themarcheschronicle

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Tonight's In-Character Lesson

My blacksmith PC, Hephaestus, has a habit of making things to give out to people. Like a silver wand he made for his mentor, Field, as thanks for a favor:

(Image description has transcript of Discord convo seen here.)

Of course, doing that as a mage is not wholly meaningless, is it?

So when a member of Field's cadre had reason to visit Heph's personal Safe Space to pick up "Satan's d20", Field didn't ask for the for the address and just sent over Griffin, a Mastigos with a bit of a fascination with portals (see Cleodora from Nameless and Accursed), to go meet Heph.

(Side note: Chicagoans will understand how torn I was in including Griffin in this cadre; the other members are Adler, Shedd and DuSable.)

Heph caught on and asked Griffin how he found the warehouse, who has his sympathetic material, and Griffin got to point out that just giving people things is one sure way to spread sympathy to everyone.

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Is there any reason I can't decide a crow is a Sleepwalker?

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I'm lucky, most of my players have nWoD experience, some have mage experience and, well. One of them made a Really Neat Sheet--make a copy and see how much it automates. And even my complete WoD neonate jumped in with a spell in the very first scene.

But there will be some training wheels--for me as well as them. I realized in retrospect that Avolio's Precognition spell should have had some Withstand to deal with from Temporal Sympathy, f'rex.

I love Yantras so much. Make your own flavour. Symbolism crystallised. Bonuses for casting under a new moon and sticking candles everywhere. Dedicated Tools as self expression. Very normal about yantras.

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My game's Libertine player is eyeing Broad Dedication to dedicate his techne. I've told him I don't want to start chewing on Signs of Sorcery (or the Tomes of the Watchtower or Pentacle) until the other players feel confident with casting basic spells. But you're right, it is incredibly neat.

Though...taking high noon as a dedicated tool, if you don't have the other SoS merit that allows for multiple dedicated tools, means you're limited on paradox mitigation at other times...improvised casting can't always be planned for midday, by its very nature.

I love Yantras so much. Make your own flavour. Symbolism crystallised. Bonuses for casting under a new moon and sticking candles everywhere. Dedicated Tools as self expression. Very normal about yantras.

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Upsettingly, "gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss" is actually a fair description of the Seers of the Throne's agenda.

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Scene Recap: LORG

Before I put the cut on this one, I wanna talk about my players a bit. Jesse, who's playing Auspex (Obrimos Mystie bird nerd), has never played CofD or WoD (old or new) before. They only know one other player (Bash, who plays Avolio), and they're nervous because getting into new systems, especially high-complexity ones, is HARD. We have not told Jesse why the name Auspex makes us all giggle a little, or tried to feed deep CofD lore yet. They have, however, played D&D, notably a raised-by-wolves half-elf druid named Ylva.

But they came at me with a really cool concept, and we powered through creation and I knew when I saw that they and Shiva, the Moros Guardian sad dead man, both had an interest in outdoorsmanship and Survival specs, that I wanted to throw them into this exact scenario.

Yes, it's January, but it's reached over 45 degrees and it's sunny on this particular day, so it's time to go hiking. James Rabinowitz, called Shiva among the Wise has brought his two dogs (beagle named Beatrice and wolfhound named Volf) out to the Grove and invited Jay Faulkner, called Auspex, to join him.

For the first part of this scene, I was busy at work, so the two mages did basic small talk--I did establish, though, that it was a quiet enough area--no Sleepers around--that it'd be safe to talk Mage shit.

Eventually, I got off work and got home just as James's player mentioned the wolfhound sniffing the base of a tree. Oh, perfect, there's my cue.

After smelling the tree, the dog whimpers and takes a few steps back.

Both players rolled Animal Ken and perception, with Auspex getting an exception success on the former, 1 success on the latter. Shiva got 1 success on the AK, none on the perception.

Auspex, you see that reaction and are certain that the wolfhound just tagged into the scent marking of another large predator. Wolf? Bear? Cougar? Something potent (and recent) enough to genuinely spook the fella. But the way he stepped backwards was toward Shiva, a protective motion even in his tail-tucked fear. He's a good dog!

And for the perception check--well, there's movement. It's Winter, everything is bare and leafless, so something a good couple hundred feet away is still visible. You can't make out what, other than...you have this impression of LORG.

And Jesse, who was nervous about the spellcasting system, came out immediately with So I would like to cast Web of Life (think a Detect Life spell) as a praxis, I think you did this on purpose.

...I'd forgotten that we made that Auspex's praxis. But yes, it was perfect for this moment in time. It took a moment to work out the spellcasting everything--I'm not going into full detail, but there's one part that's particularly important. From the text of the Web of Life Spell:

Because the unfiltered sensing of all life might provide a sensory overload, most mages specify certain types of life to detect, such as “humans, insects, and birds” or “only dogs.”

Jesse: Can I specify life larger than, say, a dog? Solstice: All the trees in this forest are bigger than a dog. Jesse: animal life. I know better than that Solstice: I know you do. Jesse: I am smart and also I am an airhead, that's all Solstice: Second moment of pedantry: there are two dogs in this scene that are decidedly different sizes. Jesse: medium-sized dog. golden retriever or bigger Jack (Shiva's player): that's gonna catch Volf Jesse: that's okay! Solstice: It'll also catch both of you, unless you're excluding sapient creatures. Jesse: I am not

This could have gone very differently if Jesse had excluded sapient life, because what is in the woods is an Uratha (werewolf) in their dire wolf form. Like, can you imagine hearing "You activate your praxis and learn whatever large thing is moving out there? It is not an animal larger than a dog"? That'd be pretty hecky!

Instead... The Web of Life lights up similar to the Detect magic spell from Skyrim. You see Volf and James and yourself glow. You become aware of a small herd of deer over yonder. And there's a shape out there, seems to be approaching the deer. The shape is not unlike a wolf.

The size is somewhat more akin to that of a horse.

Now, in the middle of the spellcasting, Jack mentioned being sleepy and needing to leave soon, and in retrospect, I kiiiinda wish I'd put a cliffhanger right here. Instead, I let the boys discuss for a bit--Shiva was in favor of just GTFOing. Auspex, however, is my character with the Curious/Impulsive virtue/vice combo.

I offered the players a choice: you can end the scene, get out clean and do your own research, or we can pause and pick up another time. This is one of the joys of Discord, where you are is preserved in text.

However, Shiva convinced Auspex to leave it alone for now, and the scene ended with them carefully heading back to their cars, as Shiva's beagle bayed at the scent of the Uratha still in the woods.

Fun fact: this is a member of a different pack than the FLGS. This group operate out of a small bar, the Rand Roadhouse. I figured the area could have a couple packs. I'm debating whether there's some Pure or Bale Hounds closer to Barrington. There's also a couple vampires and changelings around, but as with the mages, most of the action is in the city.

In a couple cases, being out of the oversight of the main ruling body is intentional, unlike it is for our mage player characters.

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Scene Recap: Penned In

I'm still working to figure out how best to do recaps, so this is probably going to get a little rambly. Bear with me. Putting in a cut to save your dash if you don't have time to engage now.

This was actually the second scene in this game; the first was Avolio meeting with his mentor at the Art Institute downtown. The biggest Occurrence in that scene was the pair encountering Griffin, another mage of the Consilium, and him making a bad impression on Avolio while trying to, like. Introduce himself and offer help with the Space Arcanum while using Public-Safe diction.

(Chicagoans are allowed to hate me and Griffin when they learn his cadre theme and where his name comes from.)

Anyway, Today's Scene...

The scene opens with Avolio (Luka Amato) and Hephaestus (Ben Heffernan) meeting at a Friendly Local Game Store in Mount Prospect, Illinois. They're here to, like, hang out and chat. Luka's already feeling a little strained about talking publicly, after that encounter with Griffin, so when the store owner, Alex, starts hanging signs in the aisles that read:

Well, Luka gets nervous that this is a subtle 'don't talk supernatural shit' message. It's not, but it is, in fact, meant to be a message to mages. See, Alex and his staff are werewolves, and someone left a deeply cursed D20 (Taleju's Isocahedron from Night Horrors: the Unbidden) in the shop. His pack's Bone Shadow called it out for A Bad Thing, Probably Mage-Related, and so Alex is not exactly happy with whoever left it at the shop.

(We're calling this plots 1 and 2 seeded in this scene; the Isocahedron and the Friendly Local Werewolf Gamers.)

Conversation at the register turns to dice and D&D games in general, with Ben explaining he can't join a game because he doesn't have time, and the enby at the cash register suggested looking into the beta test of a new scheduling app, TimeBlok, which helped a friend of eirs find more time in her day.

(This is plot 3 we're seeding. TimeBlok and Tempio Inc. are related to Phenomenoe from Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed; in this universe, her shadowname is Nortia, for an Etruscian goddess of fate.)

The mages pay for their goods and head out toward a park where they can talk more freely, and Hephaestus casts Control Sound to help make it easier for them to speak freely without being overheard; he's an Apprentice of Forces, and he fiddles with his dedicated tool, a nice multitool as he casts. We get the first on-screen glimpse of Hephaestus's Immediate Nimbus: A resonant knell, like a bell or an anvil being hammered, bearing a sense of looming potential.

The pair meander the park, making some strangerly small-talk; they're not close friends yet, but they're tied by circumstance. Avolio expresses some uncertainty, some trepidation about magic, and Heph asks if he regrets Awakening.

"Regret's a big word. Just uh-" and he never really knows how to broach it, "this isn't my first time… believing in this stuff. Me and my ex were Wiccan. I kind of lapsed, and now… here I am. Dunno if that's regret. Might just be I don't know where my head's at."

I gotta say, having an Acanthus who is sullen and resigned is fascinating. Something to remember is that Avolio is a Mystie, not a Libertine; as much as Wicca ties into his praxis, it's not a techne. Hephaestus, however, is a Libertine, whose smithing is his techne.

But it was time for me to introduce my 4th and final plot to be seeded in this scene: the pair pass a woman at a picnic table with a pen and a notebook, and as they do, something pings their Peripheral Mage Sight.

(Digression: I understand why they changed Mage Unseen Sense to Peripheral Mage Sight, but I'm still going to treat it being pinged in a pretty similar way.)

Hephaestus throws up his Active Mage sight, and spends to add Forces to his Path Arcana, Death and Matter.

Death tells him nothing.

Matter…Matter gives a weird reading. See, Matter tells you what an object's equipment bonus is, and that pen is…somehow a -1 pen. Forces…well,

Forces detects motion, like when a whole flock of pigeons takes off from the tree, starting to get worried about Moar People. One of them shits on the woman's shirt. She lets out a squeal of dismay, standing up abruptly and awkwardly, and then tumbling backwards off the bench and landing on her ass.

The boys rush over to help her up, Hephaestus dropping his Control Sound spell. As they aid the woman, Heph grabs the pen with a leaf, succeeding on a Larceny roll to hide it, while the woman goes on a brief rant about how bad her luck's been today: "I'm late on my rent, my cell phone battery won't hold a charge, the yarn shop lost my preorder for a color-of-the-month alpaca yarn, I spilled my coffee on my boss and now this!"

(the yarn shop exists in downtown Mt. Prospect, right by the friendly local game store the boys were in earlier.)

The boys make reassuring tutting sounds, and as Ben slips the pen into his pocket, he offers the woman his own pen. She takes one look at his scarred face, frowns, and declines before walking off. Look, she's under a lot of stress.

Anyway, I ruled that pocketing the pen means Ben's now carrying it, which means he's now under the effect of the Monkey's Paw spell on it. Which, like, he suspected it of being cursed...

Avolio activates his Active Mage Sight.

You know that one shade of pus yellow that humanity is instinctively repulsed by? Mucus and stain and popped-zit yellow? To Fate sight, the pen is very that color. You can't tell more without Focused Mage Sight, but it's bad. ...and seems to have gotten some of that bad on Hephaestus's hand.

Even before scrutiny, I'm content to give him the fact that the pen is Bad News.

Heph goes in for Active Mage Sight again (with Avolio standing watch to make sure no one comes up on them), this time spending to add Prime with the hope that scrutinizing with Prime will determine something useful. Hephaestus has an Obsession of "Learn about magical items - their nature and how to craft them", so this sort of thing is relevant. Through scrutiny, he learned that this is a mage's spell, something with a day-long duration. The spell caster did make a Paradox, but contained it, and their Signature Nimbus is a sensation of 'just missed it', like you were just too slow for the opportunity that passed under your nose.

So someone's passing out cursed pens, presumably to Sleepers! That's not good!

Hephaestus breaks the pen--in the process incidentally breaking the rune scribed in the barrel and thus the spell on it. But Avolio realizes after it's broken that it might make a good focus for Postcognition.

While he doesn't have his dedicated tool on him, he uses his cell phone as a glass mirror for a path tool, and Reaches for two turns of gazing at this pen at a certain time. And he sees a sallow, dark-eyed man in an off-the-rack suit that's too large for him, standing in an office, scribing the rune onto the pen. The man has a mug on his desk for a property management company--he's a landlord.

(For those of you who've read Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed, this is "Ricardo, the Fool". Except instead of a Seer mentor, he has an Acamoth mentor that's teaching him abyssal runes, and that someday plans to take over his body.)

(Do you remember the woman's rant about her bad luck? She started with how she's behind on the rent. The PCs have NOT made this connection yet; I gave them a memory roll to recall this and they both failed it.)

But yeah, they disposed of the pen's pieces after this, and decided that's enough Being Mages for one day. Heph told his mentor, Field (a cadre-mate of Griffin), about the situation, and Field suggested getting in touch with the two Arrows or the Guardian out in the suburbs with him. Let's loop everyone in on this.

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On Structure

first things first, hi @qm-vox.

Alright, so here's what's up: I'm running this game on Discord, with players as far away as literally Australia. My players have lives, and trying to schedule times when I can wrangle all of them is Not Easy. So instead, I'm borrowing some structure from the chat games (going back to the White Wolf Moderated Chat), by running planned and drop-in scenes when players are available. "Who's around to play tonight?" and letting that help determine what I run. It's working so far--I'm about a week in, and have run three scenes for four of my six players.

I also have private player channels set up in the discord for XP spends and things people want to do sub rosa, as well as a 'peanut gallery' for those watching current scenes. TBH, the biggest reason for the peanut gallery is so my know-it-all CofD familiar players can help guide the newbies. The player of Hephaestus has been in the nWoD chat trenches with me for about 15 years. He's also my sheet genie. His sheet template is as well-automated as the most high-tech hospital beds.

Another thing I'm doing a lot of: stealing. I'm cribbing plot ideas from both 1e and 2e mage books. There's NPCs that are pretty much straight from Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed or Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss. I'm cherry picking things from Night Horrors: the Unbidden. One of my werewolf NPCs is kinda directly pulled from Tribes of the Moon. I'm trying to jigsaw it all in a way that's unique to me, but like. I don't feel bad for stealing. It's not that different from anyone running the whole Curse of Strahd, and Dave Brookshaw ran Reign of the Exarchs inside The Broken Diamond; he's a big inspiration to me in this campaign.

I will be posting scene recaps for load-bearing plot scenes, and others where something really cool happens--starting with the first two when I discover sufficient spoons to write. Expect these to be pretty rambly.

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Setting/Premise

Note: I already asked my players not to follow the blog, but this post will get into spoilers.

The Northwest suburbs of Chicago, 2025 (but a 2025 without the current extent of the political bullshit. While there will be localized bigotry, I don't find "fighting a national environment where PCs are losing rights" a fun thing. This game is something of an escape from real world shit.)

Here's the thing, the Chicago Consilium is in Chicago. That's where the center of power is. That's where Mages Make Their Names, Pentacle and Seers alike. But these six happened to Awaken out in what is an area of Chicago's responsibility, but it's kind of a trek to get out there! So, like, the PCs have mentors, but if they want to see them, they're going to be driving in or taking the Metra--the game is vaguely centered on the UP-NW Metra line, from about Des Plaines to Palatine or Barrington, though Shiva lives in Buffalo Grove, which is on the UP-N line. (It was that or Skokie, and that was a bit further southeast than I wanted to work).

(Myself and two of the players live around here. They've promised not to rumble me when I fuck with geography, like when I make forest preserves bigger enough for, say, werewolf packs.)

Anyway, it's kind of the Consilium's hope that this group will support one another out here, while everyone is learning and growing. They're not a cadre yet, but they've all gotten introduced and have one another's phone numbers. And their mentors all have cadres of their own, who could, in theory, be called in if Supporting Fire is needed.

Which it might be, because some of the oldest mages in Chicago left a pool of abyssal taint, like a bunch of tanks of benzene underground, in the area where the Player Characters live and work. And they haven't told the new kids--or even members of their own cadres--yet.

This is going to be a game focused on the war against the Abyss. That isn't to say there won't be Seers, Banishers, Hunters, etc. But most of the Seers focus on Chicago itself. Hunters will need reason to turn their attention to these small fries. The primary antagonizing force is going to be Abyssal Intrusions, Scelesti, Acamoth and Gulmoth. Which is something @maquekenzie did in a past game I played in, and I actually reached out for some tips while designing this game.

So, will the new mages be able to survive on the border marches?

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The Cast

All mage games need player characters! Here are the six I've got for my game:

Auspex (he/they), called Jay Faulkner in public. Obrimos of the Mysterium. Auspex was an ornithology student, studying how birds follow magnetic fields, and had a moment of true insight, seeing the geomantic lines beneath the earth's surface. They're into augury and ley lines! They're played by the one player in my campaign who has never played a WoD/CofD game before. They did NOT take the Common Sense merit when it was suggested, and landed on the virtue/vice combo of Curious/Impulsive.

Avolio (he/him), called Luka Amato. Acanthus of the Mysterium. Avolio is a professional glassblower originally from Australia. He's also a Wiccan, who moved to the states following his wife to join a particular coven before his Awakening. His wife left, no clue where she is, leaving Luka with a teenager named Dove.

Hephaestus (he/him), called Ben Heffernan. Moros of the Free Council. Heph was a blacksmith before Awakening, but after a Fucked Up car accident, he Awakened, lost a leg and was scarred horribly, so picking a shadow name was not hard for him. Heph is a SCA nerd, and sells his work at local conventions and the Renn Faire. This is the player at my table who has the most grounding in nWoD/CofD--the only one who has cracked open Signs of Sorcery so far.

Otso (she/her), called Charlotte 'Charlie' Garcia. Thyrsus of the Adamantine Arrow. This player almost exclusively makes Thyrsus Arrows, but this one is distinguished from past characters by being a single mother to a 5 year-old (called Cub to hide her sympathetic name) and a daycare owner. This is a mother bear protecting the children fiercely; a harmacist instead of a healer. Which is going to be interesting; in 1e, this player had a Tamer of Rivers. She was the other driver in the accident that mangled Hephaestus.

Shiva (he/him), called James Rabinowitz. Moros of the Guardians of the Veil. That's Shiva like the Hebrew word for seven, or the seven-day period of mourning in Jewish culture, not like the Hindu deity. Shiva is a Jewish funeral director, who Awakened after a skiing accident killed him. He's recently lost his husband, and is thus our third single parent, though his daughter is in her 20s. He collects old books, is the voice of reason so far, and his mentor is an Obrimos Ladder who's one of the other Jewish mages in town, a cantor at a city synagogue.

Umbra Vox (she/her), called Adara (we really need a surname). Mastigos of the Adamantine Arrow. Adara's a communications coordinator in emergency management; think the person who writes press releases after Bad Shit Happens. Her Awakening happened after an Incident at a community college, and she's still sort of reorienting herself after that. She's Mind-heavy, and her nimbus ties into radio communications aesthetic in some really neat ways.

All players were instructed to make adults with strong grounding in their mundane lives; their characters Awakened in the past year. I gave each of them a 1-dot mentor among the Consilium, to represent them getting their learning in, as well as 3 free dots of Professional Training (and a ruling that there wouldn't be any PT 4 or 5). PT is a merit that makes more merits, so if you don't take it, you fall behind on merit dots. But there's another reason I wanted everyone to have it: PT 2 gives 2 free dots of work-related Contacts. Which means every character has at least two groups of people that can bring them problems--and thus, plots.

I have a page in my ST google doc for the group's social-circle merits:

Contacts:

Local Craftsmen (Heph)

SCA Fighters (Heph)

Local media (Umbra Vox)

Ambulance drivers (Umbra Vox)

Gay bar (Avolio)

Fine Arts (Avolio)

Academics (Auspex)

Environmentalist camping types (Auspex)

Local parents (Otso)

Local children (Otso)

Clergy (Shiva)

MEs (Shiva)

Allies:

Medical 1 (Umbra Vox)

Gay bar 1 (Avolio)

Glass lab 1 (Avolio)

Statuses:

SCA 1 (Heph)

Local gov’t 1 (Umbra Vox)

Like, tell me that's not going to allow me to drop some fun plots via these groups!

Next time I feel like writing, setting!

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This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a W̸͒̽ì̶͌ś̸̍e̴͐̽ culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is n̷̈́͒o̴̅͊w̶̧͗h̴̔̔é̶͊ŕ̶͐e̸͗͠, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the s̴̍̋o̶̍͝u̷̅͊l̷͊̂, and it can d̷̏̑e̵̕͝s̷̊̀t̶̉̒ȑ̴̕o̷͎͛y̷̌͝ ̶̌your realit̷̾̇y̸̛͝ The form of the danger is...