I decided to try a list of story hooks for Mage: The Ascension as a tribute to Stewart Wieck.
I asked for suggestions online, and Bruce Baugh suggested some options including The Birthday Massacre (which Faye Sutherland seconded). Thanks to all who offered ideas!
To get a suitable number: the album title, the first and last track, and any singles. This gave me thirty titles, including some curve balls for White Wolf references.
I’ve never run a Mage chronicle, so this might be what one I run would look like. I think I came up with some interesting hooks, though maybe a few too many aimed at a single mage rather than a cabal of multiple characters, and quite a few about covering up some mystical event before someone else does. I tried not to lean too heavily on the Technocracy as enemies, so I have quite a few involving rivalries with other cabals.
The Format (based on an original idea by Steve Dee)
Hook: the problem, weird occurrence or opening situation which causes the cabal to get involved with events.
Problem: the full nature of what’s going on - what caused the hook to happen, and what forces are aligned against the cabal.
Complications: Elements which are either part of the problem or external events which will make solving the problem not quite so straightforward as hitting the books or finding the killer.
Sub-Plots: These are a few lines on the character drama that could be wrung out of the events described, so that each episode is more than just a mystery.
Resolution: How to solve the mystery, kill the beast and finish the story. Usually some options are included to suit your players or allow for their creativity.
Fun Stuff: This is just a list of some of the fun scenes or ideas the episode will let you play around with, to inspire your imagination.
Theme: Mage is always full of metaphor. This last section contains ideas on how the plot could be used as a reflection or life lesson for the cabal.
The Titles
Nothing And Nowhere
Happy Birthday
The Dream
Violet
Prologue
Blue
Nevermind
Walking With Strangers
Kill The Lights
Red Stars
Looking Glass
Movie
Pins And Needles
In The Dark
Secret
Hide And Seek
Leaving Tonight
Down
One Promise
The Long Way Home
Night Shift
Superstition
Divide
Beyond
Trinity
Imagica
Under Your Spell
One
Endless
Show And Tell
Filmography
Ruby Sparks (The Dream)
X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes (Violet)
Dust Devil: Director’s Cut (Looking Glass)
Predator II and The Peacemaker (Hide And Seek)
After Hours (Night Shift)
Sliding Doors (Divide)
Groundhog Day (Endless)
--
Nothing And Nowhere
Hook: Investigating a vortex of magical power, Quintessence, being pulled into an abandoned house, one of the Cabal opens the attic door and finds a featureless grey void beyond.
Problem: Cross the threshold and there’s an endless nothingness, with the door hanging there. There seems to be a floor underfoot, but how far does that last?
Complications: From all other angles, and all other ways in, the attic is just an attic. The door itself seems to be the source of the draining into the void. And what is it powering, and how much more power does it need? And is there anything living in the nothing?
Sub-Plots: And who else might have noticed?
Resolution: Find a way to separate the door from the void, before the void does.
Fun Stuff: An endless space that shouldn’t be there, and all the ways to avoid getting lost in it.
Theme: How do we deal with the infinite?
Happy Birthday
Hook: One of the cabal has a birthday coming up... and some of their family want to make a big deal of it.
Problem: So they’re coming to town, right into the middle of a conflict between Tradition and Technocracy mages, an important celestial alignment, an attack by monsters from beyond, or something else that the cabal has to deal with right now.
Complications: The mage’s family are Sleepers, but liable to ask unfortunate questions and to have high Willpower.
Sub-Plots: Naturally, some of the cabal’s enemies think this is a moment of weakness and time to strike.
Resolution: When a mage sets out to make time for mundane commitments, they can literally make time to do so. Or maybe find a less magically drastic solution.
Fun Stuff: Oblivious Sleeper family. Very normal birthday celebrations contrasted with high mystical weirdness.
Theme: We all come from somewhere.
The Dream
Hook: One of the cabal wakes from a dream of meeting someone, knowing that she is real. Then the mage meets her the next day - and she recognizes the mage as well.
Problem: Is she a fellow mage, a Sleeper with potential to Awaken, or something else? Is she actually part of a dream made real by the mage’s imagination?
Complications: The local Technocrats seem very interested in this new arrival.
Sub-Plots: Will other dreams come true? And how about nightmares?
Resolution: Determine the truth of the dream, perhaps by venturing into it.
Fun Stuff: Run with every musical reference to dreams, jokes about the mage’s “dream come true” and so on. Play with the character’s origin, keeping it a mystery for a while. Check out Ruby Sparks for an example of how your “dream lover” could affect your waking life.
Theme: How much can we affect our realities, consciously and unconsciously?
Violet
Hook: Attempting to perceive invisible spirits who have been troubling a local mystical Node, a mage adjusts their visible spectrum... and sees a different threat.
Problem: Something ancient and alien, that exists beyond our five senses, and knows that the mage has seen it.
Complications: Optionally, the mage is now also blind to the mundane world. Temporarily or otherwise.
Sub-Plots: The original poltergeists are also curious about the mage targeted by the Unseen, and start bothering the cabal at their chantry.
Resolution: Find a different solution than X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes escaping the oncoming thing by tearing his eyes out.
Fun Stuff: Fighting invisible entities, both minor and major.
Theme: How much is our reality defined by our perceptions?
Prologue
Hook: Chasing a rival mage in possession of an item the cabal sought for six months, one of them rounds a corner... and is back on the day the conflict started.
Problem: How did they get back here? Sent by the rival mage, unconsciously resetting the fight in order to win, or is something else at play here?
Complications: None of the other members of the cabal seem to be affected – to them it’s six months earlier.
Sub-Plots: Is there something else the mage would like to change about the last few months? A dead friend they’d like to save...?
Resolution: Confront the rival mage, also affected by the disruption, and find a better way to solve their current/future conflict.
Fun Stuff: The affected mage using future knowledge, the other players acting oblivious.
Theme: What would you do if you could relive some of your past mistakes?
Blue
Hook: The invisible spirits from Violet return, seemingly more powerful, but now intermittently visible to any mage’s senses.
Problem: They seem to have taken an interest in another mystical site, this one more powerful, and contested between two rival factions.
Complications: As they start to influence the site, even Sleepers start to see them at the limits of vision, and they attract more of the wrong kind of attention.
Sub-Plots: Worshippers of the Unseen also seek the poltergeists, hoping to draw their master closer.
Resolution: Find some accord with the spirits.
Fun Stuff: Normally invisible monsters who aren’t used to being visible and aren’t shy about being seen by Sleepers.
Theme: You can’t hide threats forever.
Nevermind
Hook: A lost recording by a 90s band spreads online decades after the singer’s death, with lyrics that seem to relate to the present.
Problem: The singer was on the verge of Awakening when he died, and his recordings have a prophetic power. And who released them now, and why?
Complications: A band made up of Ecstatic and Hollow One mages wants the original recording for its mystical power.
Sub-Plots: Perhaps one of the mages loved the band in their youth, and seeing the lost song become a hit brings back fond memories, connecting the mage with other fans.
Resolution: Find the source of the song, and the reason it’s playing now... and what the final verse refers to.
Fun Stuff: Mage bands, Sleeper souvenir hunters and more.
Theme: Art can affect us long after its creation.
Walking With Strangers
Hook: The mages have to travel to another chantry to research an occult mystery. There they meet a cabal who should be allies...
Problem: ... who have their own secrets and agendas.
Complications: One of the cabal’s allies is considered a rival or enemy by this other circle, who accuse her of theft, treason or madness.
Sub-Plots: One of the strangers takes an interest in one of the visiting mages, perhaps as a potential student, or teacher.
Resolution: Find common ground, or find a way to obtain the research notes and leave quietly.
Fun Stuff: Creating another cabal that the players should find strange and off-putting.
Theme: Who can we really trust?
Kill The Lights
Hook: A Nephandus, a mage serving the forces of Oblivion, has learned a way to cut his shadow loose and send it out to kill for him.
Problem: The shadow can attach itself to others, and is almost impossible to notice in any lighting condition except direct sunlight. And it’s winter, when direct sunlight isn’t exactly in abundance.
Complications: The shadow seems to target Sleepers at random, but there has to be a pattern. What is the Nephandus mage’s goal, beyond chaos?
Sub-Plots: This happens while the mages are busy investigating a haunted house, chasing vampires, helping a band put on a show, or something else that will have them stuck in dimly-lit places all day.
Resolution: Kill the shadow, and what happens to the Nephandus?
Fun Stuff: Killer shadows!
Theme: The light and the dark are always there.
Problem: Something ancient and alien, that exists beyond our five senses, and knows that the mage has seen it.
Complications: Optionally, the mage is now also blind to the mundane world. Temporarily or otherwise.
Sub-Plots: The original poltergeists are also curious about the mage targeted by the Unseen, and start bothering the cabal at their chantry.
Resolution: Find a different solution than X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes escaping the oncoming thing by tearing his eyes out.
Fun Stuff: Fighting invisible entities, both minor and major.
Theme: How much is our reality defined by our perceptions?
Prologue
Hook: Chasing a rival mage in possession of an item the cabal sought for six months, one of them rounds a corner... and is back on the day the conflict started.
Problem: How did they get back here? Sent by the rival mage, unconsciously resetting the fight in order to win, or is something else at play here?
Complications: None of the other members of the cabal seem to be affected – to them it’s six months earlier.
Sub-Plots: Is there something else the mage would like to change about the last few months? A dead friend they’d like to save...?
Resolution: Confront the rival mage, also affected by the disruption, and find a better way to solve their current/future conflict.
Fun Stuff: The affected mage using future knowledge, the other players acting oblivious.
Theme: What would you do if you could relive some of your past mistakes?
Blue
Hook: The invisible spirits from Violet return, seemingly more powerful, but now intermittently visible to any mage’s senses.
Problem: They seem to have taken an interest in another mystical site, this one more powerful, and contested between two rival factions.
Complications: As they start to influence the site, even Sleepers start to see them at the limits of vision, and they attract more of the wrong kind of attention.
Sub-Plots: Worshippers of the Unseen also seek the poltergeists, hoping to draw their master closer.
Resolution: Find some accord with the spirits.
Fun Stuff: Normally invisible monsters who aren’t used to being visible and aren’t shy about being seen by Sleepers.
Theme: You can’t hide threats forever.
Nevermind
Hook: A lost recording by a 90s band spreads online decades after the singer’s death, with lyrics that seem to relate to the present.
Problem: The singer was on the verge of Awakening when he died, and his recordings have a prophetic power. And who released them now, and why?
Complications: A band made up of Ecstatic and Hollow One mages wants the original recording for its mystical power.
Sub-Plots: Perhaps one of the mages loved the band in their youth, and seeing the lost song become a hit brings back fond memories, connecting the mage with other fans.
Resolution: Find the source of the song, and the reason it’s playing now... and what the final verse refers to.
Fun Stuff: Mage bands, Sleeper souvenir hunters and more.
Theme: Art can affect us long after its creation.
Walking With Strangers
Hook: The mages have to travel to another chantry to research an occult mystery. There they meet a cabal who should be allies...
Problem: ... who have their own secrets and agendas.
Complications: One of the cabal’s allies is considered a rival or enemy by this other circle, who accuse her of theft, treason or madness.
Sub-Plots: One of the strangers takes an interest in one of the visiting mages, perhaps as a potential student, or teacher.
Resolution: Find common ground, or find a way to obtain the research notes and leave quietly.
Fun Stuff: Creating another cabal that the players should find strange and off-putting.
Theme: Who can we really trust?
Kill The Lights
Hook: A Nephandus, a mage serving the forces of Oblivion, has learned a way to cut his shadow loose and send it out to kill for him.
Problem: The shadow can attach itself to others, and is almost impossible to notice in any lighting condition except direct sunlight. And it’s winter, when direct sunlight isn’t exactly in abundance.
Complications: The shadow seems to target Sleepers at random, but there has to be a pattern. What is the Nephandus mage’s goal, beyond chaos?
Sub-Plots: This happens while the mages are busy investigating a haunted house, chasing vampires, helping a band put on a show, or something else that will have them stuck in dimly-lit places all day.
Resolution: Kill the shadow, and what happens to the Nephandus?
Fun Stuff: Killer shadows!
Theme: The light and the dark are always there.
Red Stars
Hook: A decade ago, a red star appeared in the sky, taken as a warning of doom for all the Awakened. After a lunar month, it vanished. Now there are two...
Problem: The signs point to a crucial mystical upheaval very soon – days, possibly less.
Complications: Various supernatural beings start panicking about the End Times. No-one is really sure what happened last time, but they certainly don’t want it to happen again – let alone twice.
Sub-Plots: A star-watching party in the city park will also attract its share of Sleeper astrologers and occultists, all looking for a sign.
Resolution: What do the stars portend? And can the cabal stop it?
Fun Stuff: Apocalypse panic, which can vary from the absurd to the horrific depending on who’s panicking and what they’re prepared to do.
Theme: The big moments are gonna come, you can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.
Looking Glass
Hook: Investigating a missing mage’s house, one of the cabal finds a mirror in the attic which is... wrong. The reflection is just a little out of step with reality. And there seems to be a coat on the rack in the mirror which is not there in the real room.
Problem: Someone has escaped from the other side of the mirror. Unnatural, able to move through mirrors, not quite a reflection of the missing mage. He has a face that everyone will find familiar, but then realise it’s not who they think and shrug it off, forgetting him as he passes.
Complications: The lost mage might be trapped on the other side. Do the cabal dare to look?
Sub-Plots: Other people are looking for the lost mage – a lover, family and friends. How will the reflection react to them?
Resolution: Rescue the trapped mage, bring the escaped reflection face to face with him in the mirror and shatter it.
Fun Stuff: An enemy who can appear and disappear through reflections.
Theme: Some people can hide whatever they really feel. What is really past the surface?
Hook: A decade ago, a red star appeared in the sky, taken as a warning of doom for all the Awakened. After a lunar month, it vanished. Now there are two...
Problem: The signs point to a crucial mystical upheaval very soon – days, possibly less.
Complications: Various supernatural beings start panicking about the End Times. No-one is really sure what happened last time, but they certainly don’t want it to happen again – let alone twice.
Sub-Plots: A star-watching party in the city park will also attract its share of Sleeper astrologers and occultists, all looking for a sign.
Resolution: What do the stars portend? And can the cabal stop it?
Fun Stuff: Apocalypse panic, which can vary from the absurd to the horrific depending on who’s panicking and what they’re prepared to do.
Theme: The big moments are gonna come, you can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.
Looking Glass
Hook: Investigating a missing mage’s house, one of the cabal finds a mirror in the attic which is... wrong. The reflection is just a little out of step with reality. And there seems to be a coat on the rack in the mirror which is not there in the real room.
Problem: Someone has escaped from the other side of the mirror. Unnatural, able to move through mirrors, not quite a reflection of the missing mage. He has a face that everyone will find familiar, but then realise it’s not who they think and shrug it off, forgetting him as he passes.
Complications: The lost mage might be trapped on the other side. Do the cabal dare to look?
Sub-Plots: Other people are looking for the lost mage – a lover, family and friends. How will the reflection react to them?
Resolution: Rescue the trapped mage, bring the escaped reflection face to face with him in the mirror and shatter it.
Fun Stuff: An enemy who can appear and disappear through reflections.
Theme: Some people can hide whatever they really feel. What is really past the surface?
Movie
Hook: A lost 1920s silent film resurfaces – apparently a recording of an occult ritual that led to a cult going extinct. How long until someone tries the ritual again?
Problem: The film is out of copyright – everyone involved was dead within a year of filming and the company went bankrupt – so after an exclusive screening the restorers plan to put it online.
Complications: And the film reel itself might be haunted by the ghost of the director, or the thing that the ritual released.
Sub-Plots: Other mages point to its importance as a work of art and cultural artefact, and will fight to defend it.
Resolution: Can you enter the space between images and prevent anything escaping?
Fun Stuff: Optional flashbacks to decadent 1920s occultists. Or meeting their ghosts.
Theme: The past is not so far away as it seems.
Pins And Needles
Hook: Technocracy agents target a mundane ‘occult’ shop, posing as health inspectors with falsified charges about some of the store’s consumables. The real target is a friend of the owner, a young witch with some real powers of sympathetic magic.
Problem: She’s started teaching others, using her abilities in exchange for favours, and otherwise attracting attention.
Complications: She has a few followers now, and the Technocrats would rather eliminate all of them than take any chances with loose ends. Their forecasting suggests it’s just a matter of time before someone sticks a pin in an effigy’s heart and gives a corrupt politician a heart attack.
Sub-Plots: One of the cabal is having trouble with Sleeper acquaintances. It would be so easy to show them what they can really do...
Resolution: Talk her down, possibly under fire from Technocracy agents.
Fun Stuff: A chance to let loose with vulgar magic where no-one around counts as a witness.
Theme: With great power... you know this one, right?
In The Dark
Hook: The news reports murders with bloodless bodies showing bite marks on their necks. Is there a vampire in the city? Actually there are several, but they don’t want to be on the news either.
Problem: The killer is a rogue, or a member of a rival vampire faction. The locals are worried, and when vampires are worried, humans are used for comfort food.
Complications: The rogue sees the mages meeting with a local vampire, and takes an interest in them, and their Sleeper friends.
Sub-Plots: One of the vampires hates his condition, and wonders if magic might offer a cure.
Resolution: Find the rogue before she declares open war on every other vampire in the city.
Fun Stuff: Working with vampires. Hanging out in dark and dingy nightclubs, tiptoeing around their egos, and trying not to get drawn into their schemes.
Theme: The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily someone I want to invite over to hang out.
Secret
Hook: Can you tell your love what you are? Do you share the magic in your life with them? How could you deny them that?
Problem: One of the mages faces this dilemma, with a lover, a family member or a close friend.
Complications: This would be the perfect time for an enemy to move against the mage.
Sub-Plots: How do the rest of the cabal keep the secret? Who have they lost because of it?
Resolution: Tell them, or lose them. Perhaps both.
Fun Stuff: Down-to-earth human problems.
Theme: Secrets have a way of coming out.
Hide And Seek
Hook: Who stole the 17th Century grimoire from the display case in the chantry? Is there really an invisible thief at large?
Problem: A rival mage, currently invisible due to either a mystical breakthrough or a Paradox backlash. Perhaps both. She’s searching for a way to undo the effect and replicate it reliably.
Complications: A Technocracy amalgam hunts for her, because invisibility would be useful.
Sub-Plots: Someone is ducking one of the mages, avoiding their calls, making them feel invisible too.
Resolution: Find a way to help her, or at least catch her. This may involve the cabal readjusting their senses. And hopefully not attracting the attention of the Unseen Thing again.
Fun Stuff: Catching someone invisible. Technocracy agents with light-up infrared goggles and laser sights like postmodern Nazgul.
Theme: Everybody’s problems seem terrible from their point of view. Can you see their side?
Hook: A lost 1920s silent film resurfaces – apparently a recording of an occult ritual that led to a cult going extinct. How long until someone tries the ritual again?
Problem: The film is out of copyright – everyone involved was dead within a year of filming and the company went bankrupt – so after an exclusive screening the restorers plan to put it online.
Complications: And the film reel itself might be haunted by the ghost of the director, or the thing that the ritual released.
Sub-Plots: Other mages point to its importance as a work of art and cultural artefact, and will fight to defend it.
Resolution: Can you enter the space between images and prevent anything escaping?
Fun Stuff: Optional flashbacks to decadent 1920s occultists. Or meeting their ghosts.
Theme: The past is not so far away as it seems.
Pins And Needles
Hook: Technocracy agents target a mundane ‘occult’ shop, posing as health inspectors with falsified charges about some of the store’s consumables. The real target is a friend of the owner, a young witch with some real powers of sympathetic magic.
Problem: She’s started teaching others, using her abilities in exchange for favours, and otherwise attracting attention.
Complications: She has a few followers now, and the Technocrats would rather eliminate all of them than take any chances with loose ends. Their forecasting suggests it’s just a matter of time before someone sticks a pin in an effigy’s heart and gives a corrupt politician a heart attack.
Sub-Plots: One of the cabal is having trouble with Sleeper acquaintances. It would be so easy to show them what they can really do...
Resolution: Talk her down, possibly under fire from Technocracy agents.
Fun Stuff: A chance to let loose with vulgar magic where no-one around counts as a witness.
Theme: With great power... you know this one, right?
In The Dark
Hook: The news reports murders with bloodless bodies showing bite marks on their necks. Is there a vampire in the city? Actually there are several, but they don’t want to be on the news either.
Problem: The killer is a rogue, or a member of a rival vampire faction. The locals are worried, and when vampires are worried, humans are used for comfort food.
Complications: The rogue sees the mages meeting with a local vampire, and takes an interest in them, and their Sleeper friends.
Sub-Plots: One of the vampires hates his condition, and wonders if magic might offer a cure.
Resolution: Find the rogue before she declares open war on every other vampire in the city.
Fun Stuff: Working with vampires. Hanging out in dark and dingy nightclubs, tiptoeing around their egos, and trying not to get drawn into their schemes.
Theme: The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily someone I want to invite over to hang out.
Secret
Hook: Can you tell your love what you are? Do you share the magic in your life with them? How could you deny them that?
Problem: One of the mages faces this dilemma, with a lover, a family member or a close friend.
Complications: This would be the perfect time for an enemy to move against the mage.
Sub-Plots: How do the rest of the cabal keep the secret? Who have they lost because of it?
Resolution: Tell them, or lose them. Perhaps both.
Fun Stuff: Down-to-earth human problems.
Theme: Secrets have a way of coming out.
Hide And Seek
Hook: Who stole the 17th Century grimoire from the display case in the chantry? Is there really an invisible thief at large?
Problem: A rival mage, currently invisible due to either a mystical breakthrough or a Paradox backlash. Perhaps both. She’s searching for a way to undo the effect and replicate it reliably.
Complications: A Technocracy amalgam hunts for her, because invisibility would be useful.
Sub-Plots: Someone is ducking one of the mages, avoiding their calls, making them feel invisible too.
Resolution: Find a way to help her, or at least catch her. This may involve the cabal readjusting their senses. And hopefully not attracting the attention of the Unseen Thing again.
Fun Stuff: Catching someone invisible. Technocracy agents with light-up infrared goggles and laser sights like postmodern Nazgul.
Theme: Everybody’s problems seem terrible from their point of view. Can you see their side?
Leaving Tonight
Hook: Someone you love now knows that you are a mage, and cannot forgive you for hiding it for so long.
Problem: Now they know the secret, a mage’s loved one decides to leave. Can they be persuaded to stay?
Complications: The loved one’s circle take their side, and now the loved one has to lie to them and keep the secret as well, adding to their resentment.
Sub-Plots: Perhaps the loved one confides in a mutual friend – one of the other members of the cabal.
Resolution: Try to provide and find some closure, or a way to communicate.
Fun Stuff: Emotional pain and drama. What, that’s not fun?
Theme: No matter who you are and what you can do, love can affect you.
Down
Hook: How does a mage deal with a broken heart? In most cases, not well.
Problem: A bad break-up, a death or some other loss leaves a mage as vulnerable as anyone – with the additional problem of it affecting their magic. Rote spells go awry, and emotional outbursts have unintended magical effects. The pathetic fallacy doesn’t quite work if it really does start to rain whenever a broken-hearted mage steps outside.
Complications: This kind of display means Technocrats and other rival mages trying to kill the mage. So the cabal have to protect the mage and clean up the mess.
Sub-Plots: Seeing a fellow mage so distraught should make everyone reassess their own emotional wellbeing.
Resolution: This will lessen with time and reflection. You just have to get there...
Fun Stuff: Accidental magic turning reality into a Gothic romance.
Theme: How much can you help someone in need?
One Promise
Hook: At their Awakening, a mage swore to aid their mentor in time of need. That time has come.
Problem: ... And it’s a problem they’re not that well equipped to deal with. A warrior is asked to help keep their sensei’s dojo in business, a pacifist to help run off a gang threatening the mentor’s family.
Complications: The mentor has a number of enemies looking for a sign of weakness, and this certainly qualifies. And they’re the kind of enemy the mage isn’t best at opposing either.
Sub-Plots: The mentor’s life has moved on as well as the student’s. Perhaps she has a family, or a new student who might one day challenge the mage.
Resolution: Find a way to fulfil the promise in your own way.
Fun Stuff: A look at a mage’s origins, which may well be surprising to the rest of the cabal.
Theme: We all have our obligations.
The Long Way Home
Hook: A Seeking requires a pilgrimage to a distant chantry to consult with an oracle – and returning without using any magic.
Problem: The chantry is a long way away, in a remote area, and getting back involves going through wilderness and hostile borders.
Complications: An enemy of the mage somehow hears of the geas part of the Seeking, the perfect chance to strike.
Sub-Plots: On the way, the mage will meet helpful people, who could easily be repaid through magical means.
Resolution: Make it home, whether by trickery or determination.
Fun Stuff: Mages far outside their comfort zone. Fighting enemies without magic.
Theme: How well can you adapt?
Night Shift
Hook: Ever have one of those nights where everything goes wrong? You miss a party, go to the wrong club, lose your wallet, hit a door and break your nose? At least mages can blame Paradox spirits.
Problem: Everyone and everything seems hostile. You can’t get a taxi, your phone was in your other jacket, someone just accused you of hitting on their date, and when you move onto the dancefloor to avoid them you step on somebody’s foot, and that somebody’s a vampire.
Complications: Whatever the mage tries, no matter how simple, backfires. Did someone curse them?
Sub-Plots: Being in trouble all night, the mage will meet people who live like this every night.
Resolution: It’s just a few hours to dawn. Everything will go back to normal then. Right?
Fun Stuff: Alone in the city after hours.
Theme: Civilisation is a thinner veneer than we like to think.
Superstition
Hook: A black cat crosses the cabal’s path as they leave the chantry. Something peculiar happens to each of them almost immediately. One finds fresh milk in their coffee has turned sour, another gets electric shocks from everything with any charge...
Problem: It would appear that someone or something has placed a hex on them.
Complications: The power seems to be spreading, causing all kinds of increasingly strange events around them. How long before they can’t step on a crack without being attacked by bears?
Sub-Plots: They also hear about similar things happening to strangers, although these are all good news. Is something balancing out the good and ill effects?
Resolution: Best the rival witch through means within their paradigm.
Fun Stuff: Black cats, walking under ladders, the number thirteen...
Theme: How much do ancient beliefs affect us to this day?
Divide
Hook: Unable to decide on a course of action, a mage splits in two and follows both options.
Problem: Now the original and pocket realities are starting to come apart, and events from one appear as hallucinations in the other, and then apparitions that can be touched, and then flashes of the other reality...
Complications: The reality division attracts the attention of wandering Paradox spirits.
Sub-Plots: How do you explain to your other side’s lover that you didn’t meet them weeks ago?
Resolution: Unify the realities or snap them apart completely... and hope that doesn’t come back to haunt you.
Fun Stuff: Sliding Doors style crossing realities starting to overlap.
Theme: Every action has consequences.
Beyond
Hook: A mage’s mentor returns from the dead. The mage buried her a month ago, but here she is, apparently hale and hearty, and there’s an empty grave where she should be...
Problem: She claims to know nothing of the time she was away, but she seems very suspicious of another old mage she previously thought of as a friend.
Complications: Mages with a grasp of the Sphere of Entropy are decidedly uncomfortable around the mentor. Anyone who can sense ghosts find they shy away from her as well.
Sub-Plots: Someone else who has recently lost a loved one would surely wonder how the mentor returned.
Resolution: Resolve what she returned to do. Does she then go back to her grave, or does she remain alive and the aftereffects fade?
Fun Stuff: Resurrection, real or feigned amnesia, ghosts.
Theme: What would we do with a little extra time?
Trinity
Hook: Three children are about to be born with flawless Dynamic, Pattern and Primordial Avatars. These ‘imaginary friends’ will protect them through childhood, and in time they will become powerful mages.
Problem: The portents all point to each of them becoming dangerously single-minded, each of them falling to become a Marauder, Pattern spirit and Nephandus. But this is years away, and surely there’s a way to prevent it...?
Complications: The agents of the three ways to fall each seek to eliminate the other two children.
Sub-Plots: Someone abducts other children born on the same night.
Resolution: Find a way to hide them, watch over them... and is there a fourth child with a Questing Avatar who can bring them together as a balanced cabal?
Fun Stuff: Three potential AntiChrists who all need protecting.
Theme: How much are we defined by nature versus nurture?
Imagica
Hook: Business is booming for the occult shop from Pins And Needles - it just opened a second branch.
Problem: It looks like one of the witch’s followers is selling herbal remedies on the side, which have a lot more effect than mundane ones.
Complications: Once word gets around and queues start forming, a lot of unhappy mystical types will want to hush it up, and they won’t all care about collateral damage.
Sub-Plots: The herbal hedge witch puts a large portion of the proceeds to good causes, in case the cabal don’t feel guilty enough about stepping in.
Resolution: Persuade the hedge witch to go for a more exclusive clientele.
Fun Stuff: Over-the-counter miracle cures that actually work.
Theme: With great powers comes great headaches. Look at everything you could do with no-one to stop you...
Under Your Spell
Hook: Love spells are a bad idea. But they’re a bad idea that people keep on trying.
Problem: Someone is acting out of sorts, seemingly under the influence and distancing from normal connections - maybe it’s the loved one of a member of the cabal, maybe it’s a celebrity on the city’s ‘most eligible’ list. (If the mages are self-absorbed enough, maybe it’ll take multiple someones before they notice.)
Complications: The spellcaster may have been dumb enough to try this, but they’re smart enough to cover their tracks. Or maybe the object of the spell’s affections isn’t the person who cast it? Would the mages believe such a denial?
Sub-Plots: Someone in the mages’ circle is heartbroken. Coincidence, or...?
Resolution: There’s a counterspell, which probably involves something embarrassing with nudity and raven feathers.
Fun Stuff: Love makes you do the wacky.
Theme: How do you use your emotional influence?
One
Hook: In a small, poorly-attended church in a poor neighborhood, a miracle just happened. God visited the Wednesday midnight mass and gave the congregation a holy mission.
Problem: A small but very determined group of people with a holy mission. The kind of mission that sends them into danger. Someone has to help them, or stop them. And there will be plenty trying to stop them. Their mission isn’t necessarily bad, just potentially dangerous to themselves and others.
Complications:
Sub-Plots: Word spreads and the church attracts believers, debunkers, jealous representatives of other religious groups and more.
Resolution: Find out how to end this peacefully. This may involve speaking to (one or more) God.
Fun Stuff: Signs and wonders!
Theme: What would you do if you were certain it was right? What would you do for the chance to be certain?
Endless
Hook: The cabal go to sleep one night, and wake up the previous morning. It doesn’t take long to realize they’re stuck in a time loop.
Problem: As mages, the list of suspects they know that could be responsible for this is pretty long.
Complications: Their Paradox levels don’t reset with each day, so the more they try to magic their way out of the problem the more likely they are to get a backlash.
Sub-Plots: One of them had a great day and will want to keep as much of it as possible through every retread. Or one had a terrible day and will want to change it extensively.
Resolution: Find out who’s responsible and fix their problem. This might involve a thorough search of the city, a lot of confused contacts, and several total party kills.
Fun Stuff: It’s Groundhog Day. Again. It’s one of the classic genre plots, players often get a kick out of doing their version of these.
Theme: Did you use today as well as you could?
Show And Tell
Hook: A powerful mage (a master of one Sphere and expert in others) with connections to the chantry has announced a visit to see the cabal’s progress.
Problem: This is both a great opportunity to learn and a great opportunity to be undermined by rivals for whom it is also a great opportunity to learn.
Complications: The master has a pet project that some of the cabal’s knowledge could help with. Accessing shard realities, fighting the Unseen Thing... something they’ll be wary of touching again.
Sub-Plots: One of the mages might have an academic or business hurdle to jump in their mundane life. Coincidence? Sure...
Resolution: Show what you’ve learned in these past adventures, and that you’re ready for more.
Fun Stuff: Entertaining stuffy and grandiose old wizards.
Theme: We can all learn something from those who came before us, or those around us.
--
Alternative ideas
The Secret: A dying enemy shares a final secret with a mage - that there’s a traitor in the most respected cabal in the city.
The Long Way Home: Chasing a mischievous spirit, the mages turn a corner, step into a sudden fog, and find themselves on another continent.
Night Shift: Investigating a disappearance in the city underground, the mages find themselves facing a cabal of squatter Orphans who resent the intrusion on their turf.
Divide: An allied cabal has gone silent. Investigating, the mages find they have gone to war against a mutual rival. It was usually a cold war - not any more. Both groups are on the run, each having lost several members to ‘accidents’ that are clearly coincidental magic attacks. And each side is calling in allies, who are even less restrained.
Hook: Someone you love now knows that you are a mage, and cannot forgive you for hiding it for so long.
Problem: Now they know the secret, a mage’s loved one decides to leave. Can they be persuaded to stay?
Complications: The loved one’s circle take their side, and now the loved one has to lie to them and keep the secret as well, adding to their resentment.
Sub-Plots: Perhaps the loved one confides in a mutual friend – one of the other members of the cabal.
Resolution: Try to provide and find some closure, or a way to communicate.
Fun Stuff: Emotional pain and drama. What, that’s not fun?
Theme: No matter who you are and what you can do, love can affect you.
Down
Hook: How does a mage deal with a broken heart? In most cases, not well.
Problem: A bad break-up, a death or some other loss leaves a mage as vulnerable as anyone – with the additional problem of it affecting their magic. Rote spells go awry, and emotional outbursts have unintended magical effects. The pathetic fallacy doesn’t quite work if it really does start to rain whenever a broken-hearted mage steps outside.
Complications: This kind of display means Technocrats and other rival mages trying to kill the mage. So the cabal have to protect the mage and clean up the mess.
Sub-Plots: Seeing a fellow mage so distraught should make everyone reassess their own emotional wellbeing.
Resolution: This will lessen with time and reflection. You just have to get there...
Fun Stuff: Accidental magic turning reality into a Gothic romance.
Theme: How much can you help someone in need?
One Promise
Hook: At their Awakening, a mage swore to aid their mentor in time of need. That time has come.
Problem: ... And it’s a problem they’re not that well equipped to deal with. A warrior is asked to help keep their sensei’s dojo in business, a pacifist to help run off a gang threatening the mentor’s family.
Complications: The mentor has a number of enemies looking for a sign of weakness, and this certainly qualifies. And they’re the kind of enemy the mage isn’t best at opposing either.
Sub-Plots: The mentor’s life has moved on as well as the student’s. Perhaps she has a family, or a new student who might one day challenge the mage.
Resolution: Find a way to fulfil the promise in your own way.
Fun Stuff: A look at a mage’s origins, which may well be surprising to the rest of the cabal.
Theme: We all have our obligations.
The Long Way Home
Hook: A Seeking requires a pilgrimage to a distant chantry to consult with an oracle – and returning without using any magic.
Problem: The chantry is a long way away, in a remote area, and getting back involves going through wilderness and hostile borders.
Complications: An enemy of the mage somehow hears of the geas part of the Seeking, the perfect chance to strike.
Sub-Plots: On the way, the mage will meet helpful people, who could easily be repaid through magical means.
Resolution: Make it home, whether by trickery or determination.
Fun Stuff: Mages far outside their comfort zone. Fighting enemies without magic.
Theme: How well can you adapt?
Night Shift
Hook: Ever have one of those nights where everything goes wrong? You miss a party, go to the wrong club, lose your wallet, hit a door and break your nose? At least mages can blame Paradox spirits.
Problem: Everyone and everything seems hostile. You can’t get a taxi, your phone was in your other jacket, someone just accused you of hitting on their date, and when you move onto the dancefloor to avoid them you step on somebody’s foot, and that somebody’s a vampire.
Complications: Whatever the mage tries, no matter how simple, backfires. Did someone curse them?
Sub-Plots: Being in trouble all night, the mage will meet people who live like this every night.
Resolution: It’s just a few hours to dawn. Everything will go back to normal then. Right?
Fun Stuff: Alone in the city after hours.
Theme: Civilisation is a thinner veneer than we like to think.
Superstition
Hook: A black cat crosses the cabal’s path as they leave the chantry. Something peculiar happens to each of them almost immediately. One finds fresh milk in their coffee has turned sour, another gets electric shocks from everything with any charge...
Problem: It would appear that someone or something has placed a hex on them.
Complications: The power seems to be spreading, causing all kinds of increasingly strange events around them. How long before they can’t step on a crack without being attacked by bears?
Sub-Plots: They also hear about similar things happening to strangers, although these are all good news. Is something balancing out the good and ill effects?
Resolution: Best the rival witch through means within their paradigm.
Fun Stuff: Black cats, walking under ladders, the number thirteen...
Theme: How much do ancient beliefs affect us to this day?
Divide
Hook: Unable to decide on a course of action, a mage splits in two and follows both options.
Problem: Now the original and pocket realities are starting to come apart, and events from one appear as hallucinations in the other, and then apparitions that can be touched, and then flashes of the other reality...
Complications: The reality division attracts the attention of wandering Paradox spirits.
Sub-Plots: How do you explain to your other side’s lover that you didn’t meet them weeks ago?
Resolution: Unify the realities or snap them apart completely... and hope that doesn’t come back to haunt you.
Fun Stuff: Sliding Doors style crossing realities starting to overlap.
Theme: Every action has consequences.
Beyond
Hook: A mage’s mentor returns from the dead. The mage buried her a month ago, but here she is, apparently hale and hearty, and there’s an empty grave where she should be...
Problem: She claims to know nothing of the time she was away, but she seems very suspicious of another old mage she previously thought of as a friend.
Complications: Mages with a grasp of the Sphere of Entropy are decidedly uncomfortable around the mentor. Anyone who can sense ghosts find they shy away from her as well.
Sub-Plots: Someone else who has recently lost a loved one would surely wonder how the mentor returned.
Resolution: Resolve what she returned to do. Does she then go back to her grave, or does she remain alive and the aftereffects fade?
Fun Stuff: Resurrection, real or feigned amnesia, ghosts.
Theme: What would we do with a little extra time?
Trinity
Hook: Three children are about to be born with flawless Dynamic, Pattern and Primordial Avatars. These ‘imaginary friends’ will protect them through childhood, and in time they will become powerful mages.
Problem: The portents all point to each of them becoming dangerously single-minded, each of them falling to become a Marauder, Pattern spirit and Nephandus. But this is years away, and surely there’s a way to prevent it...?
Complications: The agents of the three ways to fall each seek to eliminate the other two children.
Sub-Plots: Someone abducts other children born on the same night.
Resolution: Find a way to hide them, watch over them... and is there a fourth child with a Questing Avatar who can bring them together as a balanced cabal?
Fun Stuff: Three potential AntiChrists who all need protecting.
Theme: How much are we defined by nature versus nurture?
Imagica
Hook: Business is booming for the occult shop from Pins And Needles - it just opened a second branch.
Problem: It looks like one of the witch’s followers is selling herbal remedies on the side, which have a lot more effect than mundane ones.
Complications: Once word gets around and queues start forming, a lot of unhappy mystical types will want to hush it up, and they won’t all care about collateral damage.
Sub-Plots: The herbal hedge witch puts a large portion of the proceeds to good causes, in case the cabal don’t feel guilty enough about stepping in.
Resolution: Persuade the hedge witch to go for a more exclusive clientele.
Fun Stuff: Over-the-counter miracle cures that actually work.
Theme: With great powers comes great headaches. Look at everything you could do with no-one to stop you...
Under Your Spell
Hook: Love spells are a bad idea. But they’re a bad idea that people keep on trying.
Problem: Someone is acting out of sorts, seemingly under the influence and distancing from normal connections - maybe it’s the loved one of a member of the cabal, maybe it’s a celebrity on the city’s ‘most eligible’ list. (If the mages are self-absorbed enough, maybe it’ll take multiple someones before they notice.)
Complications: The spellcaster may have been dumb enough to try this, but they’re smart enough to cover their tracks. Or maybe the object of the spell’s affections isn’t the person who cast it? Would the mages believe such a denial?
Sub-Plots: Someone in the mages’ circle is heartbroken. Coincidence, or...?
Resolution: There’s a counterspell, which probably involves something embarrassing with nudity and raven feathers.
Fun Stuff: Love makes you do the wacky.
Theme: How do you use your emotional influence?
One
Hook: In a small, poorly-attended church in a poor neighborhood, a miracle just happened. God visited the Wednesday midnight mass and gave the congregation a holy mission.
Problem: A small but very determined group of people with a holy mission. The kind of mission that sends them into danger. Someone has to help them, or stop them. And there will be plenty trying to stop them. Their mission isn’t necessarily bad, just potentially dangerous to themselves and others.
Complications:
Sub-Plots: Word spreads and the church attracts believers, debunkers, jealous representatives of other religious groups and more.
Resolution: Find out how to end this peacefully. This may involve speaking to (one or more) God.
Fun Stuff: Signs and wonders!
Theme: What would you do if you were certain it was right? What would you do for the chance to be certain?
Endless
Hook: The cabal go to sleep one night, and wake up the previous morning. It doesn’t take long to realize they’re stuck in a time loop.
Problem: As mages, the list of suspects they know that could be responsible for this is pretty long.
Complications: Their Paradox levels don’t reset with each day, so the more they try to magic their way out of the problem the more likely they are to get a backlash.
Sub-Plots: One of them had a great day and will want to keep as much of it as possible through every retread. Or one had a terrible day and will want to change it extensively.
Resolution: Find out who’s responsible and fix their problem. This might involve a thorough search of the city, a lot of confused contacts, and several total party kills.
Fun Stuff: It’s Groundhog Day. Again. It’s one of the classic genre plots, players often get a kick out of doing their version of these.
Theme: Did you use today as well as you could?
Show And Tell
Hook: A powerful mage (a master of one Sphere and expert in others) with connections to the chantry has announced a visit to see the cabal’s progress.
Problem: This is both a great opportunity to learn and a great opportunity to be undermined by rivals for whom it is also a great opportunity to learn.
Complications: The master has a pet project that some of the cabal’s knowledge could help with. Accessing shard realities, fighting the Unseen Thing... something they’ll be wary of touching again.
Sub-Plots: One of the mages might have an academic or business hurdle to jump in their mundane life. Coincidence? Sure...
Resolution: Show what you’ve learned in these past adventures, and that you’re ready for more.
Fun Stuff: Entertaining stuffy and grandiose old wizards.
Theme: We can all learn something from those who came before us, or those around us.
--
Alternative ideas
The Secret: A dying enemy shares a final secret with a mage - that there’s a traitor in the most respected cabal in the city.
The Long Way Home: Chasing a mischievous spirit, the mages turn a corner, step into a sudden fog, and find themselves on another continent.
Night Shift: Investigating a disappearance in the city underground, the mages find themselves facing a cabal of squatter Orphans who resent the intrusion on their turf.
Divide: An allied cabal has gone silent. Investigating, the mages find they have gone to war against a mutual rival. It was usually a cold war - not any more. Both groups are on the run, each having lost several members to ‘accidents’ that are clearly coincidental magic attacks. And each side is calling in allies, who are even less restrained.
Nice list. Some of them helped me on my campaign. Thanks for sharing it ^^
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'm very glad to hear it.
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