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Marauders see the world slightly differently from normal mages. Normal mages tend to view it in self-consistent way, mainly based on their Traditions and personal experiences. Things happen for a reason, and although it sometimes can be hard to find the true causes, they exist somewhere. A mage can manipulate reality and get predictable changes in response, as long as the mage performs his magick correctly. Marauders doesn't agree. They don't demand that reality should make any sense or behave in any predictable pattern. It is meaningless to speculate on why something happens, although there are sometimes apparent explanations. A marauder wills changes into reality, which may or may not respond as the marauder wants. Sometimes the result is completely different, sometimes it's more useful than the effect the mage had originally intended.
This alternative way of seeing things makes marauders very different from normal mages. First, their perspective makes them appear completely insane to everybody. All normal humans (including mages) presuppose that things should make at least some sense, not just behave as they want. If a rock would start to fly, it must have been caused by something (like an act of magick). A marauder just accepts the fact.
Since marauders bend reality just like ordinary mages, their acceptance gives things in reality much greater freedom than usual, and rocks may start to fly in the vicinity of a powerful marauder just for the fun of it. These random effects are not very controllable, but tends to reflect the current way the marauder sees things. If a marauder is angry, violent effects will appear (windows breaking, nasty insects appearing and things catching fire), and if the marauder is happy, entertaining effects will tend to appear (voices sounding funny, inanimate objects moving and unusual people appearing). These are actually the same type of subconscious effects which surround many mages, albeit much stronger and vulgar. Hermetic mages tend to cause hermetic coincidences around them, Trenchcoaters spread their gloom with them and everything becomes rational and efficient around technomancers.
The most famous power of the marauders is their reputed immunity to paradox. This is in fact not true. Marauders suffers as much Paradox as normal mages, but the main difference is how they deal with it. Normal mages fear it, and try to control it. Marauders just accept it as a way of life and doesn't care what form it takes. Illogical events are just a way of life for them, so the occasional paradox flaw or backlash isn't that unusual. This acceptance paradoxically makes marauders much safer from Paradox. Most of the time, the Paradox will not hurt the marauder, it will ground in the surroundings causing even more odd changes. When it attacks the marauder, it will not really hurt him, just warp him even more. Marauders doesn't try to distinguish Quiet and Paradox Realms from normal "reality", they deal with Paradox Spirits just as if they were normal spirits. Occasional backlashes are a part of life, and can be enjoyed. In fact, many marauders are "paradox-junkies", attracting out great amounts of paradox and then releasing it just to see what happens.
Another effect of the marauder mentality is that the Spheres doesn't work in a normal way. The effects which appear often doesn't match the effects the mage intended (marauders doesn't expect them to). They often have about the same result, and frequently do things in very warped ways. This seems to be dependent on how deep into Quiet the marauder is, as a general rule the effects become more weird the more paradox he has accumulated. A marauder deep into Quiet who creates a lightening strike against somebody may create a swarm of rainbow colored confetti, which strikes the target and kills him.
Marauder countermagick also works differently from normal. Marauders doesn't resist magick like most mages do, they seek to warp it before it hits them. Their countermagick, if it succeeds, will simply turn the effect into something else (at least partially). If a mage attacks a marauder with a electric attack, the marauder might respond with countermagick using Life. If the marauder succeeds, the electric discharge manifests as a pigeon. A partial success will create something in between, like a coruscating pigeon striking the marauder.
Marauder Rotes (a contradiction in terms, I know...):
Anti-Reality (Prime 4): This is essentially the exact opposite of
anti-magick (see BoS for details). The marauder dissolves the supporting
threads of the local Tapestry, allowing reality to flow more freely and
adding excess quintessence to it. This creates a local region of dynamic
reality, where the normal laws are temporarily suspended. A kind of
anti-paradox zone, where vulgar magick may become coincidental. However,
the rote itself is very vulgar. It will attract Paradox Spirits
as honey attracts bees. But if the spirits enter the area, they become
influenced by the local paradigm and may begin to behave in unexpected
ways. In fact, they might start defending the local rules instead
for a short time, in opposition to their unchanged brethren. Very
confusing.
Another side-effect is that the dynamic reality and free quintessence makes random events occur. This ranges from weak effects like having a glass coincidentally break or insects behaving strangely when the rote hasn't turned reality very dynamic, over more dramatic effects like potential fire becoming real or spirits manifesting to truly bizarre and dangerous events like objects changing shape, breaches of the Gauntlet and reality behaving like a surrealist painting.
[Each success will make vulgar effects of less or equal levels coincidental. For example, with 3 successes all magick up to level 3 in any sphere is coincidental, while Life 4 would still be vulgar. It will also allow random effects up to this level, but they are completely uncontrollable.]
Domino Fall (Entropy 3 Prime 2): The marauder draws more randomness and weirdness into the local area, empowering them. Unlikely things start to happen, people get straight flushes all the time, long lost relatives pay visits, bullets ricochet along truly absurd trajectories and so on. This doesn't necessarily cause any vulgar effects at first, but quite soon the number of improbabilities builds up, and the domino effect causes a massive backlash.
Call Forth the Forgotten (Life 5, Prime 2, Spirit 2): see Book of Shadows, page 147. Summons a mythical being.
Transformation Rotes (Prime 4, Sphere 1, Sphere 2/3/5): Marauders excel in changing the forms of things, just to demonstrate the possibilities. This is both highly vulgar and entertaining. The marauder simply dissolves the pattern of something old and creates a new pattern for it, while keeping the essence unchanged. This works mainly on the pattern spheres, but enterprising marauders have experimented with turning people into patterns of randomness or spatial relationships.
The new pattern will still retain the essence of its previous form. Radioactivity turned into Life will appear as scorpions, air turned into life will become birds or butterflies. Gravity turned into matter will become lead, while Gravity turned into life will become an Elephant or something heavy. And so on.
[To transform a pattern of one type to another, the marauder must perceive it (using level 1 of the sphere), take it apart using Prime 4 and rebuild it using Prime 2 and the new pattern-sphere (Matter 2/4, Life 3, Forces 3/5). The number of successes will tell how well the transformation went and how stable the new pattern is. Most changed patterns don't survive very well.]
Summon Being of Change (Spirit 2): This rote summons one type of spirit, known just as the Beings of Change. They don't have any visible appearance, but can be seen due to their effects. The Beings are roughly shaped like thin surfaces, which sweep through matter as if it wasn't there. As they pass through things, they change them. Weak beings just change small things like orientation and placement, like making things appear in other places or turned upside down. More powerful beings change inanimate objects into new objects, like turning rocks into piles of paper or pencils into glasses of whiskey. After that, the beings can start to change living beings slightly, or add new things. Ants turn into butterflies, electronic components appear. Very powerful beings can twist living and dead things into new shapes, add new beings or truly bizarre dead matter. The most powerful beings twist not only the body, but the mind. They can change personalities and appearances, create completely unreal things and erase things with equal ease.
[Each success will summon a more powerful being, or several smaller ones. The number denotes the level of spheres the beings can emulate. However, they cannot change the amount of quintessence in reality, just what structures it is tied into. To create something, something else have to go. The beings will not last very long, since paradox quickly dissolves them. However, they are not influenced by any form of Prime or Pattern magick, which they simply transform into another form.]
Up to the Marauder PageAnders Sandberg / nv91-asa@nada.kth.se