Mage Backgrounds

A measure of resources both internal (Avatar, Arcane, Dream, etc.) and external (Allies, Mentor, Resources, and so on), the Background Trait tells you plenty about a mage’s position in life. A charismatic wizard, for instance, would have Allies, Contacts, Cult, and the like, whereas a solitary hermit would possess a strong Avatar, lots of Arcane, and maybe a Familiar or Node.

The Technocracy defines certain Backgrounds differently than mystic mages do. And although members of the Traditions share a lot of common terms, mystic mages and technomancers who belong to different groups – or to no group at all – might define their Backgrounds by Technocratic standards (say, a Companion, not a Familiar) rather than by the usual Tradition labels or ideas. As usual, concept guides definition: a Bata’a priestess is more likely to see her Avatar as an aspect of the Loa, whereas a self-Awakened computer geek is liable to see his Enlightened Self as a blazing spark of Genius.

As with other Traits, Backgrounds come from essential elements of that character’s history and often play significant roles in the chronicle at hand. When you pick your Backgrounds, then, make sure there are good reasons for the things you choose. Who are your Allies, and why do they aid you? Where’s your Node, what’s it like, and how did you acquire such a potent treasure? A high Avatar rating reflects an entity with a strong personality and goals of its own; how, then, does that affect your life?

Not all Backgrounds are created equally. Some can go over five dots, and some cannot. Some cost in freebies or XP than others. Some you can acquire in play, and some you cannot. Some Backgrounds are more unbalancing than others at high levels.

Don’t forget to check this page for a list of common Backgrounds available to all characters.

Backgrounds marked with a $ symbol potentially have special costs and should be read more closely. Backgrounds marked with a ! symbol have been extensively House Ruled from their 20th edition versions.

Arcane / Cloaking !Avatar / Genius !$Backup $Blessing !$Chantry / Construct !!Cult $DemesneDestinyDream / Hypercram !Enhancement $Familiar / CompanionLegendNode $Past Lives !RequisitionsSanctum / Laboratory $Secret Weapons !Spirit Network !StatusTotem $Wonder / Device $

House Rules and Restrictions

  • Arcane cannot be switched off and on. It is always a passive effect that gives a negative penalty equal to its ratings to any Perception attempts to notice you or Investigation attempts, or to scry you. It can in fact be used to mitigate every supernatural power that someone might use to locate you.
  • It gives a penalty of double your Arcane rating to any mundane attempts to research or trace you with the Influence system. (So a PC with 5 Arcane would give a -10 dice penalty to any attempt by a hired gumshoe, Scooby Doo crew or LAPD detective to find or track you down).
  • It does not double dip anymore. You cannot add it to Stealth while simultaneously reducing your opponent’s dice pools. You don’t add it to anything anymore. It is for now on, only a passive penalty against your opponent, and only to notice you the first time. It helps them overlook you (thus avoiding confrontation) – but once combat or a confrontation begins – it has no use tactically in terms of hit and run. Use Spheres or Wonders/Devices instead.
  • It will never work on someone ever again, after you have been formally introduced to them. A formal introduction is some iteration of shaking their hand/looking them in the eye and giving them your name, etc. (And regardless of the name you use, it will still be treated as a ‘Formal Introduction’, unless paired with Alternate ID (in which case Arcane only drops for that ID, not the other one).
  • You can ‘regain’ Arcane vs someone, by buying the Alternate ID BG later. But it will only benefit you to the same degree as your purchased Alternate ID BG.
  • The following Backgrounds: Allies, Contacts, Rank & Resources costs double for every dot above (5 – your Arcane rating).
  • Fame is disallowed entirely.

You know the fine art of disappearing. Whether this involves a not-so-simple trick, the ability to cloud men’s minds, nanotech sensory disrupters, or some nameless power of obscurity, you possess a talent for getting lost. Especially in the age of cell-phone cameras, global databases, electronic trackers, DNA samples, and Closed Circuit TV monitors on every corner, Arcane – or its Technocratic version, Cloaking – is a useful Trait to have. Records get lost; cameras malfunction or record fuzzy images in your place; folks recall “Some guy… or girl, I guess – I’m really not sure.” Although this talent isn’t invisibility per se, it helps you blend in with crowds, blurs your features on camera, and allows you to slide in between the cracks of an increasingly monitored world.

To mystic mages, Arcane is a bending of reality caused by fluctuations of metaphysical energy, like echoes or Resonance. As far as the Technocracy’s concerned, this is a perfectly explainable phenomenon… and they’ll get back to you with a reasonable explanation as soon as one meets the rigid criteria for disbursed information. For the Technocracy, it’s a side-effect of a life in the shadows where a key press can delete your social security number along with any other proof you ever existed.

This benefit lasts for as long as you remain inconspicuous. In combat, folks can see you normally, although videos or pictures of that fight remain blurred. A Cloaked character who runs around shouting and being obvious will be obvious, although witnesses will probably disagree about his exact description after the event has passed. The Arcane/ Cloaking effect does not conceal really memorable features. A purple-haired dude with facial tattoos is going to get noticed, although folks may disagree about the shade of purple or the patterns of his tattoos.

See the House Rules tab above for the exact mechanics.

X You’re as obvious as anybody else.
• You blend into the crowds.
•• Your presence slides out of memory.
••• You’re that person no one easily recalls.
•••• Records, pictures, even memories of you are few and hard to find.
••••• You’re like a ghost in this world, known only to the folks you want to trust.

House Rules, Special Costs, and Restrictions

  • Avatars are discussed in great detail here. Everything written in the Mage Guide holds true, except for where it might be tweaked in the following bulletpoints below.
  • We are taking a slightly different approach with Avatar / Genius here to instead reflect how powerfully it affects your life, rather than determining your eternal potential with it. This means that someone with a high Avatar rating is more attuned with their Avatar’s demands – and those with a low Avatar have established more spiritual, social and mental autonomy.
  • CHARGEN: Every character receives the first dot of Avatar or Genius for free. Subsequent dots cost twice as much Background points, freebies or Experience.
  • CHARGEN: All Avatars with a rating of 3 or higher must have their own Nature assigned to it, in addition to their Essence. This should be +noted.
    • If the Mage attempts to take an action at any time, that the Storyteller decides is contrary to their Avatar’s Nature, then they may impose a dice penalty to that action equal to your Avatar rating.
    • Note that even if your Avatar and you share a Nature, it does not remotely mean that you share similar objectives or opinions about something. Depending on your Nature, it could be extremely inconvenient.

Your character’s Avatar plays a large, but subconscious, role in her development. Psychologically, the mage is driven by her Nature and Demeanor, and by the motives and desires fostered in the course of living, as with any human. Once Awakened, though, the Avatar pushes its own direction through dream-messages, subconscious urges and emotional patterns (see Portraying Your Avatar).

How powerful is it? How does it appear to him, and what does he believe it is? A low-level Avatar Background of 1 or 2 reflects a compelling nudge or intuition. Her higher self, too, is weak – more of an ember than a bonfire. Higher-level ones, however, take stronger and more obvious forms – topping out at Avatar 5 – with spirits so real they seem like separate entities.

Especially if you’ve got a high Avatar Background, it’s important to decide the form and inclinations of that Enlightened Self and to decide how the character wraps his head around its existence. Depending on his concept, affiliations, and beliefs, your mage’s Avatar could be anything from a nagging hunch to a full-blown imaginary friend leading him toward challenge and disaster.

Even more vital to your mage’s core identity is his Avatar’s Essence: the inner drive that shapes his approach to life and magick. This mystic inner self provides you with a rough script for your mage’s overall personality. A Dynamic mage, for instance, would pursue her goals with intense passion, whereas a Pattern-oriented one would strive for stability and permanence.

Every Mage character should have at least one dot in the Avatar Background. Strong Avatars (that is, ones with more dots in that Trait) will express a more potent sense of Essence through the mage. A character with only one dot in his Avatar will feel occasional stirrings of his Dynamic Essence, for example, and one with Avatar 5 would be so Dynamic that he’d rarely sit still for more than a few minutes at a time.

A mage’s ability to absorb or employ Quintessence is based on the Avatar Trait. Although your magick-casting rolls are based on Arete, not the Avatar, your character won’t be able to use Quintessence to aid her spells, without this Background.

House Rule Reminder: Every character receives the first dot of Avatar or Genius for free. Subsequent dots cost twice as much Background points, freebies or Experience.

X An ephemeral Avatar hardly capable of magick.
• A notable presence that lets you absorb or expend one point of Quintessence.
•• A dynamic presence that lets you absorb or expend two points of Quintessence.
••• A discernable entity that lets you absorb or expend three points of Quintessence.
•••• A potent spirit that lets you absorb or expend four points of Quintessence.
••••• A powerful force of Enlightenment that lets you absorb or expend five points of Quintessence.
••••••+ An awesome being – perhaps a reincarnated Oracle or destined to become one.

House Rules, Special Costs, and Restrictions

  • This Background costs double for non-Technocratic characters.
  • This Background costs double for explicitly combat oriented Backup unless the character belongs to the NWO, is a Construct Administrator or else belongs to another approved organization.
    • It may from time to time be used to represent the LAPD for example, although whether a PC would be approved with a high enough rank within the LAPD to summon two dozen cops is a different matter.
  • Getting your Backup repeatedly massacred or calling upon them excessively for minor missions or immaterial reasons will gradually erode the amount of dots that you’re able to access without any experience refund.

You can call on the cavalry and expect help when needed… in a limited capacity, anyhow. Thanks to your membership in some organization, you’re able to request Backup and have a small team of useful folks swoop in and take care of business. Unlike Allies, these people are largely faceless, have limited skills, and are more or less expendable (to the organization at large, mind you – not necessarily under your own discretion). Essentially, they come in to handle simple tasks, then disperse back to the organization to which you all belong.

  • Backup characters come from a large pool of skilled but unAwakened personnel. Their relationship to the player characters is pretty much a matter of convenience, with no special loyalty attached. Though they might risk their lives on the mage’s behalf, the help’s not personal. These folks are just doing their job.
  • Typically, in order to get this Background, a character must be part of a larger organization – a gang, the police, an armed services division, the Technocracy, and so forth. In which case, Backup tends to arrive as a pack of gun-wielding grunts who rush in to cover a mage’s escape. Any major tasks (or sacrifices) are the mage’s responsibility – the backup’s not there to handle much heavy lifting.

    In other situations, the Background can represent other types of support personnel: receptionists, students, roadies, drivers, medics, even prostitutes. A King or Queen of the Jungle might be able to holler for assistance and attract an appropriate group of animals, assuming that character has a story-based reason for such loyalty.
  • The type of aid will depend on the organization, the situation, and the mage’s role within that group. An Ecstatic rock star could call in hookers and roadies, whereas a Black Suit might bring in cops, reporters, or a cleanup crew. And though it’s easy to dismiss the importance of students, receptionists, or bloggers, it’s also worth remembering that society at large depends more upon information than upon violence. One eloquent reporter can do more, in the grand scheme of things, than a dozen dudes with guns.
  • Typical Backup personnel have Traits in the 1-2 range, with one or two notable Skills. Animals are small (birds, rats, bats, domestic dogs or cats, etc.), and spirits are minor single-purpose entities (fetch spirits, breeze elementals, and so forth).
  • More elite Backup agents – mercenaries, ninja, cyborgs, minor spirits, or large predatory animals, for example – cost twice as much as typical agents but have Traits in the 3-4 range, unusual abilities, or serious combat potential. Essentially, these elite “temp” agents become Allies for the course of a single mission and then disappear back to wherever it is they came from.

X You’re on your own, kid!
• Two typical agents.
•• Four basic agents or two skilled “temps.”
••• Six agents.
•••• Eight agents or four “temps.”
••••• 10 agents.
••••• • 12 agents or six “temps.”
••••• •• 14 agents.
••••• ••• 16 agents or eight “temps.”
••••• •••• 18 agents.
••••• ••••• 20 agents, or 10 “temps.

Backup Examples

  • All: Students, drivers, receptionists, couriers, lab techs, political activists, merchants, manual laborers, EMTs, cult members, thugs.
  • Agents of Authority: Cops and detectives, military personnel, reporters, EMTs, cleanup crews.
  • Celebrities: Fans, roadies, personal assistants, photographers, road-crew, journalists, makeup artists.
  • Clergy: Acolytes, lesser and lay clergy, healers, devotees of your religion.
  • Cyborgs: Mechanics, technicians, soldiers, cybernetic “temps”.
  • Feral folk: Animals, healers, medicine people, tribal elders, natives of the appropriate region.
  • Gangsters and Vigilantes: Gang members, hookers, allied cops, street people, junkies, journalists, petty crooks.
  • Hackers: Technicians, bloggers, hacker “temps,” political activists, anarchists, transhumanists, IT specialists.
  • Martial artists: Healers, philosophers, martial arts students, “temp” fighters, devotees of your spiritual path.
  • Ritual magicians: Occultists, cultists, acolytes, academics, fearful assistants, aspiring apprentices, minor imps, or spirit “temps.”
  • Scholars: Research assistants, librarians, bloggers, academics, former students, grad students.
  • Scientists: Techs, research aides, robots, misshapen or enhanced assistant “temps.”
  • Shamans: Devotees, minor spirits, animals, activists, or armed defenders of your culture.
  • Spies and Assassins: Informants, gang members, sleeper agents, cleanup crews.
  • Subculturists: Artists, neotribalists, musicians, healers, bloggers, psychoactive specialists, badasses from your subculture.
  • Tycoons: Corporate subordinates, flunkies, toadies, office personnel, journalists, security guards.
  • Witches: Animals, devotees, New Agers, Pagan activists, healers, minor spirits.

House Rules

This entire Background was House Ruled to be more relevant, given its original function is already more than accounted for by the Parlor Trick Merit.

Someone out there has left its mark on you. That mark is usually beneficial, but it comes with uncanny side effects. Maybe you always find a few extra bucks when you need them but get stuck with the check when you grab some drinks with the girls. Perhaps you’re lucky in lust but can’t find a lasting partnership. This Background gives you a supernatural perk at the cost of a related quirk.

In game terms, Blessing provides you a significant story-based benefit. This benefit seems to come from an element in your character history, one that’s tied into the beliefs that focus your magick. The higher the rating, the more useful that talent becomes.

  • The exact nature of the benefit is up for discussion and collaboration. Something which provided a -1 difficulty to a single type of non-combat or non-magickal relevant roll would represent a 1 dot Blessing, as a baseline.
  • Most Blessings will do more than that, and so where they end up from 2-5 will be largely a function of how useful Sundance feels it will be. You can seek inspiration in Rotes, Merits, Wonders or whatever you like.
  • It will also have some minor inconvenience, which is more of a roleplaying function than a hardcoded mechanical stricture. The greatest significance is that it will make your Resonance more easily detectable to those capable of sensing such things.
  • This Background usually must be paired with and cannot be higher than one of Destiny, Legend, Past Life or Totem. Certain Merits or Flaws might qualify as well, like Paranormal Imperative or Prohibition, etc.
  • Blessings which provide combat or magickal utility, or are otherwise perceived to be excessively convenient for the advantages they confer will cost double.
  • Technocrats pay double as a base unless they also possess Inner Knight (5 pt Merit).

In the hazardous world of the Awakened, it’s always a good idea to have some like-minded associates and a stronghold with some fair security. Since the Golden Age of Wizardry, such places have been called Covenants: centers where a group of allied mages stake out territory, consolidate resources, and agreed to assist and defend one another when need be. In later years, the Order of Reason adopted that idea and built the Technocratic Union around that principle. By the 20th century, Tradition mages call those places Chantries, the Union calls them Constructs, and other mages call them by whatever sounds like a culturally appropriate name (temple, lodge, mosque, etc.).

A Chantry or Construct can take whatever form seems appropriate. One might be a rural woodland grove; another could be an abandoned movie theater; a third may be a secluded mad laboratory; and a fourth sets up shop in an office building, Viking longhouse, law firm, or machine shop. Low-level Chantries and Constructs have a few mundane resources – some magickal wards, a security system, perhaps a handful of unAwakened aides, communication services, and so forth. Paranormal trapping are de rigueur: scrying pools, portals to Horizon Realms, spirit guardians, that sort of thing. The greatest Tradition strongholds and Technocratic power centers have extensive mundane and magickal/ hypertech resource; requiring huge investments of time, power, labor, and materials to defend and maintain.

In its most basic game terms, a Chantry or Construct is a base of operations. A character with this Background belongs to such a base and has certain benefits from, and responsibilities to, the group that maintains that base. Most Technocratic agents belong to a Construct by default – that’s just how the Union operates. Mystic mages have a more of a choice about such things, but many of them belong to Chantries as a matter of practicality. There is strength in numbers, after all.

  • In a typical, tabletop game of Mage, Mage’s character-creation rules assume that beginning characters are new to the Awakened life. As such, a character with this Background begins as a low-ranking member of an established stronghold. She gets the benefit of a belonging to a group of older and more experienced peers (who are probably Storyteller-run characters), but starts off at the bottom of the pecking order too. The elders have her doing errands and chores around the Chantry, and she lacks political clout within the group. Growing beyond that stage is one of the keys to a young mage’s journey.

It’s not possible for the Background to work out quite that way on Liberation MUSH, where by necessity the existing Chantries have been built into the current setting and are largely staffed by PCs. As such, the Background is interpreted differently here. Instead, one’s investment in this Background is taken to show how dedicated the character is to their Chantry/Construct and how much of their life and concerns revolve around it.

There are currently two main Chantries and one main Construct in Los Angeles that PCs can app into. They are the mystically oriented Ascension Lodge located in the Hollywood Hills, the technomancer-oriented Glendale Tool Company and the Technocratic Construct known as Foundation Construct Alpha Two in Downtown LA’s Financial District.

IC PSA: Ascension Lodge and the Glendale Tool Company
The Ascension Lodge is the default landing spot in Los Angeles for the Traditions as a whole. Although it has been historically dominated by the Hermetics (as are many Chantries), it is definitely a capital-C Chantry that has been around for a century+. When NPC Mages think about the ‘Los Angeles Chantry’ they’re thinking about the Ascension Lodge.

The Glendale Tool Company, of course, isn’t in Los Angeles. It’s in Glendale. It came about from a split in the original Ascension Lodge, when Marjorie Prince (and her husband) had such a severe falling out with Harold Montague, that Harold went off to do his own thing, and declared his own chantry.

It’s not uncommon for wildly different Cabals with wildly different Paradigms and Practices, to all belong to the same Chantry. The average regional Chantry has around three dozen Mages split among several Cabals (with quite a few being solo as well), who all come together around the Chantry for Tradition business. It’s also where the newly Awakened are often brought, and where they encounter mentors belonging to their future Traditions.

There’s lots of internal politics within each major Chantry. And some Cabals are more or less associated with it (more or less so depending on the timeline).

What sometimes makes this a little confusing, is that technically, any residence or base of operations for mages, can also be colloquially referred to as a small c-chantry. This lead to a lot of confusion, inherited from Trismegistus’ initial setup, where chantries took on a new meaning. I have resisted tackling this for a long time, although I’ve waited perhaps too long, to make this post.

A couple examples, starting with Virgens and Respect: The only real major Chantry that Los Angeles has ever had, is the Ascension Lodge. Virgens and Respect were technically cabals that took on a greater independent and more autonomous existence, because of their vehement dislike for Marjorie Prince. But no one involved in those chantries (at least NPC-wise) ever believed they were a major capital-C Chantry. They were however very strongly established cabals with lots of history.

Vanguard was only ever a cabal from the start, but Polk inherited Trismegistus’ terminology, and so really had no choice but to keep up the Chantry verbiage. Vanguard however, is defunct now, since the person who started it was revealed as a traitor to the Traditions.

The GTC as mentioned above, is special. Its specialness was motivated by four compounding factors: 1) Harold Montague’s immense pride and ego, 2) The access he secured to a more powerful Node, 3) The paradigmatic difference of most technomancers such as the Sons of Ether or Virtual Adepts vs the other seven Traditions and 4) Being located in Glendale, outside the city of Los Angeles proper.

These factors gave the GTC enough impetus to spin off into its own thing. However, with Harold and Marjorie gone, and with different leadership, priorities and new threats…it’s just as likely that the GTC might one night return to being what it was before: an especially influential and powerful Cabal within the greater Ascension Lodge. Or they might not. That’s one of the narrative arcs of the game. But what is true is that: 1) They no longer have Harold Montague’s ego to contend with, 2) The Node that him and Marjorie fell out over has since been destroyed, 3) Younger Virtual Adepts are drawing closer to the Traditions as a whole, in recent decades, adopting more of a fuzzier, more mystical approach to certain concepts. Indeed, this process has accelerated as humanity (especially in Western culture) has become more integrated with technology as a whole. Young Gen Z Virtual Adepts who grew up with an ipad in their hands are not the mathematicians or pioneer-programmers of the 60s-70s or the hacker outcasts and geeks of the 80s and 90s. They’re just kids, with increasingly less rigorous scientific or logical requirements. Much like you see IRL.

So that’s the GTC.

It remains perfectly possible for others to form Cabals, and for those Cabals to even locate their own base of operations or nodes, and refer to them as lowercase chantries. But the only real uppercase Chantry that the New Horizon Council really identifies with or is aware of, is the Ascension Lodge, with some hand-wobble for the GTC owing to Harold’s force of personality.

Every approved Tradition PC knows where to find the Ascension Lodge, and technically belongs to it, unless stated otherwise. And any non-GTC Mage also belongs to it. I will be fixing the roster for it soon.

Again: This doesn’t stop anyone from forming their own Cabals and doing their own thing and having their own bases. But it’s like Elysiums and Havens in vampire. Every vampire has their own Haven, but there’s only one Elysium.

X No place to call home if a Tradition Mage. If a Technocrat, then you’re on probation.
• You enjoy theoretical membership in the local Chantry/Construct. You may take refuge there when in danger and may be allocated a personal domicile or quarters (or cell if you’re not careful.) You benefit from the equivalent of 1 dot of Arcane or Cloaking when on the Chantry’s grounds.
•• You are a more than merely nominal member of the local Chantry/Construct and as such have access to its resources. You receive 1 point of Tass each chapter (Resonance depending on the Chantry/Construct in question). In addition, you can hold office and vote on matters that concern you.
••• You are a solid member of the local Chantry/Construct. You may treat the entire grounds as the equivalent of a Level One Sanctum or Laboratory*, provided it roughly aligns with your paradigm (mystical to mystical, technomancer to technomancer, etc).
•••• You are a truly committed member of the local Chantry/Construct and are likely one of its officers. You receive 2 points of Tass each chapter through your association with it.
••••• You are either one of the principal leaders or foremost defenders of the local Chantry/Construct or else aspire to become such. You receive 3 points of Tass each chapter through your association with it and may treat the grounds as the equivalent of a Level Two Sanctum or Laboratory.

* Note, although the Chantry functions as the mechanical equivalent of a low level Sanctum or Laboratory (and you may consult that Background entry for more details), it is not considered the same thing ICly – merely a similar mechanical result, rules-wise. It represents phenomena like access to ritual materials or prepared ritual spaces, and your priority in accessing them, etc.

House Rules, Special Costs and Restrictions

  • This Background is more difficult for some to justify than others. If your character does not have the pre-existing social Attributes or Abilities to make such a devoted following plausible, then it won’t be approved.
  • Even if you have Cult 5, it’s not a trivial matter to get 30+ people to drop everything they’re doing and all show up to assist you. It generally requires some kind of set schedule or ritual, or some manner of event which gives them another reason to attend besides giving you extra dice.
  • Any manner of Cult which is designed in such a way as to be excessively convenient (We all Skype together on our smartphones, my Instagram followers!) will cost double.

Any character with charisma can have friends; this Cult, however, goes beyond mere friendship. These devotees trust and revere you so deeply that, when gathered and directed, they can lend their beliefs to your rituals (if a Mage).

The nature of your cult isn’t important. You might be a religious figure with a congregation, an artist with especially devoted fans, a professor whose students literally revere him, or any other similar arrangement. What matters is the belief: your cult accepts you as someone who works wonders, and they want to be part of that magic… and so they are.

As detailed under Allies, Assistants, and Cults and Acting in Concert (M20 Core, Chapter Ten, p. 532 and pp. 542-543), a group of assistants who share a common belief add to the caster’s dice pool in a ritual cast with their help. Such rituals can involve either mystic Arts or technomagick, so long as everyone participates. In most cases, all characters involved must occupy the same physical space during the ritual; a potential exception could be made for a networked group linked by Mind magick or conference technology (a LAN party, video conference, and so forth). Again, though, the helpers must hold absolute conviction and be free – at least for the moment – from outside distractions.

Cult members are typical Sleepers: not especially skillful or accomplished beyond their utter faith in you. Powerful helpers are Allies, Backup, Retainers, or other major characters. These people, though, have some vital reason to believe in what you do. On your end, then, you must fulfill their trust. If you want their trust, then at least appear to be the person they expect you to be. If their faith wavers, then you lose this Background’s benefits.

It’s possible to have a larger cult, of course – a popular evangelist might have hundreds of devotees. After a certain point, though, they can help you only so much. As such, the five-dot rank in this Background offers the maximum benefit for a cult.

X No cult.
• Tiny cult: 3-7 people. Add one die to the dice pool of a ritual cast with that group’s assistance.
•• Small cult: 8-12 people. Add two dice to rituals cast when that group is gathered.
••• Moderate cult: 13-17 people. Add three dice to rituals cast in the presence of the whole group.
•••• Large cult: 18-22 people. Add four dice to rituals cast with that group behind them.
••••• Huge cult, between 23-30 people. Add five dice to rituals cast when the entire cult has gathered.

A mage’s mind is her castle. There, she can get away from it all to a world of her own making. Classical and Renaissance treatises refer to memory palaces, wherein a person builds a structure in her mind as an aid to meditation, study, reflection, and, of course, memory. Shaped from the builder’s consciousness, these constructs have no physical form, yet they offer a type of refuge.

With this Background, you have such a place. Cosmologically, a Demesne exists in the Maya as a semi-permanent Dream Realm inspired by your dreaming mind.

  • This Realm might be something you created intentionally with the Talent: Lucid Dreaming, or it might exist in a place conjured by your subconscious imagination. Either way, it follows cues from your consciousness and features elements of personal significance for you. Your mind might build a temple that no one can defile, a field of flowers in honor of your beloved, a gallery of pictures that immortalize people or places you wish to remember… if you can dream it, you can create it… though you might not actually control your creation once the Demesne exists.
  • This Demesne might not be a pleasant place. Nightmares, Quiets, suicidal thoughts, or other dark neuroses can spawn a Demesne too. Maybe you want to craft a nightmare realm, either a testing-ground or a purgatory for a guilty conscience Pleasant or otherwise, the Demesne could be small, impressive, or vast. You yourself might not know just how expansive it can be.
  • In game terms, the Background rating reflects the degree of control you have over this place once it’s established. At low ratings, you can visit the Realm but not command it, while at higher levels you determine almost every detail of your Realm.

Some examples of how a Demesne might mechanically benefit you, depending on your rating in it:

  • When dreaming or meditating, your character can go visit his Demesne with a successful Perception + Lucid Dreaming roll. Once he’s arrived, the character’s consciousness is free to wander around the Demesne. In the Demesne, your appearance reflects your state of mind. If you’re calm, you’re lucid dreaming, or have managed to project your ideal astral form, you look however you want to look. Under other circumstances, your visiting form might betray whatever stress, fear, or insecurities you’re facing in the physical world.
  • There’s nothing physical about a Demesne. You don’t go there physically, and you cannot take anything physical from that Realm. Instead, a traveler sends his astral form into that Demesne, leaving his body behind; for details, see Astral Travel in Mage 20th Core, Chapters Four and Nine, (p. 87) and (pp. 476-478). That said, you don’t need Mind 3 or better to enter your personal Demesne – the Background Trait takes care of the travel arrangements. A mage who can travel astrally, though, may wander out of the Demesne and reach other Dream or Astral Realms from there much more easily than otherwise.
  • A successful Wits +Lucid Dreaming roll lets you adjust your appearance and can help you change the dreamscape too. Large changes, of course, demand several successes, and your state of mind or circumstances might also affect difficulties.
  • Because the Demesne itself reflects its creator’s mental state, you can also confront internal issues within the Dream Realm’s boundaries. A successful Perception + Lucid Dreaming roll allows you to puzzle out subconscious conflicts and figure out what’s going on beneath the surface.
  • On a related note, you can try to access memories that might be hidden throughout the Demesne. In this case, roll Intelligence + Meditation, with the difficulty and numbers of successes based upon the obscurity of that information. The name of your last girlfriend would be easy to find, but the name of the kid who sat next to you in third grade would be significantly harder to recall.
  • A skillful Mind mage (that is, Mind 3 for a sleeping subject, Mind 4 for one who’s awake) can draw other people’s consciousness into his Demesne too. If that person doesn’t want to enter the Demesne, they have a Willpower-versus-Willpower contest (see Resisted Actions in M20 Core, Chapter Eight, p. 390), with the winner achieving his objective. A person who’s fighting the dream can roll every few turns to leave the Demesne; until the roll succeeds, however, that character is trapped. Again, this is not a physical trap, though being stuck in someone else’s nightmare can be pretty horrifying…
  • If your mage falls into a Quiet, you can roll his Willpower (difficulty 9) in order to go into your Demesne; there, he’s still trapped in the mindscape, but at least it’s familiar territory. A few successful Perception + Demesne rolls could lead him back out again.

X No Dream Realm to speak of.
• Occasional visitor to the Realm. You have a name for it and recognize a few significant features.
•• A regular visitor, you’ve traveled extensively through the Demesne.
••• In your dreams, you know this place quite well.
•••• This is your Realm, and though you don’t command its every feature or resident, they know and recognize you as someone of authority there.
••••• Lord or Lady of the Demesne, you know and command this Realm as if it were your kingdom… because it is.

You’re a Chosen One, destined to play a vital role in the cosmic drama. Prophecies hint at your coming greatness; statistical analysis points toward your significance. Or so they say. What’s most important is that you know you’re fated to be special. When things seem bleak, you can call upon this knowledge to get you through.

Once per life or death situation, you can call upon this sense of destiny to keep you going in a tough spot or overcome a difficult challenge: Roll your Destiny Background as a dice pool against difficulty 7. Each success you roll allows you to instantly regain a point of Willpower. With restored confidence, you can cheat defeat or death, living another day to achieve Fate’s plans for you.

Note that this dice pool and difficulty may not be modified in any way.

House Rules and Restrictions

  • Historically, this Background has been abused (by some more gently than others) as a source of XP economy. It has also largely had its prior requirements ignored or else were found to be too convenient for the pace of play that one finds on a MUSH vs a tabletop setting. It has thus been reworked to better fit the narrative requirements and pacing of a MUSH. See the main entry below for more details.

Knowledge is everything to a mage. Being the conduits to cosmic consciousness that they can be, certain mages are able to access information that they have not personally studied or practiced. After taking a bit of time to meditate (or, in the case of Technocrats and other scientifically-minded willworkers, to Hypercram), such mages can temporarily tap into the wealth of knowledge and experience that’s out there, channeling Ability Traits they don’t normally possess.

This knowledge does not always come to the Mage in the form of a dream (though it does often enough to have become the default name for the Background in question). In story terms, your character simply takes a certain period of time to concentrate on a particular situation. The more elaborate the situation, the longer it takes to meditate upon it. The form of concentration depends on the mage’s focus, and can range from a BDSM session to a hard night at the library. A scholar could hit the books and lose himself in study for an upcoming exam; a Pagan seer might walk through the woods, reaching out to the spirits of that place. Spider Chase might spin fire while Zafira Angelita prays for the guidance of God.

  • CORE MECHANIC: In game terms, if you have met the RP requirements at least once during the current chapter, then once per chapter, your character can roll Dream vs a difficulty of (5 + your current dots in the desired Ability) and receive your successes as bonus dice for the rest of the scene.
  • Caveat #1: It is inappropriate to use this Background for something that would require longer than an hour to make sense of. That means it isn’t relevant for most extended projects or in-depth, off-screen investigations. If it can’t be done in an hour, then this is something you maybe should’ve taken an elective about or boned up on the old fashioned way.
  • Caveat #2: It must be relevant. A Void Engineer using Hypercram to learn Energy Weapons, Hypertech or Microgravity Ops is plausible. A Dreamspeaker doing so is not.
  • RAISING DREAM/HYPERCRAM 5+: You can raise Dream or Hypercram above 5 by paying double cost for each dot (i.e., 10 XP instead of 5 XP per dot). However, for every dot above 5 (in addition to a larger dice pool), you can also make use of it one extra time per chapter. Note, the difficulty of Dream/Hypercram rolls go up by +1 each time you re-use it for the same Ability in the same chapter.

This section is a Work in Progress. For now, refer to Mage 20th Edition Core, page 312 -> 313 for the details.

Animal allies remain an integral part of the classical mage’s mystique. Who hasn’t heard of the witch’s cat, the telepathic steed, the wolf-brother, or the lab-assistant made of spare parts and ingenuity? Tradition calls such entities familiars, and most of the Nine Traditions tend to use that name as well. Other groups, as usual, employ their own names: assistants, brothers, soul-beasts, spirit animals, and so forth.

Although the Technocracy does not officially acknowledge such deviation from protocol in its ranks, certain Technocrats – especially among the Progenitors, the New World Order, and Iteration X – have been known to employ Companions: cybernetically enhanced critters, bioengineered experiments, clones, and so on. Lab animals have their intelligence and capabilities boosted with the wonders of hyperscience, and vat-grown humans with perfect skin and dazzling features stock the offices and bordellos of Syndicate bosses.

These Companions, of course, are nothing like those superstitionist familiars – such comparisons would be tantamount to treason! And yet, it’s funny how much Companions and Familiars have in common. In game terms, of course, they’re pretty much the same thing.

A Familiar/ Companion’s primary role involves companionship. Mages lead strange lives that often remove them from normal human interactions, and just as people crave pets of various species, mages crave the company of entities that understand those strange lives they lead. It might seem weird to staff your lab with hyperintelligent mice (and downright crazy to fill it with hyperintelligent apes!), but when weirdness defines your daily life, those companions seem perfectly appropriate. With very few exceptions, these creatures have at least a human level of intelligence, enigmatic levels of perception and arcane wisdom, and at least one or two physical abilities beyond what you might expect from a normal animal or person.

Familiar Examples

  • Charismatic megafauna: Wolves, bears, alligators, eagles, hawks, apes, big cats, oxen, bison, horses, stags, reindeer, etc. (Shamans, nature witches, martial artists, clergy, wizards, and so forth.)
  • Small but capable animals: Mice, rats, domestic cats and dogs, rabbits and hares, ravens, owls, foxes, pigeons, parrots, monkeys, snakes, etc. (Urban or rural witches, street folks, suburban mystics, mad scientists, academics, saints, and so on.)
  • Attack Beasts: Large dogs, domesticated big cats, raptors, serpents, spiders, etc. (Witches, Black Suits, agents of authority, military personnel, war mages, etc.)
  • Machines: Robots, androids, and other mechanical assistants. (Various types of technomancer.)
  • Servitors: Clones; weird servants; incredibly strong, attractive, or capable “people” who seem unusually obedient and a bit more, yet less, than human. (Executives, celebrities, criminals, mad scientists, urban witches, seers, cult leaders, decadent tempters, Infernalists, etc.)
  • Dead Things: Zombies, animated skeletons, disembodied yet “living” body parts – heads, hands, etc. (Necromancers, wizards, cult leaders, gutter kids, and other dark- side mages.)
  • Constructs: Golems, cyborgs, technologically augmented animals, monsters stitched together from previously dead bodies, etc. (Mad scientists and other technomancers; old-school ritual magicians make them out of clay, stone, and so forth.)
  • Hybrid Beings: Mermaids, centaurs, satyrs, unicorns, and so on. (They’re attracted to high-mythic mystics, wizards, nature witches, mad scientists, Marauders, etc.)
  • Aliens: Greys, Bug-Eyed Monsters, Horrors From Beyond Space and Time. (Void Engineers, Etherites, mad scientists, crazed cultists, lone geek weirdoes, Black Suits, etc.)
  • Imps: Little devils, demonic beasties, scary little critters, etc. (Infernalists, wizards, scary witches, cult leaders, etc.)
  • Spirit Servitors: Elementals, invisible servants, minor ghosts, nature spirits, epiphlings, etc. (Shamans of all types, seers, wizards, witches, etc.)
  • Data Beasts: Incarnated programs on the Digital Web (Internet-based technomancers of all kinds.)

Whatever form your associate takes, the Familiar / Companion has a mind and consciousness of its own, with agendas and desires you might assume but never truly know. There’s always something vaguely alien about them, and not even the greatest Mind-based Arts can completely penetrate the thought process of such entities.

  • Advice: The traditional archetype of the mystic Familiar has access to certain types of information and can lend insights to his associated mage. Normally, this works as a handful of Knowledges – Cosmology, Enigmas, Occult, and possibly some others – from which the Familiar can offer suggestions to his mage. The dice pool for that Trait equals one die for each dot in the Background. Other types of Familiars (such as clones or attack dogs) might provide other services in lieu of relevant insights.
  • Other Abilities: The more points invested in a Familiar / Companion, and thus the more Quintessence needed to sustain them, the more impressive they’re likely to be. The exact statline (and how much it should cost in terms of Background points) will need to be worked out with your Director. NPC Familiars / Companions don’t use the Companion creation rules from the Gods & Monsters book.
  • Empathy: The mage and her Companion share an emotional bond and each can sense what the other is feeling unless great effort is taken to conceal it.

House Rules: The Feast of Nettles

When an impending Paradox backlash threatens a mage, their Familiar can absorb a certain amount of those energies. So long as the Companion is close to his mage when this happens, usually within 10 yards (30 feet) or so, he can partially or entirely consume a pending backlash. The Familiar can hold up to five points of Paradox for each dot in the Background. The Familiar nullifies (or digests…) those points at a rate of one point per week. If Paradox exceeds the Familiar’s capacity – then the whole amount of Paradox explodes in a horrific backlash that affects both the mage and the Familiar equally.

By the way, Familiars don’t enjoy this sort of thing at all, and they may get fed up (so to speak) with a mage who makes them “eat nettles” very often. A Familiar gets quite cranky when he’s stuffed with Paradox, and he may break the bond or otherwise act up if his mage keeps using him like a Paradox battery.

HR Note: This has been tweaked from RAW to make it so that a character’s Familiar must be present when the Paradox is earned, near to their mage, and absorb it then. This is because with so many characters and so many familiars, it has become impossible to track on an ad hoc basis. Some did a good job, yet sadly, some were very inconsistent about it.

  • Quintessence Feeding: In return for those benefits, the Familiar requires a certain amount of Quintessence or Tass per week. Mystic critters devour magickal energies by suckling on the mage, bathing in her aura, or otherwise sharing physical or metaphysical contact. Technological Companions eat Quintessence-rich snacks (that is, Tass), absorb Quintessence through physical contact (affection, mind-melds, sex, and so on), or get powered up by the mage’s hypertech machines. In game terms, it’s all the same thing: the mage offers Quintessence and the Companion feeds on it. No Quintessence, no Familiar; the disgruntled Companion disappears and the mage loses all of the benefits associated with her Companion.
  • If a Familiar dies, the associated mage automatically loses all benefits of that relationship, plus one point of permanent Willpower plus two points of Quintessence for each level in the Background Trait. If that costs more Quintessence than the mage has to offer, then the additional points of Quintessence become points of Paradox instead.

Humanity’s collective imagination focuses on you. Although you might not actually be a reincarnation of King Arthur or Biggie Smalls, you evoke those figures on a primal level. People see you as a legend, and so they expect legendary things from you. As a result, you function as a walking Node, able to recharge your own Quintessence – and possibly the Quintessence of other people too – by living up to your associated legend.

In story terms, pick a legend and then model your character off some familiar elements of that figure. Little Red would wear a crimson hoodie and wander off where she’s not supposed to go; Popeye would talk weird, eat spinach, and get into lots of fights (Editor’s Note: Don’t pick Popeye). Our media age manufactures legends, so your model could be a pop-culture character, though the power of such legends doesn’t run very deep. The more you live up to the legend, the more energy it lends to you.

And again. It doesn’t mean that you’re the reincarnation of that individual (who might not even have existed). But you are in some sense, a recapturing of that original zeitgeist.

This has the following mechanical effects:

  • You can roll your Legend Background at a particularly dramatic moment (the average rate for this to happen is about once per chapter, although the Storyteller might make exceptions for truly stellar roleplay). Each success refreshes one point of Quintessence in your pool up to the maximum determined by your Avatar. The difficulty of that roll depends on how well-known that legend is in your current location and how much the action at hand either emulates that legend or is relevant to it.
  • Once per month, you can also instill items – or a Familiar – with Quintessence – turning them into Tass – if they’ve had something to do with you living up to your legend (using the same roll as above). A Colt .45 used by a modern Jesse James, for instance, would acquire a certain energy through association. Such items have a potent feel to them; even Sleepers sense something special about Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. Characters who can use Quintessence may access that Tass for their own purposes.
  • Other Awakened characters can recharge their Avatars from you as well, if and when they take an active role in your legend (again, using the same roll as above). A lover of James Dean, a drinking companion of Janis Joplin, a mage sharing the Round Table of a reincarnated Lancelot – these characters may enjoy the benefits of this walking Node effect as well, so long as they’ve participated in the legend over the course of that particular story.

In all cases, that Quintessence holds legendary Resonance too. Smoke from a joint passed by Monsieur Zig Zag will evoke the 1960s even in 2015, and faint echoes of Ahiii-ahiii-ahhhh!!! follow the trail of a Man With No Name. Lizzie Borden’s hatchet makes people feel queasy even though the real Lizzie Borden killed no one with it. That force of belief clings to the essence of a Legend Trait. Folks touched by a legend know they’ve been part of something extraordinary.

This Background works well with these Backgrounds: Destiny and Past Lives, and with certain Merits and Flaws as well, and ought to be combined with them to justify a high rating.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Obviously, you need a compelling reason to claim the Legend Background. Simply looking like Jim Morrison is not enough – you must be Jim Morrison in every way that matters. Plenty of people claimed to be “the new Beatles” or “the next JFK,” but the connection has to run deeper than that. This Background draws upon sublime power from the realm of archetypes. Unless that power runs true and manifests in clear and constant form, then you’re just another pretender, not the real McCoy (i.e., ‘I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy’) .

In other words, this is one of those Backgrounds where writing quality and historical research matter a great deal, in order to provide an immersive experience for those around you.

House Rules, Special Costs and Restrictions

  • Node costs double compared to other Backgrounds, (i.e., 2 freebies instead of 1, 10 XP instead of 5, etc).
  • You cannot currently buy the Node Background in chargen. It can only be found on the grid as part of a plot. However, it is perfectly possible with a good enough writeup and a vivid enough idea for a Node, to get a 1-dot Node approved.
  • A cabal of Mages can jointly purchase or caretake a Node. However, note that for every additional Mage who is to be granted access to a Node, they must pay at least half the cost of the current Node. So if a Mage wanted to share his 1 dot Node with his allies (which cost him 10 XP), each of those allies would have to pay at least 5 XP.
  • Allied Mages can tap the same amount of Quintessence/Tass as the original owner, -1/-1, to a minimum of 1/1.
  • It is being done this way since we currently cannot easily track the exact Quintessence output for each character for each node, so an element of handwaving is involved. It’s also the case that the book itself notes that Quintessence output is not an exact science and does tend to fluctuate. In this case it is assumed that the more people who buy into a Node represents more people who can take care of it, and make it more efficient.

In a world where magick seems scarce, you’ve got access to a miracle: a Node where you can meditate to restore your inner Quintessence or gather solid-energy Tass in various forms. You may have to fight to keep this place to yourself, though – werewolves, spirits, and rival mages are always looking to add such places to their collections. The Node might not be obvious as a magical site; most of them are not. To folks who understand such things, though, Nodes stand out as beacons of energy desired by mystics and Technocrats alike.

In the grand tradition of religions and empires everywhere, Nodes tend to get converted to suit the purposes of the groups that claim them. The Technocracy sends in teams to sanitize mystic Nodes and then builds strongholds, labs, or power stations on top of the previous installation. Mystic mages consecrate such territories in their own ways, building temples over glens, churches over wells, and shopping malls or computer labs over the holy ground once honored by a rival group. In short, Nodes present one of the nastier fronts of the Ascension War. Even allied mages, like Celestial Choristers and Verbena, are not above repurposing one another’s sacred spaces… all for the greater good, of course!

  • As M20 Core, Chapter Three mentions, Nodes have Resonance that comes from the type of energy that formed them. The Tass from a given site carries that Resonance with it too, and the form that Tass takes will follow the nature of the Node. A Node forged by a battle might radiate fury and sadness, incarnated as blood, bones, and ash; a fountain of hope feels refreshing and clean, with pure water Tass; but a Frankenstein-esque laboratory feels Gothic and foreboding, with lightning bolt Quintessence arcing between generators and captured in batteries, as Tass, for later use.
  • The Gauntlet tends to thin out around mystic Nodes, but it thickens in Technocratic ones unless you’re using Dimensional Science procedures instead of spirit magick.
  • As a Background Trait, this Node represents a location that’s held by your character and perhaps a few close allies.
  • Your Node produces a certain amount of ambient, untapped Quintessence that your Avatar can absorb while you meditate in that spot for a while, plus a bit of Tass that can be collected in solid form and used later elsewhere.
  • The exact amounts of free Quintessence and Tass have fluctuated throughout history. In the modern post-Industrial period, the average is two points per week, per dot in the Trait – half of that in free Quintessence, the other half in Tass. Regardless of its form, that supply of Quintessence is finite. If you absorb it all into your Avatar or collect it all as Tass, that Node needs to replenish its energy before it can be used again.
  • Lupines think of especially powerful Nodes (5-6+) as caerns: sacred spaces blessed by their primal moon-goddess. Driven by bizarre religious fervor in service of the alien spirits they serve, they tend to claim such rare Nodes for themselves when they can.

X No place of power.
• A tiny site of minor significance.
•• A small trickle of metaphysical energy.
••• A steady flow of Quintessence.
•••• A pulse of energy, plus generous quantities of materialized Tass.
••••• A powerful wellspring of energetic abundance. (A weak Level One caern.)
••••• • A focused Node, with both Tass and ambient energy refined by Prime Arts or sciences. (Level One caern.)
••••• •• A considerable force of metaphysical power. (Level Two caern.)
••••• ••• A rare and wondrous place, brimming with incarnate Prime Force. (Level Three caern.)
••••• •••• One of the grandest sacred spots, or most potent refineries, in the material world. (Level Four caern.)
••••• ••••• One of the rarest and most precious sites on Earth… and a certain battleground for the forces that would tap its power. (Level Five caern.)

Reincarnation remains a subject of debate, even among mages. Akashics and Chakravanti base their entire approach to reality upon that idea, yet their Chorus allies (to say nothing of those atheistic Technocrats) deny the concept of recycled souls… or sometimes the very idea of a soul! Still, there appears to be something there… a familiar essence that certain people can call upon in times of need.

With this Background, you occasionally experience a blinding flash of insight in order to get help in a current situation. Maybe the glare of an imposing adversary reminds you of that time you faced down Stalin’s chief operative, or that weird book reminds you of the alchemical scroll you studied in Byzantium. If the Past Lives Background kicks in, your memories help you with the present dilemma.

Game-wise, this Background’s dice pool may be used to turn catastrophe into a tolerable setback, or defeat into success. It proceeds as follows:

  1. Once per scene, you either fail or botch a roll.
  2. You come up with a convincing bit of roleplay, internal monologue or plausible explanation for what past event, in what past life might have happened that was similar enough to what you’re experiencing now to provide a flash of relevant insight.
  3. Every dot in Past Lives gives you one die to roll against difficulty 8; success will turn a botch into a failure or a failure into a narrow success. If used in a contested roll, then each success will add one success to the contested roll.
  4. It may not be used for attacking, damage or soak rolls. But may be used to avoid harm.

Botching a Past Lives roll lands you in the middle of some past-life trauma; for a crucial moment, the memories overwhelm your character, blowing any chance of success in the here-and-now.

One of the Technocracy’s main advantages over the Traditions is its access to a greater support network. It’s mostly addressed as per page 302 -> 303 in the M20 Core Book. However, to reiterate the highlights:

The basic gist of the Requisitions Background is rolling your rating in it vs difficulty 7 prior to a mission. This difficulty might be higher or lower depending on what you’re trying to requisition.

  • The difficulty can be modified both by the urgency of the mission, the reasonableness of the request, the support of your Administrator and possible Merit (like Master of Red Tape), superlative Bureaucracy or Politics ratings, or the consequences of your last mission.
  • Contrary to popular belief, Requisitions can secure access to more than just Equipment or Devices. It can provide other temporary windfalls such as Resources (if the mission requires a significant cash expenditure), Contacts, Spies, Retainers (a prole technician or specialist of some kind), or potentially Backup.
  • It must be an officially assigned mission. Not a side thing. If assets are misused, or if the requests made seem disproportionate with the task at hand (i.e., if there isn’t allowances made for narrative plausibility), then the difficulty of Requisitioning will increase.
  • It does not provide anything which would give permanent benefit. You can Requisition a magazine of silver ammunition and then return it after the mission, but you can’t Requisition two pounds of raw silver to shape into bullets at your leisure.
  • Most mundane Equipment is easy to justify, if the mission contains a reasonable expectation of violence. This might include kevlar vests, special ammunition, assault rifles, or in some rare cases, even an armored vehicle.
  • Devices are held to greater scrutiny. They must be relevant to your specific Convention and your role within it, unless you’re Syndicate, who can requisition from any Convention. You can potentially requisition outside your Convention with a higher difficulty, or with Politics/Bureaucracy rolls, etc.
  • Remember: Requisitions are meant to secure you a timely, tactical advantage by acquiring what you need in the specific context of a specific mission. Requisitions is not intended to be the end-all/be-all of your Background XP economy, by providing everything you need, whenever you need it.

You have a place where you can get away from it all – said “all” being the consensual reality that hinders your Arts and Enlightened Sciences. Oh, this place still exists on the Earthly plane, and it’s subject to the Paradox Effect. Still, your Lab or Sanctum is a place of power and privacy, set to fulfill your needs and allow you to hone your skills in relative safety.

A Sanctum can range from a small herb-garden with wards set against intruders and trees planted to screen the place off from casual viewing to small laboratories filled with gleaming scientific gear. A Progenitor lab might gleam under sterile lights, polished surfaces of steel and glass ready to advance the call of Science. A ritual clearing might nestle in amongst thick forests, old runes cut into trees and stones artfully arranged to emphasize the mystic nature of the place.

In game terms, this Trait provides several benefits:

  • A relatively private space to conduct experiments, meditate, practice your arts, and so on. Again, this privacy is relative; Technocratic operatives rarely have such places to themselves. Unless a group or individual is extremely wealthy and connected, a Technocratic Laboratory is actually owned and managed by the Union, not by the operatives themselves.
  • A stock of materials you can use – herbs, cauldrons, diagrams, elaborate glyphs carved into the floors, martial arts practice weapons, chemistry arrays, telescopes, microscopes, whatever. This stock depends upon the Background rating and allows you constant access to whatever it is (within reason) that you need.
  • A Sanctum’s specially prepared ritual space (or a Lab’s experimental space) reduces the difficulty of rituals or experiments performed in that area. That reduction depends on the Background trait’s rating, as shown below.
  • A cloaking effect safeguards the place’s location. Essentially, the Sanctum/ Laboratory has an Arcane/ Cloaking rating based on the place’s Background rating. You could consider this effect a result of protection wards, concealment fields, an aura of ordinariness… that sort of thing. As long as they stay within the protected area, characters enjoy the protection of this Arcane effect too.
  • All Effects cast within the Sanctum are considered coincidental magick, so long as those Effects follow the definition of reality within that sanctuary. Cloning would be coincidental within an Iteration X or Progenitor lab; spirit-summoning would be coincidental on a shaman’s sacred ground; a witch could conjure imps or heal gaping wounds within his Sanctum; but the Black Suit busting down the door would find himself at a distinct disadvantage there because…
  • The Effects of rival mages are considered vulgar in your space. That Man in Black’s procedures go against the prevailing reality within that witch’s sanctuary, whereas the witch’s spells run counter to the established reality of a NWO Construct. Rivals who use the same style of magick would be considered equally at home in a Sanctum – two Verbenae, for example, who hate each other’s guts but who employ the same paradigms and tools would both be considered coincidental within the same sanctum; an Etherite, however, would find that her weird science is vulgar within that witch’s sacred ground, even if she was allied with one of the rival Verbenae.
  • Mystic Sanctums have an additional benefit over technological Laboratories: the Gauntlet rating is one level lower in a place that’s been dedicated to magick than it is in a similar place than has not been so dedicated. The Gauntlet in a technomagickal Laboratory, on the other hand – like those used by the Society of Ether or Virtual Adepts – is one level higher than it would be otherwise. And a Technocracy Laboratory has a Gauntlet rating of 9 except with regards to Dimensional Science procedures, whose Effects are considered coincidental in an appropriate Technocratic Lab.

Because of these many benefits, a Sanctum costs TWO Background dots for each dot in the Sanctum. Like the Enhancements Background, it offers an unusual amount of value per dot.

Regardless of its nature, this space must be specially prepared by the group or mage who uses it, with constant maintenance (no less than once per month) to keep the space attuned to the people who use it. A personal Sanctum can be no larger than 500 square feet, and most of them are much smaller than that… typically a room or two. Because this is personal space, it’s often wise to limit the people coming and going throughout your Sanctum. Too much traffic can render a Sanctuary mundane, as far as reality’s Consensus is concerned.

X No special space.
• A tiny stock of goods; no reduction of ritual difficulties, though your magick is coincidental here. One dot in Arcane.
•• Small stock of goods; ritual difficulties reduced by 1. Two dots in Arcane.
••• Decent stock of goods; ritual difficulties reduced by 1. Three dots in Arcane.
•••• Fine stock of materials; ritual difficulties reduced by 2. Four dots in Arcane.
••••• Excellent stock of materials; ritual difficulties reduced by 2. Five dots in Arcane.

You have something up your sleeve.

If you’re a Technocratic agent, then you might be a prized guinea pig for the Technocratic Q Division, you get access to experimental technology. When a new Gadget reaches the prototype stage, you get a briefing from your friends(…?) at Q, then get sent out to see what the thing will do in the field.

As a distinguished guardian within the Traditions, you are temporarily entrusted with some Charm…each a mystical conduit between the ethereal and the elemental, imbued with the wisdom of the ages…Or let’s be honest, something a dead Master left laying around and they’re not entirely sure what it does anymore, so they pawned it off on some Apprentice rube to find out.

Once per chapter, you can pull a Gadget (if a Technocrat/Technomancer) or a Charm out of your ass (or your sleeve, as it were). Roll your rating in this Background against a difficulty of 8. If it’s 1 or 2 successes, the Storyteller will come up with something for you that should be mostly useful. If it’s 3+, you can decide its exact nature. If it fails it doesn’t work at all. If it botches? Well…It’ll work alright. Good luck.

This Background is the spiritual equivalent of Contacts. You maintain good relationships with small spirits in the local region, who gladly feed you information about goings-on in the local Penumbra. Sometimes they notice things that physical observers on Earth just wouldn’t catch. This Background gives Dreamspeakers access to information they would normally have no real way of knowing. And sadly for their relations with other Traditions – no real way of confidently verifying either.

Prerequisites: Spirit Network is currently restricted to Dreamspeakers with at least Spirit 3. A lot of this has to do with culture and metaphysical philosophy, not just Paradigm and Practice (Shamanism). It’s extremely difficult to get on these kind of casual terms with the average spirit. Incidentally, just like the Totem Background, Spirit Network also costs twice as much. (So 2 Background points or 2 Freebies in chargen, or 10 XP per dot in play.)

System: To acquire information about a given event, the Mage must go to the place where the event occurred and then roll their Spirit Network Rating against a difficulty of the local Gauntlet. One success will give a vague description while three or more successes will give an entire accounting.

It is treated as a routine chapter action, just like all other Influence uses (Contacts, Resources, Allies, etc).

This isn’t so much a Background you buy as one that is set on you, depending on the nature of your Backstory or feature role you apped into. In most cases, what you’re looking for is the Chantry / Construct Background. Generally speaking, PCs and NPCs will react to you based on your words and deeds, and if there are special backstory reasons for them to treat you differently, it’ll be taken into account by the Storyteller. All in all, Status on Liberation is more of a roleplaying phenomena and not a point-spending or XP saving one.

This section is a Work in Progress. For now, refer to Mage 20th Edition Core, page 326 -> 328 for the details.

This section is a Work in Progress.