This is one of a series of posts intended to show what various mage groups believe, how they think, and why they think the Sleepers ought to prefer their vision of reality. It is not intended as a complete picture of each group, or a 'fair' portrait. It's written as propaganda by each group, but honest propaganda. They won't lie, but they won't list their own flaws in detail either :) Naturally, these posts represent my own idiosyncratic views which I believe to be reasonably compatible with canon, but given my memory is at times rather sieve like, I may forget stuff. If you see a contradiction between this or the appropriate Trad/Conv book, it may or may not be deliberate. If you have suggestions for more questions that should be covered, please let me know. Dreamspeakers and a bunch o' other stuff is all copyright of White Wolf, of course. You can find the ones done so far at: http://www.maison-otaku.net/~rhea/WW/index.html Enjoy! Ascension 2000 Campaign Pamphlets: Dreamspeakers So, you're like medicine men and shamans and witch doctors, right? Pointing bones, and doing rain dances and making medicine bundles and other primitive stuff? Aren't you all dying out? The Dreamspeakers do come from a very diverse background, yes. Our sacred objects and rituals are the most diverse of any tradition. Our communion with the spirits unites us, though we are called by a thousand different names and before the formation of the Traditions, many of our members' ancestors warred with each other. We have put aside our traditional enmity in face of the greater enemy: the advance of the Technocracy, which threatens to destroy all that is. Do not call our ways primitive. It is not we who have wiped out entire species for fun. It is not we who have clouded the skies with smog, filled the waters with filth, and dumped garbage upon the land. None of our peoples herded millions into ovens, or spread plagues which wiped out millions in the so-called 'New World', or travelled to new lands to enslave their inhabitants. We did not go to your lands and force you to follow our ways, killing those who got out of line. We are the civilized folk, while you are the ones who have spread destruction, war, slavery, and pollution wherever you have gone. We follow the ancient ways, the true ways, the ways that can still preserve the Earth, if only you will renounce your foolishness and follow them. Do I sound bitter? Yes, I am bitter. Even our 'allies' stood aside and did nothing when the Europeans came and slaughtered our people, spread plague and pollution, and raped the very Earth upon which we all depend. Then they called us primitive and backwards because we were not so stupid as they were. Are we dying out? Only in the same sense that the buffalo 'died out' when White fools killed them all just because they could. Only in the same sense that the wolves are dying out because their homes have been polluted and they are hunted down and killed. We are not dying out because we are wrong or primitive, but because those who follow the ways of the Technocracy want to destroy us, and our allies failed us, and continue to frequently fail us. But by destroying us, they destroy themselves. By abandoning the ancient ways, they abandon what preserves the Earth. If the Earth dies, we all die. That is why we fight to keep our dream alive, for if we fall, there will be no one to preserve the Earth and its spirits, and then everything will perish. Hey, don't blame me! I never invaded Africa, I don't go around killing Indians, and I don't like plagues any more than you do. And I don't have any traditional ways to go back to. Also, I think I'd go mad being a hunter-gatherer. You have accepted the benefits garnered by your ancestors by destroying and persecuting mine. Those who accept stolen goods as an inheritance are also guilty. Nor is it my fault you have forgotten your ancestral ways. Your failure to preserve them, however, may lead to us all dying together. But I am not here simply to harangue you for your civilization's sins. I am here to teach you what we believe. The most important aspect of our traditional ways is respect for the spirits. Every culture has found different ways to show that respect, and even in your stagnant, dead city, there are spirits to whom you could learn to show respect. Indeed, there is a group within our Tradition called the Ghost Wheel Society who speak to the spirits of Technology and fight to awaken the spiritual world once more within your cities. And I must admit that some faint shadow of this awareness does persist within modern society. People name their cars. They talk to machines that don't work right. Beloved inanimate objects are often called 'she', rather than 'it'. So where do you find spirits? Everywhere. Everything that exists has a spirit in it, though in these times, most spirits are asleep. Both the living and the dead contain a spirit, and most kinds of things, especially natural things have powerful spirits that rule over them and do their best to protect them. This is why we give thanks to the animals for allowing us to hunt them, and ask their lords for permission to conduct the hunt, that they will not take offense. It is not wrong to hunt, merely to not ask permission and show gratitude when you hunt. That is the greatest flaw of modern society; it treats everything as soulless things whose only value is what they can be used for, rather than respecting everything because it has a soul. Even rocks have rights. Do not think that we blindly hate all tools. Rather, we hate machines which enslave spirits to tasks which are not their duties and contribute to the wounding of our mother, the Earth. Granted, this includes many and possibly most of the 'inventions' modern society relies on, but we are not animals. Humans use tools, but their tools must be respectful of the things from which they were made, and be used for just and moral purposes, not to rape the Earth and poison it. Still, to know and respect the spirits is not enough to make one a Dreamspeaker, though it does set one on the path of righteousness. To be a Dreamspeaker, one must learn to communicate with the spirits, to awaken them, walk with them, aid them, and become able to call upon them for help. The spirits Awaken us, that we might help to awaken their slumbering brethren, and turn back the humans to the path of harmony with the spirits and the Earth. Whatever we are called, we are shamans, those whose role it is to mediate between mankind and the spirit world that most people cannot or will not percieve. So, you're basically priests who worship and serve the spirits. No. We honor the spirits and we aid them, but we do not worship them. While the Chorus will tell you we know nothing of the 'One' they try clumsily to serve, we knew of the Creator long before they came together in Egypt a few millenia ago. All things were made by the Creator, and he made the spirits too. They are not gods, much as they may claim it at times. But they are the guardians and shepherds of the world, put in place by the Creator, and they do possess a rightful authority over many things. Equally importantly, they need our help to do their duties. They preserve the Earth, but we preserve them. Without us, they fall into slumber, and fail to do their duties. Often, those who blindly follow the machine road destroy the very spirits who sustain the Earth. If too many of them die, then the Earth will die too. Perhaps the Creator will make a new world, but we won't be around to find out. In ancient times, every people made contracts with the spirits with our aid. They would aid the humans, and the humans would aid them. We lived in harmony with the Earth and the spirits. That harmony must be restored before it is too late. So how does your magick work? There are two kinds of Power. One is Sorcery, the selfish magic performed by most others who possess power. It steals the power of the spirits and uses it for personal ends. That kind of magick, we reject. Our magick, or as we prefer to call it, Medicine, is Power used for the benefit of the Earth, of our peoples, and of the spirits. It is power freely given to us by the spirits in return for the services we do them. Each of us, every living thing, possesses a 'Uhane, a spirit within them who guides us in walking the path of Medicine, and it is the awakening and naming of that spirit which is our first step in serving as a Dreamspeaker. We use a variety of kinds of sacred rituals and ritual objects in order to call upon the spirits to aid us in performing Medicine. We draw art, create sacred circles, perform dances (often wearing masks evocative of the spirit whose aid we request), chant sacred rites, sing and play instruments, make sacrifices, or sacrifice ourselves through various kinds of ordeals. What method we use depends upon what sort of spirit we're contacting, and how heavy of a price the spirit usually extracts for its aid. The rite is both payment and a call for help, though at times, further payment may be necessary. The spirits are our friends and business partners. We can call upon their power, but we must always pay them in some manner, whether it be with sacrifices, food, respect, or favors. It can take a life time to master even a fraction of the lore as to how to summon spirits and gain their aid. Still, their power is vast, and our need is great. Some spirits become closer partners, entering into fetishes to grant us their powers whenever we need them, or entering animals to act as our familiars, or forming personal contracts with us, becoming totems. These spirits must be treated with the utmost respect, and in return, they grant us power without the need to perform a rite each time. Indeed, as one grows in Wisdom, the spirits will often forgo demanding a rite entirely, and simply aid us once we have alerted them of our need. Thus it is that many of the most Wise among us appear to 'discard their foci', though we usually will still perform the rites if we have time. Best not to impose too much upon the spirits. It is only courtesy to reciprocate the aid given us with gifts and shows of respect to them. So how would you cure my lung cancer? I would tell you that it was clearly a punishment from the tobacco spirits for your wanton slaughter of their brethren without any regard for the sacredness of tobacco. You clearly deserve to die. Ack. However, if on being told this, you repented your sins against the tobacco spirits and your violation of the ancient covenant between men and the tobacco spirits which gave us the right to cultivate and smoke some of their bretheren, then I could help you. So, we'll assume you didn't just call me a primitive, then stomped off. The first step would be for you to atone for your crimes. This would start with you ceasing to smoke until your penance was complete. The next step would be an act of positive atonement. Depending on where and how you live, I would consult with the spirits of tobacco as to how best you could do that. Perhaps you might have to grow several tobacco crops and not smoke any of it yourself, but instead give it away to those who would show the tobacco proper respect. Lacking farming skills as you likely do, I might ask you to undergo some sort of ordeal to demonstrate your repentance, such as being suspended by cords just barely holding you up for several days, or going without food and water for a time. There might be some other service you could perform for the spirits. Once you had demonstrated your contrition, I would instruct you in the proper ways to show respect for the tobacco spirits in the future. Then I would begin the process of healing you. I would take you to a river, and bathe you first, for purification. Then, on the bank, we would draw a sacred circle around ourselves, and I would dress you and myself in garb pleasing to spirits of healing. The spirits of healing like food, so we would cook them a meal and leave it out for them as I sung the chants to call them to you. While I sung, I would have you close your eyes and mouth, so you could not accidentally give them offense. Eventually, they would either come and heal you, or explain what they wanted you to do before they could heal you. Depending on how advanced your cancer was, this might go fairly quickly, or it could take hours to days. So why don't the spirits give every smoker in the world lung cancer, if it's caused by them getting mad at us? There's several reasons for that. For one thing, there's too many smokers and not enough tobacco spirits. Spirits that are ignored tend to fall asleep, so many of the spirits who might enforce proper respect are too lost in dreams to do so. Secondly, the Gauntlet seperates the Dreamtime of the spirits from the Waking World. In some places, the Gauntlet is very thick, which makes it difficult for spirits to successfully reach through the gauntlet and dish out punishement. Cities, where the bulk of your populace now lives, have thick Gauntlets. And finally, they have to find you to punish you. Tobacco grown in Cuba might be smoked by a man living in California, which makes it rather tricky for the tobacco spirits to locate you. And the Gauntlet grows ever higher as those touched by the West destroy the forests and cut down the trees and pollute the waters. Every strip mall, every parking lot, every highway, every housing development makes it harder and harder for the spirits to touch the Waking World and further seperates the Dreamtime from the Waking World. Well, if they're all going to give us lung cancer, maybe we're better off without them. Let me repeat myself. The Waking World NEEDS the Dreamtime. If it was to be cut off from the Dreamtime completely, it would die. And that is the Technocracy's goal: to make the Gauntlet impassible, to utterly seperate the two Worlds. They believe it is necessary to protect humanity, but instead, they are simply building a giant tombstone for all life. The relationship between the two worlds is reciprocal. Our dreams, our sacrifices, our actions of respect sustain and aid the spirits. In return, they preserve and protect us. If we level a forest in the Waking World, it withers and dies in the Dreamtime. If it is destroyed in the Dreamtime, it will wither and die in this world. A sleeping spirit cannot protect itself, and it cannot sustain its Waking World counterpart so well as a lively one. Cut off from the 'food' we provide, spirits die or fall asleep, and the world creeps closer to oblivion. Cities are dead places because those who built them show no respect for the spirits. Deprived of food, the spirits either fall asleep or die, and the city constantly crumbles, for unlike a natural place, it cannot heal itself. Where a river travels the same path for hundreds of years without repairs, your roads crumble, full of holes within a few decades at most, for their spirits sleep or die. And so their inhabitants have to rape the Earth to get the materials they need to keep their cities from dying completely. And the poison spreads. So, how do other mages do magick if they're not keeping up the proper respect for the spirits? Spirits are not omnipotent. Their black arts enslave the spirits, forcing them to do their bidding. Not all mages fully understand what they are doing, that they are enslaving the spirits instead of showing them proper respect, and so we tolerate their actions and try to enlighten them. This failure to show respect is one of the major causes of what is called 'Paradox' by the Traditions, when mages are smitten for their hubris. In addition, some spirits have been enslaved by the dreams of the Sleepers, and try to enforce the reality that the Sleepers believe in. These strange spirits are not well understood by us, and we are still trying to learn how to placate them. Thus it is that we too fall prey to 'Paradox'. Still, we hope to one day understand them well enough to establish bargains like those we have made with the other spirits. So what would the world be like if you ruled it? Most of the 'civilization' you cling to would have to be destroyed. Perhaps if the stories the Sons of Ether tell about how one can make machines that do not pillage the environment prove to be true, some cities could be allowed to endure. At the very least, their spread would end. Once that was done, we could restore the wild places which have been savaged. This would likely be work enough to keep us all busy a century or more, healing the land and coaxing the spirits to return. A second great work that would be needed would be to renew the ancient ways. Many among our own peoples have fallen away from them, and for many groups of Europeans, these ways would have to be rediscovered. I know little of the spirits of your land, but with time and effort the ways in which you could live with them in communion would be rediscovered. There would be much travel at first, as peoples returned to their own lands. I suppose we would all end up owing the spirits many favors for the assistance we would need to accomplish that. Every people would have its own land, the land with which they have bonded themselves. It is not healthy for a people to leave their sacred places. Different tribes would live in different ways, as it pleased them. Some would hunt, others fish, others trade, and others farm. The nomadic peoples would be free to roam once more, while those who prefered a more secure life would have it. It is hard for me to describe it in more detail, since life would be very different for different tribes. The Sioux and the Bantu, the Inuits and the Chibcha, the Bedouin and the Tcho-Tchos, all of them have different ways, and they would be free to return to them. Umm...there's 5.2 billion people, and a lot of them have rather mixed origins. First of all, how would you decide who goes where? Secondly, what about when two tribes claim the exact same homeland, like the Israelis and the Palestinians? Thirdly, how are that many people supposed to FEED themselves if we abandon mechanized agriculture and the transporation network? Those of mixed origin would pass to the tribe whose heritage they felt singing mostly strongly to them. This is how it works to a large extent in your world, anyway. The 'English' are actually a mixture of Celts, Saxons, Romans, various Scandanavians, Normans, and a smattering of others, all of whom have come to adopt that tribal identity as their own. Some of your peoples are so mixed as to form a new tribe. I would argue for the lands of the 'United States' tribe being along the eastern seaboard, since most of the tribes who could lay claim to that area have died out and would be unable to return to their ancient homes. As to conflict over lands claimed by several tribes, we would ask the spirits to decide. After all, whoever lived there would have to reopen proper relations with the local spirits, and if they decided they didn't like one of the groups, to have the tribe settle there could only lead to disaster. The land belongs to both the people and the spirits. As to the third, with the aid of the spirits, all things are possible. Still, in the long term, population would have to come down. The land can only support so much life. We would work magics with the spirits to greatly reduce the fertility rate until the populations declined. If that took too long, more drastic measures might be necessary, such as petitioning the Lords of the Planets for space for a time to hold excess population, though that would likely bear a heavy price. I dunno. Being a hunter gatherer still isn't my thing, and a lot of those 'traditional ways' you love were pretty cruel, which is one reason we abandoned them. I mean, the Norse would hang themselves for wisdom, and you had stuff like 'droit de seignur', which was basically legalized rape, and women were property, and they worshipped idols and all that. I am not so conservative as to say that every tradition is good. The most important are those which show respect to the spirits. The westerners must relearn respect for the Earth, for the animals and plants they eat, and for the tools they use. There are many ways to show respect. Some of them may offend your sensibilities, but when the choice is that or the destruction of the Earth, my own choice is clear to me. Our goal is that every people be given the ability to preserve its way of life without others coming in and forcing their own opinions upon them, so far as that is compatible with not destroying the world we live in. If the Europeans had stayed there and destroyed themselves with their machines, I would have been happy to let them do so, but instead they sought to spread over the Earth and lay it waste. That must end. So what do you think about the rest of the Traditions and the other mages? A handful of those among the other Traditions follow the Medicine Path, using their powers to help and to heal. We have especially found friends among the Verbena and the Cult of Ecstasy, for they have oft supported us when all others turned their back. Their ways are not our ways, but we respect their path. The rest of the Traditions are largely mired in sorcery, using their powers to benefit themselves instead of others. They are fools, but we persist in walking with them in the hopes of showing them the errors of their ways and because they too fight the Technocracy. The Technocracy must die to the last man. It is they who have directed the war upon our peoples, and for that, there is no forgiveness. Their explorers led the others to us, their liars justified the attack upon us, their makers built the tools to conduct the assault, their false healers brought down plagues to slaughter us, and their traders profited from our destruction. We will free the spirits they have enslaved, and then we will wipe them out as they nearly wiped us out. Perhaps a few will be allowed to survive on 'reservations' in order to serve as a bad example. I believe Death Valley is available. We pity the Mad Ones, for they have become lost in their dreams. They are a warning to us that it is possible to pay too much attention to the Dreamtime and the spirits, and not enough to the Waking World. We try to heal them if we can, but largely, we just try to redirect them at our enemies. There are many small societies which are not part of us, but which follow the Medicine Path. We leave them to their work, for they know their own peoples better than we do, though we gladly aid them if they ask. Finally, there are the Dream Mockers, or as others call them, the Nephandi. They too must be destroyed, for they would smash the world with their nightmares. They are the ultimate example of what sorcery leads to. No mercy, no quarter, no forgiveness for the Dream Mockers. Time is running out. The Earth Mother cannot take much more punishment from her children. If we do not end the age of the Machine, the Earth will perish, and us with it. Things must change and soon. Can you not hear the voice of the spirits in your dreams? The wind talks to us, and begs us for help. We have broken the ancient bargains, but it is not too late to renew them. Cast aside your sorcery and walk the Path of Medicine with us before it is too late. Let us dream the world anew! [OOC: Yes, that last line is a quote from the backcover of the Dreamspeakers book]