Magickal Aspects

The chantry does not have any horizon realm. Instead it relies on Correspondence manipulations. If one were to carefully map out each room in the building, it would soon be apparent that they won't fit together; many overlap and the chantry is around twice as large as the physical building. The Paradigm is equally patched. Essentially, most rooms are sanctums with different paradigms. The laws of reality can change by simply walking through a doorway. This has certain problems, since some magick is coincidental in one area of the building but produces paradox in other areas.

Roughly speaking, each Guild controls one fourth of the building each. The rooms of the Guild of Bacchus on the bottom floor are closest to static reality. In fact, they are not very good sanctums. On the second floor, magickal reality is much stronger. The Guild of Mercury dominates this floor, much to the irritation of the Guild of Vulcanus, which is located in the eastern wing. Some places, like the Banquet Hall are quite flexible for all types of magick, while the Ceremony room or the Computer Room have very specialised paradigms.

The chantry is protected by many elaborate wards. The main ward simply makes sleepers and reality at large to ignore the chantry. People walking along Priest Street will not remember the building, and will not be interested in it if they notice it. Another ward makes it similarly invisible from the Umbra. It is the duty of the Forcemaster to keep these wards and the correspondence effects in working order.

Nodes

The chantry has several nodes. The main node is the well in the Temple, where the quintessence necessary for the upkeep of the wards is stored in the holy water which seeps in from the ground. It taps the two ancient ley-lines which first attracted people to the city. One is linked to Earth; it originally ran along the Stockholm ridge towards Uppsala (today the Technocracy has weakened it considerably, but it still remains since its so profoundly connected to the city and its geography). The other is linked to Water, and connects lake Mälaren with the archipelago and the sea.

The other main sources of quintessence are two nodes in the south part of the city. One is located on the place where the gallows once stood, on top of Erstaberget. Today it is a lawn in front of a school. The mages are helped by the ghost of Tomas Nielsson who died 1494, a forger who was hanged with his coins sewn onto his chest. These coins appear in the lawn and contain the quintessence (although the node has dried up considerably after the executions ended). The other node is a small chapel nearby, where Tass appears in the form of votive candles, which are then used in the chantry.

Beside the main nodes, the Convivo also taps several transient nodes. One node is the trinity spring in Uggleviken. This spring has been a centrum for pagan worship since time immemorial. The celebrations on the 1st of May around it with singing and dancing continued well into the early 20th century, when they died out under Technocracy pressure. However, on the ancient Sabbaths the place (the spring itself has almost dried out) regains its power. This node was originally the domain of the Children of Bacchus, but is now handled by the Forcemaster.

Another node which is occasionally tapped is located on a small island, just a rock, in the archipelago outside Stockholm. The glaciers of the Ice age left the surface of the island smoothly eroded into almost the shape of a palm. In the middle of the palm, a small puddle sometimes appear, filled with quintessence. This usually happens just after storms, especially in the autumn.

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Anders Sandberg / nv91-asa@nada.kth.se