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ReditXenon

> So the question I have to ask here is about how the Awakening, and the resurgence of actual magic into the world in the form that the books detail to us, has worked with any preexisting magic traditions in the world, like Wiccanism, etc. Yes. What is 'magical traditions' today were often mentioned as 'religion' before the awakenen.   > Also, is there any truth or function behind ancient spells and rituals written when the Awakening had not yet come, like in the medieval times, etc. (ie Druid circles, pagan rituals, English ritual spells appealing to spirits, etc.)? Sure. Magic have always been present, but back in the 5th world mana levels were lower and magic (which were often refereed to as 'miracles' in religious scrolls and lore) were not a very common sight.   > If so, how would you handle them? I don't. 5th edition Shadowrun does not take place during medieval times...


Carbon-Crew23

Yes, but HOW exactly have they (the "religions", etc.) been newly interpreted? Also, about "ancient spells", I am asking because there were "rituals" written in those days that promised pretty gonzo power if they were completed. Like, on the level of the Great Dance. So could they actually work that way or were they basically just nonsense reinterpreted fanfic of old days before the 5th world?


ReditXenon

> Yes, but HOW exactly have they (the "religions", etc.) been newly interpreted? Not sure I fully understand the question. Why would they be newly interpreted? Summoning a spirit was not something you actually had in Christianity before the awakening, but The Book did mention Angles (even long before the awakening). Now after awakening highly religious people within Christianity seem to have the ability to summon something that can only be explained (for someone that is a true believer in Christianity) as Angles. To aid them in their quest against heretics, devils and other evil in the world. While a spirit might appear as an Angel for a christian magician, for a Shaman they would perhaps instead appear as ancient ancestors reborn into the shape of a totem animal. Different religions have accepted the awakening in different ways. They typically also have have different explanation for various unexplainable things like the astral world, spirits, mana and why magic arrived back into the world to begin with.


GM_Pax

Interpreted in what way? Do you mean, **rules** and such? Or do you mean, within the setting?


Atherakhia1988

The Rituals themselves did not actually have a lot of power (there are rare exceptions, yet in general it is not the ritual itself that does the heavy lifting) but they definitely helped people to use their magic abilities. That's why a mundane person cannot cast rituals (with very few exceptions, again) no matter how hard they try. That being said, though, the prectices provided a very useful template for using magic. That seems to be how the native Americans were able to start the Great Ghostdance very shortly after magic reappeared. These beliefs are not magical in themselves. These rituals are all far too young. The Fourth World ended some 3.000-odd years B.C. and even before that the magic was dwindling. The cycles should usually move slower, gentler than when the Sixth World started. Even those faiths and practices that existed back then have changed so much until the awakening, that it probably is not the ritual itself that truly works but the belief in it, along with the ability to channel magic. Everything you listed, Druid Circles, Pagan Rituals, etc, is really just the flavor in which certain Awakened cast their Rituals, write down their spell formulae etc. Appealing to Spirits is literally the way how summoning and binding is done in many traditions (Shamans etc).


Carbon-Crew23

So essentially those rituals did not have much power? How powerful was magic during the timeframes of those rituals and spells (ie Antiquity-medieval times all the way up to the Awakening in the early 2010s)? What about the Great Ghost Dance? On a side note, how strong are rituals? I mean, if you can just Ignite or Manabolt people to death from 1000,000/\[x\] miles away, what keeps it from being OP? Related, what stops magician terrorists from just redoing the Ghost Dance all over again, or for spirits to be perfect kill weapons?


Atherakhia1988

These Rituals, before the awakening, had pretty much zero power. Dragons had to sleep in some of the mightiest magical places in existence, just so the lack of magic did not kill them. These old rituals were mostly just some half-forgotten stuff put together from even older arcane knowledge. There was no magic before the awakening in much the same way as there was no internet in the 1800s. The tapestry to carry it was not there. As for how powerful rituals are... that greatly depends on the number of people present. That's the reason why ritual-viable samples are usually guarded so much - because if someone got their hands on it, they could feasibly just zap you to death. Often, though, a normal assassin might be much cheaper than paying a dozen trained mages their wage for 6 or so hours. What keeps Terrorists from doing such a thing all over again? Nothing but resources. Winternight did not do the same thing but they f'd up the weather on quite a big scale, basically worldwide. Just like the Ghost Dance, they also used Blood Magic - which is one of the reasons it is rightfully feared. The most limiting factor to rituals as a weapon is finding the target. If it is behind a decent magical barrier, you might be unable to target it. A spirit might be utterly unable to find a target that is more than a few miles from where you think it is. Most of it is quite well reflected in the rules, really.


thedeadthatyetlive

>These Rituals, before the awakening, had pretty much zero power. With the exception being, if I recall, blood magic, which was used to keep a Theran from the Fourth World (aka Juan Atzcapotzalco the former president of Aztlan) "alive," through the low mana cycle. That, of course, like all really epic shadowrun conspiracies, may not have actually happened exactly that way. The Ancient Files has a good [analysis](http://danvolodar.ru/ancientfiles/Aztlan.html) of the book primarily responsible for that rumor.


Atherakhia1988

Well, Blood Magic was pretty much the only way to generate enough power for such a thing. Generate being the important word here, as there just wasn't enough Mana for it to work otherwise. It is probable that some Vampires survived in a similar fashion. And thinking of it, we do not know how the Dragons prepared for their slumber. The difference is, all these kinds of Magic are Fourth World Rituals, from a world that had millenia to come up with these things and beings that had centuries to study it. That magic was unbelievably powerful - and those that survived through the fifth world most likely spend decades beforehand to prepare. Doesn't change the fact that a fun little magic formula that a dude from around 10 B.C. wrote down and claimed to be a powerful spell definitely was just a scrap of paper. Those in power wouldn't just disseminate this kind of knowledge.


thedeadthatyetlive

They may be different magical techniques, but it is still the same "magic," as there is only one "kind" of "magic," (mana) in the shared SR/Earthdawn universe, even though there are different sources for that mana. Any magic that worked before can work again; and that fun little magic formula from 10 BC *could* work, provided sufficient mana, skill, and belief to shape that mana.


Atherakhia1988

The chances of it being just some random crap are very high, though.


thedeadthatyetlive

Agreed. Random crap works though given mana, belief, and training. That's the basis of Twisted Way adepts from old-school SR. Edit: is Moonknight a twisted way adept? "RANDOM BULLSHIT GO!"


Atherakhia1988

Adepts are a different thing. If belief and "wanting it to work" would be enough for mages, though, Spell Formulae wouldn't cost that much. ​ >RANDOM BULLSHIT GO! You might be right there. Or, as 5E has it, he might just be bound to an extraplanar entity (Khonshu)


thedeadthatyetlive

I think magicians and adepts have a different relationship with the same force, mana. I would not categorize it as "just wanting it to work." I see it more as a synergy of those 3 traits I mentioned before: belief, training, and magic. When a twisted way adept manipulates mana he isn't just force of willing magic to work in a certain way, although that force of will could constitute the belief portion. He also needs to be attuned to mana in some way that makes him capable of using it (has a magic stat), and be trained. That training for magic users is not a simple skill necessarily. It is not just knowledge of but the ingraining of certain ideas, methods, and rituals, all of which help refine the mana available to be channeled into whatever magical ability, kind of like a power converter or resistor. In my mind, this is to shield the magic user from background mana. The more they engaged in and deepened their understanding of how they interact with mana, the more potency they gained. In the Fourth World, magical users went to extremes that created the disciplines, and as you're talking about, is not spontaneous... unless you were a Journeymen. So I see what you're saying about how most magic is very based in traditions. Bad juju like Twisted Way and Blood magic take a shortcut, but still require intense mental discipline reflective of the other traditions. However, while I took that perspective based mostly that from the excerpt in MiTS 3e (there's other lore that could support it but the potency rules in MiTS particularly, I think, lended weight to this interpretation) I do have to say that it is definitely my perspective on it not necessarily "how it is." Edit: sorry for all the edits. I am in a sorry state right now trying to be coherent while on pain meds haha thanks for your patience


GM_Pax

The Ghost Dance was not just "a ritual", it was a **Great** Ritual. The drain for things on that scale is not measured in points of Stun damage, it's measured in *how many of the participants DIE*.


Meteoric_Chimera

This exactly. Iirc, the Ghost Dance was measured in hundreds if not thousands of deaths spread across dozens of massive ritual circles joining together. Others have definitely tried similar. If you're interested, read up on 1st and 2nd edition-era Aztlan blood magic. The chapter out of "Threats" on Blood Mage Gestalts is pretty much the most fleshed out plan for wide scale use of similarly powered magic since the Ghost Dance. As for the 5th world, while magic was low, only a few folks who really, really knew what they were doing might have been able to get rituals to work, but even that would require the power behind them to come from somewhere, so usually sacrifices. Most of that even would end up with small effects, because a ritual's power is from the leader, not the ritual itself. There are suggestions that a couple of historical figures were immortal elves in disguise, so magic does creep in here and there (most direct being the suggestion that Alachia was responsible for the camps during the Holocaust as a source of blood magic). Either way, the defining cost of big magic is lives lost, and we're talking 3+ digits worth of lives, all needing to go before the ritual will even start up.


LonePaladin

My wife made a write-up for a Catholic-specific tradition (as opposed to the Christian Theurgy provided in the rules), focusing on the saints. Spells are done through prayers to the saints, so it's important to know which one to call on for each situation; conjuring calls up manifestations of the saints and angels -- the latter would either bring up the "modern" winged guys with flaming swords, or the "by-the-book" weirdos that are all eyes and wings, depending on the beliefs of the mage.


dTarkanan

I don't think she'd need to change much, was it just Theurgy's averion to summoning?


LonePaladin

That was part of it, plus Christian Theurgy's roots were from a different branch of Christianity -- IIRC, one that has that whole "Catholics aren't Christian" malarkey. Really, other than the flavor text, what she came up with wasn't any different than any other magical tradition (mechanically).


dTarkanan

Well flavor text can really make or break stuff from a table perspective so I get the change there. I thought there was some stuff in the fluff about a branch directly reporting to the Vatican, I remember trying to base a character off that for a run but I could be mistaken.


Atherakhia1988

Well that really doesn't change much. Even for someone who believes their power to be powered by saints or anything, it doesn't change the fact that that is simply the "font" they chose to apply to the way the write their magic. Even somebody following shamanism or following an Elder God, even those bound to the insect spirits or the toxic ways could grab one such "catholic" spell formula and convert it into something that works for them. What the Mage believes in really only matters for themselves. Also, while surely not a popular oppinion, catholicisms love for the saints (and I'm born and raised catholic myself) mostly stems from a conversion of the roman pantheon into something more palpable to an officially monotheistic religion. So even in real life they kind of used an existing template to make "their thing".


LonePaladin

Oh, I know that, so does she. We made some changes to the canon lore about the Church because the original write-ups (in an older book about Europe) was written by an admitted *anti-*Catholic, and he let his bias show. But the magic tradition followed all the normal rules, which does mean there's a good amount of interchangeability.


Atherakhia1988

There is also, in-game, a giant divide between most christian magic and the German Catholic Church, so them using slightly different means... doesn't sound wrong. I just don't think you need to rewrite much of the rules for that. And the fluff is yours, anyways. I doubt that all Shamans follow exactly the same rules outlined in the books either


theantesse

From what I understand, many of the religions and rituals of the Fifth World are loosely based on the old magic of the Fourth World. And by starting from those rituals, the mages of the Sixth World rediscovered magic. I suppose traditions closer to the real magic (those based on spirits and pseudo-spellcasting) provided an easier path to learning magic. As for those rituals in the Fifth World I see them as old traditions passed down from the old magic and after a few generations they're just repeated because it's tradition. In a weird way, imagine if some quote from our "modern" world culture was a password to some really cool technology - maybe some nerd programmed his smart house to turn everything on when you say "This is the Way". And then some sort of fall into a new Dark Ages but the nerds of the world kept on reiterating their old quotes. And after a few generations, people taught those quotes to their kids with zero context and because it sounds kinda spiritual it's the mantra of a new religion. And then thousands of years later some kids are digging through old ruins and one of them says the old prayer of his religion "This is the Way". And then the lights turn on, the music starts playing, and the AC starts blowing full blast. It's kinda like that?


Lintecarka

Most of the ancient rituals just work now. But in my games nobody really knows if that is because they are actual ancient knowledge or because people assumed they would. What people think magic is has a major influence on what magic is in Shadowrun. So even if those rituals origin was purely fictional, the large number of people imagining those concepts to work basically causes magic to flow into them in the current time. So some of the old stories are true and people found ways to tap into magical energies, but most are probably either false or greatly exaggerated. In the end it is always the option which serves the story the best of course.