Rotes & Procedures

Smart time-steppers employ an Anchor Point: a Time 4 Effect that allows the temporal traveler to return to her original place in time. Without an anchor point, any trip in time is a

one-way trip, ending wherever the Storyteller chooses to place the wandering mage.

The nature of that anchor point will depend, of course, upon the mage and her particular focus. Many time-travelers employ clocks, timers, and other sorts of alarms, setting them to establish the anchor point. Others chant mantras, meditate upon icons or situations, concentrate their intentions upon objects or locations, stage events (songs, theatrical events, or other memorable occurrences) that they can look back on to forward to, and so on. Regardless of the anchor point, the mage who sets it up can – again, with Time 4 – return to that place in time, assuming it still exists and that the mage can reach it.

As an adjunct to the Anchor Point Effect, a sufficiently skilled mage can add Correspondence 4 to the spell, allowing her to return to it from across great distances of physical space. It’s vulgar, of course, to step in and out of time and space. If the anchor has been set up in a secluded place, a Sanctum, or some similarly secluded area, the effects of Paradox are less likely to boot that magus in the teeth when she steps back to the established anchor point.

Like all other forms of temporal disruption, an anchor point may be spotted by a mage with Time 1 or better. Smart travelers, then, make an effort to hide their anchor points from Time-savvy rivals.