Note: I tried a new video file format to help with frame rate issue with my camera. For some reason this caused me to lose the last 1-2 seconds of footage on a few clips. I re-shot some of them, but didn't catch all of them. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Of note about Magath: they happen less when they "feed on their polar opposite" and more when they feed on essence that has nothing to do with them. Bee spirit eating a lava elemental? Magath. Sadness eating joy is symbolically appropriate. And Death spirits can seemingly devour anything without mutating or being ostracized by the Shadow at large.
The 2e book can be a bit vague on what constitutes a Magath. “Wildly different concepts” is all it states, but I kind of like the idea that a Fear Spirit could eat a Bear spirit and not become a Magath. Or a Bird Spirit eats a Surveillance Spirit to create an “Eagle Eye Observer” type spirit.
Thank you for this! After many, many years away, I'm playing in a CoD game-- we're playing Mage, and I'm the lone Thyrsus in the group. Our GM is awesome and has decades of experience with the game, but Thyrsii just haven't ever been selected before. The Mage books are not very detailed in how Spirit magic works (and there is this aggravating tendency in the book to define X as being compared to Y. So when you look up Y, it just circles back to X, so you chase your own tail a lot trying to figure it out. Drives me nuts.
Mage as a book tries very hard to explain everything through a holistic lens as opposed to a narrow Mage lens. But Mage tries very hard to be the book about everything. Spirit Arcana is probably the most restrictive Arcana as they focus entirely on 1 monster type and 1 plane. Whereas with say Death Arcana anything undead is covered; corpses, vampires, ghosts, prometheans, etc...
I can't wait to see more stuff on the ghosts and spirits. It's honestly the part I feel the least comfortable using in games. So I'm happy to see content about it.
One of the biggest problems I have with the Chronicles of Darkness game lines is all the unnecessary jargon, but Werewolf the Forsaken is the worst of the lot in this regard.
