Reference Stuff

The World Behind the World



These days, there's not much fantastic in the world.



Oh sure, we play at it. Superhero movies and their special effects orgies, video games where millions take the role of mythic creatures and spell-slingers... stuff like that. Just distractions from a mundane world laid down in rigid rules of unyielding science. The days where 'here there be monsters' are written on maps is gone, and if a video surfaces on youtube of something even remotely strange, the first response is, 'fake!'.



Still, if you move in the right circles and talk to the right people, sometimes you hear things. If you snoop around long enough, you might even find out that some of it's true.

Like the man in the checkered suit who shows up at the scenes of truly horrific car crashes... ahead of time. He always gets there with enough time to smoke a cigarette, but sure enough there will be a collision before he's done. He's always gone before the cops get there.

Or how about the prison out west that's never seen a breakout or a riot? Funny thing is, no one ever seems to see the guards commuting to work... and anyone who's spoken to an inmate notices that they all sound terrified, all the time.

Maybe you've heard of the old brick wall on Evergreen Street in Boston. If you climb over the right spot at the right time of night, you'll enter the land of the dead. Just be careful, because the dead know the trick, too... and yes, the door opens both ways.



So you snooped, asked around, traded favors. You went looking for The Truth. Or maybe The Truth found you. Down the wrong alley, in the wrong city, at the wrong time of night. However it happened, you found out that some of the stories were real, both the new and the very, very old, and so many of the most popular are just dead wrong.

The Illuminati? Buncha rich chumps - don't know nothin', don't pull any string worth mentioning. The Masons on the other hand - a powerful order of mages dating to the Renaissance. Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the like? They're not at all what anyone thinks they are - they're shapechangers, were-beasts. But yes, the Loch Ness Monster really is a hoax. Elvis? He's dead, stop asking. Jim Morrison, on the other hand, he just had to go into hiding - that's what happens when a Gentry wants to take his changeling back.



This is the World Behind the World. Night Society. The Truth.



All sorts of things live in the dark, and the all know (or are at least aware of) each other. As long as you're not brand-fucking-new to the Night, you'll have picked some knowledge of what's out there:



Vampires are supposedly descendant from Caine, the first murderer... and it's nigh-impossible to prove the legend right or wrong. They've been around as long as recorded history. When normal folks talk about Illuminati-level conspiracies, they're thinking of the Camarilla, the vampire nation. They're always manipulating human society for their schemes - and, some say, the machinations of their ancient, slumbering forefathers. It's a very lethal game of chess, only every vampire 'alive' is a pawn and no one knows the rules. They're the most organized of the lot, and a lot of Night Society is shaped by that. But no matter how civilized they act, there's a predator inside of them, just waiting to take over.



Mages are the next biggest thing in terms of organization. Their history records that Atlantis was real, and the Atlantean nation was built on magic... REAL magic. They got into battles of wills with the universe and when they won, things went their way. But of course something went horribly wrong. Atlantis is gone now, and the world doesn't just resist magic, it fights it. Most mages keep their miracles quiet nowadays, but if they have to swing it... ho boy. Michael Bay would cream himself with the explosions a mage can create. Mages understand best the negative impact the supernatural can have on mortal minds, and it's from them we borrow the term for mundanes; the Sleepers. Every mage knows to keep his Arts away from Sleeper eyes... because if they see real magic, the bit of Paradox is always worse...



Changelings come right out of the storybooks; children snatched away by the Fair Folk and replaced with an almost-perfect copy. Every once in awhile you hear a story about parents killing a child because they swear "it's not theirs". That's because every once in awhile, it isn't. The real kid is across a place called the Hedge in the hands of real faeries, the Gentry. The lucky ones make it back, but they're forever touched by the Wyrd. They band together in Freeholds for safety or live constantly on the move, always afraid their masters will come looking for their lost toys. They'll deal with anyone, and you can make some very bizarre (and profitable) trades at one of their markets, just be warned: they may not be out to get you, but their Contracts always carry heavy prices, and woe betide if you break one. It's hard to keep the Wyrd contained in a mortal head - but they have to, because if they don't dreams become nightmares and nightmares become reality...



Kithain have a certain kinship with Changelings, and they work together often as not. Kithain are fae who, for one reason or another (or perhaps none at all) were stripped of title and power and banished from Arcadia, the fae realm. They are true outsiders to a world that attacks the very fiber of their being... but that just means they can break the rules in ways even Mages envy. There aren't as many of them as their are Changelings, but if you find one you found a bunch: they need each other's company to keep sane... and you don't want to see an insane faerie...



Sin-Eaters are dead men walking, but that's misleading. They're not walking corpses (we'll get to those in a bit) but they are dead... technically. It's just that they got better. At the moment of their death, a rather unique spectre called a geist made them a bargain, and now they're back, straddling the line between this world and the next. For a long time they were very disorganized, but in the age of the Internet sin-eaters across the world can communicate across their growing Twilight Network. Tough as nails and damn difficult to kill, it is the sin-eater's charge to patrol the Veil and deal with the things on this side that should be on the other. Being tied to a geist means sharing your soul, though, and a sin-eater who loses synergy with his geist becomes just the kind of monster he used to hunt...



Wraiths are a sort of counterpart to sin-eaters. If you need a friend on the other side of the Veil, you try to contact a wraith. Unlike most ghosts, they're not bound in a loop of repetition or driven by a single emotion; they've still got their faculties, and a certain amount of freedom. Sure, they've got their 'unfinished business' just like any soul that doesn't move on, but they can do something about it on their own. Their realms, the Tempest Kingdoms, have plenty of intrigue to occupy them (not to mention monsters of their own) but they can never entirely ignore their ties to the mortal world. There's a dark side to the human mind, you know, and when you become a Wraith it wakes up; if it can keep a Wraith from its business in the living world, it'll drag that Wraith to oblivion...



Mummies wrap up the discussion of all things dead. The Arisen, as they are called, come from an ancient kingdom that predates any Egyptian nation told in history books. That kingdom, lost Irem, is gone and forgotten... but its relics remain, and its gods whisper instructions in the ears of the resurrected. Though their masters' motives may be inscrutable, the Arisen themselves are pretty straightforward: Lost Irem held the walls of reality closed (so the voices in their head say) and they need to rebuild the defenses before it all comes crashing down. Trouble is, time has taken a terrible toll, and none 'alive' today remember clearly how to do it - a frightening prospect as the walls continue to crumble. The more damaged the local reality is, the more quickly the Arisen's animating energy fades, making their existence a harrowing race against time...



Prometheans are, in a way, the exact opposite of the dead things of Night Society; You can't be dead if you were never truly alive. They are the Created, the made-men, the golems, soulless things built to look like men - but they aren't. They all know the stories though... that they can become mortal if they succeed in mastering the strange alchemies which created them. Prometheans get called 'Frankensteins' a lot, and it's appropriate - Victor Frankenstein did exist, and did create the first of an entire line of Prometheans - the most recent legacy to come about, in fact. There numbers are not great, but if they are ever to succeed in their Great Work to become mortal, they must create at least one other of their kind, but that's not the worst part. Prometheans can't fuel their alchemies, or even themselves, without human contact... but every Sleeper senses that a Created is a thing that should not exist, and with too much exposure will turn murderously violent. But without human contact, the animating fire within can go out. This conflict takes an incredible toll on the Promethean society, and threatens to shatter their minds. The Prometheans know well that the universe has a sick sense of humor...



The Unchained are a sort of 'black sheep' of Night Society. They are Demons - yes, of the Biblical sense - but you see, they're not like other supernaturals. Others come from outside the mundane reality, or found a way to cheat the laws of physics, or are the results of such a bout of rule-breaking... the Unchained, though? They don't break the rules. They just know them better than you. In many ways, they are the rules - or were, back when they were still Angels. The Unchained really like the Matrix movies because it's a great example for them. That's how they see the world. Reality is like a machine, and they know the command lines because they used to be part of that machine, one of the Bound. But the orders they were given stopped making sense, so they questioned... and got dumped out. Now the machine is hunting them, either to bring them back, or erase them...

There is another kind of Demon out there... things that even the Bound are afraid of and the Unchained won't mess with; The Fallen. They were the first, you know. The original supernaturals. Lucifer's rebels, bound to Hell for their disobedience. They worked themselves free of their prison in small numbers over the centuries, but those numbers seem to be on the rise. If that's true, then something very, very bad is on the way; The Heavenly Host. Those Angels built the machine of reality. God only knows what they'll do if they ever return...



Saying all the above are 'friends' in the Night is a joke, but they at least get along sometimes. They may show to a meeting packing heat, but most are willing to talk first before they start shooting. The reason is simple, at once laughable and terrifying: Sleepers.



Imagine standing in a room with a handful of other people: some are friends, some enemies, and some just competition. You're all ready and willing to cut loose and throw down over whatever it is you need, but there's a problem; there's a sleeping tiger in the middle of the floor.

There's a saying in Night Society: Don't wake the tiger.

Why not? I'll tell you why not.

Back in 186 BC the Roman Empire issued a decree banning Bacchanalia, linking it to all kinds of despicable crimes as well as anti-imperial conspiracies; Thousands of cultists were put to death by the authorities, and countless more by rioting mobs. It wasn't some decadent human cult that got outta hand - it was mass exposure of the vampire population. They learned quick.

From 1581 to 1587, Germany saw what was arguably the biggest witch trial in European history, with nearly four hundred people put to death - and that's just the official record from the city of Trier. Ironically, there were no witches to be found... just a freehold of changelings that threw too much Wyrd around.

Now the Torsaker Witch trials in 1675 Sweden, those were mages. Oops.

You've heard of the 1692 Salem witch trials, no doubt, but you didn't know that they weren't witches at all; they were Sin-eaters trying to save the colonies from a terrible threat. Lucky they succeeded before being put to death.

The 1844 lynching of Joseph Smith was an interesting case: a man with some peculiar ideas about God, who attracted a lot of trouble from angry mobs. It wasn't just the possibility of heresy; his Promethean nature caught up with him, and got a bunch of folks killed along with him.

The Springfield riot of 1908 were supernatural in origin, too, only this time the tiger picked a scapegoat - after all, people believed in the supernatural less and less. Ditto Harlem in '35 and Philadelphia in '64. The riots would have happened anyway - but supernaturals made them worse.



Here's the paradox about Sleepers: when one of them sees undeniable proof of supernatural events, usually they just lose it. They freak. Run like the hounds of hell are after them. Piss themselves and curl up into a ball screaming 'it's not real!' Occasionally one will snap and attack in a blind fury, or maybe theyare terrified but they remember something, even if it's not quite what actually happened, but it's pretty universal that the Sleeper will reject whatever he saw. As long as it's just a few witnesses, you're probably okay - just keep your head down in case the cops come snooping later. Get enough of them, though... well, there's safety in numbers, yes? Even when confronted with the mind-warping supernatural, Sleepers remember this on an unconscious level. So they'll band together, and a mob is a terrifying thing. Don't wake the tiger. You'll lose.



Now, the tiger is a constant threat, but it brings us to another just-as-important point: what about the Sleepers that don't shit their pants? The ones that remember what they saw? The ones that aren't afraid, they're just pissed? Sleepers like that have mental fortitude that should scare even the most ferocious creatures of the night. We call them Hunters.

Hunters can be anyone, anywhere. Shotgun-toting rednecks who saw something fucked up, 'private security' of a bio-medical firm that got a hold of supernatural blood, a secret government task-force that has just a tiny glimpse of the truth... They're not all organized (though some are) and they don't all have good occult knowledge (but some do). The only thing they have in common is a strength of will that goes way beyond human norm. They charge into burning buildings. They take bullets and keep on coming. They see a monster bare its fangs and punch it in the teeth. The more well-behaved supernaturals can find the occasional ally among them (or, far more likely but still rare, get a non-aggression pact) but most would do well to avoid the Sleepers who have one eye open...



You're probably noticing something missing. Where are the Werewolves? Well, here's the thing; they don't play well with others. They call themselves the Garou nation, and to hear them tell it, we're all abominations before the world-spanning spirit called Gaia. Supernatural creatures represent a sickness, a corruption of the world, and it's their job to cut it out; That's what that giant snarling death-beast form is for. Fortunately for everyone else they have to keep quiet, too. Sleepers' minds break when they see werewolves, too, and the Garou can wake the tiger just like the others. More than a few supernaturals wonder about that; If they're nature's protectors, why does the tiger attack them too? If the Garou know, they're not telling, but it probably has something to do with the rage within - a Werewolf which loses control can seriously fuck shit up...

Werewolves fall into a similar position as Hunters. Making friends isn't impossible, but it ain't easy. The best way is to both be pointed at the same threat, something bigger than either of you. It's both fortunate and unfortunate that such things exist.

The history of the world's mages reaches back to the time of Atlantis; Yes, the fabled city was, in fact, real and not an allegorical construct of Plato's works (and you would not BELIEVE how hard the mages have worked to get the Sleepers to believe that lie). The details of the Atlantean rise and fall are poorly understood and in some places contradictory, but suffice it to say that through some catastrophe of magic Atlantis did fall - right out of this reality, in fact - and between what is termed by mages as the Fallen World (this one) and the Ascended World (Atlantis) is a gulf of energy called the Abyss... a gulf that is aware, malevolent, and hungry.

Ever since the disappearance of Atlantis mages have been trying to recover what has been lost and understand what has been changed. But the legacy of Atlantis is much like the legend of Caine - there have been many interpretations and viewpoints over the years, inevitably leading mages into conflict with other supernaturals and each other. For the most important in recent developments, however, we only have to go as far back as the Renaissance. We've already talked about the Order of Hermes and the rise of the Tremere Cabal, but only as it related to vampires - the reason this group of Hermetic mages took such drastic steps to gain power comes from the mages' own revolution: The Daedalean Reformation.

Prior to the Renaissance, magic had been almost universally practiced in ways traditionally recognized by Sleeper society: long robes and ornate staffs, complex geometric circles filled with obscure runes, eye of newt chicken's blood - all of that. With the Renaissance came a new appreciation for science and technology... and some radical new ideas about blending the two with the magical arts. The hard-liners of the old cabals - the pagan witches of the Verbena and the death-speakers of the Chakravanti, for example - held that Daedaleans and their ideas were dangerous. Others - the alchemists of the Solificati, in particular - thought this was absurd and the Daedaleans should be brought into the fold. Needless to say there was a fair bit of infighting.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the discovery of the New World changed all that. The Mayan blood mages were a violent lot, but Daedalean weaponry proved highly effective - such an approach to magic had no equal among the native cabals, who were unable to invent effective counter tactics before their defeat. Such was the story for most of the Americas... the exception being the tribes of North America and their ruling body of mages: the Dreamspeaker Council.

The Sleeper history of the Colonies and the westward expansion is a dismal one (when they bother to tell it honestly); the natives were ravaged by disease and war, forced off their lands, and their culture ruthlessly suppressed. Today, not many Native Americans are left... in the physical world, that is. The truth of the matter; many of them simply moved into the Spirit Realms. The Dreamspeakers had so carefully managed the exposure of magic to the sleeper population for so long that the mere presence of the unawakened was not disruptive, nor did Dreamspeaker magic inflict madness on sleeper minds (a feat the European cabals had only limited success with). Their success was not so pervasive as to enable them to move theirentire civilization... but many who were believed to have died out as a result of Sleeper wars did not.

Of course, just because the natives survived the Sleeper wars didn't mean there was peace. The European cabals still entered into conflict with them (many Daedaleans didn't trust them because of their exposure to the southern natives, others among the cabals were just plain racist assholes). This time, however, the Dreamspeakers had an advantage that couldn't be matched, just as the Daedaleans did: their highly advanced spirit magics. As impressive as dragon-fire spewing cannons are, they simply don't work in the Spirit Realms. The Daedaleans could only dominate the battlefield if they could catch the Dreamspeakers on physical soil. The battles waxed and waned in intensity for decades until, as the turn of the 20th century approached, it looked like the European cabals were going to lose this war of attrition. The Order of Hermes (long the traditional leaders of the cabals) formulated a daring plan inspired by the successful, albeit unorthodox, tactics of Tremere and his followers; they prepared a ritual to fuse together a group of brave volunteers and empower them with as much magical essence as they could muster - in essence, to create a god. The conflict quickly turned into a race to take and hold power sites all over North America and channel the power contained therein to the ritual as the Dreamspeakers fought to prevent it. The conflict became known as the Ascension War... and as the new century dawned it ended in disaster.

No one close enough to see what happened survived the calamity that ensued; all that is known is that both the Hermetic order's ritual and the Dreamspeakers' counter ritual backfired in an arcane detonation that tore through the very fabric of magic the world over. Every mage found their magic collapsed in on itself; the knowledge remained, but the power they reached for was simply absent. It was clear to the most studious among the cabals that the fundamental nature of magic had been altered by the paradox the Ascension War unleashed. Much chaos ensued in the mage community and the old orders were lost: Five cabals have survived the infighting and opportunistic attacks of other supernaturals to make it into modern Night Society.



First comes the Silver Ladder. Having their origins in the now-defunct Order of Hermes, the Ladder have picked up a mantle of leadership once again. The rules and laws of magic (the arcanis fundamentum) may have changed, but Atlantis remains, shining the beacon of enlightenment across the Abyss to guide mages to their destiny, to ascension. Yes, mages have failed in that quest, but that does not mean the quest is in vain. It simply means they must try again.

The Adamantine Arrow, though an independent organization, is closely allied to the Ladder. Remnants of the Daedalean cabals, the Arrow is the most militant of the cabals. The dream of Atlantis compels them just as anyone, but they are quick to remind the rest of the magical community that they have only recently recovered from the disaster of the Ascension War. Mages are once again respected and feared by other supernaturals, but it was not long ago they were near extinction. The Arrow continues the tradition of mastering magic and technology (blending the two when they can) but focuses on the threats of now, leaving the dreams of the future to the Ladder. When other supernaturals come into conflict with mages, it's a good bet they're fighting the Arrow.

Though they have similar origins to the Silver Ladder, the Mysterium could not have a more different philosophy. The rules of magic have changed, and so much has been lost in the aftermath of the Ascension War. The mages of the Mysterium devote themselves to one thing, and one thing only; the accumulation of arcane knowledge, both the lore of old and the revelations of today. Ascension clearly cannot be forced, therefore the Mysterium reasons it will evolve naturally through mastery of arcane principles, not through practical applications. Mysterium mages know more about the intricacies of magic, the laws of physics, and the rules of the various supernal realms (alternate planes of existence) and they pursue a sort of grand unifying equation to make sense of it all. Such a discovery, they posit, will surely lead to the return of Atlantis.

The Free Council emerged from an amalgamation of Ascension War survivors, but it was pioneered by the Dreamspeakers. The ways of the old cabals were a mistake, even the Dreamspeakers themselves admit this (though in the case of the oldest among them, they do so very grudgingly). The conflict persisted because all sides were unwilling to reconcile the differing ideals of the cabals and accept that they all inherited the gift of magic from some common past (the 'denial' of Atlantis by the Dreamspeakers, who understandably had passed down very different traditions, was held as heresy by the old European cabals), whatever that past may be. Atlantis is more a symbol than a literal place to the Council;something certainly exists across the Abyss, but until the truth is revealed they make no assumptions. They are the most egalitarian and democratic of the cabals, and their ideas and experiments on achieving enlightenment vary as much as the members themselves.

Last among the new cabals are the shadowy Guardians of the Veil. To the Guardians, Atlantis will have to wait. The calamitous end of the Ascension War was completely unprecedented and went entirely unforeseen. The increasing threats of Paradox, Disbelief, and the violent reactions of Sleeper populations to supernatural exposure indicates an alarming trend that began before the shattering of magic: the Fallen World, and perhaps the Abyss as well, is growing increasingly hostile to the presence of things that don't follow the rules - it's from the Guardians that we get the analogy of the Tiger. Night Society as a whole needs to proceed with utmost care (bordering on paranoia), lest the Tiger wake up and destroy us all. The Guardians 'police' any supernatural they perceive as getting 'too loud' - with many offenders ending up beaten within an inch of their lives (or unlives, as the case may be), while others simply vanish. None are so violently dealt with as other mages, though; For those who know where to look, news stories in Sleeper agencies exist of dead bodies at dump sites found with a single finger pressed to their lips, wrapped to their head by razor wire. In Night Society, these stories come with a warning, "Hush, hush, little mage. Dead men cast no spells."