Everything

Awakened mages are quite rare, so many mystic groups include “hedge magicians” among their membership. Certain groups, like the Bata’a and Sisters of Hippolyta, don’t even distinguish between Awakened and unAwakened practitioners — one member is essentially as good as any other. In the wake of the Technocracy’s supposed victory, many practitioners lost sight of any distinction at all between mages and sorcerers. If a person knew some sort of magic… well then, that person knew magic. End of story.

In game terms, of course, the difference is simple, yet significant: An Awakened mage has the improvisational powers of the Spheres, which allow him a flexibility that his unAwakened peers cannot match; a hedge magician or sorcerer uses a set of predetermined Paths and spells that have specific and defined effects. The characters themselves might not recognize this difference, but the game systems work very differently.

While skillful Awakened mages may pull off complex feats with little preparation, hedge wizards employ complex, specific rituals in order to cast their arts. Those specifics depend upon the occult practices of the sorcerer in question, and range throughout the cultural traditions of human magic. Unlike their Awakened cousins, however, hedge wizards cannot alter or discard their tools and rituals at a significant level of understanding. For them, those tools and rituals reflect centuries-old cultural traditions, and although such beliefs might allow them to manipulate “reality” to a certain, limited degree, it does not confer the metaphysical potential of Awakened Arts.

Suggested Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3, Charisma, 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 2, Perception 3, Intelligence 4, Wits 3

Suggested Abilities: Academics 3, Alertness 2, Awareness 3, Brawl 1, Computer 2, Drive 1, Enigmas 1, Esoterica 3, Firearms 1, Investigation 2, Occult 4, Science 1, Technology 1

Willpower: 5

Health Levels: OK, ‒1, ‒1, ‒2, ‒2, ‒5, Incapacitated

Suggested Powers: The rules for the “static magic” Paths employed by hedge magicians and sorcerers are too extensive to present in this sourcebook; for details about them, see both editions of World of Darkness: Sorcerer. In simple Mage terms, assume that hedge magicians can perform between four and 10 rituals that reproduce magical feats given on Mage 20’s “Common Magickal Effects” chart (pp. 508-510). Each spell duplicates the capabilities of a single Sphere-based Effect of between one and four dots. Every Effect a hedge magician knows requires him to perform some sort of ritual or use a magically enchanted artifact. Yet despite their limitations, such characters can be dangerous and powerful even without the fluidity of Sphere magick.

Image: The trappings of our magician’s faith or practice probably seem obvious to anyone who know what to look for. In some cases, he might be flamboyant enough to wear them openly: ritual robes, occult symbols, mystic T-shirt designs, and so forth.

Roleplaying Notes: Through hard study, work, and discipline, you’ve refined your Arts. Let no one tell you they’re neither real nor worthy of the title “mage.”

Shivante Harris

Baltimore is not an up-and-coming town; in fact, it’s rather shocking it hasn’t collapsed in on itself just yet. Shivante was born to a middle-class Black American family in the city’s suburbs. They thought Shivante was going places in life, and Shivante thought so too. When she came out, her family essentially shrugged their shoulders and accepted her as she is. Dad even asked if that would stop her from becoming a doctor like she’d always wanted. It didn’t, and it wouldn’t, and she put her nose to the grindstone and graduated, with honors, from Johns Hopkins University. Was it easy? No, she worked hard and dealt with shit from people who should have known better. If it hadn’t been for the car accident, she probably would have stayed on track. These things happen, though, and no amount of determined planning could have prepared Shivante for a broken back, shattered legs, and hands that were crushed beyond a surgeon’s capabilities to fix.

All that work. All that life. All for, what seemed like back then, nothing.

Why, Shivante wondered as she lay in her hospital bed, didn’t I just fucking die that day?

“Get up,” a voice told her on an especially awful night. “You kidding?” Shivante’s voice held obvious bitterness. “Do you see this mess?”

“Yeah,” the voice replied. “I do. And you’ve never let anything else stop you before, so don’t you dare give up on me now.”

The pain fled. In its place, she felt a clear, clean sense of strength. She flexed her legs, and they worked just fine. She sat up and looked around. The hospital room, now dark, flickered with candlelight. She breathed the scent of sweet incense. Her chest no longer hurt. At the side of her bed, in the shadows, sat a large, dreadlocked Black man, a top hat cocked on his head, his face painted with black, white,

and red designs. “You still ready to make your own life?” he asked Shivante.

She was. And she has. Although she’s not Awakened in the sense that mages prize so deeply (not yet, anyway), Shivante Harris has become a skilled practitioner of Candomblé. The creed’s emphasis upon fulfilling destiny regardless of all obstacles appeals to her, and she retains her healing vocation. Since the night her mentor Jean-Marcos fixed her broken body, she’s put everything she has behind learning the Arts of the Orisha and using that knowledge to help other folks whose lives get sidetracked by random disasters. You can’t heal everyone, she knows, and some folks flat out don’t deserve a second chance. For those who do, however, Shivante offers them the choice Jean-Marcos gave her all those years ago: Stay in the bed lamenting your fate, or else get your life back and see how much more you can become.

A tall, composed, and striking woman with broad shoulders, strong cheekbones, long hair, and a sad-yet-stunning grin, Shivante works these days as an herbalist and physical therapist at Restoration Center, an alternative-medicine clinic for folks who cannot afford high-end treatment. Her face still bears scars from the accident, and she wears them as a reminder of both what her Arts can do and of what so many people must endure without her healing powers. Her bared arms show faint scars from reconstructive surgery, plus one tattoo of a winged scarab beetle and another of a growing tree. For obvious reasons, she cloaks her practices in alternative-medical jargon mixed with the western medicine she learned at Johns Hopkins, and then works her healing Arts in among modern medical techniques that seem especially effective when she performs them. Shivante’s personality combines her dogged willfulness with a genuine sympathy she learned from her helpless condition in the hospital bed. At home or at work, she almost always wears something white — a blouse, slacks, a shirt, a headscarf — and a necklace of pearls to reflect her commitment to the healing path and her devotion to the Orisha and Loa, especially her patrons Erinle, Obatala, and Oshun. (Detailed in Chapter Four.) In game terms, she practices the hedge-magic Paths of Ephemera, Healing, Divination, Herbalism / Brewing, and — for extreme situations only — Summoning, Binding, and Warding, employing the ritual practices of Medicine Work, Invigoration, and Voudon wrapped up in medical technology so as not to scare the mundanes. No, Baltimore might not be an up-and-coming town, but for Shivante and others like her, there’s almost always time for a second chance at life.