Editing Mage: The Awakening (section)

==Archmagi==
Introduced in ''Imperial Mysteries''. When a mage hits Gnosis 6 and Arcana 6, if they obtain the proper Quintessence (basically, a one time mystical quest item), they may attempt to cross the Abyss and awaken a second time, becoming retardedly powerful if they succeed, and becoming a witch from ''Puella Magi Madoka Magica'' if they don't, complete with barrier, flocks of abyssal intruders around them, and so on. They get their own pocket dimension where they cannot be harmed, but cannot affect anyone else as long as they stay inside of it. Archmagi are so powerful, they can kill people so hard that they never existed in the first place, but all level 6+ arcana effects require arcane experience and quintessences, and it's recommended that the PCs only manage to obtain quintessences after decades and decades of work.

Why ''don't'' they run the World of Darkness, you ask?  The short answer is "there's lots of sides".  The slightly longer answer is "they're mostly immortal, mostly hiding in their reality-proof bunkers in case you do go nuclear in a way they don't approve of, and mostly can undo your work eventually". Also (hopefully), the lesson less exalted Magery grimly hammered home session after session: "hubris is dangerous". With power of this magnitude comes commensurate punishment for ambition or failure; your Supernal screwups have consequences as far reaching as any of your ''other'' spells of that scale.  

Imagine walking into a library where everything is books - the walls, ceiling, floors, and furniture - and also the words inside are the ''source code for the universe''.  In order to make one careful alteration - let's say you want dogs to be human-level intelligent - you walk across the room, scribble in your correction, and leave. Let's also say you forgot to wipe your feet when you came in and tracked mud on an early 20th century historical document. When you get home, you discover that Germany won WWII, and your new intelligent dogs are mostly Nazi German Shepherds, and so kind of assholes. Now imagine that also recorded here are phone books of true names, or the last quarter million years of terrestrial evolutionary history, or the blueprint for the human soul, or the definition of Love, or ''any other common noun'', for that matter.

Cosmic horror is COSMIC.

Despite being stupidly powerful, Archmagi are potentially easier to ST for in 1E than ordinary mages of equal XP; it costs about 205 experience points, all focused into Gnosis and one Arcana, to become one, and although they become unbelievably good at their chosen Arcana, at that rate, you can pretty much expect them to do something really good with that one Arcana and not much else. This is in contrast to a regular mage of the same XP, who could have voraciously spread out his experience points in all directions and accumulated every arcana effect worth having and being utterly unpredictable. But YMMV. 

2E on the other hand has thus far expressly kept them in NPC territory, in part because they're so powerful that the current rules just can't put their abilities into crunch form. The basic details are still all present in the fluff so in theory you could modify the 1E rules to work for 2E, but beyond that you're on your own. 

===The Ententes===
After succesfully awakening a second time the new archmage is directed to one of the six ententes, the loose groups of archmagi with similar goals, though some refuse to join them. With one exception, they lack any sort of organization, leading to many just pursuing their own goals and occasionally coming to blows with each other. The Ententes are:

*'''The Alienated:''' Archmagi seeking to restore the supernal gods to their thrones, thus restoring the world and weakening the Exarchs. Their method of ascension is the Divine Union, where they become one with their god, though some say this is just a ruse created by abyssal or otherwise malevolent entities.
*'''Aswadim:''' Archmagi of the abyss who seek Kenoma, the abyssal ascension, cutting themselves completely from the supernal and becoming abyssal entities. Obviously no one likes them and are the one entente everyone is willing to ally against.
*'''Bodhisattvas:''' Archmagi seeking to help everyone awaken and ascend. Their method for ascension is the Mitrata ascension, where by helping another archmage ascend they also ascend.
*'''Exemplars:''' Archmagi of the Pentacle Orders seeking to strengthen their own order by becoming paragons of their moral codes and skills.
*'''The Siddha:''' Archmagi guarding the balance between the 10 arcana, with each attuned and protecting one of the 10. Their method of ascension is Assumption, the merging of their being with their chosen arcana.
*'''Tetrarchs:''' Archmagi of the Seers of the Throne who work to further the goals of the Exarchs and guide the people lower on the Iron Pyramid. Their method of ascension is the Exarchial Grace, as they believe only the Exarchs can grant true ascension, and indeed some of them have gone on to become lesser Exarchs themselves.