Life

The Living Form

Specialties: Transformation, Shapeshifting, Healing, Improvement, Creation, Cloning, Evolution, Injury

Life grows, transforming over time until some final incident renders it into inert matter. Mages who specialize in Life, therefore, master the complex principles of organic transformation. Beginning with the simplest Patterns, he evolves his understanding toward godlike ends. A true Master,

therefore, may end life, but he may also create it from pure energy (that is, from Quintessence) or turn it, literally, to dust.

Whereas other Spheres grapple with abstract theories, Life focuses on literally bone-deep facts. As a Life mage knows, however, those facts remain susceptible to change. In conjunction with other Pattern Spheres (Forces, Matter), life-forms can be changed into elements, turned to stone or metal, or else created from such substances. Even without additional Spheres, however, Life allows a mage to transmute those life-forms in startling, even apparently impossible ways.

As a whole, this Sphere embraces everything that has living cells within itself, even if that object is technically dead. As a general rule, assume that anything that’s still alive enough to transplant, preserve, or cultivate is governed by Life Arts. If it’s inert enough to be irrevocably dead, then it’s governed by Matter. Thus, preserved blood and organs, still-living plants, live-culture cheese, and so forth contain Life, but corpses, cotton fibers, withered organs, or cut wood become Matter.

When used to inflict or repair damage, Life deals out aggravated damage because it works directly upon the Patterns of living things. As a result, an organism that has been radically altered by Life magick (given new limbs or other characteristics that are not part of the creature’s original Pattern) suffers Pattern bleeding: an inexorable Quintessence leak that inflicts one level of lethal damage per day. Unless the caster uses Prime magick to refill that Pattern with fresh energy, or alters that Pattern permanently, the damage continues until the subject dies.

Given their ability to heal illness, age, and harm, Life-skilled mages enjoy great health and vibrant beauty. Truly accomplished ones understand the mutable potential of organic existence and work to correct – or exploit – its ever-changing states.

• Sense Life Basic Life knowledge allows a person to read the presence and health of nearby life-forms. With such knowledge, the mage can discern a living being’s age, sex, and overall health. By combining those perceptions with other Spheres, he can also sense distant organisms (Correspondence 2), guess their potential for sickness or misfortune (Entropy 1), perceive them through past or future states (Time 2), or read the streams of Quintessence that bind them to the universe (Prime 1).

● Sense Life

Basic Life knowledge allows a person to read the presence and health of nearby life-forms. With such knowledge, the mage can discern a living being’s age, sex, and overall health. By combining those perceptions with other Spheres, he can also sense distant organisms (Correspondence 2), guess their potential for sickness or misfortune (Entropy 1), perceive them through past or future states (Time 2), or read the streams of Quintessence that bind them to the universe (Prime 1).

●● Alter Simple Life-Forms/ Heal Self

Simple organisms – viruses, mollusks, insects, plants, etc. – become clay in the mage’s hands. He learns to adjust their Patterns (giving a crab wings, for example), and heal or kill them. Although he can’t yet transmute them into other states of being, he can cause flowers to bloom or wither, help trees bear fruit, and so on. Focusing on his own Pattern, he can also heal himself or perform small alterations (hair color, skin tone, height, weight, and so on) to his basic form.

●●● Transform Simple Life-Forms/ Alter Self/ Heal Others

Advanced understanding allows the mage to radically alter simple organisms (turning a tree inside-out); transform