I'm with The Fixer - mystery cults may be able to develop new initiation scripts for new virtues by-the-book, but in practice they won't IMS, for the most part. The mysteries they teach, and the scripts they developed for them, are what's there - although these may change in practice according to saga needs, and mystagogues may experiment with variants on existing scripts in response to the initiate's needs.
Specifically for my upcoming saga, the living-ghosts won't know IotS. I'm going for the "lich" motiff.
This won't change what I argue for, namely that IotS is so useful to immortal magi that most cults that pursue immortality ought to know it. Some may not, for whatever reason (ideological blinders, overreliance on crafted enchantments...), but most will. Magi may be many things, but not stupid, nor generally fanatics (although there are exceptions, such as Bjornaer's paranoid hate of shapeshifters). We know that TMRE intent was to make the Mystery Cults in the book, and their rooster of scripts, but polite suggestions, and we know that a significant amount of cult examples, and initiation scripts, was cut from the book for space reasons, so I find rather well silly to go rigidly by the book.
This may be a reasonable motive for your choice, but may I kindly suggest you a variant ? To replicate the "philactery" motiff, instead of forbidding IotS, you may use a variant of the Living Ghost mystery (or an additional Mystery Virtue), by which the (un)life force of the LG is tied to an enchanted item, instead of (or in addition to) an Haunt. The LG won't be "killed" if he is ousted from a possessed body outside the Haunt as long as the item exists. OTOH, if it is destroyed, he's snuffed out. This has precedent in ArM (External Soul), good folklore ground, and would make LG easier to use in sagas.
Great Beasts don't have much use for hand-held enchanted items.
I do not share your opinion regarding the rarety of mysteries. The number of folks who are aware of a given mystery is small and restricted. Cannon provides no certian examples of anyone ever initiating in an immortallity mystery (even Quendelon with the becomeing and Merinita with guardian of nature are not set in stone).
Mystery cukts are by nature occult and they do not share their information.
If an immoratality virtue is know by cult in your game (say the green cokerils and the greater elixer) as their deepest virtue a character would need to spend decades in the cult before that most inner mystery is available to them. If they then wish to learn inscription on the soul (say from the cult of mithras assuming that they exisit in the same saga) they have to learn about the new cult, ingratiatie themselves with the new cult, gain entrance, and go through three or four levels of initiation before they gain the virtue of inscription on the soul. Additional decades, of work. The character might not have that long even if they can manage to jump through all of the hoops.
I am certainly not locked into the book's description of the mystery cults, House cults or otherwise.
IotS is extremely useful from a player's prepsective. And I would certainly allow interested players to uncover it, one way or another, if they so desire. As I would allow them Consumate Talisman or other virtues, too - if they want it, and we can weave some fun out of that, great!
From the SG's prespective, however, IotS is inapproriate at times. As for my liches, below. In those traditions, IotS would certainly not be present - at least until the PC comes in.
An interesting option. I would consider it. (It isn't like the liches will make an appearnce anytime soon anyways... it's in the distance.)
I find the need to remain in the Haunt highly limiting in a good way saga-wise. It will keep those living ghosts out of sight, as secret and distant masters rather than magi roaming around the tribunal.
Guardian of Nature is strange, but at the end works similarly I think - a magus limited to a single locale, slowly growing in power, but able to exit when needed. Ascendancy to the Hall of Heroes achieves the same effect - eternal magi as distant movers and shakers - by having the ascended magi in another plane of existence entirely. Bjornaer seems to achieve a similar result although it isn't clear how, precisely; the Great Beasts certainly seem to merely guide current magi, distancing themselves from this world. Criamon achieves practically an identical result by pure flavor (which is rather impressive).
Alchemy is problematic in that regard, allowing eternal magi to roam around freely. Becoming, of the Merinita, too.
Edit: I'm thinking of making it the FIRST initiated virtue, right after the outer mystery. Or an early one, for sure. Hand-held enchanted items are very inappropriate for your regular Bjornaer hearbteast-form too.
I think the idea is that they can experiment to self-initiate themselves or others with a virtue they don't have. It's exceedingly difficult, but possible.
Wanderer, you seem to play in a game in which almost any virtue can be easily initiated in any cult, and in which these same virtues seem to be somewhat common knowledge.
Fine if this suits you and your game, but this is not the only vision of the game, and, in games where this isn't the norm, IotS may very well be almost unknown outside of a few circles of initiates. So, even if you can self-initiate it, you could very well have magi that don't, just because they don't know this is possible at all, for exemple.
=> Immortal magi without IotS
Not so radical, except for cults that are purposefully syncretistic like the Children of Hermes. Rather, I do assume that any cult has Scripts for any Virtue that would highly useful for their awowed goals (since past Mystagogues would have been spurred to develop them), and that the existence of all the main Mystery Virtues is known within the Order to any mage that has a decent OoH Lore (peculiarities of the Gift and special insights do get noticed by sodales), and that any mage with a decent Mystery Cult Lore knows all the Virtues (and Ordeals) that such a cult commonly initiates.
I do expect mystae magi to be secretive where it matters: i.e. not to share Scripts or to perform an Initiation without due compensation. It is true that as rule I would not expect hermetic magi to indulge in secrecy for secrecy's sake, mystae included. It does not vibe well at all with the mentality of a magical researcher. I do expect mystery cults to work more like elitist colleges with expensive tuition fees than conspiracies. Mystery Cults (except the Infernal ones) do stand to gain very little from trying too hard to suppress widespread rumors about their very existence or the abilities they can bestow. Therefore I do not expect Mystery Cults to be any more than an open secret.
The "few circles of initiates" you mention ought to include the members of a mystery cult that has immortality as a goal. The main cases when I would expect an immortal magus not to have IotS would be a) when a Cult purposefully shun it for ideological reasons or because the other methods of the Cult make it unpractical (e.g. a Verditius cult) b) a mage wholly self-initiated his path to immortality and was not even cognizant that it existed c) he gained immortality as the effect of an unpredictable and unplanned sudden saga event, such as eating the fruits of the Garden of Hesperides.
In cases like this, I suppose that the character's perspective closely mirrors the one of the player. Both want the character's abilities to grow in a specific direction. It's just like studying an Art or an Ability: very likely, the PC and player want it for pretty much the same reasons.
You see, here you give a specific reason for the sake of saga's plot to want an exception to what would be the most reasonable course. As a player in your saga, I would be much more open to accept such a specific plot-driven reason than "it happens because mystery cults are secretive because well they are mysterious", which would put me in a rather bad mood.
Ahh, you want the immortal NPC to be distant and hidden masterminds instead of roaming forces of nature. OK, I understand it now. In such a case, I would strongly advice your "liches" to have plenty of ready LoHC effects in spells and devices, ready to go off whenever the host body is exorcised/destroyed/killed, when they do leave the Haunt (which they ought to do in the course of the saga, sooner or later; metting the Big Boss only at the end in the lair, like a Boss Monster in a video game, is rather boring).
Well, if you look at the big picture, there is a nice balance between the features of the various immortality methods: Ascension offers the maximum security and the minimum freedom of movement: they are essentially indescrutible, secured in the Hall of Heroes, but they only can (apparently) roam the earth in their Aspects and grow in power when they are summoned. Alchemical immortality, faerie Becoming, and Bjornaer Great Beast Twilight remain on Earth, can study to advance in power as much as they like (even if they have to through an additional loop to reatain what they gain), but they can killed or destroyed as easily as any other magical or faerie creature. Becoming is rather inferior to the Great Elixir because the mage inherits the crippling faerie inability to create, which magical immortals do not have, so the mages that take that route are advised to postpone transforming the mind as far as possible. Living Ghost are a middle of the road option, since they are rather more difficult to slay, requiring PeVi magic, but they can only exist wholly safely in a fixed location, and can only roam at manageable but considerable risk, and can advance themselves as easily as Elixir and Becoming users.
Guardian of Nature and Immortality of the Forest, differently from the above, belong to the lesser immortality methods, where you are freed from age, but eventually felled by Twilight, and they have a strong difficulty to leave. The former gives a dtrong protection from harm, where the latter gives no special protection. To this category belongs Goetic Binding, which leaves one free to roam, and gives no special defense. Neither gives any difficulty to learn, which is the hallmark and the balancing price of the greater Immortality methods, which bestow full agelessness.
Bjornaer apparently have managed to pull quite a unique trick, namely turning the ultimate end of Final Twilight into a new beginning. All the greater immortality mysteries turn the mage into one type of supernatural creature: magical humanoid creature, humanoid faerie, magical beast, ghost, spirit. As for Criamon, their Path of the Body has two stations which correspond to lesser and greater immortality, with none of the usual limitations to learning and freedom of movement, but come with crippling and strict limits to behavior, which more than enough balance them .
The main idea is that most cults that hold immortality as a goal, would have some scripts for IotS and Spirit Familiar, since it's just the smart thing to do if you plan immortality, and past Mystagogues would have realized it and experimented to develop such scripts. But assuming no one did it yet in your saga, any PC member of a cult can indeed use his Mystery Cult Lorte to experiment and self-initiate. It's difficult but possible, since all Cults are ultimately born and developed that way, with the help of some non-Hermetic insights at the very most.
While I'm persuaded there's good pragmatic reasons for mystae magi not to share Scripts or perform initiations without due compesnation (for the same reasons why magi do not share Summae ort Lab Texts for free), and so keep ther details of their methods secret, there's no reason for cults to be any more secretive than that, or at the most trying to keep details of their organization private, but noit their very existence or the broad nature of their methods.
Somebody did create all those Scripts. As far as any piece of history about the Order can be assumed to be set in stone, Quendalon did create the Becoming, the Master of the Green Cockerel adapted the Great Elixir to hermetic magic, Merinita (re)discovered Guardian of Nature, Bjornaer Great Beasts are a well-known if elusuive presence in the Order, at least two Mystery Cults (Disciples of the Worm and Legion of Mithras) regularly create Living Ghosts. I'd say the evidence is pretty impressive.
Sorry, I do not buy such a circular "they are secretive because they are secretive" argument.
It depends on how much effort the mage wishes to dedicate to the accumulation of Mystery Virtues, to the detriment of developing other aspects of their power, such as Arts, Abilities, spells, devices, politicking... The vast majority of initiation scripts take 2-4 seasons each to accomplish, Quests and everything. Typical paths to immortality do require to initiate from 3-4 Virtues (for the most free-formed cults) to 7-8 (for the most structured ones). To be generous, let's calculate an equal amount of time to develop those abilities and perform those non-initiation tasks a cult may require of an adept to qualify for next initiation. This means a mage who focuses most of his efforts on advancing a Mystery can do so in 10-20 years typically, sometimes 5-10 years if most of the favourable factors align or they put everything else on hold. A mage that wished to give equal attention to develop mysteries and more conventional Hermetic powers can double that time. 10-20 years to rush it, 20-40 to take it slow and easy. It's still but a fraction in an Hermetic lifespan.
This is precisely what I'm trying to explain to you!!!
you take this kind of thing as a logical rule. And it is, from a player's perspective.
But imagine an alchemical cult. Would these guys dabble in spirit magics? No. Are they likely to think about something like IotS? Nope. Would you have thought of something like it on your own? Maybe, maybe not.
So, although this is the best logical solution from a player's standpoint, there's nothing illogical per se for a non-spirit MC to have no such thing as IotS.
Unless, of course, the existence of maguses with this virtue is widely known, which is saga-dependant. After all, if any MC includes your great secret, your own theurgic cult becomes rather uselless and will soon die out, doesn't it?
Thus, while your vision of MC seems coherent and workable, there are other visions, no less coherent and workable, which can explain the scarcity of such mysteries among immortality cults.
That's all I'm trying to say: Other visions are no less logical or coherent than your vision, they are just different
If this may help, picture this as saying that a vision of (say) Tremere as guardians of the order is no less coherent or logical than a vision of Tremere as conspiratists wanting to dominate it.
Well, let's say you create the Great Elixir script after a lifetime of research and a major breakthrough. You may very well die before having successfully used it, and may have been killed after this.
Then, if only a handfull of magi learned it, a fraction of them succeeding...
You may very well want a game with lots and lots and immortals, and this can be explained. But a game with few immortals can be explained also, and, AFAK, is closer to the raw.
They are secretive in order to ensure that their powers remain their own and are not taken by any other MC
Sigh...
You assume that you can just enter a MC, and then take an initiation after the next, doing in total what? At most 2 years of real service to the cult, spread through 10 years?
Once again, this may work for you, and there is nothing wrong in it.
But if I was a MC leader, I would slow down initiations, and make sure the greater one are only handed to dedicated members of the cult. To do otherwise would mean... Well, just ask the verditius what they think about the dissemination of the Automata mystery
"All of thiose scripts" amount to perhaps two or three in a typical vision of the setting, and they could have been granted by a powerful spirit, or developed by a magus who was too old to ue them, or developed by a magus who had been too scarred and warped by their experimentation to put them into practice.
"Quendalon" is quite explicitly shown to possibly be a faerie imposter rather than a character who has undergone the becoming.
The Green Cockerel cult is not a part of canon
Merinita's "postmortem" appearances could have been explained as an actual ghost, a faerie imposter, a message from the past, a divine visitation or any of a thousand other things.
The Disciples of the Worm and Legion of Mithras are, like the green cockerel, not a part of canon.
Great beasts are not immortal magi they're magical animals.
Secrecy may be why their mysteries work. They're secretive because that's what gives their mysteries power.
Your analysis only takes into account time spent by the character to be initiated, It does not take into account when the cult is able to provide a mystigoge or the initiate.
Your assumption of an equal time for initiation and other cult work seems about right to me but it isn't generous. Between running initiations, performing work for the cult's ends and studying up your appropriate cult lore a case could easily be made that a ratio of 1 to 3 is warranted.
I don't see that the resources would reasonably be available for a character to have the opportunity to devote themselves to a cult full time, even the house exoteric cults much less an esoteric mystery. How big are the cults in your setting? sixty magi each? I see six to twenty as a more typical size for a cult.
Not only from a player's perspective. According to my own reasoning, it seems the most mutually beneficial thing to do, from the average magus character's perspective, including members of mystery cults.
Think about it: the whole Order is built on a model of exchange of magical knowledge, for a fair price. Initation Scripts are not really different from Summae or Lab Texts. Very few mages would share them for free without just compensation, OTOH very few mages do not share their new insights and discoveries for a good price, and the history of the Order shows that almost all new discoveries, no matter how precious, if they can be reliably duplicated, unavoidably spread to the rest of the Order.
I see no concrete reason why Mystery Cults should work under a different model, since mystae are still Hermetic mages. It is more beneficial for a MC to work openly, and not to charge members too burdensome membership fees, since that means more influence, more members, more opportunity to develop their insights, and be free from the burden of maintaining excessive secrecy. It is better to reap a few services from a fifty members, than a lot from a dozen. They just have to ensure nobody gets training without due compensation. Sure, some MC may still maintain greater secrecy for ideological reasons, and charge 10 years of service for initiation, but social pressure would end up making them the minority.
Therefore, I do expect most Mystery Cults to eventually end up working like unofficial Houses, where they self-perpetuate themselves by charging new mages for training, but their existence and abilities is an open secret. IE I do not expect Esoteric cutls to work much differently from Exoteric ones, in the Order. The main difference is that they don't have official recognition, although nothing really stops from creating a setting where MC are an officially recognized social network which work parallely to the Houses. It would go for added options for political intrigue, and it would take but a Great Tribunal ruling.
I'm not saying it has to be the mandatory model, only that barring overwhelming reasons to the contrary, I deem it the most likely model to develop.
Other SG may want to postulate contrary powerful factors that manage to stymie the evolution of MC toward openness, and good for them. personally I quite loathe all this cloak and dagger conspiratorial stuff, and I see no overwhelming reason in the setting or rule system why it should be implemented nonetheless, instead of a model where Mc set up shop openly.
Cults are not necessarily focused on the mysteries of one svhool only, to the exclusion of any other insight. Many cults mix insights, e.g. alchemical and astrological insights.
But since IotS is so useful to immortal magi, and the cult is about pursuing it, it is more likely that some Mystagogue thought of developing a Script for it, and therefore it is more likely for the cult to have it, than the contrary. Both may happen. But given exceeding plot-driven reason to the contrary, it is more likely to the former than the latter.
The Order is, among other things, one big marketplace for the sharing of magical insights. This makes very very likely that MC which openly advertize and proselytize in the end will bloom and grow and become the dominant model, while the conspiratorial ones will become marginalized and likely only survive for the ones that strongly share their ideology. Successful MC will never die out, since new generations of mages will always be there in the need of Initiations for the Virtues they offer, but even if in your saga hasn't happened yet, it is unavoidable that MC will arise which are like the Children of Hermes in structure, and over time, they will become the dominant model. For the very same reasons why the OoH has become dominant among the magicians of Mythic Europe. Theirs is the most efficient, successful model for mages to propser, and the setting or the rule system provide no overwhelming reasons why the same model should not come to dominate MC, too. It may not have happened yet in your saga, just the way the OoH could not have arisen. But once it does, and takes some root, it will come to dominate the market, so to speak.
It may not happned yet in your saga, I concede it, but I contend that is the by far most likely course. So bear with me if I speak of it as the foreordained conclusion.
This I readily concede. History is never entirely predictable. I just contend that barring exceptional and unforeseeable factors, my model is the most logical and mutually-beneficial and therefore likely to happen from hermetic magi POV.
Sure. This does not stop one vision to be more reasonable and likely to happen, the history and structure of the Order being the same.
On the latter point, let's agree to disagree. Given the ample place the social practices of the Order allow for secrecy, and the fact immortal magi have much less need for mundane support (they don't eat...) and therefore can afford seclusion much better, Mythic Europe could well harbor dozens or even a hundred of immortal magi between alchemical, faerie, animal, and ghost ones, not to mention Daimonic ones (even if they are likely to be the minority). Immortals are not in direct competititon for any resource but vis, and they have greately reduced need for it (no healing, no longevity), so they have limited reason for suppressing the birth of new immortals.
But being too tight-fisted about sharing their own powers is just what ensures your insights will eventually be stolen, repoduced, or reverse-engineered, as dissatisfied mages will work to experiment, self-initiate, steal Scripts, and set up shop as rival Cults. If there is something that history shows, is that keeping too tight a lid of the spread of information NEVER works, no matter how much force you apply. Knowledge can be, with extreme difficulty, destoryed, but not kept secret forever. The Essential Nature of Knowledge is to be Free. Mythic Europe is not that much different, as any new Hermetic discovery unavoidably spread out in the Order in a generation or two.
I assume that at the very most, a MC can hope to charge 2-3 years of service for every initiation they bestow, before members and perspective members grow dissatisfied and take steps to ensure that Initiation is available by other means. The very existence of Common Mystery Virtues, and the dissemination of the Automata mystery, is evidence that I'm right and that powerful social forces work in the Order to frustrate the efforts of greedy or paranoid mystagogues to keep their insights under too tight a lid.
The Children of Hermes are the wave of the future, just as Bonisagus was, like it or not.
Of course. Hostiry si never a perfect line. But it's the most likely scenario.
But any mage that succesfully makes it also makes it exponentially more liekly that the insight will take root, and spread.
Yes, and Bonisagus could have possibly been an angel or a pagan god in disguise, and therefore no real Hermetic Breakthrough is possible without strong supernatural assistance, and the rules for Original Research are actually bogus. Anything is possible. But everything is not equally likely.
And other breed of immortals are magical humanoids, faerie humanoids, ghosts, or magical spirits. The very foundation of full immortality is that the mage transforms from human to some kind of supernatural intelligent critter. Great Beasts are animals in form, but otherwise they look quite similar to other kinds of immortal mages. They even routinely act as mystagogues.
Occam's razor. It might be so by SG's fiat (provided the players buy it; I wouldn't) but it would be wholly arbitrary, since there is nothing in the rules or setting that indicates so. See above, Bonisagus was an angel. Anything is possible. Everything is not equally plausible.
I don't understand your point here.
Sure, let's assume that the less generous cults charge 2-3 years of service and training instead of a 1:1, for every initiation. It still amounts to a fraction of an Hermetic lifetime. Anything more tight-fisted than that, and magi would seek (or create) alternative sources.
Indeed I would expect the more successful MC to grow to the size of minor houses, and become an unofficial parallel social network in the Order, and harbor several dozens of magi. Only the most paranoid and tightfisted (and therefore eventually marginalized and subsisting on fringe symphatizers) would be the latter case.
I have been thinking about this thread recently, having leafed through the eleven AM supplements I bought for myself this holiday season.
I have a few beliefs and observations.
I don't believe a saga will suffer if the GM allows mystery virtues to be taken during character creation as part of a player's starting virtues, especially if the player also has to invest xp in the cult's lore.
Similarly, I think a GM would do well to be generous in making sure that a cult has a selection of virtues that will make players happy, provided these are obtained with appropriate scripts. The time one character invests in all these virtues may not do him as well as boosting Arts and Magic Theory, or enchanting devices. One character has a Cult Lore of 8, has spent ten years learning all kinds of cool virtues, while getting one or two flaws, but the other has an arsenal of spells and enchantments.
I think a lot of attention has been given to the immortality virtues, but I find these more flavorful than powerful.
Great Beast: You can attain this early in your career, and quite neatly, without the contortions required by other seekers of immortality. However, your character has become a powerful NPC of a kind that has not been seen in Mythic Europe in more than 50 years. Congratulations on your ascension, and please think about your next character.
Ascension to the Hall of Heroes: This seems to be the prize of prizes; not only are you immortal, but you cannot even be killed. Unfortunately, you can never earn and keep an experience point of your own ever again, but must depend on a tiny cult to invest vis in you. Without human attention, you are likely to be forgotten by all. Although you can theoretically boost your Might Score arbitrarily high, if you actually do so, no one will be able to summon you. Effectively, you get to choose between being weak but available, and being strong but out of the saga. In any case, you no longer have a laboratory and cannot do lab work, further weakening you. This is also the hardest immortality option to pull off, providing the best immortality but poor opportunities for growth and play.
Haunt of the Living Ghost: Were it not for the pesky inconvenience of having to kill yourself and the further inconvenience of becoming a prisoner, this is the best of the immortality options. You can still use fatigue but take no penalty. You still have a lab. The ritual will give you a very good Might score, and is simple. You are invulnerable to slings and arrows of misfortune, which pass right through you. But your range of motion is restricted. The right character might be perfectly content with this. Perhaps he is a Verditius or Bonisagus who never wants to leave his lab anyway, or perhaps he Haunts a vast, enchanted ship that can take him places, and is willing to possess crewmen.
Alchemy: You have complete freedom of movement, and you have the same advancement opportunities as a Living Ghost. However, your body is just as vulnerable as ever. Your Might will be less than a Living Ghost, at a higher cost of ascension.
Becoming: It is difficult to achieve a decent Might. Using your spells is the most expensive, because you pay Might per magnitude. Your spontaneous casting is pretty much gone. However, within limits, you can continue to gain lots and lots of experience, far more easily than the others.
Criamon path of the Body: Probably the best compromise, except you're so enlightened, so harmonious, you've gotta be an npc.
Any of these either end a career or stall it.
Immortality isn't where real power lies; when have you actually gotten to play a 300yo magus?
For real power in his domain, a character can start with Nature Lore 9+2 (Strong Faerie Blood, Affinity/Puissant, some years before apprenticeship, etc). Check out those powers!
Since IotS is so vital to immortal mages, any mystery cult that has immortality as a goal would have Scripts for IotS. quote]
I disagree. I'd note that the idea that cults get to pick which mysteries they have is false. Also, I'd like to point out that there are several who don't have this: the Path of Walking Backwards for example leads to immortality, and does not have this. Then again, they are physically immortal and don't have the problems remembering new stuff that other immortals do. Nevertheless, the approach that cults get to choose which iniations they know is false. It's one of the interpretations that the authors of The Mysteries wanted to disuade people from, because its secular and gamist. (As far as I understand them, of course.)
Secular and gamist fits me like a glove, since that's what I am, as a gamer and as a person. Radical secular, in fact. If we wish to go for labeling, I might retort that I fancy mysteries as broad-light research and mutual support confraternities much like Houses for like-minded magical scientists and mystics not only because they better fit my vision of magic, but also because I absolutely do not want anything of this pseudo-religious, pseudo-masonic conspiracy/cult freak narrativist nonsense in my gaming. I do find people overly focused on conspiracies and cults worrisome and pathetic, little wish to play one.
As far as I see it, TMRE and HoH:MC are "toolkit" systems that support playing both types of mysteries, and anything in between. That one of the authors seems to show more sympathy to one model, I chalk it to his personal play style preference, not a holy writ from Above. Had I written the book instead of him, things would be reversed. As things go, my model of playing mysteries is supported by canon bits like mysteries which are essentially based on self-initiation (Philosophers of Rome) or have a heavily syncretistic approach to mysteries (Children of Hermes), the fact that a sufficiently determined and talented mystagogue character can create a wholly new mystery or significantly steer an existing one in a new direction simply by creating a new set of Initiation script by experimentation, and the fact that at their core, typical OoH members are much more likely to be fairly secular (as much as the setting allows), rational, and practical magical researcher-mystics rather than obsessed conspiracy freaks or cult fanatics.
I will also add that my present gaming group appears completely at ease with the way we are playing mysteries, my style. The only ones that really hide are the ones that have something to hide: infernalists, and traitors to the Order (like the Cainites we are presently hunting). The vanilla Esoteric ones are an open secret within the Order: a determined and talented magus characters can always contact any one that exists and apply for membership and training (paying the right price of course) and can get a fairly accurate picture of what abilities they offer, with a little legwork and research. They are not so official as the Exoteric (House) ones, but they do not really hide, either. We find this the most confortable way to play them. Too much conspiracy gets boring and tiresome, real soon.
If that's the way you want ot play it, that's good for you, but I was talking about your character.
The intention of the Mysteries was, as I understand it, to model actual mystery cults, in which there are elements like worshipfulness and sacrifice of your own personal ambitions. The smorgasboard model you are suggesting takes the power from the external providers of the msytery (daimons, gods, faeries, whatever) and puts it all back inside the magus. This is a very modern way to see magic and worship and some of us like a bit more historicity.
Also, your Order is a lot more developed that the Order in the core setting, where a lot of really good ideas have never been followed up by magi. So, just because IotS is very useful, is no real evidence that anyone has ever followed that up. As an example, having a spare copy of all the really good books in Durenmar, in case someone botches and blows up the tower, is also a really good idea that is obvious to anyone with a passing knowledge of history, and yet, no such duplicate exists. This is deliberate: the Order doesn't work as well as it could in the core setting so that the PCs have the opportunity to make it work better.
OK...but I think Mysteries may just be the wrong tool for what you are trying to do, then. Not the mechanic, itself, just the erntire rest of the Mysteries concept.
If that's the way you want to play, I'm happy for you. To me, its kind of like using CoC to play non-supernatural forensic procedurals, though. I've done it, and it works and people enjoy it, but it doesn't seem worth getting the book if you can just lift the game's mechanisms wholesale.
I'm tempted to say a bit militant at times too -in the sense that even if your YMMV is recognised you seem urgent to also prove that any other way to go about it is somewhat misguided or totalitarian- as this debate very much reminds me of earlier ones about the Dominion and Mysteries respectively, where the lines have been similarly drawn and some of the same arguments repeatedly used. Honestly I think it is positive to experience differences in YMMV - as long as one keeps an open mind to what is the spirit of the RAW and what is personal preference. To often these debates have turned sour over preferences spilling over into heated fight over what is interpretated into RAW or even to the point of harrashing authors for postulated mistakes and/or ulterior motives.
The same issue as the one at hand was debated in the thread on the degree of tyrannical cults started by you and my opinion is still much the same. My personal preferences are still that Mysteries is a toolkit for the Troupe and not for the magus, and that even if the system is openended in the sense that is very versatile, this versatility is not open to characters. That is because I prefer Mysteries to be about stories rather than optimization, and that to me a mystery is at its core about the unknown. To me Initiation is not about a "trade", which to me demeans it, where the cult members "grow dissatisfied and take steps to ensure that Initiation is available by other means". That to me makes too mercantile an exchange rather than being something that is basically much more about passing an ordeal to be accepted as a member of a secluded group. And that is what Mysteries are about to me: a social construction, where albeit important, the gained Virtues mostly are of inferior importance compared to the socio-psycological importance of joining the group in question.
It is no coincidence that I repeatedly use the phrase "to me" in the paragraph above as I see that clearly as a YMMV difference between you and me Wanderer. But changing perspectives to the RAW, a month ago Erik Tyrrell took the time to present the relevant RAW references on this subject and as a follow-up to his discussions with you. I've noticed that you have yet to comment on that thread. This by no means interferes with what you prefer in terms of YMMV, but it does makes a strong case that the RAW at least didnt intend to offer magi the cherry picking of initiations.
Oh, just noticed something to add a little more weight to timothy ferguson's points.
If it's called "mysteries", isn't it because it's, well, mysterious?
I mean by that, no "open secret", no virtue lists and such. You get into a Cult, dedicated to something, just like real-world persons who enter the free masons don't really know what lies ahead the outer circle.
IMS Mystery Cults exist only to pursue certain paths of personal development. Some are trying to keep alive arcane lore that would otherwise be lost, or are trying to follow the teachings or path of a particular magus. A rare few are searching for lost lore or following paths only recorded in myth or legend. But in every case an initiate is either in or isn't. With the four obvious exceptions no cult is going to permit any of this negotiating for particular virtues or what not.
Sure some cultists may investigate under-explored avenues of the cult's mystery and develop new paths that way. Or a cultist might bring some lore with them that creates a new path or further develops an existing one. But no cult is going to initiate someone who turns up with a list of demands. Indeed some Wizard Wars may result from cultists either breaking their vows of secrecy or for making demands or following paths that contradict the cult's Mysteries.
Of course mystery cults are not limited to magi alone.
I looked online for a dictionary definition of "Mystery" cult and found the following:
Now I think we may safely eliminate the word "religious" from that definition but the word "secret" must remain; a Mystery Cult without the secrecy is just a cult or societas.
Now maybe my perspective is a bit skewed because my wife and I have both been members of a modern real-life mystery cult; and I don't mean the masons. No we both joined a martial arts school (she for the Kung Fu and Tai Chi for myself). I can't speak much for the Kung Fu but Tai Chi is pretty much taught as a dance with a few exercise that make absolutely no sense at the time (but sound really cool and mystical; stirring the cauldron - pushing balls of chi around in your belly anyone?) But once you've shown that you willing to put the effort in and push through your limitations (and turned up enough) it becomes evident that the wavy-hands of parting the horses mane is actually a combined block and throw. A particular wrist twist when combined with holding someone's forearm can bring them to their knees and that whole stomach churning thing actually builds great stomach muscles and allows you to control your centre of gravity. And Kung Fu is even more of the same.
Now I'm not breaking any vows of secrecy by saying any of that because it's meaningless without the groundwork. There also aren't any vows of secrecy for that very reason. However there are things that any serious martial artist won't talk about because if they were misunderstood they would be dangerous. As a mystery cult any decent Kung Fu school is fairly self-regulating because once you're advanced enough to learn the 'inner mysteries' you're advanced enough to know how dangerous those 'mysteries' can be.
Now I didn't get very far with the Tai Chi because of a pre-existing medical condition, but the less said about that the better...
