New job.

YEY!

Also, got my hands on a third ed Mage: the Elitism book. (Not going to buy one, but read through it anyway.)

Read four paragraphs and understood what no one was willing to explain to me.

The long and short of it is that Mage is designed for you to roleplay someone who doesn't understand (initially) a fraction of what they're truly capable of. The system tells you what you can do in plain English. But to properly represent your character, you have to run everything through a mental filter of imposed stupidity.

Instead of using, for example, Life 3 to heal someone, you use a Rote. There's an established rote, but I'm using my own, because I'm crazy messed up in the head like that. Yo.

Anyway:

"Here, Drink This." A Life 3 effect to heal internal/invisible damage. This rote is intended to be coincidental, but may be vulgar with too many successes. The caster of this rote takes a slightly smaller than cough-drop sized ball of honey, and uses it to encapsule a tiny gelatinous pill made out of: pure aloe (for its healing properties), a pinch of powdered mustard seed (for its purification/disinfecting properties), and a drop of the caster's blood. After cooling the capsules until the honey is reasonably firm, they are coated with a thin layer of water and confectioners sugar, heated into a fine paste, and firmed up with powdered plant leaves (belladona, for its numbing/pain relieving qualities). The 'candy' shell will retain the shape of the capsule even if it's exposed to slightly higher than room temperature, but anything hotter than that will render it into a goey mess (which can still be used for healing, but is much more annoying to do). The pills can be passed off as an herbal remedy, as lab testing will reveal levels of belladona that are too minute to cause harm to human beings, aloe, honey, mustard powder, and the elements in human blood. This is likely to raise eyebrows, but can be passed off as what it is -- an encapsulated 'natural remedy' for general pain relief with enough infection-fighting power (in theory) to bring down a fever in the same manner as asprin.

The pills are administered in one of two ways. In a rush situation, someone who is injured will swallow the pill, which works immediately to restore (casters arete) in health levels of damage. It's important to note that this healing begins to restore from the inside of the body, re-setting broken bones, staunching internal bleeding, repairing ruptured organs, etc. before working on more visible. The rote will heal as much as it can, but can often heal critical injuries while leaving superficial ones behind -- with luck, this can render the effects coincidental, though there is no guarantee of this.

The second way that the pills can be administered is to be dropped in hot water, and left heated until the entire pill dissolves into a thin, sweetened tea. This is considered an extended rote (aretex2) for the purposes of healing damage, but the recipient must drink the entire thing for it to work. Generally speaking, this effect is not likely to be coincidental if it is successful. In either case, the medicine must be administered by the practitioner of the spell, or else it's just a sweet lump of honey with aloe, blood, and powdered mustard seed inside, which is actually a pretty crappy tea, though it might put you to sleep.

For the more vulgar and emergency healing, there's the simple forced and traditional plea for help. The practicioner will eschew the complicated setup, and instead carve the sigil of Dana, and the wheel of life into their forearm (or palm, or thigh, or...) and plea with the Goddess to heal the afflicted. Newer Neo-Pagan Verbena would likely instead just trace the symbols in the air, believing that the old ways aren't as neccessary as they once were.

To Rip the Man Body (do damage) the spell is the same -- except that Brigette is invoked instead of Dana, and the spokes on the wheel of life point the opposite direction. Neo pagans find that Brigette is no longer as appropriate to be invoked as she once was -- interpetation has made her too gentle for the task, and bitter about offering aid. Instead, they will usually carve the spokes in a forearm, and then sever a thread (any thread) with the words, "And so is severed a portion of you." While the classic Verbena would allow their own superficial wounds to heal immediately, the neo-pagans often believe that leaving them to heal on their own (or healing them later) is more fitting, as a balance must be preserved in the universe, and it's only just to do so.

I'd have more ... but I'm not playing, so I'll stop there.

Kinda neat, though.