Template:Character Creation Step One

Step One

Define the concept

Having a rough idea of who your character is often is critical to creating a compelling character. An initial concept of five or less words can “jumpstart” the creative process. Remember that you are not your character. Your character can literally be anyone of any background with any religious, political, or world-view. Below is a list of actions that may be useful for further examination of the concept after starting with the baseline five or less word initial concept.

• Consider reading up a bit on the culture and social environment that shaped your character.
• Define their relationships. Who are they close to, if anyone, and what do those relationships look like? Are they close to people and open about their feelings or are the relationships they maintain cold and professional? Why or why not?
• What was your character’s life prior to joining the Traditions? Did they have one? Do they remember it? Has the Traditions been all they’ve ever known? Do they wish they had a normal life?
• Does the character have any goals or ambitions? What are they? Do they have plans for how to achieve them?

While the above is not by far a comprehensive list, hopefully it offers areas that can help define what a character knows and why, in addition to offer interesting paths for roleplay.

Nature and Demeanor

Just like real life, characters have core values that drive them. Nature and Demeanor represent both a mechanical nature of this and offer an easy starting point for defining a character’s core values. You will pick one Archetype each for both Nature and Demeanor.

Nature: A representation of internal drive and desire, Nature forms as a result of strong personal experiences and is a central part of the character that rarely changes, except as a result of extreme trauma. The mechanical advantages, and disadvantages, to a character’s specific Nature can be found on page 84 of Laws of Ascension.

Demeanor: Demeanor is the means through which the character expresses themselves, a mask offered to the rest of the world if you will. While this can change, and often does, the World of Darkness system has one that each character often fall back to.

Archetypes: Archetypes can be used to express either a character’s Nature or Demeanor. Picking a Nature and Demeanor is more than just for flavor; specifically, a character’s Nature offers some important mechanical benefits. In Laws of Ascension there is a rather large list of Archetypes from which to pick beginning at the bottom of page 84.

The Avatar

I want to make clear that this is a VERY IMPORTANT thing to think carefully about. The aspects of your character’s Avatar and the choices of its Essence will determine the ultimate magical goals that your mage will feel compelled to pursue. It should reflect the core concepts of who your character is or will become. More importantly, it will play a pivotal role in the growth of your mage as they strive for greater enlightenment and power via moments of challenge and growth called Seekings.

An Avatar is effectively a spiritual guide—though in rare instances an Avatar may be manifested in the “real world”—that helps a mage grow in understanding and power. The way an Avatar guides a mage can take many personas: from that of a patient teacher, a caring parent, to a brute who forces understanding. Whatever role it takes, the connection between a mage and their Avatar is the key to mystic understanding. The stronger it is to you, the more a mage understands.

The form the compulsions and guidance from an Avatar take stem from the Avatar’s Essence—the persona of the Avatar itself. There are four common types of Essences: Dynamic, Pattern, Primordial and Questing.

Dynamic Essence

The Dynamic Avatar is chaotic, impulsive, alive with energy and desire. It seeks endless challenge and the birth of new forms.

Pattern Essence

A Pattern Essence prizes order, structure, and balance. These Avatars speak in systems and patterns, and can take the form of mathematical visions, ancestral laws, or cosmic rhythms.

Primordial Essence

The Primordial Avatar speaks in symbols older than language, and moves through instinct, fear, hunger, and awe. This Essence destroys old forms and sows chaos to bring about renewal and rebirth.

Questing Essence

Looking for answers, testing limits, and demanding growth through experience falls under the purview of a Questing Essence. It builds upon a series of experiences to reach some eventual goal.

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Picking a Tradition

Mages take on apprentices and teach mystic practices in small groups that propagate their own styles and beliefs. Therefore, your mage likely studied with a Tradition whose beliefs already meshed with his own.

Your character’s Tradition will determine their special proficiency with an individual Sphere. It will also determine the sorts of mages that the individual may know, work with or struggle against. Lastly, it influences the character’s political position in the society of mages

The modern Traditions are the Akashic Brotherhood, the Celestial Chorus, the Cult of Ecstasy, the Dreamspeakers, the Euthanatos, the Order of Hermes, the Sons of Ether, the Verbena and the Virtual Adepts. Below is a short description of these Traditions and their Specialty Sphere. For their specific Tradition Advantages and Disadvantages, see MET Laws of Ascension for details.

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Akashic Brotherhood

"The true science of martial arts means practicing them in such a way that they will be useful at any time, and to teach them in such a way that they will be useful in all things."

Miyamoto Musashi

The Akashayana are about the perfection of the body and the pursuit of martial arts. Magic flows from the prowess and pursuit of martial skills, and the unity of mind, body and spirit.

Example: A Karate instructor who learns in the heart of practice and taking punches develops a broader understanding of the world around him and now feels a connection to something bigger yet hard to explain.

Celestial Chorus

"Now let us sing, sing till the power of the Lord comes down"

Unitarian Hymnal

A tradition of faith and song, that expresses magic through the beauty of music. Music has connected cultures and faiths and served as a high expression of devotion. In that faith is the possibility of connecting to something mystical and supernatural. This is the Celestial Chorus.

Example: Chasidim in song, Monks chanting hymns, to Sufis singing loud qawali—there are many possibilities

Cult of Ecstasy

“Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”

Anaïs Nin

Cult of Ecstasy, sex and drugs are one way to get there right? The cult is much deeper than the stereotypes, but still the vision that you can awaken through pleasure is certainly an alluring one...

Example: A drug dealer who expands consciousness with a heroic dose and devotes themself to the cult.

Dreamspeakers

"That is not an ordinary star, my son. That star is the tear of a warrior. A lost soul who has finished his battles somewhere on this planet. A pitiful soul who could not find his way to the lofty realm where the great spirit awaits us all."

Laughing Bull

Shamans exist across cultures and traditions. They are mystics and guides that commune with the spirits. In deep communion one may cross over into an awakening. Or the umbra. Depending on what adventure you've gotten yourself into.

Example: A Mystic of a rural tribe sees a vision connecting them to Minnesota and decides to quest to find purpose.

Euthanatos

"The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life's intimacy does not reveal its dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out."

Bataille

The wheel of life spins. It continues to spin so long as lives perish and return to it. The mages closely connected to death are diverse. Many return the wicked to the dirt, to give them another chance at life. Some connect to wraiths or the shadow lands. Most give off a deathy vibe called Jhor that is terrifying to most.

Example: An assassin who targets evil doers and enemies of ascension.

Order of Hermes

"The excellence of the soul is understanding; for the man who understands is conscious, devoted, and already godlike.”

Hermes Trismegistus

For antinomians, there sure are a lot of rules. A strict rigid society with sub houses and organization the devoted scholars of the order of Hermes sure have turned magic into something to be researched and studied. Beware of politics, but in the order of Hermes those who grow and learn tend to succeed, but against fierce competition.

Example: A student from a Hermetic school is sent to Minnesota to investigate strange occult occurrences

Society of Ether

“Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word "freedom" should ever be more than an empty political slogan.”

Wilhelm Reich

Formerly the Sons of Ether (Ladies and Enbies can be etherites, though, get that dirt off your shoulder). In 1904 the Technocratic Union removed the Ether from the Consensus. The SoE moved to the traditions and have since been a fun mix of high technology and scientific method, mixed with pulp novel science and theories that no longer occupy contemporary scientific consensus. It's like Kitab Al-Alacir teaches.....Everything is True.... Anything is Possible

Example: A mad scientist exploring the limits of what Consensus itself will prevent.

Verbena

"I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him."

Thoreau

Witches, Mystics, Pagans, and Neopagans, the Verbena have a holistic view of humanity and nature, seeing life as interconnected and intertwined. This could mean magic from leaves and twigs, to magic emanating from body fluids—or the exchange of them. Nature and life intertwine so deeply that the manifestations for how a verbena could draw from are nearly endless.

Example: A wiccan attempting a spell finds herself at the door of possibility, Awakening with what the pursuit of magic begins to show her.

Virtual Adepts

"The virtual is opposed not to the real but to the actual. The virtual is fully real in so far as it is virtual."

Gilles Deleuze

What if your hacking skills developed to the point that your time in meat space was merely an afterthought. What if you could hack reality itself? The most recent tradition to join—and the most recent group to be kicked out of the technocracy—the VA exist on the cutting edge of cyberpunk, where calculation and precision, and knowing your way around cyberspace are the keys to Awakening.

Example: A young hacker trying to figure out cicada 3301 stumbles upon websites that start offering a real challenge.