Mage the Awakening - The Silver Ladder.pdf - Mage - The Awakening - RPG

ladder

By Stephen DiPesa, Jess Hartley, John Newman, Alex Scokel, Malcolm Sheppard,

THe Silver

Ethan Skemp and John Snead

T he C age is The L ion ’ s h earT

He dreams like a Master, in layers as deep and strong

as the rings of an eon-old tree. Every part of him is

divided into wood-clad cells. Each one contains a vi-

sion, a secret and a plan. His mind’s eye bores through

concentric chambers with the ease of an impossibly

sharp, white-hot steel drill, down to a rotten hollow

in the pale heartwood of his mind. Behind the inal

layer a brick road and sputtering streetlights frame a

bleeding young man who writhes on broken bones.

Bright blotter paper crawls from his left hand at the

behest of a sickly wind. Printed bears and skulls: LSD.

It’s why the bikers beat him so badly, to what should

have been death, if not for magic.

The wounded man also dreams. He was Mark Long

when it all looked like this, in ’68. He is the Nemean,

the Master, who crouches to inspect his younger self’s

face.

They’re not alone.

Two guests slip away early. They trade frowns all

the way to the car. She traces a rune on her bracelet

before she gets in. He hits the gas, turns to her and

says, “That went well. I always wanted to make en-

emies in Asia.”

“They’re not our enemies. They’re his .”

“He’s Hierarch.”

“Not for long. We’ll meet at the Emerald Scroll. I

think tonight was the last straw. He was pointlessly r u d e .

Did you talk to the Arhats? Scrolls, Artifacts, money –

they’d share it all for the sake of a foothold here. Call

the committee. We’ve got to use this opportunity now

before he bribes and threatens it away.”

• • •

“See him? See your irst and greatest vision, ripped

f r o m t h e g o d s u n d e r t h e s h a d o w o f d e a t h? I t ’s a n a n c i e n t

custom, to attain Awakening with a foot in the grave.”

The voice is bodiless and mufled. There’s a familiar

quality to it that irritates the Nemean.

He looks around but can see nothing out of place.

It was a cold night back in ’68 so he dreams himself

up a thick wool robe.

“Grave or gutter, I guess,” he says. “This is your

third visit, isn’t it? Good. There’s always a revelation

third time around. Like you said, it’s the custom. It’s

the way dreams work.”

“Yeah, it’s about dreams. It’s time to revisit this

one: being Mark, helpless after they hurt you, blindly

climbing your Watchtower to escape and rebuild

yourself.”

“‘Blindly?’ Sure. Add ‘stupidly.’ Mention ‘luck’ in

there. I didn’t earn Awakening. It just happened on

its own. I searched, did the witchcraft trip. Mother

Nature, free love — it was all wrong.

“That’s the trouble, Voice.” The Nemean frowns

for want of a proper name. “I cast the Stymphalian

from Hierarchy and took his seat as easy as you please.

I trapped a werewolf chieftain in the Empty House,

even stole a scale from the Aeon Snake. But it means

nothing ; I didn’t win my Awakening with thought and

will. The drug-abusing, delusional hippie down there

just fell into it, running from his voices, from the

consequences of dropping out. I can’t accept unearned

rewards any more than I can give them.”

The voice laughs. “So that’s why you’re a terrible

Hierarch.”

• • •

“Fuck the Buddha.”

In Cormant House, silence hits like a cleaver. Mages

dodge its arc, away from the meeting table, but drop

their conversations to listen in. At one end the monks,

mages from an obscure, well-heeled Asian Legacy,

discipline their expressions, but a few tics hit after the

Nemean’s insult. They shift their chairs and smooth

their robes to buy a bit of thinking time. One of them

breathes his way to a serene smile and opens his mouth

to talk, but the Nemean chops the opportunity down

with one of his big hands.

“Make no mistake; I’m not saying this in an ironic,

mystical ‘kill the Buddha on the road’ vein. I want you

to understand that I hate your religion.”

The monk stops smiling.

“When the Buddha Sakyamuni was born, a sage

p r o p h e s i e d t h a t h e ’d g r o w u p e i t h e r t o b e a g r e a t t e a c h e r

or to rule the world as a ‘wheel-turning king,’” says the

Nemean. “Priest or emperor? What a stupid question,

to force a man to make himself a slave to win moral

approval. My answer to your proposal is no. You won’t

be allowed to set up your racket…”

“Monastery!” blurts the interrupted monk.

“Shut up. Ax, show them out. Drag them all the

way back to China if you have to.”

Anacaona de Xaragua helps the oldest monk to

his feet.

“I’m an

excellent Hierarch if you’re

wea k.”

The cityscape flexes

like a cold-stiffened mus-

cle; street wreckage wraps

around a patch of nothing,

clasping it in chipped bricks,

mist and car parts. He feels resistance as

his will grabs something human-shaped

but invisible.

“Got you,” says

t h e N e m e a n .

“Now it’s time for

your story, Voice.”

• • •

The Emerald Scroll’s full of big stained-

glass tarot cards. Nobody sits beneath the

To w e r. D a v y J o n e s a l w a y s t a l k s a b o u t g e t t i n g r i d

of the table beneath it but he never does. Choice

matters. If you can’t choose doom (or its image) you can’t

choose luck, either. Even trivial choices — symbols,

seats in very exclusive clubs — matter

to the Awakened. The conspirators

mutter over their drinks and hover at

a few different spots, but in the end they shove

a few extra chairs under Judgment. They hunch over a

little table with bent necks and furtive waves: the clichéd

body language of guilt.

The Nemean feels sorry for them but pulls up a chair just

the same. Khumeia smiles at him — well, at her cabal-

mate Thanatos, as far as she knows. The Nemean copied

his body for the occasion, matching mole for mole as

precisely as Life’s senses allowed. He checks his hands and

can ind no errors. He closes his eyes and follows a small thread of his

crystallized desire. At the other end, the real Thanatos sleeps in a folded

sheet of Shadow. Four of the spirits called Black Magistrates snap at their

chains. They’ll punish him soon enough.

Khumeia lets an hour of drunken, unstructured griping pass before

she commands the gang’s attention.

“This is it, then. Nobody thinks ejecting the Arhats was a good idea. We can ride

the wave of his mistake, move in and cut him from the Noose.”

“Way too simple.” That’s Eve from the Gravediggers. She’s probably here without

her cabal’s consent. “The Ebon Noose is tight . Even if they let the Nemean go they

still have all the cards. And Ahriman is the other Master. You want that spooky bastard

running things?”

“Naturally, no. But they’ll be too busy to throw their weight around at Council.”

Ah, here’s the twist , thinks the Nemean. He covers his curiosity with a grin.

Khumeia says, “I’ve made arrangements with the

Compa ny.”

Eve frowns. “Mercenaries?”

“Why not? They don’t care who’s in charge as long as

they’re left to their drugs, mobs and that other Sleeper

biz. Company mages will fuck up Salem something

ierce. That’ll force the Noose to protect their property

instead of the Hierarch. I told the Company they can

even keep the Noose’s Hallow, if they want it.”

T h e N e m e a n c l e a r s h i s t h r o a t a n d h u m s a b i t , t e s t i n g

Thanatos’ unfamiliar voice. Then he asks the usual

question, the one all traitors answer for him sooner

or later: “What would you do with a new Council,

then?”

She nods, mistaking it for cooperative patter. “Let’s

be straight,” says Khumeia. “The Company doesn’t

come cheap. That Hallow just motivates them to en-

gage the Noose but they want cash, connections and

some other things they don’t want made public. These

don’t come cheap. The Illuminated Pentad will put a

Master on the big chair but he’ll give us a return on

our investments. Don’t worry: we’ll be generous.”

“A pity,” says the Nemean. Something wriggles

under the Nemean-as-Thanatos’ skin. Bones shift;

his back arches.

“What?”

Monsters a nswer, ripping their way out of the Nem-

ean’s face and chest.

Dreamscapes are like stages, ilm sets. Even in a

mind as complex as an Awakened Master’s there are

boundaries; no memory captures every atom. Some

things have weight and true dimension but others

are nothing more than a curtain, a matte painting to

hide the edge of an imagined space.

T he intr uder’s u nder t he dream’s backdrop. T he Nem-

ean imagines a sheet of hanging paper there. He rips once;

a triangle of street and sky falls and he sees his own face,

older than Mark’s era but younger than his own.

“Savham.” His old Shadow Name.

Savham’s hands rend their way out from behind

the dream. Fingers blindly skid along stars and urban

vanishing points. They ind an invisible seam and

pull the rest of the body out and forward, onto the

road. The Nemean lets him go. Bricks and mist fall

back into place.

“Nemean.” The doppelgänger’s voice is clearer

now — as loud as he was in his arrogant thirties. “I

wasn’t sure you’d know me.” He sits by Mark Long’s

side, cradles his head through the convulsions. “You

never comfort him,” he says.

“I haven’t thought about you in years. Does the wasp

consider the pupa? You were an intermediary stage.”

He snorts. “That’s great, really. You’re complete!

Congratulations: Ascension must be lonely. Is that

why you’re still Hierarch?”

• • •

Mage the Awakening - The Silver Ladder.pdf

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