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Blank Badges

Legacy

See the Free Council book for all fluff.

Doctrine

Parent Path: Acanthus, Free Council (the latter only by descent, not by active support) 

Prerequisites: Mind 2 

Initiation:

Magic:

Ruling: Mind 

Yantras: Succeed on an “anti-social” Social roll relevant to the spell (+2), cast on someone in a state of shock or wonderment (+1), rebel against the lie in some effort-intensive way (+2). 

Oblations: Acts of rebellion (flouting authority, graffiti tagging, minor lawbreaking); attending a rock show (preferably punk or thrash and moshing or rushing the stage); breaking taboos (making out with someone of the same sex or streaking in public, for example); panhandling; random acts of weirdness and wonder to help wake people up. 

Attainments:

First Attainment Question Everything

Pre-Requisite: Initiation

Most people are so depressingly, mind-numbingly dull, so entranced by the Lie they don’t even understand how predictable this makes them. For those who know how to look, they wear their hearts on the sleeve, which is quite helpful when trying to wake them up. As an Instant Action, and with Aimed Attack, the Mage may determine the Virtue, Vice, and the number of dots in Mental and Social Attributes an individual has.

Emulates Know Nature, Reach into Instant Casting.

Optional Arcanum: Occultation 1
Separation from the world grants the Rebel something which few others truly have, time to think, all the time in the world. So long as the mage maintains their Occultation they can hold two individual and wholly
distinct trains of thought at once, so long as neither is physically demanding. Many Rebels use this “second train” to continually question things around them, refusing even for a moment to see the world as the Lie would want them to.

Emulates One Mind, Two Thoughts, Reach into Advanced Duration, maintaining Occultation is the “ritual”.

Second Attainment: Not a Number

Pre-Requisite: Mind 2
As a Blank Badge progresses in their study of the Arcane Lore of the Mind, they are better able to avoid the pitfalls and subtle traps of the Mind. So long as the Rebel maintains their Occultation, they benefit from a 
persistent Mental Shield spell. For the purposes of a Clash of Wills, its duration is equal to the Mage’s Mind Dots on the Prolonged Duration table.

Emulates Mental Shield, Reach into Advanced Duration, maintaining Occultation is the “ritual”.

Optional Arcanum: Occultation 2
The Blank Badges draw strength from their anonymity. As they do not officially exist, they dare all, a mysterious stranger who demands respect, and receives it in turn. So long as the Mage maintains their Occultation, when they enter a mundane social situation with individuals who do not know who they are, they are treated as having dots in Status with those individuals equal to her dots in Occultation.

Emulates... Nothing. Simple dice pool benefit that only functions in some circumstances with some people, after a Scene travelling there in Occultation.

Third Attainment: Wake Up!

Pre-Requisite: Mind 3
As their understanding of the Mind Arcanum grows, the Blank Badge is capable of subverting the control the Lie has over a group of people. The Rebel may project a singular thought, feeling, or emotion into a group of people, its sensation affecting their future actions. This Attainment takes an instant action to activate, affects a small room (increasing to a large room at Mind 4), and lasts for a scene.
So long as the Mage’s Mind dots exceed any affected individual’s Composure, for the remainder of the scene they gain a Condition designed by the mage.

Creative Thaumaturgy, granting a Condition under the purview of Mind 2. Reach into Instant Casting and Advanced Duration. No need for sensory range with AoE effect, which is fed the secondary spell factors.

Optional Arcanum: Occultation 2
The Mage’s ability to question the Lie has progressed to the point at which she mage may impart this ability even into the Paradox she may incur in her actions. The strength of her Occultation and her challenge to the nature of reality permits her to contest Paradox. Whenever a Blank Badge incurs Paradox (from whatever source) and attempts to contain it, she may roll her Occult dots, decreasing Paradox successes by one for each success rolled on this test. This carries risks however. If the Rebel still incurs a Paradox condition after contesting Paradox successes with Occultation and Wisdom, the resulting Condition will have some effect on her Occultation, potentially rendering it inaccessible, or turning it against her.

Emulation of 1e ability under Quiet One. However that needed to go later, and nobody wants to wait until the Fourth Attinment to get the Legacy’s cool “anti-paradox” effects.

Fourth Attainment: Quiet One

Pre-Requisite: Mind 4
The Rebel’s abilities are now more than mere anonymity, at this proficiency, by talking to an individual, they can convince them that they are someone else entirely. With an Instant Action, the mage may attempt to convince an individual that they are in fact, someone else entirely, creating a sensory illusion for that other individual which confirms this claim. To many this can be highly shocking, however so long as the Mage’s Mind dots exceed their Composure, they cannot contest the fact that the mage is in fact who they say they are (however they may be able to fear for that other individual’s sanity, if the mage engages in rather shocking behavior). This Attainment is active so long as the Mage maintains their Occultation, and may decide whether to apply this effect or Not a Number, however the Mage must still take an active action in order to convince someone of the exact nature of the person they are mimicking.

Emulates Imposter, with Instant Casting, and Advanced Duration. I worded it weird perhaps. It’s basically a “suggestion aura”, spend an Instant Action to tailor it to someone, and then they think you’re that person until you convince them of someone else. I dropped the Manipulation + Subterfuge aspect, because I don’t think Blank Badges would care too much about that. It’s a lot more poignant to have someone see one of their oldest friend sin a shocking new manner, plus it can’t cause Dissonance or Quiescence, as this is an Attainment.

Optional Arcanum: Occultation 3
The Rebel’s very soul now resonates with the occlusion of Occultation, and their powers over minds reinforce this with active mystical potency. The Rebel can now increase their Occultation dots beyond the normal maximum of 3, up to a maximum of the mage’s dots in Mind. Normally this will mean the maximum dots in Occultation will be 5, but legends persist of Blank Badge Archmasters whose mystic powers are so proficient that they can hide from the Supernal itself.

Breaks Occultation rules. But fuck it. Occultation 4+ motherfucker! Fuck your attempts to read my nimbus or target me with Sympathetic Magic!

Fifth Attainment: Nothing is True, Anything is Permitted

Pre-Requisite: Mind 5
The Lie is now malleable to a Blank Badge, and they may convince Sleepers of this as well. With an Instant Action the Rebel may attempt to convince witnessing Sleepers that what they are perceiving is entirely normal, either through telling them a lie, or the quite shocking truth.

In doing so, the Mage creates an Attainment-based hallucination within the minds of all witnesses, ensuring that they do not perceive true Awakened Magic and thus do not count as witnesses to the spell, and do not provoke Paradox or Dissonance.

Create an Attainment Illusion to disguise your supernal spell, ensuring that it doesn’t cause witness Paradox. Simple in effect. Reach into Instant Casting, and Advanced Scale (area), only lasts for a few seconds, so make sure your spell doesn’t take all day.

Optional Arcanum: Occultation 5
With a sufficiently advanced Occultation, the Rebel may now seek to defeat the Lie entirely, and instead of feeding a lie to the witnesses, may disclose to them to the complete and utter truth, and attempt to use their Occultation and Magic to strip the veil of the Lie from their eyes.

Instead of merely witnessing a non-Supernal illusion, the witnesses have their mind’s eyes opened by the Mage’s spell. The Sleepers still count as witnesses to the spell, however the Paradox pool does not again a dice trick based on the number of Sleeper witnesses, and at the end of the scene, Dissonance does not affect the spell from those witnesses, and they do not suffer Quiescence.

Of course, this Attainment infuriates the Guardians to no end, as the Rebels don’t even have the common decency to allow Quiescence to take hold, instead leaving more work on the Guardian’s plate in upholding the Veil. Of course, this in many cases counts as a severe breach of Consilium laws with regards to practicing Magic in front of Sleepers. However the recorded possibility of this Attainment leading to spontaneous Awakenings or emergence as Sleepwalkers means that Rebels proficiency enough to utilize it rarely care for the oppressive laws of the Consilium.

Hardcore Magic. Sure you take 1 Paradox die, but all the witnesses aren’t harmed by Quiescence for witnessing the spell, don’t cause a Dice Trick, and you might get a spontaneous Awakening or Sleepwalker out of it. I removed the dice roll here as well. I’m not a fan of dice rolls to activate Attainments in 2e. 

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