Totem (mage V20)

Mage Information

Totem $

Long before technology gave us little gods, shamans swore pacts with spirit helpers. Each side of such pacts received something in return: the shaman got aid when necessary, and the spirit got a human ally for Earthly matters. These days, a handful of people remember these pacts. The Totem Background reflects such a bargain on your part. ONLY shamans or medicine workers of some sort can choose this Background Trait.

Totems, however, are far more than just convenient helpers. Each totem is a powerful spirit archetype – an entity with many forms and faces. Coyote isn’t simply an animal; he’s a mythic trickster, libidinous and clever, though not especially wise. To be one of Coyote’s chosen is to embark on a path of mischief and misbehavior that undermines authority and fractures limitations. A shaman embraced by Coyote becomes an agent of misrule, whose tricks receive aid from Coyote himself.

Totem spirits aren’t in the business of helping human beings; in fact, these days they’re not often fond of people at all. To obtain a totem’s favor, a person needs to either seek that spirit out in a grueling vision quest or attract that spirit’s attention by embodying the totem’s essence in her daily life. That Coyote-shaman might have been a bit coyote-like in the first place: tricky and shifty with an anti-authoritarian streak a mile wide... If so, she may have had Coyote’s attention all along! Either way, a shaman who wants to bond with her spirit totem will have to journey off into the spirit world (probably while enduring a real-life ordeal) in order to impress that totem with her potential devotion.

Unlike those wizards who compel obedience from spirits, a totem-bound shaman doesn’t demand a pact. Nor does she worship the spirit as if it were a god. Instead, the shaman becomes kin to the spirit – essentially a cousin, sibling, or child. That said, a shaman/ totem bond can be fractious, argumentative, even insulting. Totems tend to be pretty rough around the edges... and so, for that matter, do most shamans. Both parties understand each other in the cryptic, sometimes blunt manner that families often use... and, like relatives, can speak volumes to each other while hardly saying a word.

In story terms, the totem spirit becomes like a combination of Ally and Patron, helping your shaman when it suits that totem’s wishes to do so. As with other allied characters, this spirit has certain things it wants in return. Typically, those desires combine service (“Go hunt down the people who killed my wolf-children”) with a ban (“Do not kill wolves or allow other people to kill them, unless those wolves attack you first”). Both elements depend on the nature of the totem – Cockroach, for instance, won’t have you hunting rabbits or ban you from drinking alcohol. In exchange, the totem instills a bit of its essence – its touch or mark – on its chosen people. A person with a Wolf totem has a fierce yet noble aspect, but one sworn to Cockroach is a tough, if dirty, survivor.

Systems-wise, each dot in Totem gives you a closer connection to a spirit entity: the higher the rating, the deeper the bond. The Background costs TWO points per dot (like Enhancements and Sanctum) and confers an escalating series of benefits:

• -- Communication: A totem can always communicate with its chosen people. Generally, though, this involves omens, dreams, and whispers in your ear. Totems rarely hold conversations with their human kin unless the bond is especially intense (in game terms, Totem 4 or 5). Your totem might get chatty in a dream, but don’t expect that to become a habit. Spirits often expect humans to be stupid... and cryptic communications weed out the

dummies. If you can’t figure out what the totem’s saying, after all, why should it bother talking to you at all?

• -- Appearance: Your totem shows up, either in a form that only you can see or – at the higher levels – in a spirit- animal manifestation. These manifestations have the approximate traits of the appropriate animals, although a five-dot Totem could be considerably more powerful if the situation demands a powerful appearance.

• -- Ability: Each totem spirit has certain famous traits: Fox’s cleverness, Cat’s stealth, Lion’s ferocity, and so forth. As a result, the Totem Background gives you additional dice to add to an Ability that’s related to that spirit’s nature. If you don’t have that Ability to begin with, then you’re clearly not worthy of the totem’s attention! To bond with a totem spirit, you must share something of its nature.

• -- Wisdom: Totems teach their special kin how to deal with the spirit worlds. In game terms, this comes through as dots in either Cosmology, Lore (with a specialty in Spirits), or both.

• -- Totem Mark: As mentioned above, a totem shares a bit of its nature with the shaman... and the shaman probably displayed a bit of that nature even before the bond. Once the bond becomes official, her behavior and appearance favor the totem’s nature even more. People who work with spirits will be able to spot the totem’s connection to your shaman (“You’ve got the look of Raven about you...”) with a successful Perception + Awareness roll. At the upper levels of this Background, though, even Sleepers notice it; they might not know what it is that they’re seeing, but the shaman feels odd to them. (“Lady, what’s with that coyote-skin head on your backpack... and don’t you EVER comb your hair?”)

Because of the differences between human shamans and shamanic werewolves, this Background differs from the Werewolf: The Apocalypse Background of the same name. (It’s also a revision of the Background presented in The Spirit Ways, which resembled the Werewolf one.) As with Backgrounds like Fame, Resources, Status, and so forth, you must maintain your totem bond and keep your spirit-kin happy. Otherwise, you could lose dots in this Trait... possibly losing Totem completely. This Background works well with Allies, Blessing, Familiar, and Legend; it might be tied to certain Merits or Flaws as well. Those Traits, of course, must still be purchased separately.

As mentioned above, only shamanic or medicine-working characters may have the Totem Background. Technocrats – being dead to the spirits – cannot ever bond with a totem spirit other than two specific exceptions: The Man and The Machine. Certain spirit-oriented technomancers, however, might bond with tech-oriented totems. Hermetics, Choristers, and other monotheistic, high-ritual types are generally considered too bossy or antagonistic to win a totem spirit’s affection. For a variety of potential spirit guides and their associated characteristics, check out the Totem Spirits section of Appendix I, (pp. 633-636).

X -- No totem spirit bond.

• -- Your totem appears in dreams and visions and offers one additional die to your normal pool for an Ability (Athletics, Stealth, Survival, etc.) that’s related to the totem spirit’s nature.

•• -- The totem speaks to you, offering occasional cryptic advice and omens, plus two dice that can be used for that related Ability.

••• -- Your spirit guide appears in your waking life, though only to you and to other folks who can see spirits. The totem gives you advice, sends omens, occasionally manifests a spirit animal for non-combat errands, grants two dice to use on that related Ability, and gives you one dot in Cosmology or Lore.

•••• -- A powerful bond allows your totem to manifest in solid form. That spirit offers frequent advice and omens, gives you three dice to use in the appropriate Ability, confers two dots in either Cosmology or Lore, and might help you in a desperate combat situation (as an Ally would) in exchange for a huge favor afterward. Among spirits and spirit-working people, you’re clearly favored by your totem and display obvious signs of that bond in your appearance and behavior.

••••• -- Your totem loves you! In dreams, visions, omens, and solid form, that spirit provides frequent company and aid. You get three dice toward the appropriate Ability, add two dots each in Cosmology and Spirit Lore, and may receive help in desperate situations. Your bond to that spirit is obvious to anyone and marks you as a very strange, primal, and probably intimidating person.