Instruments

Certain folks extend their Will through the actions of other people. By managing and directing those other people, that sort of influence can turn human resources into instruments of magick. Now, we’re not talking about transforming code-monkeys into flying monkeys… although that, too, is possible, albeit really vulgar and a major violation of HR policies. Instead, an optional rule may – at the Storyteller’s discretion – allow certain Mage characters to use people as an instrument of their Arts.

A specialty of Syndicate bosses (see Convention Book: Syndicate, pps. 71-72) and other mages who favor social acumen and hypereconomics, the Management and Human Resources instrument gets a pack of underlings to perform your magick for you. Generally, these employees and devotees are Sleepers, not mages in the Awakened sense. What they do is totally within normal human limitations. Properly directed, though, they can change Consensus Reality in subtle yet significant ways: buying shares to tip the stock market, posting videos that promote an idea, revealing a theory or concept that tilts the Consensus through popular appeal, spreading rumors that destroy a target’s reputation, using skills (medicine, transportation, fighting, finance) that the mage herself does not possess, and other everyday activities that have larger outcomes than people realize. It’s a “just say the word and it’s done” sort of magick that parlays social influence into altered reality.

As an instrument, management and human resources demands time, patience, and connections. The average schmo cannot snap his fingers and have a magical cabbie deliver him instantly from New York to DC. Ah – but a manager with clout can call Transport Services and have a helicopter waiting nearby within minutes; two or three hours later, he’s gone from his executive suite in Manhattan to the steps of the Supreme Court, where an escort’s waiting to usher him into a meeting with the judges who’ll decide a case at the heart of U.S law… and thus, reality is changed. In game terms, the player could say that he used management as a tool of the dominion practice, focusing his belief in political power to perform a Correspondence 3/ Mind 3 Effect. No Paradox, little risk – that mage plays by Reality’s rules, at the cost of a bit of time, indirect action, and some socially leveraged power.

(No, that mage does not use magick to conjure a helicopter and pilot – he’s using resources that already exist. For details, see the sidebar Axis of Coincidence, p. 533.)

Social power is essential to this option. A mage using management and human resources needs to have at least three dots in at least two of the following Backgrounds, plus a concept that allows him to boss people around and expect them to obey:

Necessary Management Background Traits

• Allies (to do favors)

• Backup (to deploy underlings)

• Contacts (to utilize social leverage)

• Cult (as per Backup)

• Fame (to get folks to help you)

• Influence (pretty obvious)

• Rank (reflects command and control)

• Resources (because when money talks, people jump)

• Retainers (that’s what they’re for, after all)

• Spies (to perform the supposedly impossible)

Those underlings cannot do things that normal people could not accomplish. Turning folks into frogs is beyond this instrument, although turning them into fish food is totally do-able. Management takes time, too – you can say “from my lips to God’s ears,” but that “god” still acts on a human schedule. This rule’s not meant to allow players to craft lawn-gnome armies or blow up cities with a few well-placed words. Still, social power is a form of magick, and its effects (and Effects) within our world can be miraculous.