Matter
Matter is one of nine Spheres of magic in Mage: The Ascension. The Solificati occupied the Seat of Matter in the original Council of Nine Mystic Traditions from 1456 to 1470, but it was unoccupied for most of the Tradition's history until Sons of Ether joined in 1904. The Shard Realm of Matter maps physically to Jupiter.
All non- living Patterns that coalesce into form fall into the Sphere of Matter. Along with Forces and Life, this Sphere completes the cycle of Pattern Spheres that influence things of the material world. Given the incredible utility and variety of objects all across the Tellurian, this Sphere is highly versatile and useful, and it's often underestimated due to its perceived “base” nature.
Matter Patterns are objects whose flow of Prime has coalesced into a simple, static form. The Quintessence in Forces is still active and energetic, and Life Patterns flow with the universe in a process of give- and - take. Matter, by contrast, is inert. However, manipulating Matter is usually a much simpler affair than manipulating other Patterns.
Magicians who study Matter can create objects (with base elements or Prime energy), transform them and change their properties. Matter can also be made to behave in unusual fashions, flouting scientific law and even, in some cases, the bounds of common sense. At the very advanced levels of study, Masters can blur the lines between matter and energy, creating Matter Patterns that throw off Forces (radiation) or bear a resemblance to Life.
Masters of Matter gift everything they own with vibrancy and solidity. Their clothing and possessions are often exceptional, with special qualities and great durability. Indeed, many take pleasure in bringing artistic forms or changes to materials that they own. Anything can be shaped or created with Mastery of Matter, but true art expresses more than base material.
- Matter Perceptions
The most basic understanding of Matter gives a mage a clear insight into the nature of material objects. By scrutinizing a Pattern, the mage can tell not only how massive something is and what it's made of, but whether it's a composite, whether it's damaged in any way, how it might interact with other objects and what could be hidden inside.
Combining Matter and Entropy lets the magician sense weak points and identify the best means by which to break them, Forces tells what energy to bring to bear against objects. With Life magic, the mage can determine the presence and composition of inert matter in living Patterns, like piercings and implants. The use of more ephemeral Spheres lends itself to scrying at range or determining whether a given object is actually a form of Tass.
- Basic Transmutation
The mage may transmute one substance into another, without changing its shape, temperature or basic state (solid, liquid, gas). The object simply takes on a new composition, at the mage's whim. Complex creations are mare difficult or in some cases impossible; usually, mages are limited to creating or t ransmuting homogenous substances —a block of wood into a brick of stone, for instance, but not into an alloy of gold and osmium. Naturally, the sorts of possible transmutations depend heavily on paradigm. A Hermetic mage might turn lead into gold alchemically, a Chorister could duplicate the miracle of turning water into wine but a Technocrat is more likely to convert simple elements like hydrogen to helium.
Only simple and inert forms of Matter can be transformed at this level. The mage cannot make radioactive elements. Doing so requires Mastery, as such Patterns shed their essence in the form of Forces. Matter Patterns also tend to have a rigid shape, and this shape cannot be changed with this base understanding. Of course, if the mage turns a rock into butter, he can sculpt or melt it easily. Rare materials are also hard to create. Metaphysically, such matter is a precious substance, not easily found or made, which reflects in the difficulty of magical duplication.
Basic transmutation combines with other Pattern Spheres to let the mage create solid matter from forces or even from living beings. (Of course, anyone can turn a Life Pattern into a Matter Pattern —just kill it). The mage can also conjure a basic object out of Prime energy. With the right understanding of Forces, the mage can impart enough energy to change an item's state while transforming it. He can use Correspondence to pull or push items around and even to reach into them and remove parts. The mage can give a spirit a physical representation or create an object according to a mental image with Quintessence.
- Alter Form
Although Matter Patterns are resilient, they are not inviolable, and a mage with enough experience can reshape matter as he desires. This level of skill lets the mage sculpt the object mystically, changing its form or even compressing or expanding certain elements of its material properties. The mage can increase the object's density or disperse it into gas, or he can just make it take on a different silhouette. Broken materials can be rejoined and matter made whole once more, or the mage can pull things apart, separate them into components or make mixtures of matter.
With the Pattern Spheres, the mage can easily draw energy out of a Matter Pattern or make it mesh with a living creature. More ephemeral Spheres let the object change in response to thought or even cause it shift randomly into a useful (or harmful) shape.
- Complex Transformation
By tearing out the detailed elements of combined Matter Patterns, an Adept of Matter can rebuild complex Patterns that rely on rare and complex material or on multiple independent pieces with different bases. Assuming that he has the appropriate mundane knowledge, the mage can easily make objects with moving parts or do the oppos ite in order to turn valuable equipment into useless lumps. Whereas a less experienced mage is limited to making simple items or Patterns of a homogenous sort, an Adept can create alloys, combinations of multiple types of matter and other fine details. Both the level of detail and the complexity of the final object determine the difficulty of the Effect.
With Forces or Life magic, the mage can transform creatures or energies directly into complex objects. He can turn a canary into a golden clockwork songbird or a lightning bolt into a silver stylization. Life magic lets the mage blend living and unliving matter, making silk, fresh food and the like. Prime energy can be used to conjure complex matter from nothing —more than one Euthanatos has pulled a gun seemingly out of nowhere.
- Alter Properties
The highest Matter Arts allow a mage to rebuild individual segments of a Matter Pattern at will. Instead of making base matter or objects of combined materials, the Master can devise entirely new Matter, setting its physical properties as desired. He can transmute normal Matter so that it has a different boiling point, specific gravity or transparency. He can also create an object with a mass, density and viscosity determined at whim independent of any sort of normal physical laws. The Patterns of Matter can be made to interact with other Matter in unique ways, so the Patterns may be explosive, acidic or even immaterial to one another.
With Mastery of Matter, the mage is not limited to the so- called “laws” of the material world. His creations can have whatever strengths and physical characteristics he desires. Matter Patterns can even be made that transform spontaneously, changing state or characteristics or throwing off Forces (radiation).
With the other Spheres, a Master of Matter can build invincible armor out of Prime energy, make devices that heal or harm living creatures outside of all normal expectations and develop complex, rare and lethal substances.
Common Rotes
The following can be assumed to be known by any mage with the appropriate Sphere level.
- Analyze Substance —Any number of simple enchantments can be used to determine material properties. The mage could pick out gold from iron pyrite and tell exactly what a chair's made of and how much weight it can hold. Mages do so in many and varied ways. Sons of Ether and Virtual Adepts use their favorite tricorder -style sensing devices, Hermetics often compare to known samples and look for disparities, Ecstatics just “go with the flow” and pick whatever feels right.
- Fragments of Dream —Dreamspeakers view all manner of fragments of the Earth Mother's dreams. By tapping such dreams, they can expand their perception of Matter. The mage extends her senses beyond physical reality into Pattern. She no longer sees matter in the same way: instead of a brick wall, for instance, she sees its Pattern in her mind's eye.
This Effect allows the mage to perceive tilings that would be unseen in physical reality. She could sense the contents of a room beyond a wall, or detect objects or structures that might otherwise be hidden, such as a false bottom of a suitcase. Really dense or complex Patterns may be more difficult to penetrate.
- Melt and Reform —The mage turns an otherwise inviolable object into a similar but much more accommodating item. The mage could grab a stone wall and briefly render the stone into clay, easily shaping it with his hands until the Effect ends, or he could turn a statue to butter and let it melt before changing it back. This Effect makes an excellent way to get out of traps, although it may take some work to be explained as coincidental.
- Straw into Gold —Just like Rumpelstiltskin, the mage can weave base matter into a valuable substance. It remains a homogenous material, but it takes on qualities desired by the mage. Vulgar willworkers may literally turn tears into diamonds and straw into gold. More subtle magicians could improve the quality of an existing object, or “accidentally discover” that an object is more valuable than it first appeared. In this fashion, a mage can turn cheap beer into a decent stout, make generic brands seem of higher quality and cause an ordinary item to actually be made of something valuable.
- Destroy Structures —The mage uses her knowledge of Matter Patterns to break down structures by shredding their Patterns. The Effect resembles Sculpture, but the mage simply breaks down a Pattern as quickly as possible. The mage can destroy nearly any simple object. He can tear up concrete, steel and cloth with equal ease. However, advanced compounds might be too difficult for the mage to unravel (and require a higher level of skill). Note that the material is not reduced to nothingness; it is simply scattered and torn apart.
The mage can also turn an object into some other sort of inert substance and go from there. Doing so can be useful if a mage is dealing with matter that won't be destroyed just by dispersing it, like poison gas or acid.
- Sculpture —By changing the shape of a chunk of Matter, the mage can easily sculpt a substance without bothering to transform it like Melt and Reform. The mage just grabs the Pattern mystically —whether by pantomiming the sculpture, chanting its name of power or whatever — and yanks it around into the desired shape. The object responds and takes on the appropriate form.
Sculpture may require multiple successes for very large or complex objects.
- Alloy —By grabbing two Patterns and compressing them together, the mage makes an alloy out of solid objects. He can shove a chunk of wood into the middle of a piece of plastic or blend two types of metal into a composite. Such an alloy still retains the properties of its individual components, but it might have its own characteristics if it's mixed finely enough. That is, a chunk of wood stuck in a wall of plastic would still burn, but if the wood were diffused throughout the plastic, the wall might have a pleasing wooden texture while remaining fire retardant (although it could well give off poisonous smoke when it did catch fire).
- Transformers —Complex and radical changes in composition let a mage with the appropriate knowledge alter the function of various devices. A mage could turn his wrist -watch into a dart-firing weapon or cause his stereo system to also house a telephone. There's almost no limit to what can be done, although the mage must have the knowledge necessary to build and use the device. Such devices are just reorganizations of existing Matter, so they must still conform to the general laws of the consensus. That is, the mage could cause his wristwatch to also have a dart firing mechanism (since someone could conceivably build such a device normally), but it wouldn't be able to also serve as a teleporter.
- Alter Weight —By manipulating the properties of an object's elemental mass, a mage can change it into a unique element that has a weight dissociated from its size. A tiny object can be given the mass of a car, or a car could be made light enough to be picked up (great gas mileage, hell in strong winds). Objects that are heavy for their size —superdense materials —tend to be stronger and more durable than the balsa like constructions of hyperlight material. The level of success scored indicates how much the object can be tweaked in terms of density. With a couple of successes, the mage might succeed in changing its mass by 25%, while 10 successes could alter it by a factor of several times.
- Matter Association —A Master of Matter can change how certain Matter Patterns interact with other Patterns. If he decides to make a Pattern unable to interact with others of a specific type, he may well get a material that's insubstantial to certain substances. Bullets could fire through body armor and a coroner's tools could pass through dead flesh. The Master can also make the matter take on the properties of some other sort of matter or entirely new properties, so a piece of matter could be made superconductive, incredibly strong and somewhat ductile, despite originally being a crumpled -up ball of duct tape. Such massive transformations are, of course, generally vulgar and reserved for occasions where the mage needs a permanent special object. The successes scored determine how much the mage can alter the nature of the object. With a few successes, he might tweak the weight and interactive properties a bit, while many successes would allow the mage to reverse fundamental properties, make an inert substance radioactive or vice - versa. He could also swap around characteristics from multiple types of matter.
