Life and Death
With my Werewolf game being currently on ice, we've decided to give Mage a try for a while. We’ve already played through two sessions. As usual, I’m keeping a couple of files on the game, but they’re all in German. I'll try and translate everything to the best of my abilities.
Feel free to check out one of these threads, if you like.
Rpg.net
White Wolf message boards
Shadownessence message boards
It's still a work in progress, and I intend to update these threads as often as possible.
To give you some taste of the game, I'll offer you a description of the two player characters:
The name of the game, “Life and Death”, is actually based on the two main characters, Drache and Inanna. Inanna represents death, whereas Drache is life, a common element shining through most of the characters, including their paths.
Let’s look at Inanna first.
Elisabeth Vaclav was raised as the youngest child of a pair of teachers living in the Austrian city of Horn. As a child, she witnessed her older brother David breaking from the family because he couldn’t stand the parent’s strict and demanding standards. Since that event, Elisabeth’s parents took great length to convince her daughter not to become like “him”, placing huge loads of guilt on her whenever she as much as attempted to speak out in his favor.
A shy and reclusive girl by nature, her parent’s strict and demanding adherence to tradition and religion left a lasting mark on her. Her conditioned reliance on them - because they never let the girl much leeway in her choices, fearing that she would break with them like David did - didn’t particularly help her mature on a personal level, even if her grades in school were phenomenal.
And so, when Elisabeth was on her own for the first time in her life, as a student of medicine in Wiener Neustadt, far away from her parents, she despaired. Desperately desiring someone who could replace the lost parental control, she threw herself into affairs with older men, which left her more emotionally drained than before. She started cutting herself just to feel.
And so, one day, when Elisabeth received a call from her mother telling her that her father had died from a heart attack, she decided to end it all.
She awoke to visions of shades and ghosts, visions so horrifying she knew them to be real. There were rivers running red with the blood of sinners, demons feasting on corpses, skeletal wolves hunting for her and a tower made out of bones.
She returned to the Fallen World screaming - and alive.
Elisabeth, now a Moros Guardian of the Veil known as Inanna, hates it. She hates the arts of the dead for allowing her to see and experience the horrifying things she has witnessed, she hates her mother for triggering her Awakening, and hates herself for hating her mother. Had the Guardians of the Veil not given her a higher goal to aspire to, that of preventing others from being witness to the horrors of the World of Darkness, she might have gone Banisher or, worse, Seer of the Throne.
Now, Inanna is still her old self, mostly. She has met somebody she loves - Max, a fellow medicine student, and the Guardians helped her getting a job as a coroner, a personal bodyguard of the Adamantine Arrows and a safe sanctum. But she’s still as clinically depressed as she was before her Awakening, the difference being that she now has a goal in life to keep her busy. There’s still that destructive relationship to her mother. Inanna might be a mage of the Moros path and a useful asset to the Guardians of the Veil, but deep down, Elisabeth is still the immature girl she has always been.
Inanna has a love-hate relationship to her own magic. On the one hand, there’s the Death Arcanum. She despises it. She despises manipulating shadows, calling up the dead, and most of all, opening her eyes to Death.
On the other hand, there’s Matter. Since the Awakening, she has found a passion for shaping materials into forms of her choosing, seeing it as an art form. If there’s anything in magic that truly excites her, that allows her to forget all the pain she went through, that redeems magic for her, it’s the Arcanum of Matter.
Next, there’s Drache.
(Drache is the German word for Dragon.) Just as Inanna is representative of the “Death” part of the title of this game, Drache is about Life.
“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. - Tyler Durden”
Drache’s life before his Awakening doesn’t matter to him anymore. It was little more than a fever dream, an illusion shattered at the time of his final ascension to the Primal Wild, the glorious first step on the road to enlightenment. Before that, he simply wasn’t complete.
Still, for the sake of completeness, I’ll have to give you the full context.
In many ways, the life of Markus Suy Yin is polar opposite to that of Elisabeth Vaclav. Born as a child to a renowned Austrian judge and a Chinese immigrant, Markus was a bright, cheerful and outgoing child, brimming with the life force Elisabeth seemed to lack.
A rebel in his youth, Markus had a passion for breaking rules. His parents silently approved, thinking that it was good of him to develop his own personality unconstrained by needless restriction.
They changed their mind when he started doing drugs and sleeping around, but by then, it was too late, since he had long since stopped listening to his parents.
At the height of his depravity, he awakened to a world of passion. Just as he was humbled by the wild beauty, vastness and purity of the Primal Wild. Markus found himself stalked by beasts of shadow, afflicted by disease. It was a sign. It was a glimpse of greatness, and a warning to change his life.
Markus returned to the Fallen World with a different perspective. He abandoned his old life, left his parents and friends and radically changed his ways.
Drache (the man who was once known as Markus), now, is still as passionate as he was before his Awakening, but in different ways. Unlike before his Awakening, he now respects his own body and physical well-being. He stopped doing drugs, gave away most of his possessions and began his existence as newly born man. The Adamantine Arrows teach him to strengthen and hone his body, now a temple instead of the tool ripe for abuse it was before his Awakening. Instead of a slave to his urges, he thinks he has mastered them.
Drache thinks of himself as a deeply spiritual person. He meditates daily, practices martial arts and seeks the Supernal in all things. His main Arcanum of choice is Life. Unlike some other Thyrsus mages, though, he is not a proficient shapeshifter. Instead, he prefers to use Life to keep his own body physically and spiritually clean, healing and strengthening it when necessary, and always cherishing it as the temple it is.
He is not very advanced in the Spirit Arcanum, as he still has trouble fitting it into his new worldview.
Feel free to check out one of these threads, if you like.
Rpg.net
White Wolf message boards
Shadownessence message boards
It's still a work in progress, and I intend to update these threads as often as possible.
To give you some taste of the game, I'll offer you a description of the two player characters:
The name of the game, “Life and Death”, is actually based on the two main characters, Drache and Inanna. Inanna represents death, whereas Drache is life, a common element shining through most of the characters, including their paths.
Let’s look at Inanna first.
Elisabeth Vaclav was raised as the youngest child of a pair of teachers living in the Austrian city of Horn. As a child, she witnessed her older brother David breaking from the family because he couldn’t stand the parent’s strict and demanding standards. Since that event, Elisabeth’s parents took great length to convince her daughter not to become like “him”, placing huge loads of guilt on her whenever she as much as attempted to speak out in his favor.
A shy and reclusive girl by nature, her parent’s strict and demanding adherence to tradition and religion left a lasting mark on her. Her conditioned reliance on them - because they never let the girl much leeway in her choices, fearing that she would break with them like David did - didn’t particularly help her mature on a personal level, even if her grades in school were phenomenal.
And so, when Elisabeth was on her own for the first time in her life, as a student of medicine in Wiener Neustadt, far away from her parents, she despaired. Desperately desiring someone who could replace the lost parental control, she threw herself into affairs with older men, which left her more emotionally drained than before. She started cutting herself just to feel.
And so, one day, when Elisabeth received a call from her mother telling her that her father had died from a heart attack, she decided to end it all.
She awoke to visions of shades and ghosts, visions so horrifying she knew them to be real. There were rivers running red with the blood of sinners, demons feasting on corpses, skeletal wolves hunting for her and a tower made out of bones.
She returned to the Fallen World screaming - and alive.
Elisabeth, now a Moros Guardian of the Veil known as Inanna, hates it. She hates the arts of the dead for allowing her to see and experience the horrifying things she has witnessed, she hates her mother for triggering her Awakening, and hates herself for hating her mother. Had the Guardians of the Veil not given her a higher goal to aspire to, that of preventing others from being witness to the horrors of the World of Darkness, she might have gone Banisher or, worse, Seer of the Throne.
Now, Inanna is still her old self, mostly. She has met somebody she loves - Max, a fellow medicine student, and the Guardians helped her getting a job as a coroner, a personal bodyguard of the Adamantine Arrows and a safe sanctum. But she’s still as clinically depressed as she was before her Awakening, the difference being that she now has a goal in life to keep her busy. There’s still that destructive relationship to her mother. Inanna might be a mage of the Moros path and a useful asset to the Guardians of the Veil, but deep down, Elisabeth is still the immature girl she has always been.
Inanna has a love-hate relationship to her own magic. On the one hand, there’s the Death Arcanum. She despises it. She despises manipulating shadows, calling up the dead, and most of all, opening her eyes to Death.
On the other hand, there’s Matter. Since the Awakening, she has found a passion for shaping materials into forms of her choosing, seeing it as an art form. If there’s anything in magic that truly excites her, that allows her to forget all the pain she went through, that redeems magic for her, it’s the Arcanum of Matter.
Next, there’s Drache.
(Drache is the German word for Dragon.) Just as Inanna is representative of the “Death” part of the title of this game, Drache is about Life.
“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. - Tyler Durden”
Drache’s life before his Awakening doesn’t matter to him anymore. It was little more than a fever dream, an illusion shattered at the time of his final ascension to the Primal Wild, the glorious first step on the road to enlightenment. Before that, he simply wasn’t complete.
Still, for the sake of completeness, I’ll have to give you the full context.
In many ways, the life of Markus Suy Yin is polar opposite to that of Elisabeth Vaclav. Born as a child to a renowned Austrian judge and a Chinese immigrant, Markus was a bright, cheerful and outgoing child, brimming with the life force Elisabeth seemed to lack.
A rebel in his youth, Markus had a passion for breaking rules. His parents silently approved, thinking that it was good of him to develop his own personality unconstrained by needless restriction.
They changed their mind when he started doing drugs and sleeping around, but by then, it was too late, since he had long since stopped listening to his parents.
At the height of his depravity, he awakened to a world of passion. Just as he was humbled by the wild beauty, vastness and purity of the Primal Wild. Markus found himself stalked by beasts of shadow, afflicted by disease. It was a sign. It was a glimpse of greatness, and a warning to change his life.
Markus returned to the Fallen World with a different perspective. He abandoned his old life, left his parents and friends and radically changed his ways.
Drache (the man who was once known as Markus), now, is still as passionate as he was before his Awakening, but in different ways. Unlike before his Awakening, he now respects his own body and physical well-being. He stopped doing drugs, gave away most of his possessions and began his existence as newly born man. The Adamantine Arrows teach him to strengthen and hone his body, now a temple instead of the tool ripe for abuse it was before his Awakening. Instead of a slave to his urges, he thinks he has mastered them.
Drache thinks of himself as a deeply spiritual person. He meditates daily, practices martial arts and seeks the Supernal in all things. His main Arcanum of choice is Life. Unlike some other Thyrsus mages, though, he is not a proficient shapeshifter. Instead, he prefers to use Life to keep his own body physically and spiritually clean, healing and strengthening it when necessary, and always cherishing it as the temple it is.
He is not very advanced in the Spirit Arcanum, as he still has trouble fitting it into his new worldview.