Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary. — Gerard Way
As we mentioned earlier, the various Traits reflect the game systems side of your character’s abilities. Through a collection of dice, represented by dots, you determine the mage’s success or failure, as well as zir overall strengths and weaknesses with certain kinds of tasks. Although certain types of Traits, specifically the Essences and Archetypes, don’t have dots or dice pools, all the following characteristics deal with the gaming side of your mage and tie into the systems featured throughout The Book of Rules, Dramatic Systems, and The Book of Magick.
As we’ve seen earlier, the Essence reflects the personality of your mage’s Avatar. By extension, it also influences the mage themself. In many regards, the Essence gives you a general script for your character’s behavior. Zir goals, zir habits, the way ze approaches life and all its mysteries — all may be guided by the mage’s Essence.
The Awakened themselves disagree about the role, nature, and purpose of an Essence. Reincarnationists view such tendencies as the legacies of past lives, whereas big-picture metaphysicians point toward the Metaphysic Trinity and the spaces between its forces. Technocrats dismiss such mystic rubbish, seeing instead the psychological profiles of Enlightened personalities. There are folks who see Essence as directives from Almighty God, and others who speak of Pure Ones who continually reincarnate their cosmic identities in Earthly vessels. As with magick itself, the truth about your mage’s Essence will depend — at least in that character’s eyes — on the beliefs ze holds about zir place in Creation.
Most often, the Avatar and its Essence reveal themselves as personality quirks, subtle nudges, dreams, hallucinations, déjà vu, and feelings of something or someone being just right or totally wrong to the mage in question. A Dynamic Essence mage feels restless, driven, impassioned, and hyperactive; zir Pattern companion might be more settled, reliable, one of those good head on zir shoulders types with a solid approach toward life. A Questing vagabond rarely sticks around one place for long, and the enigmatic Primordial soul gazes at xyr surroundings with eerie calm and an agenda no one else can fathom. Despite broad connections between the four Essences and the Ascension War factions — Dynamic for Marauders, Pattern for Technocrats, Questing for the Traditions, and Primordial for the Nephandi — all four Essences can be found in every faction... including the ones who want no part of that War.
The stronger the Avatar, the greater its influence; one or two dots in Avatar manifest as simple hunches, whereas four- or five-dot ones achieve full-blown identities. An Avatar’s manifestations are often tied to its Essence nature. Although human beings seem more complex — defined more by Nature, Demeanor, and personal choice than by cosmic forces — the Avatars that push mages themselves often display the Essence in obvious ways. Dynamic Avatars take ferocious forms, driving their mortal hosts like children before demonic whips. A Pattern Genius could manifest as that feeling of rightness when a carpenter grabs zir hammer and gazes at a stack of planks. The Questing Avatar might blow through a mage’s hair like an eternal breeze, cooling xyr skin even in the still desert air, whereas the Primordial Avatar pools deep in a wizard’s subconscious, filling zir head with visions that defy definition yet demand answers in the light of day.
During the age of High Magick, the Essences were identified by elements (Dynamic/Fire, Pattern/Earth, Questing/Air, Primordial/Water) and mythic creatures. Viewed by some mages as diagrams of the soul, these tendencies appeared to be marks of predestination. And although modern mages often assert that “I am no one’s pawn,” there does appear, at times, to be a greater force — or perhaps four or five forces — manipulating mages toward some greater end.
That fifth force, Infinite, remains enigmatic. Sages say that it must exist, but if it does, no one’s actually seen it. In game terms, it’s hard to say what an Infinite Essence might look like. We recommend that player characters probably shouldn’t have such an option, but perhaps a weird Storyteller character could embody that sort of Avatar, staring at the world with eyes and heart that reach past mere human understanding and into realms even mages can’t yet comprehend.
Genius Eidolons: The Technocratic Essence
Operatives of the Technocratic Union refuse to accept superstitionist babble about avatars and essences. Such concepts are merely the archaic excuses for perfectly understandable psychiatric phenomena. Still, even the most hardened scientists must accept overwhelming evidence, so the concept of Eidolons — constructs of a person’s Enlightened Genius — remains an open secret among Technocratic personnel.
For all practical purposes, Eidolons and Essences are exactly the same thing. But in the world of Mage, perception and belief are the foundations of reality. Thus, a Technocrat or former Technocrat will utterly deny the existence of a metaphysical soul essence. Reality Deviants may have their silly little soul-faces, but a good Technocrat knows what such things really are: wisps of imagination wrapped around perfectly sensible expressions of Genius!
Even so, Technocrats don’t like to discuss these wisps of imagination. Oh, it’s acceptable to mention one’s dreams upon occasion, but a Technocrat who discusses dreams as if they mean something may soon find themself in hot water. Dreams, then, are where Genius Eidolons run wild. If and when such phantasms manifest in clear view during waking hours, a smart Technocrat will keep such fancies to themself if they know what’s good for them... which, of course, they do.
The Dynamic Essence embodies Change itself. Manifesting as a mercurial temperament, passionate emotions, restless drive, and fickle spirits, Dynamic Avatars compel their mages toward daring experiences. Such people are never boring company! A Dynamic mage might drag you out for a night on the town that includes hijacking a taxi, skateboarding down a railroad track, and slumping into bed just after dawn with a huge grin (or a terrified grimace) on your face, just to wake up a few hours later and see what trouble you can get into next.
In more subtle forms, this Essence inspires curiosity, impatience, and sudden flashes of brilliance. Appearing in the form of shadows, whispers, and poor impulse control, it goads a mage to treat every day like an adventure. At higher levels, a Dynamic Avatar can nag a person mercilessly, leaving half-finished projects and shattered relationships in the wake of a mage who rarely sits still for long.
The very opposite of Dynamism, the Pattern Essence provides stability and order. If Dynamism is fire, then Pattern is stone. Pattern mages approach things with deliberate intent, speaking slowly and taking time to consider the potential risks and benefits of a task. Manifesting as calm temperament, sound logic, stable emotions, and authority figures (often in dreams, perhaps as people only the mage themself can see), Pattern Avatars settle the capricious whims of reality into solid, dependable forms.
Because every war needs fortifications and dependable souls, the Pattern Essence is a valued asset. Such Avatars inspire their mages to be prudent, constructive, and trustworthy — real bricks, to use the British slang. Honor, stability, and good judgment are hallmarks of such people. If they seem stodgy or uninspired, it’s simply because other people are too shortsighted to recognize a true friend when they have one.
Before light and order existed, Primordial Chaos was the Essence of the universe. Even now, that eternal enigma beckons to the human soul in the shape of eerie and often sinister Avatar-forms. Manifesting as shadows; half-heard cries; swirling vortices of pulsating energy; or the disconcerting figures of madmen, ghosts, and squamous things, this Essence reflects the depthless reaches of cosmic potential. Mages connected to this Essence tend to be abrupt and secretive, or else seductive in ways that Fallen souls can best appreciate.
A Primordial mage loves mystery. Like deep water, they seep into hidden places and defy easy understanding. Whereas Pattern people are bricks or stone, Primordial folks are riptides and dark pools. The few Technocrats who favor this Essence understand that no science can penetrate the richest mysteries of the universe; they’ll give lip service to technology, but they always keep a few extra cards up their sleeves for the time when the light fails and order becomes a punch line in the cosmic jest.
Wherever windmills beckon, you’ll find Questing mages preparing to tilt. Vagabonds and errants, pilgrims, and pioneers, these people prefer the open road and a worthy cause. Epitomizing Balance in the Trinity, this Essence avoids extremes. Questing Avatars tend to manifest as yearning; wanderlust; bright spots on the horizon; and people, beasts, or entities associated with travel. One might look like a stray hound, another like a kaleidoscope, and a third like a hitchhiker on the side of the road. Whereas the Primordial mage curls up in the shadows, the Questing mage straps on zir backpack, straps on or discards entirely zir shoes, and heads off to face adventures in the Great Unknown.
“Call Me the Breeze” makes a good theme song for such characters. Their Avatars draw them ever onward. Sure, these souls might seem friendly and fun enough; in time, however, they’ll disappear into the rising dawn, secure in the knowledge that someone else will follow the trails they’ve blazed.
Daath and the Abyssal Essence
According to the lore of the Caul, each Fallen One’s soul has been tainted or inverted, possibly in permanent ways, by the forces beyond the Cauls. That’s not wrong, exactly, but it’s a moralistic shadow of the truth. In a metaphysical sense, that Avatar slips through the flaws of Reality’s Tapestry, Falls from the grace of cosmic order, and plummets into the Abyss of Daath, as explored further in The Book of Infernalism. There, the soul subsumes the essence of the Qlippoth, and is suitably transformed in strange and awful ways.
These essential energies — in Mage terms, the Avatar Essence — are most frequently associated with the inborn spirits of widderslainte. Other mages, too, can feel their Avatars shift. In the surges of forbidden understanding, they’re infused by the nature of certain Qlippoth even though, in most cases, a transformed mage has never ventured to that realm xemself. The draw and push of such energies brings strange new qualities to an Awakened Avatar... and if an unfortunate person is born with a Nephandic Avatar, those qualities are within zir from the very beginning of zir life.
Chaotic: The Primordial Essence
All things must return to their primordial state, preferably by way of Chaos. This Essence disintegrates illusions of stability from its human host, inspiring mercurial activities and unpredictable actions. Fallen mages of a Chaotic persuasion can whiplash from kindness to cruelty without warning, betray their closest associates, fall deeply in love with someone, sacrifice him to a Goetic manifestation, and weep sincerely while doing so… anything that subverts predictability, even by Nephandic standards, sounds like a good idea to a Chaotic Essence Nephandus. Although most obviously associated with the K’llashaa sect, this capricious energy can be found among any sort of Fallen One.
Mages who Awakened with a Primordial Essence before their Nephandic conversation find themselves drawn, after the Fall, toward intensifying storms of chaos. Once Fallen, such people seem to flutter on the black wings of A’arab Zaraq, the Qlipha of dispersion. It’s been said (often unfairly) that the Primordial Essence is closest to the cosmic forces that flow through the Cauls, and so people with that Essence seem potentially suspect even if they never Fall. Those who do, however, embody that ageless Absolute in its most implacable form — not merely malicious but cosmically alien.
Destructive: The Dynamic Essence
Where Chaos is disruptive, Destruction is volatile. In Destructive Avatars, the urge to create becomes the urge to destroy in the name of new creations which might result from the ruins. That future potential, though, is a pretext; for while the Dynamic Avatar pursues constant change, the Nephandic twist pushes it toward annihilation.
Dynamic people are volatile by nature to begin with. Once infused with the savage fires of Golchab or the rampant lust of Lilith, however, that volatility hits a frightening degree. It’s sexy in a terrifying way, really, and terrifying in sexy ways, as well. Whatever restraints a person might have had before Awakening or (in the case of barabbi) Falling are burned away in the hot blast of a Destructive Essence.
Frozen: The Static Essence
Cold: That’s the word for mages with this Essence. While the Pattern Essence cultivates patience and stability, its Qlippothic manifestation assumes the alien stillness and emotionless gleam of the Black Diamond itself. Influenced by the spider-web corridors of Satariel or the arid expanse of Samael, an Avatar with this disposition retains the chilly flatness of an obsidian monolith.
Frozen Avatars plot, plan, and execute with unnerving precision. Their stratagems are as ruthless as the tortures they inflict. There’s no pity to be found in the eyes or heart of such a person. Though Nephandi are predatory by definition, those with a Frozen Essence are the most implacable of their kind.
Tormented: The Questing Essence
Unsettled. Unmoored. Maybe even guilty. The Essence of which, un-Fallen, drives its human self from place to place and passion to passion finds itself, under Qlippothic influence, Tormented. Pounded by the hammer blows of Gha’ag Sheblah, perhaps bathed in Thagirion’s Black Sun, this soul cloaks its human host in spiritual nettles. Nowhere will ze find rest. Never can ze know peace. All Nephandi feel a certain prick of restlessness. To a Tormented Avatar, that restlessness remains eternal.
It’s been said that those Fallen with a Tormented Essence are the dreamers of their kind — mages with big plans and depthless curiosity. It’s tempting to feel admiration, pity, even hope for them, as if perhaps the long Path they’re drifting along could wind up someplace better than a hell or ultimate extinction. Those hopes, though, are probably unfounded. If anything, such Torment may drive these Fallen mages harder to achieve ultimate godhood, at which point whatever good qualities they possess would pale in comparison to the horrors they might craft for the inhabitants of their new universes.
Excellence. No other word typifies the ultimate goal of a mage than that. No mage, regardless of affiliation, is just another person. Each mage is excellent in their way. And so Arete — correctly pronounced Ahr-eh-TAY, though often rendered AIR-eh-tay — epitomizes the core of True Magick and those who employ it.
Mages, as usual, disagree about what Arete actually is. Many shamans regard it as a connection to the World-Soul, and scientists consider it the heart of one’s inner genius. Akashayana speak of the enlightenment one gains through harmony with the Way, and Syndicate tycoons realize that certain people are just born superior to the Masses. Although the Traditions have agreed to use the Classical Greek word Arete as a touchstone term, Technocrats prefer the more straightforward Enlightenment, or simply Excellence. Various Disparate groups employ their own terms, but regardless of the specific language or culture, the connotation of perfection is always there.
○○○○○ ○○○○○ | Sleeper |
●○○○○ ○○○○○ | Initiated |
●●○○○ ○○○○○ | Talented |
●●●○○ ○○○○○ | Schooled |
●●●●○ ○○○○○ | Disciplined |
●●●●● ○○○○○ | Commanding |
●●●●● ●○○○○ | Masterful |
●●●●● ●●○○○ | Understanding |
●●●●● ●●●○○ | Wise |
●●●●● ●●●●○ | Enlightened |
●●●●● ●●●●● | Transcendant |
For details, see Focus and the Arts in The Book of Magick.
You must have Will in order to do. Thus, mages are very willful people. Just as a mage cannot unlock the doors to magick without understanding zir ability to use it, so ze cannot bend reality to zir intentions without enough will to command it. The Willpower Trait reflects your mage’s vision, confidence, and determination. And so, even when they’re running low on self-assurance, zir core Willpower remains unusually strong.
○○○○○ ○○○○○ | Spineless |
●○○○○ ○○○○○ | Weak |
●●○○○ ○○○○○ | Timid |
●●●○○ ○○○○○ | Insecure |
●●●●○ ○○○○○ | Secure |
●●●●● ○○○○○ | Certain |
●●●●● ●○○○○ | Confident |
●●●●● ●●○○○ | Strong |
●●●●● ●●●○○ | Controlled |
●●●●● ●●●●○ | Unshaken |
●●●●● ●●●●● | Unbreakable |
Sanity-breaking ordeals — grotesque torture, intimate betrayal, confrontation with a Horror Beyond Madness, and similar excruciations — can cost your mage a permanent point of Willpower. This sort of thing shouldn’t happen often, but in the dark world of the Awakened, such traumas seem inevitable. Willpower points lost this way can be regained only through intense roleplaying and elaborate stories associated with that character’s breaking and renewal.
The following circumstances might cost you a point or two of permanent Willpower. No event should cost a mage more than two Willpower points at a time — mages are pretty damned tough!
For details, see the sidebar Things Man Was Not Meant to Know in Health and Injury.
Rest and success restore a person’s self-confidence. The following events allow you to replenish points spent from your character’s Willpower pool:
The wheel of Quintessence and Paradox reflects the interplay of opposing energies. The first reflects your connection to the essential substance of the cosmos, and the second reflects your separation from consensual reality. Your Avatar stores Quintessence, but Paradox cancels out that essential energy. Life for an active mage involves a constant ebb and flow of both energies; plenty of Quintessence grants them greater control over zir Arts, but excessive Paradox makes ze a hazard to zirself and everyone nearby.
For details about the magick rules in general, see The Book of Magick.
Optional Rule: Resonance
Because magick is an extension of the mage who uses it, that mage’s deeds and intentions manifest as Resonance. As explained in Telling the Story, this force colors Quintessence, Paradox, magick, and occasionally even the mage zirself. In extreme cases, this energy creates echoes (as per the Echoes Flaw) that can make a willworker stand out even when they’re trying to appear mundane.
Mage Revised presented Resonance as a character Trait. Earlier editions of Mage had not done so. Given the various and contradicting depictions of Resonance throughout Mage’s history, this Trait is considered an extremely optional rule.
If your group chooses to employ Resonance and the related phenomenon called Synergy as Traits, the following scale represents the strength of a character’s Resonance and/or Synergy Trait:
○○○○○ Faint Resonance ●○○○○ Quirky ●●○○○ Odd ●●●○○ Noticeable ●●●●○ Influential ●●●●● Unmistakable For details about Resonance and Synergy, see the entry of that name in Casting Magick.
For other details about The Paradox Effect and Quiet, see those specific pages.
For all their powers, mages are mortal. When you prick them, they bleed. When you drop them off buildings, they go splat. The Health Trait measures the distance between a master of reality and a slab at the local morgue.
When the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune turn your mage into a bleeding hunk of enlightened hamburger, those attacks mark off levels from your Health Trait. An uninjured character has eight Health Levels to lose; after the first two (the Uninjured default and the Bruised Health Level), that character starts to suffer penalties to zir dice pools. The worse zir injuries, the harder it is for zir to accomplish anything. Pain and damage take their mortal toll, and if those penalties exceed the character’s dice pool for a given activity, then that character can’t perform the task at all.
The exception here is the Arete roll. Unless a willworker is rendered Incapacitated or is unconscious, ze can still call upon zir Arete and Spheres, assuming ze’s still got enough Willpower left to use them.
Life magick and other forms of treatment can heal these injuries; even then, however, pain and damage leave lasting effects. A person who gets zir arm ripped off is going to remember the experience. Sure, ze could re-grow that limb with potent spells, but the trauma will leave scars — physical, yes, but also emotional and psychological — that defy even magick’s healing power. Although you don’t need to roleplay the lasting terrors of every little paper-cut, significant injuries should have long-term story-based effects.
Injuries inflict three different kinds of damage, depending on the nature of the attack:
For more details about injuries, healing, and the Health Trait, see Health and Injury in Dramatic Systems.