DaveB:

I prefer to think of the way the different beings experience outer realities as
being like two two-dimensional beings on planes at a right-angle encountering a
sphere.
DaveB:
We go out of our bloody way to make the relationships between supernaturals fuzz
y, indistinct and a two-way game of blind man and elephant.
DaveB:
1) I wrote some of the parts of Dancers in the Dusk where Changelings and Mages
experience the astral / the skein in parallel but differently. Like the way Chan
gelings sometimes encounter people's Daimons. Mage actually says how several of
the supernatural peoples of the world clearly experience the Astral differently
to Mages; Werewolves, for instance, sometimes drift to the Dreaming Earth (one o
f the furthest and hard-to-stay-in parts of the Astral for a mage) simply by goi
ng to sleep and having a particularly vivid dream. Neither knows why.
2) As of the clanbooks, The Mekhet think they're descended from an Egyptian buri
al rite that went wrong, the Ventrue think they're descended from Trojan house "
ancestor gods" (ie, Ghosts), the Nosferatu think they're descended from people w
ho encountered horrible worm-like monsters that come up from under the ground an
d embraced humans, the Gangrel humans who merged with beasts, the Daeva are unde
cided apart from their Babylonian name and the Julii from corpses possessed by m
ysterious owl-demon spirits.
So, yeah. Those can all say "different sorts of Underworld monsters interminglin
g with humans" if you want them to.
DaveB:
To another another extent, Mages who Awaken in a Mystery Play are more likely t
o "get" the symbols and meaning of their Path (Moros who are about Change, Acant
hus who are all about the difference between what you say you'll do and what wil
l happen, Thyrsus who act like Tyler Durden) while those who have the full-blown
Astral journey to see the Supernal Natives and climb the Tower are more likely
to cleave hard-line to the stereotype of the Ruling Arcana, as they try to put t
he lessons they think they learned in the otherworld into practice in their live
s - Obrimos who would be said to be strongly religious if they didn't find all S
leeper religions lacking (as they've been to Heaven, and it was not as advertise
d), Moros who are remarkably un-morbid as they're satisfied that they've seen wh
at happens next, that kind of thing.
DaveB:
Just other people's dreams. They're incapable of going to the Temenos*. See the
"living play script that kills" antagonist in DitD which has "it's a Temenos cre
ature" as one of it's possible origins.
* Except when they do, without realising it - the way Changelings experience dre
ams is mostly like a Shallow version of the Oneiros mingled in with some Temenos
and even Past-the-Boundary-Stone symbol-creatures, like Mordred**. This is prob
ably due to the Astral as Mages experience it being the inside of someone's soul
, which is not the same thing as the inside of someone's dreams. But parts of it
might be if you look at them from a funny angle.
DaveB:
As I just finished the Translation Guide I am, unless someone else comes along,
the reigning Mage: The Awakening Developer. I also wrote far too much of Demon.
Allow me to answer you by way of youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eO3XmuVry4
Repeat after me - the Supernal World describes the Fallen. It does not creat
e it in the "Lego", "raw materials" or even "basic unit of energy" sense. Patter
ns may contain Mana, but they aren't made of it like they're made of Quintessenc
e in cMage.
A Mage using Spirit Mage Sight who sees a Werewolf use a gift knows that som
ething described by the Spirit Arcanum happened. The werewolf is not using Super
nal magic.
Demon Aether is no more Mage Aether (that being mage's collective name for a
ll symbols of Prime and Forces, and not a real place anyway) than Demon demons a
re the symbol-creatures of Supernal Pandemonium.
Which, in case you're wondering, they aren't.
DaveB:
Mages like to give Capitalized Names to new concepts and phenomena they encounte
r, because - well, they're the mental monsters, they riff on academia, and they'
re the Sort of People who do. Because they go running around the World of Darkne
ss poking things that ought not to be poked with sticks, they've got names for e
verything.
But a scenario for you; a mage and a werewolf are in the Shadow, exploring a wou
nd (don't ask me why. They're just allies temporarily) when something truly horr
ible that consumes spirits without incorporating their essence crawls out of it.
The Werewolf thinks it's some kind of anti-spirit. The Mage explains, while the
y're running away, that it's an Akathartoi from the Lower Depths, and that the W
ound must have opened a verge to its home. The Werewolf asks what that means, an
d the Mage, ducking a Blast Numen, puts it into laywolf's terms... It's some kin
d of anti-spirit.
A lot of mage's inflated lexicon stands for "we honestly have no idea about this
". Do not mistake papering over the cracks with names for having a solid wall. T
he problem is that fans attempting diagrams of the World of Darkness use those n
ames as though they were countries rather than working theories or signposts to
where all working theories break down.
DaveB:
No, I didn't. The Inferno was one of the Depths all the way back when it was bei
ng written.
And we don't imply it. We outright state it.
Mages saying the Inferno is a Lower Depth is a classification (it means somewher
e off the edges of the universe, far from the Supernal) not a map. Werewolves ex
perience the Inferno as something wormed into the Shadow, but then werewolves al
so experience the Dreaming Earth of the Anima Mundi in their normal sleep, and C
hangelings have a mad tangle of mazes instead of the Astral Realms.
But keep trying!
Blackhat_Matt:
Really? That kind of thing annoys the hell out of me. One of the things that bug
s me about Mage is that, for whatever reason, it's always the game that people l
ook to in order to put the rest of the WoD in some kind of context. And I always
write/develop from the perspective that the Supernal Realms and so on are one p
art of the larger reality of the World of Darkness, but things like the Hedge an
d the Principle and the Lower Depths and the Underworld and the Shadow are all j
ust as much a part of the WoD, and aren't beholden to the way mages look at thin
gs.
Demon is not going to reveal the larger truth to the WoD, because the "larger tr
uth" to the WoD isn't a fact you can learn. The truth is ongoing. (Actually, tha
t concept meshes nicely with one of the themes of Demon: The Habbakuk, come to t
hink of it.)
Blackhat_Matt:
Right, and I get that. And maybe my concern is more visible to my from the write
r/developer side of the curtain.
I don't mind if the "truth", for mages, is that the world consists of or incorpo
rates Platonic truths that then resonate with the Supernal Realms. That's no mor
e invasive that, say, "everything has a spirit" (Werewolf) or "don't feed black
cats after midnight on snowy nights" (Changeling). Where I get hung up is the id
ea that, when designing a new game or new material for a different game, we have
to consider how it fits into the Mage cosmology. Or, conversely, taking somethi
ng established in one game and saying, in a Mage book, "here's what this really
means." Imperial Mysteries did that, to a larger extent than I liked, but it was
also a sourcebook and I don't mind saying, in sourcebooks, "if this doesn't wor
k for your game then jettison it." But for a core book like Demon, I want the ga
me to establish it's own cosmology without invalidating another.
And actually, it's harder in Demon, because of some of the implications of the G
od-Machine. But I think it's workable.
Misc:
It seems to me that Mage is based around, "Mages see reality differently." And n
WoD itself is based around, "Perspective is important, and reality as a whole is
unknowable."
In-fiction, I don't think Mages really should be treated as having any special s
uperiority in studying cosmologies than anyone else. They're generalists who hav
e a magical (and often shallow) understanding of different realms, but I doubt t
hey know as much about New Orleans as vampires, Arcadia as the Fae, or the Under
world as the folks who dwell there. Mages are looking at power and magical symbo
lism, which can cause them to categorize things in ways that are practical to th
em but not for someone looking from a different perspective. And they didn't eve
n know about the God-Machine, it seems, so who are they to tell everyone else wh
at to think? (That last part is a joke.)
Misc:
Demons lie. From the sound of it, they can lie convincingly enough to fool even
themselves. In a game of "gnostic espionage," I'm betting that that the idea of
lying about your identity so much that you forget where you end and the lies beg
in, applies to each demon, the demon species as a whole, God, and the whole worl
d at large.