ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

We had come to seek the Raging God, but so far I had mostly seen an incomprehensible jumble of places, pictures, sounds and ideas. Inviolata called it the purity of experience and said it was really just a new way of seeing the world that was much truer than the ordinary one-dimensional perspective. Personally I thought she made it up as she went along, just as she made up the way we traveled by mumbling free associations and throwing her bible pages into the air. Of course she was insane, and I was just as mad — but at least she made the Things go away.

Suddenly she stopped, whirled around towards me and shouted "Glory be to those who build their houses on sand!". She threw a couple of fluttering pages at me, and the view cleared. We were standing in a benighted desert. A breathtaking place: rocks and dunes stretching forever beneath a sky so clear and sharp that the stars felt painful, and lit up by flickering auroras — red, green, purple.

"So, is this the home of the Raging God?" I asked, somewhat relieved by the normality of the place. Inviolata just laughed and began to skip across the dunes. Tired, hungry and afraid that They would appear even here (are there any places safe from Them?) I followed her.

Just a few hundred meters away, we suddenly came upon a structure. One moment I was limping after the maniac Inviolata in an empty valley, and the next we were standing just before a huge cubical building. The stone was black as space itself, dimly reflecting the auroras and our shadows in a way that it shouldn't. I think I would have noticed it long before we got this close. Inviolata didn't care, she just burst out in some kind of benediction and began to search along its side.

The entrance was a big block of solid steel, cold to the touch and with no hinges. In the middle there was a depression shaped like a hand. Inviolata asked me, "So, do you really want to behold the face of the Raging God, my son? Do you want to know the fire in the equations?"

"Will it drive away the Things?"

"No, you will drive them away. Once you have awakened the wild power in yourself — by basking in the fire of God". She pressed her hand into the depression and ripples spread over the metal. She stepped into it as if it was a liquid, leaving me alone. I hesitated just for a moment, already hearing the wailing of the Things from the desert. Fearful, I put my hand into the depression (it fit perfectly), and felt something inside me move, dissolving the strength of the steel. Holding my breath I stepped through the cold metal liquid...

...and emerged from a liquid metal rectangle set in the face of a jet- black cubical building standing in a desert. The stones were identical, even our tracks in the sand looked exactly like on the other side. But the sky, oh the sky! It was fire and light and power. A wild and untameable power raging against the tame reality outside. It was beyond life, sentience, stability. Pure divinity. I fell to my knees beside Inviolata to worship the Raging God.

Marauders are not known for their religiosity, so the Temple comes as a much greater surprise to everyone who encounters it.

The Temple is located in the High Umbra, said to lie not far from the Shard realm of Forces. From the outside, the Temple is a forbidding cube of black stone, standing in an immense nighttime desert lit by constant auroras. Its surface seems to reflect shadows a few seconds after they have occurred, warping them and giving them a life of their own.

The Entrance is a simple rectangular opening flanked by two heavy pillars. The door is a single massive steel slab absolutely impossible to move without superhuman strength. At the center there is a depression, a handprint in the metal surrounded by concentric circles. If visitors place their hands there, all Paradox is suddenly drained and the steel becomes liquid for them, allowing entrance.

The interior is also the exterior — visitors emerge from a rippling steel surface set in the face of a cubical temple identical to the first, set in a desert landscape similar to the landscape on the outside (inside?). But here it is day. The entire sky burns with a fierce light as if every part of it was the sun. The light twists and turns, erupts and reforms in unimaginable ways, sometimes sending down streamers of power that almost hit the ground before arching back.

The desert is hotter than any earthly desert, and farther away from the Temple it becomes more and more impassable and dangerous. It is as if it moved closer to the raging sky, and the stones begin to reflect its fierceness. The Presence of the Raging God becomes ever stronger.

The Raging God is the supreme manifestation of the wildness of existence, the intensity of being and non-being that cannot be tamed or limited. It has no form, no goal, no allegiance, just sheer Will. It is the blazing sky of the Temple-desert, the sharpness of the rocks, the hate and love between the sky and ground. Anyone in the realm will begin to reflect it, becoming wild and powerful.

Many Marauders have made pilgrimages to the Temple to gaze with awe upon the manifestation of the God. Few could resist the temptation to wander farther out into the desert. Some died, but several reached their destination and merged with the God at the horizon in ecstatic union.

Story Ideas

A group of Marauders have had a vision uniting their Quiets: they will set the Raging God free from its temple. Together they begin to travel to the realm and to seek for the means to permanently open the portal between the inside and outside.

Disturbing new images and ideas are appearing in rock videos, suggesting to knowledgeable (high Cosmology) mages that someone (or something) in the music industry is aware of the Raging God. Who? And why? Is someone trying to create a true cult of the God? Or is it a Syndicate plot to make money on its power, rendering it a saleable symbol for middle-class teenage rebellion?

A Master needs rocks infused with the essence of the Raging God for his supreme ritual. Guess who is sent to fetch them as payment for their education? Right.