Mage Setting

The world of the Awakened is not what it was a bit over two years ago. About that time, mages around the world noticed things becoming … unstable. Randomly, workings would either succeed beyond the Mage’s wildest hopes, or produce very poor or even no results. Over the course of six months this continued and worsened. Paradox seemed to be having the same sorts of variances, as though the Consensus was in a state of constant flux.

Horizon Realms became unstable. Some unanchored themselves, forever adrift and unreachable Some simply disappeared. And some, in fashions not even fully understood by the highest ranking mages left alive detonated, destroying their nodes with them.

Needless to say, the situation became dire very quickly. There was massive fighting between the Technocratic Union and the Traditions, internecine fights among factions within the Traditions, and within the Union. Very shortly the true cause of the problem became clear. The Horizon was collapsing, and nothing anyone could do could stop it.

Today, the Horizon and all it’s realms are gone. The few rumors that have returned from people who have reached where the Horizon once existed report nothing but a massive void. In all the fighting, most of the world’s mages - both Traditions and Union - are gone. There are perhaps fifty to one hundred Tradition Masters left alive, and three hundred or so Adepts. As far as is known, the Union has suffered similar losses.

The current day is a time of growth and rebuilding for the Traditions. The Masters are quietly reworking some of the fundamental ways the Traditions are governed (such as they are) to better fit the modern day, and to better function in the world-that-is. Nodes have become even more extraordinarily rare than they were before. The death toll across the world was huge. In all there are less than one hundred thousand mages known to be alive in the world today, compared with the over one million just two and a half years ago, and the losses have been dramatically top-heavy.

Locally, a Euthanatos Master named Stefan Michaelsson moved to San Diego at the behest of the Council of Nine about a year ago and established þekkingheim, or Knowledge-Home - a Chantry open to all comers so long as they will agree to help with the work of keeping the Chantry going in whatever way they can, and agree to respect all other members. þekkingheim is based out of a mansion on the coast in La Jolla, but has seemingly adjacent space somewhere in downtown San Diego as well.

It’s said that Stefan may know more about what happened in the Horizon, but if so, the enigmatic Master has yet to share what he knows.