Mage: The Ascension

[Cynical Cat]

I didn't insult you Nitram, I listed the reasons why all yours and Kathy's choices didn't fit the game since gentle certainly didn't get through to you. I was blunt, but when I'm being insulting, you'll know it.

[SirNitram]

I didn't insult you Nitram, I listed the reasons why all yours and Kathy's choices didn't fit the game since gentle certainly didn't get through to you. I was blunt, but when I'm being insulting, you'll know it.

Yea, it's not at all clear that you went off half-cocked and lost your temper, laying down 'Fuck you, you're out'. Hey, a legitimate use for a smiley.

Don't even try to play the 'when I'm being insulting' BS with me. I expect more from you than such childish retorts.

[General Havoc]

Gentlemen, can we either take this somewhere else or stop it entirely?

[Cynical Cat]

Thanks for confirming that my decision was correct. Since you're not going to be participating in this game, please leave the thread. There's other places on the board where you can call me a tyrant and all around shitty person if you feel like it.

[LadyTevar]

Cyncat, you're right.

I was stressing over a lot of things, and I let the whole fuss over the background implode. I was literally unable to understand what you were trying to say, and took it totally the wrong way. I am sorry.

You're also right about having too many players making things difficult, and of those who posted interest, there's several who have their shit together and should be playing. Unlike me.

Take care, have fun, and again, I'm sorry for the fuss.

[Cynical Cat]

Thanks Tev. That was very gracious of you and is appreciated. There will be other games. Be well.

[General Havoc]

Name: Siegfried von Austerlitz
Age: 30
Tradition: Cult of Ecstasy
Avatar: Primordial
Nature: Visionary
Demeanor: Celebrant

Concept: Mad Composer/Musician


Background: Many kids become musicians because they think it will make them cool. Some do it to annoy their parents. Siegfried Jager became a musician, ultimately, because he never considered becoming anything else. Of course it helped that he was good at it, in fact he was among the best, a prodigy from an early age in a family that had never once in four centuries been known for anything whatsoever. By the age of six he could play complex piano or keyboard pieces at a concert level, and by twelve he was so good that his parents, grocers from Salzburg, sent him away to a prestigious musical preparatory school in England, designed specifically for prodigies like himself. Yet despite his evident talent, Siegfried did not prosper in England, finding the atmosphere stifling and too competitive for his tastes. He clashed with teachers, other students, his parents when he returned to Austria on holiday, and finally, after four years, he quit school and returned to Germany at the age of 16, melting into Berlin's underground culture like a thousand other runaway youth.

For several years, Siegfried bummed around Berlin, Hamburg, and other towns in northern Germany, moving from group to ad hoc group and supporting himself through the occasional gig in bars and small clubs. Yet unlike so many others who fell prey to drugs, alcohol, or any number of other 'recreations', Siegfried's underlying obsession would not let him become distracted. He taught himself the guitar. The bass. The keytar. He bought or pirated records from American or English or German bands nobody else had heard of and played them thousands of times over until he could replicate them flawlessly. He trained his voice to the point of exhaustion, until he could croon or gargle or pitch anything he wanted, picking up entire genres almost at random and inculcating their essences within himself by habit. He did not do these things for money or fame, nor even for love of music, but simply because he could do them, and so did. What he was actually looking for with all this musical practice he could not have described. Perhaps it was nothing. And perhaps nothing it would have remained, until one night, after performing yet another 'experimental' set in a small club in Dresden, when someone suggested that he should look into performing on a grander scale than this, that he was too good for the dive bars he had been playing. Maybe it was the Saxon beer making his head spin or maybe it was his continuing inability to find whatever he was looking for in underground culture, but without saying a word, he resolved to try.

He got a stage name. He made contact with producers, and performed for them. His musical 'style' was so eclectic that nobody knew what to do with him, but he got work regardless, as a session musician or club player. The gigs got big. Then they got bigger. His name became known in the indie and underground circles as someone to watch. He began to make actual money for the first time in his life. Yet he found no greater satisfaction with success than he had with anonymity. He was perennially unable to choose a "style", migrating from rock to folk to classical to metal to any other thing with maddening frequency, aggravating his producers and agents who all agreed that Siegfried could become an international sensation if he could just make up his mind that he wanted to. But he never could. The business of music and fame bored him as much as the pretensions of indie undergrounders or scenesters did, and his restlessness drove him on like a scourge. Not even in the anesthesia of drugs or alcohol could Siegfried find solace from his listless lack of fulfillment. Only music could do that, and so he played on, indifferent to whether he was performing for 20,000 people or four or none at all, mixing music together in ways nobody else could, as though doing so could somehow bring him what he needed.

Yet throughout it all, the dropped labels and angry managers, there was one who had been following him. A woman whose name he never quite caught, but who always seemed to be part of the scene, no matter what scene he was presently in. He never really stopped to consider who she was or why she was always there, be it at cocktail parties with music executives or the mosh pits of underground punk rock clubs. But every time he held a 'good' show, she was there. And when the best show of all came and took him by surprise, one wintry night in a large theater in Nuremburg, she was front and center.

It was supposed to be an hour, an opening set for a New Wave Ska band that had been making waves locally, yet that night, from the very first chord, everything changed. The room seemed to enlarge, the crowd seemed to slow. His music seemed almost to play itself, like he was the vessel for something raw and untrammeled and entirely different than anything before. He played his set. He played his backup set. He played the sets of other musicians he saw in the crowd. He couldn't stop himself and didn't try, and with each piece he played, he felt the crowd's reaction sweeping over him like warm water, felt the very walls bending ear to catch just one more note. Two hours passed before the venue managers even realized that he'd run over time. Four hours passed before anyone thought to restock the bar. The cops who showed up to write tickets for violating the noise curfew forgot to fill them out. The headline band who never played forgot to riot. Two of them quit music the next day, convinced that they would never be able to compete with whatever the hell they had heard that night. And in the midst of it all, Siegfried stood as though alone, playing everything that came to hand and mind as though nobody else were listening, until at the break of dawn he emerged from his trance, exhausted and with bleeding fingers, to find her standing in the wings of the theater with a cup of coffee and a towel and an offer to 'talk about his music'.

Her name was Maria Wójcik, a member of a group she called the Cult of Ecstasy. He'd heard the name before, somewhere, a whispered reference here and there from scenesters who knew a little more than they let on, tied to stories of Bacchanalia and wild parties. None of that had ever interested Siegfried, half the reason he'd never become world famous, but the things she told him had nothing to do with needles and mushrooms, but with music. Music of a sort he had never heard before. "Pure" music, the music of the cosmos itself, what she claimed he had been searching for without realizing it. Unsure if he believed her or not, he let her show him things he had not believed possible, and yet all of which made sense to him as though he had known it all along without knowing that he knew. Or something. Whatever it was, he could feel it calling to him. For the first time in years, maybe ever, he wanted, needed, to do this. This and nothing else. And so he turned his hand to learning a new form of music altogether, one that ran between the notes of the music he knew so well, infinitely more deep, infinitely more grand. Music the likes of which the world had not heard since the time of Orpheus. Music that could melt reality or rebuild it from nothing. Music that the fabric of existence could not help but be moved by. Of course there were those who wanted to stop this music from being found. There were always those who could not feel the stirrings of the right combination of notes in their souls, people who stamped out music because of the uncontrolled emotional reaction it drew from its captive audience. But such possibilities did not matter to Siegfried, for he had been shown his true calling, the thing for which he believed, finally, that he was born to do, and nothing on this Earth or any other would keep him back.

And so, two years after his first awakening, the mysterious figure known in certain, esoteric musical circles by the stage name of Siegfried von Austerlitz arrived in America, a land that gave birth to so much music, the power of which none but he and a handful of others had ever recognized. Gone however was the listless, disaffected scene musician, seeking restlessly for some purpose in his craft. In its place was a man driven by a desire that brushed all others aside. A desire to find and master the Music of the Spheres, the primal music around which the universe turned. And along the way, if he had to play such harmonies as to make the Gods themselves weep or fall to their knees in supplication, then all the better. For Siegfried Jager, now Siegfried von Austerlitz, the stage is set, the band in position, the instruments ready, and it is finally time to play the very first note.

Strength: 2
Dexterity: 3
Stamina: 2

Intelligence: 2
Wits: 3
Perception: 3

Charisma: 4
(Focus: Superb Voice)
Manipulation: 4
(Focus: Persuasive)
Appearance: 2


Talents:
Alertness: 1
Awareness: 2
Dodge: 3 (6XP spent)
Expression: 3
Leadership: 1

Skills:
Drive: 1
Etiquette: 1
Meditation: 2
Melee: 4 (8XP spent)
Performance: 5 (4 freebie points spent)
(Focus: Keyboard/Piano)
Stealth: 1
Technology: 2

Knowledges:
Academics: 2 (2 freebie points spent)
Enigmas: 1
Linguistics: 1
Occult: 2

Backgrounds:
Arcane: 1 (Free)
Avatar: 3
Resources: 3 (1 freebie point spent)
Destiny: 2
Library: 1 (1 freebie point spent)

Arete: 4 (5 freebie points spent, 32 XP spent)
Willpower: 7 (2 freebie points spent)

Quintessance: 3

Spheres

Time 3
Forces 2
Mind 1

XP: 1


The Music of the Spheres:

"Music underlies reality." Such is the thesis of Siegfried's eclectic worldview, and everything fits into the pattern of song and chant, instrument and voice. Unlike some Mages who employ vastly distinct foci for vastly different magic, in Siegfried's world, rhythm and syncopation and pitch and timing subsumes everything, from the metered, precise wavelengths of an electronic keyboard to the warbling, raw, emotive power of an folk singer. By consequence, every single spell, effect, or rote that Siegfried produces is related in some way to music. Searching as he is for what he calls "the songs between the notes", Siegfried turns his not inconsiderable skills to everything from symphonies to power ballads to produce his effects. Even songs done to death are simply not the same when he plays and performs them, and the power of his music is such that he can re-write reality with it, bending the fundamental forces of the universe around the emotion and rhythm of his songs, leading them on the way a conductor might an orchestra.

Though Siegfried has only attained sufficient skill with three of the nine spheres of magic to produce even the smallest effects, his viewpoint on magic is holistic. Every sphere, to him, represents a gradation of music, divided by a form of internal logic that is contradictory as often as not, but corresponds to the deep, semi-mystical reverence in which he holds the entire art form. To him it is not a matter of representation, but one of binding existentialism, such that Matter magic, with its focus upon the building blocks of reality, is to him is inculcated within the rhythmic meters of a Military March or National Anthem, while the intertwined linkages of Correspondence are to be found within the syncretic strains of experimentalist overtures such as Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody or Pink Floyd's Eclipse. This may make very little sense to anyone, even to music fans, but it does not need to. To Siegfried the logic of the Musical Spheres is absolute, and his magical songs, performances, and results, speak ultimately for themselves.

Describing the breakdown is a difficult task, given the intensely personal and emotional reaction that music has on Siegfried. But insofar as there's any method to this madness, it seems to work as follows:

Matter tends towards strongly-rhythmic, heavily metered music, the Ur-examples of which are military marches, or their natural outgrowths, national anthems. Matter extends beyond Sousa however, and into anything with a pronounced, heavy focus upon repeated pattern, be it the primordial exuberance of Afrobeat, or the hard, electric edge of Industrial Rock.
Example tracks: March of the British Grenadiers, Du Hast

Forces is many things, but is generally associated with orchestral grandeur, be it literal or figurative. From the soaring classical range of Beethoven's Ode to Joy and Handel's Hallelujah, to the hyper-kinetic energies of high-velocity dance mixes or symphonic metal, Forces' signature is energy, the energy of a symphony real or imagined, the energy of a dance floor or DJ's booth, assembled and collected and unleashed in a torrent to sweep all resistance aside. Even more subtle forces effects are usually a matter of interpretation or revision (or simple volume), alternated with the occasional simple vocal or instrumental piece that for one reason or another thrums despite its simplicity with the necessary energies. The identifying marker with Forces is not tempo, but power, great repositories of which can be found in some of the strangest places...
Example tracks: Ode to Joy, Adagio in D Minor

Life music tends heavily towards the vocal, or even the operatic, combining the intense, raw emotion of perfect singing with the power of timeless, universal truth. Whether exuberant or tragic, Life music is always evocative, always heart-wrenching, whether inciting its audience to weep or cheer or riot against some terrible injustice. In this regard of course, it often overlaps with Forces and other Spheres, but the emotional charge is separate, divided by a personal charge of deep resonant emotion. Life magic is, after all, designed to move the heart of stone.
Example tracks: Vesti la Giubba, One Day More

Entropy is the music of discordance and disquiet, running the gamut from dour, organic tracks from ancient Gothic masterpieces, to haunting, cross-tonal experiments from geniuses demented or obsessed. Quite a bit of Entropy music has bloody backstory surrounding it, and that which does not often sounds as though it should. Minor keys and frankly discordant elements are common in Entropy music, producing the necessary effect via methods that have nothing to do with raw power (though they can), but instead with the strange, semi-atonal sounds riven through them, ones that upset the patterns of reality and spread through the surrounding world like cracks in glass.
Example tracks: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Carol of the Bells

Spirit music is rustic, folkish music, often derived from the depths of an earlier time, either explicitly or through evolution. It tends to (though does not solely) focus on acoustic instruments and older styles of music from a bygone past. Yet the seeds of Spirit music can be found as well in repertoires as varied as Bob Dylan or the Beetles, the important element being the thematic and emotional content rather than publication date. Any song with which a skilled singer can lure spirits to his call like a Siren is fair game for the sphere of Spirit, and the mightiest songs ever written by unknowing Orpheuses can literally bring forth Gods.
Example tracks: The Green Fields of France, Blowing in the Wind

Mind music is, even by Siegfried's standards, incredibly hard to distinguish, the key element being a cerebral element, often instrumental, and occasionally as discordant as anything Entropic. Everything from truly mad experimental music to more common fare whose focus seems to be upon mental states indescribable through other means. Mind music varies wildly in tone depending on the desired effect, from anthemic triumphalism to discordant eeriness, and oft-times only Siegfried himself can possibly determine what is and is not Mind music. Yet any note or current that can captivate an audience and muster their will and emotion to that of the instrumentalist cannot be far away from the sphere of Mind.
Example tracks: Requiem for Queen Mary, Thus Sprach Zarathustra

Prime, the underlying force behind all magic, is represented musically as elementally as possible. The basic building blocks of music, the evocative leitmotifs that resonate again and again within the broad canon of music, these are the things of Prime music. Very few pieces are Prime alone, yet some positively thrum with the force of Quintessence, channeling and summoning the very stuff of reality around basic musical themes of tremendous motive power. Though his experience with it is limited, and his capacity to draw on it yet untapped, Siegfried is convinced that the nature of Prime music points the way to unlocking the original music of Creation itself, a holy grail he pursues with vigor, in his own quest for ascension.
Example tracks: Canon in D, Sweet Child of Mine

Correspondence deals with the relationships between things, rather than the things themselves, and Correspondence music deals accordingly with the intersection of musical genres, styles, and theories. Like Entropy or Mind, Correspondence magic tends towards discordant elements, but unlike those spheres, Correspondence includes the pieces that seamlessly integrated these elements to produce something wholly new. Wild tempo shifts, sudden alterations of style or theme or musical genre, composite pieces derived from fifty different sources, this is the stuff of Correspondence music, which can re-write the relationships that objects, people, or the world itself hold with one another, given a sufficiently skilled player.
Example tracks: Bohemian Rhapsody, Baba Yetu

Obviously, the vast majority of songs in any sphere, including many of the ones listed as examples above, will bleed over quite easily into other spheres. As far as Siegfried is concerned, this is by design. Music is a syncretic art form, wherein multiple ideas can be maintained within the same piece, and effects that Siegfried calls upon are generally often pulled from multiple sources at once. Songs can, and do, reflect as many as four or five spheres at once, and can alter their repertoire depending on the interpretation Siegfried places on them in the moment. Yet above all of the spheres, lies that which underlies all music, his original, and still more expert sphere, that of Time. As the fundamental measurement of music (sound over time), moreso even than Prime, Time is the factor that underlies literally everything that any musician must do. As such, the focus for Time is not this song or that one, but all music, and the motive force is not the song itself, but the act of him performing it. Unlike other spheres, for Siegfried to enact a time effect, he must physically perform the piece in question, play the instrument, sing the vocals, even tapping the drumline with his foot is sometimes sufficient. Time is simultaneously no genre and every genre of music, and forms his personal connection to the rest of musical magic.

[Karrick]

So, what are we looking at? Celtic, Nordic, granola chewing neo-pagan Wiccan?

I added some more at the end of my description that I hope answers that.

[Cynical Cat]

So it will be Eclipse Phase next week.

[rhoenix]

I'm counting the days until the 28th.

[Cynical Cat]

So I've been asked about the holy grail of multiple actions.

There is no way to get more than one action using True Magick.

Other actions can be done, with the right spheres.

You'll need to spend one success to extend the effect to the whole scene.

Mind 1 can get you extra mental actions and multitasking, so while you can't take seven melee actions with it, you can use it to use magic and dodging. Each success on the magick roll gets you an extra action.

Time 3 can get you all sorts of extra (nonmagical) actions. Again, one success gets you one extra action.

You can get an extra move action and potentially dodges with enough vulgar forces to fly/TK, but that will require at least two successes to get the extra action as well as Forces 3.


Lastly, there is the option for poor mortals without magic. You can take extra actions by accepting a penalty on all of your actions. The penalty is equal to the total number of actions taken. Each successive action the penalty goes up by one. So for two actions it's two dice penalty for the first action and three dice for the second. For three actions this is three for the first action, four for the second, and five for the third.

[Charon]

I'm not gonna be in any condition to be at the game today guys.

My parents put our dog to sleep today and I'm kind of an emotional wreck.

[Hotfoot]

Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that. My condolences. :(

[frigidmagi]

I'm not gonna be in any condition to be at the game today guys.

My parents put our dog to sleep today and I'm kind of an emotional wreck.

I know how that feels man. Take some time. Get some air.

[rhoenix]

I'm not gonna be in any condition to be at the game today guys.

My parents put our dog to sleep today and I'm kind of an emotional wreck.

Take all the time you need, man. I know how that can hit you.

[Karrick]

I don't know if it's Mage or Eclipse Phase tonight, but I'm going to be missing the game again. Monday nights in general have been kind of iffy for me lately, so I think I'm going to try to shoot for every other week for skype gaming. Since we're nominally alternating, that should mean I can still keep up with one game. Not to knock CynCat, but Mage just isn't grabbing me the way Eclipse Phase is so that's what I'm going to stick with. Sorry gents.

[Cynical Cat]

That's cool. Take care of yourself man.

[Charon]

Work has student exams that will involve me getting up insanely early, as such I won't be able to make it to Mage this Monday.

[Cynical Cat]

The game is canceled today due to brutal GM computer death.

[frigidmagi]

I'm sorry to hear that Cat. I hope you can get it fixed.

[rhoenix]

Eesh, seriously. It must be killing CynCat to be sparing us agony because his computer decided to stage a revolution.

May the dissenting device be silenced and brought back to proper operation soon, CynCat.

[Comrade Tortoise]

ouch. Thats no fun!

You were giddy about taking the training wheels off too...

[Marcao]

.

[Comrade Tortoise]

I hate doing this, but I cant make it tonight guys. I give *picks name out of hat* Hotfoot control over my character should it be required to search archives, or engage in combat, magical or otherwise.

I have less time than I thought I had to finish up data analysis and build a larger poster-like object. It seems it takes the library 24 hours do get such things printed, which means I have until wednesday at 3 to get ALL the shit done... this is a tall order. A very tall order. It means I am pulling an all-nighter tonight, and likely nearly one tomorrow.

Have fun guys.

PS. Before anyone asks, no. I did not procrastinate. Nature itself was not cooperating with specimen collection. It did not cooperate until late last week.

[frigidmagi]

To sum up for half of the group that wasn't there (although most of you had damn good reasons).

We got our ass kicked. We went in thinking we'd just smooze a mundane town council and frankly if that was what we were doing... I think we would have pulled it off. But it wasn't, turns out we were walking into the den of the power that runs this town. Bill Tanner, sheriff and the guy who pegged when I tried to mind mojo him. In fact, he told me to get my ass back to my Tibetan monastery. Which means not only could he tell that I was trying magic on him, but he could tell what tradition I came from. His entire police force seems to be in on it to. He put our nuts in a vice and told him to bug the fuck out.

So... We are. For now. We're behind enemy lines, we got bad intel, no support and we're near out of ammo. If we stay, we ain't winning this fight. Everyone who wasn't at the game please check your PMs.