Wed Feb 24 '21 Announcement
about 3 years ago – Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 06:51:10 AM

Hello Extraordinary Benefactors,

Welcome to Day 2 of our Victorian Mage campaign on Indiegogo. We've managed to weather the first day of this new experiment and the campaign is proceeding quite nicely. I'm still expecting some bumps and hiccups along the way, but that is the often the cost of change. 

In fact, that's the subject of today's update: The Cost of Progress! Progress, in this case, may just mean learning what works and what doesn't, and getting through the day without messing up anything too badly!

I've got another bit from the Introduction to this book to share today. Thanks to everyone who's joined us on this voyage into an imagined past, and who's spread the world to let others know of our new location.  If you're thinking about joining our Extraordinary group, I'll be sharing previews and fiction and other updates each day to hopefully provide enough information and incentive to help you reach your decision.

Remember, we will have a Pledge Manager set up after the campaign ends, so if you want to upgrade or get Add On perks at a later time, that is perfectly possible.

Now, let's dive in...

The Cost of Technological Progress

In Western Europe, the Order of Reason is solidifying its hold on both the paradigm and the hopes and imaginations of Sleepers. The result is a self-reinforcing system built on vast amounts of natural resources stolen via imperialist conquest. The Order of Reason develops or copies inventions like steam engines, percussion caps, electric light, and surgical anesthesia. It then popularizes these technologies, which in turn astound and excite many Sleepers, making them more open to future paradigm-altering inventions in what becomes a feedback loop. For the first time in human history, magi are able to alter the paradigm with both sufficient speed and over a large enough area that Sleepers began to see technology advance in substantial ways within a decade or two, rather than over generations or centuries. The Order of Reason’s connections to imperialist governments allows them to swiftly introduce new inventions all across the globe.

This was also an era when a large number of technomancers sincerely believed in their mission. Some members of the Order of Reason sought to improve the lives of Sleepers and uplift the entire world. However, they were still bound by their prejudices — the advances they create occur alongside atrocities they are directly or indirectly responsible for. Greedy and power-mad Sleepers use Maxim guns to slaughter tens of thousands of people who resist colonial conquest, and steamships transport colonizing armies faster and in greater numbers than previously possible. Although the consequences of their actions may trouble some members of the Order of Reason, most considered it a small price to pay for their grand endeavor, and continue to develop ever more deadly weapons. Ultimately, all but a handful of members of the Order of Reason care more about the fact that these conquests helped to spread their paradigm across the world than the horrors these conquests caused.

Even amid all the suffering, proponents of the Order’s paradigm would point to how new technology also produced wonders. New medical techniques helped countless Sleepers survive illnesses, injuries, or events like difficult childbirth that would previously have killed them. Other new technologies allowed for the printing and distribution of books and the spread of literacy to millions whose parents and grandparents were completely illiterate.

However, these wonders were distributed exceptionally unevenly. An unavoidable consequence of advancing technology and the changing paradigm was increased urbanization, as growing numbers of Sleepers left rural areas to work in urban factories and provide for the needs of these factory workers. For the first half of this era, cities were cesspits of disease and pollution, where residents lived harder and significantly shorter lives than people who lived in less crowded regions. Meanwhile, in rural areas and in nations far from western Europe, most of the wondrous new technologies were either absent, or only found in the hands of wealthy elites who were not inclined to share the benefits these new technologies provided.

This was also the era when the Order of Reason adopted and helped promulgate scientific racism, which ranked all of humanity on a scale with white western European men at the top. Some Order members sincerely believed in it, but all of them found it to be a convenient justification for imperialist exploitation of non-European nations. However, despite their efforts, the Technocratic Union was never able to bring scientific racism into the paradigm itself, because the targets of these claims, those who it would establish as somehow lesser, firmly knew they were not innately inferior in mind or body to the imperialists who wanted to steal their land and their labor. Their living experience, and indeed their very existence, served as a bulwark against such a malignant change to the model of reality.

Resistance

Resistance to conquest and oppression is one of the central themes of this era. Across the globe, imperialist forces conquer and oppress indigenous peoples, while these same peoples struggle to preserve their freedom and their way of life. However, oppression and resistance aren’t limited solely to colonized peoples. In a very real sense, much of the history of the Victorian Era is the history of a relatively small number of exceptionally wealthy western European men extracting vast sums of wealth from everyone else. In western Europe, income inequality soared during the Victorian era, and until the 1880s the lives of the European poor and working class were, at best, no better than they had been at the beginning of this era.

One of the driving forces of this growing inequality was the Order of Reason. This was a time before consumer capitalism, when the Order of Reason largely consisted of members of the educated, wealthy elite who cared far more about extending their paradigm across the globe and increasing their own power than about improving the lives of Sleepers. Some new technologies they helped create aided large numbers of people, but most primarily or exclusively aided the wealthy, like machines that enabled them to employ fewer workers while making ever greater profits or new farming techniques that drove the poor off of ancestral lands. Both within western Europe and abroad, objections to industrialization among the lower classes became common and occasionally violent.

As a result, unskilled and semi-skilled workers came together to create the first modern labor unions and to perform actions like the London dockworkers strike of 1889, where almost 100,000 strikers won better pay and also helped raised support for unions across Great Britain. Protests and even outright rebellions against European imperialism, like the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Chinese Boxer rebellion of 1899, also ignited in colonized nations across the globe. 

Imperialism

By the second half of the 19th century, even Sleepers using completely mundane technologies could, in theory, completely circumnavigate the world in less than three months, permitting a level of travel and contact with distant and radically different cultures never before possible for anyone except powerful magi. The vastly increased speed of travel and the potential for cross-cultural contact that came with it could have ushered in a new era of wisdom and understanding. However, the Order of Reason and a disturbingly large number of Sleepers had little interest in peaceful contact with distant cultures. Instead, one of the hallmarks of the Victorian era was imperialism.

The first colonial conquests began with the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the early 16th century, and the Dutch colonization of India in the 17th century. Both efforts were relatively limited in scale. A combination of ill luck, inferior weapons, and rapacious tactics rendered the inhabitants of the Americas exceedingly vulnerable to European diseases and permitted a small number of invaders to conquer a large region. Similarly, in India the Dutch made trade deals with powerful local leaders and swiftly and brutally exploited instabilities caused by local wars.

However, the efforts of the Order of Reason and a small number of wealthy and powerful European merchants and politicians vastly increased the scale of colonial expansion that followed. Using large numbers of troops, and covertly aided by the Order of Reason’s most destructive magicks, colonial forces were now able to destabilize or conquer entire nations that were not already crumbling due to epidemics or civil war. By the dawn of the Victorian era, colonialism began transforming into imperialism. Rather than just settling colonies and using military force to seize natural resources or ensure favorable trade arrangements, a growing number of western European nations began conquering and ruling entire nations.

One part of the motivation for this transformation was Europe’s growing nationalism. Western European nations attempt to both prove their superiority by conquering ever more territory, while also working to reduce the power and wealth of their rivals by preemptively conquering and holding regions these nations were interested in. Alongside nationalism came raw greed. For small numbers of wealthy western Europeans, imperialism offered an opportunity to obtain funding and support from their nations’ governments. If their efforts were successful, they could then extract vastly more wealth from the nations they conquered and ruled, both in the form of booty from an initial conquest and from the vast array of taxes, fees, and tariffs they imposed on colonized peoples. While the Order of Reason endorsed imperialism as a method of imposing their paradigm on increasingly large sections of the planet, much of its appeal to the Conventions’ leaders was the chance to gain truly vast amounts of wealth and mundane power, extracting both from the inhabitants of the conquered nations.

#M20VA

#VictorianMage

Tue Feb 23 '21 Announcement
about 3 years ago – Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 11:14:08 AM

Greetings Mages!

My name is James, and I’ll be your Crowdfunding Concierge for this project, Victorian Age for Mage: The Ascension 20^th Anniversary Edition! I’ll be updating the Indiegogo camapign as we go, possibly adding Stretch Goals, answering questions, and providing support wherever needed as best I can.

I’ll note that I’m not part of the creative team on this project – so I won’t be able to immediately answer some of the more intricate rules, setting, or design inquiries – but having me manage this crowdfunding campaign allows the developers and writers to keep their focus on the awesome projects that they’ve got in the works.

So, feel free to make me your point person for any questions or issues you may have. I'll make sure to dig up answers as quickly as possible and clear up any issues that arise. Mostly, I'm just looking forward to an exciting ride along with all of you on this (and future) projects.

I know that this campaign is a change of pace for Onyx Path, and I know that there will be a learning curve as we work through the next 30 days. I’m sure I’ll figure out some things as we go, but I appreciate everyone’s patience as we learn what each of the levers and buttons does.

I’ll be posting as many preview updates as possible – I know pledging to this campaign is a big jump, so want to make sure you get as much information as you need before any transaction happens. And don’t forget – you can always upgrade your pledge in the post-campaign Pledge Manager, so if you’re not sure you want the deluxe hardcover book yet, you can pledge for the PDF now and trade up at a later date if you want.

I will also be the person who gets to distribute rewards – like our Manuscript Previews, which will be sent out via e-mail every Wednesday to all backers. My current plan is to collect the e-mail info for each backer by 9:00 AM EST every Wednesday and send out a link to the latest portion of the draft manuscript later that day. Hopefully it works out!

So, welcome to Indiegogo! Welcome to the Victorian Age! And let’s if we can work a little Magick over these next 30 days!

Introduction

“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate."

Edward W. Said

The Victorian era (1837-1901) was a turning point for magi around the world. Previously, the magi of the Order of Reason had spread their unified paradigm across most of western Europe, but had made no more than minor inroads elsewhere. However, this was a time of massive colonial conquests by many western European nations and the westward expansion of the United States. The Order of Reason encouraged and benefited from these conquests as their paradigm spread to most of the colonized nations and peoples. In addition, many of members of both the Chorus Celestial and the Order of Hermes at least passively supported these imperialist conquests.

This was also the era when members of the Traditions and of countless Crafts scattered across the world first understood the magnitude of the threat posed by the Order of Reason and their paradigm. A growing number of magi opposed to colonial conquests or the Order of Reason’s paradigm saw the value and, later, the absolute necessity of joining forces with other magi to attempt to preserve their freedom and often their lives. Most Traditions and Crafts remained relatively disorganized, both internally and externally, but near the end of the Victorian Age, some began working together to combat the Order of Reason’s encroaching strength.

One of the unfortunate truths of this era is that for many Traditions and Crafts, and for the majority of peoples who were conquered in colonial wars, it was a time of great tragedy. Despite many valiant attempts at resistance, the armies of imperialist governments almost completely exterminated entire peoples, like the inhabitants of Tasmania, and successfully destroyed whole cultures, languages, and Crafts. European colonizers forced others to change in drastic ways in order to survive in the new and rigidly limited world the Order of Reason helped to create. In addition, nations like Siam which successfully avoided conquest often had to change their culture in drastic ways so as to appear more European, and thus more “civilized”, to western European elites.

As imperialist conquests continued, members of the Order of Reason advised colonial governors, missionaries, and robber barons about the necessity of combating “dangerous superstitions”, while also doing their best to either kill or discredit the indigenous magi they encountered. Some of these latter magi were able to slow or even stop the advance of the colonizing forces. Others learned to adapt advanced western technology to their own uses, rejecting the Order of Reason’s false claim that technological progress required submission to the Technocratic Union’s control.

A few nations were even able throw off the yoke of colonial oppression. Several decades before the start of the Victorian Era, Haitian slaves drove out the French landowners who had previously enslaved them. Early in this era, Afghani soldiers almost completely wiped out the British forces during the First Anglo-Afghan War. In both cases, local magi assisted in these victories and managed to temporarily halt the advance of both colonial oppression and the Order of Reason’s paradigm across their lands.

For most Tradition magi who opposed imperialism and worked to halt the Order of Reason’s advance, complete or lasting triumphs were rarely possible. Most large-scale efforts at open resistance failed badly, like the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. However, magi frequently won small victories that provided time for themselves and the cultures they were part of to adapt to the changing world. Fending off conquerors and oppressors for long enough might not halt the spread of the Order’s paradigm outright, but it could offer a chance at survival.

History & Change

This book describes the history of the Victorian Era and the various Traditions, Conventions, and Crafts. This history is the past of Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition. However, there is no reason that your particular campaign’s history must progress in the same fashion.

It makes sense to assume that history progresses normally unless the characters somehow change it. Such changes could result in anything from one of the Crafts, like the Bata’a, becoming the ninth member of the Council of Nine, to portions of Africa never suffering colonization. Exceptionally determined and lucky characters could even deal the Order of Reason a major setback in the Victorian era.

Some such changes will only affect magi; others, like preventing the colonial conquest of one or more nations, could have a dramatic effect on world history. Major changes should be relatively difficult to accomplish, but a group of determined magi can work wonders. It’s always important to remember that the characters are the protagonists of their story, and in the right sort of campaign, they should be able to change the world.

Tone: A Gaslit Mystery

The tone of Victorian Mage can be called Gaslit Mystery: a merging of industrial technology that illuminates the darkness, and of the secret things which even such artificial light cannot fully reveal the shape of.

You could express this gaslit element a number of ways: As the traditional atmosphere for Victoriana thrillers; as the innovation that transformed a world lit by elemental fire into one illuminated by man-made technology; as a hazy and often toxic light source that blackened walls and filled buildings with poisonous fumes; even as the metaphorical “gaslighting” that occurs when an abuser manipulates his quarry into a false “reality” of his own design — a term that comes, in fact, from a Victorian-set melodrama called Gas Light. Historically, the coal-fueled gaslight marks the end of the earlier colonial era and the rise of the industrial one, before giving way to the even brighter artificial light of electricity. Although you won’t find such gaslit streets in the Great Plains or Sahara Desert, the image of gaslights glowing amid London fog remains an archetypal feature of Victorian adventures.

Meanwhile, mystery provides the counterpoint to illumination. Its Greek root, mysterion, refers to initiation and secrecy, of things shut away quietly and held in confidence. A variation, maistrie, refers to mastery of skills and knowledge, and both roots suit the enigmatic wisdom of a magus. The Awakened are mysterious by nature to begin with, and so the combination of their secret fellowships and the swirling mist that cloaks gaslit cities at night perfectly evokes the atmosphere of Victorian Mage.

We'll be sharing more from our Introduction this week, so check our updates each day for new previews and more sneak peeks into the current draft of Victorian Mage!

And welcome to the experiment!

#M20VA

#VictorianMage