Table of

e
Contents

fil
Of Scandals
& Fisticuffs
e 7

Background Traits
24
Social Combat Systems
24
24
pl
Merits and Flaws
Inspirational Media 25
Victorian Combat Books 25
Techniques 9 Films 25
Shows 25
Shadows of Queensberry 10
Bartitsu/Canne D’arme 10 Occult Celebrities
m

27
Boxing 12 Charles Babbage 28
The Boxer Rebellion 13 “What Tradition is Crowley?” 29
Gunslinging 14 Black Elk/ Heháka Sápa 30
Kung Fu 15 Madame Helena Blavatsky 31
Naginatajutsu 16
Crazy Horse 32
Sa

Okichitaw 17
Aleister Crowley 33
Savate du Rue 18
Isadora Duncan 34
Thomas Edison 35
Social Combat Arts 19
Kate and Maggie Fox 36
Class and Status 20
Stanislas De Guaita 37
Enslaved People 21
Adelaide Herrmann 38
The Cut 22
Hong Xiuquan 39
Magickal Practices 23
Carl Jung 40
Shadows of Propriety 23

Table of Contents 3
 Marie Laveau 41
Ada Lovelace 42
S.L. MacGregor Mathers 43
Georges Méliès 44
Ramakrishna 45
Paschel Beverly Randolph 46
Pamela “Pixie” Colman Smith 47

e
Austin Osman Spare 48
Nikola Tesla 49

Fortune’s Fools 53

fil
The Fact of Normal People 53
The Bohemian Malcontent 53
The Broken Soul 56
The Depraved Rake-Hell 57
Demonic Investments/Selling Souls 58
The Eccentric Inventor 59
The Maltreated Servitor 63
The Sex-Worker 64

e
Monstrous Night-Folk 65
Faerie: The Fantastical Feline
Ghost: The Vengeful Spectre
65
66
pl
Wehr-Beast: The Majestic Werebear 67
Vampyre: The Barbarous Cainite 68
m
Sa

4 Scandals & Fisticuffs

 Learn from everything, see everything,
and above all feel every-thing!

e
fil
e
pl
m
Sa

Find eyes within, look for the door into

the unknown country.
Pamela “Pixie” Colman Smith
Table of Contents 5
Sa
m
pl
e
fil
e
 Of Scandals

e
Fisticuffs

fil
&

—
e
“Thank you, sir, but I am perfectly content being the bride of death.”
Elizabeth Bennett, from Seth Graeme-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and
Zombies
pl
Eldritch Remnants in
m

Comely Guise
Some infernal thing coiled in the corner
of the room.
I studied the sullen half-light of
Sa

Alfredo’s studio, my thumb caressing the

catch that unlocked the blade within my
walking stick. The artist himself slumped,
senseless, across the ink-stained expanse of a
desk that had seen better days than this. The
papers strewn across that desk or scattered
to the floor held obscene designs. No Key
of Solomon would continence such blasphemous sigils. The
pages themselves would curl from the formulas I could read
from my vantage in the doorway. Even at this distance, I could
smell the spiced undercurrent of the absinthe film in the bottle
and glass by Alfredo’s outflung arm.

Of Scandals & Fisticuffs 7

 As for the thing in the corner, the Thames held less miasma
than that shadow clinging to the wall, making as if to hide from
me.
As well it should.
Beneath the sounds of rattling coach-wheels and drunken
revelry outside, I noted the welcome click of the mechanism within
my walking stick. Alfredo moaned, lost in hellish reverie. In that
noisome corner, a damp rustling ended in light spatters, as if the
Thing whisper in a language that stirred uncomfortable memories
in chambers of my mind best left shut.
“I do see you,” I told Alfredo’s model, her true form stripped of
its usual illusions. “Your patron can’t help you now, and I’m afraid
I must answer your insults on his behalf.”
The shadow in the corner hissed, unfurling like some
entomologist’s bad dream.
“I’d expected no less,” I told the Thing as I drew the rune-

e
crouched entity were a branch laden with soggy leaves, its burden etched silver blade from my cane. “Since we’ve dispensed with
dripping and dropping to the naked floorboards. pleasantries, shall we begin?”
As faintly as the gas within the lamp’s valves, I heard the

We Meet Again
Some years ago, while writing my sections of the book that
became Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition:
Victorian Age (for brevity’s sake, Victorian Mage), I did what
I usually do: Write everything that comes to mind, then cut it
down to suit word-count limitations. During that book’s long
gestation to its final form, those words sat in a file, patiently
awaiting their eventual appearance.
fil
The enclosed contents feature:
● A Bitter Business comprised of Social
Combat Arts and Specialized Fighting Arts.
● Of This Era’s Occult Celebrities,
providing short biographies of real-world figures

e
Here they are: A collection of entries dealing with social
conflict, occult luminaries, and martial arts that play significant
roles in the Gaslit Mystery era, plus an array of adversaries
whose presence exceeded the boundaries of Chapter Eight’s
who shaped the face of modern magic; and…

● Fortune’s Fools, some potential

antagonists, allies, or both in the contentious
pl
allotted space.
To be clear, the following entries are not a standalone shadows of the Gaslit Mystery age.
book in their own right; rather, they are adornments to M20’s Enjoy the banquet, my friends.
Victorian Age sourcebook, clippings that might prove useful
for chronicles of that era. It has been long in coming but has finally arrived.
m
Sa

8 Scandals & Fisticuffs

 A Bitter Business:
Victorian

e
Combat

fil
Techniques
e
“My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.”
— Robert Louise Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
pl
Have at You, Sir!
Despite the Victorian ideal of Pax Bri- Martial Arts Game Systems
tannia, the Victorian era features constant As mentioned throughout its core sourcebook, Victorian
violence. After the end of the Napoleonic Mage employs the game-systems given in the Mage 20 rulebook
m

Wars, large clashes of European armies give
way, for the most part, to colonial “expeditions”
and occasional territorial wars overseas. For the
people involved in those conflicts, however,
war is still war. Considering that many cultures
face conquest or extermination during this
period, especially in North America’s “Wild
Sa
and its related supplements. Even so, certain particulars of
Victorian conflict deserve to be addressed in order to better
represent that era and setting. Those particulars — which
may be considered setting-dependent optional rules — can be
found below.
Rules for advanced martial arts can be found in M20
(pp. 280-281, 423-427, and 449), with the esoteric possibilities

West,” the fighting seems especially intense, often pitting mod-

ern weapons and military technologies against traditional arms
and strategies that sometimes triumph but very often do not.
Even in cosmopolitan Europe, peace is a rare thing. Crime
is everywhere, and a gentleman (much less a lady!) strolling
at night through the fog-choked, gaslit streets invites a beating
at the very least. Modern police forces are a work-in-progress
during this era, with the cops being little more than thieves with
official sanction and slightly better weapons. An adventurous
soul in this tumultuous age, therefore, must acquit himself (or
herself, or themselves) well in the event of fisticuffs or often
a great deal worse. The following systems bring such matters
into the realm of Victorian Mage.
detailed in M20 (pp. 580-581) and How Do You DO That?
(pp. 57-69). Combat stunts and advanced weapon techniques
and maneuvers are featured in The Book of Secrets (pp.
102-111). Because hundreds, if not thousands, of martial arts
exist, we encourage players to define their characters’ martial
disciplines in story terms, selecting combat maneuvers that
suit the martial art’s style. Those maneuvers and esoterica, of
course, should fit the art and culture in question; a boxer from
the Bronx can’t fly through the air on waves of chi unless he
masters Shaolin disciplines, too!
Victorian Combat 9