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Old 11-22-2023, 05:08 AM   #1
Astromancer
 
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Default Mage: the Ascension/ Traveller crossover.

Since anyone with these kinds of powers would be hunted in the 3I much of the background remains functional. Mages are a living affront to the Status Quo it just not the same Status Quo.

How do you guys think the Mage groups would evolve? And which non-Humans would have Mages?
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Old 11-22-2023, 07:17 AM   #2
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Default Re: Mage: the Ascension/ Traveller crossover.

Assuming you mean to use the OTU as a basis, it seems to me that the simplest approach would be to search-and-replace "psionic" with "mage" or "magic" and proceed on that basis. You would have a couple of decisions to make:
  • Was the history of the 20th/21st century as presented in Mage: The Ascension true? If so, there must have been some intervening cause that prevented the Traditions from immanentizing the Eschaton (or whatever) and re-set the game clock in the 57th century.
  • Does the "Psionic Institute" represent one Tradition, more open or successful in this setting than the others, or is each branch likely to belong to a different Tradition? Either version could be interesting.
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Old 11-22-2023, 08:01 AM   #3
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Default Re: Mage: the Ascension/ Traveller crossover.

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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Since anyone with these kinds of powers would be hunted in the 3I much of the background remains functional. Mages are a living affront to the Status Quo it just not the same Status Quo.

How do you guys think the Mage groups would evolve? And which non-Humans would have Mages?
In fine discussion board fashion, I'm going to start by addressing a different question: "What happened to the Technocratic Union?"

Obviously the OTU is one where the TU has been on top for a long time. But not all of it. The Void Engineers, New World Order, and above all the Syndicate marginalized Iteration X and diverted the Progenitors into bickering about which human subspecies is best with a side of designing cool alien sophonts.

(Though the trickier meta question is were the TU and the Traditions always out there on other worlds, did they spread out to other worlds with the Solomani expansion,or were the Vilani, Zhodani, etc. magically called into being somehow, along with their worlds and history.)
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Old 11-22-2023, 08:13 AM   #4
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Default Re: Mage: the Ascension/ Traveller crossover.

A few thoughts:

The rise of the UN into a world government was one of the New World Order's great successes.

The Syndicate is very important in the Third Imperium, since the 3I is all about interstellar trade.

The Void Engineers have been greatly distracted either by creating or maintaining the FTL interstellar space fleets, or perhaps by inventing all these new planets.

The Progenitors may have been greatly changed by the struggle against the virgin field epidemics when Terran diseases got loose in Ziru Sirka. (Or by the effort of creating them.) And then there are all those alien ecologies to study of play with (or invent).

Interation X got subjugated or sidetracked into making tech for the Void Engineers, while the computing and cyborg areas mostly died out.


Note that the suppressed or neglected aspects of the Progenitors and Interation X may have ended up defecting to the Traditions.
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Old 11-22-2023, 08:21 AM   #5
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Default Re: Mage: the Ascension/ Traveller crossover.

A premise of M:tA is that (a) "outer space" is really the Umbra/the spirit world and (b) "aliens" are actually supernatural beings, often spirits. The Technocracy, of course, have been imposing the more science fictional interpretations. So you might suppose that interstellar travel was actually achieved by the Void Engineers and that they were pushing outward the frontier of turning spirit into matter.
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Old 11-22-2023, 09:03 AM   #6
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Default Re: Mage: the Ascension/ Traveller crossover.

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A premise of M:tA is that (a) "outer space" is really the Umbra/the spirit world and (b) "aliens" are actually supernatural beings, often spirits. The Technocracy, of course, have been imposing the more science fictional interpretations. So you might suppose that interstellar travel was actually achieved by the Void Engineers and that they were pushing outward the frontier of turning spirit into matter.
So perhaps we should be asking what spiritual realm turned into what aliens? That helps explain the cat-people and wolf-people...
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Old 11-22-2023, 09:46 AM   #7
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Default Re: Mage: the Ascension/ Traveller crossover.

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So perhaps we should be asking what spiritual realm turned into what aliens? That helps explain the cat-people and wolf-people...
Well, as I recall, there's the near umbra, which is similar to the adjacent earthly environment; there's middle umbras of high abstractions, of wild things, and of the dead; and there's the deep umbra, where things get really strange. The Aslani and Vargr might come from one of the middle umbras, yes.
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Old 11-22-2023, 11:25 AM   #8
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Default Re: Mage: the Ascension/ Traveller crossover.

The Techno-mages from the Babylon 5/Crusade series might make decent source material for how mages co-exist with a Psi-Corps, normal humans and other races in a Traveller setting.
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Old 11-22-2023, 02:29 PM   #9
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Default Re: Mage: the Ascension/ Traveller crossover.

Given the Traveller 3I is basically "Brits in Spaaaaace!, because Yanks in Space is a bad thing, all of the Major Mage groups work.

Certainly both the Progenitors and ItX are restricted and suppressed. I guess they joined the Etherites.

Most worlds have religious faith but Faith isn't a big thing in the 3I. Which is weird in a Romanticized Victorian British Empire. I assume the Chorus, the Dreamspeakers, the Akashayama, and the Verbena, all have their places. I would also assume that the Virtual Adepts/Mercurial Elites have and undernet that links the computer networks of thousands of worlds.

Since Psionics is a common Mage paradigm, and Mages are easily mistaken for PSIs, they would be hunted by the authorities.

A big Question would be "Are the Zhodani only Psions?" If the Zhodani are powerful Psions that's plenty potent. If there are Mages leading an empire of consors, why haven't they mowed down the 3I yet.
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Old 11-22-2023, 07:14 PM   #10
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Default Re: Mage: the Ascension/ Traveller crossover.

In Mage terms, I think psionics has to count as a static supernatural ability. If it were dynamic it would be primarily the Sphere of Mind; but it seems as if psis have specific powers that transcend the normal limits of human capability, but aren't free to invent new powers as convenient. The Zhodani might at best have a Craft.
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