[WOD] [Banestorm] Yrth of Darkness: Ascension: Yttaria

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If so, the Traditions have no major advantage over the existing magicians of Yrth.

They have greater flexibility given that it's an improvisational magic system. That would include the ability to create spell effects on the fly that no mage in Yrth has discovered. It would also be a good idea to not allow regular magicians to abandon rituals with high skills and to not impose Magery-based limits on Ritual Magic. The result is a kind of magic which is potentially much more powerful and always more flexible. But then you make it threshold-based to represent the power of Paradox.

Originally Posted by davidtmoore

- The Ascension War is essentially reversed. The magical praxes of the Order of Hermes and the Celestial Chorus are so accepted by the masses that a mage can wave a wand and throw a fireball and still qualify as coincidental. The downside is that traditional mages are very tied down to rotes and foci; they free themselves of foci more gradually, and are at a penalty to cast spontaneous magic.

Given the lack of actual clerical magic in canonical Yrth, it's more likely to be Hermes and Verbena, with the Chorus on the skids with the technomancers.

[davidtmoore]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

I'd approach it differently, because Yrth history is not Earth history. In particular, the first wave of human settlers on Yrth saw the rise of Megalos. Its founding was roughly 50 years before the Mistridge incident on Earth; and for these purposes, I'd have it spark Yrth's counterpart to the Ascension War — but in this case, it's an alliance of the Order of Hermes and the Cabal of Pure Thought that gets aggressive, attracted by dreams of Megalos' greatness. This alliance isn't as aggressive as the Order of Reason is on Earth; it seeks to conquer rather than exterminate. As such, Yrth's “Ascension War” takes on a somewhat different form, with different alliances.

In addition, mages on Yrth operate out in the open, and their counterpart to the Ascension War folds into the politics of the day. the OoH/CoPT alliance is part and parcel to the Megalan Crusades; and instead of a Council of Nine forming in the 1400s to oppose them, the newly-formed nations of al-Haz and al-Wazif become home to the Web of Faith (on Earth a predecessor to the Council of Nine, consisting of the Ahl-i-Batin, the Taftâni, and factions that would eventually join the Celestial Chorus, the Cult of Ecstasy, the Dreamspeakers, and a Hermetic House) and the Mokteshaf al Nour (an arabian precursor to the Order of Reason). Let those three sects be the primary ones on Yrth, with the remaining Traditions generally ending up as the equivalent of Disparate Crafts hiding on the fringes of the Megalan Empire, if they can't find homes among these three power players.

Nice, so the Ascension War is predominantly Islam vs Christianity (with all three alliances being various flavours of Pattern-oriented), with the technomages (who on Yrth are Questing-oriented) being a secondary concern for the big boys.

The "Mages' War" in 1924 was the WWII of the conflict, where the Ascension War spilled over into the real world, and possibly triggered interest in a more inclusive alternative, with some of the traditions splitting off from the three big powers. Possibly in Tredroy?

[davidtmoore]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Given the lack of actual clerical magic in canonical Yrth, it's more likely to be Hermes and Verbena, with the Chorus on the skids with the technomancers.

I saw core Verbena being most powerful in the Nomad Lands, with pagan magical practices being suppressed by the Order of Hermes and Cabal of Pure Thought as "hedge magic" in Megalos and Caithness.

Interesting point about the Chorus. Perhaps they end up being folded into the Cabal or the Order?