APPRENTICE ROTES

Prerequisites: Occult ◉◉◉ Arete  ◉◉◉ Relevant sphere rank ◉◉◉

SUCCESSES REQUIRED ◉◉◉ (however you may need other successes to allocate where appropriate)

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COROSPONDENCE

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Chain
Correspondence ◉◉◉
"As above, so below." Like objects often bear similar Resonance, and changing one can change the other. With Correspondence magic, a mage can strengthen or weaken the ties between objects or places. Such a chain makes for a powerful tool in building magical links, or a good way to defend against Correspondence senses and attacks. A simple Chain Effect lets the mage change the attachment between two Patterns as expressed on the Correspondence Ranges chart.

The Seven-League Stride
Correspondence ◉◉◉
Legend has it that the Order of Hermes made magical boots that would take the wearer exactly seven leagues with each stride. Though such boots are an artifact of the past, this Effect mirrors their capabilities. A competent mage can step from place to place nearly instantaneously. Depending on the exact sort of magic used, the mage might seem to blur past in an instant, or just vanish and reappear somewhere else. Regardless, the mage effectively teleports to any place he desires, although near and better known locations are easier to reach, of course.
Just as a mage can teleport himself through judicious use of Correspondence, objects or creatures can be moved with the right Effect. Simple Apportation can affect only simple Patterns, but as the mage's Correspondence knowledge improves, she can affect similarly more complex Patterns. Simple living things or composite objects can be moved with variations on the Seven-League Stride. Adepts and Masters of Correspondence can even use their greater rituals to bring along other people or to transport large or unusual substances.
Combined with Correspondence Sensing, the mage can travel to just about any place that can be scried — which is a good thing if the mage doesn't want to land in a hostile environment by accident. With Sense Connection, the mage could detect a scrying adversary, trace that connection and then teleport to the spy.

Filter All-Space
Correspondence ◉◉◉
Spreading senses across the Tellurian, a mage can search for specific objects or creatures as she extends her senses. The early Correspondence power of Correspondence Sensing may allow for scrying of specific areas or Patterns, but this more advanced technique lets the mage look in many places at once! The mage senses everything going on in all the places scried, which may call for the judicious use of Mind magic.
A mage who isn't looking for anything in particular could simply split perception across multiple locations and draw in a welter of sensory input. Conversely, a proper filter, especially with the right Pattern knowledge, lets a mage sift through many places to find an exact and particular target. The mage can then eliminate scenes from the multiplied vista until homed in on the right spot.

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ENTROPY

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Like Clockwork
Entropy ◉◉◉
Patterns that rely on precision can be improved and shielded with this simple Effect. By insulating a Pattern against the forces of Entropy, a device can be not only protected from decay and rust, but made to run perfectly for years, never failing and never allowing errors to creep in. Obviously, time catches up with all things so this Effect can't be made permanent. However, it can stretch the life and accuracy of all sorts of machines if it's maintained regularly (especially clocks, computers and other such precision devices). The Technocracy uses this Effect extensively, simply through regular maintenance of its machinery. Tradition mages might work small charms and blessings into a device to give it similar benefits. This Effect's successes establish a duration and size for the subject, keeping it shielded from running down naturally. The successes also defend against Entropy attacks levied against the object in question: An Entropy attack deducts from this Effect's protective successes first before hampering the object's functionality.

Slay Machine
Entropy ◉◉◉
Just as Entropy can protect a delicate Pattern from failure or decay, so too can chaos induce just such occurrences. By accelerating the process of inaccuracy and failure, the student of Entropy can render a modern technological device a heap of rubble — or at least cause it to fail badly enough that its compounded errors make it worthless.
The number of successes scored on the Effect determines how much chaos the mage manages to inject into a given system. For complex machines, the mage can cause gears to break, belts to snap, axles to bend and rods to slip. Electronic components suffer surges or failures. Computers and calculators get random errors and crashes along with computational problems. Simple material Patterns disperse in an accelerated rate of decay: Water evaporates, steel rusts, wood rots and copper corrodes. Use the table on page 162 for guidelines on how badly the target is damaged. A couple of successes would be sufficient to interrupt a personal computer, but 10 or more successes would be necessary to crumble a large engine to broken pieces.

FORCES

Friction Curse
Forces ◉◉◉
Turning a subject's motion into heat energy, the mage not only renders the subject unable to move, but causes the victim to heat up until he bursts into flame! This Effect essentially turns the subject's movement into damage, so faster objects are more susceptible. A modified version can cause the subject's own breathing action to create cold, freezing the subject in place and encasing him in a block of ice. Partial successes negate some motion and impart some heat; multiple successes can transform motion into damage. Better still, since the target can't move, he is hard-pressed to dodge the ensuing eruption of fire or cold.

Telekinesis
Forces ◉◉◉
At low levels of skill, a mage can perform rudimentary telekinesis by altering the directions of motive forces on an object. With the ability to transmute forces, though, the mage can easily turn body heat, a shout, even ambient light into a push that controls or moves an object. (With Prime magic the mage could create telekinetic force from nothing.) It's easier to manipulate smaller objects, of course, and fine control is quite difficult. The mage must also have a constant source of force. If no outside force influences the subject, there's nothing to transform into kinetic control. On the other hand, since people generate all manner of forces, it's usually a simple matter to hinder an enemy's movements.
Some mages focus telekinesis by using dolls or representations of the subject, while others just use transformative runes or phrases to direct the motion. In many cases, mages find it easier to telekinetically manipulate the subject if they can act out the motion, but that action isn't always necessary.

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LIFE

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Better Body
Life ◉◉◉
Mages who rely heavily on Life Effects use this power to alter themselves. A mage can take on various forms to her advantage: Claws, gills, increased Physical Attributes or Appearance, body armor and more. The only limits are imagination and what the mage believes that he can do within his paradigm. Successes scored indicate the limits of the change: One success would be good for an extra dot on one Attribute, for instance. Additional successes can maintain the Effect or generate larger changes.
If a mage changes a Pattern beyond normal limits — increasing Attributes to legendary levels (six or more), adding totally inhuman features, fortifying to soak against aggravated wounds, etc. — the subject gains permanent Paradox as long as the changes remain. Usually Paradox is a problem only for mages, but other victims can suffer as well, especially when Paradox erupts near them. Such gross changes always cause Pattern bleeding as well.
Simply altering a Pattern within its normal range of forms — swapping two Physical Attributes, for instance, or changing eye color — is a much simpler and less danger-prone use of this Effect.

Rip the Man-Body
Life ◉◉◉
With this Effect, a Euthanatos can rend the Patterns of complex life forms. As the mage lacks detailed knowledge of such complex Patterns, she cannot unravel the Patterns quickly. This damage often manifests as lesions and internal hemorrhaging.

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MATTER

Destroy Structures
Matter ◉◉◉
The mage uses her knowledge of Matter Patterns to break down structures by shredding their Patterns. The Effect resembles Sculpture, but the mage simply breaks down a Pattern as quickly as possible. The mage can destroy nearly any simple object. He can tear up concrete, steel and cloth with equal ease. However, advanced compounds might be too difficult for the mage to unravel (and require a higher level of skill). Note that the material is not reduced to nothingness; it is simply scattered and torn apart.
The mage can also turn an object into some other sort of inert substance and go from there. Doing so can be useful if a mage is dealing with matter that won't be destroyed just by dispersing it, like poison gas or acid.

Sculpture
Matter ◉◉◉
By changing the shape of a chunk of Matter, the mage can easily sculpt a substance without bothering to transform it like Melt and Reform. The mage just grabs the Pattern mystically — whether by pantomiming the sculpture, chanting its name of power or whatever — and yanks it around into the desired shape. The object responds and takes on the appropriate form.
Sculpture may require multiple successes for very large or complex objects.

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MIND

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Probe Thoughts
Mind ◉◉◉
It is nearly impossible to keep secrets from a skilled and determined disciple of Mind magic. The mage can simply bore into the target's mind, rooting around at will for surface impressions, or dig into memories, sensory information or even the subconscious. The target may suddenly experience strange thoughts and emotions as the mage brings them to the fore, or the mage can expend additional effort to slip in quietly and dig through the target's mind unnoticed.
With a successful probe, the mage can dig into memory (as the subject remembers it), experience any or all of the target's senses (perhaps in conjunction with her own senses, by using a multitasking Effect) or determine the victim's subconscious drives and desires. A quick surface scan may go unnoticed, but deeper probes often alert the subject that something's amiss. The successes scored indicate how deeply the mage can probe. Two or three successes give fleeting impressions of surface thoughts, while five or more open up buried memories and painful secrets. If the mage wants to sneak around unnoticed, his player must score additional successes exceeding the subject's Wits. A suspicious subject can resist the initial intrusion with Willpower, as always, and a Mind mage can often build a mental shield or even a layer of fake thoughts to block the intruder. In the latter case, the intruder must best the target's Mind Effect in order to break down the mind shield or notice and bypass the fake layer of thought.

Telepathy
Mind ◉◉◉
Direct mind-to-mind communication is possible with this power of Mind magic. The mage can send words, pictures or concepts directly to the subject, and he can read the surface thoughts of the target in return. With enough successes, the mage can connect to remote subjects, unfamiliar ones or multiple subjects (with additional successes needed for each). Thus, the mage can easily link minds with a member of her cabal or try to set up a telepathic network between multiple people, at the cost of a great deal of effort.
Since the mage setting up a telepathic link works on the basis of pure concepts, she can communicate through images or ideas instead of simple words. Language is no barrier to the trained mage. By contrast, those without Mind experience still tend to think in terms of language, and the magi may have to cut through the babble of words to get at the underlying concepts.
By sending images or sensory information, a telepath can also cause the subject to experience hallucinations. The complexity of the illusion determines the required successes, and a wary target may try to resist with a Willpower roll. With few successes, the illusion may seem unconvincing, incomplete or phantasmal. Illusions created with high levels of success — usually five or more — are indistinguishable from any real sensory input. Even if the target knows that something's an illusion, his body may well react reflexively when his senses warn him! Better still, the mage can simply send a knife of disturbing psychic Resonance straight into the victim's brain, inflicting bashing damage.
Untrained subjects, especially those with low Willpower, have a tendency to generate a distracting amount of psychic volume. The mage might well decide to lend a little organization to the target (by extending a mind shield) just to keep less skilled members of the link from distracting the group. Keeping a mental link up is certainly a distraction of some level, and the mage may suffer additional penalties to dice pools above and beyond the penalties for maintaining an Effect if there's a substantial amount of psychic "chatter."

 

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PRIME

Bond of Blood
Prime ◉◉◉
Transferring Quintessence between Patterns is a staple of potent magicians. The mage can take Quintessence from Tass or from a Node. If offered freely, the mage can even accept Quintessence from another individual, or gift a person with his own Quintessence. The mage can store energy in a Periapt or store it in another object. With a powerful enough Effect, the mage can even strike out against another mage and drain away that magician's extra Quintessence, although energy stored in the Avatar is inviolate.
This Effect gets its name from the Verbena, who use blood as a conduit for Quintessence. The Verbena in question smears an object with her blood or shares blood with a person in order to share her Quintessence. Hermetic mages use a similar rite by passing around a golden chalice and drinking from the cup or anointing a subject with it.
Although other supernatural creatures often carry their own power, taking Quintessence from them is a chancy matter at best. Most have a form of power that does not translate well into universal energy, and it is often bound up in their own inherent natures (that is, their Avatars). In the rare case where a mage is offered that power in some sort of conduit — vampire blood, for instance, or a shifter ritual that allows the trade of spirit energy — he can harvest Quintessence from the source. However it is usually inefficient and loaded with Resonance.
As a variant, a mage can sometimes channel a small trickle of Quintessence from a Pattern that's destroyed. An object that's burned normally releases its Quintessence back to the Tapestry, but the mage can coax some of that Quintessence into taking a slightly longer route and tunneling through another Effect. Such an Effect must be used conjunctionally with whatever magic it's powering, but allows the mage to draw a single point of Quintessence from the process of breaking or sacrificing things, like pouring out an offering of wine or burning several sticks of valuable incense.

Enchant Life
Prime ◉◉◉
Because of their ever-flowing and changing Quintessential currents, Life Patterns are more difficult to affect with Prime power than simple Matter or Forces. With this feat, the mage energizes the Life Pattern and gives it greater solidity, anchoring it in reality. This Effect makes the creature seem more "real," and it oft en provides a sudden flush of energy or emotion.
Furthermore, the living being can inflict aggravated (Pattern) damage with its own natural weapons. Akashic Brothers thus affected can score incredible damage with their bare hands, or shapeshifting Verbena can use claws to incredibly dangerous effect. As always, such an enchantment typically requires the expenditure of a rare and valuable point of Quintessence.

Lambs to the Slaughter
Prime ◉◉◉
Sacrifice is a highly controversial magical procedure, painted black in the-eyes of most of society — and no few mages — by images of Nephandi gaily slaughtering virgins, goats, children, passersby and whatever comes to hand.
Sacrifice, however, is used, approved and even praised by all Traditions in one form or another. The most common — and most holy — form is self-sacrifice, as done with Heart's Blood. Heart's Blood may be combined with a living bond (see Consecration) to sacrifice one's own life energy to power another's magic. The magic comes from a willing sacrifice, and this sacrifice lends the magic additional power, the psychic Resonance of the primal energy in harmony with the magical working. Thus, a woman who gives of her own life energy to save the man she loves will have the power of that Quintessence affected by the Resonance of her love (and the total sacrifice of her life may not even be necessary, depending on the magic).
In many other magic spells, the mage sacrifices some sort of material object: breaking an item, burning it, burying it or otherwise destroying an object of value. In the case of Tass, this act releases its excess Prime energy; to a mage with Prime magic, it allows the mage the opportunity to channel away a small measure of Quintessence as the item is destroyed (typically one point). Such Quintessence returns quickly to the flow, as soon as the object is broken, and so it must be used immediately.
The trouble with most Nephandic rituals — and the reason most Nephandi gain no additional power from their sacrifices — is that the victims are unwilling. Every point of Quintessence pulled out of the blood of an unwilling victim generates an equal and opposite measure of psychic Resonance absolutely opposed to the murderer and everything he or she stands for. This Resonance cancels out any benefit there might be from blood on the altar (apart from pleasing one's Dark Masters).
However, a willing sacrifice — such as a Celestial Chorus priest who martyrs herself to save her flock, a Verbena acolyte willingly burnt in the Wicker Man to end a famine or a Nephandic groupie who really and truly believes that the best thing she can do with her life is spill it on the ground for the greater glory of the Dark Masters — gives a great deal of power to a ritual. This sort of devotion can't be mentally compelled or blackmailed, but it can be carefully taught. There are certain Nephandi who raise children as "innocent lambs," treating them well and telling them: "The Dark Masters are your friends. The Dark Masters are better than Barney. There's nothing more wonderful than to be sacrificed to the Dark Masters — but we won't do that yet. We'll save it for a special occasion. All praise the Dark Masters".
Verbena, Hermetics, Euthanatos and particularly traditional members of the Chorus engage in similar practices, but with domestic animals — particularly lambs, goats, chickens and calves. They raise them with a great deal of special care and special treatment, then use them as the centerpiece (and main course) of seasonal rituals and feasts. As vampires know, the amount of life energy in such a creature is not as great as it is in a human, but there are also less moral qualms about killing a chicken or lamb.
Many people find the concept of sacrifice distasteful, but it is included here both as a story element and as an important part of both ancient and modern magical and religious belief. However, a Storyteller is free to disallow sacrifice as a source of magical power if it is a story element she does not want to deal with, if it's inappropriate to particular magical ceremony or if the proper rites and rituals have not been observed by the player's character. A Verbena might gain between two and five points of Quintessence from an appropriately raised and humanely slaughtered lamb as part of a May Day feast. Then again, the lamb may not be that innocent or willing, and any possible bonus might be spoiled by negative Resonance. It is a matter of Storyteller opinion and judgment whether any particular sacrifice holds power beyond the beliefs of the person performing the ritual.

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SPIRIT

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Awaken the Inanimate
Spirit ◉◉◉
By talking and crooning over a physical object, a Dreamspeaker or Akashic Brother may Awaken its spirit and rouse it into awareness. A Verbena might spread blood in a pattern over the object while a Hermetic mage would sprinkle it with dark dust and carve a seal onto its surface.
Objects, once their spirits are awake and aware, can be particularly useful. Their personalities tend to be very protective of those who have treated them well and ill-disposed toward those who have treated them badly. The object could not really do much on its own, but it might cause small coincidences that work for or against the mage. For example, if a Euthanatos were to rouse the spirit of his gun, it might misfire in the hands of an enemy. Likewise, an aware Chantry house might take a very dim view of burglars, especially if they broke in — doors might slam, lights could go out (or on), and the alarm system the burglars disarmed might short out and go off anyway.
Rousing an object typically requires plenty of ritual successes — five or so for a gun, 20 or more for a house. This is slow, but often coincidental unless the mage wants an especially vulgar manifestation. The older and more psychically-charged the object is, the more powerful its spirit and the harder it will be to rouse. The newer and less important the item, the less powerful and less intelligent its spirit and the easier it is to rouse. A new knife from the knife shop, never used, would have less personality and intelligence than a cockroach, but could be made aware with a minimal amount of magic. Over years or decades, the objects would start to absorb some of its owner's personality. The knife an old shaman forged in boyhood would have a strong and active spirit (thought it might not be a fetish per se). As always, an object with strong Resonance similar to the mage's is more likely to awaken to his call.
An object with an awakened spirit exists in multiple worlds at once. A person can use an awakened knife in the physical world to injure spirits in the Near Umbra, or he may cut the silver cords that connect astral travelers to their bodies.
In the modern age, many objects resist awakening completely. The dullness of mundanity infects them and prevents them from taking on their own personalities. Even if a mage manages to awaken an object, there's no guarantee that it will be helpful, or that it will know anything of value.

Stepping Sideways
Spirit ◉◉◉
Mages can push through the Gauntlet and into the Near Umbra. Once in the Umbra, the mage walks and interacts with the place just like always, but as a being of ephemera instead of as a material entity. The mage is always noticeable to those who know what to look for. Living beings stand out in the Umbra, especially if they visit the deadlands.
Traveling through the Gauntlet is usually done as an extended ritual — the mage makes a real or symbolic journey and eventually passes into the spirit world. The difficulty of such a journey varies with the thickness of the Gauntlet. Should the mage botch, he may well become stuck. In such a case, only another mage able to reach into the Gauntlet can pull him out or push him through.
Crossing the Gauntlet is a very dangerous journey. The storm winds of the Reckoning lash the very Avatars of those mages who dare to cross into the Mirror Worlds. When a mage crosses into the Umbra, roll the mage's permanent Paradox + Arete (difficulty 6). Each success indicates one level of aggravated damage as the storm winds flay the mage's enlightened spirit! In some particularly nasty cases, mages have even had their Avatars flayed apart by the storm winds, getting haplessly dumped back in the material world with less power and sometimes horribly Gilguled. Such punishments rely on the Storyteller's cruelty.

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TIME

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Distort Time
Time ◉◉◉
By generating a field of slow or fast time, the mage causes localized distortions that let people or objects move and react to the world at different rates than normal. A bubble of fast time would contain a person who could move two or three times faster than normal, for instance, while slow time could enfold a hurled weapon and cause it to seem to float through the air in a leisurely fashion. The subject still experiences an undistorted sense of subjective time, so the fast man would feel as if he's moving at normal speed while the world around him is slow, and the hurled weapon would retain its deadly momentum but could be easily grabbed by the handle.
Every two successes scored causes the bubble to accelerate or decelerate time by one factor. Thus, two successes would allow a mage to double her physical speed, or attack a 1  + successes opponents with a single attack or add +1 per success to your attack or defence for the duration of effect.

Time Warp
Time ◉◉◉
By pulling time back into a loop, the mage causes a small area to suffer a local "rewind" of time. The mage herself remains immunized against this Effect due to her command of Time magic (otherwise he wouldn't know that he'd done anything and the looping would be almost pointless). From there, the mage can change her actions and responses to a given situation, already knowing how it would turn out otherwise. By combining Life and Mind with the Effect, the mage can actually rewind herself physically and undo the effects of physical trauma, while still retaining her memory of the events that never happened.
In game terms, the mage causes one or more turns to rewind and get redone in her area. Successes spent on the area determine how large a location is affected — the mage might just unwind damage done to herself, or might rewind a whole area to undo a massive catastrophe. Additional successes spent on individuals can insulate them from the Effect just like the caster, so that they remember what's about to happen again and can act appropriately. Anyone who's not insulated just redoes whatever they were doing before, although they might change in response to someone else's differing actions. That is, a Man in Black firing his gun still fires it (and scores the same result as before) unless, say, one of the rewound mages decides to body-check the MiB instead of diving for cover.
Rewinding time is not only exceedingly difficult, it's very vulgar. If the mage rewinds time over a specific thread (say, one particular turn), then any attempt to affect that spot of time again must overcome the successes scored on the initial rewind — time is already so bent out of shape that further manipulations must be even more powerful. Time scrying and the like also fight a similar barrier. Time's distortions make it hard to read the area — which, incidentally, means that although the mage knows what may happen when she rewinds time, she still can't predict how her changed actions will change the replaced timeline. Rewound time tends to stack up Paradox due to the inherent trickiness of the feat. Every turn of rewound time causes Paradox for the Effect, so rewinding three turns would cause triple the normal Paradox for the spell!
Naturally, this spell is so difficult and specific that very few mages use it at all. Some paradigms just don't accommodate the idea of "rewinding time" while others facilitate it, but all mages agree that such stunts are left to young hotheads who haven't yet learned the dangers of such vulgar magic. (Your Storyteller will probably hate it if you overuse this Effect, too, which is another sure way to get lots of problems.)

 

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