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The Watchtowers

The mystical realms that allow humans to Awaken.

    Awakened in general 
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Tropes applying to all Mages:

  • Atlantis: The "Awakened City", which is what the legends on Atlantis were based on in the New World of Darkness, was the place where Mage society was born.
  • Cast from Hit Points: One of the ways a mage can recover mana involves taking it from his own body, which either results in losing dots of physical attributes for 24 hours or inflicting themselves lethal damage. Each temporarily lost dot or lethal damage point inflicted to themselves allows them to recover 3 mana.
  • Enlightenment Superpowers: Humans become mages when they go through the titular Awakening, which is a point in their life where they realize the full extent of reality, allowing them to learn how to perceive and manipulate its fabric.
  • Familiar: Many mages end up having a connection to a spirit, ghost or Goetia who serves as their servant, either appearing as a disembodied ephemeral being or an animal.
  • Functional Magic: Magic in this game is split into ten Arcana, which each covering a form of magic: Death, Fate, Forces, Life, Matter, Mind, Prime, Space, Spirit and Time. Each Mage Path has two Arcana it is good at using, and one with which it lacks affinity. Finally, their magic abilities and spells are roughly classified in four categories:
    • Improvised Spells, which are basically mages coming up with spells on the spot. Unlike the other categories, Mages do not need to learn them in order to use them; as long as he has the proper Arcana, a Mage can improvise any spell on the list. However, they tend to cost more Mana and be less safe to use.
    • Rotes, which are spells designed by master mages to be used in conjunction with their mundane skills (such as using their knowledge in science to better cast a spell meant to control electricity, or their social skills to make telepathy more effective) and then taught to their students. They are easier to cast as a result, and can be easily passed on.
    • Praxis, spells used so often by a Mage they become like a second nature to them. While harder to cast than Rotes, they tend to be more effective when successful (which translates gameplay-wise as easier exceptional success).
    • Attainments, which aren't exactly spells, but more like abilities a Mage develops as he increases his mastery of the Arcana. Unlike spells, they do not need to be cast, and usually are either passive of reflexive.
  • Healing Factor: Awakened can spend mana to heal wounds faster by reversing their Cast from Hit Points ability. It's rather weak compared to most supernaturals however, as they have to spend 3 mana to heal 1 bashing or lethal damage.
  • I Know Your True Name: Knowing the true name of someone gives a mage the ability to locate him anywhere on the planet and use magic on him from a distance. Because of this, most mages come up with aliases known as Shadow Names to protect themselves.
  • The Magic Touch: By default, Awakened spells require to touch the target physically in order to work. It is, however, possible to throw them manually at the opponent or spend a Reach to affect an opponent from a distance.
  • Mana: Obviously; in this case, it refers to the energy from the Supernal World they use to cast some of their spells.
  • Mana Shield: Each Mage has access to at least one "Mage Armor" Attainment, allowing them to use an Arcanum as a mean to protect themselves against attacks at the cost of 1 Mana.
  • Our Mages Are Different: They are humans who went through an event known as the "Awakening", causing them to realize the full extent of their potential and perceive the very fabric of reality, which they can then learn to manipulate. The practice of Magic originated from Atlantis, and with the exception of the relatively recent Free Council, the various mage orders started out there in some way. They get their power from another place called the Supernal World, where the various realms each grant a different kind of magic. Finally, they cannot use their powers in a way too flashy or obviously out of the ordinary in front of regular people, or reality will react badly and cause their spells to fall apart in often spectacular ways.
  • Squishy Wizard: When compared to other supernaturals in the New World of Darkness. Mages have much more power than beings like vampires or werewolves, but physically they are still one-hundred percent humans, so they lack any form of super-strength or enhanced durability unless they use spells designed to grant them these, and, safe for Life Mages, their Healing Factor is very costly in Mana; if you manage to get around their magic, they can be killed as easily as any human. Enforced further in the second edition, where the Attributes no longer factors in a spell's dicepool, meaning a Mage character is likely to neglect his physical Attributes. Note, however, that this only applies when compared to other supernaturals; in terms of human abilities, it's perfectly possible for a mage to be in good physical shape and skilled in hand-to-hand fighting in addition to their magic. Moreover, they do have a Supernatural Trait, meaning they can eventually raise their Attributes and skills above the human limit, unlike Hunters.
  • Super Power Lottery: Mages have the biggest one of all the gamelines; whereas creatures like vampires or werewolves are limited to the powers they actually buy with experience points, an Awakened can potentially cast any spell of the list provided in the main book, as long as he has the matching Arcana; the spells he buys are just much easier for him to cast. Even a starting Mage potentially has access to dozens of spells, and that's without counting the Attainments. Of course, this huge power is considerably limited by the fact they cannot do something too obviously supernatural without risking a Paradox.
  • True Sight: All Mages have access to a a power known as "Mage Sight", which passively lets them sense when something supernatural is occurring nearby (an ability known as "Peripheral Mage Sight") and can be activated to allow them to see everything around them through the scope of their Arcana, thus revealing hidden information about them.
  • Words Do Not Make The Magic: While Mages do use incantations in High Speech when casting spells, the actual power comes from their connection to the Supernal; the High Speech itself is little more than an optional Power Crutch that makes the spell more reliable, but is useless to Sleepers and other non-mages.

    Acanthus 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pathacanthus.png

Enchanters and Witches on the Path of Thistle, who Awakened to the Watchtower of the Lunargent Thorn in the Realm of Arcadia, Acanthus mages tend to be easygoing, sometimes to the point of carelessness, due to their grasp of Fate and Time magic — it's hard to be worried when you've seen what's going to happen and you can tweak the dice so you know it’s going to work. However, the magic to which they're born is subtle, and they have little ability when working with overt Forces. Associated with the Fool (XXII) Tarot.


  • Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster: Befitting people who can instinctively check the future, most Acanthus seem carefree or even foolish because they already know they're in no actual danger. Most of them are proud invokers of The Trickster, and indeed that's how most of them Awoke.
  • Arcadia: Their Supernal Realm. Word of God says this is not the same one in Changeling: The Lost; it runs on the same storybook logic and legalese, but the inhabitants are infinitely more human and generally nicer. There were some 1E hints that, this being a realm of Fate shaped by the power of thought and belief, the Others are quite literally forced into a nicer role while the Awakening is going on, but the canonical answer is that Changeling Arcadia is, at most, an imperfect reflection of Supernal Arcadia.
  • Curse Escape Clause: One of their Fate Attainments allows them apply this to their spells. This actually has a practical use, as it makes it easier for them to prolongate the duration of the spell; the easier the condition needed to break the spell instantly is, the longer they can make it last as long as said condition isn't fulfilled.
  • The Fool: Their Tarot card, and a popular stereotype of the Acanthus. After all, when you can hit rewind and play with fate, who needs to worry or plan ahead?
  • Magically-Binding Contract: Fate allows them to seal contracts with their spells, which among other things allows them to know when the contract is broken, grant a boon to those who follow it and inflict a hex to those who break it.
  • Manchild: They have a reputation as the most capricious of the Awakened, and frequently decried by their detractors are "childish" and "immature". See Apparently Powerless Puppetmaster above to see how much of this is true.
  • Time Master: Time is one of their major Arcana. With sufficient mastery, they are capable of casting a spell on your past or future self.
  • The Trickster: Very frequent among them. Acanthus favour those who rely on illusion, glamour, luck or benign trickery to make their way. They also are meant to represent the "Trickster" type of Mages despicted in celtic myths, such as Enchanters and Merlin.
  • Seers: Given they have affinity for both the Time and Fate Arcana, they obviously have the ability to see the future (as well as the past, for that matter). Interestingly, this actually is one of their most basic abilities; at higher levels, they influence or even reshape it.
  • Winds of Destiny, Change!: Their other major Arcana is Fate, whose power tend to heavily rely on the manipulation of luck and probabilities. At sufficiently high levels, they are capable of manipulating any organized pattern to get a wide variety of results through the Butterfly Effect.
  • Older Than They Look: They frequently look younger than their real age, both because they tend to be more attractive and child-like than other Awakened and because the Time Arcana can allow them to slow down their aging.

    Mastigos 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pathmastigos.png

Warlocks and Psychonauts on the Path of Scourging, Scions of the Watchtower of the Iron Gauntlet in the Realm of Pandemonium (Hell), the Mastigos tend to be driven and intense. Their ability to use Mind and Space magic to twist their enemies' paths and thoughts alike make them dangerous foes, but their abilities focus on the intangible and impermanent, making it hard for them to affect Matter. Associated with the Devil (XV) Tarot.


  • Alien Geometries: With use of the Space Arcanum and a bit of creativity, a Mastigos can change how spaces are connected, distort their internal dimensions, or add new dimensions by "stacking" them on top of each other.
  • Bigger on the Inside: Thanks to their mastery over Space, they are quite capable of using Alien Geometries to create an area that contains more space than it should. This means they can essentially build their Sanctum in a small appartment barely big enough for more than one person, and then use their magic to make it as spacious as a palace.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Pandemonium and its residents superficially have a lot in common with the Fire and Brimstone Hell, but it's about self-knowledge and gaining strength through adversity rather than suffering for its own sake.
  • Guile Hero: When they aren't Manipulative Bastards. Mastigos prefer to reach their goals through subtle and indirect means rather than using any form of magic that would be too blatant.
  • Hell: Their Supernal Realm... with the caveat that it's a temporary prison for souls undergoing purification, with the demons being more like prison guards and (brutal) therapists than anything.
  • Manipulative Bastard: They have a reputation for being this; after all, it's all too easy to abuse your power when that power is to read and control people's minds and to spy on anyone. While this reputation isn't entirely deserved, they are pretty good at being this.
  • Mind Probe: One of the most common uses of the Mind Arcanum is to get inside the opponent's head.
  • Mind Rape: A perennial favorite offensive power, to the point where Warlocks are stereotyped as being a tad trigger-happy with the mindwipes.
  • Space Master: One of their two major Arcana is Space.
  • The Spymaster: They can read minds, use telepathy for long-range communication or secret conversations, watch people from a distance, and cast on people without even being in front of them, making them spectacularly good as spies and assassins.
  • Surveillance as the Plot Demands: A not-necessarily villainous variant; Space covers the ability to "scry" people which consists in summoning a window to watch someone from a distance. Using this ability, they are capable of watching anyone from a distance as long as they have some form of sympathetic connection with them.
  • Sympathetic Magic: The concept behind one of their Attainments; using Space magic, they can affect anyone from a long distance as long as they have a body part, object, or name belonging to the intended target. This is part of what makes them such spectacular spies. All they need is a random object or lock of hair belonging to the person to spy them at any time. And if you are powerful enough (Seer Prelatus or Archmage), not even that.
  • Telepathy: One of the many abilities the Mind Arcanum gives them access to is to communicate telepathically and read minds.
  • Teleportation: Space covers a wide array of abilities allowing them to teleport. Earlier spells merely allow them to cover more ground when walking, go through obstacles or cause two locations to overlap, but by Space 4, they become capable of rewriting their location in space, allowing them to fully teleport to any place with which they have sufficient sympathy.

    Moros 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pathmoros.png

Necromancers and Alchemists on the Path of Doom, visitors to the Watchtower of the Lead Coin in the Realm of Stygia (The Nothing After Death), Moros are often (though not always) dour and stern. They have dominion over Death and Matter, following the archetype of Pluto or Hades. Both of these things are dead and lifeless, though, and Moros have difficulty learning the ways of the Spirit. Associated with the Death (XIII) Tarot.


  • Alchemy Is Magic: They are frequently associated to Alchemy in addition to Necromancy, due to their obsession over transitions and transformations. Their second major Arcana, Matter, focuses on manipulating and changing non-living matter as a whole to reflect this.
  • Animate Dead: The Death Arcanum can be used to re-animate dead bodies as zombie thralls, which can then be used as minions.
  • Anti-Magic: A Master of Death can kill active spells.
  • Casting a Shadow: The Death Arcanum covers spells that allow the caster to manipulate and control shadows. This includes turning into a living shadow or creating physical constructs of darkness.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: They have mastery over the Death Arcanum, which covers ghosts and shadows, they are called the Path of Doom, and their Supernal Realm is Stygia, the realm reflecting death, but they're no more or less prone to abuse their powers than any of the other paths.
  • Expy: To the Euthanatos from Mage: the Ascension, who likewise favored the Death arcanum and had solemn attitudes.
  • I See Dead People: One of the most basic abilities granted by the Death Arcana is to see and speak with Ghosts. At higher levels, it can also be used to fight them, control them or enhance them.
  • Mundane Utility: Moros who have a good enough mastery of the Matter Arcanum usually don't suffer financial problems, as they can easily create fortunes of gold and gems with minimal effort.
  • Necromancer: A common nickname for the Moros. Fitting, considering the powers granted by the Death Arcana are primarily oriented toward the control of, well, death.
  • Younger Than They Look: While they don't particularly age faster than their peers, they do tend to look older than their age as a side effect of their entropic magic. It probably doesn't help either that many of them sleep only a few hours each night so they can dedicate more time to their research.
  • Soul Power: The Death Arcanum covers the concept of Soul as well, meaning Moros have power of them. Including the ability to take away someone's soul.
  • The Stoic: They have a reputation of being rather sour, stern and taking almost every matter very seriously. This isn't always true, however, as some are known for their Gallows Humor.

    Obrimos 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pathobrimos.png

Theurgists and Thaumaturges on the Path of the Mighty, Scions of the Watchtower of the Golden Key in the Realm of the Aether, the Obrimos tend to be devout and fervent. They often believe that they were granted their magic by some deity or deities, and have power over the Forces of the natural world and the Prime ways of magic itself. However, as creatures so filled with life and power, they have little tie to the powers of Death. Associated with the Strength (VIII) Tarot.


  • Anti-Magic: All Mages have the ability to dispel and counter spells, as long as they know how to use at least one of the Arcana used in the spell. But since the Prime Arcanum grants power over raw magic energy itself, Obrimos can use it to counter or dispel any type of spell, even those whose Arcana they have no knowledge of.
  • Arrested for Heroism: Sadly quite common. Catholic Obrimos who believe they got their powers from God and use them to perform miracles or heal people are frequently targeted by the Malleus Maleficarum, who see them as misguided pawns of Satan and think they can only be redeemed through torture and execution.
  • Belief Makes You Stupid: Obrimos find this trope a very strange idea. The Creator, whatever he/she/it/they may be, set unchanging, eternally-true physical laws in place, so why wouldn't someone use the scientific method to puzzle them out? This isn't to say there aren't atheist Obrimos, but even they admit that it's quite possible to see spiritual beauty in the interlocking systems of the world. Truly knowledge-adverse ones tend to be Banishers, i.e. certifiably insane.
  • Beneath Notice: One Prime spell allows a Mage to hide his Aura and look just like a Muggle to foes relying on magic-detecting abilities to spot Mages.
  • Comes Great Responsibility: They very strongly believe they should use their power to fight the good fight and fulfill their mission. Unfortunately, some of them have a terrible idea of what exactly the good fight is.
  • Elemental Powers: Of the five kinds of Mages, the Obrimos wield these as some of the most overt forms of magic. The Force Arcana grants them power over light radiations, gravity, fire, sound and electricity.
  • Expy To Mage: the Ascension's Celestial Chorus and Order of Hermes, both of which favor the same arcana as the Obrimos.
  • Fantastic Light Source: Light is one of the elements covered by Forces, so obviously Obrimos have no problem using magic to create light sources when needed.
  • Knight Templar: Not all of them thankfully, but at their worst, the Obrimos can be dogmatic and fanatical.
  • Light Is Good: What they usually represent. However, they also can be...
  • Light Is Not Good: Despite their strong association with Angels and Light, as well as their overall very flashy magic, Obrimos can go wrong just as quickly as the next. By example, there's an Obrimos Legacy whose members are addicted to prying people's souls out of place and taking a peek at what's hiding underneath.
  • Mana: One of their major Arcana, Prime, allows them control over the very fabric of magic itself. This can be used for a wide array of abilities, such as manipulating Ley Lines, creating magic artifacts, countering spells, writing down Grimoires or runes that can only be read with Mage Sight, and building objects out of pure Mana.
  • Mind over Matter: Among the many powers covered by the Forces Arcanum are telekinesis and levitation. These can be used both to manipulate objects and to attack, either by enhancing your blows with kinetic force or by crushing something telekinetically.
  • Mission from God: Not necessarily God, as some might think their magic came from multiple Gods, Nature, or even just the Universe itself, but Obrimos typically believe they received it from some kind of higher power in order to fulfill a role. This can be quite confusing for those among them who were atheistic before their Awakening.
  • Religion is Magic: They are the most strongly associated with religion, frequently believe they got their abilities from God or a similar entity, and some of the nickname given to them, such as Theurgists and Thaumaturge, typically are associated with religion.
  • Technopath: Since the Forces Arcanum grants power over electricity and radiation in general, this actually covers plenty of spells useful for interact with modern technology. Noteworthy mentions include the abilities to trigger and power machines indefinitely and to listen to radio emissions.

    Thyrsus 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/paththyrsus.png

Shamans and Ecstatics on the Path of Ecstasy, who Awakened to the Watchtower of the Stone Book in the Realm of the Primal Wild, the Thyrsus are wild, primal, and passionate. Their ability with Life and Spirit magic makes them strong and gives them many allies among beasts and spirits alike, but this magic is wild and untamed and limits their ability to work with the Mind of another. Associated with the Moon (XVIII) Tarot.


  • The Beastmaster: The Life Arcanum grants power over all life forms, including animals. One of the most basic abilities granted by it is to talk to animals.
  • Don't Think, Feel: Their inferior Arcana is Mind, which represents their preference for intuition rather than intellect.
  • Druid: Thyrsus are the closest thing to the archetype in this universe; they are a category of mages whose powers are the most oriented toward nature, and this does cover the ability to turn into animals.
  • Expy: To Mage: the Ascension's Verbena and Dreamspeakers, both of which favor the same arcana as the Thyrsus.
  • Extra-Dimensional Shortcut: The Spirit Arcanum grants them the ability to go through the Gauntlet and travel to the Spirit World the same way werewolves do— meaning that just like them, they can enter the Shadow, walk to the place matching their intended location, then return to the world of flesh, effectively making it look like they are teleporting.
  • Genius Bruiser: Since they usually travel a lot and spend time in the wild, they tend to have very strong physical attributes. They still are mages, however, so intelligence is a given.
  • Green Thumb: Everything natural is covered by the Life Arcana, including plant life.
  • Healing Factor: Their Improved Pattern Restoration Attainment allows them to heal more easily using Mana than most mages, using 1 Mana to heal either 2 bashing damages or one lethal damage.
  • Healing Hands: The Life Arcanum include the ability to heal, both themselves and others. At high level, it can even be used to regrow lost limbs.
  • Long-Lived: Their mastery over life mean they tend to live longer than the average person, often increasing their lifespan from 30 to 130 years.
  • Ludd Was Right: Averted. Most Thyrsus don't have a problem with civilization; and an entire Legacy of Shamans, the Neocologists, devote themselves to uniting the natural and the artificial. That said, there are Thyrsus apostates that are hostile to civilization.
  • Mind Hive: How they perceive the world; as far as they are concerned, people aren't truly individual, they are colonies made up of cells and spirit working together as a community. This is the main reason they have a hard time mastering the Mind Arcana— they have a hard time seeing people with one consciousness each.
  • Nature Hero: They have affinity for the Life and Spirit Arcana, both being connected to nature in some way. Thyrsus usually are the closest thing to shamans and druids in this universe.
  • Nature Is Not Nice: The Thyrsus embody both nature's beauty and its brutality.
  • Unkempt Beauty: Living in the wild and focusing on events in the Shadow leave them little time to waste on things like make-up or fashion, so they tend to not bother too much with these. However, their magic makes it easy to stay in good physical shape, so they frequently are fairly physically attractive anyway.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: The Life Arcanum at high level can be used to shapeshift organic matter, meaning they can use it to turn either themselves or other people into animals or different people, or trigger bizarre mutations. They can even use it to create new species entirely.

    The Sixth Watchtower 

The Mage Chronicler's Guide mentions reports of Mages awakening to a Supernal Realm unknown to traditional Atlantean cosmology: a world of elemental forces that move with purpose and alien intelligence, called Djinn. These forces can be bargained with— and for those who follow this Path, coerced into doing the Mage's bidding. Mages of the Sixth Watchtower have power over Forces and Spirit, but lack control over Prime.


  • Elemental Powers: The Sixth Watchtower specializes in Forces.
  • Sixth Ranger: If implemented by the Storyteller, the Sixth Watchtower can serve as this.

The Pentacle Orders

The intended playable factions of mages, the Pentacle represents a somewhat unsteady alliance between the Diamond, four orders that trace their lineage back to the days of Atlantis (or so they claim), and the Free Council, a more disparate grouping of those who hold to different world views. They oppose the machinations of the Exarchs and thusly the dominion of the Seers of the Throne, driving them to understand the mysteries of the Awakened World and perhaps find a way to start bringing down the Lie.

    Adamantine Arrow 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/orderadamantinearrow.png

The Adamantine Arrow are an Order of warrior-wizards, claiming descent from the Ungula Draconis (Talon of the Dragon) of ancient Atlantis, who served the City of the Awakened as both an army and a police force. They seek the spiritual purity of a warrior's code and the drive to act, especially for the greater benefit of the Pentacle Orders. Their philosophy boils down to five precepts: Existence is War, Enlightenment is Honor, Adaptability Is Strength, The Supernal is the Self, and Service is Mastery.


  • Boxing Lessons for Superman: One of the credos of the Adamantine Arrow is that you should be at the peak of human physical and mental prowess before you even use your magic — that way, the apex of your capabilities is even higher, and it leaves you with more options if a situation renders your magic inappropriate or unavailable.
  • Colonel Badass / Majorly Awesome / Four-Star Badass: Adamant Sages and Banner Wardens are just as deadly in open combat as the lower-ranked Talons, as the order believes every general must be able to take on the role of a grunt when needed.
  • The Fettered: To their vows. Every Adamantine Arrow is under at least one oath, which they take extremely seriously. Getting one to break a sworn oath is like trying to chisel through solid concrete with a broom handle.
  • Honor Before Reason: The Arrow's devotion to their vows can be just as much of a bane as a boon.
  • I Gave My Word: Vows are Serious Business to the Arrow.
  • Magic Knight: The ideal Arrow mage is proficient with both mundane and magical methods of war.
  • The Paladin: The archetype the Arrow invokes, albeit in a contemporary version.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: They believe this is an ideal to achieve; the very first precept of their creed is "Existence Is War", meaning conflict — not necessarily violent conflict, mind you — is the basic state of all existence (fire wars with wood, for example, gravity with electromagnetism).
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Vidanti ("the Shunned") are Arrows who have given up fighting, most often due to trauma from combat. While the order considers them outcasts and advise lower-ranked Arrows not to listen to them, this rule is not strictly enforced, and Vidanti can often serve as informal sources of advice... save for matters of morality.
  • War Is Glorious: Or at least an honorable war is glorious.
  • Warrior Monk: Most Arrows are known to live simple and austere lives.

    Free Council 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/orderfreecouncil.png

The youngest of the Pentacle Orders, the Free Council is a disparate conglomeration of assorted heretics and agnostics who reject most if not all of the Atlantean doctrine that so defines the rest of the Pentacle. The Free Council was born in the wake of the Nameless War, a period in the early 19th century when the Atlantean Orders rose up and fought for doctrinal supremacy with assorted cabals of "Nameless Orders", lesser beliefs and cults, mostly dedicated to finding the Supernal truths underlying human cultures and beliefs. Defeated but still defiant, the Seers of the Throne approached the Nameless Orders and offered to unite with them, an offer that the Nameless violently rejected. This impressed the Atlantean Orders enough that they formed a formal truce, and thus the Free Council, and the Pentacle, was born. Even to this day, the Free Council is still considered as being where the "rejects" of the Awakened go, with little to unite them beyond the three precepts of the Council's charter of unity: Democracy seeks the truth; hierarchy fosters the Lie, Humanity is magical; human works have arcane secrets, and Destroy the followers of the Lie.


  • Arch-Enemy: While nobody in the Pentacle is exactly fond of the Seers, the Free Council take it to extremes. Who did you think "The followers of the Lie" were supposed to be?
  • Berserk Button:
    • The Seers of the Throne. Being compared to the Seers of the Throne. Being accused of collaboration with the Seers of the Throne. They really don't like the Seers of the Throne, to the point where their Badass Creed specifically identifies the Seers and people who act like them as worthy only of obliteration.
    • Harming Sleepers in other ways is also a reliable way to raise their ire. Left-Handed Legacies that focus on harming other mages can often pass relatively unnoticed among the Libertines, as long as their abilities are predominantly used on the Council's worst enemies (such as Banishers and followers of the Exarches), but those who empower their magic by harming Sleepers are given much the same treatment as Seers (i.e. viciousness followed by death).
  • Enemy Mine: Technically speaking, the Free Council started out in bad terms with the Diamond, and were on the verge of going at war with them when the Seers of the Throne approached them. The Great Refusal completely reversed the situation and turned them into allies, resulting in the Pentacle Orders being founded.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes: This was their status in First Edition. None of the Atlantean Orders precisely liked the Free Council, mostly on account of their irreverent dismissal of Atlantean tradition, obsessive love of modern technology and their (in the Diamond Orders' eyes) naive commitment to democracy. Nearly every public statement the Atlantean orders made about the Free Council was a dismissal or an insult. However, they despised the Seers of the Throne with a passion that exceeded even the Atlantean Orders and were actually the source of a lot of honest-to-goodness new magic in a society previously choked by stagnation, so they were accepted as grudging allies by the Atlantean Orders and the Pentacle holds. In Second Edition, their relationship has been revised. The Free Council is a fully accepted order that has a reasonable amount of respect from the Diamond, although disputes still occur and not everyone has a glowing opinion of them.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: They love technology as much as they love magic.
  • The Heart: To a certain extent they serve as the moral compass of the Pentacle Orders, by virtue of being more in touch with Sleepers and modern values such as tolerance and democracy. Many members of the Free Council hope that the foundation of the Pentacle is a first step in improving the Diamond.
  • The Idealist: Foremost among the Free Council's unifying features are its commitment to democratic ideals and its dreams of modernizing Mage society.
  • Magitek: Council Mages are fond of combining modern technology with traditional Atlantean magic. This can sometimes verge into territory considered heretical by the Atlantean orders.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: They get... creative with Seers they capture, and are often willing to overlook Black Magic when the practitioner is using it to hurt Seers.
  • Post Modern Magick: This is at the core of "Humanity is Magical", one of their mottoes. To them, the Supernal conforms to human culture rather than the other way around, hence why they're great with Magitek, but also why they're the Order most influenced by the culture around them (to the point where they're more of an allied Sect with a common organizing principle than a conventional Order). In fact, in 2E, they have a Merit representing their ability to have Sleeper acolytes assist their magic, knowingly or not.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill Muggles: One of their key principles, stemming from "Humanity is Magical". They probably won't execute you if, for example, the local Serial Killer's house coincidentally catches fire when you're nearby, but Left-Handed Legacies that persecute the Sleepers can expect no mercy from the Libertines.

    Guardians of the Veil 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/orderguardiansoftheveil.png

Claiming descent from the Visus Draconis (Eye of the Dragon), an order of secret police and spies that preserved the internal stability of Atlantis, the Guardians of the Veil are still agents of conspiracy, deceit and misdirection. In the modern age, though, they act this way because of their belief in both magic's potential for great danger and because they believe that great good can only come if there are those willing to sacrifice their own virtue to defend it. This makes them one of the most hated of the Pentacle Orders, barely seen as better than Seers or Banishers in the eyes of many, forcing them to rely on a mixture of blackmail, manipulation and intimidation to do what needs to be done. Their three defining precepts are simple: Paradoxes strengthen the Abyss as punishment answers pride, Sins for a just end grant Wisdom to the Awakened, and Merit must rule the Fallen World.


  • Anti-Hero: By far the most morally grey of the Pentacle Orders; being in charge of spying and watching over security, Guardians of the Veil consider it their duty to risk their Wisdom and cross lines when the other Orders are unable to do so.
  • Comes Great Responsibility: Their attitude towards magic; the Guardians of the Veil believe that magic demands high responsibility, and as such only people with the necessary virtues and qualities should be allowed to Awaken. As such, they put great work in ensuring people with these qualities will Awaken while those without them won't.
  • Everyone Has Standards: Their willingness to use anything, including Left-Handed magic, to protect Awakened society does not extend to attempting to speed the arrival of the Hieromagus. Eschatonics - people who try to sculpt Awakenings to create the perfect mage, bring about doom in order to hurry the Hieromagus along and the like - can expect a rough time of it when the other Guardians figure out what they're doing.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes: None of the other Orders like the Guardians (in First Edition, they and the Free Council were the only orders with negative stereotypes from everyone else - and, due to their secretive bent and the Council's philosophy of optimism and openness, they didn't get on well with each other either), but their work keeps Paradox from tearing reality apart, so they let them go about their business.
  • Hypocrite: Their approach to Left-Handed magic. The Guardians will eliminate Scelesti, Reapers and the like in other orders when found, but tend to keep their own Left-Handed heresies screened until they become too public, because Black Magic is a useful tool in the Guardians' approach.
  • Knight Templar: Part of the reason nobody likes them; an unpleasantly high number of Guardians have taken their work too seriously.
  • Necessarily Evil: They believe that all their actions are for the good of the Pentacle Orders. That doesn't make them feel any better.
  • No Place for Me There: Many Guardians believe in a "Hieromagus" - a messianic figure who will close the Abyss. Not only will the Hieromagus not be a Guardian, but once they've dealt with the whole eldritch space of destructive universes thing, they will judge the Guardians for their sins.
  • Screening the Call: The Guardians of the Veil maintain what they call the Labyrinth, a gigantic network of various seemingly unrelated secret societies which they use to watch over the world and look for people with the potential to Awaken; using it, they push people they feel deserve magic to complete their Awakening, while hiding it from those they feel do not. However, another part of their bad reputation is that quite a few Guardians have used the Labyrinth to build cults of personality around themselves.
  • Secret Police: For the Pentacle. They are in charge of watching over Awakened in general to make sure they don't abuse of their powers. Thanks to the Labyrinth, they also usually are the first ones to notice Awakenings and provide recruits for the other Orders.
  • The Spymaster: Their function, both in the time of Atlantis and today.
  • The Unfettered: In contrast to the extremely fettered Adamantine Arrow. There is no line a Guardian will not cross, no oath they will not break, all in the name of defending magic and the Pentacle.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: They're a rare kind in that they acknowledge this: "Sins for a just end grant wisdom to the Awakened."

    Mysterium 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ordermysterium.png

Born from the remnants of the Alae Draconis (Wings of the Dragon), the Mysterium are the scholarly order, dedicated to locating, recovering, preserving and safeguarding all magical knowledge in the world. Particularly emphasis is placed on the "safeguarding" part; magic is too rare, and too dangerous, to just hand out freely. Their fundamental precepts are perhaps the simplest to understand; Knowledge is Power, Knowledge must be Preserved, and Knowledge has a Price.


  • Adventure Archaeologist: One function of the Mysterium, particularly of the Archaeomancer faction. The Mysterium are the order the most inclined to travel and explore new areas in the hope of uncovering new magic and knowledge.
  • Badass Bookworm: They are mages focused on knowledge, so this was to be expected.
  • Fantastic Racism: Of all the Diamond Orders, their creed is the most uncaring towards Sleepers, even a little contemptuous (since Sleeper interaction provokes Pancryptia, the tendency for magic to obscure itself). Because of this, they have no small contingent of Sleeper haters, such as the infamous Jnanamukti.
  • Higher Understanding Through Drugs: They use special hallucinogens in their Initiation Ceremonies, briefly allowing mages to experience and understand magic in ways that can't quite be explained. The mystical effects are a function of the ritual; other drugs or contexts don't provide the same benefit.
  • Magical Library: Athenaeums are a smaller-scale version of this; they are storehouses packed full with grimoires and magical items.
  • Reduced Resource Cost: As the Pentacle's dedicated lorekeepers, they have a unique version of the Library merit, the Athenaeum. Every dot of Athenaeum provides two dots towards Library or Scriptorium.
  • Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: They do recognize that there are a lot of magical tidbits that need to be locked away from people for the good of everyone. This is one of the reasons why they are very stringent about making it difficult for people to access their archives.
  • Wizard Classic: The Mysterium is the order most likely to invoke this, what with their academic bent and time spent studying magic itself.

    Silver Ladder 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ordersilverladder.png

Without a doubt the most arrogant and ambitious of the Pentacle Orders, the Silver Ladder claims to be the inheritors to the Vox Draconis (Voice of the Dragon), the priests and viziers of Atlantis. Their philosophy is boiled down to a set of four precepts that they call the Elemental Precepts: Diamond (The Awakened are one nation), Thunder (Imperium is the right of humanity), Star (The Silver Ladder is the path to victory) and Blood (The Sleepers follow).


  • Benevolent Boss: As the Precept of Blood and Thunder make clear; Sleepers may be inferior to mages, but that is because they have been wounded, denied the right to the Imperium Mysteriorum — the Sovereignty of Mysteries. In the belief system of the Silver Ladder, no force has any right to control human destiny, making the Lie an obscenity. Sleepers must be guided, but that guiding is towards healing and growth. The ultimate goal of the Silver Ladder is to raise as many Sleepers up to the ranks of the Awakened as is possible.
  • Comes Great Responsibility: This is why the Silver Ladder aren't just the Seers in different hats: they believe that while they should rule Sleepers, this is supposed to work to the benefit of all, while the Seers genuinely could not give less of a shit about anyone but themselves.
  • Fantastic Caste System: An unusual variant. The Silver Ladder's iconography preaches that there is a natural order to things, and that one should accept one's place. However, their belief system is also meritocratic; what they preach is that you should honestly understand yourself, your capabilities and your limitations, and you should reach as high as you can successfully go. Birth doesn't matter, ability matters, and whilst Awakening does display higher levels of ability, there's still a hierarchy beyond that.
  • Hidden Depths: Free Council mages who rage against the "tyrannical" Silver Ladder might be surprised to learn that it was the Silver Ladder's European Convocation who urged the other Atlantean orders to recognize the Free Council.
  • Humans Are Bastards: Defied. One of the Silver Ladder's core tenants is that humans did nothing to deserve the Exarchs stealing their magic and locking most humans away from their true potential.
  • The Leader: Their typical role.
  • The Magocracy: Oftentimes, Ladder mages are leaders in a Consilium. Indeed, as described in the 1st edition corebook, this is essentially what they want to bring back; mages ruling over the Unawakened, though without that pesky Lie getting in the way.
  • Secretly Earmarked for Greatness: Since there's no reliable way to Awaken someone to magic, they identify promising candidates, secretly nudge their lives towards experiences that might inspire an Awakening, and welcome them to mage society if they succeed.
  • Super Supremacist: An interesting variant. While the Silver Ladder's philosophy teaches that the Awakened are superior to the Sleepers, this is because they believe that Awakening is the fundamental birthright of humanity, stolen from them by the Exarchs. The Sleepers are less than the Awakened, and so in an ideal world nobody should have to continue as a Sleeper.
  • Ãœbermensch: The Sage, their ideal person-all the wisdom of the Stag (self-limiting moral belief systems) guiding the power of the Lion (amoral ambition with the charisma to back it up).
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Ladder's problem is that they can fall into this all too easily: When your own moral beliefs scoff at the idea of self-limiting when it's not directly beneficial to anyone, it's not hard to make the intuitive jump to Utopia Justifies the Means.

The Seers of the Throne

The primary hostile mage faction, the Seers are mages who have sworn themselves to the service of the Exarchs, the Supernal Symbols of Tyranny whom the Pentacle accuses of having created the Abyss and the Lie in their pursuit of all-governing power. Their governing precepts are simple and direct: Conquer the Watchtowers, Control Magic, Divide Humanity, Destroy the Pentacle, Enslave the Gods, Protect Humanity, and Regulate the Abyss.

    Seers of the Throne in general 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/logoorderseersofthethrone.png

  • Ancient Conspiracy: The Exarchs have been around since the beginning of time as we know it, clandestinely bending the course of history towards their design.
  • Better Living Through Evil: One of the standard temptations they offer is to make you filthy stinking rich. Of course, all those resources remain under their control, and can be withdrawn the moment you let them down...
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Downplayed. The Seers are fully aware that they serve the transhuman gods of oppression, but many of them do try to justify their behavior to themselves, claiming that the Exarchs are a Necessarily Evil to maintain order, that their form of oppression is ultimately just, or simply too powerful to fight.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: The whole reason the Seers aren't a lot more powerful and the Pentacle's job isn't a lot more difficult. Every single member is not only allowed, not only expected, but actively encouraged to screw each other over career advancement opportunities. At one point this led to a bout of infighting so destructive that it almost wiped out the Seers, and the only thing that's preventing it from happening again is the honour system.
  • Les Collaborateurs: Make no mistake— there is no altruistic reason for working for the Exarchs that is not a product of willful ignorance or delusion. The Seers ultimately care about themselves more than anything else.
  • Decadent Court: The Seers are just as preoccupied with backstabbing one another as they are with fighting the Pentacle Orders. This is why they are not as powerful as they want to be.
  • Demonic Possession: An artifact common among particularly loyal Seers is the Profane Urim, an object which they can use to mind control people from a distance even if they don't normally have access to the spell and Attainment needed.
  • Despotism Justifies the Means: They maintain the Lie that keeps the masses of mankind un-Awakened because they believe only they deserve the power. Each Ministry in general is dedicated to controlling and oppressing Sleepers by some mean.
  • Dirty Coward: It's not universal, but many of the Seers just think the Exarchs are too strong to fight and join because they want to be on the winning side.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Even the Seers despise the Abyss and its servants, and regard those among them who serve the Gate, Exarch of the Abyss, as madmen and potential dangers. This is also partly Pragmatic Villainy, since the Abyss wants to devour the world— and Seers want to rule the world, not destroy it. They will also reluctantly cooperate with the Pentacle in order to root out Banishers; the Seers want magic under their control, and Banishers, being unpredictable and murderous, don't fit into that model.
    • It's mentioned in the first edition corebook that some Seers cabals despise the ones that use Profane Urims to enslave people.
  • Evil Counterpart: To the Pentacle Orders.
  • Evil Is Easy: At their core, the Seers are ultimately Selfish Evil, lazy, and entitled jerks who do not actually care about the Exarchs as a whole. They just attach themselves to the poisonous power structures the Exarchs embody because it takes less bravery, self-knowledge, and ultimately independent thought than the Pentacle Orders' own desire for freedom and understanding.
  • Evil Sorcerer: While mages in general can often go wrong, the Seers' dogma is unique in that them becoming power-hungry, ruthless manipulators is things working as intended.
  • Expy: Zig-zagged with regards to the Technocracy. Like the Technocratic Union, the Seers are a global organization of mages who uphold The Masquerade to maintain stability. Unlike the Technocrats, there's no noblesse oblige about this; just about every Seer abuses or exploits the sleepers they're "safeguarding".
  • Fantastic Racism: While Diamond Mages do not necessarily hold Sleepers in high regard, the Seers of the Throne definitely are worse in that area, treating humanity as little more than resources and toys to exploit, often in nightmarish ways.
  • Nebulous Evil Organization: Arguably the biggest one of the game.
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Sometimes they present themselves as protectors of humanity from dangers of magic. However, considering they serve Supernal symbols of Tyranny and Oppression and are willing to do anything in their services (they use rape as Oblation, enslave Sleepers and Sleepwalkers and then transform them into their tools, cause wars, bigotry, pogroms, etc), that is not the case.
  • Promoted to Playable: The second edition explicitly allows them as playable characters.
  • Propaganda Machine: The records they keep of their own History are filled with propaganda and contradictions made to make the Diamond look bad and the Exarchs justified. Among others, they like to pretend that, if the world really was as described in the myths about Atlantis, then Atlanteans mages hold magic irresponsibly and were risking tearing reality apart, while the Exarch brought order to a chaotic world.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Of the "Played straight for horror" version. The fundamental nature of the Seers can be neatly summed up in the phrase "The Banality of Evil". They're not the Nephandi, taking a personal delight in the ruining of the world. They're simply too apathetic to try and challenge the Exarchs; the things they do aren't personal, it's just the way the world works, and at least they're benefiting from their place in the chain of events.
  • Status Quo Is God: Or Gods, in this case. The Exarchs are functionally gods. When they seized power in the Supernal Realms, they Retconned reality to separate humans from magic to prevent any usurpation. Through various means including the Seers of the Throne, the Exarchs constantly strive to keep things that way.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill Muggles: Comprehensively averted. The Seers' sole moral guideline towards Sleepers is "Don't spook the herd". They have an entire Ministry devoted to perpetual warfare, regardless of the human cost.

    Hegemonic Ministry 
Servants of the Unity, Exarch of control through nationalism, the Hegemonic Ministry uses government, political ideologies and nationalism as a way to divide and conquer humanity. Once, they were the most powerful Ministry: however, time and the changing world have reduced them to a weakened husk, with little power in most of the world.
  • Evil Counterpart: To the Silver Ladder. The Ladder wants to raise humanity to their level and create a social order where individuality is prized, but not at the expense of the group. The Hegemons want people to think of themselves as a faceless mass whose only purpose is to serve their nation and its amoral leaders.
  • Government Conspiracy: Their modus operandi.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Hegemons' attempts to control the world through Big Government have ended up screwing them over twice.
    • When they tried to turn governments into all-encompassing entities, it opened them to Pentacle infiltration, which let the Atlantean Orders turn the Seers' favored weapon against them.
    • In the 19th century, with the Ministry weakening, the Tetrarch attempted to get the Nameless Orders to join the Seers. Most of the Nameless rejected the offer, resulting in the birth of the Free Council. The resulting Nameless War struck the Ministry a crippling blow from which it never quite recovered.
  • Obstructive Bureaucrat: One of the two kinds of people attracted to the Hegemons.
  • Vestigial Empire: Once, they organized the Seers into the cold, stable bureaucracy they are now. Today, they're being eaten alive by Mammon, which serves an Exarch who isn't even native to the same Supernal Realm as their patron.Explanation 
  • We Can Rule Together: Extended this offer to the Nameless Orders. The Orders said no. Well, technically they said a lot more than "no", and then things started exploding, but "no" was in there somewhere.

    Ministry of Panopticon 
Servants of the Exarch known as the Eye, the Ministry of Panopticon believe in control through surveillance. Making extensive use of surveillance technology, they try to manage everyone through conspiracies and secret polices.
  • Big Brother Is Watching: And unlike other examples, they want you to know it, since a scared populace is a gullible populace.
  • Conspiracy Theorist: They love these individuals. There's few better puppets for spreading hopelessness in the face of the powerful.
  • Evil Counterpart: To the Guardians of the Veil. While the Veil watches to ensure the safety of the Awakened world and remove all threats to it, the Panopticon watches to foster paranoia and distrust among Sleepers.
  • Panopticon of Surveillance: Well duh. They are a group dedicated to watching everything, and are named after a Panopticon. In addition, their headquarters is a panopticon.
  • Secret Police: Their concept in a nutshell; a Ministry focused on watching over all Mages and Sleepers as a way to monitor them and ensure their rule.
  • Sinister Surveillance: Their means of control. They can use Grigori to spy over everyone in their territory, and their Prelates have a unique Attainment granting them a Weak Sympathetic Connection even to people they should have no Sympathetic Connection with- meaning they can theoretically cast spells from a distance on anybody, and thus scry whoever they want. Not only that, but this Attainment also allows them to bypass Anti-True Sight, meaning they usually know about all the Mages and supernaturals present in the areas they watch.

    Ministry of Paternoster 
Servants of the Father, Exarch of control through faith and religion, Paternoster is made of zealots trying to reinforce dogma and bigotry as a way to control people, all while squashing the more positive aspects of religion and faith.
  • Believing Their Own Lies: Unlike the rest of the Ministries, who are in it for the power, the Paternoster Seers genuinely believe that they are doing the right thing — they believe once all Supernal truth has been scoured from the world, the Exarchs will transform it into a utopia.
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: Paternoster uses the trappings of Christianity to distinguish themselves from the other Ministries, although their object of worship is less Crystal Dragon Jesus than Crystal Dragon Demiurge.
  • Evil Counterpart: To the Mysterium. The Mysterium seeks to uncover and preserve occult truths to be found by people who want to find them, and prize the concept of individually finding enlightenment. The Paternoster wants to destroy all occult truth except for what they personally have, and blindly follow the dogma handed down to them from the Exarchs.
  • Have You Seen My God?: The current Apotheosian, or Great Minister of Paternoster, has had no contact with his patron Exarch in a long time. This is somewhat shameful, as he is the only one who has had this problem. His predecessor, an actual avatar of the Father, left an artifact as a means of communing with the Father. The Apotheosian has tried to use it to no avail, and he's asked every question of it save for one: "Father, why have you abandoned me?"
  • Knight Templar: Paternoster's Seers are absolutely devoted to their creed and their patron Exarch, the Father.
  • Path of Inspiration: The Ministry creates them to deceive Sleepers, believing that the one true religion should belong to the Awakened (read: the Seers) alone.
  • Religion of Evil: They worship the Exarchs, the tyrannical god-kings that caused the fall of Atlantis, and generally work to use faith as a an instrument of control over Sleepers.

    Praetorian Ministry 
The Servants of the General, Exarch of control through violence, Praetorians are brutal demagogues and warriors, priest-soldiers who espouse war as a dehumanizing meat-grinder.
  • Colonel Badass / Majorly Awesome / Four-Star Badass: Like the Arrow, the Praetorians have excellent fighters at every rank.
  • Divide and Conquer: Their modus operanti; they work maintain Sleepers into conflicts with each other to keep them from uniting and distract them with conflict so they won't Awaken.
  • The Evil Army: They work for the Seers, and serve an Exarch trying to promote violence and conflict as a mean to control people, so yeah, not the nicest people.
  • Evil Counterpart: To the Adamantine Arrow. The Arrow uses conflict to spur on personal growth and to protect people; the Praetorians use it to oppress Sleepers. This causes the Seers mixed feelings; they think Arrows are throwing themselves away for the "greater good", but feel a bit jealous and ashamed in contrast.
    The very act of bearing witness to earnest heroism can be painful for a sell-out.
  • Made of Iron: Their Prelates get an Attainment allowing them to use their Mage Armor for free instead of spending the usual Mana, meaning they can indefinitely maintain protection against one form of attack and switch to the adapted one during a fight at no cost, making them really hard to take down.
  • War Is Glorious: For them, at least. Played with in that they reject the idea of noble, honorable warriors— to them, war is primarily a tool of the Exarchs, a grinding machine meant to keep humanity divided and weak.
  • War Is Hell: When warfare becomes an affair of atrocity after atrocity, the fear and pain created makes a potent barrier to enlightenment. As such, Praetorians encourage such a state of affairs where they can.

    Ministry of Mammon 
Not part of the traditional four Great Ministries, the Ministry of Mammon serves the Chancellor, Exarch of Matter, by using the corporate world to control Sleepers. They are the most prominent Lesser Ministry, competing with the weakened Hegemonic Ministry for ascendancy.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: They're awakened examples, using the coperate world to suppress sleepers. For now, they're a Lesser Ministry...but as companies start to become more powerful then states and empires, they're rising up rapidly.
  • Evil Counterpart: To the Free Council. The Council uses modern tools and systems to uplift Sleepers and guide them to the Supernal: Mammon uses those same tools and systems to debase everything and everyone by reducing them to commodities that can be bought and sold.

    They're actually one of two counterparts to the Council, the other being the Pantechnion, the very small minority of Nameless Mages who accepted the Seers' offer of alliance. While the Council seeks to use technology to guide the common man to the wonders of the truth, the Pantechnion wants people to use technology without really understanding them, leaving real knowledge to the elite few. Of course, the other Seers know the very existence of the Pantechnion is a Berserk Button for the entire Council and mainly see them as cannon fodder to be thrown at the Pentacle.
  • MegaCorp: The preferred vehicle of control for the Mammonites— and it is a very efficient one, thanks to globalization.

    The Exarchs 
The Exarchs are Supernal symbols/beings (they're the same thing) that represent Tyranny. They are the ones who create and maintain the Lie in the more cosmic scale. Most Diamond and Seers believe they're Atlantean sorcerer-kings that have ascended and became what they are now. Regardless of the truth, we do know their goal — keep humanity enslaved and away from Awakening.
  • Abstract Apotheosis: Should they have been human at some point. The Exarchs now exist as the noticeable sentience and coordination of Abyss-tainted symbols of oppression in the Supernal World.
  • God in Human Form: They can make ochema, embodiments of a fraction of their intellect and personality, to enter the Fallen World and direct it personally. They really don't like doing so, as it is a breach of the Pax Arcanum which all archmages are meant to abide by. As such, they only form ochemata for when a mission is too important to leave to mortal Seers.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: They are the leaders of the Seers of the Throne, and are responsible for the destruction of Atlantis and the state of magic. Much of the brokenness in Mage's universe can be traced back to them.
  • Mysterious Past: While 1E firmly established them as originally human Mages who went through Abstract Apotheosis, 2E leaves it more ambiguous if they started out as humans or just always were what they are now. Considering that they either retgoned Awakened Civilization or first war with them caused its destruction, both variants may be correct.
  • Shadow Archetype: Each Exarch (aside from the Gate, who governs the Abyss), is an embodiment of tyranny based on each Arcanum; the aforementioned Ministries are backed by the Unity (Mind), the Eye (Space), the Father (Prime), the General (Forces), and the Chancellor (Matter) respectively. The others are the Nemesis (Spirit), the Raptor (Life), the Psychopomp (Death), the Ruin (Fate), and the Prophet (Time).
  • Transhuman Treachery: If what the Diamond and Seers believe is right. Ironically, they made the world more anthropocentric in the process, because while they're (unlikely) to be human anymore they're tied to humanity as a whole: tyrants need subjects after all.

Left-Handed Mages

Less an organization and more of a general term, "Left-Handed Mage" designates all Mages who don't fit in either the Pentacle or the Seers of the Throne.

    Banishers 
Sometimes known as the Timori (Atlantean for "the fearful" or "the feared", depending on who you ask), Banishers are mages who wield the Supernal against other Mages in the name of wiping out what they see as "tainted" powers. They come in all shapes and sizes, and have a variety of ways of operating. The primary use of the term is when a mage's Awakening goes drastically wrong, becoming instead a Mind Rape scholars call a Harrowing; some part of their soul remains broken by the act, rather than being cleansed, and so they are inherently disgusted by the magic that they wield, a disgust that cannot be cured and which drives them to murderous insanity.
  • Anti-Villain: The less homicidal Banisher cabals, like the Translators and Shepherd Paine's Flock, come off as this.
  • Book Burning: A favorite tool of theirs. They often study the books they confiscate from other mages first, as they don't usually create their own grimoires... which many mages find infuriating: reading a book and then burning it is an incredibly selfish act.
  • Boomerang Bigot: Most Banishers hunt other Mages for wielding powers that pervert reality— never mind that they gained their powers from the same source as the Mages. For Harrowed, this is because they feel an instinctual revulsion when using magic, while for others they interpret their directive through their own distinct lens.
  • Does Not Like Magic: That's putting it mildly.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: How Harrowed Banishers are created; their Awakening "glitches", and rather than see the world as it relates to them, they see... the world in its entirety. This does not do good things for their minds, and all they really get from the experience is that "it all fits together", which is why they're obsessed with destroying magic; they desperately want to cling to some sense of order in their lives.
  • Hunter of His Own Kind: They are Mages who hunt other non-Banisher Mages.
  • Knight Templar: Their fanaticism and revulsion for magic make getting through to them a Herculean task, to say the least.
  • Mad Prophet: One of the main advantages Harrowed have over normal mages is a sort of "Timori bond", a little-understood phenomenon which allows them, among other things, to find other Banishers and team up, Awaken other Banishers, and have Genetic Memory. Indeed, a common theory among Atlantean literalists is that they're the reincarnations or inheritors of Technical Pacifist monks in Atlantean times who sought to preserve the Supernal Realms from hubris but went mad when the Abyss was born.
  • Tragic Monster: Harrowed Banishers (as opposed to ideological Banishers, who are just mages who proactively destroy many types of magic for reasons of their own— some of them even good). To put it simply, something scared these Banishers away from accepting Awakening in the process of Awakening, leading them to develop magic... but not Wisdom. As such, they still suffer from the Sleeping Curse, but are unable to cheerfully suppress memories of magic. This makes every spell they cast self-inflicted Mind Rape, and every bit of magical lore they pick up even more of a mental assault. Small wonder they're all crazy, broken people. Small wonder most normal mages think death is a mercy for them.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ideological Banishers, unlike Harrowed ones, had normal, healthy Awakenings and developed Wisdom, but choose to destroy magic and other mages for reasons of their own. Some of them are fundamentally mistaken about the nature of magic: some of them have simply seen one too many bad Mages mess things up and want to stop them by any means necessary. Unlike Harrowed, they can be negotiated with and even convinced to turn away from the Banisher cause— if you can tell them apart from the Harrowed.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: It's kinda hard not to feel sorry for Banishers when you realize how their madness and fear has destroyed them. Some, like the sociopathic Aaron Murphy, make that task a bit easier, but the majority are more in need of help than hate.

    The Mad / the Rapt 
Mages who embrace atrocity, committing acts of Black Magic and selfishness so extreme that their soul breaks, become living avatars for Wild Magic, spilling incarnations of magical energy from their being, are known quite fittingly as "the Mad", or in later 2E books "the Rapt". Analogous to Mage: The Ascension's Marauders, the Mad usually don't last very long before Paradox ultimately consumes them, but the amount of suffering they can inflict before that happens is extreme.
  • Blessed with Suck: All of the massive power they have? They can't really control it consciously. Also, having broken their souls means they have no buffer against Paradox, which means that ultimately their magic will destroy them, usually when some horrifically powerful Abyssal entity winds up riding one of their spells into reality to possess or consume them.
  • Damaged Soul: The Mad Ones' derangements are the result of having their soul "break" for some reason, frequently because of all the transgressions they've committed. Mages' souls can also break when an attempt to experiment with Legacy attainments goes horribly wrong.
  • Lack of Empathy: This, above all else, is why Mad Ones are villains, as opposed to sad, broken people. You don't fall off Wisdom entirely without committing several acts magic itself seems to regard as Moral Event Horizons and deliberately ignoring the effect you're having on the world. To the Mad, anything and everything nearby is a subject for experiments, a source of knowledge, or an obstacle that must be removed.
  • The Mentally Disturbed: Defied, and the reason for their 2E name change both in and out of universe. The Left-Hand Path splatbook outright states that mental illness is not a risk factor for becoming one of the Mad. Being capital-M Mad is a sickness of the soul brought on by one's own actions, not by a quirk of the mind. A true Rapt is best described as The Sociopath, something far different than, say, bipolar disorder.
  • Mook Maker: A Mad Mage spawns tulpas, embodiments of all the Arcana that have leaked out from the cracks in their soul.
  • Power Born of Madness: They develop unique abilities due to their Damaged Soul.

    Tremere Liches 
The Tremere are a secretive, infamous Legacy founded on one of magic's greatest taboos: soul theft. These immortality seekers have transformed themselves into spiritual vampires, sustaining their lives on human souls instead of blood.
  • The Ageless: They stop aging naturally when inducted and can live indefinitely, so long as they keep feeding.
  • Balance Buff: The 1st edition core book's version of the Tremere didn't present much benefit to make up for their dependency. Left-Hand Path acknowledges this and gives the Tremere a greater range of powers.
  • Black Magic: Soul stealing is one of the few ways to drive your Wisdom all the way to zero, and the Tremere have it hard-coded into their own souls.
  • Evil Versus Evil: When most mages see Reaper Legacies, they see the worst sort of person imaginable. When Tremere Liches see another Reaper Legacy, they see rivals... and loot.
  • Fantastic Racism: The Tremere are deeply bigoted towards all non-mage supernatural beings, seeing them as descendants of the "corrupted" Watchtower of Blood. House Vedmak specializes in hunting them, and ghosts, for more souls for their services.
  • Immortality Immorality: It doesn't get much worse than destroying someone's soul to stay alive, and the most powerful among them need at least two Sleepers a month.
  • Join or Die: Mages must choose to become Tremere liches. That choice might be informed by a Tremere severing their soul and letting them choose either to fade into oblivion or to live on through lichdom.
  • Mythology Gag: They're based on Clan Tremere, a former House of the Order of Hermes. The Tremere's House Nagaraja take their name from Masquerade's Nagaraja bloodline, former death-mages who turned themselves into vampires.
  • Necessarily Evil: It is their mission to merge the five "soul" (i.e., Subtle) Arcana back into one, thus bringing about a golden age of magic. And since the only way to do that is to merge souls with the Final Watchtower (which they become living portals to), munch away.
  • Our Liches Are Different: "Lich" is a catch-all term for mages who attempt magical immortality, but the Tremere are by far the most notorious. They can live indefinitely by feeding on stolen souls, and can choose to slumber for decades or centuries in a deathlike state, but wither away to nothingness in body and soul if they go too long without sustenance.
  • Paradox Person: Members are inducted by severing their soul (which normally destroys the victim's magic) and baptising them in the astral Ocean Ouroboros (which normally erases everything it touches from existence). Somehow, the rite grants them a paradoxical un-soul that sustains their life and magic, so long as it's fed.
  • Power Copying: When they destroy another Reaper Legacy, they try to internalize that particular variety of soul magic as one of their Houses. Unique among all Legacies, this lets them create sub-Legacies with additional Attainments.
  • Red Right Hand: The Seo Hel House have this as their weakness—much like their patron goddess, half of their bodies look dead.
  • The Social Darwinist: Not only do they believe they have the right to prey on sleepers and mages, they take a vow not to extend charity to each other, since liches who can't survive on their own merits are a liability to the Legacy.
  • Soul Eating: They need a steady supply of souls — one per year at minimum, escalating to one per two weeks for the oldest and most powerful. They can perform the theft either with Death magic or with the innate power of their Legacy. A soul can be recovered and reattached while it's still being "digested", but afterwards, it's gone forever.
  • Soul Power: They have several unique uses for trapped souls, including masking their own aura with a soul's and converting souls to mana. The Legacy's ultimate goal is to become true masters of souls, transcending what they believe to be the false divisions of the Arcana.
  • We Used to Be Friends: Originally, the Tremere were allied with the Diamond Orders in warfare against the Seers, Scelesti, vampires and other Reapers. But once they ran out of other Reapers to plunder, they started turning on their former allies, and it became clear that they had been a wolf within the walls the whole time.

The Abyss and its Servants

    The Abyss 
The Abyss is simply indescribable; description is an aspect of true things that have a basis and feed the Supernal World, and the Abyss is everything not touched by the Supernal in any way, no matter how degraded. Which is to say, everything there is not only unreal, but can never be real without massive rejiggering of the Supernal Realm. Unfortunately, it's a very active unreal capable of tricking the Tellurian into believing its laws and inhabitants are part of it (especially in times of reckless and imprecise magic), cloaking themselves in the form of warped reality and strange spirits, all with a seething hatred for everything not of their alien Outside. Apparently a wound torn in the fabric of reality by the Exarchs, it is the ultimate source of the Lie, Paradox, and all things related to them.
  • And I Must Scream: To some extent, the Abyss is in a state of this — they're things that aren't real but are still sentient and aware, existing in a state of hate-filled, tortured semi-reality. This trope also tends to happen to people who mess around with them, although in a less philosophical sense.
  • The Dark Side: Use of Abyssal power eventually leads towards degeneration.
  • Deal with the Devil: Any bargain made with the Abyss may grant potent boons, but will eventually lead to the downfall of the one who made the deal.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Abyss(' components) and all the beings it(/they) spawns.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: Some Mages, in their hubris, think that they can wield the powers of the Abyss. The fortunate ones die quickly.
  • Evil Takes a Nap: The Acamoth are Abyssal spirits who somehow became stuck in the physical world and fell into slumber. Certain depraved acts can still catch their attention for long enough to bargain with them, and one fear-obsessed Legacy is audacious enough to peek into their nightmares, usually at the cost of their own sanity.
  • Evil Versus Oblivion: Any time the Abyss pops up, it ends up being the "Oblivion" side of the conflict, with Seers and anything else being the "Evil".
  • Genius Loci: The Abyss is made of these, the Annunaki. Each one is a world that is fundamentally broken, stillborn and impossible in the light of the Supernal. And each one has a mind of its own, desiring reality for its own.
    • Alternate Timeline: Some Annunaki, like the Prince of 100,000 Leaves, are alternate histories only possible if reality was different. They are never nice (The Prince's version involves a world-spanning, bloodthirsty, theocratic super-state where cannibalism is not only the norm, but a sign of regality and civilization).
    • Reality Is Out to Lunch: What tends to happen in Abyssal Verges, places where an Annunaki has overlaid a bit of its own self over the Tellurian, making it as unto their counterpart in the Annunaki's version of reality. As one might expect of the Abyss, things go a bit... strange.
  • Mind Screw: It's both an actual location and aspect of the mystical reality and a completely nonexistent falsehood. It tends to make brains hurt, even before Dissonance is involved.
  • Mind Rape: The Abyss loves this. In fact, it's even how Dissonance/Disbelief works in 2E; when a Sleeper without any expressed magical potential (which makes people Sleepwalkers by default) witnesses magic and knows it, the Abyss uses the confusion over seeing something impossible and incomprehensible to bombard their mind with its untruths, which are invariably so horrifying and traumatic that the Sleeper's subconscious represses those memories so they can move on with their life. That is why causing Dissonance is a sin against Wisdom.
  • Our Monsters Are Weird: Gulmoth and Acamoth, the beings born from the Abyss, are just as confusing and alien as the Abyss itself.
  • Weirdness Censor: Subverted and Deconstructed. The Abyss is actually indirectly responsible for every gameline's Masquerade being a hell of a lot easier, since the looming presence of its Lie subconscious urges people to pretend that everything is fine, there's no such thing as monsters, avoid the shadows. They do this, because the Lie is a constant refrain of humanity's utter helplessness before all but the most mundane problems-everyone at least suspects the truth, but do nothing, because nobody believes they can do anything. The Abyss itself does not care: in fact, Dissonance provoked by the Abyss' creations themselves causes them to grow stronger.
  • You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Read that description again. That throbbing pain in your skull is probably the closest you, or anyone else from anywhere in the Tellurian, will ever be to actually understanding the Abyss in all but the most tangential ways, barring being completely Ax-Crazy.

    The Scelesti 
The Scelesti are mages who have chosen to deliberately study and invoke the Abyss, allying themselves with the force of Non-Creation that lies like a bleeding wound between the worlds.
  • Black Magic: Scelesti practice "Antinomian Sorcery", the art of deliberately weaving Abyssal energies into their magic. This makes for more powerful, but far more self-destructive, effects.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Scelesti as a whole are far removed from human concepts of good and evil, though they act in a way that most people would call "evil".
  • Dark Messiah: Aswadim, or Scelestus archmages, are part of the very make-up of the Abyss and have the power to change the world as they see fit. Unfortunately, the changes Aswadim desire are not good for much of humanity. Ironically most of them aren't Scelestus pre-Archmastery; most Scelesti are noted to be living at their Abyssal master's whims and rarely make it to Aswadim status.
  • Fallen Hero:
    • Scelesti commonly arise when a Pentacle mage goes too far for what they see as the greater good.
    • Most Aswadim did not come from the ranks of the Scelesti, simply because Scelesti usually end up dead or enslaved well before they're ready for archmastery. Instead, the majority came from the Pentacles (a smaller number from the Seers) and then chose the Abyss at the Threshold.
  • Fantastic Rank System: While it's kind of fluid and a Scelestus doesn't necessarily pass through all ranks, there's still five tiers of just how deep you are into the Abyss. Most of the names are taken from Mesopotamian languages.
    • Rabashakim ("cupbearers") are new recruits, marked by learning to cast antinomian sorcery. These are almost universally disposable pawns of greater evils.
    • Nasnasi (named after a mythical half-demon) have Joined with the Abyss through a dark mirror of their Watchtower, and have warped their minds and magic for dark power. Some Scelesti who undergo this reject the Abyss; sometimes this is redemption, but other times it's a decision that the Joining's benefits don't outweigh the costs (which include a tainted aura that other mages can detect).
    • Shedim and Autarks are those who have embarked on an Abyssal Legacy. Shedim join an existing Legacy under someone or something's tutelage, while Autarks develop their own. Autark is usually the starting rank for an independent Scelestus, who initiate into a Legacy first and discover the methods of the Rabakshim and Nasnasi later.
    • Baalim ("lords") are Scelestus Masters who have bargained with a being known as the Old Man, receiving a power called the Elder Diadem that signifies their rank as both prince and slave of the Abyss. They found cults to the Abyss' glory and scheme with other Baalim to bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
    • Aswadim are the rare archmasters of the Abyss, pursuing alien goals and wrapping lesser mages in their schemes. They're bad news.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: Regardless of their individual means and motives, all Scelesti who accept the moniker seek to have the world swallowed by the Abyss.
  • Religion of Evil: Some Scelesti worship the Annunaku, the stillborn universes within the Abyss. These "Archonians" usually lead small cults with themselves at the head.
  • Straw Nihilist: One of the ideologies that drive Scelesti is nihilism, a contempt for the notion of meaning and hope in the cosmos. Most of them quickly take a one-way train to madness and burn themselves out; the smart ones encourage the rest to go ape while reaping the rewards.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: While many Scelesti are cackling madmen, there are just as many who were driven to their present state by desperation or personal pain. Two examples in Left-Hand Path are Angrboda, a Fallen Hero who made a deal with a gulmoth to avenge his cabal and ended up becoming corrupted; and Theumiel, an Aswadim who despises the screwed-up state of the Spirit World and wants to fix it by using the Abyss to wipe the slate clean.

Sleepwalkers and other variants

    Sleepwalkers 
Less a species or faction and more of a broad category, "Sleepwalkers" is a term used in Mage society to design Sleepers who, for one reason or another, escape the effect of the Quiescence Curse without having actually Awakened. They exist in all shapes and size, from people who made an incomplete Awakening or got accustomed to the Curse to the point of becoming immune, to mortals who gained supernatural powers from a different source allowing them to push it back, such as psychics, ghouls, wolf-blooded or stigmatics. Regardless of the origin, they all share the ability to resist Quiescence and Dissonance, meaning they remember seeing the Supernal and do not trigger Paradoxes. This allows them to play a role in Mage society, and they often are groomed and followed by Mages, who hope to see them fully Awaken.
  • Amplifier Artifact: Starting with 2E, Sleepwalkers can now "carry" spells for Mages, thus increasing the number of spells a Mage can maintain simultaneously. Most of them only grant one or two additional slots, but a merit can allow them to carry more.
  • Blessed with Suck: More of a removal of a different Blessing With Suck-unlike Sleepers, indefinite magic can be cast on Sleepwalkers, as they don't have Quiescence that would eventually unravel it. Good if it's regenerating a limb, not so much for curses.
  • Fantastic Racism: The Pentacle Orders are at best somewhat condescending toward Sleepwalkers, seeing them as disadvantaged people in need of help only slightly better than Sleepers. The Seers of the Throne are even worse, seeing them as resources to spend and dispose of; see the entry for Grigori to see an example.
  • No-Sell: Despite being technically Sleepers, they are immune to the Curse, allowing them to witness magic without going insane nor forgetting about it.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Sleepwalkers in 1E were little more than regular mortals who could No-Sell Disquiet and avoid Paradoxes. In 2E, they can now support Mages by carrying some of their spells, and have access to special merits that can give them an edge. Their concept also is revised to include all characters with both Integrity and innate supernatural powers; meaning they now include ghouls, wolf-blooded, and psychics, among others.

    Proximi 
A particular type of Sleepwalkers, Proximi are still unable to truly perceive the Supernal, but did manage to partially free themselves from the Curse, granting them the ability to cast magic, albeit nowhere near as powerful as actual Mages (most of them can only cast a few spells and have a strongest risk of causing Paradox), usually at the cost of one Curse. Their abilities are In the Blood, and as a result they usually grow to become entire bloodlines, known as Dynasties. Such Dynasties are considered precious by Orders, who maintain and even groom them in the hope of seeing them eventually Awaken.
  • Achilles' Heel: Each Proximi Dynasty suffers from an unique curse giving them a drawback in exchange for their access to magic.
  • Blessed with Suck: Compared to Awakened, as their magic is less powerful than theirs and comes with an additional weakness that can make their life more complicated. Compared to regular Sleepwalkers, on the other hand, they can actually be lucky, depending on what their Curse is.
  • In the Blood: Their abilities are shared by all the family, meaning they exist as Dynasties.
  • Mutant: In contrast to Awakened, their abilities are transmitted by the blood, making them closer to this trope.
  • Not That Kind of Mage: Poorly informed mortals such as hunters might have a hard time realizing Proximi are a different type of Mages than Awakened. This can lead to Underestimating Badassery as they fight and take down this dangerous but overall limited sorcerer who only knows two to five spells and assume all Mages are about that level - only to be then confronted with the Person of Mass Destruction an Awakened can be.
  • Our Mages Are Different: A slightly different form of Mages than Awakened, albeit still connected to the Supernal, Proximi technically are an advanced form of Sleepwalkers who can cast magic. They are significantly weaker than Awakened, as they have access to only a small number of spells, must use their Integrity as dicepool for spellcasting due to their lack of Gnosis and Arcana, and cannot use Reach. They abilities also are In the Blood, meaning they exist in lineage called Dynasties. Finally, each Dynasty has a unique particular feature that doubles as a curse.

    Grigori 
Ephemeral servants used by the Ministry of Panopticon, Grigori are created using a specific kind of Artifact known as the Shroud of Observation. A Sleepwalker wrapped in this Shroud suffers a horrific transformation, placing his body in suspended animation while his soul and mind are merged into an ephemeral being and projected into Twilight to serve as spies for the Seers. The creature is then used to watch people everywhere, while its body keeps whispering what it's seeing to their master.
  • And I Must Scream: The Sleepwalkers used to create Grigori are still aware of what is happening to them, but completely unable to either control their astral selves or return to their original body. All they can do is spy for the Seers while their bodies report what they saw. Worse, removing the Shroud is fatal, so the only way out is a Mercy Kill.
  • Eyes Do Not Belong There: Grigori's astral selves usually are visible only in Twilight, but when you get to see them, their body is entirely covered with eyes.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: The process to create them require to inflict the And I Must Scream situation described above to a Sleepwalker.
  • Sinister Surveillance: The Ministry of Panopticon use them to this end; they essentially are living, invisible camera drones.
  • Surveillance Drone: A magical version of this trope, created with a particularly horrifying method.

    Hollow Ones 
Slaves used by the most powerful Seers from Paternoster, Hollow Ones are Sleepers victims of human trafficking gangs who were brought to an Eldritch Abomination coming from a Lower Depth, who then stripped them of their individuality. This left them as Empty Shells whose mental abilities, skills and personalities can be re-written at will by Seers using Mind spells.
  • Empty Shell: By default, Hollow ones have no personality or memory, leaving them with no Vice, Virtue, skills or social and mental Attributes. These are all written in them by their masters using Mind spells to fit their need, and will reset after a few days unless they are fed Mana.
  • Manchurian Agent: Used frequently as such by the Paternoster and those Seers they're loaned out to. Since their personality can be customized at will with Mind spells, it's very easy to send them infiltrate an enemy organization group "written" to be genuinely faithful to said enemy, then rewrite it to be faithful to the Seers again the moment they are needed.
  • Slave Mooks: Possibly one of the most disturbing example of this trope. They are Sleeper mooks used by Paternoster, whose individuality has been removed, leaving them with literally no ability to have individual personality and thought unless a Seer decides to give them ones. Essentially, they are the perfect example of the Seers treating Sleepers as objects and properties to customize on their whim.
  • Weak-Willed: Their lack of self makes them incredibly susceptible to Mind magic, to the point that Mind spells can last indefinitely on them, unlike any other living being.

    Myrmidons 
A specific family of Proximi aligned to the Praetorian Ministry, the Myrmidons are supposedly the real people behind the myth outlined by Ovid, ants who were transformed into humans by the gods. Of course, the Myrmidons say the god who made them was the General, Exarch of Forces, and so with their elevation came with a condition; the Myrmidons must obey any order in a specific dialect of High Speech taught only by the Seers, at the cost of their own souls until potentially forgiven by a superior. Thus, they have become the perfect soldiers Praetorian Seers seek; obeying not because they necessarily want to, but because they have no other choice.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: Subverted. They're more Lawful for one, and when it comes down to it they're human; they just can't fight against the Oath-Tongue.
  • Blessed with Suck: Worse than most Proximi, since their curse binds them to an abusive slave culture. Worse, it even lasts past Awakening, even though mage Myrmidons can issue counter-orders in the Oath-Tongue to their family.
  • Glamour Failure: All Myrmidons have ant-like traits, like compound eyes, breath that smells of formic acid, or a chitinous shell covering an arm. The Quiescence hides this from Sleepers, but everyone else can notice.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: They really don't like the Seers for how they're treated, but they have no choice in the matter.
  • Proud Warrior Race: They worship the General as Ares, and embody his modern cult.
  • Slave Mooks: They're ultimately victims of the Seers' inability to trust anyone without magical bindings on their behavior. Learning a way to free them is a suggested plot hook in Seers of the Throne.
  • Super-Soldier: Their Blessings allow them to invoke spells that are extremely useful for combat, and the Oath-Tongue ensures their loyalty.

Invisible Entities

In their quest to explore Mysteries, Mages meet with a wide variety of strange beings. These includes things like Spirits and Ghosts, but some are really specific to them.

    Ghosts 
Residue ephemeral beings sometimes left behind by people who died violently or unsatisfied. Frequently used by Mages, in particular Moros.
For tropes related to ghosts, read Geist: The Sin-Eaters.

    Goetia 
The inhabitants of the Astral Realms, Goetia are incarnations of the various concepts in the human mind. While similar in some aspects to spirits, they are only born from human thought rather than from concepts of everything, and, unlike them, only exist in the Astral Realms, meaning they cannot enter the physical plan or manifest without the help of a Mage.
  • Anthropomorphic Personification: Of human thoughts; Goetia are borns from dreams, feelings, and whatever goes through the human mind.
  • Gods Need Prayer Badly: Played with; Goetia in the Tenemos have their powers defined by how much humans know about them and regard them, but not necessarily through worship. Being relevant or well-known as symbols or even fictional characters is enough to give them a decent amount of power.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Goetia occasionally are referred to as "Goetic Demons". However, this term is meant here in the sense of "Demons" as spirits, not evil spirits — and they definitely have nothing to do with Inferno and Pandemonium Demons or the Unchained.

    Spirits 
The inhabitants of the Shadow, born from reflections of human concepts. Mages, in particular Thyrsus, frequently come in contact with them.
For the tropes related to Spirits, go to Werewolf: The Forsaken.

Supernal Entities

The entities native from the Supernal Realms where Mages go to during their Awakenings. Usually they stick to their respective realms, due to being unable to survive in the Fallen World for long; however, with the proper ritual, it is possible for Mages to summmon them and ask for their help.

    Supernal Entities in general 
  • Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: While the trials they make Mages go through can be harsh and sometimes even lethal, Supernal Beings overall are fairly nice compared to most Invisible Entities; they do not usually attempt to invade the Fallen World, help Mages awaken, and will gladly help the Awakened should they pass their trials.
  • Kryptonite Factor: They are much more vulnerable to Paradox and the Abyss than even Mages are; just being seen by a human being can inflict them Aggravated damages, and they usually cannot survive outside their own realms for more than a few hours.
  • No Biochemical Barriers: A rare aversion; due to existing in an entirely different plan of existence, Supernal Entities just do not have the means to survive all the imperfection of the Fallen World; they require a special summoning circle to even survive in it, and even with it they will usually die after a few hours if not sent back to their realm.
  • Only the Worthy May Pass: Each Supernal being has a specific test associated with him that Mages must pass in order to gain what they expect from him. Much like a Ban, this is less a personal choice and more a law; even if the being wanted to, he simply could not grant his favor to someone who hasn't passed the trial.
  • Summon Magic: The primary use Mages have for them is to summon them and ask them for assitance.

    Angels 
The Supernal inhabitants of the Aether, Angels are beings of pure Forces and Prime magic. They are divided between two categories: Seraphim, which are the Angels of Forces, and Cherubim, which are the beings of Prime.
  • Angelic Abomination: Variable, but these Angels usually look downright bizarre at best and terrifying at worst.
  • Good Is Not Nice: Angels typically are highly moral and expect the same from those who ask for their help. Make no mistake, though; some of them have Black-and-White Morality or very weird standards on what's "right'', and they can be merciless with people who do not meet such standards.
  • For Great Justice: The condition required to get their help usually is to be genuinely altruistic and virtuous in your motives. Their trials usually involves proving in some way that you intentions are pure.
  • Light Is Good: Or at least virtuous and righteous; most Angels have high moral standards and will impose trials that require their summoner to be genuinely selfless and good people, though they can be absolutely merciless if they consider said summoners do not live up to their standards. Still, they are way nicer and better-intentioned than most of the other Angels in this setting.
  • Our Angels Are Different: They have nothing to do with either the Qashmallim or the God-Machine's Angels, being in fact closer to religious Angels, albeit the old representation.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: Seraphim tend to be rather war-like, and very knowledgeable about the art of fighting.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Seraphim are the Red (being fiery and war-like with destructive powers) while the Cherubim are the Blue (being patient and wise with power primarily related to more subtle actions over magic).

    Beasts 
The Supernal inhabitants of the Primal Wild, Beasts are beings of pure Life and Spirit. They are divided into two categories: Atavisms, Beasts of Life, and Totem, Beasts of Spirit.
  • Animalistic Abomination: Atavisms usually appear as animals, though not necessarily mundane ones- some might appear as mythological beasts, for example.
  • Nature Is Not Nice: One thing young Thyrsus are frequently warned about when about to summon is to not make assumptions about Supernal beings from the Primal Wild being all nice and helpful- Atavisms are quite literally animals, albeit ones from a different plane of existence, and will behave as such, meaning they could try to devour their summoner if he isn't careful enough. Survival is part of life, after all.
  • Our Spirits Are Different: Totem are nearly undistinguishable from classic Spirits aside from being Supernal Beings, to the point it's easy to confuse them.

    Demons 
The Supernal inhabitants of Pandemonium, Demons are being of pure Mind and Space.
  • Cruel to Be Kind: Their modus operanti; they usually actively torture or hurt Mages who go through their Realm or summon them, but these tortures actually are tests intended to help the Awakened improve themselves.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Played with; on the one hand, the Denizen of Pandemonium definitely aren't as malevolent as classic demons, in that they are more prison guards and therapists than evil creatures trying to tempt you. That said, this doesn't make them exactly good either- they are still willing to torment and harm their summoners and visitors, as they try to help gain strength through adversity.
  • Fire and Brimstone Hell: Pandemonium usually is described as looking like the traditional vision of Hell.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Despite their name and appearance, they have nothing to do with either Inferno Demons, Goetia or the Unchained.
  • Torture Technician: They are really good at using magic to injure or torture people. Their Trials almost always involve hurting in some form.

    Fae 
The Supernal inhabitants of Arcadia, Fae are beings of pure Fate and Time.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Fae are somewhat infamous for being capricious, and you can never predict when they will be malicious, benign, or a combination of the two.
  • The Fair Folk: Downplayed; they can act mischevious and malevolent, and Mages are advised to be cautious when approaching or summoning them, but some of them also are benevolent, or at least willing to help as long as you follow their trial.
  • Our Fairies Are Different: They are very much not the True Fae from the other realm also called Arcadia, not having the Lack of Empathy or profound narcissism that defines Keepers. They are embodiments of Destiny and Casuality, rather than inhabitants of the Hedge or the Gentry's Arcadia, though they operate on similar physics.
  • Politeness Judo: Many of their Trial merely ask that you behave politely (or at least following a specific code of conduct) with them.

    Shades 
The Supernal inhabitants of Stygia, Shades are beings of pure Death and Matter.


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