (using Passing Resemblance if they have Kinship with a Mage) but this won't hold up to prolonged scrutiny. Maybe Mind Sight reveals their strong attunement to the Astral Plane and Nightmares, or Space Sight shows the lingering resonance of their bizarre home and how they tear physical holes into the Primordial Dream. Death magic used to peer at their very soul reveals something even more bizarre: a powerful nightmare body of a Horror has replaced the soul of a normal Sleeper.At that point, many of the more ethical mages would want to exercise and destroy the monster-part, maybe trying to save the body and mind of the person who used to be. This of course is folly, and potentially fatal for a mage to try to accomplish. Closer inspection reveals the monstrous soul of the person is perfectly fused with the body, Time spells reveal that the potential for this was in the Sleeper's soul before this one, and that it was always going to happen.
If they get that far, a wise mage would be hard pressed to imagine an Awakened immoral enough to befriend such a creature. Many things about their nature force the mage to question their thoroughly cultivated cosmological model. And, without detailed conversation and observation, the Begotten appear completely devoid of relatable human values or moral codes. But, for better or worse, their are those among the Awakened who claim Kinship with the Begotten.
A Hunger for Secrets:
Mages are more human than many other kin, but they Hunger just the same. The Awakened hunger for secrets and they are as much kin as any other supernatural creature (despite the distress of the mages suspecting they are somehow more monster than they thought). The Collectors in particular understand that once a secret becomes knowledge, it isn’t a secret anymore. Mages and Beasts often play a cautious, protracted, and even (depending on the personalities of those involved) flirtatious game of cat-and-mouse as they decide how much to reveal to each other. Since Beasts often find themselves involved in deeper mysteries of the World of Darkness, though, they have enticing bait with which to lure a mage.
Lair Diving:
At any given time, some visitors to a Beast’s Lair may be physically present or in a dream state, depending on exactly how they gained access. Visitors or intruders using Primordial Pathways from anything other than the Primordial Dream are physically present in the Lair. Mages, naturally, can find their way in a Beast's Lair through the Tenemos in their Dream Forms. While characters whose nightmares touch the Primordial Dream (Beasts who have yet to undergo the Devouring, for example) are present in a dream state. Beasts exploiting Kinship with mages or changelings sometimes find themselves wandering the greater dream-realms beyond their Lairs, as well.
Out of the beings Beasts claim kinship with, mages have a natural ability to enter the Primordial Dream. To mages, the land of Lairs is a rarely-explored deep region of the Temenos, reached by arriving at the Astral Realm of language (The Omphalos) and then journeying back into the universal subconscious, animal instincts of humanity. Once a mage in astral form finds her way into a Lair, she can follow the Burrows like any other connection between Astral Realms.
Some mages have means of entering the Oneiros of others, and a few stumble into Lairs during these Astral journeys. Such warlock explorers run the gamut from largely-harmless tourists and unwelcome guests to over-curious investigators and dangerous invaders. Mages capable of entering a Lair through the Primordial Dream likewise possess powers that can ward off or even destroy a Horror — especially if the Beast underestimates them.
Kinship with Mages:
Beasts who explore Kinship with other supernatural beings quickly learn that the Begotten experience of the Primordial Dream is not universal. Mages (perhaps the most likely kin found exploring the dreamscape) navigate the Primordial Dream almost as well as Beasts.
From a Beast’s perspective, mages are the one child in a family who went to college; she comes to family gatherings with her mind on experiences she can’t share and vocabulary her kin can’t understand. Her family feels threatened, and she feels alienated by their reaction. But a Beast who takes the time to explore his Kinship with the Awakened finds they have more in common than they think — a shared fascination with primal symbolism, the human soul, and a burning ever-present hunger. A mage’s addiction to Mystery is just as potent as a Beast’s own Hunger, and both Beast and mage grow more powerful by experiencing the strange and uncanny — the Beast incorporating it into his Lair and the mage adding it to the symbolic knowledge making up her Gnosis.
Mages also have an innate sense for the supernatural, and can be attracted to any stage in a Beast’s activities from Devouring (which mages might even mistake for a Thyrsus Awakening at first) to Inheritance, which puts many mages in mind of Ascension.
Psychonauts & the Begotten
Despite the name “Beast” and the symbolism of great monsters being shared by the Supernal entities linked to the Thyrsus Path, iconic symbol-creatures of Life and Spirit, it’s Mastigos mages who have the closest affinity for the Begotten.Mastigos Awaken to a nightmarish “Pandemonium,” in which the inner fears and limitations of the soul are reflected, and they often have an interest in primal terrors. They’re also the mages most often found exploring the Astral and getting caught up in Mysteries of the mind (such as the wave of nightmares caused by a rampaging Horror) so are the most likely to come looking for a Beast.
However, because of their affinity with fear Mastigos mages are often more resistant to a Beast’s Nightmares. Their high Resolve, Composure and use of Mental Walls give them a distinct edge. Barring that an ST may grant +2 to rolls to resist a Beast's Nightmares.
Friend or Foe
Peaceful contact between Beast and mage often hinges on how far the Beast goes in sating its Hunger, and how the mage takes the story of the Dark Mother and an explanation of the Lair and soul. Friendly Mages use baffling terms like “Pandemonic Emanation Realm,” tell the Children stories of the great primal “Aeons” in the far reaches of Astral Space — some of whom match certain descriptions of the Dark Mother — and make theories about the Dragon-like beings who supposedly helped the first mages to Awaken.
Mastigos and Thyrsus can even use the presence of a Beast with a kinship bond as a symbol or “Yantra” in their spells.Hostile mages decide that Beasts are a reflection of the World’s Fallen state, or claim that the Dark Mother is the Raptor, the Supernal personification or “Exarch” of humanity’s fear of nature. They become terrible enemies, able to slip into the Lair and wreak havoc with their magic.
Worst of all are mages who steal the souls of victims for use in experiments or fuel for strange powers; a Beast’s soul is a difficult but prestigious prize for so-called “Reapers.” Due to Beast’s connection to their Lair mages can’t steal the soul of a Begotten just by casting a spell in the physical world. It requires as much ability with the Arcana as taking the soul of a mage, and can only be cast inside the Lair. Despite the risks, some Reapers who learn the existence of Beasts go on twisted safaris into the Primordial Pathways, convinced that they can reduce the Children of the Dark Mother to big game.
Befriending the Families
Anakim (Giants) - Mages, with their quest for power and mastery, may seem like a good fit with the Anakim at first, but many willworkers prefer to pursue mastery of self rather than mastery of others, making them an uneasy match for Giants. Even with the Obrimos and the Silver Ladder exerting their power in ways that make Anakim Horrors lick their collective chops, Giants prefer far more outwardly ambitious Kin. As a result, they adopt a disproportionate number of Seers of the Throne.
Makara (Leviathan) - Mages, with their endless adaptability and elevated methods of thought, intrigue the Makara to almost no end. The possibilities their magic can invoke are endless, and their discussions of the Abyss immediately catch the Leviathan’s attention. Their curiosity makes it easy for the Makara to lure them in, and the additional power only spurs them both on. However, too much curiosity can strain relations.
Ugallu (Raptors) - Mages intrigue Ugallu. They can understand the constant search for knowledge, and the power that knowledge brings. Raptors find a natural equilibrium in their Kinship with the Awakened; a Mage needs a grounding presence to temper her growing power, and an Ugallu needs a link to the earth to keep him from slipping away from the realities of life on the dirt before he’s ready. They meet one another on the ground, share the odd human moments that remind them of the people they used to be before they woke up, or fell too deeply asleep.
Shared Hungers
Collectors - Apart from Beasts, few supernatural beings hoard as mages do. Their libraries hold objects of incredible power, so Collectors wanting an in with the Wise need to bring a special offer to the table. Beasts have a natural rapport with supernatural creatures that some mages struggle to develop, and social Collectors might use that Kinship as a means to access Mysteries. A mage may have trouble getting close to a vampire’s mandragora garden, but a Beast can pose as a friendly Kindred with little effort. In cases where both sides are willing to work in the long term, Collectors and mages form true partnerships. One Guardians of the Veil caucus uses a Beast to retrieve artifacts
from unwitting Sleepers, spreading Nightmares to ensure people never dig into the occult again.
Tyrants - Tenuous as relations with vampires may be, tensions rise even higher with mages. Tyrants either adore or despise beingin the presence of the Awakened, as they have the power to shape the world according to their will. While this might mean they can aid the Beast in reaching her goal, a mage can also easily hinder a Beast using the same power. Additionally, if a Beast is enlisting the help of a mage, she is tacitly handing over some of her own power and relying on the mage to aid her in the exact way she requests. As such, most Tyrants won’t trust another with any crucial tasks. Hinging their machinations on the actions of another goes directly against their habits, but working alongside someone with such versatile talent as mages is sometimes worth the discomfort.
THE VIEW FROM WITHOUT: DREAMING DEEP
"Over time, I’ve come across people — Sleepers, by the way — who claim that their dreams are meaningful. That part isn’t uncommon, of course; check the self-help section of any bookstore and you’ll see countless piles of crap dedicated to telling you that if you dream of crabs you’ll come into money, or whatever. Every so often, though, I find a person whose dreams really do connect to something. Whether or not their dreams grant them any helpful insight isn’t my place to gauge, what with confirmation bias, recall bias, and narrative bias being what they are. Skimming their subconscious minds, though, these “dreamers” are doing something that few other people can. They’re reaching an Astral space that we can’t reach without effort. Are their minds just more open? Are they on the cusp of the Awakening? From what I can tell, no. It looks like the connection was there from birth. Spiritual genetics aren’t really my area of expertise, though."
- Arborghast, Mastigos of the Mysterium
Kinship Nightmares
You Are Better Than Them (Mage)
They’re insects. Beneath you. They can barely even see the world for what it is. If the one-eyed man is king of the land of the blind, you are its God-Emperor. Who can dare gainsay you?
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Satiety vs. Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
Normal: The effects of the victim’s Virtue and Vice are swapped for the duration of the Nightmare: He may regain one Willpower point per scene by fulfilling his Virtue without having to risk himself, and regains full Willpower once per chapter by fulfilling his Vice in a way that poses a threat to himself.High Satiety: For the duration of the Nightmare, the victim does not (and cannot) suffer from breaking points due to his own actions. Things that would normally prompt breaking points (such as murder, theft, or assault, or even nonviolent acts that are nevertheless fundamentally opposed to the character’s self-image) seem as reasonable and as appropriate as having a polite discussion. In addition to making the victim potentially act wildly out of character, this Nightmare negates any penalties to Social maneuvers or similar actions that might arise due to breaking points. It’s as easy to convince the victim to murder his boss as it is to convince him to loan you his car. Once the Nightmare’s duration ends, the victim must immediately roll for any and all actions undertaken during the Nightmare that would call for breaking points.
Satiety Expenditure: The victim sees his own desires as paramount, and anyone who would gainsay him as an enemy who must be crushed. As long as his actions are directed toward the fulfillment of his Aspirations, the victim earns an exceptional success on any roll that yields three or more successes. If, however, anyone stands between him and his Aspiration (whether deliberately or not), the victim gains “Destroy that person” as an Aspiration as long as the Nightmare lasts. “Destroy” doesn’t have to mean “kill:” depending on the victim’s Virtue, Vice, and Integrity he might try to ruin the character socially or financially, get her fired, or the like.
Exceptional Success: Each time the victim suffers (or would suffer, for the High Satiety effect) a breaking point in the Beast’s presence, it counts as fulfilling the Beast’s Hunger (base Satiety potential of 3).
The Void Is Waiting (Low-Wisdom Mage)
A book that is a universe. A set of mathematical formulae that graph nonexistence. A million chittering, hungry things desperate to be. They’re all out there. And they’re all waiting for you.
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Satiety vs. Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
High Satiety: When the victim succeeds on a Clash of Wills triggered by this Nightmare, the user of the supernatural power takes lethal damage equal to the number of successes rolled.
Satiety Expenditure: The player may spend multiple Satiety on this effect. For every Satiety spent, the Beast may cause one attempt at activating a supernatural power in the victim’s presence to automatically fail.
Exceptional Success: Each time the victim absorbs a supernatural effect in the Beast’s presence, it counts as fulfilling the Beast’s Hunger. See Satiety, p.107, for more information on fulfilling Hunger.
Everything You Know Is A Lie (Mage)
Your eyes have been opened to the profound truth. Nothing you have ever experienced is true. This world is a simulation and others are just pawns in some cosmic play. How can you love if you don’t
know what love truly is? How can you eat if you’ve never felt true hunger?Dice Pool: Intelligence + Satiety vs. Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
Normal: The victim comes to the terrible realization that his life experience is based off a false paradigm or incorrect assumptions. The victim loses access to Specialties and 10-again for the duration of the Nightmare.
High Satiety: The character is plagued by doubt — every action feels false and guided by some principle that simply doesn’t apply to the situation. While the Nightmare is active, the victim’s player must reroll any dice that come up successes when using any Skill in which the victim has a Specialty. The victim keeps the results of this reroll.
Satiety Expenditure: The Beast chooses a Skill category (Mental, Social, or Physical). Within that category, the victim treats all Skills as untrained (meaning the character loses access to any dots in that Skill and suffers a –1 or –3 penalty as appropriate). If this would affect a supernatural being using a power or ability, it provokes a Clash of Wills.
Exceptional Success: The victim’s threshold for exceptional success in any Skill that lost a Specialty is raised to seven successes. For Storyteller characters, who might not have Specialties, the player can specify one Skill that suffers from this effect.
You Have Foreseen This (Acanthus Mage)
There’s no chance they’re going to stop it in time. You already know exactly how it’s going to happen and how much they’re going to suffer, but nobody will believe you. So all you can do is watch it play
out exactly as you saw it coming.
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Satiety vs. Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
High Satiety: The player may select a number of rolls equal to the successes rolled on the Nightmare activation roll that the victim knows are destined to fail. No matter how many successes the victim’s player achieves, these rolls are treated as though they only show one success.
Satiety Expenditure: The victim walks through the world a helpless tool of capricious destiny. As long as the victim has the Delusional Condition, her threshold for exceptional successes is three successes instead of five — as long as she follows the vision’s narrative. When the Delusional Condition is resolved, the Beast regains one Willpower for each exceptional success that the victim achieved. After the Delusional Condition is resolved, the victim loses 10-again for the scene.
Exceptional Success: If the Delusional Condition is resolved by the victim during the duration of the Nightmare, it counts as fulfilling the Beast’s Hunger.
Mage Kinship Merit: Scour your Body (••)
Prerequisite: Family Ties with a mage
Effect: You may damage your physical form in order to power your abilities. As a reflexive action, you may reduce one of your Physical Attributes by 1 and take one lethal damage. This damage cannot be avoided by any means, nor can it be healed except naturally. The loss of the Attribute dot lasts for 24 hours. If you use an Atavism or Nightmare in the same turn, it takes effect as though you had spent a point of Satiety (or an extra point, should you wish to spend multiple points) along with the activation.
DEATH OF THE DARK MOTHER
Doug: What stories do you tell about the time before your Atlantis?
Chimera: Darkness, monsters, and general misery. Those things being more part of the inciting incident for seeking out Atlantis than the crux of the stories we tell, in my experience.
Doug: Right. Darkness, monsters, and general misery. I am a dream, a memory of ancient monsters that once hunted men in flesh. Before the shining city, the world was a terrible and wondrous place. Because of the Dark Mother.
Doug: She gave rise to the giants and titans and lurkers and dragons and chimerae of the world. In her shadow, man was but prey. And according to some of our stories, the monsters she begat were treated no better.
Doug: The Dark Mother is real. She is not a myth, not an analogy, not some metaphor for preliterate hunter-gatherer societies. She is a legitimate force, a god, a cosmic entity, and more. Personally I think the is also Gaia, her dark alter ego, but I can't prove that.
Doug: When mages talk of the time before Atlantis, they are trying to remember something that the world is trying to forget. Does that make sense so far?
Chimera: Mostly, yeah; it’s still a struggle not to parse parts as a metaphor though. When you say you’re a memory of something that was... were you always that way? I know that Iki claims to have been just human at one point.
Doug: Yeah, I was. And still am, in many ways. But my Horror, my soul, most definitely is not, and never was. I was eaten by it, you see. Devoured, we call it. In a dream that lasted my whole life, until I realized I was the one devouring myself. Weird, right?
Doug: But my Horror, the giant that lives inside of me, that I live inside of, is a dream echo of the oldest of the Dark Mothers children. Now it needs a man-suit to walk in the world. But once upon a time, it would stand before you as large as Donato's Tower. And eat you without thinking about it.
Doug: Have you heard the stories if Father Wolf? Do you know about the betrayal of Iron? The Myth of Cain and Lilith?
Chimera: And is that why you navigate Astral Space with so little trouble? You are, in a sense, an idea? I did... see that, the really nightmarish stuff, when you used that door trick on me.
Chimera: Anyway, yes - I don't deal with werewolves often, but I've heard some about Father Wolf. Not so much the others.
Doug: With so little trouble? You bounce from dream to dream like everything is burrowed together, and I'm the one who makes it look easy? Hahaha!
Doug: But yes, because I'm an idea, a nightmare, primal and universal, I can navigate the Primordial Dream and the 'scapes beyond with relative ease.
Doug: But I had a point... where was I?
Doug: Right! The Betrayal!
Doug: Most kinfolk have legends of some ancient betrayal, from werewolves to the lost. Even the Awakened, but they don't tell the whole story.
Chimera: Heh. I learned that uh, unconventionally. But point. What parts are we leaving out of our stories, then?
Doug: That the first mages were used. Used for a terrible purpose.
Doug: The dragons were the most prideful of the Dark Mother's children, and they had had enough of her abusive dominance. So the came together, and called out to men. Men they were meant to terrify and ravage, they instead inspired.
Doug: And so the tribes if men came to a foreboding island, and entered its darkest caves, and stole a bit of the Dark Mother's power for themselves.
Chimera: I have this friend telling me his also heretical stories about magic. Really should introduce you at some point. Thinking aloud. Just... give me a sec.
Chimera: Honestly, I have a lot of questions for you and I’m not sure where to start in asking them. You include us in kin, which is not a title I would expect, for prey turned thieves – but I assume that does play a part in your concerns.
Chimera: And you claim a similar relationship with vampires, werewolves, and so on; a connection through the Dark Mother? What purpose do you view us as serving now?
Doug: The same as any of us. To teach mankind to be afraid. Just because you stole the Dark Mother's birthright doesn't mean you aren't now her children. Adopted or not, welcome to the family.
Doug: But here's where my concerns start to come in... You see, those newly awakened to the power of the Dragons, the power of the Dark Mother, didn't just use their new magics to make life better for people.
Doug: They built a city. You've seen it.
Doug: And what a city! Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to it from around the world! The built their homes, raised their young, walked the streets under the protection of the Dragons. Never knowing the full extent of their sacrifice until it was too late.
Doug: Because, as the city grew in size, it grew in power. Dream and flesh were drawn together. And the Dark Mother's traitorous spawn and adopted bastards moved on to the next part of their plan.
Doug: They built a ladder.
Chimera: The Dragons... intended for the Ladder to be built from the beginning? Why?Chimera: Was the Fall part of their plan too?
Doug: Yes. Kind of. I mean, you can call it a ladder. You could ascend the heavens with it, so, I guess...?
Doug: But really, it was a weapon. A spear. Gungnir, Gáe Buide and Gáe Derg, the Spear of Longinus... Your Celestial Ladder was the first god-slayer, and it worked.
Doug: The dragons showed a few of your kind how to wield it against the Dark Mother, and seize her immortality for themselves. And they did. They plunged it deep into the Dark Mother's heart, and bathed in her blood, and became gods.
Doug: Some of your kind tried to stop them, of course. These you revere as heroes, the mighty Oracles who built their towers to call out to you over the ages.
Doug: And then there was the one, the regretful one, the Eleventh Gate. He is a wretched remnant that heralds the end of all things, and should be avoided...
Doug: So, the Magi of Atlantis slew the Dark Mother, and rid the world of the worst of her influence. But an unforeseen problem arose... Where do you put the undying body of the mother of all monsters?
Chimera: I... remember hearing a similar story once. That there was a dragon, Oroboros, who was supposed to keep the material and the supernal separate. But the Ladder pierced its heart (like a spear, some would say), and its body was swallowed up by an ocean of his own blood, which became the Ocean Oroboros. A sea filtering into the Abyss, where people now go to cast away their possessions forever...
The Last Refuges of the Astral Realms sit on a shoreline of dream-stuff: rusty metal sigils, crumbling idols and bones litter the beach. Oroboros waits beyond. Awakened sagas say that it was once the great dragon responsible for separating the material realm from the Supernal planes. The Celestial Ladder thrust through Oroboros like a spear; it bled forth an ocean that swallowed its body. The depths poured in to the Abyss, and the Abyss welled up inside the sea of dream-blood, leaving the Last Ocean of Oroboros behind.The shallows of the Ocean are the limits of Fallen being. Oroboros is the Abyss in the form of a dead
dragon’s black blood. Creatures crawl from Oroboros to seek succor in realms of thought, or to engage in some dark mirror of the quest for enlightenment. Some believe that this is why the acamoth seek out powerful souls. After all, the Abyss is a realm of ignorance and twisted wisdom, so its denizens must steal virtue from other domains. The Ocean also congeals into strange shapes: three-legged, scaled things with umbilici that snake back to the water’s edge, or headless birds with fanged mouths on their breasts.
Oroboros has one virtue: a mage can cast almost anything into the Abyssal deep, formally declare
his sacrifice and concentrate to divest himself of it forever. Oroboros’s waters wash over him and claim the abandoned trait. It vanishes from all realms... A mage who casts away his sight can never see through a pair of eyes again. A mage who casts away his body might vanish, while his sleeping material body collapses into dust. Most visitors are content to use the phenomenon to relinquish curses or dangerous magical objects. Souls cannot cast away anything that is not theirs, and such definitions are based on symbolic truth instead of any form of legalese. Nobody knows what happens to mages who give their souls, minds or selves to the Last Ocean.
Tradition holds that the Supernal Realms lie on the other side of Oroboros, but no astral barge or sailing ship has ever crossed the gulf. Oroboros is the end of everything.
