Beyond this world, an adventurous mage can find infinite numbers more. Although these Otherworlds are rarely easy to find or explore — especially in the age of the Avatar Storm, which might or might not still make passage hazardous — a courageous traveler can unlock heavens, hells, dream worlds, and that ever-growing Digital Web.
The Worlds Beyond goes into extensive details about these many layers, Realms, Zones, and so forth. Whether or not your Mage chronicle reaches into these Otherworlds depends upon the focus of the chronicle and the plans of your Storyteller. Although the earlier editions of Mage dealt extensively with Horizon Realms and off-planet excursions, the later books concentrated more on adventures in the material world. Either option works, and both of them feature a wide range of possibilities.
As detailed throughout The Worlds Beyond, the various Otherworldly Realms have different paths of access. A mage can turn into spirit-stuff, project zir consciousness into the Astral Reaches, experience a “little death” and pass into the Shadowlands, or step through a portal and into a distant Realm while sidestepping the distance (and possibly the Avatar Storm) entirely.
With or without an “avatar storm,” the Otherworlds remain forbidding, unpredictable territory. Even their most familiar aspect — the Penumbra that reflects the spiritual nature of the human world — is changeable and strange, filled with eerie sights and vivid sensations. From a Storyteller’s perspective, each excursion past the Gauntlet should be different — an invitation to the weirdest corners of your imagination. For all the rule systems presented below, the most vital rule regarding the Otherworlds is that there are no hard-and-fast rules about the Otherworlds. These guidelines merely lay a foundation for your own interpretation of What Lies Beyond.
Entering the Otherworlds involves stepping outside of everyday reality... or whatever passes for everyday reality to a mage... and literally entering a new state of being. With a few exceptions, a physical being does not enter the Umbra without undergoing some sort of transformation — projecting an astral self into the High Umbra, becoming spirit stuff for the Middle Umbra, and dying in order to become a sort of ghost for the Lower Umbra. A physical person might step through a portal and enter a Horizon Realm, but to walk through the three Umbrae, a mortal has to become something beyond mortality.
Theoretically, a person retains zir material form when ze walks into the spirit world through a Shallowing. Thing is, as certain mages claim, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle may be at work in such situations: is that person still material because ze thinks of zirself as material, or is ze transformed into spirit matter, simply believing ze’s still material while the rest of Creation views zir as a spirit? Snarky folks refer to this as the Schröndinger’s mage theory: a mental puzzle with no practical utility beyond its ability to provoke arguments. For all game-system purposes, the traveler remains material, though ze can think of zirself as whatever ze wants to be.
Unless it involves a direct portal into a Realm, every journey through the Otherworlds works like peeling an onion from the inside out. The traveler begins at the core (the material world), perceives the bigger picture (the Periphery), steps through the first layer (the Gauntlet) and into the next layer (the Penumbra). From there, ze travels outward, following omens and instincts into other layers (Realms), the skin of the onion (the Horizon), and freedom beyond that. If ze ever makes it beyond the first Horizon, there’s said to be another one waiting out there in the stars. The question as to whether that second true Horizon is the true skin of the onion or the skin of whoever’s peeling that onion is a puzzle best left to philosophers.
As depicted in The Worlds Beyond, the Periphery is less a place than a perception. The visitor perceives the deeper levels of existence through the Vidare — the perspective — that ze expects to see. In game terms, this heightened perception involves either the Awareness Talent (described in Attributes and Abilities), or the first dot in any Sphere (described in the Sphere entries of The Book of Magick). Essentially, these abilities reveal the shadows of the Otherworlds, although those perceptions don’t actually involve travel as such into those realms.
After the Storm?
In the Reckoning metaplot, the Avatar Storm shook things up beyond the Gauntlet. Realms were displaced, transformed, and destroyed; paths between the worlds got switched, scrambled, and obliterated. Even the most familiar travelers found themselves lost in the Otherworlds. Although the decade and a half since those events might have settled things back to their old configurations (as detailed in Beyond the Barriers: The Book of Worlds), it might instead have established an entirely new order... or, more fittingly, a general lack of predictable order (as depicted in The Infinite Tapestry). If the Storm never happened, things may be very much as they had been back in the old days; then again, the Otherworlds are ephemeral, mysterious, and unbound by conventional excuses for human logic. Even without an Avatar Storm, the various Realms and pathways can change between visits... even change during visits. May the traveler beware!
Unless your characters step through a portal, discover a Shallowing, or are among the very few people who know how to find and employ the Paths of the Wyck, they’ll need to pass through the Gauntlet — that metaphysical barrier that separates the physical and spiritual worlds. True, a perceptive person can sense the Periphery without stepping through the Gauntlet, getting feelings or catching glimpses of the Worlds Beyond. To actually enter those Worlds, however, your characters must penetrate the Gauntlet. And in our modern era, that ain’t easy.
Rules-wise, you need to roll a certain number of successes in order to penetrate the Gauntlet by any method. Unless your mage’s Arete is outrageously high, that also requires an extended roll. Time-wise, that roll reflects a certain period of time in which the character focuses on getting through the Gauntlet — anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more per roll. (Storyteller’s option, based upon circumstances.) Botching at any point while making those rolls has awful consequences; the mage gets stuck helplessly in between worlds, and needs another party with Gauntlet-crossing skills to push or pull zir through to the other side. If the Avatar Storm’s still in effect, then getting stuck can be excruciating and possibly fatal... (See the nearby sidebar, Optional Rules: The Avatar Storm.)
The game systems for crossing over and moving around can be found on the Traveling the Otherworlds charts.
In story terms, this short journey involves some sort of ritual or process: focusing on a mirror, drumming and chanting, activating a trans-dimensional flux-capacitor, or whatever else suits the mage’s practice and beliefs. While the character concentrates on passing through, the player rolls dice against the listed Difficulty until the character phases through and winds up on the other side. Whether or not the character has to face the dreaded Avatar Storm is up to your Storyteller. Even without the Storm, however, the process can feel quite disconcerting.
The way a given character perceives zir passage through the Gauntlet probably depends a bit upon the character and a lot upon the location and circumstances. An Akashic Brother meditating in a harmonious grove might feel a misty fog slide over zir and then subside, leaving zir in the Otherworlds. A dimension-hopping scientist could hear the turbines on xyr trans-dimensional flux-capacitor roar as a blinding light rises, fills the room, and explodes into a brilliant flash, shattering the dimensional wall. A High Ritual Magus could hear the music of the spheres as he cuts complex designs in the air with zir thrice-consecrated blade; meanwhile, a desperate warrior in the combat zone cuts runes into the dirt, bathes them in xyr own blood, and prays to Odin or Sif as the distant blare of horns alerts xem to the crumbling of that barrier between worlds. Both the player and the Storyteller should have fun describing the crossing of that Gauntlet. And given the odd nature of the Otherworlds, it might never happen the same way twice.
Whatever the method and location involved might be, a Gauntlet passage should reflect the ease or challenge of getting across. Penetrating the thick Gauntlet of a high-tech lab should feel different than sliding through the thin Gauntlet of a windswept mountain peak. From a Storyteller perspective, make that crossing as dramatic as possible... eerie, calming, terrifying, even sensual, depending on who’s traveling where, how they’re doing it, and under what sorts of circumstances they’re traveling. Crossing the Gauntlet, ideally, should be more than just a series of dice rolls until you hit the target numbers. Even for people who spend lots of time in the Otherworlds, crossing between realities ought to be a memorable experience.
The simplest way to travel to the Otherworlds, other than a portal, has traditionally involved stepping sideways. Whether or not that’s still simple depends upon whether or not the Avatar Storm occurred. As we’ve seen elsewhere, that Revised-era cataclysm is optional in your chronicle. Perhaps it happened in 1999 and is still going full force today. Maybe it happened but has since subsided, either to a lesser storm (see the sidebar) or to the relative calm of an earlier era. Your Storyteller could decide that it never happened at all and simply assume that stepping sideways is still as easy as it was in the mid-‘90s. As any Umbral traveler can tell you, though, that trip was rarely as easy as it might appear...
To start with, a mage who steps sideways must use a Spirit 3 Effect to step sideways, employ Spirit 4 to open a gateway in the Gauntlet, or travel with someone else who opens that gateway for zir. Certain powerful spirits can bring a mortal over to their side as well. Whichever way, the traveler becomes ephemera: the material of the spirit worlds. Ze might feel like flesh and blood, but ze has become like the spirits around zir.
In game terms, there’s no change between matter and ephemera. The character still uses all of zir Traits the same way on both sides of the Gauntlet. Once ze’s in the spirit world, however, that traveler cannot affect the physical world without using Spirit Sphere magick to reach the other side. Ze may, however, see and address spirits as if they were flesh and bone — something ze can’t do when ze’s in the material world. Even so, ze needs at least 2 dots in the Spirit Sphere before ze can actually touch them, and Life and Matter magick have no effect on spirits at all. (For details, see Part VIII: Umbrood Spirit Entities.)
When the traveler crosses back to the mortal world again, the process works in reverse; ze becomes material flesh again. On both sides of that crossing, the experience can feel pretty weird — after all, the traveler’s exchanging one kind of form for another. (See Disconnection, below.)
Traditionally, a person can step sideways carrying whatever they happen to be wearing at the time. Also traditionally, certain things just won’t make that passage, or they malfunction if they arrive at all. High-tech materials and gadgets, sophisticated non-mechanical machines (like computers and so on), and instruments that depend upon complex material physics to work (like guns or explosives) tend to be iffy, especially in the Middle Umbra’s Spirit Wilds, where the principles of capital-N Nature take precedence over the vanities of men.
Wonders, however, work just fine. Any item with an effective Arete (see The Toybox) functions in the Umbra, although high-tech Devices might fail in certain specific areas of the Otherworlds that emphasize the essence of primal nature. Thus, a Technocrat’s Alanson Hardsuit might function in places where an Uzi jams, but it could still fail — or entirely bar the Technocrat from entry — in places like the Hollow Earth.
Stepping sideways involves getting your feet dirty, so to speak. Unlike the cleaner disembodied astral traveler, a mage who steps bodily through the Gauntlet becomes a part of the Otherworlds when ze enters. As a result, ze can visit the Middle Umbra Spirit Wilds, where some sort of physical presence is essential... a feat astral travelers cannot match unless they spin a body out of Quintessence (see below). Sadly, stepping sideways is vulgar magick; the person fades away into nothingness, and that’s clearly not a natural thing!
Beyond the effects noted above, a character who steps sideways is essentially zirself. Ze cannot fly unless ze uses magick to do so, walks to get wherever ze’s going, and can use whichever items ze holds in zir possession, assuming they still work where ze goes. A traveler who employs astral travel, on the other hand, has some very different capabilities, both pro and con...
For astral travel, a person enters a deep trance, meditates zir consciousness outside of zir body, and projects that astral self toward zir destination. Normally, this requires Mind 4 or 5, although certain Night-Folk and talented Sleepers can do it too. As the physical body remains behind in a trance, the astral body flies off, attached to that body by the umbilicus argentus, or silver cord, that unites both body and consciousness.
An astral character can travel into the Periphery, journey through the High Umbra, or skim along through the material world if ze chooses not to go into the Umbra at all. Because ze’s consciousness, not a physical body, the astral voyager can fly as well as walk. In either case, ze cannot affect, or be affected, by physical beings — only by spirits or other astral entities (mummies, ghosts, astral travelers, etc.). For the cost of a Willpower point, ze can manifest in the material world for 1 turn as a hazy vision of zir idealized self. Even then, however, ze can’t interact with the material world except by using magick.
It’s worth mentioning that technomancers, even Technocrats, can still employ astral travel. To them, it’s not mystical — it’s a science, a technology of the mind in which one’s consciousness steps beyond this dimension and enters another one. Although such feats are beyond the reach of accepted Sleeper science (for now, at least), Enlightened scientists understand that the mind transcends the body. Though the concept of a soul might seem absurd, the techniques of astral travel are perfectly acceptable to technicians of the mind.
In game terms, a character who’s traveling astrally uses zir Mental and Social Attributes as zir Physical ones. Manipulation becomes Strength, Wits becomes Dexterity, and Intelligence becomes Stamina. Willpower takes the place of health levels, and so when an astral character suffers damage, ze loses Willpower points instead of health. Intelligence can soak Bashing and Lethal damage but not Aggravated damage, which attacks the mage on an essential level. If an astral character loses all of zir Willpower, zir silver cord snaps and ze winds up disconnected from zir physical body. Unless ze can catch the cord and ride it back home soon, ze’ll be lost. (See Going Adrift, below.)
Normally, an astral traveler cannot bring material possessions along with zir. The default astral form is naked, although the traveler can will imaginary clothing around zirself by spending a Willpower point to do so. (That’s not often a good idea, however; in astral travel, you’ll want all the Willpower you can get!)
Certain objects can follow the astral form if they have been metaphysically bound to the mage by a ritual and a Prime 2 Effect. In that case, the player spends a Willpower point and then rolls zir Arete, striving to get at least 5 successes. A successfully bonded object can travel into the astral realms as well, although if it depends upon complex physics to function (like a gun or computer), it probably won’t work. Theoretically, it’s impossible to do this with objects that have more mass than the mage zirself. The existence of certain astral devices, however — like ghost trains and phantom cars — makes that theory rather debatable.
At the Storyteller’s discretion, certain high-level Wonders — those with an effective Arete of 5 or higher — may have their own form of astral substance. In that case, a traveling mage might be able to take the Wonder with zir. An allied spirit or familiar can accompany the astral traveler too, if the character has the appropriate Background Trait. (See Backgrounds.) Otherwise, an astral traveler is on zir own.
Simple astral travel — the type you get from using Mind 4 alone — cannot push outside the High Umbra, Periphery, or material world. To go further, the traveler must employ the advanced Astral Sojourn ritual (Mind 4 or 5/Spirit 3/Prime 2).
This high-level act of magick allows a traveler to project zir astral form into any layer of the “living” Otherworlds. Entering a deep and helpless trance, the mage weaves a metaphysical body of light for zirself out of Prime energy, duplicating zir Earthly body out of ephemera and Quintessential force. Once that body is completed, the traveler can use it to step sideways, carrying the traveler’s consciousness with it.
In this case, the astral body has its usual Physical, Social, and Mental Attributes, as well as its usual health levels. If that body should lose all of its health levels, however, the body disintegrates and the consciousness finds zirself adrift in the Umbra... not an especially pleasant fate.
The mystic umbilicus argentus that connects an astral traveler to zir physical form is as strong as that traveler’s Enlightened Will. To snap it, an attacker has to break the traveler’s Will, either by reducing zir to 0 Willpower or by proving xemself superior through raw metaphysical force.
Snapping a silver cord is difficult. In game terms, it requires Mind 5 and a direct psychic attack aimed at disconnecting body and mind. In a resisted roll, the attacker tries to roll more successes than the target, with the target’s Willpower as the Difficulty of both rolls. Obviously, a strong-willed person can break that connection more easily on a weaker-willed opponent than xe could with an opponent whose Willpower is equal to, or greater than, xyr own.
A traveler whose astral cord gets snapped still has an astral form. By spending a Willpower point, ze can grab onto that fleeting silver cord and ride it back to zir physical body. Otherwise, ze winds up disconnected... and adrift.
An astral traveler who dies has a short time to find zir way back to zir body before the consciousness drifts and the body decays. In game terms, ze has up to 1 week for each point in zir permanent Willpower; after that, zir consciousness dissipates into the High Umbra and is essentially gone forever.
To find zir way back to zir body, the player for that drifting mage must make a successful Wits + Occult roll, Difficulty 9. Each roll reflects 6 hours of time spent searching. Various obstacles — Umbrood jailers, astral storms, and so forth — can interfere with this search, although because the consciousness has no body left to attack, ze’s essentially drifting around the Otherworlds.
To attract the attention of a drifting traveler, an ally back in the material world can set up an Astral Beacon spell in order to draw zir back toward zir body. Game-wise, this requires a Mind 2/Prime 2 Effect. The Beacon lasts 1 day per success, and it gives the lost traveler the ability to roll Perception + Occult (or Wits + Meditation, Perception + Meditation, or Wits + Occult, whichever is best) to find zir way home. That roll’s Difficulty is 9, minus the successes rolled by the ally; an ally’s roll of 4 successes, for instance, would give the traveler’s roll a Difficulty of 5.
If the traveler has the Totem or Familiar Background, then that entity can try to lead zir home. In this case, the traveler rolls Perception + the appropriate Background Trait, with a Difficulty of 9 minus the Background’s rating (Totem 3, for instance, would make the Difficulty 6). In all cases, the journey of a lost astral soul back to zir physical body should involve vivid narration and roleplaying that deal with the cosmic side of Mage and an Awakened person’s identity. (See Seekings, Telling the Story.)
A drifting soul with sufficient magick can try to possess a different body. In this case, the traveler needs to use a Mind 4 Effect and overcome the target’s Willpower. (See the Mind Sphere description in The Book of Magick.) If that body lives on the other side of the Gauntlet from the drifting traveler, then ze’ll need to be able to see xem (Spirit 2) before ze’ll be able to possess xyr form.
Unless ze uses Correspondence 2 to retain connection to the meat back home, an astrally projected traveler cannot sense the body ze has left behind. Hopefully, ze’s stashed it in a safe, secure location, protected by allies, wards, locked doors, and so forth. While the traveler’s away, the physical body remains vulnerable to pretty much everything. It continues to live in a biological sense but is effectively brain dead. If the astral consciousness gets lost, the body remains in a coma... and, unless there’s someone around to take care of it, eventually dies of thirst. (For rules, see Starvation and Thirst in the Environmental Hazards section.)
In many respects, astral travel remains an ideal method of exploration. Immune to the Avatar Storm, that astral self can fly from the physical world to the Penumbra, the Vulgate, and the High Astral Realms. A sufficiently skilled traveler (Mind 5) can even leap beyond the Horizon and venture into the Deep Umbra. Astral travel provides the natural way of entering the Maya and the primary method of entering the Digital Web. Unlike stepping sideways, astral travel is usually coincidental, too. Unless the traveler crafts a body of light, the only thing a witness would see is the traveler meditating in a deep trance. Still, such journeys have inherent hazards and limitations.
The hazards have been outlined above. As far as limits go, an astral traveler cannot explore the Middle Umbra beyond the Penumbra layer unless ze employs the Astral Sojourn method and creates a body for zirself from Quintessence. Ze can’t go into the Lower Umbra at all unless ze has, in a sense, died. And although ze may pass through a portal and enter a Horizon Realm in astral form, ze’s confined to the usual limits ze would have in the material world.
On a meta level, astral travel breaks the connection of that person as a united self. The mind and body clearly become separate entities during astral flight, and that fact can mess with the traveler’s head when ze comes back to zirself in the material world. In some regards, this cultivates the ideal of unattachment that certain mages and philosophers prize; on the other hand, it can leave a person feeling disassociated and remote. Having disconnected zir body and zir mind (possibly zir soul as well) from one another, that traveler may face existential questions that have no easy answers, in this world or any other.
And then there’s the place you have to be literally dying to get into. As mentioned elsewhere, a traveler to the Low Umbra must be dying or dead in some fashion in order to enter the Shadowlands. Even then, depending on the metaphysical situation, there might not be much to see there at all. Although it’s likely that the Shadowlands have been rebuilt over the last 13 years even if there had been a titanic Maelstrom, living mages might still be forbidden from entering the Dead Realms these days. Given the business with that spirit-nuke, it would certainly make sense to have the living barred.
A mage employing the Agama Sojourn ritual (assuming it still works) must pass through the Gauntlet using a combination of Entropy 4/Spirit 3/Life 2 for zir own passage — the Agama Re rite — or Entropy 4/Spirit 4/Life 3 in order to send someone else through and keep them tethered to the living world enough to return — the Agama Te rite. Considering that the Sojourn is a time-honored method of initiating Chakravanti mages (and, under other names, initiates from several shamanic cultural traditions as well), we recommend that Storytellers still allow the short, sacred initiatory experience to exist even if longer trips are no longer possible.
An Agama Sojourn essentially divides the mage’s soul between the worlds of the living and the dead, keeping zir body just alive enough for a return trip to material reality. Although there’s no silver cord connecting the two aspects of the traveler’s being (as there is in astral travel), the journeying character simultaneously becomes ghostly ephemera in the Shadowlands and a clinically dead (though not fully dead) body in the material world. As mentioned in The Worlds Beyond, it’s an extremely perilous trip, one many travelers can’t return from. That edge of danger remains a vital part of the Sojourn’s importance. If it was easy, after all, then it wouldn’t be the transformative event that it is.
That spiritual body — often referred to as the corpus — has 10 health levels and sometimes manifests features from the mage’s Avatar as well as zir physical self. Thus, a Sojourning mage might appear as a combination of zir familiar physical person and zir metaphysical Awakened Self... which can be a rather revealing and enlightening, if terrifying, experience.
Life Sphere magick means nothing to a corpus, as the traveler’s life remains behind in zir physical form. If ze suffers damage in that form, then, only Spirit 3 magick can heal it. True ghosts can sense that traveler’s spark of life with a Perception + Awareness roll (or, for Umbrood spirit beings, a Gnosis roll), Difficulty 6. That spark makes the traveler extremely attractive for all the wrong reasons. Certain ghosts will want to strike bargains with the traveler, some will try to eat or corrupt zir spirit, and some will try to destroy zir simply for being what they can never be again: alive.
Unlike living things, a ghost or corpus suffers no wound penalties; after all, ze’s got no physical body, and thus cannot be physically crippled. A traveler who loses all of zir corpus health levels, however, reaps two awful consequences: a permanent point of Jhor (death Resonance — see The Book of Magick), and a trip into a Harrowing.
Essentially an Underworld Seeking, a Harrowing brings up the traveler’s worst fears and then forces zir through a maze of horrors drawn from zir own psyche. Split into a helpless Avatar-self (robbed of most, if not all, of its most powerful features) and a naked victim self, the traveler confronts the embodiments of zir innermost nightmares, comprised of a tormentor self that comes from the mage’s repressed elements. Everything ze fears, hates, or tries not to recognize about zirself becomes part of the Harrowing. Through the course of this timeless torture, ze’s driven away from Ascension and towards despair. Unless ze drags up the most determined and yet compassionate aspects of zirself, that nightmare may consume zir.
System-wise, a Harrowing becomes a Seeking of the most intense kind that your troupe and boundaries allow. (See Seekings and Triggers, Limits, and Boundaries, both in Telling the Story.) Even if only one mage character’s involved, other players might take the roles of spectral tormentors in that ordeal. If the character can hold true to zir vision of integrity and Ascension, then both the Harrowing and the Agama Sojourn end with the traveler back in zir living body. If ze falters or fails, the player should roll Willpower, Difficulty 9. A successful roll brings zir back to zir body in a state of deep panic or despair, whereas failure brings zir back with 1 fewer point of Arete (after all, ze failed an important test), an additional point of Jhor, and possibly other lingering effects of that ordeal. (See Flaws in Merits and Flaws.) A botched roll at this point turns the character into an Oblivion-consumed monster — a Nephandus, possibly, or a demon-ghost spectre. Such a fate, however, should be inflicted only on a character whose soul is already in doubt and whose player seems ready to handle either losing zir mage or playing out the corruption. One bad die roll should not annihilate a character.
A mage on an Agama Sojourn brings nothing with zir. Whether or not this includes clothing is a Storyteller call, although ghosts do tend to manifest wearing either the clothes they died in or else some other significant garb, like a wedding dress or military uniform. In any case, those clothes are projections of the person’s self-image, not material items. They don’t have useful things in the pockets unless those items have been imbued with Entropic energies from an Entropy 3 Effect and then bound to the mage with a Prime 2 ritual as in the Astral Travel entry, above.
Although few mages can accomplish this feat, it is possible for an Agama voyager to move from the Low Umbra to the other layers. Doing so requires either powerful magick (Entropy 5/Spirit 5, plus the usual Agama requirements) that can open a gateway between the Shadowlands and the Middle Umbra, or a high-end astral projection (Entropy 5/Mind 5, plus the usual Agama requirements) that can take the dead consciousness up out of the Shadowlands and raise it into the Vulgate region of the High Umbra.
Note that only an Agama Sojourn voyager can cross between the Low Umbra and other layers. A Middle Umbra traveler or High Umbra astral visitor cannot cross down into the realms of death unless ze is already deceased. The only possible exceptions involve Shallowings, portals, and the World Tree, all of which — according to legend — can take a living person to the Realms of the Dead.
Self-recognition and a deepened understanding of morality are perhaps the greatest benefits of an Agama Sojourn. It’s a risky, morbid trip that leaves a part of the Shadowlands lodged within the traveler’s psyche. Since the Avatar Storm, that journey has also forced travelers to face the very real prospect of a permanent death. Unlike an astral traveler, a visitor to the Low Umbra has no protection from the Storm’s lashing winds. In fact, that Storm, if it still rages, may reach its most chilling aspects in the realm where it originated. The Underworld also imposes certain limits upon visiting mages and their Arts. For details, see Magick in the Otherworlds, below.
Even for successful voyagers, a trip to the Low Umbra is an ugly look at cosmic fatalism. With or without the Storm, a Harrowing, or other screaming horrors, such trips mark a traveler in ways ze cannot truly comprehend until ze has faced them and returned.
Optional Rules: The Avatar Storm
As revealed in previous chapters, metaphysical concussions from 1999 turn the passage between worlds into a danger zone for mages. The shredded Avatars of dead souls rip through the Patterns of human travelers. Although spirits and shapechanging monsters can apparently pass through the Gauntlet without trouble, mages who step sideways suffer devastating harm... and the more powerful the mage, the more severe that harm can be!
Does the Avatar Storm still exist, has it since subsided, or did it ever happen to begin with? That’s your call. If you choose to keep the Storm in force, however, the following optional rules apply:
- Shredding Winds: When a mage steps sideways into the Umbra, ferocious winds scour zir Avatar with the screaming fragments of lost souls. Even if ze merely reaches into the Umbra, this effect still applies. The player rolls zir permanent Paradox + Arete against Difficulty 6; each success inflicts 1 health level in Aggravated damage as the howling gales tatter zir ephemeral form and rip gashes in zir soul.
If your Storyteller decides that the Avatar Storm is receding but has not yet completely dissipated, that damage may be Lethal or Bashing instead. In either case, that damage is automatic unless the traveler has somehow insulated zirself from its effects.
- Bodily Protection: Magickal, and perhaps mundane, methods of protection from Aggravated damage might help a traveler soak the damage from the Avatar Storm. Life Sphere magick, technomagickally enhanced armor, protection conferred by Wonders, and so forth can all add to a character’s soak roll. Because the damage is metaphysical, however, it’s a Storyteller’s call as to whether or not normal armor will protect someone. Can Kevlar deflect raging soul-shards, or will they go straight through it? The answer depends on each Storyteller’s judgment.
- Gauntlet Spell Damage: A mage who tries to set a spell inside the Gauntlet — like a Spirit 4 ward — can still take damage from the Storm, as described above. An Effect that has been designed to penetrate the Gauntlet (like a Mind-based message) gets distorted while passing through the Storm; the Storyteller rolls the usual Shredding Winds damage dice based on the caster’s Arete, and each success removes 1 success from the caster’s original roll. (A 3 success Mind message, for example, that takes 2 levels of damage going through the Storm would have only 1 success left and would thus wind up distorted from its original intentions.)
Low-level Spirit Sphere Effects, like the ones that allow mages to see or contact spirits, remain immune to Storm damage or distortion, although mages who step sideways into the Umbra to use them suffer damage as usual. Also, Effects that travel only a short distance — say, a bolt of lightning cast from the physical world into the Umbra — arrive more or less intact; long-distance Effects, however, may be badly warped or often lost completely.
- Wonder Damage: Enchanted Wonder items take damage as well. In this case, roll the Arete of the object crossing the Gauntlet and apply damage as above. If that object takes more than double the object’s Arete, that Wonder gets destroyed by the Storm. A spirit bound into a Fetish might escape both the Storm and the Fetish unharmed... but if that spirit had been bound into the Fetish unwillingly, the mage might have a whole new problem on zir hands...
For details about Wonders, see the Background of that name and Wonders: Objects of Enchantment.
- Spiritual Immunities: Spirit entities, shapechanging Night-Folk, and unAwakened sorcerers remain unaffected by the Avatar Storm. Although passing through it hurts a bit — like an exceedingly hot or icy shower — such beings do not take damage from it the way that Awakened mages do.
- Astral Immunity: Travelers who employ Mind 4 or 5 to project their astral consciousness may bypass the Avatar Storm. This method, however, can access only the High Umbra — not Horizon Realms or the Middle and Low levels. Such travelers also have a silver cord connecting them to their Earthly bodies; if that cord gets damaged, the traveler is probably lost. (See the Astral Travel entry for details.)
- Paths of the Wyck: For the few people who can find and navigate them, the Paths of the Wyck remain free from the Avatar Storm’s effects. Those who stray from those Paths, however, may find themselves in the middle of the Storm... or worse, somewhere beyond the understanding of even the wisest of Verbena!
- Shield of the Soul: Mages with the Totem or Familiar Background may ask their companion spirits for a favor... the favor of taking them across the Storm without harm. In this case, the mage creates what’s called the Shield of the Soul (a Prime 3/Spirit 2 spell) between zirself and zir allied spirit. Successfully cast, this Shield disguises the mage’s spirit within the mantle of zir spirit friend. With that Shield in place, the mage suffers damage only from zir Paradox Trait, not from zir Arete. Naturally, the spirit in question must be favorably disposed toward the mage on both ends of that journey; if not, the results could be rather painful.
- Bridging with Blood: Speaking of painful, the abhorred Bridge of Blood ceremony (Spirit 4/Prime 3) forces a spirit to serve as protection. Offering up that spirit as a sacrifice, the mage essentially fakes out the Avatar Storm by filling the spirit with zir own Quintessence and then using it as a decoy while stepping sideways. System-wise, this requires a roll of at least 1 success for each point in the mage’s Avatar Background rating and puts all that mage’s Quintessence into the spirit before pulling it through the Gauntlet as a light snack for the Avatar Storm. Such behavior is considered extremely bad form and may put the spellcaster on the shit list for other mages as well as spirits allied with the unfortunate entity.
- Stormwarden: A rare but precious birthright, the Stormwarden/Quantum Voyager Merit — described in Merits and Flaws — reflects a total immunity to the Avatar Storm’s effects. See that entry for details.
- Peeling of the Soul: A botched roll while a mage steps sideways through the Gauntlet locks that mage in place — half in the material world, half in the raging Avatar Storm. That traveler remains stuck until some other party pulls zir through to one side or the other. Each turn that ze remains in this netherspace after the initial botch, the winds peel 1 point of Avatar away from zir Avatar Background Trait. If ze loses every point in zir Avatar Background, plus 1, then ze’s effectively Gilguled until and unless ze finds a way to heal zir spirit. The mage might be able to undergo a Seeking to retrieve the missing bits of zir soul, but until then, ze remains spiritually crippled from the Storm.
- Quiet: A mage who takes more than 4 health levels in damage from the Avatar Storm might have to make a Willpower roll or fall into a Quiet from the trauma. That roll’s Difficulty would be 3 + the amount of damage the mage suffered from the Storm. If ze drops to Incapacitated, the Quiet is automatic — a refuge from the horrific torment of zir soul. For details, see Quiet in The Book of Magick.
Roving Storms
Even if the worst of the Avatar Storm has passed into troubled memory, occasional Roving Storms roll through the Realms at various inconvenient times. In such moments, a roiling cloud of shrieking voices and tortured faces appears in the distance, flowing across the landscape and rearranging things into chaotic and often terrifying forms. For obvious reasons, anyone and everyone nearby should run for cover or suffer the consequences.
The full effects of getting caught out in a Roving Storm are left to the Storyteller’s twisted imagination, but they should include the usual type of damage (perhaps lowered to Lethal damage, for survivability’s sake), the potential for Quiet, and the certain annihilation of familiar landmarks in the Realm. An awful embodiment of metaphysical decay, the Avatar Storm — in all of its guises — upends expectations and tears predictability apart.
Portals, moon bridges, and other passageways allow a traveler to move from one place to another within the Otherworlds. Human travelers usually need spirit allies to open up moon bridge routes — such paths are not intended for human feet, especially not in the modern era.
If a voyager wishes to cross from the High Umbra into the Middle Umbra without a portal or bridge, then ze’ll need to either return to the Penumbra, climb the Pattern Webs, or else find and scale the World Tree (or Mount Qaf) that supposedly rises and descends between every layer of the universe.
In any case, a traveler to the High Umbra may rise only as far as the Courts and Afterworlds unless ze has taken astral form. A character who has stepped sideways or who’s risen up from the Underworld cannot ascend to the Spires or Epiphamies except through astral projection or the embodied Astral Sojourn form.
Scaling the World Tree or Pattern Webs is a rigorous, risky feat. Such a journey should be an adventure in itself, with various spirit critters (Pattern Spiders, titanic insect spirits, giant creatures, Bane spirits, etc.) interfering with the climb. Rules-wise, that feat should involve many Dexterity + Athletics and Perception + Cosmology rolls, with horrible penalties for failing or botching a roll — nightmarish falls, detours into other Realms, cosmic vertigo, and so forth.
The Worlds Beyond describes the legendary Midrealm, from which the Alder Bole, or World Tree, rises and spreads between all of the Three Worlds. Certain accounts also liken this Tree to Mount Qaf, the center of the universe, although Mount Qaf also supposedly resides within the Digital Web. (Damn conflicting metaphysics...) According to legends, a person can supposedly scale the World Tree and/or Mount Qaf. In order to climb them, however, mages first have to find them.
An intrinsically primal Realm to begin with, Midrealm might remain completely hidden from all but the most primal of travelers: shapechangers, shamans, witches, ascetic monks, religious primitivists, and other mortals whose ties to Nature remain untarnished by modern technology. In game terms, locating Midrealm requires an adventure, possibly begun with several Perception + Enigmas or Perception + Empathy rolls as the travelers read the vibe of their surroundings. IF (big if) those travelers manage to find the rainbow and step beyond its brightly colored borders, they might be able to climb the Tree (or, if it appears as Mount Qaf, the mountain) into other Realms and layers of the Umbra. Even then, however, they’ll be able to rise only as high as the Courts or sink only as low as the Shadowlands. The Tree might reach higher and lower than that, but mortals remain limited by their own innately flawed nature.
All layers of the Otherworlds defy normal geography. Their paths and landmarks shift in unpredictable ways, and traveling is more a matter of instinct than of memory.
In game terms, an Otherworldly traveler uses the following dice pools if ze tries to navigate zir way around these puzzling Umbrascapes:
(These methods of navigation differ somewhat from those presented in The Infinite Tapestry and The Book of Worlds. If you prefer, use the older systems instead.)
For other routes and methods of travel, see The Worlds Beyond and the Digital Web section.
Optional Rule: Verbena and the Old Roads
The Verbena Tradition was formed, in large part, because of the Paths of the Wyck. That group’s founders, Nightshade and William Groth, used those Old Roads to travel to unknown lands and bring back mages from distant regions. As a result, the Council of Nine was born, and so those Paths are considered a sacred inheritance to that Pagan Tradition. Trusted members (that is, people who have spent several years in the group and whose deeds have graduated them beyond initiate status) are told the secrets of the Path, which they swear to protect with their lives.
Thanks to the secrets handed down to them through the Tradition and its teachings, Verbena characters — and only those characters who have been trained by, and who’ve earned the trust of, the Verbena Tradition — may use Correspondence 1 in order to locate an entrance to the Old Roads near a Node. A successful Arete roll, used as part of a search for that entrance, can locate a Path if one exists in that area. The Difficulty of the roll, in this case, is the local Gauntlet rating, not the Difficulty of a coincidental Rank 1 Effect. It’s harder to find entrances in high-tech places, assuming that such entrances exist there at all.
In many areas, even around Nodes, there are no entrances to find. The Paths are elusive, especially in this age of diminished mysticism and technological dominance. Other Paths lead nowhere — a few yards, perhaps, before dead-ending in a tangle of thorns, a stone wall, or a cliff. It’s the Storyteller’s call as to whether or not the Old Roads found by a given character lead anywhere useful. Still, a very successful roll — one with 3 successes or more — should yield a Path of some significance.
As mentioned in The Worlds Beyond, the Old Roads can be found in, and can lead to, urban areas as well as wilderness. That said, they tend to favor primal nature over technological constructs. On many levels, it’s as if such Paths are living things that don’t want to be found except by their ancient caretakers, so again, this optional rule applies only to Verbena witches who have bound themselves to that ancient role and who can be trusted to protect those Old Roads from would-be trespassers.
Acclimation
In another optional rule rooted in the Reckoning metaplot, mages who spend time in the Otherworlds have to readjust, or Acclimate, to the material world after being away from it for a time. Until the traveler reorients zirself to Earthly reality, ze feels disconnected and awkward, as if ze were balancing between two worlds but not fully part of either of them.
In game terms, a traveler without the Umbral Affinity Merit suffers penalties to zir rolls when ze returns to Earth. Longer trips inflict higher penalties and greater recovery times, as shown on the Acclimation Periods chart. Full details about Umbral Affinity can be found in Merits and Flaws.
Before the Avatar Storm appeared, acclimation wasn’t really an issue. Even if the Reckoning metaplot doesn’t come into play, however, the Storyteller may impose a +1 penalty upon Earth-bound physical actions for several days after a long trip in the Otherworlds. Our world can be emotionally and physically disorienting when you’ve been somewhere else — physically, as on an extended wilderness hike; mentally, like being immersed in a long session of a roleplaying game; or spiritually, journeying through the Otherworlds — for a while.
Acclimation Periods
Journey Penalties Up to 1 Week None except for mild disorientation. 2 to 3 Weeks +1 to Difficulties for physical tasks; lasts 1 or 2 days. 4 to 5 Weeks +1 to physical Difficulties and +1 to the Difficulty of all Pattern magicks (Forces, Life, and Matter Spheres) for 1 or 2 days. 6 to 7 Weeks +2 to physical Difficulties for 2 days, lessening to +1 for a week afterward; +1 to the Difficulties of all Pattern magicks for 3 days. 8 to 9 Weeks +2 to physical Difficulties for 4 days, lessening to +1 for a week afterward; +1 to Pattern magick Difficulties for a week. 10+ Weeks +3 to physical task Difficulties for 4 days, +2 for an additional week, and +1 for an additional week after that; +2 to all Pattern magick Difficulties for 3 days, then +1 to those Difficulties for an additional week.
Unless they have shapechanger blood, human beings hold only tenuous ties to the Otherworlds. Over time, their ties to the material world begin to fade. A traveler who does not return home within a given period of time will grow increasingly disconnected from Earth, gradually becoming spirit-stuff. Once it happens, that’s a one-way trip. Many spirit entities supposedly began their existence as human beings who lost touch with their former lives and became roving Umbral denizens. (See Disembodiment and Void Adaptation in The Worlds Beyond.)
How long does that take? That depends on the travelers and the metaplot. In the days before the Avatar Storm, the average person could spend between 1 and 4 months in the Otherworlds, depending on their ties to the mortal world and the nature of their travels. Exceptionally primal mages, however, could wander the Spirit Wilds for up to a year without losing their ties to the material world.
In the Avatar Storm metaplot, the upheaval between worlds cuts this time shorter. If you use that metaplot element in your chronicle, then a traveler can spend up to three cycles of the moon (3 months) in the Otherworlds. After that, ze loses touch with zir old home and joins the Umbrood hosts, possibly becoming a strange phantom of zir former self. If the Avatar Storm did not happen, or if its effects have faded since that time, then the old rules for disconnection apply.
In Horizon Realms, this spiritual disconnection has been suspended. A person can live for years in a Horizon Realm and then return to the material world... a bit unsteady, perhaps, but still human. (See Acclimation Periods, above.)
In the Reckoning metaplot, however, the Avatar Storm severs ties between most of the Horizon Realms and Constructs outside material reality. Sealed off from their old world, the people in those Realms became disembodied spirits — still conscious, but no longer human, and exiled from the mortal world by the Avatar Storm. Presumably, their weird blend of Awakened mortality and Disembodied spirit essence leaves them vulnerable to the Storm, which does not normally affect spirit beings. In any case, these people have been lost. Now they populate the Ghost Realms, literally shades of their former selves.
Again, the truth behind the situation depends on your individual chronicle. Perhaps the Storm did come, did sever Realms from Earth, and their residents did wind up as spirit beings. Or maybe not — perhaps Horizon is still whole and the old Masters are still fully human. Maybe it happened and those people are lost, but new Realms have been built since then. Ultimately, the only way to know for sure is to find out for yourself.
Mages being mages, your characters will want — and often need — to use magick in the Otherworlds. Such Arts can vary wildly in their effects, depending on where the characters are, who’s doing what, and how they’re doing it. The specific rules for certain locations are too involved to feature in Mage 20, and can be found in the sourcebooks The Infinite Tapestry and Beyond the Barriers: The Book of Worlds. As simple guidelines for such situations, however, a Storyteller can use the following rules:
Being accustomed to the material world, most mortal visitors suffer a +1 Difficulty penalty to their attacks in the Umbra. Characters with the Umbral Affinity Merit don’t suffer this penalty, nor do characters who’ve spent a few days in (or have made several voyages to) the Otherworlds. By that point, they’re acclimated to the weird rules of the Umbra and its Realms.
Mages in the Otherworlds tend to reflect the nature of their magick, often shining or shadowed with the radiance of their Truest Self. In the Otherworlds — particularly along the passages between Realms, out beyond the Penumbra — a traveler looks like an exaggerated, idealized, version of the person that, for better and worse, ze is.
Echoes of Resonance manifest more obviously in the Umbrae, too. A vibrant and generous Hermetic magus may glow with cheerful light, making plants thrive simply by walking past; a dour priest, on the other hand, may slouch over his exaggerated crucifix, a perpetual scowl etched across his stony face.
Powerful mages radiate the aura of their strongest Spheres too, and almost everyone displays at least a hint of their affinity Sphere. A Forces-dedicated witch may crackle with electricity, while a Time-focused cyborg seems to flicker in place or move with clockwork precision. Such manifestations come through in roleplaying, narration, and general description, without hard-and-fast rules deciding their effects. In many cases, though, it’s easy to tell a lot about a traveler simply by looking at zir. Unless that traveler makes an effort to conceal zir true nature with magick, a successful Perception + Awareness roll will almost certainly reveal interesting details about who ze is and what ze does.
Traveling the Otherworlds
Gauntlet Ratings
Area Difficulty#1 Successes Needed Node 3 1 Deep Wilderness 5 2 Rural Countryside 6 3 Most Urban Areas 7 4 Downtown 8 5 Technocracy Lab#2 9 5 Notes
An area’s Gauntlet Difficulty may vary with time and circumstances; a dark alley on Halloween night might have a Gauntlet of 6, while a rigidly cultivated garden at noon could have a Gauntlet of 8.
- #1 = If using the Technocratic victory metaplot, add +1 to the Gauntlet Rating when in industrial culture zones, whether or not the Avatar Storm is still in force.
- #2 = Treat as a Node when using Dimensional Science.
Methods of Travel and Navigation
Method Spheres Stepping Sideways Spirit 3 or 4 Astral Projection Mind 4 or 5 Astral Sojourn Mind 4 or 5/Spirit 3/Prime 2 Agama Re Entropy 4/Life 2/Spirit 3 Agama Te Entropy 4/Life 3/Spirit 4 Climbing Entropy 5/Mind 5/Spirit 3 Region Dexterity + Athletics High Umbra Usual Dice Pool to Navigate Lower Umbra Intelligence + Cosmology or Enigmas Middle Umbra Perception + Cosmology or Survival Old Roads Perception + Enigmas or Survival World Tree Perception + Cosmology
As a general rule, all forms of mystic magick are coincidental in the Umbra as a whole. Certain Realms, however, may be more or less attuned to certain paradigms, accepting one type of magick as coincidental (say, High Ritual Magick) while rejecting others (like Weird Science or Martial Arts) as vulgar.
In the High Umbra, technomagick tends to be as coincidental as mystic magick is. Science and technology, after all, are products of rarefied thought. In the Middle Umbra’s Spirit Wilds, on the other hand, technomagick is often vulgar, and fails completely in the Aetherian Reaches. Again, certain Realms flip that around, recognizing technomagick (or at least certain forms of it, anyway) as coincidental while rejecting mystic practices as vulgar.
As for the Low Umbra, techomagick tends to be vulgar there, while primal, ritual, and sacred magick is coincidental. Perhaps the disastrous effects of the spirit nuke added a spectacular Paradox Effect on top of the usual conflagration...
Certain Spheres work better or worse in the Otherworlds than they do in the material world. Although the following guidelines may not apply in various Realms, they hold true for most of the Umbra at large:
As an overall rule, assume that most rules, within the Otherworlds, are optional. The unpredictable nature of the Otherworlds remains one of the few predictable constants in the notoriously inconstant Realms beyond Earth’s material reality.