FACTION MENU

​

 SAHAJIYA

A.K.A The Cult Of Ecstasy

(TRADITIONS)

​

Consciousness is both a playground and a trap. Infinite in possiblity yet limited by necessity, the human mind is the seat of everything real… at least as far as human beings are concerned, anyway. And so, the Ecstatic Tradition expands reality by expanding consciousness. If you rearrange perceptions, they believe, you also rearrange potential. To members of this “cult,” magick flows from altered consciousness. A mind unfettered is a mind released from limitations and thus capable of anything. Because consciousness depends upon limitations in order to function, though, a mage must be able to slide in and out of an open state. Thus, Ecstatics have crazy eyes and eccentric manners that seem compelling yet frightening.  Despite their image as snuggly hippie-kids, Ecstatics can be the scariest mages around. For starters, they’re intense and unpredictable. Many are not, as the saying goes, good with boundaries, and they tend to say and do inappropriate things, like kissing enemies and laughing at pain. They’re reckless by normal standards and often pull stunts that unAwakened folks could not survive. Passion is a sacrament they indulge to exciting and often uncomfortable extremes. “Extreme,” in fact, is a good way to sum these mages up. They are, by definition, ex: outside, beyond, no longer a part of what has come before or after. Often linked with the 1960s – perhaps the high point of this group’s influence – ecstasy is among the oldest Paths on Earth. Primal humans, according to Cult lore, ate psychedelic mushrooms and thus opened the conflux between spirit, animal, and Homo sapiens. Even now, Ecstatics see themselves as living gateways between flesh, spirit, and imagination, bound to all three and transcending each; in honor of their ancestors, many employ entheogens – drugs that “open the god within” – not as vices but as tools of sacred illumination. Since those origins, Ecstatic mages have lived beyond the bounds of respectability, devotees of a Left-Hand Path that embraces sex, drugs, music, dance, pain, pleasure, risk, and even death in the name of divine madness. Seers and shamans, rake-hells and prophets, these mages run with Sleepers who aren’t afraid to go beyond. And yet, largely thanks to their reliance on extremity, Council Ecstatics have powerful ethics. The Code of Ananda – the Cult’s commandments – forbids these mages from forcing their Path on unwilling partners. “Passions,” the Code declares, “are the seat of the Self, and if they bleed, so too does the Soul.” More than their esoteric peers, Ecstatics enjoy the company of unAwakened folks. Challenging Sleepers to shake off that sleep, these mages favor art, music, and bohemian and neotribal subcultures – environments where they can reward courage and inspire creativity. For a while, especially during its psychedelic heyday, this Tradition wore its “cult” moniker with pride. Recently, though, many Ecstatics have begun to feel limited by that flippant name. Cults have deluded, sinister implications in the popular imagination, so the group starts to favor its old title, Sahajiya (saHA-jee-AH, or “the Naturals”), as the new millennium dawns.  

​

Organization:

Informal and nomadic, this Tradition’s loose structure reflects its focus on individual transcendence. It has several subsects but few leaders as such. Cultists tend to congregate at festivals, raves, concerts, and other tribal gatherings, mingling with “sleepwalkers” who tread the line between Sleeper culture and full Awakening. For the most part, this group favors influence over organization. Each Ecstatic is encouraged to follow his or her own Path, so long as that Path doesn’t violate the sacred nature of other people. The only rigid element in the Sahajiya Path is the Code of Ananda and its emphasis on compassionate respect. Everything else is negotiable.

​

Initiation:

Five Steps to Ecstasy: 1: Surrender your fear; 2: Focus your intentions; 3. Open yourself; 4. Attune yourself; 5: Repeat Step 1. To help a new Ecstatic into Step 1, a mentor challenges that person to leap beyond his fears and then use his intentions to fly instead of fall. Diksham – the mentor/ student covenant – provides a safe space for the initiate to learn magick and control. Often, mentors and students become lovers, opening a channel of intimacy and trust that goes beyond mere sex. That’s not a rule, though, and compulsion is considered the worst sin an Ecstatic can commit. After initiation and initial training, a mentor often pulls away from her student, trusting him to find his own way. She’ll provide advice or secondary helpers, but she refuses to become a crutch. In order to grow along this Path, a mage must shape his own triumphs and mistakes.  

​

Affinity Spheres: Time; Life or Mind.

Focus:

“Get out of your own way” sums up the Ecstatic paradigm. To touch the Lakashim (“Divine Pulse”), a person must blow open the doors of inhibition and fear. Magick is the communion between a focused mind and the Lakashim – a dance of possibilities directed by crazy wisdom. To perform it, an Ecstatic guides Ojas (life force) energy with conscious but flexible intentions. Ideally, a mage operates in a flux state in which neither time nor inhibitions block the life force – aware of what she’s doing and yet open enough to do anything. The Cult’s infamous substances and stimulations are meant to blow open mental doors and blast away obstacles to Enlightenment. That’s the theory, anyway. In reality, those same tools can become obstacles in their own right. Smart Ecstatics, then, keep shifting their tools around to avoid stagnation and dependence on “the same old shit.” Crazy wisdom is the core of this group’s many practices, which include everything from gutter magick, yoga, and martial arts to cybernetic hypertech. And so, paradigms include Creation’s Divine and Alive, Everything is Chaos, It’s All Good, and quite often Everything’s an Illusion.

​

Stereotypes

Fellow Traditions: A bunch of tight-assed academics who’re often scared to push beyond the obvious limits of their disciplines and embrace everything they could be on the other side of those expectations.

The Technocracy: Abominations of the human condition, and the source of almost everything wrong today.

The Disparates: I don’t blame them for wanting their freedom. Too bad it’s cost them almost everything else

​

​

ROTES

Do Remember allocation of successes and success limitations still applies to rotes

 

 

 

TRUE FORM

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉ Arete  ◉

ENTROPY  ◉ MIND ◉ SPIRIT ◉  with optional LIFE ◉

Practitioners of the Ecstatic arts often claim that chemically induced hallucinations reveal the truth of things. By their reasoning, this altered state allows them to see past the mundane and obvious, into the realm of pure truth. By taking a hit of acid, the Ecstatic can see people as they truly are. Those who are wicked are revealed to be wicked, those who are victims are shown to be the weak, wispy things they are, and powerful men appear like beaming behemoths. How the mage actually sees the true form of others largely depends on the mage's perceptions. A staunchly anti-establishment Cultist might see a police officer as a Gestapo enforcer. If the cop was corrupt, perhaps the Cultist would see money falling out of his pockets. Sometimes, the images are deeply personal. A Cultist might pick out the hidden Technocracy agent, thinking that he is, in actuality, a large bully from her childhood.

​

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

The mage can get small bits of information about those around herself, although this information is somewhat shrouded in metaphor and layers of symbolism. The sort of information generally involved the target's Nature. These images should be very archetypal and tailored to the mage's outlook. Two people using this rote at once rarely agree on what they see. To the mage sensing True Forms, it is as if he is participating in a filming of Frank Zappa's 2000 Motels, with nuns, djinns, strippers, black shrouded executioners and adult sized children interacting with one another. Adding Life 1 to this rote allows the mage to tell the physical state of those she perceives. This perception could manifest as a physical tumor, a missing limb or, if the target is very close to death, as a feebly animate corpse.

 

NOSTALGIA

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉◉ Arete  ◉◉◉

MIND ◉◉/◉ TIME ◉◉◉  with optional LIFE ◉◉
The Dissonance Society, a faction of the Cult devoted to creation of an utopia based around the ideal of self mastery and enlightenment, is said to use magically induced stimuli as negative and positive reinforcement. However, the use of Nostalgia is far more effective and sophisticated than a mere waking of a few nerves. The Cultist actually conjures up her target's memory of some overwhelming stimulus he felt in the past, forcing the target to feel the sensation again, as if it had just happened, which makes the experience a very personal one. This effect is useful for a number of reasons. First off, the effect of Nostalgia is not some random sensation, its roots lie in the target's memory. One tends to respond more to, say, a spanking given as a child, than to a random application of pain. Secondly, the mage can use these associations and tie them to something unrelated. For instance, if an Ecstatic wishes to teach a hard-hearted corporate executive some compassion, she could tie the joy of his wedding night to the act of donating money. Therefor, whenever the corporate executive is generous, he feels the elation of just being married.

​

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

The Ecstatic has no control over what sensations are conjured when she uses Nostalgia, but she may set it as either "positive" (pleasure) or "negative" (pain) stimulus. Doing so generates memories of stimuli, it does not engender full activation of the nervous system. However, using Life 2, the mystic could conjure not only the memory of the stimulus, but the actual stimulus itself. In conjunction with Mind 3, the mystic can "tie" the stimulus to a trigger. By doing so, the mage can encourage or discourage certain behavior.

 

GRAND STYLE

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉ Arete  ◉◉

MIND ◉◉  with optional MATTER ◉ PRIME ◉◉

A variation of a Mind 2 effect known as Mood Swing, Grand Style allows the Ecstatic to use mass communication on an intuitive level. To do so, the Ecstatic must use some form of art. Although live music is the most common vessel for this effect, it can also be placed on visual art pieces. This effect causes those who perceive the artistic display to feel a certain way. Predominantly, this rote is used to bring about feelings of well being, joy, pride, contentment and reverence, although other factions use it for less altruistic purposes. The militant Hagalaz faction uses Grand Style to create riots, militant vigilante activism and good old-fashioned chaos. The occult Acharne use it to fuse brotherhood among its members and create feelings of having been raped for those unlucky enough to learn of their existence. Klubwerks DJs excel at its use and use it to create an atmosphere of pure human impulse. Even the Dissonance Society ties emotions into its pamphlets.

​

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

The Grand Style effect is generally achieved through music. By using Prime 2 and Matter 1, the mystic may "tie" the effect to a visual work of art. Obviously the type of art that the effect is based on decides the emotion it conjures. A Lords of Acid fast pumping dance track would be ideal for increasing people's libidos, but the medieval painter Hieronymous Bosch's "Temptation of Saint Anthony" triptych would not be able to get a similar effect. But, whereas the dance track would not put the fear of damnation into its listeners, those beholding the triptych would be left shaken and questioning their place in God's Kingdom.

​

TOLERANCE

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉ Arete  ◉◉

LIFE ◉◉  MIND ◉ 

Cultists have an amazing survival record in spite of their brushes with overindulgence, and luck's only part of it. Those who dabble too much in damaging habits - drugs, sleep deprivation, asceticism, whatever - generally learn to use meditative techniques and chakra-channeling to focus themselves and overcome the after-effects of their foci. Simple methods to prevent overdosing, flush body toxins and focus the mind all help to keep the Cultist alive. Often, this requires a specific regimen combining yoga or meditation with a lot of water and the occasional herbal additive.

​

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

Use of the Tolerance rote mitigates some of the potential problems of nasty drugs or other habits. A Cultist might suffer bashing or even lethal damage from a particularly foul overdose; this rote's successes reduces the damage by 1 per success.  if the rote's prepared in advance. This isn't a sure defense, but it'll probably help avoid using the adrenaline plunger.

For more on drugs and toxins go here.

 

CRIME AND CONSEQUENCE

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉ Arete  ◉◉

TIME ◉◉  MIND ◉◉

As modern Cultists have learned, responsibility for the aftereffects of ecstasy are just as important as the ecstatic experience themselves. Some people refuse to recognize the consequences of their actions, though, and foolishly endanger themselves and others. Cultists use this rote as a sort of warning, to engender a sense of responsibility in others. The Cultist projects ahead the possible outcome of an ill-conceived decision and then sends the emotional impulse of everything that goes wrong into the mind of the subject.

​

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

The Player must score enough successes to see forward in time to the point of consequences (this might be only a few minutes ahead for a drug overdose, or months ahead for an ill-considered pregnancy or other life-changing event.) The Cultist must also gain a success to project this moment empathically to the subject. If successful, the subject experiences all of the frustration and remorse of this badly chosen course of action as a series of flashes of anger and disappointment, with premonitions of things to come. For instance, a drug abuser might feel his body contracting in spasms, then see himself from the outside as he's dying and convulsing. A careless sex-hound might feel the pain of labor and sense the terrible burden of unassisted, life-crushing poverty for a victim he plans to love and leave. Often, such a flash is enough to at least give pause to the target. This doesn't necessarily give concrete flashes of the true future; it simply provides concentrated glimpses at things that could go horribly wrong due to someone's bad judgment or lack of responsibility.

​

ZEITGEIST

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉ Arete  ◉◉

MIND ◉◉ SPIRIT ◉◉ TIME ◉◉ 

Sometimes, an element of an age carries Resonance so powerful that it ripples through time in a memory carried by a huge mass of humanity. People establish pictures of an era so vivid that just a simple phrase conjures bright pictures and strong emotions - "The Summer of Love," "The Burning Times," "Black Tuesday." As the masters of time and passion, Cultists can call forth these spirits of ages, these zeitgeists, to make manifest all of the wonder - or terror - of a given point in time.
The Cultist simply associates an ecstatic practice with trappings that call forth the spirit of the age itself. This might mean listening to certain music, putting on specific clothes, burning incenses or smoke of a particular type, maybe even playing a movie or going to a specific place. The more the Cultist does to make the mundane surroundings match up with the zeitgeist, the more powerful the manifestation. At the completion of the rite, the Cultist unleashes the spirit's Resonance to touch everyone's emotions in the area. Anyone in the right place, who can see the Cultist and recognize the things she does, feels a sudden surge of that era.

​

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

Successes apply to the range and to the strength of the effect. The Cultist doesn't necessarily need successes to affect other people; in this case, the Cultist calls forth a spirit, which then does the work of generating the spirit of the age, and the Cultist simply uses magic to help project that spirit. This could provoke actual memories or just passive emotions regarding a specific scene, so a character might feel the unbounded sense of love and heedless joy from the Summer of Love, or the soaring pride and wonder of the the Age of Reason. It helps if the Cultist was personally there (as per arcane connections,) but it's not absolutely necessary.

​

PURIFY

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉/◉ Arete  ◉◉/◉

LIFE  ◉◉◉ OR MATTER  ◉◉ 

OR  LIFE ◉◉◉ MATTER  ◉◉ 

​

SUCCESSES REQUIRED

(matter) ◉◉ OR (Life) ◉◉◉ OR (matter +life ) ◉◉◉◉◉ (however you may need other successes to allocate where appropriate)

This rote allows a Cultist to flush drugs, poisons and diseases out of the target’s body. Matter allows them to remove drugs or poisons, Life allows them to remove diseases other than the worst (such as HIV and Cancer, which only go into remission), and both can, of course,
do both.

​

APHRODITE'S BLESSING

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉ Arete  ◉◉

LIFE ◉◉ 

​

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

Without dulling the sensations caused by an extreme environment, the Cultist continually repairs any damage that it causes.

​

​

PROLONG PLEASURE /PAIN

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉◉ Arete  ◉◉◉

MIND ◉◉◉ TIME ◉◉◉ 

​

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

The Cultist creates a simple time loop, causing the subject to experience the action setting into motion for as long as the magic lasts. To focus through it, the subject needs to make a Willpower roll with difficulty determined by the strength of the stimulus, +1 for each hour. Any new strong sensation cancels the effect

​

BAMBOLAI

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉/◉ Arete  ◉◉/◉

SPIRIT ◉◉◉  OR  MATTER ◉◉ PRIME ◉◉ 

​

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

With this, a Cultist can make a drug more intense. With Spirit, the spirit of the drug is awakened to improve it, with Matter and Prime the drug is charged with Quintessence. Either way, each success doubles the potency of the drug, and more than five successes causes it to require a difficulty 16+  Stamina roll to avoid blacking out.

​

DREAMLINE

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉/◉ Arete  ◉◉/◉

MIND ◉◉ or ◉◉◉  CORRESPONDENCE  ◉◉ TIME ◉◉◉

OR  CORRESPONDENCE  ◉◉◉ SPIRIT  ◉◉

​

SUCCESSES REQUIRED 

(Mind 2, Cor 2, Time 2) ◉◉◉◉

(Mind 3, Cor 2, Time 3 Or Cor 3 Spirit 2)  ◉◉◉◉◉  (however you may need other successes to allocate where appropriate)

There is a bond that all Cultists share. With this rote, a Mage can reach through this bond. They can send an empathic impression (Mind 2) or a specific message (Mind 3) to other Cultists, Time 3 permits many messages to be sent in a short time period. The variant with Spirit sends a spirit to deliver the message rather than relying on this bond.

​

DIONYSUS'S GIFT

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉◉◉◉ Arete  ◉◉◉◉◉

LIFE  ◉◉◉◉◉ Optional MATTER  ◉◉◉ Optional  FORCES  ◉◉◉ 

​

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

Dionysus was a shapechanger, and many Cultists look to him to gain the ability. This allows them to change shape (with Life 5 without the risk of losing themselves), or to change the shapes of others. With Matter or Forces, they can even turn their targets into inanimate objects and energy

(Remember Pattern Attacks must first reduce the target to zero health  and are resisted with Composure + Resolve + Essence roll at a difficulty equal to  Mage Arete+ 10 + Highest sphere value used , each success = 1 negated success against target. Far, far, far more successes are required to alter another character, This rote is unlikely to succeed against another target  without a great deal of planning)

​

MOOD SWING/ /COMMUNION

Prerequisites:  Occult ◉◉ Arete  ◉◉

MIND ◉◉ optional CORRESPONDENCE ◉◉ 

​

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

Spreads sensations and emotions to one person nearby per success. With Correspondence (the version called Communion), the person doesn't need to be nearby.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​