Collected Broken Diamond AP Thread

842 Pages·2007·3.99 MB·English

Broken Diamond
Incorporating material from ‘Reign of the Exarchs’

A Mage: The Awakening ‘Actual Play’
As originally published on forums.rpg.net

By:
DaveB

Starring:
Mark – Thomas ‘Wolsey’ Dean
Sam – Kemi ‘Kali’ Simone
Rafe – Carl ‘Damascus’ Washington

Additional Material:
Brian Campbell, Wood Ingham, Robin Laws, Matthew McFarland,
Will Hindmarch and Bill Bridges

With thanks to:
ssheftall, Christian A, Cantankerous, BlackHat_Matt, Borogove, iresprite, Ujio,
TheBrassMonkey, The 23SidedDie, Wood, JLynn, Zooroos, IronSyndicate, tabrumj,
Ravious, Honken, Silver-Fire, Snoopy, Spectrum, Shisumo, Sensorium, ScottL, imrtl,
DeusIrae, Aryth, Raphael, Grantanz, Befuddled, BOAZ, DocTheWeasel,
LivingDeadGuy, Gnomish American, Strife, markpank, Jeph, mhacdebhandia, Jason
Anderson, Mozart, JoshShaw, Shadowchaser, Renchard, Harmast, Ebonheart,
kingofblarg, Deflare, Charade, Paradisio, Treborn, moray, Andrew Ellis Troubio,
Oakthorne, Ageis, 5monkeys, Kacie, Michael Brazier, Eynowd, Shadowchaser,
Earthscorpion, Ravenscroft, Exit, stage left, KakitaKaiten, Dakkareth, lycosidae89,
Nalanthi, ramenlord, iLikeSpoons and Azel & others

Collated by:

Rafe J Richards

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents......................................................................................................2
Chapter 0: Introduction..............................................................................................4
Themes.................................................................................................................5
Overview of the City...............................................................................................9
Cabals, Legacies and People Known at the Start................................................11
The Player Characters: A Summary....................................................................12
Chapter 1: “Through Me, Revelation”......................................................................15
Session 1.2..........................................................................................................20
Session 1.3..........................................................................................................29
Story 1 Recap:.....................................................................................................36
Interlude: OOC Decisions........................................................................................40
Chapter 2: "Instruments of Fate".............................................................................41
2.1 Commentary..................................................................................................61
Session 2.2..........................................................................................................63
Session 2.3..........................................................................................................84
2.3 Commentary:...............................................................................................104
Story 2 Recap:...................................................................................................107
"Not the Same Person".........................................................................................113
Session 3.2........................................................................................................133
Interlude: Recap!!..................................................................................................159
Session 3.3........................................................................................................160
3.3 Commentary................................................................................................185
Story 3 Recap....................................................................................................191
Chapter 4: "Five Things"........................................................................................198
Chapter 5: "Who Benefits?"...................................................................................212
Session 5.2........................................................................................................233
Chapter 6: "Stop the Train, I want to Get Off"........................................................279
Session 6.2........................................................................................................298
Chapter 7: "Scorpion"............................................................................................324
Session 7.2........................................................................................................346
Chapter 8: "The Only Place You Can"...................................................................375
Session 8.2........................................................................................................392
Session 8.3........................................................................................................413
Story 8: Commentary.........................................................................................440
Chapter 9: "Nothing To Say".................................................................................441
Session 9.2........................................................................................................463
Session 9.4........................................................................................................497
Session 9.5........................................................................................................524
Chapter 10: "A Polite Society"...............................................................................552
Session 10.1......................................................................................................552
Chapter 11: "Yours To Throw Away".....................................................................577
Session 11.1......................................................................................................577
Session 11.2......................................................................................................599
Session 11.3......................................................................................................621
Session 11.4......................................................................................................639
Session 11.5......................................................................................................665
Interlude: A Sad Announcement............................................................................687
Chapter 12: “In The Air Tonight”............................................................................688
Session 12.2......................................................................................................705
Chapter 13: “Is This a Rescue Attempt?”...............................................................723
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Session 13.2: THE FINAL SESSION.................................................................755
Appendix 1: The Characters..................................................................................808
Wolsey’s Background........................................................................................808
Carl ‘Damascus’ Washington: A Background.....................................................810
Appendix II: Legacies............................................................................................811
Appendix III: The Pentacle (and Independent) Cabals of the Broken Diamond and
their Members.......................................................................................................814
The Bringers of the Utopian Design...................................................................814
The Seekers of One Soul...................................................................................817
The Defenders of the Forgotten.........................................................................819
The Recorders of Living History.........................................................................822
The Gatekeepers...............................................................................................826
The Wardens.....................................................................................................829
Children of the Book..........................................................................................832
The Ascendents.................................................................................................834
Project: Twilight.................................................................................................835
The Crucible......................................................................................................837
Independents.....................................................................................................839
Appendix 4: Character Stats as at End of Story 9..................................................840
Thomas "Wolsey" Dean.....................................................................................840
Carl "Damascus" Washington............................................................................841
Kemi "Kali" Simone............................................................................................842
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Chapter 0: Introduction

Washington DC - The Broken Diamond. Designed by a freemason, riddled with
murder and drugs, more concentrated power per square mile than almost anywhere
else in the world. Under constant pressure from people and.. things.. that try with
varying degrees of success to influence it's decision-making for their own ends. With
all the damage one creature of the night with mental influence could do in a lobby, or
in the White House, there's a high-stakes game of peace-through-mutually assured
destruction, where Mages live under paranoid lines of behaviour. The Dichotomy
between the Avenues of Power and the parts of the city that people actually live in,
worse in the World of Darkness than it is in the real world, has created two City-father
spirits - if two cities exist in the same space, which one is real? The effect the city's
plan has on the resonance of it's leys is too strong to be coincidental - should it be
encouraged and perfected or broken open like the cage it might be? When the
practices of the Pentacle mages - forced by their circumstances to wipe memories,
control minds and infiltrate the corridors of power to prevent their use by others -
approach those of the Seers, is there any difference between the two sides? When
you use the tools of the Exarchs, are you any better than a Seer?

Order and Chaos. Liberty and Control. The use of Power.

The man trying to perfect himself as an example to others, finding enlightenment in
serving others.

The one-eyed man in the labyrinth of the blind, breaking rules and committing sins in
his search for something precious.

The woman finding herself by destroying herself, ripping lives apart in a search for
something real.

--------------------

The world needs another Awakening Actual Play, I think - specifically one covering
the things that I don't think I've seen addressed anywhere. I'm that small-press-
game-running-guy - I've AP'ed A|State, Everway, Deliria and (still ongoing) Primetime
Adventures. None of them are exactly mainstream - so why Mage?

I'm a Mage junkie, and have been since the release of Mage: the Ascension. I own
every book published for Ascension - two feet of purple, bar a couple of inches of
weird sparkly covers for the First and second edition Tradition books. I even have the
novels. I was involved in either running or playing the game for six and a bit years up
until well after the Time of Judgement. I could explain the metaplot to people, for
Christ’s sake.

So why's it taken a year to start my own Awakening Chronicle?

I was waiting for optimal conditions. My group contained several Mage-sceptics, and
I had the luxury of time. Now that my group consists of people who *are* up for it,
now that Awakening is a year old and I have the benefit of seeing how's it's
developed in the (excellent) supplements, most importantly now that there's space
between me and Ascension, I'm ready.

The thing I've not seen addressed in the NWoD actual plays so far is this - how do
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you go from running an Old WoD game to running it's successor? Do Forsaken
Storytellers have a hard time grasping the feel of the new game, or do they find
themselves sliding back to Apocalypse? What makes Awakening *different* to
Ascension - what is a good Awakening story as opposed to a good Ascension story,
where do they overlap and where do they differ? It's taken me a *year* to get to the
point where I'm confident enough to run Awakening - and even then, as we'll see, it
took until the second session for Awakening to "click".

Fortunately, it clicked hard.

My position on the eternal flamewar is thus - look, I loved Ascension too, it served me
well - but I *already own it*. If I'm going to run Awakening, I'm going to run it with
Atlantis, the Exarchs, the Seers, the Pentacle, the Western symbology and all. I'm
going to learn to love it like it's elder cousin, and find something that interests me in
it's themes, not try to force the themes I've been playing with for years onto it.

A note on format. Out of character, behind the curtain-type bits are written like this, allowing the reader to choose what they
emphasise on.

SPOILER WARNING

As it says in the title, There be spoilers for Reign of the Exarchs in here. I bought the
book after running the second session of this chronicle, and have decided to
incorporate it into Broken Diamond - changing huge chunks of it to make it fit in with
the chronicle I already had, but not that much, as the theme of the book was already
the main question of my own chronicle. With that in mind, people likely to play RotE
at any point would be well to be warned. I'll put spoiler warnings before each story in
this thread that's run based on the book as well, but as I'm a plot foreshadowing kind
of guy, there will be snippets and bits of run-up throughout the thread.

Themes

These are the parts of Mage: The Awakening that I'm consciously emphasising,
because they spoke something to me, because they're maybe different to Ascension
and because they fit the setting.

Masks and Identity Crisis
I like to explore matters of self-identity in my games (see.. pretty much every actual
play I've done - especially Malekin's story in Deliria and... the entire of the Everway
thread, really) based on a fascination with Phillip K Dick-like "what is real?" stories
and a certain amount of Real-life musing on the nature of reality during my growing
years. I've had characters have their personalities altered by magic and the other
characters have to debate whether the new personality is a person that they'd be
killing by restoring their friends. I've had deathlords in Exalted turn out to be the
ghosts of the first-age selves of PCs. I've run two successful campaigns based on
amnesia (the second of which is my Everway thread here).

Mage: The Awakening is as a gift to my sort of GM, and it's for this reason;

"What does it mean?"
"That the Matrix cannot tell you who you are"
"But an Oracle can?"
"That's different"

"What's your name boy?"
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"John"
"What's your real name, John?"
"Pyro"

I'm talking about Shadow names. For me, and in this game, the taking of a Shadow
name isn't something you do to make it harder for other people to cast magic on you
- though that's a big ancillary benefit. Consider - the entire world is the Gnostic prison
of the Exarchs. Your identity - your real identity - is the prison-tag they gave you.
Shadow identities are like the rebel's callsigns in the Matrix - based on their own
particular subculture, but taken as a badge of rebellion. The false identity you
construct for yourself as a mage is who you are, not who they intended you to be.
And when that magic's gone - when they call you by your slave name - your ass is
theirs.

Seers of the Throne in my game tend to do the "Mr Anderson" whenever they can.

But it goes further than that. You can't just change your name to "Lord Thraxnor" or
something and call yourself Supernal. It requires a big change, a directed alteration
of your life. When Banneker, the Hierarch of Washington DC in my setting, goes
home to his wife and kids he is not Banneker any more - his Fallen identity is not his
Supernal identity, and he keeps them rigorously separate. His body language is
different, he speaks differently. If he had enough grasp of the Life Arcana he'd *look*
different. For Mages without dependents it's easier - they can live their Supernal lives
nearer to 24/7. Even those Mages that require careers and mortgages in my
interpretation don't use their real names - they have their Supernal identity, a second
false identity that they use for dealing with the Fallen World and then, buried deep
somewhere inside, the real life they hide from everyone.

The player characters all fit this to a T, as we'll see - Kali and Damascus are both
motivated by trying to change themselves into what they consider their supernal
selves to be ("good" in Damascus' case, "bad" in Kali's, morally), while Wolsey is
both damaged by fallout from his Fallen life *and* a man of many guises and masks,
with a different name on every business card and identities like a puzzlebox.

Liberty vs. Control

"What Truth?"
"That you are a slave, Neo. born into bondage in a prison you can neither see nor
touch"

It's in this matter that I think Awakening is superior to Ascension. Ascension, in it's
later years, tried to recast the conflict between the Traditions and the Technocracy as
being one of Liberty vs. Control rather than Magic vs. Science, but it was a case of
one development too late and still buried beneath the *trappings* of the surface
conflict. Awakening has no such considerations - the Exarchs and their willing
servants use the same powers as the Oracles and their followers in the Pentacle
orders, the Seers of the Throne look awfully like the Guardians of the Veil crossed
with the Silver Ladder (as our Silver Ladder character has pointed out) when you
really look at them. It really is just down to the fact that the Exarchs control the world.
There's no "they use science" crutch to distract from the struggle against the archons
of the world.

Awakening is a Gnostic game, and for me it's horror comes from that - you are in a
world that your enemies run, and everything inside it - including you - can be altered
by them on a whim. Mages are ants that know they're in an ant farm.
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Fighting Fire with Fire - using the enemy's methods

The "Big Four" cabals of Pentacle Mages in my setting are driven by their reactions
to two elements of the background, which I'll explain at more length later: DC was
designed by a freemason as a very particular grid that somewhat worryingly
resembles a Kabbalistic mandala, and as the city's grown it's had more and more..
symbology.. built into it. Symbology that has an effect, resonance-wise - the
government areas, the mall and the other parts of this "grid have detectably more
orderly resonance than the rest of the city, which is a hellhole exaggerated from the
real DC's crime-ridden backstreets. One of the city's "ruling" cabals is dedicated to
perfecting the grid, which they think was inspired by the mortal architect's run-in with
an Astral vision of Atlantis. Another is dedicated to preventing supernatural influence
on American politics wherever they can - watching for and stopping vampires, seers
and even pentacle mages wherever they can.

Both of them are using the methods of the Exarchs. Controlling a human population
by geomantic means? Actively working to prevent supernaturals from changing the
world? Their *motives* are good, sure. But what, exactly, separates them from the
Seers?

Everybody Lies
There's a paradox inherent in Awakening's setup - and I love impossible quandaries
like this. Mages are driven by their search for Truth. In their Awakening, they see the
Exarch's lie for what it is.

Pity, then, that Mages seem incapable of being straight with one another.

The Orders all lie to one another, and to their members. Elder mages lie to their
youngers, who all lie right back at them. Mages - to an individual - live carefully
constructed false lives. If you've read Secrets of the Ruined Temple, you know how
there are dozens of contradictory Atlantis stories. The Guardians of the Veil
painstakingly build recursive dolls-nests of conspiracies and occult "secrets" for the
unwary to become lost in. The Silver ladder decides on it's own sweet time when
you're enlightened enough to be told what's really going on - and when you progress
beyond that, you'll find out that they were lying the second time too.

Being a Mage is a quest for truth in a world where everyone - including your own
damn self - is constantly practicing the art of misdirection, desperately safeguarding
their own secrets.

Morals are for Mortals.. or maybe not
"We make the Vampires look like boy scouts" - Beckett, session 3

There's a bit at the end of Ascension (the novel, not the game supplement, that
finished M:TAsc's metaplot) in which the world ends during the time of judgement
and everyone and everything is reduced to it's component spheres. All the mages
Ascend, become aware of the full span of the lives of all human beings. The
Ascension war stops, and the last thing they all do - Technocrats, Orphans and
Traditions alike - is heartfeltly congratulate one another for their efforts to better
humanity. It was hopeful, optimistic - it felt appropriate as an ending to a game where
everyone is trying to better the lot of humanity, but are fighting over how to do it.

Wouldn't happen in Awakening, beyond the obvious reasons. Because Mages in
Awakening? They're bastards.

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The path to ascension in Awakening (and it's odd that the game that isn't named after
the concept has the clearer view of what it means, and seems - to me at least - as
being a game in which it could happen more realistically) is a deeply personal one.
Mages in Ascension lose their individual hangups as they progress, realising their
paradigms don't matter. Mages in Awakening *gain* something akin to a paradigm as
their soul evolves along a Legacy. It's the other way around.

Because the path is so personal, because they have empirical proof that it's
themselves they need to worry about and not anyone else, because they're used to
living under the shadow of jealously guarding who they are from friends and co-
workers for fear of someone getting an advantage... Awakening Mages are an awful
lot more narcissistic. Selfish fucks were the bad apples of Ascension, but they're the
operating standard of Awakening - everyone is out for number one.

Similarly, it's a lot easier - in a game which has a Morality mechanic - to handle
stories about the slide of a Mage's morality. Hubris IS one of the main points of the
game, after all. Of the player characters, Kali is deliberately becoming a less "moral"
person (and suffering the wisdom loss for it), because she's aiming for a level of
society which she believes to be more real. Wolsey lies to and uses anyone that gets
in his way, and can countenance selling out just-won allies to their mutual enemies in
order to buy a momentary advantage.

Atlantis and Alchemy
I like Atlantis. There, I said it. I never had a problem with it in the Corebook, simply
because it just made me think of Mage as a world in which Graham Hancock was
right all along and in which I could, if so inclined, adapt Indiana Jones and the Fate of
Atlantis. What could be wrong with that?

I was *so* glad when I got Secrets of the Ruined Temple.

In any case, the lost city looms large - DC is suspected in the chronicle of being a
partial copy of Atlantis and the plot threads from Reign of the Exarchs touch on the
battle against the false gods of reality. But it's not the only part of the "generic
western" trappings of Awakening that have seen use.

Because I like the feel of Awakening's magic.

I am having great fun putting Masks, Cups, Pentacles, Coins, Wands and Swords
into the chronicle in unusual places. DC's geography, with important sites laid out on
cardinal directions, helps.

I describe the world under Mage sight as having elements of the Supernal Realm of
the arcana being investigated - inspired by the movie version of Constantine, Mages
using Mage sight have an unsettling time of it.

Paranoia
"...which means anyone still connected to their system is potentially an agent."

Everyone's out to get you. The other four orders, your own superiors, your own
inferiors. And then there are the enemy. Mages are undercover in an espionage war
they can never win, constantly looking over their shoulders and second-guessing
themselves. This is present in the game as presented, but I've kicked it up a notch -
the Seers in my setting have more than one Profane Urim, and they're not afraid to
use them.

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When Wolsey, in session two, informs the others they can't use the restaurant
they've met at twice again for fear of building up a pattern others can use against
them, I knew I'd hit the right note.

Overview of the City

DC does not have the very best of histories - a diamond-shaped (originally, there's a
chunk missing of it's border after Virginia took it's portion back, hence "broken
diamond") lump of swampland that no-one wanted, set aside so that no one state
would have the capital city within it's borders. A grand plan by a French military
engineer for the layout of the city was delayed through lack of funds while the city
turned into a cesspit - when it *was* put into action, the distance between the grand
design and the reality was laughable. What's important for our purposes is the effect
that Design - and the parts of the city that follow it - has on the local resonance, both
inclining the areas covered by the "Grid" of traced lines towards orderliness and
doing the reverse to the spaces in-between.

DC in the World of Darkness is worse off than in the real world - the real DC has
racial divisions, huge areas of poverty and became the murder capital of the US in
the 70s. The World of Darkness' DC still is - the areas off the grid are still suffering
the after-effects of riots that went on longer and harder than in our world, the Control
Board never gave up power back to a mayor and the residents of the district still don't
have the vote (which they only got in the 60s in our world). In contrast, the "grid"
areas are under heavy lock and key, with even more armed police surrounding even
more lobbyists and bureaucrats. The WoD DC is more ghettoised, more violent, more
partisan and much more judgemental - a grid of imposed order on a semi-permanent
lawless hellhole. Without the residents being franchised, there's no reason for the
WoD's politicians to spend money on them - the overwhelming majority of DC's
funding goes into the Grid areas both subconsciously (on the part of sleepers) and,
tragically, by the design of one of the city's cabals.

The geomantic pressure exerted on the city by the collected power of it's
monuments, public buildings and avenues is constant, unyielding and entirely
artificial - like a tracery of pins holding it down in an unnatural shape. The pressure
"releases" in the areas not covered by the grid - a weak gauntlet is worryingly
common, and things creep into the dark corners of the city from the Twilight, the
Shadow and the Abyss. The nature of the city - grandiose capital city overlaid on,
coexisting within and contemporaneous with a resentful, ignored, almost-imprisoned
and poverty-stricken town - has meant that no one City Father has formed -
"Washington" and "DC" both have their own City Fathers, and the Shadowlands are
locked in a frenzy as the two spiritual ecosystems clash.

Into this come the Mages, of the Pentacle Orders and the Seers of the Throne, with
numerous independents and a worrying number of Banishers lurking on the edges.
Mages - and other creatures of the night - come to DC from all over the world,
looking to gain power and influence, and those already resident have to work hard to
keep their own control. Control of the Capital City of the world's Superpower is a
prize worth fighting over - covertly, of course: The two main "sides" both agree that
the spiritual chaos of the city's shadow should be contained, and that incautious
outsiders should not be allowed to meddle with politics. They disagree on who should
be the gatekeeper. The Pentacle mages of the city are faced with a City under
unnatural stresses, a larger than normal Seer population (with a Ministry rumoured to
be based in the city) looking to exterminate them and the unhappy prospect of
preventing any of their fellow Pentacle mages from shifting the delicate balances of
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power too far - by any means necessary. Much effort is expended to go nowhere, all
the sides in all the debates aware that if they stop struggling as hard as the others
they will find the city has no room for them.

The dichotomy of the city is interpreted according to Mage's individual prejudices - a
sizeable portion of the Awakened believe that Washington DC is clearly in the
process of merging with it's own Supernal self, held back by it's Fallen aspect. The
difference of opinion among these is over which city is Supernal, and which is Fallen.
Others believe that both cities are equally valid, and that the false divisions require
healing.

Three of the main cabals of the city's consilium are divided up along that axis - the
pro-grid, anti-grid and "unification" Cabals. Another is dedicated to the messy
business of preventing interference in mortal affairs on a grand scale. The last major
Pentacle cabal - and the largest - is based less on DC as a physical or supernal
*place*, but as a setting for events - chroniclers of history-in-the-making, students of
both populations, they think that the geomantic argument is worthless until the nature
of the grid is fully understood.

Power-wise, the Hierarch of the city (a Silver Ladder mage) is the least potent, in
terms of personal ability, of the City's Masters - he owes his position to careful
negotiation, the disinterest of two of his peers and a deal done with the last - the
head of the Gatekeeper Cabal and the senior Guardian of the Vale in DC - to allow
that individual and his followers great leniency in pursuing their mission. That the
Hierarch is in this situation is a result of the deadlock - the Silver Ladder's traditional
allies in the Adamantine Arrow are predominantly in the Cabal directly opposed to the
Hierarch's, so he's had to seek other friends.

The Consilium, painfully aware of the power struggle within itself and the constant
cold war against the Seers, issues the following advice to new Mages - adapted from
an apocryphal list of advice told to CIA agents about to be sent to Moscow.

* Assume nothing.
* Murphy is right.
* Never go against your gut; it is your operational antenna.
* Don't look back; you are never completely alone.
* Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
* Go with the flow, blend in.
* Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.
* Any operation can be aborted. If it feels wrong, it is wrong.
* Maintain a natural pace.
* Lull them into a sense of complacency.
* Build in opportunity, but use it sparingly.
* Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
* Don't harass the opposition.
* There is no limit to a human being's ability to rationalize the truth.
* Magic will always let you down.
* Pick the time and place for action.
* Keep your options open.
* Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is an enemy action.

In an effort to build up his powerbase despite his precarious position, the Hierarch
has a habit of poaching new apprentices for himself - he declared long ago that the
placement of newly awakened mages would be at the discretion of himself, and
coincidentally declared his own cabal as the one that fostered all but a few of the
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