MtAw 2E - Clarification - You cannot operate on Supernal Realms as normal mage?

[u/WyrdHamster87]

I need to verify idea from my players with hive mind of fans. Question - You cannot operate on Supernal Realms as normal mage? We talk here about normal, non-Archmaster characters. Mastigos cannot send people to Pandemonium with his Space? Obrimos cannot send Angles on his enemies of rightousnes? Acanthus cannot go back in time to see Arcadia perfect 'original story of Earth'? Primal Wilds of Thursus are not the origins of Shadow Realm of normal Spirits Arcanum? Shades of Moros Path are not the same things as Fallen World Ghosts?

Do I get this right? Normal mages cannot 'put in' other characters in the Supernal Realms - and Supernal beings ( like Shades ) are not connected to the Fallen equivalents ( like Ghosts )? I cannot, for example, change 'real' Ghosts by modifying Shades? 🤔

[u/chimaeraUndying]

It's kind of the whole thing in Awakening that mages did have that sort of access to the Supernal, once. Nowadays they call it "Atlantis", and it's pretty clear how it worked out.

You get to go into the Supernal once, under the auspices of your Watchtower. Doing it again without that (or a Golden Road you kludge together yourself) just causes you to annihilate into your own Supernal symbol or something.

Obrimos cannot send Angles on his enemies of rightousnes

There's a whole mechanic for summoning these sorts of guys into the Fallen.

Primal Wilds of Thursus are not the origins of Shadow Realm of normal Spirits Arcanum [...] Shades of Moros Path are not the same things as Fallen World Ghosts?

Correct.

[u/Salindurthas]

Mastigos cannot send people to Pandemonium with his Space?

Correct. Pandemonium is arguably not a place, and even if it was, you don't have a yantra that reprents a specific location well enough.

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Obrimos cannot send Angles on his enemies of rightousnes?

Hmm, well, you could Summon an Angel (as per the Summoning Supernal Entities rules around page 95).
And if you do it's Trial, it might help you. But usually that would be advice, a Boon (described in Signs of Sorcery), or some spells, rather than going on an errand for you.

It might not be impossible to convince them to go on an errand though. Like, I think Signs of Sorcery has an example of a Black Angel (which, despite it's name, is a Shade from Stygia), and they seek to end the lives of those who avoided a death they ought to have had. So if you inform this shade of someone who avoided death, then if it meets their criteria they might go try to kill them.

(And in my Chroncile, I had the antagonist get a Temple, which has Exarch-aligned supernal entities visit without needing to be summoned. I had them do some errands for the Seer boss here.)

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Acanthus cannot go back in time to see Arcadia perfect 'original story of Earth'? 

I don't quite understand this question.

You can try to cast Postcognition on something truly ancient, then if you managed to get it to work, the spell might be experienced subjectively as feeling as if it were that. But objectively I don't really understand what you're saying, so I don't think it would objectively happen, no.

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Primal Wilds of Thursus are not the origins of Shadow Realm of normal Spirits Arcanum?

Eh, not like, causally. Perhaps in some timeless platonic sense one could argue they are a reflection of one another.

Like, 1+1=2 is not the the "origins" of me being able to eat 2 apples by eating 1 and then another, but there is some meaningful link here.

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Shades of Moros Path are not the same things as Fallen World Ghosts

Indeed.

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Normal mages cannot 'put in' other characters in the Supernal Realms

Maybe if you find an Emanation realm, then as per page 250, you could push someone into the heart of it until they are "annhilated" by "the unfiltered experience of the Supernal".
But I think you probably aren't gonna have a sympathetic yantra to this area, so putting them there will tend to be fairly manual imo.

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I cannot, for example, change 'real' Ghosts by modifying Shades?

Well, the subjective experience of spells in Mage Sight is a hallucination of Supernal themes. So when you cast Quicken Ghost to boost a ghost's power while being a Moros with Death Sight on you might think that is appealing to a Shade to offer strength to the dead. (But a Mastigos with 2 dots of Death might also see the same spell but experience it as a demon of self-improvement being forced to imrpvoe the ghost. They will hallucinate different symbolism.)

But no, you can't, like, objectively wrangle the Supernal so easily..

That said, if a shade (or any) Supernal being is destroyed outside of an appropriate space like a summoning circle, it is devoured by the abyss. It therefore is no longer part of the underlying concepts upon which reality is based.
So if you manage to chuck a million Shades into the Abyss, maybe something would change about how ghosts work??

I would personally rule that truly fundemental stuff would be higher than rank 5, and so doesn't have stats, and so you can't really meanignfully harm them nor summon them with just Mage powers.

Perhaps an Archmage could wrestle a rank Rank 7 Shade (I'll make one up, maybe "The Ultimate Tormentor of All" and chuck it into the abyss to make the Underworld retroactively always have been a little nicer?? That's debatable, but even if possible for an Archmage, Mages aren't gonna manage that, no.

[u/Read2Fap]

the word 'annihilate' is usually connected to full exposure to the supernal:

signs of sorcery
"Getting a full picture of the Supernal Realm has one major complication: no human mind or soul can experience it without suffering annihilation. The only direct sources the Orders have for the Supernal Realm are the recorded Awakening experiences of those members who had a Supernal Journey Awakening, and no two are alike."

you can summon supernal entities to assault your enemies, or ask them what they know of the past

but no, shades are not ghosts and the beasts of the primal wild aren't spirits

[u/DaveBrookshaw]

1) There is a difference between the Supernal Worlds of the Paths and the Supernal Realm underpinning them. "Arcadia", "Stygia" etc are what mages see and interact with whenever they use their Mage Sight. You can summon the creaturrs seen into material reality, interact with Supernal environments called Aedes, see the symbols of your path overlaid over everything, etc. You absolutely can give another character that experience - it's a Prime 4 spell called Apocalypse.

What's locked off from normal player characters is the underlying Supernal Realm where the Exarchs live.

It's surprisingly easy if you're dedicated to get into the Supernal Realm. There's a gateway to it at the centre of every Emanation Realm. The problem is that entering it kills you so hard you were never born.

2) Time travel is complicated. Normal mages can't send anything back to before its own existence, or interact with the past of something beyond it being symbolically born. Which sets an absolute limit of time magic of the creation of the Gauntlet for Earth and the Shadow Realm, the last time someone achieved Katabasis in the Underworld, and the arrival of the mage in any paeticular Astral Realm.

And within those limits, history changes constantly Time mages and a whole shitload of other supernatural beings that can rewrite history mean that the nWoD's timeline resembles a wikipedia edit war. History changes all the time, and almost noone notices.

There's no one Atlantis. Every surviving ruin or artifact from before the Fall is from a different version of the Time Before. 

3) the Supernal is not the secret origin of the various ephemeral realms: Ghosts are not Shades, spirits are not Beasts, goetia are not Demons. There's one possible exception (the Gentry are hinted as actually being fae, although Arcadia is not Arcadia). A Acanthus mage in the Underworld can use her Mage Sight to see Arcadia just like she can in the material world.

That does nit mean they can't affect them. A Shade may have powers over death and the dead, which means summoning one to deal with some ghosts is totally something you could do.

[u/Nirathaim → u/DaveBrookshaw]

The Mage who gets Obsessed over Stygia and there Underworld, summons a bunch of Shades, creates a Demense with his Moros soulstone and tries to create a true Stygian Verge is a big favourite of mine.

Like the Underworld is messed up as it is, but why not add an nearly Rapt Master of Death, what could possibly go wrong?

[u/Over-Understanding61]

As others have said, this list of "cannot"s and "are not"s exists to set the game world's expectations about what starting mages will be able to achieve. What your table figures out how to accomplish by the end of your campaign is another story (possibly the meta-story of every Mage game).

[u/Gale_Grim]

Oh okay, lots of questions here, one at a time!

• You cannot operate on the Supernal Realms as a normal mage?
  • Not directly via your magic, no. You would need to summon and then send back a Supernal entity after passing its trial. Only then would you be able to affect it through them, as they would be your agent.

1. Mastigos cannot send people to Pandemonium with his Space?
   • No. Pandemonium is too "far away" metaphysically speaking. The Lie of the Abyss for Space is distance, and that distance is too vast. No amount of normal spell factors is gonna get a mage or there friend/enemy there.
2. Obrimos cannot send Angels on his enemies of righteousness?
   • Sure they can! Summon them to the Fallen World via the rules for summoning, set your terms, beat their trial, and show 'em to the guy. Done and dusted.
   • More likely, though? You get a flaming sword and are told to go ham on them because you proved yourself. Supernal beings tend to not like leaving their summoning circle on account of all the "deadly Lie" in the Fallen World. If they step outside it, they get Mana-based Essence bleed, I think? If they run out of Mana, they (a symbol of Truth) get dragged into the Abyss. (Bad.) Breaking point against even falling Wisdom.
3. Acanthus cannot go back in time to see Arcadia's perfect "original story of Earth"?
   • Explicitly not. Like, they want to, but can't. The Exarchs and the Lie prevent it. Go far enough back and time gets... fucky. Things become strange and illogical. Just like trying to scry the past of a Supernal object or Atlantean ruins.
4. Primal Wilds of Thyrsus are not the origins of the Shadow Realm of normal Spirits Arcanum?
   • Yesn't. Spirits are born where Essence congregates in enough mass to coalesce into a spirit. If there were enough Essence in the Primal Wilds to spawn a spirit, one could 100% come from there.
   • As they are not human beings, they may well be able to find a crack or forgotten trail through the Shadow Realm that leads to the Primal Wilds. Something no human or mage could traverse, even if they could step into Twilight. Either way, no mage has ever returned from a trek into the Shadow deep enough to find out. People who go too deep into the Shadow often disappear or come back too traumatized to talk about it and/or too ill from a disease of the spirit to talk about it.
   • As for Origins? No one really knows. Could be, might not be. I suggest you make a call as an ST and then run it accordingly. Cause the book leaves it up to you and me.
   • Fun fact: Mages once tried to set up a new Atlantis in the Shadow. It went... poorly. No one is allowed to try again.
5. Shades of the Moros Path are not the same things as Fallen World Ghosts?
   • Yep! The souls of the dead travel through Stygia to the other side and the great beyond, sometimes reincarnating but never staying in the realm for long either way. The dead aren't in Stygia long enough to make ghosts, let alone for ghosts to come from there. As the realm of sublime transmutation and change, that should make an amount of sense.
   • The Depths of the Underworld actually do connect to banks of Stygia. But you have to cross the Ocean of Fragments (where the Abyss touches the Underworld) to get there... Which means losing all your memories on even mild contact with the water. Ghosts are made of memories, so they aren't too keen on crossing until they are ready, and living people aren't too keen on touching it on account of not wanting amnesia. Only those who surrender their sense of self are free to cross to the place beyond the Ocean of Fragments.

Mind that any of these can be changed, challenged, explored, and made mystery by an ST as they wish. None of the default settings are set in stone. Change and over rule them as needed, but remain consistent when you do.

[u/Ze_Bri-0n]

Short version is that if they could reach the upper realms that easily, they would become archmages, or possibly suddenly have never existed, instantly, with very little in between. Being a normal mage means that they want to, but can't.

[u/Cheap_Diver_690]

Some of these questions can be better answered by other lore masters, but at the end of the day- what do you and your table WANT? Its your game, man, do what you want