Mage<br/><br/>Welcome to Talis Canyon.<br/><br/>Ah, good ol' Talis Canyon, natural home of the Perpetually Paranoid Willworker. Keep a few steps away from me boy, just 'cause I said I'd give you the low-down, doesn't mean I won't fuckin' stab you in your face. Things weren't always this bad.<br/><br/>You know, folks 'round here never really considered the possibility that we would have power over this town. Sure, it was an idea we believed in, but The Traditions around here figured that would come far in the future, with humanity backing us as we drove the last stake through the Technocracy's metal heart. We kept this in mind as we fought the Ascension War from the founding of this town until the Reckoning.<br/><br/>Then a peculiar thing happened in Talis Canyon, around 1998. We started to<em>win</em>.<br/><br/>Sure, the loss of Horizon and the Masters hurt everyone, but we still pushed even harder against the Technocrats. We struck at their sympathizers, their constructs, and all the little businesses they hid under until... They stopped showing up to fights. Any violence on our part was met with retreat, misdirection. They made no efforts to retake power or brainwash any more sleepers. They just stopped everything, except for when some moron was trying to break the Rule of Shade.<br/><br/>Naturally everyone was pleased as punch that we had effectively won Talis Canyon. There were parties and orgies and mass-meditations, depending on the particular Tradition, of course. Then some fucker had to stand up and ask the inevitable question:<i>What are we going to do now?</i><br/><br/>That's when things started going wrong. A bunch of folks just wanted to blow the whole door on the supernatural open, let humanity know what was up. There was surprisingly great opposition to this, mostly from the Hermetics. The use of magic on Sleepers became a big topic too, and after a few Traditionalists were found murdered, wild accusations started flying. Fuck, even the bad blood between the Brotherhood and the Euthanatos was kicked up again.<br/><br/>Long story short, the Traditions in this city have effectively imploded. Everyone is guarding their stuff and their asses, certain that the unseen evils will come and get them. With the Technocrats on their heels, Mages now have the time to carry out private agendas. You're going to have to make a serious effort to get someone outside your tradition to trust you. And things just keep getting weirder every day.<br/><br/>So, Welcome to Talis Canyon. You don't want to wake up here.<br/>