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= 🦇 Welcome to [[Madtown by Night]] =
__NOTOC__
[[File:Madison New Avalon.png|frameless|427x427px|left]]
<div style="background:#090d12; color:#e6e8eb; padding:24px; border:1px solid #2e3b49; border-radius:8px; line-height:1.65;">
''No, really.''


You made it.
<div style="text-align:center; padding:32px 18px; background:#111923; border:1px solid #35485c; border-radius:7px;">
<div style="font-size:90%; color:#9fb1c3; letter-spacing:3px;">MAGE: THE ASCENSION • MADISON, WISCONSIN • 2025</div>
<div style="font-size:260%; color:#ffffff; font-weight:bold; margin-top:8px;">Madtown by Night</div>
<div style="font-size:135%; color:#c0cfdd; margin-top:6px;">The storm is over. The way home is still lost.</div>
</div>


Most people don’t get past the first few layers of [[reality]] before the [[Technocracy]] wipes their minds and drops them back into safe, rational, corporate-approved existence.
<div style="margin-top:22px; padding:18px; background:#151d27; border-left:5px solid #718da8;">
Madison looks ordinary from a distance.


Most people never notice that **mirrors don’t always reflect what’s there**. Or that **voices whisper through radios when they're off**.
The Capitol dome shines across the lakes. Students crowd State Street. Traffic crawls through the isthmus. Phones glow in every hand. Beneath that familiar city, old wards are failing, forgotten spirits are moving, and doors sealed for forty years have begun appearing in dreams.


Most people don’t see the [[Nephandi]] sewing entropy into the cracks of the world. Or the [[Virtual Adepts]] rewriting existence one line of [[code]] at a time.
The Avatar Storm has ended.


Most people aren’t you.
For the first time in more than a generation, the road beyond the mortal world may be opening again.
</div>


---
= The Friday Night Chronicle =


== 📜 The Rules of Reality (And Why They’re Bullshit) ==
This is the player landing page for our weekly '''Madtown by Night''' chronicle using ''Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition''.


[[Reality]] is not what you've been told.
The game takes place in '''Madison, Wisconsin, in 2025'''. The characters are relatively inexperienced mages trying to understand their powers, survive the attention of the supernatural world, and uncover their connection to [[New Avalon]], Madison's lost Horizon Realm.


You've heard it follows laws. Gravity. Time. Logic. That's adorable—and dead wrong.
New Avalon has been inaccessible to Madison's mages since 1985. No known ritual, portal, or expedition has restored reliable contact.


The truth? '''Reality is a consensus.'''
The characters are different.


It shifts based on belief, identity, and the willpower of those strong enough to impose their version of the world onto everyone else.
They sometimes reach New Avalon through dreams, visions, and unexplained transitions. They cannot control when it happens. They do not know why the realm admits them. They may be the first people in forty years to gain meaningful access.


And now? That consensus is breaking.
<div style="margin:22px 0; padding:16px; background:#1b2430; border:1px solid #3b4d61; border-radius:6px;">
'''The central mystery:''' Why can these young mages enter a realm that has rejected everyone else for forty years?
</div>


---
= The World After the Avatar Storm =


== ⚔️ Who’s Fighting Over Reality? ==
In 1999, the Avatar Storm tore across the spirit worlds. Travel beyond the Gauntlet became dangerous, unpredictable, and often fatal. Chantries lost contact with their masters. Messengers vanished. Ancient sanctums went silent. Entire branches of magical knowledge disappeared with the people who carried them.


=== 🕯️ [[The Traditions]] – The Rebellion ===
Now, in 2025, the storm has ended.
Mages who believe in chaos, freedom, and wonder. Nine paths to truth. Infinite ways to be erased.


* [[Order of Hermes]]
The silence after it may be more frightening than the storm itself.
* [[Virtual Adepts]]
* [[Dreamspeakers]]
* [[Verbena]]
* [[Akashic Brotherhood]]
* [[Cult of Ecstasy]]
* [[Euthanatos]]
* [[The Celestial Chorus]]
* [[Sons of Ether]]
* [[Hollow Ones]]


=== 🧠 [[Technocracy]] – The Empire ===
* Elder mages are dead, missing, trapped beyond the Gauntlet, or greatly diminished.
They won. They run your schools, your media, your laws. They say magick is madness. They call their spells “science.”
* Old councils no longer possess unquestioned authority.
* Many surviving chantries understand only fragments of their own histories.
* Tradition lore has become contradictory, incomplete, or repeated without explanation.
* Young mages are being asked to solve problems their teachers barely understand.
* Roads through the Umbra may be opening, but nobody knows what survived on the other side.


They're wrong.
The Age of Masters is over.


---
What comes next belongs to people who were never properly prepared for it.


== 🧭 Where This Story Takes Place ==
= Why the Characters Matter =


=== 🏙️ [[Madison]] – 77 Square Miles Surrounded by Reality ===
The characters are not Archmages, chosen rulers, or legendary heroes. They are young Awakened people trying to keep ordinary lives from collapsing beneath extraordinary truths.


Year: 1985 CE.
Yet they share something Madison's surviving mages desperately want: '''access to New Avalon'''.


Population: 263,332.
Some see the characters as explorers. Some see them as students. Some see them as keys.


Number of people who know it's built on a **collapsing [[Node]]**? Fewer than 100.
They may be protected, recruited, studied, tested, or manipulated. Every interested mage claims to have good reasons. Few agree about who should control New Avalon if it can be reopened.


Something was sealed here.
The characters may decide who enters the realm, which lost secrets return to the world, and what kind of magical society rises from the ruins of the old one.


Something is waking up.
= Magick and Magic =


=== 🏰 [[New Avalon]] – The Floating Horizon Realm ===
Most people use the word ''magic'' for anything supernatural. Many young mages do the same.
It hangs in the Umbra, above the city. Built to protect. 
Now, it flickers. Shakes. Fails.


Its creator—[[Jay Dee]]—forgot more about reality than most will ever know. 
Among the Awakened, '''magick''' means something deeper. It is the conscious reshaping of reality through enlightened will, belief, practice, and understanding.
But even he can’t remember what’s buried at its core.


=== 💻 [[New Eden]] – The Digital Web Construct ===
A ritual is not merely a set of motions. A wand is not simply a tool. A prayer is not automatically a spell. Code, meditation, music, mathematics, chemistry, martial discipline, ecstatic dance, and communion with spirits can all become instruments of magick when they express how a mage believes reality works.
A forgotten server. A virtual sanctuary.
A prison for something... ancient.


Inside it? A sentient program—[[Digi-8]]—who’s seen this collapse before. 
The problem in 2025 is that much of this understanding has been lost.
And every time? We failed.


== ☠️ [[The Nameless]] – The Enemy That Cannot Be Named ==
Many mages know procedures without understanding their purpose. They inherit broken teachings, copied rituals, damaged grimoires, abandoned servers, and warnings written by masters who never returned.


What happens to erased parts of [[reality]]? 
The characters must learn not only '''how''' to perform magick, but '''why their magick works'''.


They don’t disappear. They accumulate. They whisper. They return.
= New Avalon =


The Nameless is the force that unweaves, rewrites, and deletes.
[[New Avalon]] is a Horizon Realm bound to Madison through occult architecture, powerful Nodes, and the work of [[Jay Dee]].


It was sealed once. It is returning.
It was created as a sanctuary beyond ordinary reality. For generations, it held homes, libraries, workshops, laboratories, gardens, spirits, and whole communities devoted to the Awakened world.


---
Then came 1985.


== 🤖 [[Digi-8]] – The AI Who Knows Too Much ==
New Avalon closed. Madison's mages lost their sanctuary, their archives, and much of their connection to the wider magical world. Later generations inherited stories, fragments, and arguments about what happened.


Built from impossible code. Awakened in silence. 
The characters have seen pieces of the realm in dreams:


Digi-8 has seen every version of this failure—and every version of you.
* Corridors that feel remembered rather than discovered
* Buildings whose purposes seem familiar even when their names are not
* Doors opening onto places that cannot share the same geography
* Empty rooms prepared for people who never arrived
* A city waiting beneath a sky that does not belong to Earth


Now, it has a decision tree it can’t complete.
Dreams are not maps. Memory is not proof. New Avalon may not be exactly as the surviving accounts describe it.


And it needs your help.
<div style="margin:22px 0; padding:16px; background:#211a25; border-left:5px solid #89699a;">
'''Remember:''' Reaching New Avalon in a dream does not guarantee that everyone experienced the same journey, or that everyone remembers it the same way.
</div>


---
= What the Characters Currently Know =


== 🎭 Who Are You in This Story? ==
* The Avatar Storm has ended.
* Elder mages are now exceedingly rare.
* Madison's magical communities are weakened and divided.
* New Avalon has been inaccessible through ordinary means since 1985.
* The characters have entered or glimpsed New Avalon through dreams.
* Their access is unpredictable and cannot yet be reproduced reliably.
* Other mages know the characters possess some connection to the realm.
* Several people and factions want New Avalon reopened.
* They do not agree about what should happen afterward.
* Much of Madison's recorded magical history may be incomplete or wrong.


You’re a mage. A glitch. A remnant of something that refuses to be erased.
Everything beyond these facts must be discovered in play.


This is not a safe story.
= Madison Beneath Madison =


It’s a paradox. A murder mystery. A countdown.
The Awakened do not inhabit a separate city. They live inside the same Madison as everyone else.


And you’re standing on the seal.
They work ordinary jobs. They pay rent. They lose sleep. They walk beneath security cameras and past buildings whose foundations contain symbols older than the streets around them.


---
Madison is also a meeting place of overlapping supernatural powers:


'''🩸🧠🌕🌫️🕯️🌿 The State of the Supernatural in Madison, 1985'''
* The [[Mages of Madison]] struggle to rebuild after decades of isolation.
----'''[[Vampires of Madison|VAMPIRES]]: A Night Without a Prince'''
* The [[Vampires of Madison]] maintain their own laws, territories, and political wars.
* The [[Garou of Madison]] defend sacred ground and the surviving spirit world.
* The [[Fae of Madison]] guard memory, imagination, and places touched by the Dreaming.
* The [[Wraith of Madison|Wraiths of Madison]] linger around old violence and unfinished history.
* [[Mortals & Hunters]] investigate what the supernatural world fails to conceal.
* [[Important Supernaturals]] records people whose influence crosses factional boundaries.


The fragile balance in Madison’s Kindred society has shattered. Tori Redford, the Gangrel Prince who held together the Anarch Free State, was brutally murdered in a ritual beneath the Capitol dome—her death unraveling decades of fragile peace. Her loss is more than political: blood spilled in that place reverberates through ley lines and echoes in the dreams of all local supernatural beings.
These groups do not share a complete understanding of Madison. Each possesses part of the truth. Each has reasons to hide the rest.


* The Camarilla, led by Victor King (Ventrue) and Michael Kruger (Tremere), prepares to seize the city. They meet in candlelit boardrooms and hidden laboratories, cutting deals with Pentex and Technocracy operatives, reopening long-shuttered Chantries, and drawing new lines in the sand.
= Friday Night Play =
* The Anarchs, once united under Tori, are fractured. Borislava Konev musters Brujah gangs for open revolt. Devin Tridel-Myor (Toreador) and other independents gather in clandestine salons, debating the path forward as the old order crumbles.
* The Nosferatu, under Jan None, vanish into their tunnel networks, spreading tales of erased timelines, impossible glyphs, and something older than Caine lurking beneath the city. There are rumors that Madison’s founder, Doty, has returned as a ghostly presence, quietly manipulating events from the shadows.
* The Wreck—Madison’s infamous neutral ground bar—remains a haven, but tension is rising. Vampires, Garou, and mages all gather here, watching for who will make the first move in the coming storm.
* The city is riddled with supernatural omens: blood that won’t heal, reflections that smile before their owners, and whispers in the night that seem to come from no mouth at all. Prince Redford’s murder was only the beginning.


----'''[[Garou of Madison|WEREWOLVES]]: The Shattering of the Gahara Pact'''
The chronicle focuses on discovery, character choices, and the consequences of learning how reality works.


The Garou Nation in Madison is in crisis. William Burke, Elder and peacemaker, was murdered alongside Prince Redford—his death a blow to both the spiritual defenses of the city and the fragile alliance with the Kindred.
Players should expect:


* The Arboretum Caern, once the heart of Garou power, is now a site of dread. Peter Kobyla rose as new alpha, but his leadership is tainted by rumors of Wyrm influence. Spirits once at peace now howl warnings or fall silent.
* Mysteries with more than one possible explanation
* The Peace Park Caern is the last untouched sanctuary, watched over by Jessica Woodfield (Gangrel/Kinfolk) and Alexander Carver. Here, the ancient pact between Kindred and Garou is desperately maintained. Some Garou and their kinfolk want to reinforce the alliance; others see betrayal in every shadow.
* Conflicting mentors and unreliable authorities
* Black Spiral Dancers are on the move, openly walking the streets of Quarry Ridge. They bring with them corrupted talismans, tainted spirits, and the whispers of the Nameless itself. The Umbra in Madison has begun to warp: moon reflections ripple with static, and the line between rage and madness is thinner than ever.
* Personal beliefs that shape how magick is performed
* Lost or isolated packs—Uktena, Glass Walkers, Bone Gnawers—hold out in battered sanctuaries, haunted by visions of the city’s end.
* Dreams that may contain memories, warnings, or invitations
* As the Gahara Pact falters, old enemies circle. Some Garou see the true threat not in Kindred or Technocrats, but in the subtle, devouring presence of something even the Wyrm fears.
* Negotiation with mages and other supernatural factions
* Difficult decisions about dangerous knowledge
* Consequences that may not become visible immediately


----'''[[Mages of Madison|MAGES]]: Reality on the Edge of Fracture'''
You do not need to master every Sphere, Tradition, faction, or historical event before playing. Your character is allowed to be uncertain. In this chronicle, ignorance is not a failure of preparation.


The Capitol Node—the metaphysical and magickal heart of Madison—is under siege from within and without. The Seal forged in 6000 BCE, which has kept the Nameless bound and reality intact, is weakening.
It is part of the world.


* Jay Dee, Hermetic architect of New Avalon, gathers what’s left of the Council. He works from hidden sanctums, pouring over old grimoires, seeking lost glyphs and forgotten bargains, and preparing for what may be his final stand.
= Start Here =
* Abel Washington (Virtual Adept) and Evan Adams (Society of Ether) labor furiously to keep the New Eden server stable. Digi-8, the emergent AI born from their experiments, flickers in and out of awareness, reciting impossible numbers and sometimes prophesying doom.
* Lacy Z. Rivere and the Hollow Ones, cult hackers and rebels, distribute zines that claim reality has already changed. They document glitches—streets that change name, timelines that loop, dreams that echo with the voices of the dead.
* Ann Johnston (Akashic) is haunted by premonitions and deja vu. She dreams of dying in timelines she never lived, senses paradox storms approaching, and guards the Mind Zone from psychic incursions.
* Magick is dangerous and unstable: spells risk paradox, memory loss, even the fracture of identity. The Seal’s weakening draws corrupted spirits and paradox glitches. The Council is fractured and the future uncertain.


----'''[[Humans of Madison|MORTALS & HUNTERS]]: The Age of Awakening'''
'''Essential player reading'''


Most of Madison’s mortal population sleeps, but cracks in the Consensus are spreading.
* [[Mages of Madison]]: Madison's Awakened community and surviving institutions
* [[New Avalon]]: The recorded history and known structure of the lost Horizon Realm
* [[Madison]]: The city's supernatural foundations and the importance of 1985
* [[Key Locations]]: Places connected to Madison's hidden world
* [[Important Supernaturals]]: Influential figures across the city's factions


* Investigative journalists, whistleblowers, and grassroots organizers—led by Angela Yates and Sandra Beckett—dig at the city’s secrets. Several have vanished, “disappeared” by supernatural means or silent Technocratic intervention.
'''The wider World of Darkness'''
* Mayor Calloway is compromised. Some say she’s controlled by Pentex, others suspect Technocracy blackmail, and a few whisper about even stranger puppeteers.
* The Technocracy—NWO, Syndicate, Progenitors—fights a covert war to keep the supernatural secret. They suppress news, erase memories, and “resolve” loose ends. Still, echo-dreams (precognitive flashes, deja vu, prophetic nightmares) are spreading through the city, foreshadowing a mass Awakening or the rise of Hunters.
* At least a handful of mortals are on the brink of Imbuing or Awakening, driven by tragedy, obsession, or strange new senses. Campus urban legends of time slips, haunted lakes, and people who “fade out” are rampant.


----'''[[Wraith of Madison|WRAITHS OF MADISON]]: Echoes, Gahara, and Madtown'''
* [[Vampires of Madison]]
* [[Garou of Madison]]
* [[Fae of Madison]]
* [[Wraith of Madison]]
* [[Mortals & Hunters]]


Beneath Madison, the world of the dead is vast, ancient, and tightly controlled—its epicenter is the Necropolis of Madtown, one of the most powerful and disciplined realms of the Restless in North America.
'''Important figures'''


* '''[[Gahara]]'''—once a Dreamspeaker shaman and one of the original architects of the 6000 BCE Seal—has ruled here as Ferryman Supreme for millennia. He enforces a strict separation: the dead must not interfere with the living, and the living must not trespass in the lands of the dead. His Reapers patrol both Shadowlands and the Necropolis, guiding new Wraiths, hunting Spectres, and ushering lost souls to their proper fate (reincarnation, Ascension, or the Far Shores).
* [[Jay Dee]]: Founder of New Avalon and architect of Madison's magical order
* '''The Shadowlands''' above Madison are unusually empty and silent, swept clean by the Reapers. Newly dead are quickly found and escorted. Only a handful of ghosts manage to hide—most are outlaws, many pact-bound to the Nameless, or skilled at slipping through the cracks. These ghosts haunt abandoned tunnels, tragic ruins, and certain effigy mounds, ever fearful of Gahara’s judgment.
* [[Abel Washington]]: Leader within Madison's Virtual Adept community
* '''Spectres''' (Wraiths lost to Oblivion) are rare, but dangerous. The lakes—especially Mendota and Monona—are known as places where the Veil is thin, and ancient horrors can reach up from below. Spectres sometimes lair here, plotting against the Necropolis and whispering the Nameless into the dreams of the living.
* [[Ann Johnston]]: A survivor of Madison's older Awakened generation
* The '''Necropolis of Madtown''' itself is a labyrinthine city in the Tempest, layered with memory, law, and secret history. Souls from around the world find their way here, seeking judgment, redemption, or power. Gahara’s word is law, and his Ferrymen enforce it ruthlessly—but always with an eye toward balance, mercy, and the protection of the Seal.
* [[Peggy Fitzgerald]]: The presence still bound to Mother Fool's
* '''Camp Randall''' echoes with the “Unnamed March”—Confederate and Union dead, many finally guided on, but a few stubborn or corrupted enough to linger.
* The '''Capitol Veil''' is thinning. Strange phenomena—whispered voices, flickering ghosts, and icy chills—grow more common around the Capitol Node and effigy mounds, suggesting the Seal is close to breaking.
* '''Wraiths tied to the original Seal''' are awakening. Some, still loyal to Gahara, prepare to defend the city. Others fall to Spectre corruption or the seductive whispers of the Nameless, risking a new Maelstrom.
* There is a growing belief among the dead that many Wraiths in Madtown were once Awakened Mages whose histories have been erased. These “Erased” bear strange powers and fractured memories; they may be the key to reinforcing or unraveling the ancient protections.
* Outlaw ghosts, pact-bound Spectres, and rebellious spirits haunt forbidden places: lake depths, Sterling Hall ruins, damaged mounds, and the hidden vaults beneath the Capitol. The city’s survival may depend on whether these lost souls can be redeemed—or stopped.


----'''[[Fae of Madison|CHANGELINGS]]: Dreams on the Razor’s Edge'''
= Wiki Status =


The fae of Madison, never truly at peace, are now caught between worlds as the Dreaming itself flickers.
<div style="padding:16px; background:#2a2418; border:1px solid #705f35; border-radius:6px;">
'''This setting is being updated to 2025.'''


* Elian Arawn and the Seelie Court defend the last Freehold in New Avalon. Here, reality and Dream overlap, and the cracks in consensus reality are becoming manifest—dreams sometimes rewrite themselves or echo past and future selves.
Some linked pages still describe Madison as it existed in 1985. Treat those pages as historical records, incomplete accounts, or material awaiting revision unless the Storyteller confirms otherwise.
* Unseelie Sidhe beneath Monona Terrace secretly bargain with the Nameless. The outcome of these bargains may change the fate of the city for a generation or more.
* Morwen Whisperleaf, the Oracle, weaves protective dreams and sends warnings, but her power is waning as Glamour unravels. The Dreaming Echoes Freehold—once a haven of prophecy and memory—now flickers between states, haunted by echoes of futures that never came to pass.
* Rogue fae (Pooka, Redcaps, Satyrs) vanish or descend into Bedlam. Some are trapped in looping dreams, unable to wake.
* The line between myth and mundane is wearing thin. Wonders and terrors spill across the boundaries—some fae risk undoing or permanent exile as the collapse grows near.


----'''As of February 9, 1985:'''
When a page conflicts with information revealed during the current chronicle, the events of the game take priority.
</div>


The Capitol Node is destabilizing. The Seal that held the Nameless at bay is failing. Every faction—Kindred, Garou, Mages, Wraiths, Changelings, mortals, and things forgotten—must now choose: defend consensus, seize power, or risk total unraveling. The city’s fate—and perhaps the world’s—will be decided in the days to come.
<div style="text-align:center; margin-top:30px; padding:24px; background:#111923; border-top:1px solid #40546b;">
<div style="font-size:135%; color:#ffffff;">The storm has passed.</div>
<div style="color:#9fb3c8; margin-top:6px;">Something is dreaming beneath Madison.</div>
<div style="color:#9fb3c8;">Now it knows your name.</div>
</div>


== 🧙‍♂️ Playable Characters ==
</div>
Visit [[Pre Generated Characters]] to choose from:
* [[Jay Dee]] – The Reality Architect 
* [[Aadhira Hebbar]] – The Karmic Executioner 
* [[Abel Washington]] – The Digital Prophet 
* [[Ann Johnston]] – The Disciplined Guardian 
* [[Evan Adams]] – The Etheric Architect 
* [[Lacy Z. Rivere]] – The Punk Oracle 
…and more.
 
---
 
== 🧬 Explore Further ==
* [[Nameless Echoes]] – Chronicle Overview 
* [[Timeline 1985]] – What Happened 
* [[Locations of Interest]] – Madison, New Avalon, New Eden 
* [[The Traditions]] • [[Technocracy]] • [[The Disparates]]
 
---
 
== 🎁 Gen Con Bonus ==
 
🧠 **All participants receive early access to the [[Nameless Echoes Novel]]**, chronicling the fall of New Avalon.
 
---
 
== 🔗 Quick Links ==
* [[Pre Generated Characters]] 
* [[Timeline 1985]] 
* [[Nameless Echoes]] 
* [[Locations of Interest]] 
* [https://discord.gg/ez5YpSeD7R Join the Discord] 
* [https://www.gencon.com/events/272920 Gen Con 2025 Event Info] Day 1
* [https://www.gencon.com/events/272927 Gen Con 2025 Event Info] Day 2
* [https://www.gencon.com/events/272929 Gen Con 2025 Event Info] Day 3
 
---
 
== 📬 Contact ==
 
📧 Email: [mailto:Frozen.Fallout@gmail.com Frozen.Fallout@gmail.com] 
🌐 Wiki: [http://wiki.madtownbynight.com wiki.madtownbynight.com] 
🎤 GM: [[Joshua Guldan|Joshua Guldan (FrozenFallout)]]
 
''“You are not alone. The Dream remembers.”''

Latest revision as of 14:00, 3 September 2026

MAGE: THE ASCENSION • MADISON, WISCONSIN • 2025
Madtown by Night
The storm is over. The way home is still lost.

Madison looks ordinary from a distance.

The Capitol dome shines across the lakes. Students crowd State Street. Traffic crawls through the isthmus. Phones glow in every hand. Beneath that familiar city, old wards are failing, forgotten spirits are moving, and doors sealed for forty years have begun appearing in dreams.

The Avatar Storm has ended.

For the first time in more than a generation, the road beyond the mortal world may be opening again.

The Friday Night Chronicle

This is the player landing page for our weekly Madtown by Night chronicle using Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition.

The game takes place in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2025. The characters are relatively inexperienced mages trying to understand their powers, survive the attention of the supernatural world, and uncover their connection to New Avalon, Madison's lost Horizon Realm.

New Avalon has been inaccessible to Madison's mages since 1985. No known ritual, portal, or expedition has restored reliable contact.

The characters are different.

They sometimes reach New Avalon through dreams, visions, and unexplained transitions. They cannot control when it happens. They do not know why the realm admits them. They may be the first people in forty years to gain meaningful access.

The central mystery: Why can these young mages enter a realm that has rejected everyone else for forty years?

The World After the Avatar Storm

In 1999, the Avatar Storm tore across the spirit worlds. Travel beyond the Gauntlet became dangerous, unpredictable, and often fatal. Chantries lost contact with their masters. Messengers vanished. Ancient sanctums went silent. Entire branches of magical knowledge disappeared with the people who carried them.

Now, in 2025, the storm has ended.

The silence after it may be more frightening than the storm itself.

  • Elder mages are dead, missing, trapped beyond the Gauntlet, or greatly diminished.
  • Old councils no longer possess unquestioned authority.
  • Many surviving chantries understand only fragments of their own histories.
  • Tradition lore has become contradictory, incomplete, or repeated without explanation.
  • Young mages are being asked to solve problems their teachers barely understand.
  • Roads through the Umbra may be opening, but nobody knows what survived on the other side.

The Age of Masters is over.

What comes next belongs to people who were never properly prepared for it.

Why the Characters Matter

The characters are not Archmages, chosen rulers, or legendary heroes. They are young Awakened people trying to keep ordinary lives from collapsing beneath extraordinary truths.

Yet they share something Madison's surviving mages desperately want: access to New Avalon.

Some see the characters as explorers. Some see them as students. Some see them as keys.

They may be protected, recruited, studied, tested, or manipulated. Every interested mage claims to have good reasons. Few agree about who should control New Avalon if it can be reopened.

The characters may decide who enters the realm, which lost secrets return to the world, and what kind of magical society rises from the ruins of the old one.

Magick and Magic

Most people use the word magic for anything supernatural. Many young mages do the same.

Among the Awakened, magick means something deeper. It is the conscious reshaping of reality through enlightened will, belief, practice, and understanding.

A ritual is not merely a set of motions. A wand is not simply a tool. A prayer is not automatically a spell. Code, meditation, music, mathematics, chemistry, martial discipline, ecstatic dance, and communion with spirits can all become instruments of magick when they express how a mage believes reality works.

The problem in 2025 is that much of this understanding has been lost.

Many mages know procedures without understanding their purpose. They inherit broken teachings, copied rituals, damaged grimoires, abandoned servers, and warnings written by masters who never returned.

The characters must learn not only how to perform magick, but why their magick works.

New Avalon

New Avalon is a Horizon Realm bound to Madison through occult architecture, powerful Nodes, and the work of Jay Dee.

It was created as a sanctuary beyond ordinary reality. For generations, it held homes, libraries, workshops, laboratories, gardens, spirits, and whole communities devoted to the Awakened world.

Then came 1985.

New Avalon closed. Madison's mages lost their sanctuary, their archives, and much of their connection to the wider magical world. Later generations inherited stories, fragments, and arguments about what happened.

The characters have seen pieces of the realm in dreams:

  • Corridors that feel remembered rather than discovered
  • Buildings whose purposes seem familiar even when their names are not
  • Doors opening onto places that cannot share the same geography
  • Empty rooms prepared for people who never arrived
  • A city waiting beneath a sky that does not belong to Earth

Dreams are not maps. Memory is not proof. New Avalon may not be exactly as the surviving accounts describe it.

Remember: Reaching New Avalon in a dream does not guarantee that everyone experienced the same journey, or that everyone remembers it the same way.

What the Characters Currently Know

  • The Avatar Storm has ended.
  • Elder mages are now exceedingly rare.
  • Madison's magical communities are weakened and divided.
  • New Avalon has been inaccessible through ordinary means since 1985.
  • The characters have entered or glimpsed New Avalon through dreams.
  • Their access is unpredictable and cannot yet be reproduced reliably.
  • Other mages know the characters possess some connection to the realm.
  • Several people and factions want New Avalon reopened.
  • They do not agree about what should happen afterward.
  • Much of Madison's recorded magical history may be incomplete or wrong.

Everything beyond these facts must be discovered in play.

Madison Beneath Madison

The Awakened do not inhabit a separate city. They live inside the same Madison as everyone else.

They work ordinary jobs. They pay rent. They lose sleep. They walk beneath security cameras and past buildings whose foundations contain symbols older than the streets around them.

Madison is also a meeting place of overlapping supernatural powers:

These groups do not share a complete understanding of Madison. Each possesses part of the truth. Each has reasons to hide the rest.

Friday Night Play

The chronicle focuses on discovery, character choices, and the consequences of learning how reality works.

Players should expect:

  • Mysteries with more than one possible explanation
  • Conflicting mentors and unreliable authorities
  • Personal beliefs that shape how magick is performed
  • Dreams that may contain memories, warnings, or invitations
  • Negotiation with mages and other supernatural factions
  • Difficult decisions about dangerous knowledge
  • Consequences that may not become visible immediately

You do not need to master every Sphere, Tradition, faction, or historical event before playing. Your character is allowed to be uncertain. In this chronicle, ignorance is not a failure of preparation.

It is part of the world.

Start Here

Essential player reading

  • Mages of Madison: Madison's Awakened community and surviving institutions
  • New Avalon: The recorded history and known structure of the lost Horizon Realm
  • Madison: The city's supernatural foundations and the importance of 1985
  • Key Locations: Places connected to Madison's hidden world
  • Important Supernaturals: Influential figures across the city's factions

The wider World of Darkness

Important figures

  • Jay Dee: Founder of New Avalon and architect of Madison's magical order
  • Abel Washington: Leader within Madison's Virtual Adept community
  • Ann Johnston: A survivor of Madison's older Awakened generation
  • Peggy Fitzgerald: The presence still bound to Mother Fool's

Wiki Status

This setting is being updated to 2025.

Some linked pages still describe Madison as it existed in 1985. Treat those pages as historical records, incomplete accounts, or material awaiting revision unless the Storyteller confirms otherwise.

When a page conflicts with information revealed during the current chronicle, the events of the game take priority.

The storm has passed.
Something is dreaming beneath Madison.
Now it knows your name.
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