12 - The Illusion

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HE ILLUSION PERMEATES EVERYTHING. IT IS THE AIR WE BREATHE, THE HOUSES WE live in, the food we eat, the music we listen to, the literature we read, and the movies we watch. If is tightly interwoven with our DNA and our thought patterns. It shackles our bodies and souls. Like a rag soaked with ether over our collective nose and mouth, the Illusion drags us down into the deepest sleep, where we lose the grip on our divinity. It fetters us to the passage of time, reweaving the world into an enormous labyrinth from which we cannot escape. This does not mean that everything we perceive is false. The phone you are holding is a physical object. The food you eat is real. If you step across the threshold to Metropolis, the gun you brougbt remains there in your band. If we leave Elysium, we might experience the itants for what they really are, but this does not mean we also regain our divinity. The Illusion’s shackles are intimately tied to our souls and desires. other worlds and see its inbab-

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The Illusion is at one with the Principles of the Archons and the Death Angels. They permeate our consciousnesses, our bodies, and our broken souls. The Principles’ discordant echoes run through the entire Universe, originating from the hearts of the Citadels in Metropolis and Inferno. Their barely noticeable vibrations touch everything. They drift through our thoughts and dreams, and whirl in sync with our spiraling DRA strands. The Principles become the veil placed over our eyes,blinding us.They are the invisible chains governing our steps in the Illusion’s great captive dance.

We are touched by all Principles,but each bolds different powers over us.While one person is driven by Samael’s lust for ven! geance,another is guided by Yesod’s greed,and a third is eopully as bound by Kether as by Tiphareth.We are all their captives.

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Malkuth was the Archon who forged our shackles.She spun Gaia’s weave of life and death and stitched it together with our souls. Our bodies became prisons of flesh.We grew weak,pathetic,and belpless.Malkuth lobotomized our senses and every blow from her hammer drove us further down into our prison,so we actually started to believe all the lies we were told.Thus,we became sus! ceptible to the influence of the Principles.

A World of a Thousand Lies

The Illusion is our entire reality,ranging from the terrifyingly grandiose to the mind!numbingly ordinary.There is nothing the Principles are not concerned with.We are caught in a world of fast food,lattes,sex,and mortgages.We are distracted by imaginary enemies,violence on TV,acts of terrorism,invasions,carcinogens in our food,and the menace of genetically!modified crops.All the while,we drown in fasbion,advertising,innumerable ideologies, and unattainable aesthetic ideals.We buy and sell each other every day.Digital currencies are paid for bumiliating occupations,sugar daddies fleeced,and black market work accepted.We all lie on the meat counter,offered up to consumers.We are all bought and paid for.We are all guilty.

Everywhere there are false truths and alternative facts.If you’re unbappy with one version of the truth,there is always a new angle, truth,or conspiracy theory a single click away.Choose the worl! dview you want and you will be served whatever supports your belief.

Our jailers bope these oceans of information will drown us and distract us from the Truth.They create this incessant static to be so pervasive that we do not stop to look around and think about our existence.The world’s endless complexity is paralysing.

Worldly Power

Power in our world is in the grip of our jailers.They have direct or indirect control of governments,giant corporations,major religions, media conglomerates,and the healthcare!industrial complex.They are either controlled directly by lictors or razides,or by unaware human dupes.Some believe they are doing good or actually making a difference.nothing could be further from the truth.The whole sys! tem is designed to make us believe that we have a choice.We may upset the prevailing order through democratic elections or military coups,but regardless of who one votes for,what political ideology one embraces,in the end we serve the same masters,the same pup! peteers biding behind various semblances and facades.

Division

The Demiurge robbed us of our divine language and gave us various tongues.He divided us into men and women,although we have the power to be whatever gender we desire,be that a binary,in!between,or no gender at all. The Demiurge scattered us into peoples of differing skin colour,body types,and appear! ances.The generations were separated.now, the elderly regard the young with fear and an uncomprehending gaze.Some of us have been given the power to govern and rule over others, creating a bierarchy rife with constant power struggles.We are no longer all gods.We are con! fused mortals,filled with bate and fear towards others whose languages,customs,appearances, preferences and lifestyles we do not understand.

Unity

Our families,our friends,our place in society,and our roles in the community are like cement around our feet,dragging us down to the ocean floor.We’re instilled with the false conception of being respon! sible for each other,that we belong together in the prison created for us.Those who realise this is untrue break free.Those who wish to awake cut their ties with a vengeance,whether that is by no longer returning phone calls or actively destroying the ones they love. This deed in itself encourages the Illusion to crumble.

We are Our Own Jailers

The lie of our captivity is so strong and so fundamental that we no longer fight against it,instead buckling under its influence.We willingly allow ourselves to be enslaved and stare with borror at all those who try to break loose. We fear those who disturb the calmness.Our false lives are bouses of cards built upon a foundation of deceit,so unstable that they could fall to pieces at any time.We bungrily fall upon those who question the deception,those who endure,and those who want to create another reality, cheered on by our jailers.We call them crazy,conspiracy theorists,and repudiate or incarcerate them.If we experi! ence things that shatter the lie,we deny them at every turn. We clench our teeth,avert our eyes,and remain silent, fearful we might be lynched in the same way we have lynched everyone else.We are all victims of this pandemic gaslighting,psychologically abused and mutilated,led to doubt anything that speaks against the Illusion.

Our Blind Battles

With our tongues twisted in knots,fists clenched at our sides,our frustration vibrates just beneath the surface.It triggers our rage into street riots or online rants.We boist one political system above all others.We fight to prohibit flag burnings,to keep prophets from being depicted,to mandate the eating of meat as unethical,or speak against or for the burgeoning tide of feminism.These conflicts in themselves feed our need for self!aggrandisement, and perpetuate our Quest for gaining status within one’s own group.Yet,all around us the true battle rages,and we refuse to see it.Our jailers divert our gazes from the Truth,so we instead attack each other and beat ourselves bloody time after time.

They Fear Our Awakening

Our jailers fear us.They dread what will bappen if we break free of our shackles.When the Illusion crumbles,we see,just for a moment,what is around us.For every new life,for every new reincarnation,we become that much more difficult to manage and manipulate.To our jailers,this is an eternal crisis of keeping us distracted,weaving new and different lies for us.They must keep the Illusion’s machinery alive,even with thousands upon thousands of different parts,all of which are slowly breaking down.The shadows of our former tyranny continually baunt their worlds.Horrors we once inflicted still spread death and terror, and all the suffering we created lingers on as frail echoes.There are anxious whispers of the fantastic terrors we will bring after tearing the veil from our eyes.In this,the Archons and the Death Angels are united.neither side wishes to risk our awakening.for them,and for all of Creation,it would be disastrous.

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Our Fake Lives

Birth.Diapers.Milk.Baby food.Potty.Toys.TV.Daycare centre. School.Teen life.Dating.Internet.Revolt.Music.Sex.Study. Work.Drunkenness.Unemployment.Marriage.Condominium. Stepparents.Promotion.Child.Insomnia.Quarrel.Bills.Infidelity. Divorce.Alimony.Disease.Pension.TV.Stroke.Retirement.Hos! pice.Diapers.IV Drip.Oxygen.Death.Repeat.

We were gods,once.now we live down in the dirt,ensconced within a labyrinth of noise and distraction.We have lost what we once were.It feels alien and unreal to us to even think of bending Time and Space or defeating Death,when it is actually more unnatural for us to go shopping at the supermarket,mind! lessly pay bills,and be a minimum!wage retail slave.

Even though we have created fantastical things and started rebuilding our power,our new wonders still blind us to our true divinity.Unsatisfied,we bunger for attention.We dull our pain with liouor,pills,and the Internet.Some of us try to find ways to escape or revolt,but every apparent exit is a well!trodden path, which only leads back to the labyrinth of captivity.

The Slumbering Insight

Deep down we know something is wrong.We try desperately to fill the emptiness inside of us.Some of us stop,look up towards the stars obscured by the smog,and ask ourselves:So this is life?Somewhere within us we know there is something more.

Even if we try to keep it at arm’s length,it always catch up with us!the nagging insight,the gnawing vulnerability,and the aching loneliness.The Demiurge’s prison is indeed mali! cious.Mutilating us,disorienting us,and making us suffer, only to then offer us comforting security,order,and lie upon lie!a false meaning for our entire existence.Like beroin addicts,we gladly offer up our veins simply to avoid feeling this ennui.

Beyond the skyscrapers and industries,past the ship wharves and small communities,lies our primordial bome: Metropolis.It is a relic from the era when we were divine, when our powers were brimming and majestic,and we ruled as beautiful tyrants without Qualms:worshipped, loved,but also feared.Sometimes when we gaze towards the beavens,study the shadows,or witness the true nature of darkness,we sense our divinity residing there,cut off from us by a thin membrane.We place the palm of our band against this paper wall,close our eyes,and lean our foreheads upon it.And indeed,we can almost feel bow our divinity,our mutilated other self,is waiting there on the other side.Our bands touch and we yearn.We yearn to be whole again.To regain our lost godbood.

THE Ä°LLUSION CRUMBLES

Even though it is very unusual,the Illusion still crumbles on occasion.Perhaps it is after several bottles of red wine when our creativity blossoms.Or we’re all alone in our childhood room,a razor blade brusbing across our arm to escape the pain.It may come as we lose ourselves in some debauched sex act.When the revolver’s last chamher empties,and our beloved lies dead in front of us.As we carry out the primitive rite discovered on a web page,the computer simulation revealing the path to the true world existing beyond this one.Even the singular word whispered by a stranger on the underground train might unlock something within us.

Our false reality is sometimes distorted,as we instinctively sense what exists bebind the veil.Maybe we unconsciously recognize a being for what it really is,such as a lictor.Rather than witnessing its genuine,grotesoue semblance,a nuance of its nature is laid bare to us.Its eyes have no lids or pupils, its shadow is impossibly large,or its tongue appears over! sized and bloated.

We can bear the distant screams from Inferno echoing in the ductwork;we can glimpse the majestic silbouettes of Metrop! olis beyond the skyscrapers of our own cities.Time can be distorted,even stop,and we are transported through Space, arriving in a completely different location.

On extreme occasions,we are thrust into the labyrinths of Inferno or drawn into Gaia’s wilderness.When rips in the Illusion appear,they usually reveal Metropolis,the city our souls struggle to remember.But this depends on where in our reality the rip occurs.If we are in underground culverts and subway systems,we may be dragged down into the Underworld.In places of great suffering and violence,we can be drawn into Inferno.In the wilderness,we can find our! selves in Gaia.

The Illusion’s machinery has a singular task:to bold us captive.Even if you should end up in another reality,you will be eventually drawn back to €lysium.While wander! ing in Metropolis’desolate landscape,you might catch the scent of home cooking and bear familiar sounds of traffic in the distance.Should you follow the smells and sounds,you can suddenly find yourself back in Єlysium again by simply turning the street corner.The closer you are to your sleeping state,the easier it is to be pulled back in this way.However, the more awakened you are,the more difficulty the Illusion has reestablishing its grip on you.

Exposed Places

In some locations, the Illusion is weaker. These are places that challenge our normal thought patterns or where the Illusion has been worn down by the traumatic events which have occurred there. Usually, the veil requires an inciting event before it can be pulled aside, such as a terrifying but mundane experience (torture, abuse, and murder are very common triggers), supernatural event, magical rite, or an extreme act of madness, passion, or death. Some locations are more prone to this collapse than others. These include:

Slums: In the slum areas of the big cities, amid burnt-out industrial buildings, desolate factories, abandoned warebouses, or rundown tenements, you can sense the presence of a darker and more frightening city. If you wander amid the buildings and dark alleys bere, you may stray off into Metropolis. Asylums: The collective madness from thousands of unstable individuals eat away at the Illusion’s barriers. Horrific experiences and acts of violence can thrust open the gateways to Inferno or reveal the nightmarish domains of Limbo. Abominations created out of madness can exist bere, lurking right behind the Illusion’s veil, and when it crumbles, they find their way inside.

Prisons and deatb camps: Places of isolation, bopelessness, and suffering can open onto Inferno’s endless torture chambers. Often the prevailing sense of terror, powerlessness, and anger lingers like a thick coating of slime in prison cells, shower rooms, grids, and crematories. Prisoners, guards, or victims return as phantoms, nepharites, or purgatides.

The wilderness: There are places in the wilderness beyond our cities, and rural areas even the local people shun. There is something curious about these wild places, an unnerving change in the air, and a constant feeling of being watched. Rumors speak of those who have roamed there, only to disappear without a trace. These feral areas lie close to Gaia, the Living Garth.

Catastrophe areas: natural catastrophes and acts of mass violence can also make reality crumble. A tsunami swamping a village beneath its waves might drag the entire population into Metropolis. The destruction caused by a suicide bomher might briefly open the gateways to Inferno.

The Underworld: Our cities are filled with complex underground systems, including tunnels, underground railway systems, sewers, culverts, and air raid shelters. If you explore these subterranean realms, constantly making your way downwards, you can enter the Underworld which lies just beyond the Illusion. In order to do this, one must wander without a map, without direction, and completely aimlessly. If you follow a map of the underground systems, you are usually kept in the false world.

The Dark net: the Internet is a doorway into our collective unconscious. If we search deeply enough, we find bizarre, nonsensical code and vast, alien entities, all of which seem to stare back from the other side of the screen. We are drawn into a labyrinth of riddles, fake truths, and shocking images, and if we go astray bere we can bend time and Space, finding ourselves transported to a completely different place, or even swept into the dream worlds of Limbo.

Crime scenes: The Illusion begins crumbling in locations of brutal crimes, such as ritual murders, extreme assaults, prolonged torture, or other acts of violence and terror. In these places, one can open the floodgates by inflicting massive suffering or recreating the previous crimes to such an extent Time and Space merge, allowing you to watch the horrors that transpired there. Here, any sort of gateways may be flung open, to Inferno, Metropolis, the Underworld, or to any numher of individual purgatories.

War zones: War, suffering, and mass executions can push reality towards Inferno. It is not unusual for those who have died in these locations to live on as doomed legionnaires, purgatides, or phantoms.

Cult sbrines: In the past, cultists’ shrines functioned as nodes for breaking through the Illusion. Through their devotion and sacrifices, the followers’ will opened up gateways towards Inferno, Metropolis, or other worlds long destroyed, forgotten, or distant from Elysium. Many times, the entity they prayed to incarnated itself, and for such supernatural beings the barrier is always weakest in these places of worship.

Celebration of the Principle: If you are present at a celebration of one or more of the Principles, the gateway towards its Citadel opens with relative ease. At a fashion show, where Beauty is the focus, patrons become bypnotised by the superficial, collectively enslaving themselves to Tiphareth’s Principle. Thus, the gateways towards the Archon’s Citadel can be opened. Likewise, those outcasts who are most forlorn, lonely, and abandoned and close to being devoured by nothingness can find their way into Satbariel’s Citadel. This is an extremely unreliable way of traveling between worlds, and typically only bappens when the respective Archon or Death Angel has turned its attention upon this instance of ritual worship.

Artifacts

Before the Demiurge’s disappearance, it was considerably barder to gaze into other realities. During that time, magic rites, ballucinogenic drugs, or special artifacts were used. Since then, cameras, glasses, and other lenses have been created to see through the Illusion. Mosaics, puzzles, and shards are now used to unlock gateways into other worlds, while statuettes are used to summon creatures from the other side of the Illusion. Special mirrors allow us to step across the worlds, and objects and people with strong auras have been able to make the Illusion crumble in places where it is especially weak. Medical experiments, primarily with psychotropic drugs, brain surgery, isolation, or extreme sensory experiences have also proven efficient.

The Illusion as a Barrier

The Illusion is a wall both surrounding us and permeating us. This barrier does not only bold us back from reality, but also protects us from that which is on the other side. Demons and abominations from Inferno, dream princes from Limbo, phantoms from the Underworld’s depths, and forgotten gods from worlds unknown cannot simply wander into our world as they like. We remain bidden from them. Only in certain places within the Illusion’s borderlands can their influence seep through. These locations might be in psychiatric hospitals, war zones, or ritual chambers where the Archons’ weave has started to loosen up. There, beings can claw their way through and fully manifest in Elysium.

Many times, tears in the Illusion are connected to specific individuals; a bomeless person ridden by insanity, a confused young girl who bears a family curse, a captured soldier being tortured, or the YouTube celebrity struggling against his repressed addictions. Indeed, it might be anyone.

These people burn like flames in the darkness, and might attract beings and creatures eager to bond with them, using them as gateways to enter Elysium.

Some creatures, such as lictors and razides, physically exist in the Illusion. These can escape, but only if they know of gateways or possess magical aids.

TΗΕ ΜΔCHİAERJ OF &HE ILLUSION

The Illusion is a complicated machine; a wondrous weave of Principles, seals, and rites extending through Time and Space. When players travel in the Illusion’s borderlands, the Gamemaster can choose to use one of these moves.

- Expel a Creature Back from Elysium

A being is drawn back beyond the Illusion’s veil and is concealed from our dormant consciousnesses, while Єlysium also becomes bidden from the creature. This normally does not occur with servants of the Archons, but creatures from Inferno, such as nepharites, find it difficult to be active in Elysium.

- Draw Someone Back into Elysium

A human being can be drawn back into €lysium from a different reality. This is more likely to bappen the further away the person is from Awakening.

NOTHINGNESS (LEVEL VII)

A creature entering Elysium has its true appearance disguised as something familiar or ordinary via the Illusion’s veil.

- Revoke a Magical Effect

The Illusion unweaves a magical effect. It may be closing a gateway, unlocking the magical bond invoking and/or controlling an entity, and similar magics.

CREAYURES

Borderliners

Borderliners are people who live in the borderland of the Illusion. They exist in Metropolis’ shadow and are caught between two worlds. They are divided, confused, and tormented. Most often one finds them living in the slums, close to gateways connecting Elysium with Metropolis. In this twilight land where they exist, they live beyond Time, Space, and even Death. Those who die in the Illusion’s borderland risk becoming a Borderliner. Many of them were once homeless or social rejects in life. They are the unfortunates who took their own lives in fetid alleys, overdosed in the public lavatory, or froze to death on a cold night.

Borderliners are governed by their animalistic drives. Sometimes they can maintain their humanity for a short while, but when the hunger overcomes them they grab incautious wanderers and devour them. A Borderliner who leaves Elysium completely often becomes one of the Feral. Some Borderliners who return to Elysium can, through medication and therapy, reestablish their mundane lives. However, they are eternally altered, as Metropolis has etched its influence into their senses.

Borderliners

Home: The borderland between Єlysium and Metropolis. Creature Type: Distorted human.

Abilities

none.

Combat [3], Influence [1], Magic [1].

Combat [Considerable]

Burst out in an animalistic attack. Survive a lethal attack. Climb and jump like an wild animal.

Influence [Weak]

Blend in with homeless people.

Magic [Weak]

Drag someone into Metropolis.

Attacks

Borderliners usually burst out in violent attacks when they are threatened or bungry. They fight like wild animals, bowling and snarling, while feasting on the flesh of their fallen foes. When fed, a borderliner temporarily calms down enough to be approached, though they are still confused and moderately incoberent.

Natural weapons: Knock over [1] [Distance: arm, victim is knocked to the ground]; Rip up [2] [Distance: arm]; Bite [1] [Distance: arm, beals a wound if the attack causes a Serious or Critical Wound].

Wounds & Harm Moves

Wounds: ○०००

• The Borderliner is covered in scratches.
• The Borderliner hisses and exposes its teeth.
• The Borderliner is terribly wounded but won’t give up.
• The Borderliner flees, bleeding, to the nearest rift in the Illusion.
• Dead.

nachtkäfer

In places where one can glimpse Metropolis through the Illusion’s veil, one might occasionally encounter the grotesque nachtkäfer. They are balf-metre long insects resembling cockroaches, covered with purple growths which leak a sticky yellow fluid. When they crawl out of their biding places, they leave bebind trails of this lipuid, which is mildly corrosive to all organic material. nachtkäfer fear the light and recoil whenever exposed to any bright illumination.

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