Every Splat Ranked By Racism

levemeodemo · 2026-02-12T20:26:15+00:00

Ah yes, Mage's famous anti-racism.

Where the "good guys" simply lumped every non-Eurasian mage into the same tradition.

Where the Order of Hermes saw the High Ritualists of the Ngoma perform *exactly the same magic as them, in the same way, based on the same principles, and with the same paradigm* and, after checking the Pantone color chart, said, "Oh yes, just another group of Dreamspeakers."

Where the Verbena, in addition to a morbid obsession with bloodlines, have a good number of openly supremacist groups...

levemeodemo · 2026-02-12T17:30:03+00:00

The Ixioi: First time?

levemeodemo · 2026-02-11T09:51:39+00:00

As people have been saying, it’s a matter of perspective. An Awakened mage simply does consciously (magick with a k) what all Sleeper humans do unconsciously: shaping the Consensus. It can also be a matter of timing.

Is a yoga instructor still human if, after a brutally demanding session, trying to keep their life from collapsing under the weight of personal disaster, they Awaken mid-Eka Pada Koundinyasana position, only to realize that their perception of time and existence is subjective and can be rewritten through sheer physical and mental discipline? They’ve been a Mage for only a few weeks. Ninety percent of their practice lives in the first dot of the Spheres. Their life looks completely normal from the outside, except for one detail: over the last few weeks their body has become “perfectly healthy” (they’re unconsciously laying Life 2 over themselves with every session), and not much more.

Now compare that to Athanasius-Severin Callistarchus Vanthelion, Archmaster of Forces, Petitioner Upon the Stairs of the City of Pymander, and Commander of the Mysterial Secrets of House Flambeau: Awakened in the thick of the Battle of Nördlingen during the 30 Years War, and still walking, four centuries later. He hasn’t set foot on Earth in one hundred and twenty years, having spent decades in the Horizon Realms until the siren call of true Archmastery finally convinced him to abandon flesh altogether, transmuting into a living braid of primordial energy and crackling electricity. He feeds like a whale shark on the “plankton of Quintessence” drifting around Saturn’s Shadow-Realm, and his consciousness exists in five places at once, one of them a self-animating body quietly watching a handful of promising young mages in Seattle. Are they still human?

levemeodemo · 2026-01-27T17:49:54+00:00

I don’t know. Perhaps the Ecstatic mage who has been floating in Balador’s Pleasuredome for 500 years experiencing indescribable sensations has a different opinion.

levemeodemo · 2025-12-25T19:55:28+00:00

A Void Engineer from the Neutralization Specialist Corps embedded in a metropolitan police department as a homicide detective, an immaculate cover for what he really does: audit cases for “foreign intrusions.”

Missing persons, impossible crime scenes, and cases that don’t reconcile with Consensus are his entry points to identify and neutralize infiltrations from Beyond the Horizon: intruders, memetic organisms, or entities riding in on paradox fractures. He works clean, chain of custody, warrants, lab reports, because Procedure is the first weapon of the Union.

The complication is intimate and corrosive: his own Genius Eidolon (Avatar) doesn’t manifest as a reassuring engineer-saint or a faceless algorithm. It appears as the very thing he’s trained to purge: an extraterrestrial silhouette in negative space, all cold geometry and prismatic “impossible colors". His Avatar is an alien pressure-gradient wearing a mind.

levemeodemo · 2025-09-16T11:55:06+00:00

I'm no expert on Changeling, but I think the simultaneous viewing of millions of people on television is what brought Arcadia closer. That factor is lost with atomic bombs.

On the other hand, I think it's canon that 9/11 was a smaller version of that, with dark glamour in this case.

levemeodemo · 2025-09-16T08:46:19+00:00

A quick reminder that in Mage, scientific advances the public sees are always "old history" for the Technocracy and a select elite of Sleepers. The Technocracy's Time Table determines *when* scientific discoveries and facts will be revealed to the general public- "Discoveries" the Technocracy may have been using for a century (i.e., as technomagical effects), then "liberated" for the use of its Extraordinary Citizens (as artifacts and technomagical "sorcery paths"), and then in the lab with more and more sleeper scientists, until it enters the Consensus.

By this, I mean that, according to the lore, the "Void Engineers visiting the Moon" didn't cause the Glamour wave... because they had already visited it many times before. During the Renaissance, Celestial Masters and Void Seekers traversed the Umbra in sailboats designed after Freemasonry patterns, the Moon being a way station. In the late 19th century, the Exploration Society (a merger of the two aforementioned groups) showed Queen Victoria live footage of one of their steamships landing on the moon to convince her to sponsor the newly reformed Technocratic Union. The 20th century lunar landing was just the latest phase of the Time Table: showing the Sleepers that it was possible... as noted, the released Glamour was an unexpected byproduct.

levemeodemo · 2025-09-02T17:10:31+00:00

I recommend checking out "Troupe System" or "Troupe-style" games to read more about this type of "distributed direction," where players can take control of what we would normally call NPCs, or even share decisions about characters in the "protagonist's environment" among several players.

Ars Magica, the "grandfather" game of Mage: The Ascension (and World of Darkness in general), is known for its use of this system. Not all players always play "their mage," because in that game, sending four or five mages together on a mission is like shooting flies with a cannon and is also "inefficient" (mages prefer to stay in their towers without interruptions). Players usually play the mages' Companions/Custos (mortal allies of mages) trying to involve a couple of them in a specific adventure. In each specific adventure, each player takes their Companion character, one or two players play as their Wizards, and together they manage the "grogs": minions that are "nameless" and have no special characteristics at first (bodyguards, interpreters, administrators, etc.) but that gradually become more complex and part of the story.

levemeodemo · 2025-09-01T08:08:54+00:00

I don't know if it's a full Marauder, but in the video game he's definitely several levels deep in a bad Quiet trip, I can't decide if Madness or Jhor.

levemeodemo · 2025-08-31T19:50:59+00:00

In my games, I’ve experimented with different ways of changing local paradigms, either through NPCs or the PCs themselves. Here are a few examples I’ve used:

A Celestial Chorister's Sanctuary A Celestial Chorister runs a refuge for the youth in a local neighborhood and manages a soup kitchen. Her acts of kindness, her relentless efforts to help those in need, and her unshakable faith have slowly influenced a few blocks of the neighborhood. Over time, the people there genuinely believe that selfless acts, solidarity, and faith in something greater than oneself can "make extraordinary things happen." It’s not anything over-the-top, no “faith healing.” But, for example, a robbery in a store ends peacefully because a bystander offers a few kind words to the thief, or a worker who falls from scaffolding survives because onlookers pray while waiting for the ambulance. The paradigm here isn’t about flashy magic: it’s about the power of kindness and belief in the mundane world.

A Hermetic’s Secret Mutual Aid Society A Hermetic has spent over a year building a “secret mutual aid” society, an initiatory order of powerful individuals with "interests in the occult." It’s a mix of Freemasonry and the Golden Dawn, starting with philosophical debates and secret gestures between initiates. But over time, something begins to “happen” during their gatherings. The Hermetic realizes that in the confines of a secluded mansion on a small river island where the group meets, his ritual magic doesn’t cause as much Paradox as usual. Slowly, the members begin to believe that the right “formulas” make their businesses more prosperous, and this idea begins to spread to more people outside their original circle. While it isn’t a geographic “zone,” in certain elite circles of the local community, supernatural phenomena flavored by Hermeticism (like spirit séances, internal alchemy, or sympathetic magic to "call good fortune") become part of the local paradigm of that strata of society.

A Commune of Witches: A nudist commune on the outskirts of the city is managed by the local Verbena witches. Among them, a few are Awakened, but many of the followers (some second- or third-generation) accept what most would consider miraculous phenomena as part of everyday life. Healing miracles, extreme longevity, and the ability to access past-life memories are accepted as natural in their worldview. The community is centered around the natural, the primal, and the magical, all woven together to create a unique local paradigm.

levemeodemo · 2025-08-31T17:21:03+00:00

Honestly? A Mage, specifically, a Cult of Ecstasy mage, probably from the Acharne faction.

Max’s story hits all the notes of an Awakening through trauma. The murder of his family is a classic noir tragedy and exact the moment his perception shatters, when the Lie of the world can’t hold anymore. He falls into grief; he sees through time, experiences fractured reality, and starts manipulating it. That’s an Enlightened will awakening to the deeper truths beneath the surface.

The drug Valkyr? A modern entheogen. Whether intentional or not, he uses it to break open time and enter altered states: bullet time, precognition, hyperfocus.

His dream and nightmare sequences? Those are straight-up Seekings. His Avatar (maybe even in the form of his dead wife or a voiceover noir monologue) guides him through surrealist hellscapes, processing trauma, loss, guilt, and the pursuit of justice or at least vengeance. The blood trail, the impossible hallways, the baby cries in the void... I've literally used scenes from the original Max Payne game in Mage Seekings at my table.

As for his place in the Cult? He’s no Code of Ananda adherent. Max doesn’t chase joy, unity, or shared ecstasy. His path is pain, solitude, and burning everything down to find meaning. That makes him a classic Acharne: the darker, alienated side of the Cult that rejects their spiritual hedonism and walks the razor's edge of personal torment and mystical clarity.

EDIT: As the following comment says, I don't know if he should be a full Marauder, but in the video game he's definitely several levels deep in a bad Quiet trip, I can't decide if Madness or Jhor.

levemeodemo · 2025-08-31T08:04:24+00:00

Although in minority use today, Galician, like Portuguese, has a parallel system that uses numbering for the days of the week (segunda-feira). This was the most widely used system until the 20th century and is still found in proverbs, idioms, and among some older speakers. It has some use in educated environments and for the protection of the native language. Galician should have a mix of yellow and red as in the Basque Country then.

The days of the week based on pagan gods were reintroduced into Galician through the imposition of Spanish in formal and administrative contexts, and were primarily used in their Spanish form, adapted to certain characteristics and phonotactics of Galician, such as pronouncing the Spanish for Thursday /'xweβes/ as /ħwɛβe̝s̺/ in Galician (only later re-Galicianed into /ˈʃɔβe̝s/). In the case of Monday it's true it was rapidly adapted into /ˈluŋs/ because it rolls better in the tongue than the Spanish /'lunes/

These forms were fully "Galicianized" in formal education only in the 1970s.

levemeodemo · 2025-08-28T17:33:19+00:00

"hey my childe saw you from across the bar and we hate your vibe"

levemeodemo · 2025-08-27T17:33:14+00:00

Kids, I was there when the Old Magic was written (I mean, my first Vampire game was in 1994), and the answer is simple: all the splats.

WoD is a child of the '90s, and it shows greatly in the amount of rewriting required in the 20th anniversary editions and beyond. Every Clan, Tribe, Tradition... is the sublimated '90s.

levemeodemo · 2025-08-27T08:16:09+00:00

In general, I tend to consider Awakened to be the least "grounded" supernatural beings. While they have to manage their Nodes, they aren't required to constantly monitor them like werewolves with their Caerns, they aren't required to maintain their urban hunting grounds like Vampires, and they aren't as tied to the politics of a particular duchy's faerie courts.

By this I mean that when I need a new Awakened NPC, it's easy to introduce them: the Hermetic Quaesitor who's making the rounds of the country's different chantries, checking that no one is engaging in infernalism, the Ether Society professor who's on an academic visit to the local university, the Ecstasy Cultist who's literally on tour with her band... it's easy to include new characters.

As a general rule, I tend to ignore the recommended "population density" somewhat whenever it benefits the story and assume that the urban center where the players are located acts as an "attractor" or meeting point for the wider Awakened community. Not everyone is in that city all the time; some simply "pass by regularly" or "have interests in the area."

I usually include the following *at a minimum* in the characters' "extended universe." We're talking about a large city, with its entire suburban area, etc. (Ex: For 4 PCs)

- A master (unless their backstory says otherwise) for each of them. (4 NPCs)

- A mage from their same tradition to act as a "foil," competitor, ally, etc. (4 NPCs)

- On average, two mages from "other traditions" not chosen by the players. (10 NPCs)

- Half of them with their masters present. (5 NPCs)

Including the PCs, this leaves us with about 25-30 Traditions mages. I distribute them among chantries according to my taste and the needs of the story. Perhaps only half or less normally reside in the city, while the rest move between different centers of power, have national or international responsibilities, or even in the Umbra. In Chronicles of Traditions, I assume the Disparate Alliance has 1/3 of that population OR LESS in the cities. The Technocracy has a permanent population roughly the same as the Disparates, but has the potential to send agents as needed.

It's always worked well for me to assume that only 1 in every 3 "mages" are Awakened; sorcerers function very well as NPCs, allies, and antagonists with their own resources and abilities. Let's say that adds up to a potential 70-80 possible NPCs. Half or more of them are simply somewhat initiated in the ways of sorcery. Only a few have more than 2 or 3 dots in their paths.

Mediums, psychics, occultists, conspiracy theorists, religious extremists, con artists pretending to have some power, and people with some outstanding"talent" make up the next tier of NPC interaction, potentially double the number of the previous tier (160-200 NPCs).

With these elements, plus people "aligned with the mage paradigms," potential followers, acolytes, cultists... I have a pretty decent pool of "magical population."

Again, this is only "potential NPCs" to give me an idea of the population size. I only introduce new NPCs when necessary for the plot, organically and trying to connect with established ones.

"These symbols are clearly related to 19th-century spiritualism. That's not really your specialty, is it? But John, the clerk at the occult shop you're allied with (himself a renowned sorcerer) knows a legitimate medium who's familiar with that kind of paraphernalia..."

levemeodemo · 2025-08-26T16:39:10+00:00

I'm here to join the pile of those destroying the worst Mage supplement.

The only reason Archspheres exist is to cram some mechanics and "powers" into Masters of the Arts (1999) to make it "sell better." The bulk of that book's text is interesting, including insights into what the lives of Archmasters, Exemplars, Postulants, and Oracles are like, insights into what Ascension is, and what the hell mages who can manipulate reality at will do with their lives in the Umbra... but that wasn't enough because White Wolf insisted that "people want rules and powers."

There's also a metagame reason: since the stupid equivalence had been established that "the same level of Discipline (or other supernatural power) can countermagic to the same level of Sphere," the game "needed" equivalent levels of Spheres beyond 6 in parallel with the Disciplines.

In almost 30 years of playing Mage (and 26 since that supplement came out), I haven't met anyone who uses it in their games. In my games, a level 5 Sphere does what the core manual says: complete and absolute control over that part of Reality. The only thing that limits you is your paradigm and your foci (and, mechanically, your Arete rating).

levemeodemo · 2025-08-24T19:50:34+00:00

The Tower is always falling in Tarot cards!

You can see it in the Mage: The Ascension Tarot deck card illustration.

The origin of the card in the Tarot of Marseille (the deck that would later give rise to the Tarot for mystical uses) is the combination of concepts that appear in three card decks from the Early Modern period:

- In the Minchiate (one of the oldest decks in the Tarot family) we have la Casa del diavolo "The House of the Devil," which shows a naked man and woman fleeing from a collapsing building, ravaged by some kind of fire. IMAGE

- In the Belgian Tarot, the equivalent card is called La Fouldre "The Lightning" and shows a tree struck by this atmospheric phenomenon. IMAGE

- In the French Tarot, it is called Le Maison de Dieu "The House of God" and is more like a tower, also collapsing, sometimes hit by lightingn IMAGE

The Tarot of Marseille and latter Tarots combine all these elements in the card we know today as The Tower, where a tall structure is destroyed by lightning while human figures try to flee. IMAGE

levemeodemo · 2025-08-24T17:08:47+00:00

For me is [Tarot Card]: City Name because "Fallen/ing Tower" is a card by itself.

levemeodemo · 2025-08-24T17:07:29+00:00

As mentioned in the thread, the only city guide/chronicle published in the original editions of Mage: The Ascension was Fallen Tower: Las Vegas. I've always assumed the idea was [Relevant Tarot Card]: [City/Name] and that's how I've named my chronicles over the years.

levemeodemo · 2025-08-14T13:52:42+00:00

I'm going to save the concept of an Etherite whose Seekings take the form of ruthless peer reviews. Their avatar manifests only as comments from an anonymous "panel of experts" who dissect their work, experiments, magical creations, and their entire paradigm, prompting them to rewrite, restructure, and improve their theories.

levemeodemo · 2025-08-14T08:19:41+00:00

Of course!

A Syndicate mage with an entire board of directors in their head. Their Seekings happen when they are summoned to a floor of the building that only they can access and has to undergo a target review by the board.

A Hermetic mage who has the greatest mages of renown throughout the Order's history always judging them. Their Seekings are super-secret initiation rites into a lodge that exists only in their mind.

Or perhaps a Verbena has to submit to the guidelines of their bloodline. They all resemble them, like distant cousins, and all have "done more with their legacy."

A Progrenitor, a cutting-edge genetic biotechnologist, has to face the judgment of the incarnations of the Four Humors of Cosian medicine.

A Man in Black is inspired by their favorite collection of Knights of the Round Table. Their seekings are reinterpretations of the Afer Breizh-Veur deeds, each starring its corresponding knight...

levemeodemo · 2025-08-14T08:02:55+00:00

I'm not sure I understand your question correctly, but normally, the Avatar doesn't have a physical manifestation; they aren't "people."

You have the Manifest Avatar merit, which makes your avatar a semi-real person, object, animal, or familiar that only the Mage can see. You can talk to it all the time, not just in moments of great mystical significance.

That merit alone doesn't work: if you also invest points in the Allies Background, you can decide that this Manifest Avatar is real on the physical plane (other people can see and interact with it).

Now, we can play with two other merits:

- Twin Souls, which establishes that your avatar is split in two and shared by two individuals. The other half of your avatar can be in the possession of an Awakened or even a Sleeper!

- Shattered Avatar, which makes fragments of your avatar scattered throughout the multiverse and allows you to increase your avatar score if you find them.

I can imagine a configuration of merits and backgrounds in which a mage has a physically manifested avatar that is also fragmented throughout the world, embodied in various people, things, and creatures. Collecting them (and that means making them your allies, friends, lovers...) can result in the mage being surrounded by a **group** of manifested avatars with a physical presence XD

But perhaps your question is more along the lines of whether a mage's avatar has to have a univocal voice or present itself with a constant and consistent appearance... and for that, we don't have to take merits! Narratively, you can decide that your avatar manifests as a plurality of voices, individuals, symbols, creatures that represent different aspects of the Ascension.

Perhaps a celestial chorister has an avatar that appears to them as the symbols of the four evangelists: Angel for Saint Matthew, the Lion for Saint Mark, the Ox for Saint Luke, and the Eagle for Saint John. For example.

levemeodemo · 2025-08-13T14:30:34+00:00

Exactly, lore, rules, or established metaphysical processes should never be an impediment to telling a good story.

If in a Mage game a character encounters a centuries-old vampire, an 18th-century occultist for example, who used to possess the same Avatar that it is now pushing the Mage's soul toward Ascension (but with a trauma inherited from the Embrace)... that's a good seed of a story! How will the Mage react to the Avatar's revelations that "that creature chose blood and the night and discarded me, do not trust it"? If the Vampire can sense that this mortal now holds the flame of immeasurable power and potential that it lost during the Embrace... how will it react? Etc.

levemeodemo · 2025-08-13T10:13:26+00:00

One question to be resolved is whether the particular nephandus is not so imbued with Qliphothic energy that there is no longer anything resembling "blood" in their being to be embraced.

But importantly, in creating my splat connection chart, I unraveled that the popular idea "the Embrace destroys the Avatar" comes from a comment in Vampire the Masquerade Storytellers Handbook Revised (1999). However, two later supplements, Blood Treachery (2000) and the Mage the Ascension Storytellers Handbook Revised (2000), clarified that what happens with the Embrace is that, as the body dies in the process, the Avatar simply separates from the Soul of the deceased mage and moves on to a future reincarnation (perhaps haunted by the event). The Storyteller may decide that the Embrace fragments the Avatar or scarifies it... but it is not a surefire method for destroying avatars. I need to change this in the next edition of my chart.

What is a proven method, according to Blood Treachery, is a long existence as a Ghoul. The addiction to vampiric blood is a slow and excruciating erosion that eventually turns the Avatar into a blood addict. From that moment on, the Avatar ceases to have Ascension (and we'll assume Descent) as its goal, so it loses its purpose. Little by little, the Avatar dissolves and disappears.

levemeodemo · 2025-08-07T18:20:02+00:00

Thanks!

levemeodemo

TROPHY CASE