ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

Whenever someone attempts to shape reality one of three things will usually happen.

1. The mage successfully shapes reality. No problem.
2. The mage fails to shape reality. The spell fizzles. Bad for the mage but not catastrophic.
3. The mage shapes reality wrong. This is really bad.

If this happens too often reality unravels and we're all screwed. However, deep within the mind of every human being lies an unconscious, knee-jerk reaction to stop reality from unwinding. That instinctual reaction is what creates Paradox.

A lot of people think that Paradox is linked to quintessence but that there is some difference between them. In reality Paradox is just quintessence with a really nasty resonance. The Paradox resonance is induced by the mage himself into the quintessence flowing through his pattern to prevent him from botching reality itself.

Hence Paradox existed even in mythic times, just to a lesser extent. The Paradox reaction of Sleepers is in addition to the mage's own instinctual drive to protect the integrity of reality. The Technocracy has simply manipulated a natural drive to maintain reality and turned it into a fear of any type of reality shaping.

Paradox spirits, backlash and flaws are all fueled by the Paradox-tainted quintessence. Just like other resonances, the tainted quintessence can only be used for the effects it's geared toward.

This theory also covers the Marauder phenomenon. Marauders don't get Paradox because they have figured out how to stop that unconscious reaction within themselves that generates it. Once they figure out how to do that it's easy to deal with the relatively smaller Paradox that's sent to them by Sleepers. Unfortunately, unhooking that reaction also really screws you up in the head. It disconnects you from the rest of humanity and in some sense from the natural order of the universe. The bad things that happen to people when they're around Marauders are actually effects from the Marauder screwing up reality. Thus Marauders are a much bigger threat than previously thought. A few Marauders here and there ripping up the fabric of reality isn't a major threat but the effects accumulate. Eventually some Marauder somewhere will tear a big hole out of reality itself and when that happens the Technocracy and the Nephandi are going to look like relatively small problems.