Hmm. Is there anything that describes what triggers a moment of awakening as a Mage, or what it's like? I've been assuming a classic 'moment of sudden epiphany' for most of these potential characters, mixed up as appropriate depending on individual experience and personality, but if there's a better guide anywhere that would be pretty good too.
Epiphanies are actually not a bad model for awakening, but you have to remember how epiphanies actually work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(feeling) said:
Epiphanies are relatively rare occurrences and generally follow a process of significant thought about a problem. Often they are triggered by a new and key piece of information, but importantly, a depth of prior knowledge is required to allow the leap of understanding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(feeling) said:
Despite this popular image, epiphany is the result of significant work on the part of the discoverer, and is only the satisfying result of a long process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(feeling) said:
epiphanies are only a rare occurrence, crowning a process of significant labor
Epiphanies may be sudden, but prior steps have laid the groundwork for that sudden leap forward.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(feeling) said:
allegedly
Albert Einstein was struck as a young child by being given a compass, and realizing that some unseen force in space was making it move. Another, perhaps better, example from Einstein's life occurred in 1905 after he had spent an evening unsuccessfully trying to reconcile Newtonian physics and Maxwell's equations. While taking a streetcar home, he looked behind him at the receding clocktower in
Bern and realized that if the car sped up close to the speed of light, he would see the clock slow down; with this thought, he later remarked, "a storm broke loose in my mind," which would allow him to understand special relativity. Einstein had a second epiphany two years later in 1907 which he called "the happiest thought of my life" when he imagined an elevator falling, and realized that a passenger would not be able to tell the difference between the weightlessness of falling, and the weightlessness of space - a thought which allowed him to generalize his theory of relativity to include gravity as a curvature in spacetime. A similar flash of
holistic understanding in a prepared mind was said to give
Charles Darwin his "hunch" (about
natural selection), and Darwin later stated that he always remembered the spot in the road where his carriage was when the epiphany struck. Another famous epiphany myth is associated with Isaac Newton's apple story,
[4] and yet another with Nikola Tesla's discovery of a workable alternating current induction motor. Though such epiphanies might have occurred, they were almost certainly the result of long and intensive periods of study those individuals had undertaken, rather than an out-of-the-blue flash of inspiration about an issue they had not thought about previously.
[6][7]
As the famous examples show, an epiphany generally happens when a person who has been thinking about something for a while receives new information, or has an experience that makes them think about a problem in a completely different way. You can't have an epiphany (or an awakening) without some level of groundwork. The kindling of the background knowledge and work is set off by the new experience or information.
There are also books (and other media) that can reliably awaken people.
notanautomaton brings up Primers, books that awaken young mages to arete 1. To write a Primer you have to have arete 5
or more.
Forged by Dragon's Fire Page 71 said:
The mage must think back, remember what it was like not to know what he knows now and to make the knowledge as palatable as possible to an unAwakened reader.
Primers often have prerequisites for them to work. You sometimes need background knowledge to understand what they are saying.
Forged by Dragon's Fire Page 73 said:
A reader may at first have problems with some of Melanippe's leaps of logic, but it is precisely in these leaps of logic that wisdom occurs. Melanippe gives the reader just enough direction to determine where she's going with her thinking, but then lets the reader do the actual work. These "gaps" get wider and wider as the dithyramb goes on until the last one leaves the reader hanging, and the only resolution is to come to the same realizations Melanippe herself came to nearly three millennia ago — resulting in an increased Arete.
This description is for a regular grimoire (increases arete rather than giving you your first dot), rather than a primer, but is still enlightening as to how the books work. The Primer has to give you all of the groundwork for the conclusion, but you have to reach it by yourself. Everything else is just a set up for the final epiphany. You also have to engage with the text.
Forged by Dragon's Fire Page 68 said:
The Sleeper must be of above-average intellect and willing (even subconsciously) to open his mind to new ways of perceiving the world. If the sleeper reads the entire Primer and makes an active attempt to understand the contents, he will most likely awaken.
Awakenings don't just happen. Even seeing the supernatural isn't really enough.
The vast, vast majority of awakenings come from institutionalized teaching. The number of mages who awaken from witnessing the supernatural is exactly as high, proportionally, as the number of werewolves who undergo their First Change after being bitten by a werewolf. That is to say, 'there is no meaningful difference.' The Taftani are not correct. Throwing around vulgar magic does not, in fact, Awaken people. The way you Awaken people is with education and patience and 'exposure to the supernatural' that goes far beyond mere witnessing but actively broadens people's horizons. A Ecstatic takes his or her groupies into the Umbra so they can have an orgy with lust-spirits. The academies on Doisstep taught young students linear sorcery and then showed them the older, Awakened students and the wonders they could accomplish, as well as surrounding them with wonders of every shape and form as inspiration.
Damien, Unity, and MIHT do the exact same. They surround their students with hypertech and high-end Enlightened Science so their horizons are broadened, they teach the theory and practice behind them to do the same. Awakenings are an epiphany that results when you realize that reality can be changed in ways far beyond what you believed possible before. Watching two people throw around fireballs doesn't do that when you don't believe it by definition.
Awakening is a
process punctuated by a final moment of epiphany.
Here are some examples:
We can, in fact, examine our decidedly-abnormal party here and still find similar patterns;
Illiyeen because she is disgustingly self-reliant managed to essentially put herself through a basic spy training course through careful, measured observation of patterns of behaviour, deliberately expanding her horizons and teaching herself French so she could listen in people's conversations, and months of watching, waiting and learning all in pursuit of the truth.
Serafina, amusingly enough, despite being the only party member who's gone through the ludicrously expensive Damien education did not Awaken thanks to the countless Primers and teaching she was exposed to, but did it during the school holidays because she was a desperately lonely little girl who really wanted a friend and to get to do things with her parents.
Elsa followed an entirely typical Virtual Adept path to Awakening - joins as an outcast (Russia not exactly being entirely tolerant of her sexuality) who hangs around the cyberpunks, trains as a consor and linear sorcerer hacker, Awakens after years of training.
So, if you want someone to awaken as a Verbena, think of the process that led them to that epiphany. Do not neglect that prior groundwork. Here's an example of a Verbena awakening:
There is a boy. simultaneously bookish and fond of the outdoors. He's read a lot of fantasy. He got started with more modern urban stuff, but he ended up finding his way to the classics. He looked deeper into mythology after some well known book caught his interest. On top of all of this, he loves camping. His parents have fostered in him as much of a love of the outdoors as his love of books. His mother has a garden in their backyard that she grows flowers and produce in. She sings to the plants and he helps out with the work. He knows about plants and animals.
One day he's out camping with the Boy Scouts. He gets separated from the rest of the group. Maybe it was to use the restroom. Maybe he saw something cool and followed it. Whatever the case is, he is alone in nature. Nature is beautiful, but it is also harsh. He has to use what he knows to survive. His knowledge of plants and animals is tested. He ends up talking to himself, as most would when stranded without others. He talks to his surroundings. The trees and squirrels are his conversation partners. They seem to almost listen. He has a dog, which has always seemed to listen as well. His father always said animals are smarter than people think they are.
The boy works with nature, and nature works with him. He survives. He sees the untaped beauty of nature untouched and tamed by human hands, and he sees the seemingly malicious whims of weather. He starts talking about the weather in ways that anthropomorphize it's actions. By the time someone finds him he seems to live
with nature. Even when back at home he still looks at the world changed by his time out in the wild. What happened to him then helps him to understand the world better. He has some superstitions from his time in the wild. Things that he's found seem to work for him. Ways to read weather and animals, to predict their actions. Ways to tell where he is by looking at his surroundings.
He wouldn't necessarily describe the weather, the animals, and plants as
speaking to him, but he pays attention to what they say. They seem to listen back in return. He finds that if he takes care of things, they have a way of repaying him. Like some fairies out of a faerie tale. Favors repaid in kind. He understands his dog better now. He knows its instincts. He knows how to make other dogs respond as well. He can put himself in its mentality, see what it sees, almost smell what it smells.
He learns that humans too are a kind of animal. That they often have instincts they don't fully understand. People can be pushed. Our instincts act as levers. There are things we don't see, or take notice of. Things we don't consciously notice shape our actions. In the end we are not as above animals as we like to think we are. There are things we can learn from the animals.
That's basically an Awakening, the groundwork behind it, and the aftermath. Things blend into each other. There's not always a clear cut off. It's clear that being in the forest alone changed his thinking, but not clear exactly where. His prior beliefs played a role. It didn't just end at the Awakening. It's an ongoing process.
