[UA] Old groups and power

[Mario Magallanes]

Tim Toner escribió:
> 
>  Old school magick doesn't work
> because it's TOO powerful.  Simple as that.  The IC like to see us jump
> through hoops, so they leave the occasional carrot dangling for someone
> crazy enough to snap at.

See, I actually would go for the opposite approach. I would assume old
school magic (or at least, some of it) still works, but it's no longer a
primary factor in the Occult Underground because the old schools, or its
practitioners, weren't powerful enough to fight off the occult
revolutions.

Think about it. The Occult Underground is a highly competitive
enviroment, full of petty vendettas, backstabbing and cabal wars. Adepts
are a paranoid bunch, afraid from other adepts who could stole their
secrets, fearful of rival cabals, and above all, afraid of the Tiger
which can devour all of them. You have to be tougher, smarter and meaner
than the next weirdo in order to kill him before he kills you, and
careful enough to avoid being identified as a sorcerer and burned at a
stake. Now, if you are that guy and get a mystical iron sword when all
the other guys are still using bronze, you can carve your place as the
king of the underground. For a while. Until everybody has iron.

Now, consider what happens if everybody is using swords and armor and
you get a two-barreled shotgun.

It's evolution, baby. Survival of the fittest. Those who can't handle
it, go extinct, like the dinosaurs.

There are two example in "Hush Hush" about magickal revolutions which I
find very useful:

- Dugan Forsythe creates cliomancy and cuts through the european and
asian underground like a knife through butter, throwing major charges
like candy. And no one can stop him, because he isn't like anything they
have seen before. Until they find out how his power works and a way to
use it against him. Nowadays cliomancy is well known in the underground
and not that dangerous, since it has lots of practitioners, but at its
heyday it was like a machinegun against cavalry. 

- Then, the Brotherhood of Harmonious Response. One of the the most
powerful cabals of the UA setting. And in the course of fifty years it
was almost reduced to *nothing*. Why? They couldn't handle change. They
weren't used to competition, so seasoned european adepts hurt them. they
weren't used to hide from mundane forces, so the european armies and the
cultural revolution punched them really good. 

> 
> As for rituals--I'd say that they were either the hollow remants of failed
> schools and fallen avatars, or else human actions that are as enduring as
> the archetypes that represent us all.  Most of the time they make sense, but
> in the worst possible way.

My guess that they are commands, words and phrases in the language of
the Statosphere. The Comte knows the language, that's why he can invent
new rituals as he needs them. 

Mario Magallanes
--
Save the kittens
http://home.adelphia.net/~ncavezze/sigs/kitteh2.jpg

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