The major Orders seek to provide general guidelines for how magic ought to be employed. Legacies, however, represent a conscious, narrow view on how an individual mage should wield magic.
Magic
Not all Awakened develop Legacies, but most do, because they confer several advantages:\
- Yantras
- Oblations
- New or strengthened Ruling Arcanum
- Legacy Attainments
By adopting a Legacy, a mage alters her Gnosis, shaping her mystic self in accord with its principles. Some Legacies are initiatory traditions; others, deeply personal obsessions.
Prerequisites
Path, Order or Praxis
All Legacies possess an originating Path, and many (though not all) are connected to an Order.
Normally, your mage must either belong to the Legacy’s Path or Order. However, it is possible for a mage of any Path or Order to join a Legacy if she learns a Praxis that duplicates the Legacy’s first Attainment, and utilizes one of the Legacy’s Yantras. She develops the understanding to join without other requirements. Note that some Legacies possess unusual Attainments that make this impossible. Once she learns the Legacy’s first Attainment, she loses the Praxis it duplicates but receives one standard Experience and one Arcane Beat.
Arcane (and Other) Knowledge
Before initiation, your mage must possess at least two dots in the Legacy’s new Ruling Arcanum. She must also possess two dots of Gnosis. If she’s founding her own Legacy, the requirement is increased to three dots.
Legacies also require other forms of knowledge based on their respective theories and beliefs. This normally takes the form of two or more dots in a particular Skill, but Storytellers and Legacy founders may specify additional requirements.
Indoctrination
Finally, each Legacy demands that prospective pupils perform tasks, endure ordeals, and otherwise encounter the Legacy’s perspective through direct experience. Even a self-founded Legacy can’t be invented with a mere idea — the mage needs to explore its Mystery through action.
Initiation
Mages have developed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Legacies, but most are no longer practiced. Some represent one sorcerer’s obsession, but others are full-fledged “academies”.
To join, one must be initiated through the following methods, after meeting the Legacy’s prerequisites. Legacy initiation usually requires a week of dedicated study and ritual, or a longer period of part-time effort, but certain Legacies naturally require more or less time.
Founding a Legacy
Your mage might be able to develop her own Legacy at Gnosis 3 or greater. You must expend one Arcane Experience to complete the process after designing the Legacy with your Storyteller.
This is, however, the least common way to join a Legacy for the simple reason that most mages aren’t up to the task — anyone can join a Legacy, but few can found them.
There’s no hard and fast rule restricting who can found a Legacy. It rests entirely on what the troupe feels comfortable with.
Know, however, that a cabal of mages who have each founded their own Legacies would achieve legendary status and an inconvenient degree of attention.
Daimonomikon
Your sorcerer may study a Daimonomikon: a special Grimoire that teaches the Legacy’s secrets.
This requires a minimum Gnosis of 2.
Daimonomika are difficult to find, and often deliberately hidden or destroyed by rival Legacies or parties who believe the Legacy should be suppressed.
To join the Legacy described in a Daimonomikon’s pages, spend one Arcane Experience.
Soul Study
Your mage may study the soul or soul stone of a mage belonging to a Legacy to join it.
This requires a minimum Gnosis of 2.
Outside certain Legacies that use this as a traditional way to instruct students, this is considered a serious crime — you’re not only ripping off the Legacy, but probably stealing a practitioner’s soul.
To learn a Legacy by studying a soul or soul stone directly, spend one Arcane Experience.
Tutelage
This is by far the most common way to learn a Legacy.
Once your mage reaches Gnosis 2, an established Legacy member may initiate her into its ways.
The tutor must possess the Legacy’s third Attainment.
To join the Legacy, spend one standard or Arcane Experience. Furthermore, both tutor and pupil earn one Arcane Beat. If the pupil elects to spend an Arcane Experience, she may use this Arcane Beat to contribute to it, though this is not mandatory.
Legacies In Society
Every mage in the world belongs to one of the five Paths, which colours a mage’s perception of the world; Legacies describe for a mage how they should act.
Ancient Legacies reflect belief structures that have rung true for their members for centuries, and even contemporary ones represent a very specific worldview developed after careful reflection and self-examination.
Those who share a Legacy belong to an elite and highly specialized clique.
Some consist of hundreds of members scattered across the world like members of an especially esoteric social club.
Others boast only a few dozen mages with a belief system others among the Wise find inexplicable if not outright objectionable.
For those within one, a Legacy offers a specialized network of social contacts that understand each other better than any other mages do. Members of the same Legacy share an extraordinary philosophical connection, and the bond between mentor and student of a common Legacy tends to be stronger than that between any Order master and apprentice.
Members of a Legacy develop Legacy Attainments, powers so instinctive and often-used that they carve channels into the mage’s Gnosis, forcing her soul into a new shape, and are accessible without spellcasting. Some Legacies display physical or mental changes as well.
Adopting a Legacy is seen as a sign of maturity in mage society, marking the mage as a dedicated practitioner of her magical style. A minority of mages don’t develop one out of personal reluctance to shape their own souls, or wait to define their own Legacies rather than take the easier route of joining an existing one, but adepts and masters without Legacies or a stated reason to not have one are notably unusual.
While the Awakened accept that each mage will shape her soul to match a Legacy that might be radically different than those of cabal mates, most Consilia keep lists of banned Left-Handed Legacies in their Lex Magica Silver Laws. These Legacies practice Attainments deemed abhorrent by the Consilium, or have been interdicted by Convocation as hostile to the Pentacle as a whole.