Everything

Some things are almost always vulgar, no matter who’s doing them, where they’re doing them, or how they’re being done. In game terms, acts that violate these Earthly Foundations contradict the baseline reality for Earth.

• Sudden Large Alterations of Physical and Metaphysical Mass or Space: Stacking places on top of one another, disintegrating large structures, changing large masses of physical matter into large emissions of energy (i.e., explosions), radical transformations of one physical form into another (that is, people into stone or vampires into lawn chairs)… such things disrupt Reality on a fundamental level. Even when performed by technology, such large-scale alterations are never truly safe. The horrific consequences of nuclear detonation could be seen as manifestations of the Paradox Effect; so could environmental pollution, climate change, organ rejection, electromagnetic pulses, cancer, and other aftershocks of technological disruption. The bigger the Effect, the larger the consequences… and no matter who you are or how you work your magicks, no mage acts without consequences.

• Obvious violations of normal physical laws: Water running uphill, people flying around, free-floating molecules abruptly manifesting as solid mass, turtles suddenly moving at cheetah speed… such gross alterations of Earth’s primary physical laws tend to incur Paradox. Certain long-term projects – like airplanes, flying ointments, and martial arts – might be able to bend those principles a bit, but the act of investing that much time, energy, and devotion to a task still recognizes that those principles exist. Simply ignoring them – say, by jumping off a roof while believing you can fly – is a good way to get your ass kicked, either by Paradox (if you do fly) or by physics (if you don’t).

• Cross-dimensional rifts: Whether you see the Gauntlet as a spiritual barrier or the membrane between dimensional spaces, it clearly exists for a reason. When folks go through it, Reality responds. The Avatar Storm metaplot could be seen as one huge Paradox backlash – one so vast that every mage alive felt the shock. Even if the Avatar Storm never happened in your chronicle, it’s a slap in the face to Reality at large when a person opens gates between the worlds.

• Messing with the time stream: Although perceptions of time are fluid (a fact that allows mages to peer backwards or forwards through time), the actual actions that occur in time cannot be altered easily. Time-trained mages know that such alterations are possible, but those actions are never coincidental unless Reality itself performs them… and even then, there are consequences from that alteration.