Infrastructure: Alternate Pattern Spider

Hidden throughout the world are pieces of Infrastructure, devices and beings designed to serve the occult purposes of the Machine, a universe spanning entity working to unknown purposes.

Continuing on last week's post we look at an alternative pattern spider to Cob and something stranger still.

Alternate Pattern Spider

The concept for these characters came from the Mage: the Ascension adventure Loom of Fate which I adapted to my Mage: the Awakening chronicle "The Darkness That Men Make". Due to some parallel reality troubles in that chronicle my players got to see Norna Weaver make both choices: to choose to keep her humanity AND to become Cob's replacement. Add to that a clever mid-game plot by the PCs to replace Cob themselves using the proto-Geist (ghost-spirit hybrid) of Simon Ellsworth from the adventure Chicago Workings and the result is a fairly complicated assortment of spirits attempting to hold Chicago together.

Arachne/The Weaver

Norna Weaver felt like a prisoner of fate but in the end she got an opportunity few do: to change her fate and live both lives.

On one path she struggled against her destiny and refused the path laid out for her. The young Acanthus mage took on the name Arachne and helped by the cabal that rescued her became a potent oracle for the Mysterium.

Then an act of Imperial Magic provided her the opportunity to rewrite her own past. Her past provided many tragedies to alter: the murder of her mother, the death of her father, the cataclysms of her days as a neophyte. She chose instead to change a pivotal moment in her past, her one real choice: whether to remain human or become something greater and stranger.

In the reality that currently holds sway, she accepted her destiny on her own terms. Subject to a powerful magical ceremony she shed her humanity and Supernal spark, becoming something more spirit than flesh. She became the elegant Weaver, a silver skinned pattern spider which combines order and chaos in a way to promote balance and strength throughout the city. She replaced the fallen Cob, rebuilding the spiritual reflection of Chicago stronger than before.

Rank: 4
Attributes: Power 10, Finesse 10, Resistance 8

Willpower: 18  Essence: 25
Initiative: 20     Defense: 10
Speed: 30          Size: 6
Corpus: 14

Influences: Balance 3, Infrastructure 3
Numina: Chorus (order spirits), Greater Influence (x 2), Material Vision, Mortal Mask, Prophecy, Strengthen Gauntlet
Ban: The Weaver can be bound by a net (without a resistance roll) that includes a strand of hair from Norna or her parents.

Ellsworth

A third entity supplemented Cob's position for a while in a now lost version of Chicago. Once a gifted but fundamentally mundane architect, after his death Ellsworth rose to become something greater than a ghost but not quite a spirit.

In life Simon Ellsworth pursued sacred geometry by following secrets left behind in a text known as "Chicago Workings". With it this geomancer infused his spirit into the city itself, imparting some measure of his sense of charity to the people living there.

That might have been the end of it if not for the death of Cob, a crisis within the city, and the inventiveness of a cabal of Mages. Using a spell crafted by a long dead (but not entirely departed) Mage, they elevated Ellsworth from a fading ghost to something greater and stranger. He became part ghost and part spirit, composed of ephemera and infrastructure.

Ellsworth resembles the aged bald man he was in life but his eyes shin like sunlit glass while his skin has taken on the texture of steel and brick. Despite the inhumanity of his appearance, those in his presence feel a comforting warmth.

Virtue: Charity. Ellsworth looks after the needs of everyone in the city down to the lowliest beggar.
Vice: Pride. Ellsworth pushes himself hard and refuses to accept less than perfect results from himself.

Attributes: Power 6, Finesse 4, Resistance 5
Influence: Chicago Architecture 3
Numina: Gauntlet Breach, Chorus (city and infrastructure spirits), Commune (Reaching), Hallucination
Ban: He cannot refuse a request from someone who is truly homeless.

Willpower: 11
Initiative: 10     Defense: 4
Speed: 20          Size: 6
Corpus: 11