Merits & Flaws

A powerful entity is watching over you, providing advice, assistance, and occasional protection when things get ugly. Such aid is beyond your control (perhaps even beyond your comprehension) and while this “angel” has certainly supported your best interests thus far, there could be a terrible price-tag attached to all this help. You think your angel is of the better sort, but seriously – have you read the lore about angels? Sweetness and light are not among their more noted characteristics. From a Merit perspective, this Trait provides occasional help from the Storyteller. The nature of said help is entirely up to the Storyteller, although it should be beneficial in at least the short term. The help in question should also suit the nature of the mage and her paradigm, although that suitability might turn

out to be rather ironic – an actual angel, for example, watching

over an Infernalist mage, or a nature spirit protecting an avowed Technocrat. The helpful party may be waiting for the mage to “see the light,” honoring an ancient vow to the mage’s ancestors, leading the protected party toward a new and unexpected Path, or perhaps setting him up for a final revelation that could be more terrible than the things the angel has been driving away.

From a Storyteller standpoint, we recommend playing up the mysterious and potentially frightening nature of this guardian “angel.” Legendary angels tend to be notoriously bloody in their work, and can scare the living hell of mortals even when their intentions are technically righteous. As a Storyteller, determine who is helping the mage out, and why; that information, of course, can be for you to know and your players to wonder about. Whenever the angel manifests, play up the implacable weirdness of such entities, couching their appearances in eerie symbolism and elemental phenomena (winds, fires, earthquakes, and so forth) whenever they appear. (For suggestions, see Mage 20, pp. 356-359 and 363-367.)

Conversely, the angel could be an apparently mundane person or animal who just happens to unleash hell on the mage’s behalf. The animal spirits, minions, and elementals described in Mage 20, Appendix I, represent the more sedate end of the guardian angel spectrum; stranger beings could in­ clude protoplasmic globs, shimmering energies, horrific beasts, and unnamable things that serve powers best undreamed of. Even if the angel is exactly that – a messenger from the Biblical God – such messengers can be pretty frightening. Check out Ezekiel 1-10, Genesis 3, Revelations 4, and other awe-inspiring manifestations. If the Powers That Be behind this guardian angel are more along the lines of Pagan gods or cosmic horrors, this unearthly Merit could unleash some rather scary things…