Everything

We’re in it for the paycheck. Mages and their organizations can pay decent wages, especially if you’re hired by a deep-pock­ ets group like the Order of Hermes, certain Ecstatic sects, or those Syndicate ops who believe in merit-based pay for their subordinates. Hence, many low-level consors — groundskeep­ ers, housekeepers, lab assistants, office personnel — and some higher-level ones, such as bodyguards, trainers, specialized technicians, and executive assistants, perform their duties for a paycheck and perhaps the benefits that come with working for a mage.

In most regards, the pay-for-play associate holds the most straightforward role. He’s there for the money, and though other forms of loyalty and affection might creep in around the edges, the consor sticks around in order to pay his rent. It’s a decent gig if you can get it, too: flexible hours, lots of excitement, intriguing work environments, and a decent pay package so long as you’re not hiring out to some mangy street magus. Such work is rarely boring, especially if it deals with maintaining hypertech, grooming Bygone critters, or polishing the furniture in some wealthy wizard’s manor house. Of course, it’s got its challenges, too, with all those metaphysical weirdos forever trying to convert you to their way of thinking, and their rivals occasionally blowing down the doors. For folks with the patience to deal with endless evangelism and periodic violence, however, there are plenty

of rewards involved, especially if you’re working for some witch whose medical plan puts modern medicine to shame.

Professional consors, thanks to their mercenary motiva­ tions, tend to receive less respect from their employers than do consors who truly believe in the cause. A cranky mage can be literally the boss from hell, too, especially if the associate’s unlucky enough to be working for a Nephandus. Syndicate execs are ruthless, Ecstatic ones unpredictable, and Thanatoic ones downright frightening. If combat cyborgs start shooting, the hired help ranks among the lowest of priorities as far as the cyborg’s targets are concerned. A primary reason for the high salaries such consors receive comes from the potential hazards involved. Coupled with a need for absolute discretion (You can’t exactly tell your friends about the average day at work), a mage’s life exerts heavy demands upon her hired help.

Unlike most other consors, professionals don’t take on more duties than they’re paid to handle. They might sweep your sanctum, but don’t ask them to help you cast a spell. In terms of vulgar magick or extravagant hypertech, low-level professionals are considered to be witnesses; high-level ones are used to such things, though, so they’re not witnesses in that sense of the word. Unless their job specifically requires loyalty under fire, and pays accordingly, these consors will head for the hills at the first sign of violence. Their devotion to the job and their employers depends significantly upon each individual’s personality and the benefits or liabilities involved with that gig. A shaman who slaps her employees around for minor infractions can’t count on their loyalty, though an abusive executive who pays the best salaries in town can get away with quite a bit of crap. It’s in a mage’s best interests, then, to pay her crew as well as possible, treat them with respect, and keep ‘em out of harm’s way. That’s no assurance, naturally, that a paid employee won’t sell out his boss for a better offer, but it reduces the possibility that it’ll happen easily.

A person who’ll work in the eccentric world of the Awakened tends to have flexible views about reality, ethics, and law. After all, most of the stuff the employee’s liable to see and do will violate at least two of the average Sleeper’s perceptions about those three things. That employee will have at least one skill of suitable value to his employer, too, and should at least seem trustworthy. He probably won’t have to share his employer’s paradigm, although mutual beliefs make a lot of things easier for everyone involved. In return, he’ll most likely earn a respectable pay grade, possibly with benefits… which, in places where such things grow increasingly precious, is compensation perhaps worth killing for.

Suggested Traits: Even low-level functionaries need valuable skills before they’ll be of any use to a mage. Cooking, Academics, Etiquette, Crafts, Art, Finance, Law, Gunsmith, Technology, Cultural Savvy, Pilot, Seduction, Vice… any sort of Ability will do so long as it’s something a mage (or group of mages) will benefit from having around the house. Professional consors should have at least three dots in the

Abilities

for which they’ve been hired — anything less is wasting the employer’s time. Upper-level hirelings might have a few Merits, probably Flaws as well, and Background Traits that add value to their services. Every so often, an employer might give an unskilled employee a ground-level job in order to help that person out. Given the risks any hired consor both faces and brings to their employer simply by existing, however, that person will need to earn his keep soon if he wants to hold that job… especially if he’d prefer not to leave the job feet first.

Suggested Templates: At the very least, a professional consor would rate as a Human Resource. Upper-tier specialists are more like Hardcases, Professional Badasses, Extraordinary Scientists, and Subculture Devotees with skills appropriate to the gig. With very few exceptions, such hirelings are unAwakened humans, though the occasional ghoul or Night-Folk employee might find her way onto the payroll of an especially flush magus.

Jean-Pierre Lompo

Born in Mali, Jean-Pierre and his parents left the country in the late 1980s for Burkina Faso. They almost fled during the coup that led to the rise of Blaise Compaoré, but through some deals made they were able to stabilize their lives for a time. Jean-Pierre’s father was a Sufi, and his mother a Catholic who ultimately joined a convent during the youth’s teenage years. Thus, Jean-Pierre grew up in a split household, a divided neighborhood, and a country with high hopes but persistent internal and external tensions. Following the example set by his father, Jean-Pierre sought the love in those around him; he spoke calmly, and quietly, and listened with pure respect and joy to anyone and everyone he interacted with. Thanks to his near-inhuman patience, he had the simple ability to make those around him feel wanted and understood, and he used that gift to bring people together. He couldn’t always make them work with one another, of course; sometimes the rift between them was too strong. Even so, Jean-Pierre was able to mend many fences, and even as a young man he was renowned as a fair judge and peacemaker.

Ultimately, Quakers schooled him, and though he never accepted their faith he did accept their mission of bringing and sustaining peace. When they offered him a scholarship to attend school, first in England and then in the United States, he jumped at the offer. In the course of three years, he completed a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and a master’s in International Peace and Conflict Resolution. During his last course in that program, a professor approached Jean-Pierre to assist him with a particularly difficult project. Two men wished to meet to begin a dialogue, but their people had a long and difficult history, fraught with persistent frustrations and long-festering wounds. Jean-Pierre was, at that time, unfamiliar with the Ngoma and the Solificati, but felt that he was up to the task of bringing these two trailblazers of peace to the table.

Despite a pervasive aura of secrecy between the negotia­ tor and his employers, Jean-Pierre eventually pieced together the sense that these two groups had a shared history with a

third party. That third party had left both groups to fend for themselves, and much of their hostility toward one another probably should have been directed toward this “Order” his dossiers mentioned. Jean-Pierre’s first action, then, involved getting the men to describe their view of their people’s per­ sonal histories… at which point he asked them to plot their commonalities, their places of overlap, the times they worked with one another and not in opposition. The meeting was fruitful, and Jean-Pierre — though unAwakened himself — stands near the center of the budding Disparate Alliance.

A thin man of Afro-Indian ancestry, Jean-Pierre leans close when he is listening to those he speaks with. He has a habit of listening intently for many minutes, and then releasing a quick breath with a “Yes!” spoken in the appropriate language. His clothes often seem carelessly thrown together because he’s more worried about the people around him than about how he appears. Since the first meeting with the representatives of the Ngoma and the Solificati, he’s been sent around the world by his mentor and employer in the Society of Friends to build bridges in this new Alliance. Some of the particulars about who these people are still escape him, but Jean-Pierre has realized that this Alliance involves important and powerful people from various marginalized societies and cultures. He knows they seek a greater peace — a world that’s better for all people, one open, at least in theory, to new possibilities

and freedom. For now, then, he quietly observes and creates a space for the deepening dialogue between these groups. Jean-Pierre excels at bringing people together, and though he remains unAwakened in the metaphysical sense of that word, his current project may write a new chapter in the history of the magickal world.