Magic is the act of transforming will to power. A mage needs no more than that — just the ability to think clearly enough to form an Imago is enough to work magic.
But mages are also human, and humans find that the focus necessary to form and maintain all but the simplest Imago at the drop of a hat is elusive at best. Instead, mages do what all humans do: They use semiotic shortcuts.
Just as a first-grader may learn “Roy G. Biv” as a mnemonic for the colours of the rainbow, so a mage uses symbolic times, places, words, items, and movements as a key to forming an Imago.
The Diamond calls these keys “Yantras,” after the Sanskrit word for a mystical design or apparatus.
The Free Council prefers the more prosaic “Instruments,” focusing on their grounding in humanity’s acts of creation.
The Seers know them as “Chains,” mystic signatures burned into the Fallen World by the hands of the Exarchs.
Sleepwalkers and Sleepers alike often mistake the medium for the message, believing that the Yantras associated with a given working are in and of themselves sources of power.
This belief — that anyone can work Supernal magic with the right combination of items, motions, and words — is sadly mistaken.
To a mage, they are aids to concentration and keys that unlock parts of an Imago held in memories.
Semiotics
Each Yantra has a meaning above and beyond the Yantra itself — to the mage who wields it, a crystal rod is a tool of clarity and a means of action at a distance, of touching beyond one’s grasp.
To some mages, it is a symbol of male sexuality.
Others see it as a means of channelling power and removing illusions.
Still others see it as a tool of command.
All of these things are true — this crystal wand is a reflection of the Crystal Wand that casts a shadow on the wall of Plato’s cave.
In order to use a Yantra, a willworker has to recognize a specific symbolism in the tool. That reflection then factors into her arcane understanding, enabling her to use that symbol as the foundation for an Imago. Rather than drawing a picture of what she wants freehand, she instead has a stock image she can trace or use as inspiration. The more Yantras she uses — whether different interpretations of the same tool or different tools altogether — the more basis she has for her Imago, making it easier to form.
Naturally, using Yantras in this way has its limits — if the mage can’t fit any of the symbols associated with the Yantra into her working, she can’t use it to bolster her magic. A Guardian might set up a Chamber of Veils that she uses to hide truths and reveal secrets, but unless she can connect her Supernal understanding of the Chamber of Veils to a place of healing, it won’t help her when a cabal mate stumbles through her door holding his intestines in place.
Unlocking the Imago
When a mage uses a Yantra in the working of a spell, she adds bonus dice to her spellcasting dice pool.
The number of dice varies by the Yantra that she uses. These bonus dice can help eliminate penalties to her spellcasting pool, or provide bonuses.
A mage can only get so much help from Yantras — after offsetting any penalties, the maximum bonus from all her Yantras combined cannot exceed +5 dice.
A mage may want to use as many Yantras as possible in her spellcasting, especially for powerful acts of magic. She can, however, only access so many pieces of Supernal knowledge at once.
To reflect this, the number of Yantras she can apply to a given spellcasting pool is limited by her Gnosis. If she uses one ritual item in many ways, each individual use counts as one Yantra for this limit.
It takes time to draw upon the Supernal sympathy of objects and actions. A mage can draw upon one Yantra as a Reflexive Action when casting a spell; each further Yantra extends the casting time of instant spells by a turn.
Ritual spells already take long enough to incorporate as many Yantras as the mage is able and willing to use. Someone who wants to interrupt an involved casting thus has plentiful opportunities to snatch away mystic items, block out the light of the full moon, or just shoot the mage in the head.
List of Yantras
Places
Mages seek out — or create — locations that border the Supernal in the hope of using that proximity to enforce Supernal laws on the Fallen World. Others find places or times where the Lie reflects the Supernal without any specific proximity.
Demense
A willworker might enhance her ritual space with a soul stone, turning it into a weak form of Verge. Mages most often decorate their ritual spaces according to their Orders — a Mystagogue’s ritual space may be a storehouse of knowledge that reflects the Order’s Tarsi Archive, while a given Libertine may fit hers out as a machine shop or embed the soul stone in a sacred tree.
A Demesne is of most use in ritual casting. It provides a prepared, sacred space where the mystic can work without the interruptions of the Lie; only a few (such as a dojo used by an Adamantine Arrow to practice sacred weapon forms) are of any use with instant spells and then only in defences of the Demesne.
Beyond that, the construction and sacred tools within a Demesne determine what magics it can apply to.
A Libertine’s machine shop helps with spells that build, repair, or dismantle.
An Arrow’s training room helps with spells involving duels, preparation for battle, and self-mastery.
A Guardian’s Veiled Room helps with spells of disguise, misdirection, and uncovering truths.
Effect: Demesnes provide a 2-die bonus. (See Demense for more info)
Environment
Places and times in the Fallen World can bring about the Supernal if they reflect the spell a mage is using. An Acanthus may use the sun at noon to see through falsehoods, while a Mastigos might use the light of the full moon reflected in a pool of water to scry across vast distances.
Location is just as important — many Obrimos seek out churches to perform spells of persuasion, command, and stewardship. Some wizards prepare ritual spaces that contain multiple Yantras — combining a favourable environment with Atlantean runes and magical tools into a summoning circle. Such a location combines three Yantras in one place — but inexperienced mystics must take their time, and a mage’s enemies will soon learn where best to strike.
An environment has to link to the spell itself, not just the mage. The Obrimos in a church cannot use it as a Yantra to magically charge her cell phone. The magic must link to what Sleepers know about a place or time, not because their perceptions cause Supernal notice but because their actions unconsciously reflect the Supernal attributes of a place.
Effect: Casting in an appropriate location grants a 1-die bonus.
Supernal Verges
In places where the Supernal touches the Fallen World, willworkers find it much easier to draw power through an Imago.
Such places are natural Yantras, lending their power to those within. Each Supernal Verge teems with the power of one of the Supernal Realms, and lends its power to the Ruling Arcana of that Realm.
Supernal Verges are thus as valuable for their versatility as their power. In a Pandemonic Verge, any spells that use the Mind or Space Arcana can draw upon the Verge’s power, be that a long ritual to superimpose two locations or a simple spell to fuddle an opponent’s senses.
A mage in the appropriate Supernal Verge can use his mystic connection to the Watchtower to use it as a Yantra on any ritual spell that doesn’t involve the Path’s Inferior Arcanum but does use one of the Ruling Arcana.
Effect: Verges provide a 2-die bonus.
Actions
Everything a willworker does can be magic.
Orders teach ritual gestures that bring the Imago of a Rote to mind through conditioning and muscle-memory. High Speech allows a mage to intone or write her spell not in the imperfect tongues of the Fallen World but the sacred glossolalia that is what it describes.
A mage can even hold her spell’s Imago in her mind, focusing on it beyond the point of creation in order to maintain Supernal truth upon the world.
Some mages use actions as Yantras to get out of a bind — even stripped naked and chained in a cannibal killer’s dungeon, a théarch can speak words of High Speech and focus upon the Imago of a spell.
It takes a little practice to get used to, but given a little time to breathe he can work magic far easier than if he formed an Imago from whole cloth.
Concentration
Many spells finish when the willworker forces the Lie to change. Some hold on for as long as the mage can impose her will.
It’s a draining task, but worth it. Most common is a mage who holds her Imago in her mind. If she’s particularly skilled in the High Speech, she may find it easier to keep the spell in mind by slowly translating her Imago into runes and back again, focusing on them.
In either case, she must focus on the spell and only the spell. If she wavers, the effect is lost.
On a basic level, concentration is a mage exerting her will over even her own mind, forcing herself not to weaken. As such, it’s a symbol of ongoing action — and a means to have a spell last longer than it should.
The vast majority of mages focus on a spell over time in order to bolster its Duration. A few mages instead see concentration like a lens, focusing Supernal truth. While this interpretation can bolster a spell, it also leaves the mage open to disruption until she completes her spell.
Effect: Concentrating on an spell with a Duration greater than a turn provides +2 extra dice. If the mage is hurt or takes a non-Reflexive Action while the spell is active, it ends immediately.
Mantras
A trained mage can use High Speech to intone her Imago, describing the change that she wills and thus making that change real. As a means of changing the world it is flexible — it requires no external props nor ongoing concentration — but it requires her to speak the words out loud.
As a Yantra, High Speech is very versatile. Many mages know enough to declaim control or dominance, or to repeat the words over and over again to build up a defence. It is, however, not subtle. She cannot work words of High Speech into a normal sentence to compel a listener to her will. The meta-language of the Supernal cannot hide in the shallow grammars and inflections of the Lie.
Effect: If the mage has the High Speech Merit, vocally intoning her Imago confers a 2-die bonus. As it takes time to speak the words, she cannot use this Yantra reflexively — it always increases the casting time.
Mudras
Mudras are Supernal mnemonics taught by the Orders that draw on skills and knowledge of the Fallen World, cast through the Order’s philosophy.
Creating mudras is part of defining a Rote, codifying the structure of magic in the symbols of the Lie.
Mudras come in many forms — Buddhist Libertines may use zazen, while the Arrow may tense specific muscles in a set pattern, and Guardians use specific rhythms of walking and representative hand gestures.
Each Rote is unique to the mage who created it — some encode specific symbolism into the positioning of individual fingers to allow a student to form his own mnemonic; far more present a paternalistic approach that teaches the mudra and the magic without an intervening step to consider the actions’ meaning.
Effect: Using a Rote’s mudra adds the user’s rating in the Rote’s encoded Skill to her dice pool up to +5. If the Skill is one of her Order’s specialized Rote Skills, she adds an extra die. Mudras do not require the mage to actually use the Skill beyond remembering the gestures of the mudra; a mage cannot spend a turn hacking in order to then claim a Computers mudra for a spell.
Runes
An intersection between incanting in High Speech and concentrating on an Imago, some mages use runic High Speech to enhance the power of a spell. Most use the boost from a runic Yantra to boost a spell’s Duration; the need to scribe the runes onto the spell’s subject makes them less useful for most other castings.
Anything that disrupts the careful shape and arrangement of the runes makes them an imperfect description of the spell’s Imago, ending the effect.
Some mages inscribe the runes of a healing spell onto their cabal mates in the form of mystic tattoos that heal injuries, while others paint or carve them into solid objects to make them harder than diamond.
When using runes on a person, a mage may paint her subject, scribe the runes with a tattooing gun, or brand them right into the subject’s flesh. Properly drawing runes takes time equal to the mage’s ritual interval.
Effect: Runic casting adds +2 dice to the mage’s spellcasting pool. If anything damages or disrupts the runes while the spell is active — whitewashing runes painted on a wall, or slicing through a runic tattoo — it ends immediately.
Tools
Each mage maintains at least a handful of magical tools, mundane items that have a symbolic link to specific kinds of magic. Almost no mages rely on just a single tool. Even if she only uses magic appropriate to its symbol, it’s too easy to take the tool away from her.
Effect: Each item used as a Yantra adds +1 die to the spellcasting pool.
Path Tools
Each Supernal Realm has its reflections in the Fallen World, and a mage knows the Tools of magic that align closely to her Path.
While mages with a background in Sleeper occultism recognize that the Path tools show up in several traditions, their direct elemental or Tarot symbolism is the Lie’s corruption of the Supernal Realms’ truth.
Each Path has five Tools, each of which has a specific magical function:
- Coins or other symbols of material wealth, which represent construction, repair, and inanimate or intangible things that last beyond mere human lifespans. It is the Tool closest to the Fallen World, and so is often used to manipulate it directly, for money or other resources.
- Cups or other drinking vessels can invoke healing, intuition, perceptual magic, and gathering together. Drinking from a shared cup is a common way to spread a spell among a group. It’s often seen as a symbol of female sexuality, though what that means depends on the mage.
- Mirrors may be actual mirrors, polished plates, or reflecting pools held in containers of the appropriate material. They represent sight, soul, and the self, and are the Magical Tool most commonly used when the mage would work a spell upon herself.
- Rods, wands, or staves are symbols of control — the ability to point and have a thing happen. Pointing a rod is a way of singling out a specific victim, while holding one is a symbol of rulership and command. It’s also used as a symbol of male sexuality.
- Weapons, most normally knives, are symbols of thought made action — any spell that takes direct, decisive action on the world (or a person) can benefit from a weapon. While often used to harm, weapons also represent the mastery of intellect and will over the world.
Materials
Each Path has specific materials that elevate a Magical Tool from merely an object to something resonant with a Supernal Realm, as well as weapons that can replace the traditional knife.
- Acanthus: Glass, crystal, silver, reflective materials; Rapier, bow, precision weapons
- Mastigos: Iron, brass, leather, worked materials; Curved sword, whip, cruel weapons
- Moros: Lead, bone, gems, buried materials; Hammer, mace, crushing weapons
- Obrimos: Steel, petrified wood, gold, perfected materials; Double-edged sword, spear, noble weapons
- Thyrsus: Wood, copper, stone, natural materials; Axe, sling, hunting weapons
Order Tools
An Order’s Magical Tools draw upon that Order’s symbols rather than those of the Supernal world directly, focusing magic in a way that matches their teachings.
The formal magical style of the Diamond Orders and the Seers of the Throne all resonate through the same tools — the Arrow uses martial Tools as symbols of conflict; the Guardians use cloaks, masks, and veils as symbols of things hidden and revealed; the Mysterium teaches books, writing, and language as Tools of knowledge and communication; and the Silver Ladder uses signs of authority to as Tools of status and persuasion.
The Seers of the Throne each choose a sigil or word that they must display to use it as a Tool.
The Free Council are an oddity among all the other Orders.
While every Libertine may use complex mechanisms and systems as Order Tools, the Techné Merit allows a Libertine to focus on a personal style of magic based on Sleeper culture, using it as an additional Tool in her magic.
Sympathy
Rather than defining the “what” of a spell, sympathetic tools define the “who” — the person, place, creature, or institution upon which the mage forces her will.
She may have a person’s Sympathetic Name or a lock of his hair, a ghost’s Anchor, a chunk of concrete taken from a building, or a company’s articles of incorporation.
Whatever the case, the Yantra represents the subject of the spell, allowing the mage to build it into the Imago or access an Attainment to use her own sympathetic connection to the subject in order to cast across Space or Time.
- Material sympathy represents the subject as he is now, or at the time the mage wants to affect him. It could be a piece of the target’s physical substance, or a recent photograph or recording; an item the subject created within a month is also acceptable.
- Representational sympathy is something that represents the subject though she has changed since — an old lock of hair or photo of the subject as a child, for example.
- Symbolic sympathy includes indirect representations of the subject — a person’s Sympathetic Name, drawings, caricatures, or posed and costumed photographs.
Effects: Material sympathy gives a 2-die bonus to the spellcasting pool, while representational sympathy adds +1 die.
Symbolic sympathy is not close enough to the subject to give a bonus.
A mage must use a sympathetic Yantra in order to cast a spell using the Sympathetic Range or Temporal Sympathy Attainments; it does not give any bonus dice when doing so.
Sacrament
A sacrament is any Magical Tool symbolic of the spell in question that the mage destroys during casting. Many times — though by no means always — it also provides a sympathetic link to the subject of her spell.
She may infuse bread with herbs and spices to make those who share the loaf work together smoothly.
She may burn a man’s driver’s license and passport for a spell that removes him from government records.
She may fire a male figure out of clay then crush it to powder when changing her body to match her gender.
If she can find one of her enemy’s Magical Tools, she has both a sympathetic link and a sacrament for any spell that would hurt him.
Some mages go further than finding or creating things to sacrifice during casting. Some engage in quests into the other realms of the Fallen World, leaving the flesh behind to uncover items with magical properties of their own. Destroying them during casting can make a spell flare with power.
Particularly twisted mages kill animals and murder humans for the magical power. The surest way to kill a powerful enemy with magic is to sacrifice something close to him — a beloved pet, or a family member.
Effect: Most sacraments grant a +1 bonus. If the mage has to spend significant effort to find the right item or component, the bonus increases to +2, or +3 if the item comes from somewhere other than the material realm.
Persona
Some mages invest in their cabals and in their Shadow Names, coming up with whole new personas as willworkers, independent — or at least, significantly divergent — from who they were as Sleepers.
A persona binds a mage’s magical style, her personal mysteries, and her Shadow Name into an identity that, over time, leaves its mark on the Fallen World.
By playing to this fictional persona, she can tap in to a level of Supernal sympathy. Her actions must play in to her personal story, however — a fortune-teller or faith healer can’t use her persona as a Yantra to harm another.
By contrast, the faith healer could use his persona not just for healing, but to bolster his reputation and give his words greater gravitas, making people more likely to believe him.
Effect: A persona Yantra keys in to the mage’s Shadow Name and Cabal Theme Merits, providing +1 to +4 dice. Mana charged by ley resonance also allows a +1 Persona Yantra.
Dedicated Tools
Each mage has a Dedicated Magical Tool — an item that synchronizes with her Nimbus and that feeds in to her understanding of magic.
A Thyrsus who trusts to nature to provide may not have much by way of possessions, but his walking stick is his staff, and he uses it even for spells that do not benefit from its symbolism. A Botswanan Libertine who learned the magic of the Sangoma may tap a rhythm on her drum even when the noise has no bearing on her spells, as the drumming is part of her Nimbus.
The Dedicated tool is often the first Path tool that the mage used, or something that she grabbed at the moment of her Awakening.
If it gets destroyed or lost, she can replace it — but at a price. She must use her chosen tool as a Yantra in every spell she casts for a month (counting against her limit), regardless of whether doing so gives any benefit.
Effect: Using a Dedicated tool as a Yantra penalizes any Paradox dice pool by –2; the mage can also use it as a Path or Order tool.