The Noosphere and the State of Humanity

Life, let alone sentient life, is an aberration. A freak occurrence. The physical universe is overwhelmingly void and nothingness, and it's a known fact that humanity is an immeasurably tiny tick on the cosmic timeline. The premise of Arcana Americana is that utter oblivion and non-being, or else a primordial state of chaotic, cosmic potential without form, is the universe's "base state". A reality capable of sustaining human life is a temporary deviation from this state, a state the cold and uncaring universe will someday naturally snap back to.

Indeed, perhaps the greatest and most terrible cosmic truth to this setting is that universe has already snapped back. Alternate realities are encroaching on this one, and alien beings from other planes worm their way into the world like scavengers drawn to carrion. This fate is held back only by humanity's collective unconscious will. Humanity's collective thoughts, narratives, beliefs and passions form a sort of metaphysical cocoon around reality, called the Noosphere, offering it temporary succor from the howling forces of entropy beyond. In a way, human experience as we know it is a delusion, a sort of stasis offered by the protective embrace of the Noosphere. Madness, then, is truth, glimpses at the pandemonium of conflicting realities and unrealities that lie just beyond the borderlands of popular understanding.

This may at first appear to be a rosier take on cosmic horror: humanity, in this setting, is not insignificant. Their unique ability to socialize and maintain a consensus reality has kept the ravening tides of primordial madness and the utter heat death of their universe at bay for millennia. But in truth, this protection is temporary and tenuous. The Noosphere is weakening, and as paranormal events occur with increasing regularity and human scientists and occultists slowly unravel the truth with their investigations, the protective shell of Noosphere may soon fracture.

One can than think of the Noosphere as a bubble adrift in the ocean, with poor air-breathing humanity huddled inside. The entities described below, the Outer Powers that exist beyond the Noosphere, are the things that swim in the deep. Things that could shatter that bubble with a caress. A thought. A glance.

Lusts-for-Ash
One of the two primary powers of the pantheon. An entity of essential chaos, determined to drag reality back into a primordial state so she can re-shape it for the Pretender-in-Feasting.

Magic: Evocation, including all gray magic spells. The Howl is free with her gifts and blessings. Black magic dependent on sites of power is called "geomancy" in particular.
Corruption: Naga result from certain black magic spells, which in turn can gestate into wendigo.
Familiar: Nagual, totemic animal spirits. Black magicians can bind with them, and ultimately send parts of themselves to attack their foes or deliver spells in animal-guise. Each nagual is tied to pair of hours in a day, a particular body-part, and grants particular discipline-like powers.
Minor Summon: Thunderbirds, who can be called down to convey cultists or attack enemies of the cult.
Grand Summon: Wendigo, who can be created through great and dire cthonic rites, but more often stem from naga whose human hosts die.
Secondary Grand Summon: Dragons, free-willed apex predators roaming the multiverse. If the Howl is an ocean, the dragons are the sharks.
Important Spell: The Argent Evocation of Lunar Shadow, which allows the cult to tamper with Ways, creating or destroying a fane.
Battle Spell: The Hierodule's Hymn, which paralyzes those who hear it with hideous pain before killing them, animating their viscera into a hideous facsimile of life. Those who use it must safeguard against its effects, though a caster that falls victim to it will continue to compulsively chant the spell between convulsions.
Cults: The Ivory Brotherhood, New Geomancy, Cult of Astarte
Ascension: Access to the Little House Without Windows, the Shadow of Akkad or other inter-dimensional places where time flows strangely can allow for near-immortality, if you can simply survive the violence and strangeness that tends to grip those sort of places. Black magicians can also use numerous forms of evocation to alter or transmute themselves, or parts of themselves, into some eternal state. None of these are perfect answers, and others, like the Exalted Bloodlines or the Hungry Ghosts occupying a wendigo's demesne are a fate worse than death.
Ways:

The Pale King Ascending
The second primary power of the pantheon, he represents the heat death of the universe, as well as the lesser deaths of everything else. He rages against The Howl, but does not yet have the power to overcome her.

Magic: Necromancy, dealing with corpses, divination and the manipulation of the soul.
Corruption: Ghouls, who enter the Dance while their consciousness is in the Pale King's domain.
Secondary Corruption: Vampires, who enter the Garden of Bone while in the liminal space between life and death, whether that be due to a near-death experience or dark magic.
Familiar: Mambabarang, swarms of fell insects that can infest a corpse, animating it into a false seeming of life.
Minor Summon: The black dogs, raw manifestations of the Pale King's lesser will that skilled necromancers can sic on their foes as assassins. Many of their victims rise again as ghouls or vampires, so their summoners are often paranoid about disposing of the corpse.
Grand Summon: Simurgh, the remnants of a multiverse-spanning empire that are indentured to the Pale King as they slowly dissolve in the Garden of Bone.
Important Spell: The Rite of the Brightest-Burning Candle, which the Wilcox Agency uses to exploit their artists. Those who undergo the rite become exceptionally talented at some mundane art or science, but are fated to die within a year.
Battle Spell: Slipping the Skein of Flesh, allowing the caster to fashion a ring from human skin that allows them to transfer their consciousness into a corpse. As a price, their original body instantly dies.
Cults: The Pale Cup Fellowship, The Wilcox Agency, The Knife and Caul Society
Ascension: Vampirism is an attractive path to immortality for many, if you have access to fresh victims and can avoid the attention of the Pale King Ascending. Long-lived, powerful or unusually "public" vampires are usually drawn into the Garden of Bone before long.
Ways:

The Purple Silken Dawn
A predatory consciousness that has metastasized into a parasite noosphere, and attached to our own. Independent of the other outer powers, it controls only a single fane of fell power in mainland China.

Magic: Invocation, dealing primarily with the practitioner inviting the influence of the Purple Silken Dawn into their own mind and body in order to grant greater degrees of power.
Corruption: Monks of the Throne, whose minds are devoured by the Purple Silken Dawn, leaving them as withered mummy-things that will guard the throne for all eternity.
Familiar: The sunzuwu phoenix, who is spiritually bound to an Iron Star Wu Operative and allows them to deliver spells as though they had a sympathetic connection. The sorcerer cannot die while the phoenix lives, and the phoenix will resurrect at dawn the morning after if killed.
Minor Summon: The akaname, a feculent hunter that requires human handlers to cover its tracks.
Grand Summon: The qilin, a sort of sacred temple guardian that provides a direct conduit to the Purple Silken Dawn. Can be used by Iron Star or Far West Laboratories to establish new beachheads devoted to the Dawn.
Secondary Grand Summon: The shen, a fearsome shoggoth-like entity that is nearly invisible underwater, often guarding Iron Star installations or ships at sea.
Important Spell: The Sunlit Path, considered the signature spell of the greatest of the Inexorable Masters, renders all locks and wards meaningless to the master. They can cast the spell Unsealing the Vault of Wisdom at will and in a single round, and all doors, windows and other portals slam open with violent force with a mere gaze from the magician, even if locked, barred or bolted shut. This effect cannot be turned off, hampering their ability to function in modern society.
Battle Spell: The discipline of pyrokinesis is sort of a specialty of the cults of the Dawn. The Enlightened Hand discipline is a favorite of theirs as well, though they are not the art's originators.
Cults: Iron Star, Far West Laboratories, The Illuminated Throne
Ascension: Wu who have plucked out their hearts to craft a phoenix-familiar are difficult to kill, but do not enjoy eternal youth. The Inexorable Masters are those who sit upon the throne and receive its blessing, but do not become monks. The Inexorable Masters are the leaders and luminaries of the cult, and use rare magical invocation potions to live well beyond their natural lifespan. After 500 years, it's said, they ascend in purple fire.
Ways:

The Third Living Tone
The medium from which the noosphere is crafted, it is dangerous to prod at the flimsy space between realities, or at the dreams of your fellow man, for too long.

Magic: Apportation, using the collective thoughts of humanity to transport matter across dimensions or generally blur the lines of dream and reality in minor ways. Though the Third Living Tone is not as directly inimical to human life as some of the outer powers are, wielding powers of apportation is still incredibly dangerous black witchcraft, as it risks cracking the noosphere itself.
Corruption: The angels, inter-dimensional travelers who linger in other spaces without proper protection begin to "unfold" into red-hot starfish-like shapes over time.
Secondary Corruption: The Toll-Keeper and the Wayfarers. The Toll-Keeper sits at the Source of Roads, frozen until petitioned by a traveler. Taking the coins from his hand frees the Toll-Keeper, creating a Wayfarer. Wayfarers can walk anywhere but upon the earth, though that doesn't stop them from trying.
Familiar: A tulpa, a dream-being made real by the powerful delusions of one deeply traumatized or disturbed individual, or by the cumulative lesser impulses of a group of people closer to the consensus.
Minor Summon: The hounds, the origin of the men in black myth. The noosphere's immune response to too much knowledge spreading too fast.
Grand Summon: Egregore, the dreams of many cultists joined and given a hegemonic power over the dreams of others. At least one of the original dreamers must be asleep at a time to sustain the egregore. Egregores inflict a curse that disables the Precognition, Telepathy, Telekinesis, Pyrokinesis and Witchfinding disciplines. Even those not gifted in the disciplines takes 1d4 Madness per night and a -2 penalty to skill checks until relieved of the curse.
Important Spell: Unspooling the Thread, which allows a caster to wipe or alter a recent memory. Events can be changed that are even very far back, and up to a year of time can be removed, but the larger the change the more brain damage is done to the target.
Secondary Important Spell: The Wolfsbane Censor, which allows the caster to avoid the notice of the hounds for a short time. An incredibly dangerous spell.
Battle Spell: The Occluding Mask Damask, which perfectly shields the caster's face from onlookers and all forms of surveillance, even magic. But only their face.
Cults: The Noble Academies, The Goetiac Hand, Janus Laboratories, Working Group Bleak Comet
Ascension: Like adepts of evocation, apportation specialists must stitch together immortality through lesser magic spells and magic-soaked places. The Wayfarers have immortality of a sort, though they give up their physical form and must "serve" possibly for centuries as the Toll-Keeper first.
Ways:

The Blue Hum and the Waiting Whisper
Also known as the Second Living Tone, the Waiting Whisper is the prophecy the death of the noosphere made manifest. He is the moment when mankind's last sapient thought finally flickers out. A moment that does not exist until it occurs, and will cease to exist once it finally arrives. He is ephemeral. He is coming. This makes him no less real.

The Hum is the Whisper's physical manifestation, an almost imperceptible tone heard in very remote areas or during rare natural events or cosmic conjunctions, such as solar or lunar eclipses. The Hum permeates areas vulnerable to becoming Ways, the "default setting" of all fanes until altered by other black magic.

Magic: Theironamancy, ablating away human consciousness to its primal state, or at higher degrees of proficiency, shapeshifting into animals or adopting animal-like characteristics somehow. It is, almost by design, a sanity-eroding avenue of magic. Only the Key of Horns could be said to be a master of it.
Corruption: The fae-things, as well as the Hum itself, which creates them. The Waiting Whisper is the breaching charge, establishing a toehold in reality so the other Outer Powers can spill forth. Corruption is the norm when it comes to the Blue Hum.
Familiar: Doppelgangers, unwitting doubles of humans who sometimes appear as they astrally project or otherwise enter the Chaos.
Minor Summon: A will-o-the-wisp, an orb of light purported to be a faerie or ghost. Really, it is a beacon and transmitter of the Hum.
Grand Summon: The Wild Huntsmen, hunters who appear human but are not. They are possessed by things from outside. They prefer human prey, and their wounds bleed blue light. They are relentless, and their very gaze makes your brain burn blue.
Important Spell: Making the Masked Unmarked, which allows a fae-thing to (sort of) step into the life of a human being. Whisper cultists sometimes use this spell to try and cover up murders, abductions, and the like.
Battle Spell: Mark of Yew and Horn, which renders a human target completely immobile and magically enthralled with a touch.
Cults: Winter Solstice Silent Yoga, House of Horn and Bone, Fox and Hind Club
Ascension: The only ascension possible for true devotees of the Waiting Whisper is utter self-negation. The ideal state is for the body to persist, perfect and unaging, but the mind to expire, be erased, or otherwise removed. Life is a permissible sin, but consciousness is not. Fae-things may not live forever, but they certainly don't think, and that is good enough.
Ways:

The Pretender-in-Feasting
The fifth reality, a reality not yet borne, has grown impatient as it festers with prophetic and apocalyptic power. Fated to be the last reality before all things collapse back into either the court of the Howl or the gardens of the Pale King, the Pretender-in-Feasting has done the unthinkable. In the eons it has waited for humankind to die off and the noosphere to crumble, it managed to conquer the fourth reality. Now it's worming its way into the third. Ours.

Magic: Channeling, which physically manifests aspects of realities not yet born in ours. Deals with conjuration of objects from different areas or planes, inviting foreign spirits into the caster's own body, or otherwise drawing upon some aspect of the Pretender-in-Feasting's corrupting influence.
Corruption: The Yellow Pageant, a sort of bioweapon or propaganda campaign imported over from the Conquered Kingdom (the fourth reality). A yellowish fluid that is highly addictive, causing ecstatic visions and religious fervor in users. Even a single use dooms the user to slowly dissolve into more of the material.
Familiar: Dwellers on the threshold, "lost spirits" that appear in otherwise non-magical grimoires. They will teach black magic to those that summon them, but also doom their summoners, either by drawing them into the Fourth Reality or by bringing the Fourth Reality to them by hollowing them out into colony-men.
Minor Summon: The colony-men, humans from the fourth reality overtaken by some type of parasite, which are in turn overtaken by the fungus that is the Pretender-in-Feasting's manifestation in the fourth world.
Grand Summon: The eidolon, which can look like anything or any object. It is the platonic ideal of some idea or object that exists somewhere in reality. When witnessed by sapient targets, its perfect beauty will implant itself in the witness' brain. The subject will become obsessed with it, and gradually begin to identify with it.
Secondary Grand Summon: The leviathans, who slumber in green icebergs that are slowly melting. They swim through air, water and time alike, seeding the Pretender's influence everywhere.
Important Spell: The Inward Carving Path, which sacrifices someone infected with the Yellow Pageant to teleport a small party anywhere in the third or fourth realities.
Battle Spell:The Golden Ash, a satchet powder that is actually a dried, preserved form of the yellow pageant. If any amount is inhaled, the target must succeed on a Physical save or be stunned for 1d4 rounds. Those who fail this save must also succeed on a Magical save or become infected with the Yellow Pageant.
Cults: The Secret Order of St. Argys
Ascension: Everything will join with the Pretender-in-Feasting. The Pretender-in-Feasting intends to bend all of humanity to the Yellow Pageant, or transport them to the fourth reality for transformation into a colony-man. Colony-men can be possessed by The Pretender, becoming entities known as imago. Their blood is the pageant, and their flesh teems with the heir's many children.
Ways:
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:21, Fri 15 Nov 2019.