Will Hindmarch was there and I have to say he is a really great guy to sit down and talk with. I was initially planning on getting him realy drunk and clubbing his NDA over the head until it was uncoscious and then pummping Will for Info on Mage.
Fortunately I didn't have to as we Had advance copies of the Quarterly there wherein Bill pretty much gives away the whole show. Thats right 4 pages of Crunchy Mage goodness. You want your Sneak peak?
A Mage's Path represents his innate magical connection to a higher reality. . .
The mages of Atlantis codified the workings of the universe into a metaphysical system involving 10 elementary forces. They called these elemnts the "Arcana", for each revealed secrets about aspects of reality beyond the mundane. As a means of conceiving the inconceivable, the Atlanteans devised a metaphor for the universe: the Tapestry. The threads of this great weave consist of the 10 Arcana, and their warp and weft make up the patterns within the Tapestry.
Then the Celestial Ladder was shattered, creating the Abyss and dividing the worlds. While the Arcana still represent reality, their true power only faintly manifests in the fallen world in the most fundamental and static ways, recognized as the common, unyielding laws of physics. They are now truly manifest only in the Supernal World, in varying degrees within the five realms. To weave their strands a mage must draw them down into the Fallen World by way of the watchtower of his path's realm.
The Arcana are:
Sample Spell: Labyrinth (Space OOOOO)
The mage can mutate dimensional axes. A hallway can be made to go one for miles (despite the fact tht is in a building that is only a hundred feet across at its widest point).
Practice: Making Action: Instant Duration: Prolonged (one scene) Aspect: Vulgar Cost: None
A simple spatial warp, making one direction appear to be another, might levy no penalities, while a complex one, making all roads lead to one junction, might be -3 or more, depending on how much space is affected.
The mage is capable of sculpting bizarre vicissitudes of place and distance through this level of space, folindg space in ways tht defy the senses. For instance, the horror move staple of causing every possible path of egress from a given locale to instead lead back into isolated wilderness is possible, as is making a road that a person can visually confirm lead to the store down the street actually go in the opposite direction. Needless to say the use of the Arcanaum can be extraordinarily vulgar and potentially insanity-inducing if practicied in blantant enough ways upon another person (almost assuredly requiring resolve + composure rolls by teh subject in order for him to keep calm and rational).
Rotes
All mages can cast spells as soon as they learn the proper degree of Arcanum mastery (Space 5 in the given sample). This is called an improvised casting. It calls upon the mage's innate connection to the supernal world (a trait called Gnosis) and his Arcanum rating. This does not always result in a strong dice pool, however, especially for beginning mages. To improve their casting ability with a certain spell, mages can learn that spell as a rote, a tried-and-true crafting. He's a sample rote version of the Lbyrinth spell (the spell effect's are the same as listed above, but the dice pool is more favorable):
Guardians of the Veil rote: Sundered Path Dice Pool: Intelligence + occult + space
Guaranteed to eventually dissuade all save the most dogged of interlopers, this rote helps a Guardian of the veil to defeat sleepers' (and others') curioisty with frustration, fear or despiar, as she sees fit. Roads that go on a little too long leave inquiring souls feeling tired and most eventually lose interest. Paths that double back upon themselves in some nightmarishing Moebius loop, on the otherh and, can eventually erode the courage and even sanity, of one unprepared for inexplicable happenings.
More Quotes from the Quarterly
Magic is something everybody dreams of but nobody seems to possess. The power to conjure something from nothing, to change a man into a toad, to curse one's enemies and their progeny, to call down lightning from the sky and lay waste to a city - all powers claimed by wizards in myth, legend, and epic fantasy tales. We are drawn to these tales, however, not just because of the power displayed in them. Wizards present a different kind of allure: the desire for power, tempered with wisdom. Demons and monsters have powers, but they have great limitations and curses, too. Mages have the power of knowing when and how to use power. While this can be a limitation, it is a self-imposed one, betokening a discipline rare in this world.
Mage: The Awakening is a game about these kinds of mages and the trials and temptations they face on the path of discipline and enlightenment. The allure of power constantly threatens to draw them from the path, away from wisdom. A mage is someone who has Awakened, whose souls has been freed of an ancient curse afflicting mortals. Most people's souls are asleep, unaware of the raw power they can tap to remake their world. The truth has been hidden from them many lifetimes ago; all they know is a lie. Mages can see through the lie and enact humanity's birthright: magic.
Mages live in the here and now, in this world, just down the street. Althought their society resembles more the feudal states of the past, broken into the balkanized regions that remain largely incommunicado with one another, they still travel and use cell phones and the internet like most modern people. But they live in a world of secrets, where the hoarding of theose secrets is a form of currency.
Disagreements between mentor and student, master and adept, turn into rifts as apprentices accuse masters of withholding necessary knowledge, and masters declare most apprentices unworthy of it. When a mage can no longer work with his mentor, he leaves and seeks his own sanctum and cabal, a group of mages to whom he can trust his own secrets - or so the theory goes. In practice, cabals can be contentious, backbiting groups fighting over the same old theme: the ownership of secrets.
Humanity at large is ignorant of this occult underground. Sorcerers and witches life down the street and sometimes shop at the same stores, but the public is ignorant of this amazing truth. Even were the existence of mages to become known, most people wouldn't believe it, and those who wdid would see it as a cause for alarm and fear rather than wonder and awe. Magic is afoot in the world, but most people resist it.
Mage presents a vision of magic somewhat different from that portrayed in most occult literature, although it incorporates many famos occult elements. Mage hearkens to stories of high magic, mythic tales of wizardly might and awesome hubris, but set in the here and now, not in some distant nerverland. Instead of assuming a charater is a practitioner of a known magical practice, such as vodoun, cabalism, hermeticism, taoist exorcism or any number of other forms, Mage posits a mortal who has become aware of a more real world than the one we line in - one from which we all once came. This Awakened mortal performs magic by connecting to this invisbile world. All the magical practices mentioned above hint at or in someway speak to the existence of this higher realm, but none of them fully prepares a magician to encoutner it. For that, he must walk down paths of sheer mystery, entering a reality unknown to mundane occult traditions, but one that completes and realizes their fragmentary knowledge.
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