Life
Life is one of nine Spheres of magic in Mage: The Ascension. The Verbena have occupied the Seat of Life in the Council of Nine Mystic Traditions since its founding. The Shard Realm of Life maps physically to Venus.
Those material things that move, grow and change come under the purview of the Sphere of Life. While other Patterns remain stagnant, or are self-contained flows of Quintessential energy, life Patterns are different. They connect to the Tellurian, drawing Quintessence as they live and grow and returning it to the flow with their own contributions and excretions. Only in death does this process cease, the Pattern stultifying to base matter. It is this connection to the cosmos that makes life unique, and it is from this everchanging flow that life adapts and draws its infinite complexity.
The power over life is a great one, the power to create and influence all creatures. Mages who study Life learn to heal and alter animals and later themselves and others. As the mage's knowledge grows, he learns to affect more complex Patterns. Eventually, the mage can change shapes, restore youth and health, heal injury. Conversely, he can strike down foes, rend apart the living and spread disease in his wake.
Among the Traditions, study of life is a respected discipline. Life mages are the healers, the nurturers and the defenders who bring health and the joy of living with them. Even potent necromancers and the undead cannot stand against the ever -renewing power of life. With the strength drawn of life, the mage can be whole and effectively immortal.
Life magic holds sway over any creature or cell that still moves with the ebb and tide of living breath. Even cells in plucked fruits or severed parts may still be governed by life while there is yet the spark within them. Once the subject finally dies —its Quintessence still and its connection to the universe inert —it returns to Matter.
Masters of Life are without blemish or imperfection, carefully healing away the foibles and flaws of their own bodies. Strong and radiant, they seem to glow with the unending bounty of generous life. The appearance of such a mage reflects her desires and moods, and she eats or drinks, breathes, ages or changes according to her will.
Note that when a mage alters or heals a Pattern, she does so to the limit of her capabilities. If a mage pulls off a Life Effect, she cannot recast the same Effect for more successes until the Pattern has undergone some natural change (that is, a change of scene). Thus, the mage can transform herself and then change differently or change back, but if she heals an injury or causes a wound in a given scene, she cannot use that power on the same subject again —she's done all that she can to the Pattern at that time.
If a mage affects a Pattern and changes it away from its true nature —that is, increasing or decreasing Attributes or adding new characteristics that are not natural to the creature —then the subject suffers the phenomenon of Pattern leakage (or bleeding). Over time (once per day, sometimes more often) the creature suffers injury as its Life Pattern fights the changes, generally taking one health level of lethal damage for each gross change. A mag e skilled in Prime can use Quintessence to offset this injury, but when he runs out of Quintessence (or if the victim is not a mage), the problem will set in again. The only way to overcome this Pattern bleeding is to alter the Pattern permanently or to re move the changes.
- Sense Life
The most basic principles of Life magic involve the study of living Patterns and their motions. The mage starts by learning to feel the flow of life energy. From that point, the mage can sense injury or sickness, and he can feel the potency of vibrant health. Given experience, the mage can easily learn to sense nearby living creatures, to determine their nature, health, sex and age, and to sense any tears or imperfections in her own Pattern.
With the other Pattern Spheres, Life senses allow a mage to tell not only if there are people nearby, but what they wear or carry and whether the forces and objects around them cause injury. Entropy with Life tells-whether they will suffer from disease or mischance and what form it will take. Time and Correspondence magic lets the mage sense the living Patterns of far -away individuals or people in the past or future. With Prime, the mage can actually see the stream of Quintessence that bonds all living things to the cosmos.
- Alter Simple Patterns, Heal Self
A mage's manipulation of living Patterns begins with the most rudimentary ones, and with the ones most familiar to her. The budding Life mage learns to affect sessile Patterns and ones that make up very simple creatures. She also learns to recognize her own innate Pattern's form, to help it in the process of restoring itself.
A novice of Life magic can heal herself, restoring her Pattern to its original form and closing wounds or removing alterations. She cannot actually transform herself into new forms or change her Pattern from its original base nature yet, but she can at least defend herself if others do so. She can determine if her Pattern has been affected in some way, sensing disease or imbalance long before any symptoms manifest.
With control over simple Life Patterns, the mage can also influence rudimentary life forms like bacteria and plants. Any plant, invertebrate, algae or fungus is within her purview, and the mage can harm or change them as she desires, perhaps shaping t hem to grow in certain ways or striking offending creatures dead. The mage can't totally transform them yet. Such Patterns must retain their original nature, but they can be coaxed into moving, growing and changing in certain ways.
In conjunction with other Pattern Spheres, the mage can imbue herself or a living being with resistance to certain objects or forces, or she can cause such other Patterns to influence the growth and development of simple creatures. She can set up Effects to heal herself upon the receipt of injury (with Time magic) or use Correspondence to sense and alter life anywhere in the world.
- Alter Self, Transform Simple Patterns
By the time the mage reaches a significant understanding of Life, she unlocks the keys to transformation: the means to turn a life Pattern away from its original nature and into something different. She can change her own Pattern in startling ways, and she can exert mastery over simple living things. To more complex creatures, she can exert change, causing the entity to grow or change as she desires.
By working with her own Pattern, the mage can take on new qualities or change old ones, perhaps giving herself unusual features. She can grow claws or suspend briefly her need to breathe. She must remain fundamentally human, but she can stretch the limits of her own capabilities and surpass her normal limits of mortal flesh.
With total mastery of simple Patterns, the mage can transform them into new shapes, turning a crawfish into a cedar tree (albeit a very, very small one) or reweaving a simple bacterium into a deadly killer. Her understanding is sufficient to create and destroy such Patterns utterly, and to cause them to grow, change or die as she sees fit.
By using simple Pattern- transformation in conjunction with other Spheres, the mage can create simple living things out of nothingness, or turn nonliving matter or forces into living creatures, although such creations have no minds of their own unless the mage uses the Mind Sphere. She can also alter creatures across a distance or push or pull such beings into other places, even the spirit worlds, with the proper Spheres. She can cause a change that will not affect a creature for some time, such as causing an apple tree to suddenly blossom in the middle of w inter some years later, or she can render plants and simple animals safe from disease and injury.
- Alter Complex Patterns, Transform Self
The Patterns of all living things are accessible to the Adept of Life. The mage can not only rewrite her own Pattern as she desires, but she can shift and change the Patterns of nearly any other creature, including sentient beings. She can heal with a touch, gift someone with great strength, cause wounds or make a being manifest robust youth and vitality.
With self- transformation, the mage can reshape her Pattern in any form that she desires. She can take on new characteristics, become an entirely different creature of the same rough size and mass and even bolster her natural capabilities beyond human levels. However, such gross manipulations often lead to difficulties. It may take some time to get used to a new animal form, and the form itself may not have the capacity to store the mage's human knowledge and intellect. Animal forms often come with instincts as well, and the mage risks losing her identity over time.
The Pattern itself usually has a tendency to grow back into its natural shape, too, so a mage who alters her own Pattern too radically may suffer injury as her Pattern fights against the confining magic.
By altering complex Patterns, a mage can heal people or animals and perform small manipulations to them. She cannot yet create duplicates of them or totally change their true nature, but she can guarantee health or instill weakness or injury.
In conjunction with other Pattern magic, the Adept of Life can assume various supernatural properties: becoming a fire -breathing dragon or eating metal, for instance. She can make wounds that will not heal or set transformations that will revert at a set time, or even stretch out to heal or harm people that she cannot see.
- Transform Complex Patterns, Perfect Metamorphosis
All living things become as putty under the sculpting hands of a Master of Life. Her command of life is flawless, bringing her into perfect harmony with the flow of life energy. She can change all life at her whims, and she can heal or harm as needed and desired.
The mage can rework a creature into any form as long as the mass and size remain similar, thus turning a man into a tree or raising up a small dog into a human child. Such transformations are difficult, of course, but spectacular. The mage could reduce a group of enemies into large, flopping fish, for instance. She can also smooth out Pattern defects and deformities completely, and she can mutate the Pattern into any sort of natural or unnatural change.
With her total control of her personal Pattern, the mage can immunize herself from the rigors of age, disease, hunger or injury. She can regenerate nearly any damage,although direct Pattern damage may take time and effort. Better still, she can surpass many of the usual limits of Pattern transformation. She no longer needs to worry about the problems of losing her identity to animal instinct, for example. She can even cause her own Life Pattern to grow or shrink as needed, allowing her to change her size.
Most phenomenally, a Master of Life can combine her powers with other Spheres to create complex living creatures from Quintessence or from other Patterns. She can make clones of existing beings, make mythic monsters or let her creative whims take her as far as her resources allow. She can gift such creations with their own minds and spirits by use of the appropriate Spheres, or leave them empty, perhaps as homes for a disembodied spirit. She can even create a new body and move her consciousness into it, or reincarnate into a successive body that will be born in the future. With access to Prime and Correspondence, the mage can open her awareness to the entire vast glory of life and touch any living thing.
Common Rotes
The following can be assumed to be known by any mage with the appropriate Sphere level.
- Life Scan —A simple attachment to a computer can search for the bio-fields of nearby living creatures, allowing a Virtual Adept to determine the locations and conditions of such targets. Although such scans require additional work (and Correspondence) to reach over a great distance, they can be helpful in targeting friends or enemies, since the Virtual Adept can recognize individual Patterns that have been detected and logged previously. Most Virtual Adepts also include special filter programs to cut out undesired life- forms from the scan, like microscopic organisms or simple vermin (aside from Technocrats).
Many other Traditions can perform a similar Effect with an appropriate scrying tool. A Verbena might use a mirror that shows images of nearby creatures, while a Euthanatos sniffs for the distinctive scents of various creatures.
- Prayer of Healing Revelation —The Celestial Chorus studies Life magic to detect illness and injury. These Disciples learn to identify flaws that indicate various diseases, injuries, poisons and parasitic infestations in a life form's Pattern. The mystic must usually make a Perception roll when scanning the Pattern. The more successes scored on the Effect, the more specific the information she receives. One success might reveal poison, two might reveal that the poison is affecting the respiratory process, and three successes might determine the poison to be arsenic.
- Alter Simple Creature —By grasping a Life Pattern and molding it metaphysically, the mage learns to heal or change it as desired. Euthanatos use a version of this called “Little Good Death” to learn how to tear simple Patterns, bringing death to plants or small creatures as a stepping -stone to greater skill. Verbe na use this skill to mold their trees and pets into pleasing and healthy forms, and to cure disease or injury in such. Healing or injuring a creature uses the damage chart in the spell-casting rules. Causing a change to the Pattern relies on judgement of the power of the feat and severity of the change.
- Heal Self —Each Tradition has a time - tested means for self- healing; mages get into too many scrapes not to! Verbena renew themselves with a draught of pure water or a charm of good fortune. Hermetic mages restore the form of the physical body by words that mold flesh. The Akashic Brotherhood uses “Ho Tien Chi,” or the “Breath of the Day After Birth,” to bring in healing energies and vitality, as taught through Do. Celestial Choristers lay on hands while Technocrats use simple slap - on medical patches, amp drugs and regenerative devices. The Effect is simple: The caster simply heals damage as specified on the Damage and Duration table in the spell-casting rules. The mage cannot heal aggravated damage on himself at this level (life 3 is needed).
- Better Body —Mages who rely heavily on Life Effects use this power to alter themselves. A mage can take on various forms to her advantage: Claws, gills, increased Physical Attributes or Appearance, body armor and more. The only limits are imagination and what the mage believes that he can do within his paradigm. Successes scored indicate the limits of the change: One success would be good for an extra dot on one Attribute, or physical merit/ability, for instance. Additional successes can maintain the Effect or generate larger changes.
If a mage changes a Pattern beyond normal limits —in creasing Attributes to legendary levels (six or more), adding totally inhuman features, fortifying to soak against aggravated wounds, etc. —the subject gains permanent Paradox as long as the changes remain. Usually Paradox is a problem only for mages, but other victims can suffer as well, especially when Paradox erupts near them. Such gross changes always cause Pattern bleeding as well. Simply altering a Pattern within its normal range of forms —swapping two Physical Attributes, for instance, or changing eye color —is a much simpler and less danger -prone use of this Effect.
Permanent changes aren't susceptible to Pattern bleeding, but vulgar ones cause Permanent Paradox, and all need to be paid for with XP (either as a Blessing or merit for most changes or by paying 3/4 of the normal cost for Attributes/Abilities)
- Rip the Man- Body —With this Effect, a Euthanatos can rend the Patterns of complex life forms. As the mage lacks detailed knowledge of such complex Patterns, she cannot unravel the Patterns quickly. Damage is inflicted using the normal table. This damage often manifests as lesions and internal hemorrhaging.
- Mutate Form —The mage can alter the form of any living creature, changing its appearance and function much tike the Better Body Effect. Disguises and beneficial alterations are popular among Tradition mages in varying degrees —Verbena sometimes give their pets unusual capabilities, Euthanatos might change the appearance of their confederates and Hermetics would just deform people with whom they became irate. The mage can also transform himself, taking on animal form, changing shape and generally screwing with the basic nature of his Pattern. In this case, the mage can actually turn his Life Pattern's true nature into that of another creature; he can become a true cat, for instance, and thus avoid the problem of Pattern bleeding due to internal conflict. On the downside, the mage fundamentally is whatever form he assumes. He must spend a point of Willpower each day to retain knowledge of his former self, his intellect and human instincts; he may also need time to adapt to his new form (as adjudicated by the Storyteller —two experience points is a good measure). Certain Mind magic can help the mage to get around some of these problems, which is fortunate, because if the mage runs out of Willpower in his animal form, he completely loses his identity and believes himself to be a normal animal of that sort.
The successes rolled determine the scale of change possible with th is Effect. As with any gross physiological change, there is a risk of Pattern bleeding if the true nature of the Pattern isn't altered.
- Physiological Emotion Control —Many Virtual Adepts view human beings as biological computers. By inducing certain reactions within the physical body, the Adepts can “reprogram” a person's behavior. Emotions like anger or fear can be induced by causing the body to release adrenaline, while endorphin stimulation can bring on intense pleasure. Even depression has biological causes. This “tyranny” of the physical body over the mind is one of the reasons that the Virtual Adepts wish to attain a virtual reality state, where that body is left behind and the mind is no longer a slave to the body's desires.
Any Adept of Life can induce emotions in a subject by causing the person's body to release or stifle the correct hormones. More successes on the Effect roll make the emotion more severe.
- Animal Form —Although the mythical Circe's transformation of men into pigs is perhaps one of the better - known examples of this power, Verbena and Hermetics still have a history of changing offenders into various sorts of animals. The subject must retain a similar general size, although the mage can induce the Pattern metamorphosis to cause the victim to shrink into a mouse or grow into an oak tree with enough work. The subject's consciousness remains, but it will eventually fade into the new form, as with Mutate Form.
Animals can also be changed into humans with this power —although they retain their animal instincts, they may slowly become more human. Whether an “uplifted” animal could Awaken is unknown.
- Perfect Metamorphosis —Overcoming the problems of imperfect Pattern- transformation, the mage can create a Pattern that carries the physical nature of a beast yet holds as well his own persona and mind. The mage can take on the shape of any creature that he desires, of any size. She can shift or revert, cure her own Pattern of undesired changes and maintain a perfect state of health in any living form as she desires.
