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From: fbausch@mail.sas.upenn.edu (Frederick J Bausch)
Newsgroups: alt.games.whitewolf
Subject: A new theory of paradox
Date: 7 Sep 1994 15:57:14 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
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Get ready kids, here's my theory of the week on paradox. I've had about 10
different ideas over the past year so bear with me.
Basically it comes down to this: 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. I mean really bad.
If this happens too often reality unravels and we're all fucked.
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
quint 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 "emotion" 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 quint. Just like other resonances the tainted quint 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.

Well that's it. Reactions, positive and negative, are more than welcomed.


--
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Father Festus Hammertoe, First Minister of the Fried Chicken synod, holder
of Empress Gabor's Sacred Speculum, Treasurer of the Andy Williams Farted
For You Society, and Official Dogkeeper for the Municipality of Tindalos
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The original king of late night,         -fbausch@sas.upenn.edu
F. Jesse Bausch                          -fjb@ssc.sas.upenn.edu
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