History Tabletopgame / MageTheAwakening

* '''The Scelestus:''' Servants of the Abyss, the aforementioned magic-destroying realm, who want to bathe the world in evil forever. The game's AlwaysChaoticEvil faction.

** ''Imperial Mysteries'' makes them even more Eldritch-as it turns out, the Supernal Realms are a WorldOfChaos as well, with the five being general ''types'' of subrealm that emerge-an archmaster venturing there literally needs to force it into a form he can understand simply to survive (the Watchtowers do this during Awakening). Since it contains the platonic forms of everything, doing ''anything'' there causes the Fallen World (called the Phenomenal World by archmasters on the basis that the question of it not naturally being in this state becomes legitimate) to change (an example has an [[HighPriest Alienated]] trying to restore the Supernal god of Justice ''accidentally'' rewriting history so that Roman mystery cults survive to the modern day as a major religion, though he swears to fix it).

** ''Imperial Mysteries'' makes them even more Eldritch-as it turns out, the Supernal Realms are a WorldOfChaos as will, with the five being general ''types'' of subrealm that emerge-an archmaster venturing there literally needs to force it into a form he can understand simply to survive (the Watchtowers do this during Awakening). Since it contains the platonic forms of everything, doing ''anything'' there causes the Fallen World (called the Phenomenal World by archmasters on the basis that the question of it not naturally being in this state becomes legitimate) to change (an example has an [[HighPriest Alienated]] trying to restore the Supernal god of Justice ''accidentally'' rewriting history so that Roman mystery cults survive to the modern day as a major religion, though he swears to fix it).

** This is actually part of a pact that archmages have among themselves, called the Pax Arcanum-given how they can do things that would cause a {{Physical God}} to JawDrop in disbelief, they need it to protect continued existence of the universe. Unfortunately, this also protects the [[DarkMessaih Aswadim]]...

** ''Imperial Mysteries'' reveals Qliphopth, failed archmasters who have had their soul hollowed out and replaced with the lies of the Abyss, effectively turning them into [[GunnerkriggCourt Zimmy]]. About the only thing archmasters agree on is that killing them [[MercyKill is a kindness]].

** Dr. Lynden Chambers is a kind, albeit creepy, old mage with a PhD in Art and History who works in the Boston Athenaeum. He is always happy to help out a mage with any information he/she might require and constantly offers invitations for dinner to simply talk. [[spoiler: He is also a nihilistic abyss-worshipping scelestus whose touch can read your past like a book or corrode any object.]]

* CosmicRetcon: The Seers of the Throne believe that the Exarchs of Time and Fate, the Prophet and the Ruin, went back in time and prevented Atlantis from ever existing. How successfull they were depends on your GM.

** The Harper family, either a clan of inbred rednecks or inbred {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s, their ancestor made a deal with something nasty from the Abyss. Seems to be the only case in the entire [[strike:game]] World Of Darkness setting where the humans making the deal weren't screwed over or eaten, [[spoiler:in fact from their perspective it's never cost them anything they valued.]]
* DeityofHumanOrigin: The Oracles and Exarchs.
* DemonicPossession: Why [[strike:Goetic]] all summoning magic is not a good thing.

* Don'tSummonAnythingBiggerThenYourHead: For the love of god DON'T! Half the creatures in the Sourcebook for Summoners are either toxic, madness inducing, undead monsters that can't be confirmed to of ever lived, Cthulu-Esque creatures from the Abyss, Creatures incapable of understanding the fallen world from the Supernal, extra-dimensional monsters that exist to lobotomize people. One of the only SAFELY summonable entities just drops some rare items out of the sky...oh, but you have to [[HumanSacrifice burn someone alive to call them up.]] There ARE instructions on summoning spirits, ghosts, and Cryptids (Weird creatures from other universes that act like spirits and are implied to exist due to mortal belief), which are somewhat safer...but still potentially dangerous without the right precautions.

** [[strike: Some Most]] Almost all of the Abyssal intruders in the ''Intruders: Encounters With The Abyss'' sourcebook have these traits.

** Anyone [[strike:suffering from]] casting The Final Spell of Eli Ben-Menecham, is intentionally making themselves being completely incapable of not being JerkAss.

** Most conflicts within the Mage community, (excluding anything involving Seers, Demons, the Abyss or mere Spirits) tend to be because almost every [[strike:Order, Cabal]] Mage acts like a KnightTemplar whenever anything compels them to interact with other Mages.

* SexIsEvilAndIAmHorny: ''The Unbidden'' features Franklin High, a school under a persistent enchantment by a (now deceased, [[KnightTemplar thankfully]]) mage who wanted a return to the sexual and moral purity of his youth in TheFifties ([[NostalgiaFilter stop snickering]]). The classes under it's effects become idealized HappyDays-esque students, with a dislike of premarital sex, polaymorous behavior and [[MoralDissonance homosexuality in any form]]. The ''problem'', of course, is that the same hormones the enchantment represses are ''kinda'' vital to the development of the mind. 90% of the time, the alummni find passive outlets for that bottled passion (if creepy-it takes the form of the Fixation Derangement, meaning that the individual alummni literally ''cannot stop thinking'' about it). The other? Oh, nothing, it just screws up the KarmaMeter so that sexuality-related sins rank up higher than what would normally be there-like say, ''[[SkewedPriorities murder]]''. And let's not get started on ''actual'' homosexuals...

* SquishyWizard relative to the other three gamelines.

* TragicMonster: If there's a Seer-made monster about, odds are he's this (the [[SuperSoldier Myrmdions]] are {{Punch Clock Villain}}s forced into becoming minions of the Praetorian Ministry, [[MysteriousWatcher Grigori]] are brainwashed ghosts enslaved to an artifact, and [[BlankSlate Hollow Ones]] have had their individuality and memories destroyed. [[CaptainObvious Seers are not nice people]].

*** The Paternoster itself is more of a ReligionOfEvil. But uses paths of inspiration to manipulate muggles.

* AGodAmI: Anyone with Gnosis 10 and anything less then saintly Wisdom will practically say these words. To an extent it's the goal of every single Mage to say these words and have magic to back it up.
* AlienGeometries: Some of the Supernal Realms all of the time and all of the Supernal Realms some of the time.

** the Crossways, False Demenses, the Halfway Houses, The Nemesis Continuum, the Temple of Zanak Khan and Twisting Mazes all thrive on this, all of them being cases of Abyssal intrusions afflicting Space and geography (and dreams in the case of the Temple of Zanak Khan) instead of the more common forms of Abyssal intrusion.

Now the Mages seek to find lost arcane secrets, prevent the Abyss from further corrupting Earth, act as {{Badass}} mage cops, find magic in normal life, and rebuild the ladder to the Supernal. They are thwarted by Abyssal demons, servants of the Exarchs, those Mages who made it the Supernal, and pretty much everybody in the World of Darkness.

''Mage: The Awakening'' is a tabletop RPG made by White Wolf. It is part of the ''TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness'' line. The story goes that long ago people all over the world had dreams that brought them to Atlantis. Once there they got the ultimate spirit quest that enlightened their souls and gave them magic powers. Thus the [[TitleDrop Mages Awakened]]. Unfortunately, the good times soon ended: Mages wanted to get to the Supernal World, the source of all magic. To achieve their plan they built an enormous ladder that they sought to travel the gap between worlds. This ended badly. After some Mages made it to the Supernal the ladder broke, destroying the connection between earth and the Supernal and thus magic, and replacing it with an evil, magic-destroying realm called the Abyss. Atlantis fell, and the rest is history. Literally.

* TheMultiverse: ''Mage'' has the widest array of defined otherworlds of all the TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness lines, giving it reason to bring in some of the other lines. There's the world proper, of course. Then there's the [[WerewolfTheForsaken Shadow Realm and intervening Gauntlet]], and while not portrayed on the multiversial map in the corebook, there are numerous mentions of ghosts and their home plane, [[GeistTheSinEaters the Underworld]]. Spirits and ghosts can appear in the world proper in the state of Twilight, immaterial and invisible. The Abyss stretches around these three (technically four) planes and attempts to blockade the five Supernal Realms.

''Mage: The Awakening'' is a tabletop RPG made by White Wolf. It is part of the ''NewWorldOfDarkness'' line. The story goes that long ago people all over the world had dreams that brought them to Atlantis. Once there they got the ultimate spirit quest that enlightened their souls and gave them magic powers. Thus the [[TitleDrop Mages Awakened]]. Unfortunately, the good times soon ended: Mages wanted to get to the Supernal World, the source of all magic. To achieve their plan they built an enormous ladder that they sought to travel the gap between worlds. This ended badly. After some Mages made it to the Supernal the ladder broke, destroying the connection between earth and the Supernal and thus magic, and replacing it with an evil, magic-destroying realm called the Abyss. Atlantis fell, and the rest is history. Literally.

* FiveRaces: As usual in the new WorldOfDarkness. The innate FiveRaces deal with which Supernal Realm the Mage visited when he Awakened. The social splats deal with what he does now that he's got his Phenomenal Cosmic Powers.

* {{Metaplot}}: Averted, as with the rest of the new WorldOfDarkness.

* TheMultiverse: ''Mage'' has the widest array of defined otherworlds of all the WorldOfDarkness lines, giving it reason to bring in some of the other lines. There's the world proper, of course. Then there's the [[WerewolfTheForsaken Shadow Realm and intervening Gauntlet]], and while not portrayed on the multiversial map in the corebook, there are numerous mentions of ghosts and their home plane, [[GeistTheSinEaters the Underworld]]. Spirits and ghosts can appear in the world proper in the state of Twilight, immaterial and invisible. The Abyss stretches around these three (technically four) planes and attempts to blockade the five Supernal Realms.

* {{Atlantis}}: the original home of Mage society.
** However, it's heavily implied that Atlantis (which should be more accurately called "The Awakened City", as a) Atlantis is just a Greek name for it, and b) there is far too much FanDumb about the use of the name) was not a nice place at all; a powerful society that subjugated other weaker ones and enforced its hegemony.

* ContinuityNod: Played with; the [[AncientConspiracy Seers of the Throne]] offered to join with the [[PostModernMagik Nameless]] and form a [[MageTheAscension Technocracy]] to rule the world. The Nameless disagreed violently, and became the Free Council.

* GothicPunk: Less so than the old [[MageTheAscension game]], but still present in places.

** Also part of the appeal of the Seers after their {{Sourcebook}} came out-they aren't as powerful as the [[MageTheAscension Technocracy]] was, but they're twelve times as evil-it specifically mentions that their plans for the world require them to make it ''as oppressive and helpless as possible''.

* TheVirus: Dark Angel Aphasia [[spoiler: (a contagious Aphasia)]], Blood Worms [[spoiler:(think vampire tapeworms spread by vampires but supernatural)]], Abyssal Spiders [[spoiler: (invisible brain stomping DemonicSpiders)]], the Lethean [[spoiler:(a memory eating demon)]], Ractain Strain when infectious [[spoiler:(bizarre ugly humans that carry a bizarre disease when they experience life threatening situations)]], Flesh Intruders [[spoiler:(Donor Organ rejection taken to the extreme)]] the Oath Of Ruin [[spoiler:(an inbred clan of rednecks that carry Abyssal genes)]]... Essentially half of the entries in the Intruders sourcebook.

--->[[LampshadeHanging "Note Important Capital Letters. Mages Use Lots Of Capital Letters."]]

* SexIsEvilAndIAmHorny: ''The Unbidden'' features Franklin High, a school under a persistent enchantment by a (now deceased, [[KnightTemplar thankfully]]) mage who wanted a return to the sexual and moral purity of his youth in TheFifties ([[NostalgiaFilter stop snickering]]). The classes under it's effects become idealized HappyDays-esque students, with a dislike of premarital sex, polaymorous behavior and [[MoralDissonance homosexuality in any form]]. The ''problem'', of course, is that the same hormones the enchantment represses are ''kinda'' vital to the development of the mind. 90% of the time, the alummni find passive outlets for that bottled passion (if creepy-it takes the form of the Fixation Derangement, meaning that the individual alummni literally ''cannot stop thinking'' about it). The other? Oh, nothing, it just screws up the KarmaMeter so that sexuality-related sins rank up higher than what would normally be there-like say, ''[[JaywalkAndDie murder]]''. And let's not get started on ''actual'' homosexuals...

* SexIsEvilAndIAmHorny: ''The Unbidden'' features Franklin High, a school under a persistent enchantment by a (now deceased, [[KnightTemplar thankfully]]) mage who wanted a return to the sexual and moral purity of his youth in TheFifties ([[NostalgiaFilter stop snickering]]). The classes under it's effects become idealized HappyDays-esque students, with a dislike of premarital sex, polaymorous behavior and [[ButterMilkEggsSquick homosexuality in any form]]. The ''problem'', of course, is that the same hormones the enchantment represses are ''kinda'' vital to the development of the mind. 90% of the time, the alummni find passive outlets for that bottled passion (if creepy-it takes the form of the Fixation Derangement, meaning that the individual alummni literally ''cannot stop thinking'' about it). The other? Oh, nothing, it just screws up the KarmaMeter so that sexuality-related sins rank up higher than what would normally be there-like say, ''[[JaywalkAndDie murder]]''. And let's not get started on ''actual'' homosexuals...

* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve: Less prominent than in the previous Mage iteration, but still evident in the rules for Paradox. While Paradox is ultimately ''caused'' by a flaw in the structure of the universe, the subconscious disbelief of non-Mage humans can aggravate its effects.
** To be more accurate, the Disbelief in question isn't a Muggle not believing in magic so strongly that it can make a spell go poof. It's a flaw in the structure of the Sleeping soul caused by the shard of [[CosmicHorror The Abyss]] that every [[{{Muggle}} Sleeper]] has.
** It's also possible for mages to learn magic according to mundane belief systems, which can provide numerous benefits.