Frame — RPGaDay #15

Questions over the extent and structure of the frame of heaven begin to bubble to the surface during this period of history, though any acceptance of a heliocentric universe would wait another century. Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and other astronomers began to posit and chart out theories and principles that would shift Earth from the centre of the universe to that of just another moving body in the Great Void.

John Dee, as something of a polymath, rolls many of these concepts into his own work and understanding, and yet his revolutionary thinking would go further and yet remain ever tied to a model with Earth at the heart. He and Kelley mapped out the lines and angles of Heaven, with their Keepers and Watchtowers, while the Arch Magus Dee also considered the lines and angles implicit in mathematics and wider scientific discoveries. In that overlap between the two, there was both knowledge and madness.

The Agents don’t quite go so far as to get mixed up in such high minded pursuits, but their individual exposure to both science and magick allows them to understand more than the folklore and superstitions of old. Every character has seen strange sights, read esoteric texts, and been exposed to curious rituals. Each Agent’s understanding stretches and distorts the frame of Heaven—as does it their world view—adopting and understanding not only the spheres outside our own but those realms and fractions of otherness that overlap and intertwine with this, our dull terrestrial home.

The chiefest God, first mover of that sphere,
Enchan’d with thousands ever-shining lamps
wi11 sooner burn the glorious frame of heaven
Than it should so conspire my overthrow.

Every day during August, I’ll be writing something new on The Dee Sanction and aim to connect the word prompt of the day with the development of the game. Check out the concept, the list and the graphics over at AUTOCRATIK.