A mage whose Path leads to Stygia. Also known as Alchemists or Necromancers.
Bonded to the Watchtower of Lead Coin in Stygia
Ruling Arcana: Death and Matter
Inferior Arcanum: Spirit
Favoured Resistance Attribute: Composure
To see examples and get an idea of the Moros, read the stories below.
Ruling Arcana
Death and Matter.
They’re the slow, quiet Arcana of endings and foundations. Move a mountain and the earth shudders. Errant souls can spin the world out of balance.
Death is the Arcanum of destructive change: the power to speed, slow, or shift the details of inevitable doom. Bodies shift from Life to Matter. Light scatters to the corners of the cosmos, allowing darkness to flourish. Although a soul’s components include every subtle Arcanum, Death is the loose thread that, once pulled, removes it from its living home or unravels it into its parts. Mages know that ghosts aren’t souls, but Necromancers point out that doesn’t mean they aren’t people.
Matter is the world’s skeleton. Forces shape it and Life puts flesh on its bones. It releases energy and accepts corpses into its embrace. The world constantly performs the Great Work Alchemists pursue, perfecting itself and, at the peak, falling apart to be rebuilt. Contemporary Moros also think of Matter in mechanical metaphors. Every speck of dust is part of a cosmic machine whose parts adapt to the tasks given it
Inferior Arcanum
Spirit
Moros know that despite outward appearances, inert things dance with activity.
Alchemists know that spirits exist, and that the world has a living Shadow, but feel little need for them. Death provides its own invisible kingdoms, and Matter moves even in the absence of will.
Symbols and Myths
Death and the World. The gods of death, prosperity, and craft. The signs and symbols of alchemy and descendants, such as chemistry and engineering.
Moros embrace the Death signifactor because they understand that the skeletal rider doesn’t just cut down its enemies, but guides them through radical change. Death takes the Leaden Coin as payment, and points the unburdened soul to new existence.
Alchemists relinquish their fear of loss and embrace their imperfections — their personal, rotting nigredo — as the morass from which creative power emerges. The Path’s Mystery card of the World embraces all things, assigning the elements their functions. It represents the Alchemist’s Great Work. Even the Lie contains the secrets of self-perfection, written in substances and souls as they organize themselves into novel, powerful forms that culminate in the rubedo: the crown, the rose, the philosopher’s stone.
Moros have always honoured the gods of death, alchemy, and industry, especially when they exist in one person. Hermes is a psychopomp, alchemist, and god of commerce. Hades rules The Underworld and wealth plucked from the dark earth. Anubis measures a soul’s weight in sin and guards tomb wealth. Moros gods are usually lonely, set apart from the pantheon by their duties, but they aggressively guard their domains. The lords of Death prefer one-way journeys to their realms. To cross against the current, a Necromancer must honour their laws and behave with appropriate decorum.
Closely linked to practical trades, Moros magic extends from artisanal expertise and scientific insight. Most are well-versed in their cultures’ alchemical and funerary traditions. Alchemists keep laboratories filled with ancient and modern instruments, from antique athanor furnaces to gas chromatographs. They use myrrh, corpse-eating beetles, and modern embalming procedures. Ceremonies acknowledge Death’s supremacy, but eventually shift to practical craftsmanship.
Alchemists in the Orders
Adamantine Arrow:
They can’t be bribed. They don’t run from death. Steel breaks in their hands, and their dead soldiers rise. Moros Arrows go about their duties with a chill implacability. They’re relentless warriors but avoid rash adventures. Awakening dulls their pride, preventing rash applications of violence, but inhibits their loyalty because they don’t want to fall in thrall to someone else’s ego.
Free Council:
Can you ignore modern chemistry? Modern death? The world’s full of materials ancient alchemists never dreamed of: steel-hard ceramics and nanoparticles. Modern doctors know death as a process that migrates from cell to cell instead of a curtain that falls on the last heartbeat. New knowledge creates new problems, too. Wealth offers more temptations than ever, and death stretches out when machines force hearts to beat. It’s time to turn these new ways into new magic and comfort Sleepers bewildered by contemporary challenges.
Guardians of the Veil:
Not even murder can hide a secret. Ghosts talk, and death’s keening echoes in a killer’s footsteps. Yes, there are Necromancer assassins, but Moros know that killing is a crude tool of last resort. Kill, and the mystery of death attracts investigators for generations. Bribe, and you not only win a life of silence, but build a conspiracy with the recipient. When you fear neither death nor lust for riches, you not only become an incorruptible keeper of secrets, but capable of using murder and wealth with utmost precision.
Mysterium:
They say magic is alive, but this is only true in the loosest sense, for it includes death and base matter. Magic is a form of directed change that the layperson associates with life, but numinous energies conceal the deep truths of stone and souls. Moros investigate them in tombs and Atlantean redoubts, and are typically less interested in living Masters and questions about who deserves to learn the Art.
Silver Ladder:
How do you foster human potential when you know that every prodigy will die, and their accomplishments will fade with the ages? You foster a lineage, with temples and artifacts to remind it of its obligations. Make change your tool, not your enemy. They’ll pass on their knowledge, adapt the past to the future and grow stronger, closer to Imperium with every new Awakening. Don’t plan for next year’s revolution, but your empire.
Seers of the Throne:
Seer Executors use the Path’s insights to perfect the materialism that counterparts in other Orders avoid. The doctrines of the Chancellor, Exarch of Matter, tell them that wealth is a god ever-devoured by scarcity. Executors balance deity and devil, setting the fortunes of individuals and nations. As Exarch of Death, the Psychopomp condemns souls to Fallen incarnations or teases anguished ghosts from them. Seer Moros trade in souls and ghosts as commodities like any other. By keeping them from the Supernal Realms, the Psychopomp intends them to be used thus.
Moros Stories
Magic is a secret transformation. Death is not still, and gold flowers from the World’s corruption.
We Awaken to this secret: Within adamantine permanence lies change, and within change, permanence. For the price of the Leaden Coin, we see that nothing ends.
This is not your husband.
He’s dead.
He’s changing.
His body rots in the grave.
They’re going to shut down his social media. One day, you’ll see a face he never had, changed by the flavours of memory. This ghost was part of your husband, once. He thinks he’s the essential part, but he’s a component.
He’s a fragment that loves you too much and doesn’t care enough.
He’s the frustration that smashes glasses and screams in the night.
He’s the only part that isn’t changing, nourishing the future, or making space for new life.
I mean to reunite this ghost with the rest of his soul, leaving you with the man as you’re meant to remember him, softening with time.
Only memories live forever, if you pass them on — and they’ll change, as they were meant to.
Who Are They
She’s an Alchemist: a scientist of change who sees atoms hum, ready to transform at her urging. She can command the slain to rise again by harnessing a body’s remaining mystic potential.
She can even adjust the motion of a soul, luring it away from the cycle of life and death. People believe the dead must cross into some great below or heaven above when their bodies fall, the puppet’s strings cut; but Moros reach across the gulf and speak to the dead, or correct a malfunctioning demise where part of the soul stays behind.
Moros who concentrate on misplaced souls, ghosts, and corpses are better known as Necromancers.
They can make you rich but never happy.
They can bring him back, but he’ll never return to who he was.
You loved that car: a 1970 Chevelle 454 SS.
Like new wasn’t good enough; you made it better than new, machining the parts yourself until you could practically see a Detroit line worker’s handprint fading in the door.
But you loved to drink too, and killed a twelve-pack and took your baby for a spin.
Horns.
Lights.
Something tore your car apart and they put it back together wrong. You can’t get out. You won’t get out, even when that asshole brother of yours drives it like he owns it, and refuses to even acknowledge your goddamn presence. You kicked his ass right out of the driver’s seat.
That’s when he got the new mechanic. You were going to toss this fucker too but he nodded at you and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll fix it up just right”.
Every time you try to help him he slaps your hand out of the way. But you’ve got to admit that he brings perfect parts every time.
When he finishes, maybe it’ll be time to let your brother drive and move on to something new.
Maybe that’s why your brother’s crying.
You’ll have to ask the mechanic.
He listens.
The Styx never stops flowing, and its black waters will carry everything you value away
Three Moros
Brother Owl combines the roles of alchemist, necromancer, and priest to serve those in need.
As an alchemist, he rebuilds and renews broken things in run-down communities.
As a necromancer, he pacifies angry ghosts and relays whatever they never got a chance to tell the living.
These all fulfil a basic commitment to the priesthood even if, after abandoning his church, it’s a priesthood of one.
He still wears the old Episcopal “dog collar” along with the rugged clothes he needs for a traveller’s life. He still believes in God, but has no taste for any particular faith.
He’s loosely associated with the Silver Ladder, but believes that humanity can’t return to glory without getting its collective house in order first.
The Guardian killer called Mayfly paid the Leaden Coin in middle age, after founding a family and helping his kids get a good start.
He thought that for all practical purposes his life was over and Death obliged, for a time.
He Awakened during a stroke and returned from Stygia with a new purpose: to take life, after years of helping it grow. He’s good at making quiet killings look accidental, not only to cover his tracks, but to minimize the trauma his victims’ families might feel — and his family might, if they discovered he was an assassin.
His wife has passed on, but he has grown children who check on their father and worry that he spends too much time alone.
Iosis has been one of the richest women in the world, sold drugs on a cracked Milwaukee street corner, and worked the line building ICBMs.
Each time, the woman they call “Mammon’s sister” walked in with a goal, met it, and moved on.
She believes that no servant of the Exarchs should develop strong personal preferences, so she finds it easy to adopt and abandon identities. Her connections span all walks of life, giving her a more accurate window to the world than her elitist comrades.
Her colourless life hides the fact that no matter how often she changes herself, she can’t deny her accumulated experience of human kindness and suffering.
She is starting to use her subtlety to cover reluctance, inefficiency, and a fear of being found out by other Seers.