Mage OOC Talk and Questions

[Xander]

Pretty sure it hasn't been mentioned in a while, but when West took over he brought back the wards with the time clock as a construct of West and Tyria Primoria. Before that the venue was pretty fractured as Casitive had a heavy focus on cliques through cabal and orders (which all had separate bases), so consolidating people into a safe single HQ was a thing. The occultation was an extension of that warding (by my understanding and knowledge of the two characters) so I figure if ST's want to keep the occultation and the time clock they would keep the wards as well.

It's also mentioned here that the Circle is a neutral, protected ground and Wards are well within the means of those two characters since they cast that spell on the regular when they were active PCs for their order HQs.

Also psa, my interest in conflict ends with my characters. I'd like to think I've had a soft enough touch in discord to illustrate that point.

Also sure Woland.

[Xadun]

Sure, I get that.

But even if those characters casted the Wards way back when, wouldn't they have worn off by now? Or is that handwavy because its the Circle? I honestly dont know.

This is more a scenario where I'm trying to check if IC clashes are happening because Xadun has missed something fundamental about Mage.

[Xadun]

This was also more or less my assumption, that there's a big-ass powerful magical artefact keeping all that stuff upright... that no mages of the present know much about.

[Vincent]

Short recap/timeline/FAQs-whatever on the Circle and the Current state of the world. It should have probably be done IC, but given the turnover, it's much better to put this in OOC form.

Three caveats:

1. I assume IC events from ST-ran/sanctioned plotlines take precedence over meta knowledge from a 2016 thread;
2. The venue is not linear, the current state of the world can be deduced by several plots ran by Yumy, Cayce and Matrixchild (aST for a short time) over the course of the past 2 years;
3. Most knowledge obtainable in-game is filtered through IC lenses (dots of science, dots of occult). The only two characters currently still in play that have been active through all the relevant plots are Campanella, Langdon and Winter.

FAQs (OOC knowledge in green):

• What's the Circle?

The Circle is an Artifact created by at least 4 (Arch)-Masters and powered by a relic called the mouth of Ouroboros. The clockwork Master of Time (met in game) and 3 others going by the names of Arthur, West and Tyria. Winter shared the knowledge of those names with Campanella. The Artifact bestows a powerful Occultation upon the building (a replica of the Westminster Abbey) that - allegedly - turns both Sleepers and Seers away. Nobody knows the full extent of this power and neither how much technological means of detection would be impacted. Keep in mind that both Internet and cellphones work within the building (they've been used IC).

• Who are those people?

We don't know. The only two characters who had any recollection of Tyria were Weavebreaker and Aurora. Apparently the latter met Tyria the year before. However, the centuries old catacombs and the strange magical room/garden beneath the Circle share a link to a certain museum. Winter recovered a cigarette butt, DNA might still be there on the sample.
Tyria and West are Sleepwalkers, currently living in Montana. Avis and Aurora met them during their short stay in Sacramento.

• Is the Circle safe?

The answer is: it depends. The short answer is: no

• Ok, why?

​After the kidnapping, the interrogation and the murder of one of the PCs (Epitaph, Cayce's necromancer), an FBI hunter cell discovered the general location of the Circle and attempted to lure the PCs out by staging a terrorist attack against the buildings nearby.
Several buildings were bombed, nevertheless their mission was unsuccessful. The hunters and their abomination were killed and the survivor of the strike team was captured and later interrogated. The PCs proceeded to murdered her (Benji's, Saber's, Kelreth's), her ghost should be haunting the cells beneath the Mysterium Wing (IIRC, Langdon probably knows more). In that occasion, we learned that the FBI knows about Mages.
At the time the power of the Circle was at its peak.

• What happened afterwards?

​An Arrow strike team was dispatched to one of the FBI's safehouses. They managed to recover the lower half of Epitaph's(?) body. One of the Hunters sported extensive body modifications, his remnants were recovered but weren't examined.

• And then?

​ The Seers attack the Circle. Either the power of the Circle has waned or the enemies have managed to warp past the Wards (if there ever was any, technically neither Awakened Tyria nor Awakened West exist in this timeline) and teleport a strike team. For the second time, we're reminded that the Artifact isn't as fool proof as we originally thought. The Consilium splits in two. Aurora, Phoenyx and Alastor fight the Seers head-on, pushing past the portals to lay waste to the Seer's base. There, they find another powerful artifact, a chained monumental door.
Team 2 (Sand, Shodan, Kaze, Kasterbouros and Winter) travel back in time to Renaissance London. There they fight a bunch of past-Seers and meet the clockwork Master that delivers the mouth of Ouroboros to Winter. They are immediately teleported back to the modern age, where they plug the mouth to the clock. In a shower of White, Crimson, Brown and Cyan, the Circle is rebooted. The mages promise themselves to study the Clock in the future.

• Follow up

The FBI is revealed to possess the technology necessary to track down spells and resonance. Several agents are armed with portable devices, but nobody knows the full extent of this technology. The Consilium only expert in Space leaves, further study of the Artifact is suspended.
Reduced to a skeleton crew, the mages of Sacramento decide to fortify the Circle against mundane attacks. OOC: A seer wanting to hack the cameras with magic would need at least space 2 (assuming no wards on the Circle, that's the minimum requirement for sympathetic non-sensory spells), in that case the cameras would be the last of our worries, after all, such foe would be wasting his time to keep an ongoing hacking effect when he could just scry on us anytime or plant a bunch of bugs of his own somewhere hidden via apportation (This is why IC, the idea of stashing a bunch of jammers was proposed) and get better intelligence. Besides, the Seers have opened a portal right by the Circle anyway.
The FBI can't solve NP-complete problems, not yet at least, and they got dangerously close to the circle, so anything helps.

[Xander]

Oh man, it's the zombie plots of yesteryear!
Yumyumcrow , can we just get an OOC call on the state of the venue/plots and whether we need to be worrying about security at the Circle so a plot that's now been dropped by two storytellers doesn't hang over the venue for the next five years like the new Baron Fairweather?

[Xadun]

That was really succinct and covers all the bases, I think.

Thanks Vincent!

[Yumyumcrow]

Thank you Xander Xadun and Vincent . This does seem a good moment to clear away some clutter before the venue gets bogged down again.

As far as I am concerned the Circle of Creation is Safe Ground. Add mundane security won't alter or undermine the integrity of the Occultation / Wards that surround the site. From an OOC perspective, the Circle is just like the Elysium in Vampire and the Freehold in Changeling. Its a place for characters to safely interact without having to worry about Sleepers, etc.

As far as I am concerned the Circle of Creation is a massive Artefact that is powered by the - now upgraded - Clock. As per Vincent post, this Artefact was created by at least four Masters, three of whom are linked to Sacramento directly. West the mage was PC and so was Tyria at one point (I think) before she became an NPC. Arthur was a PC as well who was later reintroduced in the Time War plot as an NPC.

I will be leaving the Circle alone in future, unless players are actively interested in exploring the site further. From an OOC standpoint the Circle exists as a common meeting place / Consilium house for the mages. Prior to that the venue had multiple bases for each Order - and sometimes individual Cabals - which became convoluted and messy as time went on. The revived Circle was a tool to amalgamate and flatten out the venue. It was not originally envisioned as an adventure site in and of itself.

I am letting Matrixchild's plots lapse. The FBI won't find anything linking back to the mages of the Consilium and will be downgrading their presence in the city. The Hunter group behind everything might keep a token presence but they will be deeply into the background and only bought out if I come up with a small plot for them now and then.

I am letting my earlier plot's lapse. I will be letting the shapeshifter plot and the mana flare lapse as most of the players involved have left. Rather than push on / restart those plot's I'll come up with something new for the new player base. After being away for more than a few months I have lost the plot threads anyway, so I will be starting afresh.

The Time War is over. The Ouroboros heart mechanism was the physical manifestation of an Imperial spell that, for want of a better word, sealed the time line and stopped the Seers from messing with it in Sacramento. The Time War was a modular plot which I thought needed to have its end. This was the best I could come up with at the time.

Hope this helps clear up some things.

[Ruach]

Thank you Xander Xadun and Vincent . This does seem a good moment to clear away some clutter before the venue gets bogged down again.

As far as I am concerned the Circle of Creation is Safe Ground. Add mundane security won't alter or undermine the integrity of the Occultation / Wards that surround the site. From an OOC perspective, the Circle is just like the Elysium in Vampire and the Freehold in Changeling. Its a place for characters to safely interact without having to worry about Sleepers, etc.

As far as I am concerned the Circle of Creation is a massive Artefact that is powered by the - now upgraded - Clock. As per Vincent post, this Artefact was created by at least four Masters, three of whom are linked to Sacramento directly. West the mage was PC and so was Tyria at one point (I think) before she became an NPC. Arthur was a PC as well who was later reintroduced in the Time War plot as an NPC.

I will be leaving the Circle alone in future, unless players are actively interested in exploring the site further. From an OOC standpoint the Circle exists as a common meeting place / Consilium house for the mages. Prior to that the venue had multiple bases for each Order - and sometimes individual Cabals - which became convoluted and messy as time went on. The revived Circle was a tool to amalgamate and flatten out the venue. It was not originally envisioned as an adventure site in and of itself.

I am letting Matrixchild's plots lapse. The FBI won't find anything linking back to the mages of the Consilium and will be downgrading their presence in the city. The Hunter group behind everything might keep a token presence but they will be deeply into the background and only bought out if I come up with a small plot for them now and then.

I am letting my earlier plot's lapse. I will be letting the shapeshifter plot and the mana flare lapse as most of the players involved have left. Rather than push on / restart those plot's I'll come up with something new for the new player base. After being away for more than a few months I have lost the plot threads anyway, so I will be starting afresh.

The Time War is over. The Ouroboros heart mechanism was the physical manifestation of an Imperial spell that, for want of a better word, sealed the time line and stopped the Seers from messing with it in Sacramento. The Time War was a modular plot which I thought needed to have its end. This was the best I could come up with at the time.

Hope this helps clear up some things.

Hooray! We won! Celebration!

[Xander]

I think if Shodan ( Woland ) wants to roll some dice against Campanella ( Yumyumcrow ), then they and anyone who wants to join in should all be rolling some dominance.

In other words, I'm calling for init.