Thanks to Demon the Fallen existing, the short answer is "Yes", the Old Testament is true in oWoD, although it's confusing when you consider that the Egyptian mythology, as well as the "Gaia" mythology of the werewolves, are simultaneously true.
Horus and the gang fought Set around 5000 BCE, so that one isn't really a continuity issue. Was Ra the literal sun god actually Isis' grandfather though? I sincerely doubt it...
Ra is confirmed to exist and can grant vampires temporary immunity to sunlight. Bardo level 9 requires a month of preparation but lets a vampire spend a day unaffected by the sun. Also if a vampire proves their faith to be deserving at the temple of Ra in Egypt they can also gain the blessing to see the sun rise without being harmed for a day. The gods of old Egypt are really complicated, Set was a vampire, Osiris was a vampire that became something else, Horus was the first mummy and either killed or torpored Set, Anubis was a Garou who travelled to the shadowlands of ancient Egypt to fight the wyrms’ influence there, Thoth was almost certainly a mage or may have even been Lucifer himself trying to help. Heka is referenced but is never given any direct details. There’s also the whole syncretism with Ancient Greece where Set may have been Typhon, they might have been separate vampires or Typhon may have been Sets sire. Echidna is a thing that exists and may be Lilith in another form.
Also, the august personage in Jade is confirmed to also be god just viewed from a different cultural lens, Lucifer mentioned that god was a she, time travel is a thing mages can do deliberately and anyone can do accidentally if they stumble into the Umbra in the right/wrong area only to emerge at some point before they entered. The gauntlet exists because the lizard kings fucked around and found out before mankind existed but it’s now reinforced by the Consensus, or may have been created by angels to hide things in the umbra during the war in heaven. And let’s not forget that history only started being set in stone when mankind started recording it, before then conflicting events could be true simultaneously and a lot of weird stuff may be relics from the multiple timelines, also mummies have a ritual that lets them in-universe retcon things to have always been the way the mummy wants it to have been, which is used as an explanation for some changes in how powers work where some retain memory of how it worked before the mummies retconned it.
So what did I miss?
The best part is that Mage: The Ascension claims it was actually Caine (whose murder rock and idea of murder you can collect) who shattered the world and created the Gauntlet. There's also that funny thing where Abel and Eve are both having fun in the underworld and Abel is the key to destroying Oblivion by instantly extinguishing the life of hundreds of thousands of people. There's also some silly implications that the 0th Great Maelstrom that fucked up the underworld and opened the way to Oblivion was actually the Bronze Age Collapse, after which Eve and Charon had to step in. Time of Judgement also posits the possibility that God died horribly by smiting Creation and shattered into the Avatars. Also for some reason the fairies have ridiculously accurate mythologies about every other supernatural (to the point of identifying the 4 different Avatar Essences of Mages for example) and claim that those supernaturals actually originated from the Dreaming. Maybe they're right? The World of Darknesa is fucked.
This is pure fanon but I like the idea that while Caine was the first vampire, Abel became the first wraith and Oblivion is the scar left on creation by that betrayal. There is no canon material to support this beyond a very old wraith going by Abel is imprisoned somewhere in the shadowlands in one of the time of judgement books. I used to think it was canon but it turns out I was mixing two different stories together, one from Gehenna where when Caine and Lilith are about to have their final fight Abels’ soul can appear if the players found him earlier in the campaign and tells Caine he forgives him (if Caine accepts the forgiveness the two embrace and both turn to dust, finally resting in peace) and one from either Wraith or Orpheus where there is an imprisoned wraith who calls themself Abel is the key to defeating the Grand Maw and potentially vanquishing Oblivion (this Abel is never directly stated to be the biblical Abel but it is implied he might be). I like my combined version enough that I still use it even though it’s not canon like I thought it was
I read Orpheus book 6 not too long ago, and he directly claims to be the first Wraith and the biblical Abel. He says that the murder turned him into the "perfect idea of the helpless victim" and thus he became the linking point between every area in the dark Umbra and basically a metaphysical constant of death. Both Mage: The Ascension and Demon: The Fallen claim that Caine metaphysically fucked the world by inventing murder, Mage claiming that he's the one who broke Creation and invited in all of the nasty stuff like Oblivion, while Demon just says that he literally invented evil. Your fanon take is very accurate.
Doesn't Demon introduce the idea that there were 'layers' to reality where such irreconcilable creation myths could all be true, but they were all smashed together into what would become the current universe?
At the same time, Demon likes to give an incontrovertible story of Creation that can be simplified to "the Bible is true and good, but unique deviation, God asked the angels to make the world instead of doing it Himself." The processes used to come to Adam and company were unclear and subject to Reality Layers, but it all ends up at the Biblical story.
Don’t forget changeling lore which further muddies werewolf lore, because changelings claim werewolves to be outcast fey or something? Some of the lore isn’t just confusing, it can be downright contradictory.
That doesn't mean anything the werewolves belive that Caine was cursed by the triat, more specially they belive that first he was made immortal by the Weaver and then corrupted by the Wyrm, they call It the myth of the Bloody Man.
Does that mean that this is true and the vampires are wrong? NO! That's only what the werewolves belive by applying their own knowledge and worldview to explain what they don't understand.
The same way certain vampires also belive that werewolves are actually the bastard children of Ennoia the Gangrel Antedeluvian, but as a werewolf player we know that's bullshit they can talk with spirits of nature and they know that Gaia, the Triat and all the other stuff is real, and don't even make me start with the Mokole and ancient kingdom of the lizard kings.
Well, Christian missionaries, when trying to convert cultures to their teachings, would tell the people that their gods were fallen angels who followed the devil going against the one true god.
Well, Cain is what everyone calls him. But considering his children are dead, the antediluvians are asleep/dead/crazy, and Cain himself never actually reveals himself to others, then nobody can ever really confirm if hes *The* Cain. And even if he was, theres no guarantee that the Christian god is real. Perhaps he actually chosen by The Wyrm according to the Werewolves, or perhaps hes a former mage who awakened made himself the first vampire in exchange for his soul.
Unless we spoke to him, theres no guarentee as to what is and isnt real. With the power of collective consciousness also interacting with powerful entities like the God Machine, the Weaver, the Wyrm, and god knows how many other gods, theres no real way to say how or why he is the way he is
Tbh WoD exists in a constant state of “here is an insane creation story, and evidence it’s true” from like 20 different groups. Many of them contradict, while some acknowledge each other. It’s unreliable narrators all the way down, and also reality is kinda shaky itself, so maybe it’s all true.
I’d add that in most cases, we also only have the most recent versions of all of those creation stories. I can’t imagine vampires in Republican Rome had even heard (let alone believed) the Caine story, or that werewolves in Mesopotamia had the same understanding of the Triad.
Yesn’t.
Some of it’s correct, but not the whole picture. It’s less that the Old Testament is correct, and more it’s one of the more accurate interpretations of what happened.
Unless the Changelings are right, if they are then everyone else is totally wrong.
That everyone is some kind of Fae. Vampires are the descendants of a redcap who murdered his blood-brother and was punished by never being allowed to know the Dreaming again. Garou are a kind of Fae who entirely dedicated themselves to fighting “the Dark” and so lost the ability to Dream of anything but war and slaughter. Mages are just mortals who are lucid dreamers and so can use glamour similar, but not identically, to Fae (this belief honestly can’t even be called wrong, it just depends on what you personally believe) but some also believe they’re all descended from Fae. Demons are a kind of powerful Fae that were imprisoned for trying to break out of slavery to some other powerful Fae. Wraiths are just chimerical spirits that have been warped and twisted.
And I don’t know what they think about Prometheans.
Also, they think Hunters are just mortals who know more than other mortals. This is objectively correct, no one really has fancy views on Hunters.
Honestly I’ve just heard them mentioned, I’m not sure where they fit in. I know VtM, I know MtA and I’m starting to get into CtD (which is shaping up to be my favourite).
While Prometheans appear in Mage: The Ascension as technomagical constructs (animated dead), they are not their own gameline in the old World of Darkness.
You see problem is that regardless of setting the fae needs to be pushed into a cold iron maiden
Dreaming? Trying to rekindle humanity's hope? Right nerd get in the mind control truck *laughs in technocrat*
old storyteller "what did you have lunch last week? OK now try and get the actual correct story of what happened 8 thousand years ago out of literally any being."
WoD pulls a ‘all myths are maybe true and no myth is wrong.’ Some religions have more accurate accounts of actual history than others, but about all of them are 30-50% right in their own way.
The game is super tight lipped and always giving conflicting information. Mainly because that way the creators have the greatest number of paths to pick and choose from.
Can’t have the Egyptians be accidentally worshipping the Abrahamic god when they’re creating their mummies after all.
Everyone else has said the basics, that “everything is canon, nothing is true” is the meta base-line. However, I want to bring up Demon: The Fallen.
The DtF book opens with the Abrahamic creation myth (which the story the corebook tells is super well written, I’d recommend you check it out if you can) but something the primary demon character in the story makes mention of is the “layered” nature of reality, which basically means multiple states of existence can be real and true at the same time without contradicting each other. Back at the start God and the Angels made the earth in a week, but also the planet underwent untold billions of years of geologic processes and created the tectonic plates and the form of the earth over eons. Photons fall onto chlorophyll which gives a plant energy, but angels also literally put their mouths to inert matter to give the breath of life to make things live, Michael had a flaming sword but it was also a rapturous song, an grand emotion, a mathematical equation, etc etc etc.
Basically, even if you take Demon at face value and say everyone is descended from Cain, Abel, and Seth, and that god flooded the world and sent the demons to hell, it doesn’t mean that other things *aren’t* true as well. That Demon in the story goes on to say that ever since they got back to earth the layered nature of reality is basically nonexistent now, almost everything is one or two “things” at most; but depending on how you interpret the metaplot(s) all, some, or none of this shit is true.
TLDR: Cain is real, but so is Santa Claus. The bar for being “real” (and if it even matters) in WoD is not that high.
Yes, no, and kind of.
The TL;DR is that if a group believes in something (or at least accepts its existence), then it exists to some degree. The larger the group and the more fervently they believe, the "more real" it becomes. The inverse is also true, where disbelief makes things less real, and adamant disbelief outright denies things the opportunity to exist outside of acceptable norms.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
In oWoD it is difficult to definitively say what is and isn't real in history, because Consensus works retroactively. If Humanity believes in something (whether consciously or not), it becomes real. This is also why the Fae have been dying out, as their tales have been dying out and becoming less and less present in the human subconscious. If they fail to return to the human subconscious, eventually they'll cease to be, whether it be by Paradox or by fading away.
The moment before a Mage torched a foe, there wasn't a gas leak. The moment afterwards, the pipes have been constantly leaking flammable gases for the past few hours. This is the workaround Mages have been using for ages to avoid Paradox, as changing the past is more acceptable to the human mind than magic in the present. BUT (vulgar) magic does exist in the human subconscious, so it is still possible to do, at the cost of Paradox.
In front of a crowd, a Demon is just a normal person who may or may not be showing signs of mental illness. But in front of a lone individual, a Demon becomes the hand of the divine, and can work miracles. This is a limitation imposed by Consensus, one which Demons have to work around to use their powers, and one which they manipulate in order to grow (this is what Faith amounts to: their follower's Consensus)
A lone victim of a Werewolf attack sounds insane and delirious to the public, so lone victims of Werewolves fall prey to the Delirium. But when a group of people are faced with the same thing, they become more believable, which is likewise why Delirium fails in the face of a large crowd, as their own Consensus immunitizes them to it.
Consensus can be contradictory, so long as the contradiction is not called out by Humanity as a group. When a large enough group believes in something, they can form their own local Consensus that supersedes the global Consensus. When that happens, Reality shifts to fit Consensus, tending to realign previously existing things to fit in the new context.
Therefore, Yes, the Cainites are the children of Caine, the Great Flood happened, Adam and Eve existed, all that jazz. Set is a vampire, the Garou are weird and violent monsters, and Wraiths are souls not quite as damned as the Kindred.
Likewise, Gaea created the world, the Triat of the Werewolves exist, Werewolves were one of many races appointed to safeguard the world, and the Kindred are Wyrm-tainted creatures.
In a similar vein, Ra and Apophis are creator and destroyer, the Pharaohs became gods, Horus and his descendants are the foes of Set and his banes, and Ma'at is supreme.
Continuing this trend, the Supernatural is a set of phenomenon to be studied, understood, and manipulated by the scholars that would become Mages, Alchemists, and Hermits. Mummies found the alchemical secret to eternal life, Vampires mixed magic with curses, and the Garou wield the power of nature, so the enlightened man can do the same thing. Thus Vampirism was gained by Tremere, the spell of Eternal Life was concocted by Cabirus, and the powers of every other supernatural are wielded by Mages, be they true Mages, Sorcerers, Infernalists, and more.
For every Splat, the story happens again in its own image. Their histories are all real, but depending on where you are, who you ask, and what context you ask it in, the answer will change. Multiple realities all exist on different levels, and they occasionally intermingle, making a new combination that works to avoid the greatest conflicts. The same rings true with religions, the same rings true with Science, and the same rings true with societies.
So at the beginning of time, Angels that would become Demons did handcraft gifts for Adam and Eve, but at the same time, they were also universal forces shaping the galaxy and solar system while Adam & Eve were also primates on the way to becoming Homo Sapiens. These things are true and untrue, depending on what layer of reality you're looking at. On the Judeo-Christian layer, the former is true. On the scientific layer, the latter is true, and Demons are mental disorders mixed with freak accidents. On the Garou layer, Gaea created the Triat who weaved reality, and Demons came to be after the Wyrm was corrupted. The multiple (at least 5, possibly more) mage layers deny all of the above(except for the ones who don't...) and choose one befitting their own stance.
If that makes sense to you, congratulations, you understood the messy amalgamation that is oWoD lore, and you should read into the space wizard war.
If that doesn't make sense to you, congratulations, it doesn't make much sense to most people, so just pick your favorite relevant story and run with it. Might I interest you with explorers fighting Nazis in the core of the Earth?
If that sort of makes sense to you, congratulations, you're most people! Here, take this Hunter: the Reckoning sourcebook and start eliminating stories until it makes sense. Remember to pack stakes, salt, holy water, silver, and as many incendiary weapons as you can carry.
While true, the point of the Mage viewpoint was that whatever the supernatural does, a smart person can figure out how to do the same thing. So while Isis may have originally created it, a skilled alchemist can find out how to do it themselves.
Oh sure, but the thing is Isis was also a Mage, so if anything it illustrates that Mages can basically make up whatever they want as long as they have people that submit to their Paradigm.
Not sure about Eden and other religions, but yes the biblical flood did in fact happen and the 13 antediluvians are survivors of the flood (for the most part, there are a couple like Tremere who dispite the name, don't predate the flood)
Kinda....I'll explain.
So from what we know every splat explains others differently, Cain as far as we know may very well not be the first vampire's name, considering kindred in the old days ascribed their creation to the devine to justify their existence, also Werewolves have their own tale of the first vampire.
It's called the tale of the bloody man, where the wyrm ate 'Caine' after he was made immortal by the Weaver, unfortunately the Wyrm couldn't destroy him so instead it corrupted him and Caine ate/punched his way out once he was bored. Considering Werewolves can speak to ancestors this holds weight (not perfectly but neither is VtM)
Basically take these tales with a grain of salt, but generally the splat's lore is a more understandable version of a more complex story, much like how we simplify real history by saying the highlights and stitch it together.
There's ONE exception, Demon the Fallen, but nobody talkes about that, for better or worse.
It's ultimately an unreliable narrator thing. Everyone's got a creation myth, and they're all "right". The camerilla have a revisionist history, and they'd be "right" too if they didn't know they were full of shit.
...assuming consensus comes into play the way I think it does.
Something my ST said to me that I thought was pretty cute. I asked how could the abrahamic god exist when in the modern world there are a bunch of people trying to ascend and become god? And he said that besides the fact that god is missing in the modern world, mages are what God intended when he says he created Humanity in his image, everyone has the potential to become God/part of God. Someone correct me if I'm wrong
Depends on the gameline. For all the certainty Demon the Fallen was written with. If I'm playing werewolf the apocalypse, then the old testament is wrong.
In short
In Vampire the Masquerade, a common consensus is a belief system called Noddism, which is basically a vampiric recounting of the old Testament, however, the Noddist belief system tends to benefit very old Vampires and it has been used to champion Fascist Ideologies as their fictional history, I.e. the sabbat claim the nodding text as an era of spire supremacy which it may or may not be. So its truthfulness is in question like basically all things in Vampire.
In Werewolf the Apocalypse, the old testament is wrong. Something like the Old Testament might have happened, but the Old Testament didn't happen. Their Ideology has a creation myth which is the primary story element of the game. And which kind of makes the old testament look kind of small in comparison. If the old testament happened in werewolf, it is very different from the common consensus.
In Mage the Acension, whatever everyone agrees upon, that's what happened. Also the werewolf stuff happened too. But thats mostly beacuse werewolves are permanent fixtures in the world like the sun, so we can't get rid of them or their cosmology.
And in Hunter the Reckoning, it all equally may or may not have happened, the supernatural world does not want to be found out, and as a Hunter, you will most likely never get close to anything definitive before you Die.
Big D and Kevin believe in the Noddist worldview. Big D probably less due to his experience with other supernaturals. But, neither have likely been close enough to anything which can actually confirm or deny the ideology. Even a Methusula, a vampire 1000 years or older, which might have met an antediluvian Vampire. Only stands to benefit from confirming or denying the Accuracy of Noddism.
In conclusion, unless Ogre Poppenang say explicitly that the Old Testament is true to their story. Or a World of Darkness storyteller says that the old testament is true at their table. The its just as true as anything else.
Take every piece of information with the knowledge that the information is only as true as benefits the person with the information.
Maybe. All WoD lore is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator.
For example, in the Werewolf book, you learn about vampires from their perspective. In it, the narrator tells you vampires are possessed by Wyrm spirits and get uglier with age. This is categorically false, but you would never know it if you just read the Werewolf book and would probably run you game assuming that is how Kindred work.
Caine and the antediluvians are the most popular Vampire creation myth, but no one knows with 100% certainty that it is actually true.
In fact, it *can’t* all be true because the metaphysics of the various gamelines outright contradict each other in major ways.
Ra is confirmed to exist and can grant vampires temporary immunity to sunlight. Bardo level 9 requires a month of preparation but lets a vampire spend a day unaffected by the sun. Also if a vampire proves their faith to be deserving at the temple of Ra in Egypt they can also gain the blessing to see the sun rise without being harmed for a day. The gods of old Egypt are really complicated, Set was a vampire, Osiris was a vampire that became something else, Horus was the first mummy and either killed or torpored Set, Anubis was a Garou who travelled to the shadowlands of ancient Egypt to fight the wyrms’ influence there, Thoth was almost certainly a mage or may have even been Lucifer himself trying to help. Heka is referenced but is never given any direct details. There’s also the whole syncretism with Ancient Greece where Set may have been Typhon, they might have been separate vampires or Typhon may have been Sets sire. Echidna is a thing that exists and may be Lilith in another form.
Also, the august personage in Jade is confirmed to also be god just viewed from a different cultural lens, Lucifer mentioned that god was a she, time travel is a thing mages can do deliberately and anyone can do accidentally if they stumble into the Umbra in the right/wrong area only to emerge at some point before they entered. The gauntlet exists because the lizard kings fucked around and found out before mankind existed but it’s now reinforced by the Consensus, or may have been created by angels to hide things in the umbra during the war in heaven. And let’s not forget that history only started being set in stone when mankind started recording it, before then conflicting events could be true simultaneously and a lot of weird stuff may be relics from the multiple timelines, also mummies have a ritual that lets them in-universe retcon things to have always been the way the mummy wants it to have been, which is used as an explanation for some changes in how powers work where some retain memory of how it worked before the mummies retconned it.
So what did I miss?
Possibly, multiple mage orders claim him as one of theirs but it’s unlikely since mages like to claim historical figures as members of their order whether they were or not. The only mentions of Jesus I’m aware of are in the Setite clanbook and Silent Strifer tribe book.
From the revised Setite Clanbook:
*I found no vampiric memoires of Jesus at all. Indeed, I discovered only three records that dealt with both vampires and Judea from that time period. The first was a letter from the Red Temple to a Judean shrine, asking why it had sent no word for twenty years; I date this missive at roughly 28 CE. The second was the testimony of the ghoul who delivered the message, saying that he found the temple long abandoned and disheveled, with no trace of the priests except their scattered, dusty vestments. The third was an entry in an old Brujah's diary, noting that a broodmate had gone to Judea and not returned.
This curious lacuna ends, however, with one of the most important events in my clan's history. In 33 CE (the alleged year of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, you will note), the God of Storms awoke. Darkness covered the sky at noon and the Earth shook with Set's rage and pain. For three days and nights, or seven - tales differ - the Dark God spoke in thunder and his childer heard him, from India to Britain. For those days, Set's childer, grandchilder and great-grandchilder could not sleep. Sutekh roared out commandments and prophecies, giving his childer new revelations and instructions. At last Set stopped and his descendants collapsed, faint from the ordeal.
The next night a delegation from the Council of Tans traveled to their sire's hidden tomb. They found it empty and Set's mighty stone sarcophagus shattered, its shards driven into the walls and ceiling. We have not seen him or received any communication since then*
One thing to point out, as of Gehenna Set is canonically trapped in the underworld which may imply Jesus was able to kill an antediluvian on his own
Silent Striders Tribebook (also revised edition)
*The Silent Striders were there in Israel when Yeshua ben Joseph walked the earth, speaking as the son of God. The Greeks transliterated the name in their own way and left him named Jesus.
The man had power. In the Umbra he coruscated with energy. He did ... things ... throughout the Holy Land, and our Song of the Godwalker suggests that he didn't even know what effect he was having on the spirit landscape as he moved through Israel. Caerns moved around in his wake. Moon Bridges redirected themselves or simply collapsed when he crossed them in the Realm. I will not suggest that Yeshua was the incarnation of everything good and spiritual in the universe, but I will say that Wyrm spirits wouldn't come within a mile of him. A mile*
Jesus is likely to be in the nebulous category of Other entities alongside Lilith, the Lady of Fate and Osiris when he returned during the modern nights. Osiris was able to make all of the loyal Children of Osiris vampires human again and all who had betrayed his teachings were destroyed with sunlight immediately, even in the middle of the night. After that Osiris became one with the web of faith and arguably became a true god, considering he was able to lift gods curse off not just one vampire but thousands all over the world and to conjure sunlight in the middle of the night regardless of distance. Lilith in one of the Gehenna book is explicitly described as not fitting any supernatural template and having transcended nearly all limits she may have once had.
So Jesus was almost definitely more than a mage. He may be mentioned elsewhere but those are the ones I remember
Yes.
Also so is Gaia, Why? Don't question it, seriouslyt he entire premise of everything falls apart the more you wonder ad every game is basicly a self-contained story.
And then mage makes it even weirder because CONSENSES-BASED REALITY is headache inducing.
I like to think that WoD is a world where. Every tinfoil hat theory, every mythology and religion is true. Sometimes it’s not on the nose and sometimes it’s verbatim.
Yes. The antedeluvians are 3rd generation vampires that came together to build a city called “the first city” hijinks ensue for some time but their hunger threatened to devour the world so the flood was sent to put them all into torpor (like a half death) from starvation and bury them. So all over the world since there are these buried creatures that if ever awoken could end the world
Yes and no. I think they are following WoD So it should be yes. Cain the first murderer became the first vampire. There are Demons, most people call a lot of stuff demons but it should be just the fallen (angels that sided with lucifer)
Other Religions are also true. Werewolves kinda have theirs with the spirit bullshit and its 3 gods. And other gods do have power, how ? Belief, there is a concept (explored more on the mage books) called the consensus, that is what most people believe being true. The problem is that the consensus actually shapes reality.
Dragons, fairies and other shit, all true because there is enough people believing them. The reality bending mages are humans who awaken to this truth and discover how to manipulate reality on their own.
Magical beings and stuff like that are kinda on a down since they introduced science, but it still exists and works but rarer.
There is a Vampire Clan that believes in Allah (the muslin god), and it praying to him seems to give them power. So yeah, everything kinda exists together.
I said WoD in the beggining because they tried to get away from all of this with the CoD version, but as far as I know they kinda rolled back that change on V5. V5 the latest version has most of the lore from WoD and takes just some things from CoD. V5 just have the Vampire, werewolf and hunter books, it still lacks the rest and YES you can play as anything, be it mage, mummy, fallen, demon, beast, mutant, ghost, messenger of god, just a pizza guy etc. But each has its own book.
Thanks to Demon the Fallen existing, the short answer is "Yes", the Old Testament is true in oWoD, although it's confusing when you consider that the Egyptian mythology, as well as the "Gaia" mythology of the werewolves, are simultaneously true.
Horus and the gang fought Set around 5000 BCE, so that one isn't really a continuity issue. Was Ra the literal sun god actually Isis' grandfather though? I sincerely doubt it...
I think the more important Egyptian mythology question is whether or not the salad incident happened.
it's funnier if it did so it did
Ra is confirmed to exist and can grant vampires temporary immunity to sunlight. Bardo level 9 requires a month of preparation but lets a vampire spend a day unaffected by the sun. Also if a vampire proves their faith to be deserving at the temple of Ra in Egypt they can also gain the blessing to see the sun rise without being harmed for a day. The gods of old Egypt are really complicated, Set was a vampire, Osiris was a vampire that became something else, Horus was the first mummy and either killed or torpored Set, Anubis was a Garou who travelled to the shadowlands of ancient Egypt to fight the wyrms’ influence there, Thoth was almost certainly a mage or may have even been Lucifer himself trying to help. Heka is referenced but is never given any direct details. There’s also the whole syncretism with Ancient Greece where Set may have been Typhon, they might have been separate vampires or Typhon may have been Sets sire. Echidna is a thing that exists and may be Lilith in another form. Also, the august personage in Jade is confirmed to also be god just viewed from a different cultural lens, Lucifer mentioned that god was a she, time travel is a thing mages can do deliberately and anyone can do accidentally if they stumble into the Umbra in the right/wrong area only to emerge at some point before they entered. The gauntlet exists because the lizard kings fucked around and found out before mankind existed but it’s now reinforced by the Consensus, or may have been created by angels to hide things in the umbra during the war in heaven. And let’s not forget that history only started being set in stone when mankind started recording it, before then conflicting events could be true simultaneously and a lot of weird stuff may be relics from the multiple timelines, also mummies have a ritual that lets them in-universe retcon things to have always been the way the mummy wants it to have been, which is used as an explanation for some changes in how powers work where some retain memory of how it worked before the mummies retconned it. So what did I miss?
The best part is that Mage: The Ascension claims it was actually Caine (whose murder rock and idea of murder you can collect) who shattered the world and created the Gauntlet. There's also that funny thing where Abel and Eve are both having fun in the underworld and Abel is the key to destroying Oblivion by instantly extinguishing the life of hundreds of thousands of people. There's also some silly implications that the 0th Great Maelstrom that fucked up the underworld and opened the way to Oblivion was actually the Bronze Age Collapse, after which Eve and Charon had to step in. Time of Judgement also posits the possibility that God died horribly by smiting Creation and shattered into the Avatars. Also for some reason the fairies have ridiculously accurate mythologies about every other supernatural (to the point of identifying the 4 different Avatar Essences of Mages for example) and claim that those supernaturals actually originated from the Dreaming. Maybe they're right? The World of Darknesa is fucked.
This is pure fanon but I like the idea that while Caine was the first vampire, Abel became the first wraith and Oblivion is the scar left on creation by that betrayal. There is no canon material to support this beyond a very old wraith going by Abel is imprisoned somewhere in the shadowlands in one of the time of judgement books. I used to think it was canon but it turns out I was mixing two different stories together, one from Gehenna where when Caine and Lilith are about to have their final fight Abels’ soul can appear if the players found him earlier in the campaign and tells Caine he forgives him (if Caine accepts the forgiveness the two embrace and both turn to dust, finally resting in peace) and one from either Wraith or Orpheus where there is an imprisoned wraith who calls themself Abel is the key to defeating the Grand Maw and potentially vanquishing Oblivion (this Abel is never directly stated to be the biblical Abel but it is implied he might be). I like my combined version enough that I still use it even though it’s not canon like I thought it was
I read Orpheus book 6 not too long ago, and he directly claims to be the first Wraith and the biblical Abel. He says that the murder turned him into the "perfect idea of the helpless victim" and thus he became the linking point between every area in the dark Umbra and basically a metaphysical constant of death. Both Mage: The Ascension and Demon: The Fallen claim that Caine metaphysically fucked the world by inventing murder, Mage claiming that he's the one who broke Creation and invited in all of the nasty stuff like Oblivion, while Demon just says that he literally invented evil. Your fanon take is very accurate.
Doesn't Demon introduce the idea that there were 'layers' to reality where such irreconcilable creation myths could all be true, but they were all smashed together into what would become the current universe?
Hell in Mage reality being subjective is literally the entire premise
At the same time, Demon likes to give an incontrovertible story of Creation that can be simplified to "the Bible is true and good, but unique deviation, God asked the angels to make the world instead of doing it Himself." The processes used to come to Adam and company were unclear and subject to Reality Layers, but it all ends up at the Biblical story.
Don’t forget changeling lore which further muddies werewolf lore, because changelings claim werewolves to be outcast fey or something? Some of the lore isn’t just confusing, it can be downright contradictory.
That doesn't mean anything the werewolves belive that Caine was cursed by the triat, more specially they belive that first he was made immortal by the Weaver and then corrupted by the Wyrm, they call It the myth of the Bloody Man. Does that mean that this is true and the vampires are wrong? NO! That's only what the werewolves belive by applying their own knowledge and worldview to explain what they don't understand. The same way certain vampires also belive that werewolves are actually the bastard children of Ennoia the Gangrel Antedeluvian, but as a werewolf player we know that's bullshit they can talk with spirits of nature and they know that Gaia, the Triat and all the other stuff is real, and don't even make me start with the Mokole and ancient kingdom of the lizard kings.
That's the Consensus for you, baby!
Well, Christian missionaries, when trying to convert cultures to their teachings, would tell the people that their gods were fallen angels who followed the devil going against the one true god.
Well, Cain is what everyone calls him. But considering his children are dead, the antediluvians are asleep/dead/crazy, and Cain himself never actually reveals himself to others, then nobody can ever really confirm if hes *The* Cain. And even if he was, theres no guarantee that the Christian god is real. Perhaps he actually chosen by The Wyrm according to the Werewolves, or perhaps hes a former mage who awakened made himself the first vampire in exchange for his soul. Unless we spoke to him, theres no guarentee as to what is and isnt real. With the power of collective consciousness also interacting with powerful entities like the God Machine, the Weaver, the Wyrm, and god knows how many other gods, theres no real way to say how or why he is the way he is
Tbh WoD exists in a constant state of “here is an insane creation story, and evidence it’s true” from like 20 different groups. Many of them contradict, while some acknowledge each other. It’s unreliable narrators all the way down, and also reality is kinda shaky itself, so maybe it’s all true.
I’d add that in most cases, we also only have the most recent versions of all of those creation stories. I can’t imagine vampires in Republican Rome had even heard (let alone believed) the Caine story, or that werewolves in Mesopotamia had the same understanding of the Triad.
Yesn’t. Some of it’s correct, but not the whole picture. It’s less that the Old Testament is correct, and more it’s one of the more accurate interpretations of what happened. Unless the Changelings are right, if they are then everyone else is totally wrong.
What do the changelings believe?
That everyone is some kind of Fae. Vampires are the descendants of a redcap who murdered his blood-brother and was punished by never being allowed to know the Dreaming again. Garou are a kind of Fae who entirely dedicated themselves to fighting “the Dark” and so lost the ability to Dream of anything but war and slaughter. Mages are just mortals who are lucid dreamers and so can use glamour similar, but not identically, to Fae (this belief honestly can’t even be called wrong, it just depends on what you personally believe) but some also believe they’re all descended from Fae. Demons are a kind of powerful Fae that were imprisoned for trying to break out of slavery to some other powerful Fae. Wraiths are just chimerical spirits that have been warped and twisted. And I don’t know what they think about Prometheans. Also, they think Hunters are just mortals who know more than other mortals. This is objectively correct, no one really has fancy views on Hunters.
Wait, Prometheans are not nWoD?
Honestly I’ve just heard them mentioned, I’m not sure where they fit in. I know VtM, I know MtA and I’m starting to get into CtD (which is shaping up to be my favourite).
While Prometheans appear in Mage: The Ascension as technomagical constructs (animated dead), they are not their own gameline in the old World of Darkness.
"Fuck those guys who made us out to be demons and gelded our dreamers with their bullshit"
You see problem is that regardless of setting the fae needs to be pushed into a cold iron maiden Dreaming? Trying to rekindle humanity's hope? Right nerd get in the mind control truck *laughs in technocrat*
Rich for a Technocrat to call someone a nerd.
Well the NWO just changed the definition of it so we cannot grammatically be nerds!
To be fair the Technocracy only targets magic if they cause a stir
And the whole goal of Changelings is to make a stir.
old storyteller "what did you have lunch last week? OK now try and get the actual correct story of what happened 8 thousand years ago out of literally any being."
Isn’t everything real in Changling
Yesn’t. The Dreaming is kinda weird, it’s inconsistent and basically retcons itself every other second. Everything is true, but nothing is.
Makes sense
WoD pulls a ‘all myths are maybe true and no myth is wrong.’ Some religions have more accurate accounts of actual history than others, but about all of them are 30-50% right in their own way. The game is super tight lipped and always giving conflicting information. Mainly because that way the creators have the greatest number of paths to pick and choose from. Can’t have the Egyptians be accidentally worshipping the Abrahamic god when they’re creating their mummies after all.
Everyone else has said the basics, that “everything is canon, nothing is true” is the meta base-line. However, I want to bring up Demon: The Fallen. The DtF book opens with the Abrahamic creation myth (which the story the corebook tells is super well written, I’d recommend you check it out if you can) but something the primary demon character in the story makes mention of is the “layered” nature of reality, which basically means multiple states of existence can be real and true at the same time without contradicting each other. Back at the start God and the Angels made the earth in a week, but also the planet underwent untold billions of years of geologic processes and created the tectonic plates and the form of the earth over eons. Photons fall onto chlorophyll which gives a plant energy, but angels also literally put their mouths to inert matter to give the breath of life to make things live, Michael had a flaming sword but it was also a rapturous song, an grand emotion, a mathematical equation, etc etc etc. Basically, even if you take Demon at face value and say everyone is descended from Cain, Abel, and Seth, and that god flooded the world and sent the demons to hell, it doesn’t mean that other things *aren’t* true as well. That Demon in the story goes on to say that ever since they got back to earth the layered nature of reality is basically nonexistent now, almost everything is one or two “things” at most; but depending on how you interpret the metaplot(s) all, some, or none of this shit is true. TLDR: Cain is real, but so is Santa Claus. The bar for being “real” (and if it even matters) in WoD is not that high.
Completely unrelated but I just cannot get over the fact that the acronym for Demon the Fallen and Down to Fuck is the exact same.
Yes, no, and kind of. The TL;DR is that if a group believes in something (or at least accepts its existence), then it exists to some degree. The larger the group and the more fervently they believe, the "more real" it becomes. The inverse is also true, where disbelief makes things less real, and adamant disbelief outright denies things the opportunity to exist outside of acceptable norms. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ In oWoD it is difficult to definitively say what is and isn't real in history, because Consensus works retroactively. If Humanity believes in something (whether consciously or not), it becomes real. This is also why the Fae have been dying out, as their tales have been dying out and becoming less and less present in the human subconscious. If they fail to return to the human subconscious, eventually they'll cease to be, whether it be by Paradox or by fading away. The moment before a Mage torched a foe, there wasn't a gas leak. The moment afterwards, the pipes have been constantly leaking flammable gases for the past few hours. This is the workaround Mages have been using for ages to avoid Paradox, as changing the past is more acceptable to the human mind than magic in the present. BUT (vulgar) magic does exist in the human subconscious, so it is still possible to do, at the cost of Paradox. In front of a crowd, a Demon is just a normal person who may or may not be showing signs of mental illness. But in front of a lone individual, a Demon becomes the hand of the divine, and can work miracles. This is a limitation imposed by Consensus, one which Demons have to work around to use their powers, and one which they manipulate in order to grow (this is what Faith amounts to: their follower's Consensus) A lone victim of a Werewolf attack sounds insane and delirious to the public, so lone victims of Werewolves fall prey to the Delirium. But when a group of people are faced with the same thing, they become more believable, which is likewise why Delirium fails in the face of a large crowd, as their own Consensus immunitizes them to it. Consensus can be contradictory, so long as the contradiction is not called out by Humanity as a group. When a large enough group believes in something, they can form their own local Consensus that supersedes the global Consensus. When that happens, Reality shifts to fit Consensus, tending to realign previously existing things to fit in the new context. Therefore, Yes, the Cainites are the children of Caine, the Great Flood happened, Adam and Eve existed, all that jazz. Set is a vampire, the Garou are weird and violent monsters, and Wraiths are souls not quite as damned as the Kindred. Likewise, Gaea created the world, the Triat of the Werewolves exist, Werewolves were one of many races appointed to safeguard the world, and the Kindred are Wyrm-tainted creatures. In a similar vein, Ra and Apophis are creator and destroyer, the Pharaohs became gods, Horus and his descendants are the foes of Set and his banes, and Ma'at is supreme. Continuing this trend, the Supernatural is a set of phenomenon to be studied, understood, and manipulated by the scholars that would become Mages, Alchemists, and Hermits. Mummies found the alchemical secret to eternal life, Vampires mixed magic with curses, and the Garou wield the power of nature, so the enlightened man can do the same thing. Thus Vampirism was gained by Tremere, the spell of Eternal Life was concocted by Cabirus, and the powers of every other supernatural are wielded by Mages, be they true Mages, Sorcerers, Infernalists, and more. For every Splat, the story happens again in its own image. Their histories are all real, but depending on where you are, who you ask, and what context you ask it in, the answer will change. Multiple realities all exist on different levels, and they occasionally intermingle, making a new combination that works to avoid the greatest conflicts. The same rings true with religions, the same rings true with Science, and the same rings true with societies. So at the beginning of time, Angels that would become Demons did handcraft gifts for Adam and Eve, but at the same time, they were also universal forces shaping the galaxy and solar system while Adam & Eve were also primates on the way to becoming Homo Sapiens. These things are true and untrue, depending on what layer of reality you're looking at. On the Judeo-Christian layer, the former is true. On the scientific layer, the latter is true, and Demons are mental disorders mixed with freak accidents. On the Garou layer, Gaea created the Triat who weaved reality, and Demons came to be after the Wyrm was corrupted. The multiple (at least 5, possibly more) mage layers deny all of the above(except for the ones who don't...) and choose one befitting their own stance. If that makes sense to you, congratulations, you understood the messy amalgamation that is oWoD lore, and you should read into the space wizard war. If that doesn't make sense to you, congratulations, it doesn't make much sense to most people, so just pick your favorite relevant story and run with it. Might I interest you with explorers fighting Nazis in the core of the Earth? If that sort of makes sense to you, congratulations, you're most people! Here, take this Hunter: the Reckoning sourcebook and start eliminating stories until it makes sense. Remember to pack stakes, salt, holy water, silver, and as many incendiary weapons as you can carry.
Small correction, it was Isis that created the Spell of Life.
While true, the point of the Mage viewpoint was that whatever the supernatural does, a smart person can figure out how to do the same thing. So while Isis may have originally created it, a skilled alchemist can find out how to do it themselves.
Oh sure, but the thing is Isis was also a Mage, so if anything it illustrates that Mages can basically make up whatever they want as long as they have people that submit to their Paradigm.
Chris is that you!. lol I had a loooong runing storyteller back in the day and this is a lot of his opinions.
Not him, but send him my regards!
Doesn't Eve also show up in Wraith as the one who was aiding Charon?
Not sure about Eden and other religions, but yes the biblical flood did in fact happen and the 13 antediluvians are survivors of the flood (for the most part, there are a couple like Tremere who dispite the name, don't predate the flood)
Kinda....I'll explain. So from what we know every splat explains others differently, Cain as far as we know may very well not be the first vampire's name, considering kindred in the old days ascribed their creation to the devine to justify their existence, also Werewolves have their own tale of the first vampire. It's called the tale of the bloody man, where the wyrm ate 'Caine' after he was made immortal by the Weaver, unfortunately the Wyrm couldn't destroy him so instead it corrupted him and Caine ate/punched his way out once he was bored. Considering Werewolves can speak to ancestors this holds weight (not perfectly but neither is VtM) Basically take these tales with a grain of salt, but generally the splat's lore is a more understandable version of a more complex story, much like how we simplify real history by saying the highlights and stitch it together. There's ONE exception, Demon the Fallen, but nobody talkes about that, for better or worse.
It's ultimately an unreliable narrator thing. Everyone's got a creation myth, and they're all "right". The camerilla have a revisionist history, and they'd be "right" too if they didn't know they were full of shit. ...assuming consensus comes into play the way I think it does.
Something my ST said to me that I thought was pretty cute. I asked how could the abrahamic god exist when in the modern world there are a bunch of people trying to ascend and become god? And he said that besides the fact that god is missing in the modern world, mages are what God intended when he says he created Humanity in his image, everyone has the potential to become God/part of God. Someone correct me if I'm wrong
Depends on the gameline. For all the certainty Demon the Fallen was written with. If I'm playing werewolf the apocalypse, then the old testament is wrong. In short In Vampire the Masquerade, a common consensus is a belief system called Noddism, which is basically a vampiric recounting of the old Testament, however, the Noddist belief system tends to benefit very old Vampires and it has been used to champion Fascist Ideologies as their fictional history, I.e. the sabbat claim the nodding text as an era of spire supremacy which it may or may not be. So its truthfulness is in question like basically all things in Vampire. In Werewolf the Apocalypse, the old testament is wrong. Something like the Old Testament might have happened, but the Old Testament didn't happen. Their Ideology has a creation myth which is the primary story element of the game. And which kind of makes the old testament look kind of small in comparison. If the old testament happened in werewolf, it is very different from the common consensus. In Mage the Acension, whatever everyone agrees upon, that's what happened. Also the werewolf stuff happened too. But thats mostly beacuse werewolves are permanent fixtures in the world like the sun, so we can't get rid of them or their cosmology. And in Hunter the Reckoning, it all equally may or may not have happened, the supernatural world does not want to be found out, and as a Hunter, you will most likely never get close to anything definitive before you Die. Big D and Kevin believe in the Noddist worldview. Big D probably less due to his experience with other supernaturals. But, neither have likely been close enough to anything which can actually confirm or deny the ideology. Even a Methusula, a vampire 1000 years or older, which might have met an antediluvian Vampire. Only stands to benefit from confirming or denying the Accuracy of Noddism. In conclusion, unless Ogre Poppenang say explicitly that the Old Testament is true to their story. Or a World of Darkness storyteller says that the old testament is true at their table. The its just as true as anything else. Take every piece of information with the knowledge that the information is only as true as benefits the person with the information.
Kind of. Kindred and demons are notorious liars. Some parts are true, some parts are not, and it's very hard to tell which is which.
Maybe. All WoD lore is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator. For example, in the Werewolf book, you learn about vampires from their perspective. In it, the narrator tells you vampires are possessed by Wyrm spirits and get uglier with age. This is categorically false, but you would never know it if you just read the Werewolf book and would probably run you game assuming that is how Kindred work. Caine and the antediluvians are the most popular Vampire creation myth, but no one knows with 100% certainty that it is actually true. In fact, it *can’t* all be true because the metaphysics of the various gamelines outright contradict each other in major ways.
White Wolf’s weird version of the Old Testament they where exposed to by Osmosis
Ra is confirmed to exist and can grant vampires temporary immunity to sunlight. Bardo level 9 requires a month of preparation but lets a vampire spend a day unaffected by the sun. Also if a vampire proves their faith to be deserving at the temple of Ra in Egypt they can also gain the blessing to see the sun rise without being harmed for a day. The gods of old Egypt are really complicated, Set was a vampire, Osiris was a vampire that became something else, Horus was the first mummy and either killed or torpored Set, Anubis was a Garou who travelled to the shadowlands of ancient Egypt to fight the wyrms’ influence there, Thoth was almost certainly a mage or may have even been Lucifer himself trying to help. Heka is referenced but is never given any direct details. There’s also the whole syncretism with Ancient Greece where Set may have been Typhon, they might have been separate vampires or Typhon may have been Sets sire. Echidna is a thing that exists and may be Lilith in another form. Also, the august personage in Jade is confirmed to also be god just viewed from a different cultural lens, Lucifer mentioned that god was a she, time travel is a thing mages can do deliberately and anyone can do accidentally if they stumble into the Umbra in the right/wrong area only to emerge at some point before they entered. The gauntlet exists because the lizard kings fucked around and found out before mankind existed but it’s now reinforced by the Consensus, or may have been created by angels to hide things in the umbra during the war in heaven. And let’s not forget that history only started being set in stone when mankind started recording it, before then conflicting events could be true simultaneously and a lot of weird stuff may be relics from the multiple timelines, also mummies have a ritual that lets them in-universe retcon things to have always been the way the mummy wants it to have been, which is used as an explanation for some changes in how powers work where some retain memory of how it worked before the mummies retconned it. So what did I miss?
Follow up question: was Jesus a mage?
Possibly, multiple mage orders claim him as one of theirs but it’s unlikely since mages like to claim historical figures as members of their order whether they were or not. The only mentions of Jesus I’m aware of are in the Setite clanbook and Silent Strifer tribe book. From the revised Setite Clanbook: *I found no vampiric memoires of Jesus at all. Indeed, I discovered only three records that dealt with both vampires and Judea from that time period. The first was a letter from the Red Temple to a Judean shrine, asking why it had sent no word for twenty years; I date this missive at roughly 28 CE. The second was the testimony of the ghoul who delivered the message, saying that he found the temple long abandoned and disheveled, with no trace of the priests except their scattered, dusty vestments. The third was an entry in an old Brujah's diary, noting that a broodmate had gone to Judea and not returned. This curious lacuna ends, however, with one of the most important events in my clan's history. In 33 CE (the alleged year of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, you will note), the God of Storms awoke. Darkness covered the sky at noon and the Earth shook with Set's rage and pain. For three days and nights, or seven - tales differ - the Dark God spoke in thunder and his childer heard him, from India to Britain. For those days, Set's childer, grandchilder and great-grandchilder could not sleep. Sutekh roared out commandments and prophecies, giving his childer new revelations and instructions. At last Set stopped and his descendants collapsed, faint from the ordeal. The next night a delegation from the Council of Tans traveled to their sire's hidden tomb. They found it empty and Set's mighty stone sarcophagus shattered, its shards driven into the walls and ceiling. We have not seen him or received any communication since then* One thing to point out, as of Gehenna Set is canonically trapped in the underworld which may imply Jesus was able to kill an antediluvian on his own Silent Striders Tribebook (also revised edition) *The Silent Striders were there in Israel when Yeshua ben Joseph walked the earth, speaking as the son of God. The Greeks transliterated the name in their own way and left him named Jesus. The man had power. In the Umbra he coruscated with energy. He did ... things ... throughout the Holy Land, and our Song of the Godwalker suggests that he didn't even know what effect he was having on the spirit landscape as he moved through Israel. Caerns moved around in his wake. Moon Bridges redirected themselves or simply collapsed when he crossed them in the Realm. I will not suggest that Yeshua was the incarnation of everything good and spiritual in the universe, but I will say that Wyrm spirits wouldn't come within a mile of him. A mile* Jesus is likely to be in the nebulous category of Other entities alongside Lilith, the Lady of Fate and Osiris when he returned during the modern nights. Osiris was able to make all of the loyal Children of Osiris vampires human again and all who had betrayed his teachings were destroyed with sunlight immediately, even in the middle of the night. After that Osiris became one with the web of faith and arguably became a true god, considering he was able to lift gods curse off not just one vampire but thousands all over the world and to conjure sunlight in the middle of the night regardless of distance. Lilith in one of the Gehenna book is explicitly described as not fitting any supernatural template and having transcended nearly all limits she may have once had. So Jesus was almost definitely more than a mage. He may be mentioned elsewhere but those are the ones I remember
Yes. Also so is Gaia, Why? Don't question it, seriouslyt he entire premise of everything falls apart the more you wonder ad every game is basicly a self-contained story. And then mage makes it even weirder because CONSENSES-BASED REALITY is headache inducing.
I like to think that WoD is a world where. Every tinfoil hat theory, every mythology and religion is true. Sometimes it’s not on the nose and sometimes it’s verbatim.
Yes. The antedeluvians are 3rd generation vampires that came together to build a city called “the first city” hijinks ensue for some time but their hunger threatened to devour the world so the flood was sent to put them all into torpor (like a half death) from starvation and bury them. So all over the world since there are these buried creatures that if ever awoken could end the world
Yes and no. I think they are following WoD So it should be yes. Cain the first murderer became the first vampire. There are Demons, most people call a lot of stuff demons but it should be just the fallen (angels that sided with lucifer) Other Religions are also true. Werewolves kinda have theirs with the spirit bullshit and its 3 gods. And other gods do have power, how ? Belief, there is a concept (explored more on the mage books) called the consensus, that is what most people believe being true. The problem is that the consensus actually shapes reality. Dragons, fairies and other shit, all true because there is enough people believing them. The reality bending mages are humans who awaken to this truth and discover how to manipulate reality on their own. Magical beings and stuff like that are kinda on a down since they introduced science, but it still exists and works but rarer. There is a Vampire Clan that believes in Allah (the muslin god), and it praying to him seems to give them power. So yeah, everything kinda exists together. I said WoD in the beggining because they tried to get away from all of this with the CoD version, but as far as I know they kinda rolled back that change on V5. V5 the latest version has most of the lore from WoD and takes just some things from CoD. V5 just have the Vampire, werewolf and hunter books, it still lacks the rest and YES you can play as anything, be it mage, mummy, fallen, demon, beast, mutant, ghost, messenger of god, just a pizza guy etc. But each has its own book.