Sanctum/ Laboratory (mage V20)
Sanctum/ Laboratory $
You have a place where you can get away from it all – said “all” being the consensual reality that hinders your Arts and Enlightened Sciences. Oh, this place still exists on the Earthly plane, and it’s subject to the Paradox Effect. Still, your Lab or Sanctum is a place of power and privacy, set to fulfill your needs and allow you to hone your skills in relative safety.
A Sanctum can range from a small herb-garden with wards set against intruders and trees planted to screen the place off from casual viewing to small laboratories filled with gleaming scientific gear. Martial-arts studios, yoga lofts, sacred groves, basement dens, band practice spaces, penthouse suites, photography studios, tiny shrines on remote mountaintops – the Sanctum or Lab is whatever you want it to be. Essentially, a mage or group secures the place, dedicates it to reflect their needs and wishes, and sets the reality of that space to suit the owners’ purposes. A Progenitor lab might gleam under sterile lights, polished surfaces of steel and glass ready to advance the call of Science. A ritual clearing might nestle in amongst thick forests, old runes cut into trees and stones artfully arranged to emphasize the mystic nature of the place. You might have a blood-spattered basement with chairs of human bones; a ‘70s-style seduction pad; a bookstore that’s open only at night; a hobbit-hole straight out of a Peter Jackson Tolkien flick – whatever suits your fancy (and your available resources) is within the grasp of this Background Trait.
In game terms, this Trait provides several benefits:
- • -- A relatively private space to conduct experiments, meditate, practice your arts, and so on. Again, this privacy is relative; Technocratic operatives rarely have such places to themselves. Unless a group or individual is extremely wealthy and connected, a Technocratic Laboratory is actually owned and managed by the Union, not by the operatives themselves. Thus, your superiors have their eyes on you even within your sanctuary, and its privacy is more of a courtesy than an absolute.
- • -- A stock of materials you can use – herbs, cauldrons, diagrams, elaborate glyphs carved into the floors, martial arts practice weapons, chemistry arrays, telescopes, microscopes, whatever. This stock depends upon the Background rating and allows you constant access to whatever it is (within reason) that you need.
- • -- A Sanctum’s specially prepared ritual space (or a Lab’s experimental space) reduces the difficulty of rituals or experiments performed in that area. That reduction depends on the Background trait’s rating, as shown below.
- • -- A cloaking effect safeguards the place’s location. Essentially, the Sanctum/ Laboratory has an Arcane/ Cloaking rating based on the place’s Background rating. You could consider this effect a result of protection wards, concealment fields, an aura of ordinariness... that sort of thing. As long as they stay within the protected area, characters enjoy the protection of this Arcane effect too. (A character who already has the Arcane/ Cloaking Background gets whichever Arcane
rating is highest – the rating of the Sanctum or the rating of her Arcane rating – not a combination of both.)
- • -- All Effects cast within the Sanctum are considered coincidental magick, so long as those Effects follow the definition of reality within that sanctuary. Cloning would be coincidental within an Iteration X or Progenitor lab; spirit-summoning would be coincidental on a shaman’s sacred ground; a witch could conjure imps or heal gaping wounds within his Sanctum; but the Black Suit busting down the door would find himself at a distinct disadvantage there because...
- • -- The Effects of rival mages are considered vulgar in your space. That Man in Black’s procedures go against the prevailing reality within that witch’s sanctuary, whereas the witch’s spells run counter to the established reality of a NWO Construct. Rivals who use the same style of magick would be considered equally at home in a Sanctum – two Verbenae, for example, who hate each other’s guts but who employ the same paradigms and tools would both be considered coincidental within the same sanctum; an Etherite, however, would find that her weird science is vulgar within that witch’s sacred ground, even if she was allied with one of the rival Verbenae.
- • -- Mystic Sanctums have an additional benefit over technological Laboratories: the Gauntlet rating is one level lower in a place that’s been dedicated to magick than it is in a similar place than has not been so dedicated. The Gauntlet in a technomagickal Laboratory, on the other hand – like those used by the Society of Ether or Virtual Adepts – is one level higher than it would be otherwise. And a Technocracy Laboratory has a Gauntlet rating of except with regards to Dimensional Science procedures, whose Effects are considered coincidental in an appropriate Technocratic Lab.
Because of these many benefits, a Sanctum costs TWO Background dots for each dot in the Sanctum. Like the Enhancements Background, it offers an unusual amount of value per dot. If you’re allowed to purchase Backgrounds with experience points, Sanctum costs double the usual Background price.
Regardless of its nature, this space must be specially prepared by the group or mage who uses it, with constant maintenance (no less than once per month) to keep the space attuned to the people who use it. A Sanctum can be no larger than 500 square feet, and most of them are much smaller than that... typically a room or two. Because this is personal space, it’s often wise to limit the people coming and going throughout your Sanctum. Too much traffic can render a Sanctuary mundane, as far as reality’s Consensus is concerned.
- X -- No special space.
- • -- A tiny stock of goods; no reduction of ritual difficulties, though your magick is coincidental here. One dot in Arcane.
- •• -- Small stock of goods; ritual difficulties reduced by 1. Two dots in Arcane.
- ••• -- Decent stock of goods; ritual difficulties reduced by 1. Three dots in Arcane.
- •••• -- Fine stock of materials; ritual difficulties reduced by 2. Four dots in Arcane.
- ••••• -- Excellent stock of materials; ritual difficulties reduced by 2. Five dots in Arcane.
