Mage: The Ascension

Very brief intro: Mage is a game of modern magic. Mages live in our world, and no one knows it. They practice their magic, and we don't see it. Belief is power, even in a modern world that doesn't believe. Magic is powerful. You can do almost anything, provided you believe you can. Society doesn't believe you can, and their collective belief is powerful too. Different factions of mages secretly fight to manipulate the belief of the masses, and thus consensual reality. This is the Ascension War. In the war for reality, whose side are you on?

Master Eastman, your tutor, has this to say about affairs:

"These are the dying days of magic, gentlemen. I'm sorry, but it's true. We are still capable of many of the things our mystical forbears were, but we must hide them, lest the massed disbelief of our world tear them, and us, apart.

"Magic is codified belief. That's all there is to it. That one fact is the soul of your education, but it will take you years to internalize it. Right now, you're thinking there has to be more to it than that. I know. I was in your place many years ago. Well, listen up. That's all there is to it.

"We have, through centuries of effort, formulated a system to allow us to more easily manipulate our power. We have the nine spheres: correspondence, entropy, forces, life, matter, mind, prime, spirit, and time. Combined, these nine spheres of power describe all things that can be manipulated through belief. Like I said, it took us a long time to arrive at this system, but now, the Hermetic system is the best there is. So good that even mages of other very ancient traditions tend to use our terminology, even if their practice is very different from ours.

"Still, in the hundreds of years it took us to create our belief structure, the world changed. Our roots reach back into ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Mesopotamia. Our organizational structure was formed in the late Roman Empire. 476 is a vital date for three reasons. One, the one known even to mundane historians, is that that was the year Rome was conquered by the barbarians.

"It was also the beginning of our greatest flourishing. Rome had provided a stability that had led to a suppression of what has come to be called 'superstition.' This was our first real encounter with the limits of our abilities. Sure, individual practitioners have always had limits, and even groups together had them, but it was noticed that sometimes long standing enchantments would fail, and that some great tasks would take more effort than they had in past attempts. Eventually we learned why. All belief is power, not just ours. Our arrogance has always been our undoing. When the populace trusted the world around them, we had to try harder to bend it to our will. When Rome fell, and the barbarians moved into the old empire, things got easier again.

"There was a third important fact then, but we didn't find out about it for centuries. 476 was the beginning of our end. The barbarians had mages of their own, and their invasion had been aided through magical means. A few very forward thinking mages in the Empire realized what a threat to public safety unfettered magic was, and began to analyze the problem. While we would eventually settle on the goal of Ascension, they would eventually settle on their own goal, Consensual Reality. We now live in Consensual Reality. The war didn't start then, but when it did, they won.

"Well, so what do we do about it now? Ascension is still our goal. The Order of Hermes seeks first for its members, and then for all of humanity, complete subjugation of the world to the individual will through the mechanism of magic. The Order of Reason, some call it the Technocracy, seeks, so they say, the freedom from the vagaries of change and unreliable reality brought about by magic. They've made the most progress; the world is less mutable now than it ever has been before. But just because they won the open battles doesn't mean we have to stop fighting. If we gave up, that would mean no more magic, for us or anybody. That would mean the loss of wonder, and the loss of that great hope that Ascension holds out. And just because the Orders have polite relations doesn't mean we aren't at war. They'll do everything in their power to control you. Remember that.

"Your education will be long and hard, but magic is and will be your reward. Apply your will to the shaping of your belief, your very soul, and you will become masters of the world, this world and all others."

The character sheet is here. Instructions on what to do with it are coming.