A mage whose Path leads to Arcadia. Also known as Witches or Enchanters.
Bonded to the Watchtower of Lunargent Thorn in Arcadia
Ruling Arcana: Fate and Time
Inferior Arcanum: Forces
Favoured Resistance Attribute: Composure
To see examples and get an idea of the Acanthus, read the stories below.
Ruling Arcana
Fate and Time.
They’re the root powers of destiny: Arcadian energies that turn the Wheel of Fortune. Witchcraft is the art of shaping destiny.
As a subtle Arcanum, Fate is part of every soul, the vessel containing its ultimate purpose. Like Merlin (a name Acanthus say was a title), they study and draw forth potential. Like the Mórríoghan who laid Cú Chulainn low, they turn Fate against itself with curses and oaths that trap the fools who swear them.
Time is the loom that spins Fate into action. Acanthus part the Mists of possibility to predict portentous events. To Witches, these are scenes in a mythic story. Arcadia teaches that lives are legends, so as tricksters, allies, and prophets, they predict and shape pivotal moments — a role that puts them on the outside of great stories, setting the stage but rarely wielding the hero’s sword.
Inferior Arcanum
Forces
Lightning arrives at its appointed time in the tale, not before.
In Arcadia, elemental powers are visible manifestations of destiny and Fae passions. Fire isn’t heat alone, but the anger of the Fair Folk or the climax of an apocalyptic myth; it is not to be raised through some mechanistic act of Will.
Symbols and Myths
The Fool and the Wheel of Fortune. Tricksters, fairies, and witches. Stories of curses, blessings, and great destinies. Wishes and bargains.
In the Awakened Tarot, the Acanthus personifies the Fool: a trackless soul, able to move freely through the currents of destiny. Witches don’t get to this state through naïve wandering, but by unburdening themselves of old attachments, and using magic to slip the grasp of new ones.
Their Mysteries involve the Wheel of Fortune, a card depicting the relentless spin of destiny. There’s no still place to stand in the world, no equilibrium to be had. Even Acanthus can’t just grab a spoke of the Wheel to get to a favourable situation. A Witch needs to get to the right place at the right time to nudge things just so. The further she is from the ideal opportunity, the more she needs to push — with stronger, more dangerous sorcery.
Witches are well known for invoking Supernal Fae, but do not worship them. The Fair Folk respond to bargains and payments, not one-sided adulation (which as something given for free they enjoy, but never answer with favours). Modern Fae can take any shape. Many Acanthus invent personal fairy idols to attune themselves to Arcadia. Beyond personal inventions, Witches structure magic around trickster figures.
Tricksters demonstrate the value of breaking conventions, but also illustrate why those conventions exist. Coyote gets punished in the end, and the gods bound Loki with his son’s entrails. Acanthus need not use tricksters alone, however. Some prefer gods and signs of duty, destiny, and moral obligation. Acanthus rituals recall stories where luck, fate, obligations, and strong consequences come to the fore. Their spells are jinn-wishes with unintended consequences, or awful promises that must be kept. They recreate stories where heroes die from errant wordplay. Macbeth fits the pattern of an Acanthus legend. When Yudhishthira throws the dice to lose again and again, the tale follows Acanthus logic.
Witches in the Orders
Adamantine Arrow:
The Fallen World preys on hope and human potential. Acanthus see the mighty unwritten destinies; the Arrow trains them to defend these seeds of power. In return, Acanthus enhance Arrow zeal with efficiency. They’re the blow to the pressure point, the bullet to the eye socket, the charge to the weak flank.
Free Council:
We make our own fate; time is a ticking clock, a human breath, and moments of pain and love that stretch beyond objective measurement. The Free Council wants everyone to walk the Fool’s path, to shake off the Lie of oppressive systems and the compromises they force people to make with their true selves. Their Acanthus free people to explore their true destinies — to a point. Freedom is precious, but dangerous. We make our own fate, but produce our own evil.
Guardians of the Veil:
Horrors incubate inside foolish actions. The power to save or topple the world blazes in every soul. Some should be encouraged, but others need to be swaddled in ignorance, so they cannot even conceive of power, lest they abuse it. Acanthus sense these dangers before anyone else, and have the Art to deal with them quietly. Peering through time, they can see why the Order does its work in disastrous possible futures. They cut away these diseased, unborn fates to let a better world flourish.
Mysterium:
The Wheel of Fortune is the pulse of living magic. Occult physicians, Mystagogues preserve magic’s health by helping some Arts grow, and amputating forms that show signs of disease. Acanthus can sense when a sorcerer’s ready for a new secret, or whether certain events must take place to prepare her, making them ideal mentors. They’re notorious for speaking in riddles and demanding strange ordeals to produce mages worthy of the Mysteries.
Silver Ladder:
Religions live and die by their prophets. The Ladder is a faith of sorts, devoted to humanity’s secret divinity. It values Acanthus not just as practical oracles, but as those who predict when people Awaken to godhood. Every mage is a messiah, and every messiah needs a Baptist, to purify him and charge him with duties.
Seers of the Throne:
Masterminds, manipulators, and decadents, Seer Acanthus hone their senses of entitlement into unshakable articles of faith. Foresight trumps force, and Seer Visionaries possess more of the former than anyone else. They honour the Ruin, Exarch of Fate, who tells them lesser people might as well serve a purpose while they march to doom. They’re favourites of the Prophet of Time: anointed Great Men who make history.
Acanthus Stories
Magic is a twisting tale where Fools walk Fortune’s Wheel.
We Awakened to the power of choices, jewels of possible fates — and beheld in every jewel its flaw, its consequence, its doom. We climbed the Watchtower of the Lunargent Thorn and beheld Arcadia. We screamed iron words to the Fae and mutilated our destinies.
It’s never just once upon a time. You wanted revenge, like the oldest man with his sharpened stone, like your ancestor with the bronze knife, and your unborn daughter with a ceramic pistol, someday. Cut on the same thorns, their footsteps join yours along a common trail of blood: the path heroes walk. But I’m not a hero. I’ve stepped off the path. I leave no bloody footprints but those I choose, or paint new, twisted ways for others to follow.
Take my hand and I’ll drag you into mists unseen by Fate — or like witches in the stories, end your red journey with the old curses. That’s freedom’s danger.
Who Are They
Acanthus wield Time and Fate to tell the stories of other lives.
In great and monstrous myths they appear as mist-shrouded figures, the tricksters and foreshadowing poets who guide events with subtle gestures.
When we witness benign influence we might call them Enchanters, and thank them for overcoming obstacles with strange ease, but we more often call them Witches: cunning ones who step outside the laws that bind everyone else to spin new rules from the Wheel of Fortune.
You don’t know them but you’ve seen their work — lived it, even.
That woman who hounded you for spare change didn’t exactly jump from the bushes, but still defeated the usual alertness you exercised when you couldn’t make it to the campus lot until after dark. You nearly dropped the book when she appeared out of nowhere.
That would’ve been the worst — you’d snuck it out of Special Collections, where it languished under a layer of dust and a dull name: SPEC 0045-3 BRI, Cryptic Text with Illustrations of Weapons c. 1600.
You were going to decode it.
You dropped your purse instead and quarters bounced, silver fairies in the dark. The panhandler didn’t pick them up. You kept one eye on the book and another on her as you stooped, gathered nine quarters, and handed them off with a mutter. It was an awkward, infuriating five-minute process.
Five more minutes took you to the freeway, where you passed a burning car that looked just like yours. You drove through its skid marks before the fire trucks arrived. You’d only be five minutes late for your date, but you cancelled anyway and made it home five minutes later than usual, instead. The woman from the parking lot flashed into view under a streetlight and walked to your door. She smelled of smoke.
She pulled nine quarters from a ragged pocket; you gave her the book. She tucked it under her arm and you knew you were the one making the greater payment, the book for five minutes of her time — enough to keep you from becoming smoking wreckage on the road. The quarters were a medium for the encounter, a significant accident. They bit into your hand.
That’s what Witches do: Seize the Norns’ skein to spin, weave, and cut our days.
Three Witches
The Acanthus Path seized Lucy Sulphate on an ordinary day and left her raving for days while she explored Arcadia as a cityscape in twisted steel and broken glass.
When Lucy performs, the audience enters its frenzy willingly; but when she uses magic, she imposes, coerces — assaults. Other Acanthus manipulate lives in ways she abhors, so she finds herself stumbling between her respect for autonomy and her sense of justice.
To Lucy, the Wheel of Fortune generates an intricate rhythm she can harness through music. Lucy’s moved behind the scenes now, nurturing musicians capable of worldwide influence.
She uses magic to bring out that greatness instead of burying herself in petty, violent Awakened disputes. Naturally, she joined the Free Council.
Movran’s the best-known Merlin of the Walkers in Mists, a Legacy that travels through the realm of unrevealed destiny.
His mother and sisters were Awakened, so even as a Sleeper, he knew magic was treacherous; but none of it prepared him for the Thorns, where he learned that a childhood steeped in occult traditions had merely made him a brittle young man, too filled with preconceptions to learn the intuitive side of the Art.
He Awakened a youth, but descended the Watchtower with the soul of an old man. Now in middle age, he feels he’s finally starting to resemble his true self, the Fool divested of foolishness.
Now he’s Movran the Mentor, Movran the Meddler: a man who fits the mould of a traditional wizard, staff and all, but aches with helplessness because he knows the important things can’t be taught.
Nevertheless, his occult knowledge makes him a valuable member of the Mysterium.
Is Sunjata the Fool personified?
He remembers cannons, swords, and sharks attacking fallen sailors before meeting foreign mages in Jamaica 13 years ago. Nobody had noticed Sunjata before, and he didn’t seem to recognize any form of modern technology.
He knows his Shadow Name, bareknuckle boxing, archaic sailing skills, and how to speak half a dozen languages, but not his home (he appears to have African and South Asian roots) or how he arrived. His magic is intuitive, based on the principle that oaths sealed in blood grease the Wheel of Destiny.
Sunjata’s world is made of wishes and earnest promises. He fell in with a cabal connected to Boston’s Free Council and even approached the Silver Ladder in search of answers, but it was only when he duelled an Adamantine Arrow that he recognized certain techniques and initiation mysteries.
He’s the warrior with no past, and now suspects he’d rather not know about the bargains he struck in a time he only knows through dreams of blood-spattered sails.