Everything

Despite the apparent laws of physics, Reality often is fundamentally irrational. Vampires, spirits, gods, and magick did not simply fade away because a few textbooks overruled their existence. Certain things can never be quantified or proven, so large portions of the material world remain in an either/ or state, with malleable reality and greater margins for coincidence.

Game-wise, the following contested territories have more flexibility with regards to mystic practices and miracles of faith. Technology, on the other hand, might be considered more vulgar in certain areas; a haunted house, for instance, could throw Paradox at technomagick and accept witchcraft as perfectly normal.

Localized realities extend from small areas (a house, a field, an underpass) to communities of several hundred people (a small town) or areas of several dozen miles. Higher populations – or really low ones – tend to lead a localized reality toward either Primal or Technocratic extremes. This localized reality syndrome allows mages to create Sanctums and Chantries, whereas Sleepers spread faiths, build churches, maintain cultural traditions, and use art, education, and technology to change their world in small yet significant ways.

Urban Decay: When Entropy settles into the cracks of man’s creativity, the apparent solidity of tech-based reality breaks down. Slums, ruins, abandoned factories, derelict homes, disaster areas, urban warzones, the old parts of town… anyone who spends time in such areas realizes how precarious reality can be. Even the biggest, most modern cities on Earth have places where a shaman, houngan, priest, or witch can still get the Old Ways to work despite the laws of scientific technology.

Irrationality Zones: That’s even more true in places where rationality fades: haunted houses, sacred spaces, holy lands, SF conventions, religious revivals, battlegrounds, murder sites… places where the reasonable façade of scientific progress gives way to primal chaos or counter-rationality. In such irrationality zones, mystic Arts and outrageous coincidences have the upper hand over science-based technologies.

The Technocracy isn’t blind to this effect… and has, in fact, taken it into account. One of the reasons that flamboyant cyborgs and Men in Black make such effective agents in such places is because those figures hold archetypal powers that go beyond mere science. The Black Suits, in particular, share a symbolic mystique that puts them far outside the bounds of rational technology and into the realm of myth. The apparently supernatural techniques of such agents remain coincidental in certain types of irrationality zones. After all, those agents are essentially walking legends with their own sorts of magick to command.

Unlike the Mystic Regions mentioned below, an irrationality zone can be wildly scientific too. A steampunk workshop or robotics lab could seem so counter-rational that it shuts down both magick and conventional scientific principles. On a related note, that irrationality might bring down a curtain of disbelief so thick that the people inside it refuse to accept anything outside their chosen view, even when a rational person would admit the evidence of her senses. (For details, see Types of Quiet: Denial, pp. 557-558.)

Borderlands and Crossings: Certain times and places slip between the rational and irrational worlds. Crossroads, holidays, dawn and dusk, the edge of a forest, mirrors, fogs, cliffs or caves, even the threshold of a house – they’re transitions between states of being. For mages who understand them, such places can be avenues for coincidence as well. A witch at midnight on Halloween, for example, can get away with things that Paradox would strike her down for doing in broad daylight on either side of that holiday. A Storyteller may consider certain thresholds in time and space to be more open to coincidence than usual.

Rural Areas: The further you get from the big city, the more primal and irrational the world appears to become. Farmlands, frontiers, distant houses, small towns in the middle of nowhere… such places tend to follow the rules of the people who live there. And if those people believe in ghosts or miracles or Babe the Blue Ox, well, then the local reality will probably accommodate that view of the world. The big-city stranger with his cell phone and Internet might just find that those things don’t work ’round here; meanwhile, the faith-healing preacher- man really can perform miracles when he acts according to God’s Will. For that reason, among others, mystic mages often move to rural areas where the culture suits their own beliefs.

Regions of Faith: The greatest showdown of the 21st century isn’t the battle between magick and technology but the divide between religious faith and material rationalism. In this fight, the boundaries of coincidence and vulgar magick depend less upon whether or not something is “magical” than upon whether or not people accept it within their religious views. People all over this world can, and do, accept fundamentally (and fundamentalist) irrational ideas that contradict pure science.

And so, a mage who shares the dominant culture’s faith has an edge over one who does not.

The Digital Web: Although it’s not the wild-west zone it once was, the Digital Web still features a dynamic flux of tech and magick. As the section in Chapter Nine explains, the Web considers certain types of Effects and practices to be perfectly normal, whereas it shuts down other kinds of magick with Whiteouts and other quirks. No one truly owns Web-based reality, though lots of people still like to think they do. In truth, the Web is very much its own universe, with laws and principles that apply only within its expanse.

High-Resonance/ Synergy Zones: Certain places have a different “feel” than others. For various reasons, such places have a type of energy about them. Las Vegas has a high-roller atmosphere that encourages risks and excess; Auschwitz holds a misery that every living thing can feel. The Resonance and Synergy sidebar describes various types of Resonance and Synergy that a mage can either use or contradict. As mentioned above, a player who works with that energy will have an easier time than one who goes against it.

Realms: Each Realm is a reality unto itself. The physics of one Realm might differ considerably from the principles of other Realms, each Realm following the essence of its specific place. A Chinese Hell, an animistic Nature Realm, the Machine-Haven Autocthonia, and the Umbral Realm of Forces all run by very different rules, and none of them bears much resemblance to Earth’s reality.

That’s all especially true of Horizon Realms – places specifically created by mages to suit a particular paradigm. The Hermetic stronghold Doissetep obviously favored Hermetic Arts; the Copernicus Research Center catered almost exclusively to Void Engineer techniques. Within those regions, reality is what its creators make it to be, accepting and rejecting magicks according to those creators’ wishes. Opposing magicks are almost always vulgar, and the appropriate Arts remain coincidental.

Realms also tend to reflect a lot of Resonance, echoing the deeds and natures of their primary inhabitants. In addition to the reality-zoning that makes rival forms of magick vulgar, trespassers also find that their magick is more difficult to cast in such places. A Man in Black, for example, would be operating at a disadvantage in a Cult of Ecstasy Horizon Realm like the Balador Pleasure Dome; even if his Mind-based Procedures are essentially coincidental, his Authoritarian Resonance goes against the spirit of that place. As described above, folks who go against the flow suffer penalties, whereas those who go with it reduce the difficulties for their Effects.