ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

A Sceptic is a person who is firmly rooted in consensual reality. This is not just a superficial intellectual connection, but a deep subconscious link it. In a way they can be called deep-Sleepers, Sleepers who are more asleep than others. What makes them dangerous for the Traditions is that they are so intensely anti-magickal. While normal Sleepers just hinder magick somewhat, Sceptics actively counteract it. If a mage tries to cast some magick in the vicinity of a Sceptic, the sceptic will work as a wandering Paradox domain.

For example, a Sceptic with a rating of three will roll three dice against any magick in the vicinity, and each '1' will counteract one success for the mage, and may even make cause a botch. Magick becomes much harder around them, and neither the mage nor the Sceptic will know why. Since Sceptics will almost never experience magick or other supernatural phenomena, they will be much more convinced that such things do not exist.

The Technocracy knows about Sceptics and are actively searching for them. The Technocracy has created organizations with Sceptics in them to actively disprove magick, parapsychology, fraudulent science and other "non-tech" things. A typical example is CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, a well renowned organization with many respected scientists in its ranks. It studies and tries to debunk parapsychology and pseudoscience. The Sceptics in it effectively damp out any possible effects from the investigated phenomena. Since the claims cannot be proven, the organization dismisses the phenomena as fraud, sloppy experimentation or other normal explanations. The technomancers also use it to find Orphans or other magickal activity.

Another use for Sceptics is of course "bodyguards" to important people and places, to protect them from magickal attacks. Important technomancer allies may have one or two Sceptics nearby, often without their (or the Sceptics') knowledge.