[Icelander]

Here's some background on how magic and the supernatural might work in the setting. It goes some way of explaining the feel I want, even if the Vatican gives shorter shrift to various 'primitive' traditions than the PCs know to be true.

This proposed historical background may or may not be true, but it is the more or less accepted theory among those in the Vatican who know about magic (and believe in it). Their certainties about how difficult magic is to perform are constantly under attack, however.

The Vatican consensus is that at some time back in the unimaginably ancient past, things we would regard as supernatural were present in the physical world. Monsters, spirits, fey and other beings appear to have coexisted with humanity. Most of this happened before recorded history and there is even a school of thought that maintains that once a culture became complex enough for its own written language that records daily events (as opposed to runes, pictographs or hieroglyphs with mostly a ritual purpose), such beings were less likely to interact with it.

The theory goes that the various magical traditions in the world were learned from supernatural beings or developed in cooperation with them.

In the land of Sumer and Akkad, humanity consorted with what the Catholic Church considers demons*. They learned to bind these creatures into their service and command them to use their powers on their behalf. These demon-spirits or ekimmu were hungry for sacrifices and are drawn to strong negative emotions, such as fear, anger, shame and disgust. Blood and various bodily fluids solidify their connection to the world and may even allow them to take physical form in the world. Adepts in this style of magic have been called diabolists, necromancers, blood mages or conjurers.

Egypt is theorized to have been colonized by ultraterrestials, who may even have interbred with the population. Alchemy and much of the ritual magic the Church has documented ultimately appears to derive from such ultraterrestial interactions. The study of ultraterrestial archaeology before recorded human history and philological reconstructions of their ritual languages (in Egypt and elsewhere) are fields with much promise. Those who use magic derived from Egyptian roots may be dubbed alchemists, sorcerers, magi or magicians.

The Church regards ultraterrestials as physical beings and has at points during its history viewed them as without souls or free will. The progressive view, espoused by Pope John Paul II, was that they were simply pagans who had the same opportunities as human beings for good and evil and with faith could also be saved.

Ultraterrestials appear to fall into several groups. In Egypt and in other places around the Mediterranean, they lived in human society as rulers and were worshiped as gods. These groups of ultraterrestials may have had a different origin than the more reclusive groups who lived in magical places that appeared to straddle the boundaries between the physical world and some other place where Nature** reigned supreme. That world was dubbed Faerie by many and the beings from it the fey.

The fey are conjectured to be the origin for Celtic magic as well as Nordic rune magic. Those who study Ogham or Rune magic are convinced that fey are beings entirely separate from the ultraterrestials of Egypt, pointing to the very different magical traditions, but others claim that cultural differences among the fey account for these and that all 'human-like' ultraterrestials ultimately come from one place, which is Faerie, merely at different times in its history and with different attitudes towards humanity.

In any event, the beings who were called the fey, faeries, Hidden People, Lords and Ladies and many other things had direct contact with humanity after it developed writing. As a result, far more is known about them. It is known, for example, that some of them preferred to live on Earth over Faerie, but that nearly all of them wanted nothing to do with human society. Over time, the fey retreated from human expansion on Earth. Some were content to go back to Faerie, others lived in Hidden Places where humans did not wander and still others attempted to find areas on Earth where the wilderness was beautiful to them and no humans lived.

Some faeries, however, felt that meek acceptance of human supremacy on Earth was vile and unacceptable. They wanted to slay humans and carve out their own kingdoms there. The fey races*** were bitterly divided. Those who were cautious and feared the consequences of a war with the humans were more numerous and more powerful, but in their caution, they failed to see the danger of disunity among their own people. Centuries of civil strife took place, among those humanity would dub Seelie and Unseelie Courts, the 'friendly' or neutral fey against those who would destroy all humans.

The precise start date of this conflict is hard to ascertain. The Catholic Church can trace Unseelie sentiment, in attacks against humans, back to the earliest records of interaction with the fey, but most scholars believe that large-scale warfare between fey didn't start under well after the year 1000 and probably not until after 1100. What is known that Seelie nobles came to leading human adepts in secrecy and asked for their assistance if the conflict should spread to Earth. As a consequence of this, the Unseelie were put on the defensive**** and mostly forced to stage their war from their fastnesses in Faerie.

Most scholars believe that the eventual closing of the way between Faerie and Earth was related to the war. The theories of precisely why it happened are legion, but as no fey appear to be left on Earth, there are none to confirm or refute them.

Scholars of magic note that supernatural occurrences appear to have been waning on Earth for all of recorded history. Yes, it is true that many of the magical traditions were preserved throughout the ages, but the effectiveness of the rituals, when experimented with by these scholars, was always much less than in the ancient sources they had access to.

Finally, at some point after the Industrial Revolution and before the First World War, all supernatural charms, rituals and spells ceased to work. No confirmed and proven working of magic or sighting of supernatural phenomena exists in the Vatican after the date of 1901 (there is dispute among some even about those events).

As a result, even with the wealth of occult materials in the vaults of the Vatican, most people born after this time ceased to believe in the supernatural. Those who had access to the secret files usually believed that it had once existed, but if so, it was irrelevant now. Where there had once been a strong organisation of Christian priests educated in the occult and dedicated to eradicating all magic that conflicted with their faith, there were now only a few scholars who theorized endlessly about a subject no longer relevant to the world.

The story among other adepts, less centralized and with access to less information, was similar. Rituals were passed on down as part of religions or culture, but most people did not remember a time when they truly worked. Ever since scientific study of magic began, with the rebirth of science in the Renaissance, even the smallest magical effects required the flawless knowledge of truly ancient languages and a complex working where nothing could go wrong. Folk magic was mostly superstition, even during times when magic did work*****.

The game is set at the end of 2018 (it's the 28th of December, 2018). At some point past 1980, or at any rate before 1990, credible reports of supernatural phenomena again began to surface. In 1989, the Catholic Church took official (albeit secret) steps to investigate and confirm these reports. In the modern day, the Jesuits and the Knights of Malta oppose supernatural evil in the world, but despite the desire of Pope John Paul II and the early plans of Pope Benedict XVI to go public with what the Church knows, it remains official Vatican policy to act only in secret.

*Some more secularly-minded Jesuits theorise that these beings only appear demonic to our sensibilities, but are natural creatures who fit into God's creation in a way that is not currently understood. Theories include a race of pure physic energy from another plane (ultraterrestials), spirits of fierce animals and angry ghosts of humans who fail to find their way to the afterlife or simply mental projections of the worst things about humanity.
**In all senses, that is, breathtaking beauty, serenity, wholesomeness and oneness with all living things and the Nature that is red in tooth and claw.
***For the inhabitants of Faerie are not all alike, with some being small and sprite-like, others being tall and majestic humanoids and still others having stranger forms.
****Well, over a period of some centuries. Time in Faerie probably passes at a very different rate than it does on Earth, as recorded interviews with named fey take place with centuries between them and the fey appears to have changed little and is still engaged in much the same events on his home plane.
*****This is due to the massive penalties to magic in the setting. At no point in recorded history has the Earth as a whole been more than Low Magic and non-mages (the vast majority of people) have a further -5 penalty to work magic. Trying to cast spells in 'common' languages, as most people did, is a further -5. So, only scholar-mages with encyclopedic knowledge of the theory of magic as well as the ancient cultures from whence it sprang have a realistic chance of using it safely and effectively (or so the scholar-mages of the Vatican believe). It does not help that working magic in the presence of skeptics is at a penalty as well.