Ferrum Impressions OOC 2

[Danteric]

I've actually never got around to playing Witcher, do intend to one of these days if it goes on sale, I hear its pretty good though. I'll take a look at those books, hopefully I can get them on my tablet

On another note, how rare are nodes? I mean it would make sense for mages to build around them (At least if the garou dont come for them) and draw on them for Quintessence, other wise its fairly hard to get more right?

[Artemciy]

Well, I didn't exactly counted them all.
True, the nodes are usually a seat of some power, like the whitehall palace in this London. The house on the tree is a node, too. Able Prime mages can weaken the gauntlet to make a place more exposed to the Umbral influx of pure unbound energy (or sometimes not so pure). The node is a combination of such a weakening with lots of protective and utility wards to make it safe and useful to a mage. The consensus itself is usually warped in such places to favor the mage's paradigm, though that takes time. If by a node we mean simply a weak Gauntlet then these things occur more often than we might think, though properly established nodes are rare since they might need a lot of work and protection/stature to maintain in the face of hostile forces.

P.S. Garou Caverns are a valuable example, because there's a lot of lost ones. Evil things creeped from the Umbra or driven the Garou from the Tellurian's side of the cavern. There's a place of magic, yes, but it isn't accounted for. It takes resources to maintain a node.

[Danteric]

Oh, I didn't know the tree house was a node as well, good to know! I've been contemplating on how to use Quintessence for my spells, but using it wildly would no doubt eat through the few points he has fairly quickly. At least if we're living on a node we can regenerate it, but I wonder how that'll turn out when we're not living on Romeos node anymore

[Danteric]

Would Joseph be able to use Forces 1 effect Dark Sight to see better in the cave?

[Artemciy]

You can use any magic by default, I'll tell if something looks doubtfull.

[Danteric]

Sorry, I slept in and am about to head off to work, so I wont be able to get a post up today. I'll get one up when I get home in the morning as i'll be off for 3 days then.

[Danteric]

Phew, finally caught up on my sleep and off work, working on a post now!

[Artemciy]

To save us another iteration, will John follow Tanaka inside?

[Danteric]

Ah yes he would, I should've mentioned that, my bad.

[Danteric]

Also just out of curiosity, what is Josephs specialty sphere? I assume it's either Forces or Entropy, but just curious to what one.

[Artemciy]

Why don't you pick one? It's about XP costs, is it?

[Danteric]

Yeah, levelx7 instead of x8, suppose it only makes a huge difference mechanically in the long run. But considering Romeo is our teacher and he's a life mage, I suppose it would make sense to have Life as his specialty, what do you think?

[Artemciy]

So far the round guy been trying to help you with your Spheres too, but you can expect him to focus more on his favorite sphere in the long run and sure, Joseph might focus on studying the trickery and tricks of Life as well.

[Danteric]

Alright, i'll go with Life as a specialty sphere then, Life is pretty interesting to me, so it works out.

[Artemciy]

All right! Write down a single point of Life and Prime for Joseph, BTW.

[Danteric]

Cool, updated the sheet, glad I got that dot in prime too, soon I can (hopefully) begin churning out enchanted artifacts and the like

[Danteric]

Given some thoughts on combination spheres and began to wonder, If you combined Life/Matter/Spirit/Mind spheres and through obviously much paradox/difficulty, would it be possible to create a sentient being? Or perhaps even revive someone from the dead?

[Artemciy]

would it be possible to create a sentient being?

Definitely.

Or perhaps even revive someone from the dead?

If you capture a soul then it's possible to recreate the body (with Life 5) and essentially resurrect a character. And there are ways to capture a soul after the fact (e.g. snatching it from the past with Time or making it luckily linger in the Tellurian with Fate). So yes, it's doable if you know how. If you don't, then it might be harder, some brute force examples can be found there.

[Danteric]

Oh cool, doesn't surprise me that it'd take level 5 in multiple spheres though. Also i've been wondering, seeing as Kindred Disciplines can go beyond level 5 after reaching 7th generation and lower, can mages level their spheres to 6+ after getting Arete 6 and higher?

[Artemciy]

After level 5 it's archmastery, if you survive the hunts (there are cabals who hunt down the emerging archmages) there is some tricky mechanics to achieving the archmastery status, I haven't quite figured it out yet. Haven't planned on taking the mage character development this far. Vampires - sure, NP. Mages I planned to limit at 5, something like this.

P.S. Actually, there's a plot line in the story right now that involves breaking the archmastery limit.

[Danteric]

Gotcha, I suppose Vampire progression is a lot less messy (Or is it? ) then the mage system, given how their system is generational based and the like. I'm guessing Archmage spheres get extraordinarily overpowered? Seeing as there are very few limits to what you can do with a level 5 sphere, the thought of what archmages could do would probably be literally reality shattering.

[Artemciy]

I'm guessing Archmage spheres get extraordinarily overpowered?

I don't really have a problem with that. In my opinion the more powerful the character, the easier it is for her to break things beyond repair. I'd like to see Black Company scale mages in the game.

But... one problem with Mage is that high-level characters are supposed to loose their humanity, to become alien and queer. I don't know what to do with that, I'm more comfortable with powerful mages with normal human emotions and the like, characters I can relate to.

Another problem is brute force vs. creativity, I see Mage as a system whose original idea was to endorce the creative magic, the way to achieve the results with wit instead of brute strength. Five dots in any sphere and a bit of resourcefullness should be sufficient to get a very versatile Mage. I don't see much reason to go further.

Yet another problem is that a high-level Mage might be a subject to responsibilities and forces that shift the focus from a pure adventuring to something political. Instead of spinning out a normal world I'll have to invent a large-scale conflict. Vampires sometimes shun this and walk the earth pretending to be neonates but I'm not sure about the Mages. Might be interesting, but I'm not that comfortable with the game yet.

[Danteric]

Vampires sometimes shun this and walk the earth pretending to be neonates

Yep! Helena, a fourth generation Toreador, is a prime example of this. After being in torpor for centuries she arose and began to masquerade as a 13th (or so) generation neonate, makes you wonder how many neonates in some of the courts are actually millennial-old Methuselah playing a rather dangerous game of the Jyhad.

As for mages getting higher up in power, dont they have certain restrictions? I believe I read somewhere that some ascend to become oracles and the like, beings so powerful that they cannot physically manifest on Earth without horrendous amounts of paradox attracting to them, so they decide to stay in the Umbra and play whatever games they wish there.

[Artemciy]

I believe I read somewhere that some ascend to become oracles and the like, beings so powerful that they cannot physically manifest on Earth without horrendous amounts of paradox attracting to them

That's what I mean, I'm not sure an archmage can adventure or even supposed to have an interest in it. Paradox becomes a real problem, too. If I go that way, I'll have to choose whether to stay with the Mage system or go farther from it.

P.S.

John didn't particularly like the idea of searching a forest, and would much rather get to interrogating the Bishops agent, but if searching a forest let them pass through the city and get close to their target for questioning, he'd have to put up with it, and maybe they'd gain a few allies in the process.

If our information is correct then it stands to reason that the leader of this ragtag band of quickly assembled mercenaries is the Bishop's agent. Him or maybe the one whom John just sent home.

[Danteric]

Oh god, in hindsight I shouldn't have done that, but I guess what's done is done, let's hope its not

[Danteric]

I'm a tad bit confused about Paradigms, Would you mind helping me sort one out? They are how your mage believes their magic works, isn't it?

[Artemciy]

So, in the 20th anniversary there's a page 568 on paradigms.

Tanaka's paradigm is a mix of "Creation is Innately Divine and Alive" and a bit of "Everything is Data" (which makes sense given that she is a Dreamspeaker who was a member of the Ghost Wheel society originally). I've actually forgot some of it, thanks for reminding me.
Her Paradigm "works" when she whispers to the living word around her (you might remember her muttering about when she magicked). It's betwixt the Cloister's prayer to the God and the Shaman's ghost-talk. She can talk directly to spirits, too. Recently she's more into communicating silently, mostly because of the Stealth factors.

You might have noticed that she likes the bearings of a witch , but her paradigm is not of Witchcraft (p. 584), it's more of Shamanism and Reality Hacking (p. 581), though she isn't above stealing ideas from Verbena spells.

There's also True Magick, Paradigm and Belief. They explain it well and I'm firmly on the True Magick side = ).

Let's take Lars for example, since we need to flesh out his Paradigm too.
Lars is a bit of a cynicist. His belief in magic stems from being able to hear reflections of human thoughts all around him, but that also've made him a tad skeptical about a single belief system. You might say the telepathy is an early pluralism, whether he wants it or not Lars was exposed to a multitude of practices. He knows there are sincere Christians and he knows there are hypocrites, who use religion for their gain, and self-delusional people rejecting the facts and people of the old faith, worshiping various pagan gods, people who don't believe in anything and people who observe strange half-magical practices. He knows that faith truly works for some and remain a hoax for others.
That gravitates him to a more skeptical attitude of the "A World of Gods and Monsters" paradigm described in the book: "The dark side of existential philosophy, this model insists that everything is meaningless. Paradoxically, it’s both a very primitive viewpoint and a completely modern one."
He's an occultist in a sense that he recognizes the existence of various forces in the universe and would like to know how to work with them. He's a solipsist in a sense that his own talent is the only truth he knows.
His primary focus is the perception of the thoughts around him. He learned to merge with other's thoughts and shift them. His first steps in Matter were similar, he thought to merge his mind with something else than the living, to find solance in the silence of the stone, in the freedom of the wind.
Per the "Might is Right" paradigm he seeks to hone his own will and his own abilities.
(To sum up, Lar's paradigm is a mix of "Might is Right" and "A World of Gods and Monsters" as described above and his primary focus is telepathic perception and projection).

P.S. What's common and what's different in Tanaka and Lars paradigms?
Tanaka believes that the world is alive and even though her Whispering works, she still has to make (a small and routine) leap of faith every time she does that kind of magic.
Lars experiences the world's thoughts in a more Descartian "I think, therefore I am" manner, he doesn't believe it's alive though, paradoxically he might tune to the thought-hum of the elements but he still thinks it's dead matter.

To Tanaka the world is whole and sentient on some fundamental level. To Lars it's just a disparate set of thoughts and entities.

[Danteric]

Oh neat, i'll give the 20th edition a read over and see if I can come up with something, thanks for the help!

[Danteric]

So from what i've read, and will likely take some more thought, I'm kind of leaning towards a "World of Gods and Monsters" with a mix of "Everything is Chaos – You Only Think it Makes Sense", as his beliefs were formed around his first few days after awakening, being captured by the villagers and being chased by the monster made him realize there are other things that go bump in the night, and its a dog eat dog world, so to speak. As for the second part of the paradigm, Joseph heavily believes that to use his magic he must force the change upon using sheer force of will.

I understand its a bit lacking detail wise, but i'd appreciate any tips and the like.

[Artemciy]

So... to figure out a weakness in a wall Joseph would... will himself to know that weakness?

What if he accidentally wills something, like setting on fire a person who was rude to him or making pedestrians fall under the ground when he's in a foul mood?

Sounds like a kind of magic a beginner would have, but something that would be shaped into a more manageable form by most teachers, no?

P.S. There must be a trick to "willing things to happen" that separates it from simply... willing things to happen.
Maybe imagining things happening,
or willing things to happen magically,
or thinking "do it!", clicking one's fingers.

It's actually an interesting part of the process, in some worlds it's very important to learn to limit one's spells, the simpler the spell the more dangerous it is: "turn matter into liquid" spell might destroy half the world. = )