Magick, according to your beliefs, does not come from you – it comes from your god, and you’ve broken faith with him. Until you can shake this crisis of faith, perhaps atoning for your perceived misdeeds, your Spheres remain stuck at Rank 1 – potent enough to perceive the presence of Divinity around you, limited enough to remind you that you have failed.

This Flaw (which is more likely to be “awarded” to you through the course of the game than it is to be something you purchased during character creation, though of course you can start off a new character in such a crisis) represents the power of faith in your character’s life – a power so strong that it can interfere with your abilities as a mage. Ironically, the strength of that faith denies you the ability to use magick when you feel that your faith is lacking. From a game-system standpoint, you are denying yourself the ability to access your magick because you believe that your magick comes from a source you have betrayed. Your mage believes that his god is cutting him off from magick, though… and, considering that the player is pretty much the “god” of a gaming character, in a meta sort of way, that’s true.

Although a character with this Flaw can pursue any sort of spiri­ tual focus, his paradigm and practice must be oriented toward religious devotion. You could be a shaman or a priest, a Goddess-bound witch, a spiritual scientist, even an Infernalist whose hell-spawned powers flow from a damnation pact. Obviously, this Flaw means nothing to an atheist, or to someone with nebulously casual beliefs. Only a mage who believes deeply in some greater power can believe that she has so much to lose from a sudden lack of faith.

In order to discard this Flaw, the player must pay a five-point “fine” in order to buy off the Trait itself, and roleplay out a “dark night of the soul” sort of Seeking in which he faces his sins and rededicates himself to his divine Path. The character, meanwhile, must first undergo an atonement that suits his belief system and the “sin” that invoked this punishment. Maybe he needs to take strict vows within a re­ ligious order… or take on even stricter ones if he had already broken his previous set of vows. Did he violate a taboo? Then he must undergo ritual purification, often by way of fasting, marathons of prayer, and some traditionally torturous ordeals. A mage who has sworn never to kill, and yet who has killed someone, may be forced to make significant restitutions to the murdered person’s family. Traditional atonements in­ clude pilgrimages, vision quests, oaths of poverty, appalling

mortifications (self-torture, radical fasting, mutilation, and so forth), and other difficult paths back to the favor of one’s god. Regardless of the creed and specific atonements, however, the mage must spend endless hours in intensive prayer. A faithless soul, after all, must find his way back to the presence of his god… typically on his knees.