Le Pacte des Magicae Artes

Purpose: Le Pacte des Magicae Artes welcomes serious magicians seeking a deeper understanding of the arcane, including the study of different paths.

Traditions allowed:
- Hermetic
- Shamanic
- Voodoo
- Buddhism
- Norse

Strictures:
- Oath- “I affirm and declare that I shall honorably walk the paths of magic, sharing my gifts and insights with my brethren, faithfully adhering to the high standard of conduct as required by the Code of the Pacte. Without equivocation or evasion, I seek the truth and purpose through the Artes, and will everstrive for self-improvement, fulfillment of my obligations, and the betterment the order. To all of this I pledge on my sacred honor.”
- Exclusive Membership- Magicians with magic rating four or greater only. May not be a member of another initiatory group. Members must post their Streetnames and traditions to this dumpshock thread.
- Fraternity- Liberté, égalité, fraternité!
- Attendance - The group meets a minimum of once yearly during a mystical convention. Due to the group's nature of information sharing, the group holds many other non-mandatory meetings throughout the year to conduct training, group business and related seminars.
- Belief (Professionalism) – Members are required to maintain a high code of conduct in their work and interactions.
- Dues - 1,000/month per member per month. While the Pacte is actively looking to branch out to other sprawls, it currently maintains a Middle lifestyle meeting place in NYC:
Comforts: Middle 3 (Comfy overstuffed chairs)
Entertainment: Squatter 1 (Soycafe maker & subscription to “SECmage” trade magazine)
Necessities: High 4 (Plenty of meeting space)
Neighborhood: Middle 3 (Third story walkup)
Security: High 4 (Lots of wards)

The Le Pacte des Magicae Artes is a fairly new organization on the local scene, part traditional English gentlemen’s club, part mystical research group. Members are expected to frequently lead seminars and teach one another new spells, theories or any other areas of applicable scholarly or practical pursuit. Membership is open to all, from corporate mages to wiz-gangers, and respect for fellow members is required. To encourage egalitarian dialog, discussions of “day jobs” with the confines of the organization is forbidden, though members often gather privately offsite to conduct personal business. Obviously, involving the Pacte in any unauthorized “biz” is grounds for immediate expulsion. Interestingly, though his name appears on no roster, a mage known as Quince is afforded full membership privileges. Additionally, rumors persist of a high powered magic “hit-squad” deployed for egregious violations of code.

This group has been SRM approved and is now open for business. Please note the Belief (Professionalism) stricture; group members are expected to maintain a high standard of conduct and behavior during play. If you'd like to join us, please post your streetname and tradition to this thread (and if you're interested in conducting a class or lecture, you're welcome to post a synopsis as well).

I will be joining this esteemed group.

Handle: Mr. Morden
Tradition: Hermetic

I am one of the two founders of this group.

Handle: Sixth Sense (aka "the guy that talks to himself")
Tradition: Buddist Mystic Adept.


Here's a current roster list so we can keep track...
1. Papa Chango - Voodoo Shaman (Magic founder)
2. Sixth Sense - Buddhist Mystic Adept (Magic founder)
3. Mr. Morden - Hermetic Mage
4. Maskue - Voodoo Shaman
5. Lucky Rick - Shaman
6. Dr Gro - Shamanic Mystic Adept
7. Obrafour - Buddhist (our number is growing!)

(Unbound) Patron: Quince

Unconfirmed list
. Caleb - Hermetic Mage

I was under the impression that magical groups had to have all members using the same tradition. I just had another look in Street Magic and I seem to be mistaken. [Perhaps I was confusing it with ritual magic.]

Can an Adept join ? I would have my minotaur Medic/Adept in !

Papa Chango, Voodoo Priest.
Professional Shandowrunner and group founder at your service.

A Mystic Adept would certainly be welcomed into the fold. The Pacte offers little for Adepts focusing exclusively on physical development, but provided your tradition matches, the door would be open for an Adept deeply interested in their own mystical journey.

I believe all Adepts are of the Somantic tradition, which is not included in this group.

My character, Lucky Rick, would like to join.

He is a combat shaman, specializing in combat spells. He is also skilled in counterspelling and astral combat.

Just a quick note Quince he said Medic / Adept as in he does first aid / medicine along with the adept stuff.

And I will duck and run for cover as I see Papa Chango walking into the room he ain't mounting me!

Well, Sixth Sense makes a good point. A Somantic tradition probably wouldn't a good match.

Name: Mathias Archilleos
Handle: Toothgrinder
Tradition: Norse
Mentor Spirit: Thor
Specializations: Combat Spells, Guardian Spirits

I have a question concerning the professionalism. My Mystic Adept is based off of the Victorian 'Orientalist' model and as such has incurred geasa of using Bliss (opium), does this violate that stricture?

The addiction in and of itself would not necessarily be a professionalism violation. However, if the addition causes behavior is less-than-professional, well, that would be stricture violation. You're in the best position to judge if the Pacte would be a good fit- both now and in the future.

Even in the Shamanic path ?

Minotaure Medic/Adept Former Docwagon ... Shamanic Path Adept

Name: Fargo
Handle: Dr. Gro
Tradition: Shamanic Way Adept (Mystic Adept Shaman)
Mentor Spirit: Bull
Assets : Combat Wounds Specialist(21 dices), Former SpecOps from DocWagon, Follow the Hippocratic Oath.

I'm your Mentor Spirit? That's sweet, but I'm pretty sure you're getting a raw deal

Bull

Yes you are !

If he's an Adept, and not Mystic Adept, I believe his tradition is still Somantic. You'll notice that new paths for spell slingers are listed as "Traditions", and new paths for Adepts are listed as "Ways". Also, the adept paths are all flavor, and offer no actual rules (which leads me to believe the tradition goes unchanged). Being as such, Somantic Traditions can't complete the binding ritual with our group

My GM was kind enough to let me redo some part of the character so he would be a mystical adept shaman aspected to cast only health spells and being mentored by Bull for his adepts powers and having a shamanic mask of bull while using his powers.

Excellent-- note that everyone needs the Arcana skill to join the group. After the initial 5 members bond (those members have been part of the original email to create this group), each additional member will start with a Threshold of 2 on the Logic + Arcana test (you can not default Arcana). Karma can be used, and it's not an Extended test.

6d6s5: 2 successes [1, 5, 4, 6, 1, 4] (Randomleetwenty in google wave)

Lucky Rick: Logic 5, Arcana 1.

Dice pool: 6.

Result: 5, 6, 1, 3, 1, 2. [Two successes]

By the way, who are the original five members?

Papa Chango - Voodoo Shaman (Magic founder)
Sixth Sense - Buddhist Mystical Adept (Magic founder)
Caleb - Hermetic Mage
eBay - NORSE Mage
Mr. Morden - Hermetic Mage


And while Quince isn't a bound member, he is somewhat of a founder on the mundane aspects of this group. Critical in its forming and paper work, etc. Note that the Dues are 1k month, as we gain members, we gain resources. I'm assuming Quince will (as best as he can) edit the first post to show when we get enough for a bump in head quarters. I'll do my best to keep the roster list in the third post updated from now on.

"eBay"? Is he selling any second-hand foci?

IS there a place where we can interact freely ? Googlewave, Itabletop ?

The Pacte has a very limited matrix presence, though an industrious member would certainly be welcome to put something together!

I would start a Google Wave for now.

https://wave.google.com/wave/#restored:wave...w%252BB0aF6zglB

Not sure this link works.

Is the group still alive ?

Not dead, but the influx at opening certainly seems to have died down.

Just nothing new to say

Oh, the new FAQ screwed my Mystical Adept hard-- I wonder if I'm grandfathered in. That FAQ seemed a lot like an errata when they go against stuff that is actually written in the book.

I would like to make a philosophy forum about selfish spell design.

Feel free!
Chance are, Quince will be in attendance.

Selfish spell design

Theory : Redesigning a spell that can affect people around you and limiting them to a touch range and for very restricted target named The caster who is casting the spell at this very moment. There is a lot of spells in various cathegories that would allow just that.

Would you like to help me state a list ?

How does rounding work? When the group hits six members, does that set the threshold at 2 (and thereby actually requires 3 hits on the joining test since the PC needs a net hit to succeed).

Who is the exact person to see about creating a Denver magical group...I'm not sure how feasible it is for my character to travel to NY...

Thanks!

If the Pacte gets to be of sufficient size, we'll probably see about spinning off smaller "study groups" circles of 6-12 member (a la Illuminates of the New Dawn in Street Magic). This might help keep the threshold reasonable, and might also make a Denver (or if there is a SRM04 city) chapter possible.

I understand that some of our members are looking at moving out of NYC.
But fear not, the Pacte will now be opening a Seattle chapter in the near future!

I am guessing an amoral mercenary type isn't a particularly good fit for this group, huh?

That's the problem with all these magical groups. They mostly tend to have things like morals and codes of honor.

Where can us moneygrubbing spellslingers-for-hire fit in?

It's just not fair!




-karma

An actual amoral mercenary would be a pyschopath. Our code is professionalism, which fits in with mercenaries. You do the job you are hired for as the first priority; you don't risk your team or Johnson unneccessarily. You complete the job to the spirit of what you were hired to do, not the letter-- if you were hired to retrieve a truck, you don't steal its weapons off it or take liberties such as copying it's design while it's in your possession. If there was a drone (not part of the job) in the garage with the truck, you are free to do anything with it you'd like (e.g.), as long as it doesn't interfer with the current job.

So, if you need to kill a corp security guard to do your job; it's greenlighted. Wetwork: green lighted. Killing civilians (the unarmed guys that are not part of the mission) is frowned upon and could be a violation depending on the circumstances.

I need a check, via PM if you will, of everyone who is currently a member. Please tell me the date you made your Arcana test (you can't default on Arcana, so if you don't have it, then you aren't in), and if you got one or two+ hits on it. Of course you need to also spend 5 karma, but that's not something I need to know.

If your name is on my first post of this thread and you haven't done this-- please let me know.

I just realized my guy doesn't meed the Magic Point minimum anyhow.

And as for the "amoral" part... well, I'll just say that he often plans for the possibility of having to kill his own team and the Johnson if necessary, and leave it at that.

Then again, he has contingency plans for sudden appearance of dragons, so it may not be so much being amoral, as being paranoid.





-karma

Submitted to missions AT missions shadowrunfour for official re-santioning for season 4.
And we need to see about getting chapters in Seattle and Denver!

Don't sweat approval. That got nixed a while back, as someone forgot to remind me that joining a group costs 5 Karma already, which is a good balancing mechanism.

You're good to go for Season 4.

Bull

Is anyone from the Pacte going to be at Indy Scramble 2011?

I don't suppose there's any Magical Groups around that accept custom traditions?




-k

Sadly since you have to list out the traditions allowed, there's a very very small chance of any magical group choosing whatever custom tradition you have. You're best making your own group.

We have some characters in New York who will be looking into making a group in the near future though.

Also i'm pretty sure missions doesn't accept custom traditions.

Addendum: Yep, anything that requires working with the gamemaster to lay out is pretty much banned.

If I remember correctly, Karma doesn't technically have a custom tradition. I think we had this discussion a while back. What he has is a reskin of a regular tradition. Same rules, spirits, etc. Just a different name and flavor. Which is fine.

Or, I could be mixing things up, in which case... Err, yeah. No custom traditions.