Did anyone notice that Imperial Mysteries uses the term "Lower Depths" incorrectly? When the book is describing the Phenomenal/Fallen World, it refers to Abbadon (the Hell described in Inferno, the name itself is taken from Kabbalah) as "The Lower Depths." In previous sourcebooks, this term referred to a place that exists below and apart from the Fallen World, a grey and barren place where the Ten Arcana barely hold sway, inhabited by undying, forever hungry Eldritch Abominations like the Tutor (Seers of the Throne), the Intruders (Tome of the Watchtowers, Antagonists), the Decay and the Hellminth (Summoners). It is further postulated that some of the weirder things in the Underworld are actually coming up from the Lower Depths, since tunnels are believed to exist between them (Geist, Summoners, Book of the Dead).
Edited by Zenoseiya Hide / Show Replies
"The Ten Arcana hold no sway there" was put forth as a theory in the only place Mage Core mentions the Depths.
TotW was written around the same time as the corebook, a practice which has been noted to almost never produce quality material (besides which, the Invaders are mentioned in one myth that includes zombies walking to the end of the world and their actions don't exactly contradict the statement in Summoners and IM that the denizens of the Depths "hate all life").
The description of the Tutor makes little mention of the nature of its home, and Eldritch Abominations aren't exactly forbidden from depravity and debasement.
Is the idea that the place full of unmitigated inhumanity is underneath the place that slowly funnels increasingly inhuman and Vice-addicted ghosts downward somehow confusing to you?
Edited by WonSab
David Brookshaw gave a description of the Lower Depths that he was thinking about when writing the Tutor: [1]
, which is consistent with the description of the place beneath the Underworld explained in the Hellminth section of Summoners. He worked on Imperial Mysteries.
The description in IM is simply inconsistent with what was written previously, and is only consistent with Inferno. Conflating the Lower Depths with Abaddon is a clear misunderstanding. Abaddon is *not* beneath the Underworld, but is part of the Phenomenal World and accessible through Wounds in the Shadow.
"[The Lower Depths are] a place even further removed from the Supernal World [than the Fallen World].
Creatures from the Lower Depths might occasionally find their way to the Fallen World, where they probably need a lot of Mana to survive — Mana best taken from Awakened sources."
—From Mage: The Awakening, p. 61
"From the Lower Depths [the Intruders] came, some walking on two legs like humans, some scuttling along the ground like insects and some flying through the air in perverse mockery of the great Dragons of Old. They were creatures of hunger, of cold and lonely yearning, for to call them “evil” would be to grant them too much humanity. They did not understand humankind, and they did not intend to try. They wanted only warmth, and the souls of humanity were the fuel for their fires."
—From Tome of the Watchtowers, p. 76
"Whatever form [the Tutor] had in its native realm, the increased pressure of reality in the Fallen World renders it immobile and indistinct. It is half-materialized, half in Twilight, unable to communicate and difficult to look upon for longer than snatched glances. It is a thaumivore, but it has another appetite as well: it eats the human sense of self."
—From Seers of the Throne, p. 217
"Dead, But Never Born – Chthonians - those of at least an effective spirit Rank of 4 — allegedly know at least a little about the doorways to the Lower Depths situated in the deepest parts of the Underworld."
—From Summoners, p. 46
"[When summoning demons from Pandemonium] Other Warlocks look for information on “true” Demons, the inhabitants of Lower Depths that, unlike the Demons of the Kingdom of Nightmares, feed on human vice and depravity."
[This is a misue of "Lower Depths," and should have said "Inferno" based on the "vice and depravity" reference.]
—Summoners, p. 91
Official Clarification by David Brookshaw:
"The Lower Depths, as I think of them, are as far from the Fallen World as the Fallen World is from the Supernal. They're not Abyssal - they're *empty*. A Thin Place, where strange things move through their grey void of a world taking in what few scraps of Mana they need to survive.
The Tutor is undefined (to the point where you can't really percieve it) because it's not meant to be in this reality. It can't move by itself, or free itself from its half-materialised state because our world is just too *real* for it. It's functionally immortal because its homeworld (if its home can be said to be a world at all) is so far from Arcadia that Time doesn't exist.
Imagine a world where the Ten Arcana don't exist - no Forces, no Death, no Spirit, no Life and so on - or are present in only tiny amounts due to the Supernal being so very far away. If it's hard to conceptualise - good. If a mage went there, they'd be like a Supernal being coming to the Fallen. That's what I was shooting for.
YMMV."
When Imperial Mysteries briefly mentioned the Lower Depths and the Infero, it mentioned that they might be the same place, or they might not. Unfortunately, the Lower Depths was described as working like the Inferno, further muddying the waters.
This is an excellent example of writers contradicting themselves because they forgot what was written before, which began in Summoners and was continued in Imperial Mysteries. Hell and the Lower Depths cannot be the same place, because they are originally described with entirely different Modus Operandi until the writers confused them. Lower Depths entities are characterized by hunger: the Tutor consumes the sense of self, the Decay consumes the immediate area it manifests within, and the Intruders and the Hellminth consume everything in their path until the world is left a barren wasteland. Demons are characterized by feeding solely on vice and depravity; in fact, they are described as "loving" the world and fervent to prevent its destruction. Furthermore, demons only came into existence with mankind, whereas creatures like the Decay and the Hellminth are independent of humans and claim to predate them (which is supported by their appearance in Atlantean myth).
In Warhammer 40,000 terms it's the same difference between Chaos Demons and Tyranids/Necrons. The sheer hubris required to believe they are equivalent when they're not even remotely similar is just... argh!
Edited by Zenoseiya
And the category of "emotion eaters" is somehow necessarily completely distinct from the category of "eaters"? The idea of "Virtue floats, Vice sinks" does not naturally overlay itself such that Vice overlaps the metaphysical "downward" pole?
There is a thread on Imperial Mysteries in which you can ask questions of David Brookshaw. The publishing of the book likewise seems a legitimate reason to resurrect the old Lower Depths thread to ask if Dave changed his tune or has a means of reconciling the supposedly-divergent interpretations of the Depths. Go ask if it's bothering you.
Yes. The akathartoi feed on negative emotions gained from tempting and torturing humans. They do not, say, hollow out the crust of the earth until the planet is a barren wasteland like the Hellminth, consume the sense of self like the Tutor, or feed on the environment by inducing accelerated entropy like the Decay.
Is it so difficult to imagine that the two are distinct from one another? Summoners even goes so far as to include an entire chapter of entities that are deliberately designed not to fit into the "orthodox" cosmology.
That is what the demons from Inferno do. Those things are not specified as being the particular M.O. of the akathartoi in IM.
The Quincunx and the Men In Black have nothing resembling a similar thematic to either Inferno or Abaddon.
Go ask Dave and/or Malcolm if it's bothering you so much.
Edited by WonSab
I asked a week ago and still haven't received an answer.
IM states in its introduction that "Like Inferno’s demons, the Unclean Ones thrive on temptation and degradation." Which is incongruous with Tutor, Decay, and Hellminth. Heck, the Hellminth description even gives a brief tour of the (original) Lower Depths.
It really seems to me that the writers simply misused the term "Lower Depths" from its original meaning, which began in Summoners and culminated in Imperial Mysteries.
Ask again. There are a lot of posts in there and they can miss it. Alternately, dredge the Lower Depths topic.
"Temptation and degradation" is basically all the Decay is. The Hellmenth are served by the Operators, who have Morality 2 and decay their surroundings when summoned, to say nothing of this line from the Hellmenth's writeup:
Again, nothing about the Tutor contradicts the idea that it could possibly come from the same broad location as the Inferno is found in.
Edited by WonSab
I've tried at least a couple times already with comments and private messages, so I'm not going to keep asking.
The Decay is not an Inferno demon, because it does not have a body, ephemeral or otherwise, and is obviously alien-y. The phrase "grey Hell" in the Hellminth description is poetic, and furthermore it's in the chapter that explicitly states it contained entities that were not from the Supernal, the Abyss, or the Fallen World (which includes the Inferno). The Tutor isn't a demon because it eats the human sense of self, directly and irreversibly, whereas demons feed on vice and depravity; and its description also states that it is "pressured" by the increased reality of the Fallen world, meaning it is less real, but Demons have no such hindrances.
Abaddon is part of the Fallen World, and the original sense of the Lower Depths were not: they were as far from the Fallen world as the latter was from the Supernal. Abbadon is essentially the Nine Hells to the Lower Depths' Gray Waste, if you want to think of it in vaguely D&D-ish terms.
Correction. I was told the answer is "meaningless."
Edited by Zenoseiya
Whisperers don't have bodies, either, and can explicitly masquerade as symptoms of mental illness. Inferno-demons in general are not terribly picky about the definition they receive (note that the Supernal is essentially a Platonic realm of Form, and the Denizens of the Lower Depths are posited to be Mana-hungry in the extreme).
The Hellmenth are explicitly said to be too big to enter the material world unbidden; Inferno's Archdemons are too powerful to even manifest in the mortal realm as a Whisperer.
Is there a reason you're claiming the Tutor's particular state is proof that "squares are not rectangles" is the situation with regards to Inferno and the Lower Depths rather than just "this particular rectangle is not a square"?
If you're referring to the opening segment of Chapter Four, I note that the cosmology being drawn by the hypothetical mage is both grossly simplified (no Underworld or Hedge is mentioned, despite the former having existed in Mage cosmology since the Core Rulebook) and explicitly stated to be "not […] precisely objective" and is "accurate enough [to her.]"
And then there's something you seem to be neglecting about the Lower Depths in assuming it's inaccessible on the merit of equivalent metaphysical distance from the Fallen as possessed by the Supernal: the Supernal has an Abyss in the way and still manages to filter down. What does the Lower Depths have in the way?
I see nothing in IM saying that Abaddon resembles the stereotypical Hell, and, for that matter, nothing in Inferno that says the Inferno resembles it either; the inside of a Hellmouth looks different to everyone, and the description for the Hellform Numen notes that traditional forms are not the only forms possessed. Meanwhile, there's significant overlap between the stereotypical depictions of creatures from the Depths and the thematic qualities possessed by, say, Beelzebub- and Belphegor-type Inferno-demons and their related panoply of Vestments.
Could I get a full quote with context from "meaningless"?
Edited by WonSab
For the purposes of clarity I will refer to Brookshaw's "grey void" as Sheol and the Lower Depths/Inferno as Abaddon.
> What does the Lower Depths have in the way?
Sheol isn't inaccessible: there are paths through the Underworld that lead to it, through which creatures from Sheol may find their way up. Abaddon, on the other hand, is accessible through Wounds in the Shadow or through the rare Hellmouth.
> Could I get a full quote with context from "meaningless"?
The World of Darkness is supposed to be a Timey-Wimey Ball, meaning the cosmology can't be mapped out with any degree of certainty.
I'm not trying to argue the "one truth" or anything, but I personally feel that the writers have drifted away from the original conceptions (a criticism I also aim at Danse Macabre and the "Ascension War" described in IM: their thinking is too big and drifts away from the games' original intent as down-to-earth and personally-focused). Therefore, I see "the Lower Depths" as being a label that is unfairly applied In-Character to two separate places with their own unique traits, which also plays very nicely into the theme of hubris.
Sheol and Abaddon are both hellish places inhabited by soul-sucking demons. The same can be said for the Abyss and the Shadow, but it doesn't mean they're the same. The fundamental difference between the two is that Abaddon is formed of human vice and depravity, whereas Sheol actually predates the Supernal. That's it.
Edited by Zenoseiya
> Sheol isn't inaccessible: there are paths through the Underworld that lead to it, through which creatures from Sheol may find their way up. Abaddon, on the other hand, is accessible through Wounds in the Shadow or through the rare Hellmouth.
I reiterate my previous question.
>The World of Darkness is supposed to be a Timey Wimey Ball, meaning the cosmology can't be mapped out with any degree of certainty.
Overgeneralization, as the necessity of Irises to traverse delineated boundaries shows.
>Sheol and Abaddon are both hellish places inhabited by soul-sucking demons. The same can be said for the Abyss and the Shadow, but it doesn't mean they're the same. The fundamental difference between the two is that Abaddon is formed of human vice and depravity, whereas Sheol actually predates the Supernal. That's it.
Except that the Shadow's denizens and its effects are both distinct from the Abyss in their methodology — spiritual ecology is a matter of living symbols, whereas the Abyss is a broad swath of broken realities that occasionally makes incursions on the Phenomenal World through sundry different channels, several of which have little or nothing to do with spirits except in periphery. By contrast, the cosmology does not lose coherence if one assumes that "Sheol," Abaddon and/or the Inferno are at least closely related.
Also, I can find nothing that says Abaddon or the Inferno are "formed of human vice and depravity.'' A place need not be made of something to feed on it.
Finally, if "Sheol" is meant to include the Lower Depths described in Summoners… No, we do not have a concrete statement that it predates the Supernal. We have a statement that some of the the things from there claim to predate the Tapestry. These are not remotely the same thing.
Edited by WonSab
If Zenoseiya tried to PM me, it didn't get through.
Yeah. The Lower Depths.
What you're picking up on isn't a retcon so much as two groups of writers picking up the ball from Awakening and running in different directions - Malcolm wrote on Inferno and the parts of Imperial Mysteries where it's mentioned.
Should they ever be looked at in more detail, I'd expect the Inferno to turn out to be one realm inside the Lower Depths, which contains multitudes of realms hungering for the Phenomenal World.
> I can find nothing that says Abaddon or the Inferno are "formed of human vice and depravity."
"akathartoi: The “Unclean,” creatures formed from human evil that hunger for Mana. Inhabitants of Abaddon" (IM 18).
> We have a statement that some of the the things from there claim to predate the Tapestry.
Point taken.
> Should they ever be looked at in more detail, I'd expect the Inferno to turn out to be one realm inside the Lower Depths, which contains multitudes of realms hungering for the Phenomenal World.
Of all the realms of the Lower Depths, Abaddon strikes me as the most... different. When I read about it in Inferno and Imperial Mysteries, I'm reminded of The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, and Barlowe’s Inferno.
"akathartoi" The “Unclean,” creatures formed from human evil that hunger for Mana. Inhabitants of Abaddon" (IM 18)."
The fact that I've read the book, saw that line, and still said that I can find no evidence that either of the places mentioned are "formed of human vice and depravity" should tell you that you have not actually made a counterpoint with this citation. A place can be other than its inhabitants — if I were trapped in a place I hated for all eternity I would neither ever consider myself a native (barring horrible torture, which wouldn't change the fact that I still would not be a native) nor would I likely become that place — I'm pretty sure the inhabitants of Detroit are not made of concrete, asphalt and etc.
Thanks for clarifying the matter, Dave. Glad that you could supply a more direct look and whatnot.
Edited by WonSab
Whatever, my viewpoint's already changed. All I read into it is that there are many hells, and that the specific hell that got a book written about it is a dank crevice where human vice and depravity has been pooling for a long time until it formed into a dark parody of Pandemonium.
The Striges strike me as very similar to Intruders. Very similar.
The dominant Fanon theory is that the the Abyss is different in that it corrupts and destroys and that the Lower Depths assimilate and consume. Similar until you examine them, and realize the Depths don't actually take anything away from sane reality, they just make it a part of themselves until they're full. Less harmful to the Tellurian at large, at least.
The Abyss hates as a function of its existence, but by and large large the Lower Depths are just hungry. Individual beings may hate, but that's because of Fantastic Racism, not a function of their existence.
What rises must fall, what falls may rise again.
Okay, there's a subsection of the Free Council that holds the idea that "belief defines reality" (the way it was in Mage The Ascension). Does this count as Wrong Genre Savvy?
Where are the Proximi tropes? I think they should at least have a mention under Breeding Cult, for the biggest way the lineages are created from what I can tell. I want to see what other people think before I add them.