ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

Vampires are infamous as ancient, undying beings but with the powers at their command, it would seem that mages should be equally immune to aging and death. There are several Spheres of magick that could grant immunity to age. If this is the case, why aren't there more ancient mages running around and influencing the world?

There are several simple effects that slow or even halt aging. Any of Life 3, Entropy 4, Time 4, or a Time 3/Life 1 Rote will do. These Rotes are well known to many Traditions and if a mage cannot perform the magick herself, she is likely to know someone who can. Most of these Rotes are preventative in nature, keeping the mage at her current age. Rotes designed to reverse aging and return a mage to youth are correspondingly more difficult.

Some Traditions, the Dreamspeakers and the Euthanatos in particular, find this sort of magick to be an abomination. They council against it, saying it weakens the Avatar and prevents the mage's eventual Ascension. This does not prevent individual members of these Traditions from succumbing to temptation as they feel the encroaching weakness of age. The Technocracy also has an official policy against such magick but exceptions are made for its more powerful and influential members.

Immortality is in fact a trap for mages, and a subtle one. Initially, anti-aging magick can be made coincidental, but as the mage grows older, this becomes increasingly difficult. Once the mage's actual age exceeds his physiological age by several decades, immortality magick is always vulgar. Unaging mages almost always have some lingering Paradox in their Pattern (about a point per decade).

Once the mage exceeds her natural lifespan, having lived about a century, she finds that her very existence becomes Paradoxical. Paradox backlashes of any kind tend to try to correct this state, by rapidly aging the mage a few decades. The mages can usually survive this kind of punishment, but it can take some time to recover. Such mages tend to become extremely paranoid about Paradox. They spend more and more of their time in the Near Umbra where their magick is coincidental, venturing to Earth only on important occasions.

Once a mage reaches two centuries in age, he is such an aberration that he can suffer damage from Unbelief while in the physical world. Any Paradox backlash, no matter how small, will attack the mage's most Paradoxical aspect: his age. Even backlashes from other nearby mages can effect him. Paradox will always revert the mage to his natural state, that is, a corpse dead for more than a hundred years. Even the Near Umbra is too dangerous for such an aged mage, and he is forced to dwell in the Deep Umbra or in specially prepared Horizon Realms. A bicentennial mage will only venture to the physical world under the most dire circumstances, for a single mistake will mean his instant death.

Thus, as a mage remains young for more unnatural lengths of time, he is slowly forced further from the physical world deeper into the Umbra. The process is so gradual that few mages realize what is happening until it is too late. One day the mage realizes that she is so far removed from the Realm that she is no longer a player in the war for reality. Her existence is restricted to some spiritual half-life.

Some such mages struggle on, refusing to recognize the futility of their existence, and working through younger mages whom they mentor in Horizon Realms. Others give up their physical form, fade and truly become spirits. A few slay themselves, in the hope that they will reincarnate within the Realm and once more walk the path to Ascension.

The more practiced immortal magi seek to circumvent the Paradox trap. They use innumerable tricks to fool Paradox and remain within physical reality. Many of those tricks involve the darker sorts of magick, such as body-stealing or deals with infernal spirits. Even these mages are only buying time. Paradox is not a fool that can be confused with parlor magick and it will find the mage in the end.