Scelesti

The Accursed, The Wicked, Nefandi

Mage The Awakening Sourcebook 361
warning.png"Scelesti" is not in the list of possible values (Architects of the Future, Ascended Adept, Austere, Awakening Gambit, Bearers of the Eternal Voice, Bene Ashmedai, Blank Badges, Brotherhood of the Demon Wind, Carnival Melancholy, Celestial Masters, Chrysalides, Clavicularius, Cryptologos, Daksha, Daoine, Devourers of the Flesh, Dreamspeakers, Echo Walkers, Eleventh Question, Eyes of Ain Soph, Fallen Pillar, Fangs of Mara, Forge Masters, House of Ariadne, Illumined Path, Imagineers, Keepers of the Covenant, Liberatores, Logophages, Lords of the Inanimate, Masters of Destruction, Mimirs Voice, Neocologists, Orphans of Proteus, Path of the Book, Perfected Adept, Princes of the Many Masks, Pure Sovereigns, Pygmalian Society, Reality Makers, Reality Stalker, Roses of Eden, Scions of God, Secret Order of the Gate, Singers In Silence, Sisterhood of the Blessed, Skald, Sodality of the Tor, Sphinxes, Stewards of the Celestial Orrery, Stone Scribes, Storm Keeper, Subtle Ones, Tamers of Fire, Tamers of Rivers, Tamers of Stone, Tamers of Winds, Tamers of the Cave, Tellurians, Thread Cutters, Threnodist, Thrice-Great, Timori, Transhuman Engineers, True Soul, Uncrowned Kings, Unforgotten Scions, Votaries of the Ordained, Walkers In Mists, Whipping Boys, Wraiths of Epochs) for this property.
Primary	Spirit
Past	warning.png"Scelesti" is not in the list of possible values (Architects of the Future, Ascended Adept, Austere, Awakening Gambit, Bearers of the Eternal Voice, Bene Ashmedai, Blank Badges, Brotherhood of the Demon Wind, Carnival Melancholy, Celestial Masters, Chrysalides, Clavicularius, Cryptologos, Daksha, Daoine, Devourers of the Flesh, Dreamspeakers, Echo Walkers, Eleventh Question, Eyes of Ain Soph, Fallen Pillar, Fangs of Mara, Forge Masters, House of Ariadne, Illumined Path, Imagineers, Keepers of the Covenant, Liberatores, Logophages, Lords of the Inanimate, Masters of Destruction, Mimirs Voice, Neocologists, Orphans of Proteus, Path of the Book, Perfected Adept, Princes of the Many Masks, Pure Sovereigns, Pygmalian Society, Reality Makers, Reality Stalker, Roses of Eden, Scions of God, Secret Order of the Gate, Singers In Silence, Sisterhood of the Blessed, Skald, Sodality of the Tor, Sphinxes, Stewards of the Celestial Orrery, Stone Scribes, Storm Keeper, Subtle Ones, Tamers of Fire, Tamers of Rivers, Tamers of Stone, Tamers of Winds, Tamers of the Cave, Tellurians, Thread Cutters, Threnodist, Thrice-Great, Timori, Transhuman Engineers, True Soul, Uncrowned Kings, Unforgotten Scions, Votaries of the Ordained, Walkers In Mists, Whipping Boys, Wraiths of Epochs) for this property.
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This is a Left-Handed Legacy.

Every mage must reach across the Abyss to grasp Supernal power. This is no mere initiatic hurdle to weed out the unworthy, but a very real danger to a mage’s psyche, for the Abyss is far from empty. Awash in its torrents, its darkness clings, permeating clothing, body and soul. The slightest misstep in the Abyss can so derange the enlightened that any illumination they transmit is tainted with madness. Thus do the Legacies collectively known as the Scelesti — the Accursed — come into being.

If the hordes of the Abyss can be said to have an agenda or motive, it would seem to be a desire to claim the Fallen World in lieu of the shining realms of the Supernal World that are closed to them. These entities, languishing in a kind of non-existence between the pure light of the Supernal and the gross matter of the Fallen World, seek to establish themselves in the latter. To accomplish this, an Abyssal entity must have some instrument through which to work its will in the material world. The Scelesti are such instruments. Unable to emerge in being by their own power alone, Abyssal beings must first make themselves known to an Awakened consciousness, who can then make their presence real in the Fallen World by writing the spirits’ unpronounceable names across the earth in letters of fear, suffering and disaster.

Mages who gaze too long into the Abyss fall prey to fascination and awe, their souls bound up in madness and obsession with the yawning chasms of unreason. Some might escape with psychic scars. Others fall prey to their own delusions and desires. Mistaking the vastness of the Abyss for a source of knowledge and strength, they abandon all sense and reason to lose themselves in endless chaos. Or they pledge themselves to the entities that lurk therein, and so consign their souls to oblivion.

Those who are able to retain enough of their identity to contain their madness find that the Abyss has power in and of itself, apart from the hordes of non-beings that haunt it. Some swim in a primordial ocean of chaosplasm, riding its currents and shaping it to their ends. Others are lost tothevoid,theirinnerlightswallowedindarknessand silence. Still others may find twisted reflections of their Supernal ideals in delusions.

Meanwhile, the new overlords of the corrupted mages goad them on with promises of worldly glory and opulence — once the Fallen World has fallen into their clutches, of course. Such a thing cannot be accomplished alone, however, so the immediate task of the Scelesti becomes that of luring other mages into their sway and bringing them to the brink of the Abyss.

Being one of the Accursed has its advantages. In a corrupt world, the expert corrupter can rule. The Abyssal hordes are not without power, and grant portions of their might to a mage who can provide them with a foothold in the Fallen World. And there are legions of lesser entities, any of which may be dispatched to serve a Scelestus as slave, guardian or familiar.

Damnation by this magical course is not specific to any Path. Inheritors of this Legacy may be found practicing anywhere in mage society, using arcane symbolism and hermetic secrecy to conceal their true nature from peers and the rest of the world. Sometimes when a Scelestus is discovered within an order, his entire tutorial lineage may be stricken from the order’s records if it cannot be determined at which point a teacher was corrupted. (Hence, the Scelesti are also sometimes called Nefandi, the Unutterable, or “that which is not to be spoken of.”)

Attainments

• Magic Circle
• Abyssal Command
• Shadow Circle