Rotes & Procedures

When setting up an essentially permanent portal between locations, a wise mage prepares those locations to accept a powerful, vulgar act of magick. Whenever possible, he sets them up as Sanctum or Chantry Background spaces, so that the ensuing Effects aren’t too vulgar.

As mentioned elsewhere, we’re using the word “magick” generically. Portals between Technocratic Constructs use the same game-systems as portals between mystic fortresses; the focuses are different but the rules are the same. Remember, though, that a mystic portal into a Technocratic lab is as vulgar as a Dimensional Science/ Data-based portal into a mystic grove would be.

Consider that the basic 10 successes establish the permanent gateway. Beyond that, the player needs to add the necessary successes from the Teleportation Locations chart. Making a portal to a very familiar location, then, is easy (two additional successes); making one to a place you’ve only heard about (five additional successes) is much, much harder.

Story-wise, a portal could be an elaborately crafted passageway, shaped from stones and encrusted with runes. Conversely, it could also be utterly innocuous – a normal door or window that leads somewhere other than where you might think it should lead.

Most portals feature built-in wards. For details, see the

Warding section, under Summoning, Binding, Bargaining, and Warding, pp. 95-104.

In perhaps the ultimate feat of transportation, a Master-level mage can bring her destination to her present location. This is mighty vulgar juju, disrupting the very fabric of time and space. Still, if time and space seem like illusions to a mage, then such disruption is more a matter of logistics than of possibility.

Although one of the cornerstones of Correspondence theory suggests that all places are one place, and one of the key elements of reality-hacking (see Mage 20, Chapter Ten, p. 581) maintains that everything is data – and thus subject to change – overt demonstrations of those theories remain highly vulgar. Moving a mountain to Mohammad is a miracle that defies all conventional laws of physics, and while such deeds are possible, there’s a cost:

• With the one exception described below, all of the following feats are vulgar, and they usually involve witnesses too. The minimum difficulty for such miracles is 6 (Sphere Rank 5 + 4 if there are no witnesses, -3 if every possible modifier gets used), and is most likely to be 7 or more.

• For such feats, Paradox inflicts five points under the best circumstances. A botched roll inflicts at least six points, perhaps even double that amount. For especially vivid distortions of space-time physics, like the folding city-scape in the film Inception, the Storyteller might double the usual amount of Paradox, if only because reality has shifted so radically for so many people at once. A mage who attempts to twist physics to this extreme will have a lot to answer for, and so – Marauders aside – very few mages even try.

• According to Mage 20’s Magickal Feats chart, the following acts count as Outlandish or Godlike feats – 10 successes or more required. Rituals, then, are usually essential. A mage who can “bend” the distance between Hong Kong and Hollywood is a formidable character. Mages who’ve lived long enough to perform such deeds, however, are usually smart enough to do them only in complete secrecy.

• Unlike many other feats, large spatial-distortion spells are not considered coincidental within a Sanctum because they usually reach beyond that Sanctum’s protected space. The aforementioned exception would involve turning your Sanctum into your own private Escher print, limiting the warped physics to a self-confined area.

• As per the usual rules, a permanent warp in space requires at least 10 successes. The Storyteller may decide that a really gross one – like sticking the Washington Monument in the middle of Dubai – would require 20 successes or more, with a walloping amount of Paradox to boot.