Editing Mage: The Ascension (section)

== Herding Cats: Organizations ==
The Traditions are a loose association of even looser organizations, <s>led</s> represented by the Council of Nine who are doing what they've always done: pursuing independent agendas. Their meetings take place every nine years and only three Masters even bothered to show up in 1988, it's unknown if any were there for 59th and last planned council of 1997.

The alternative is the Technocratic Union, who are currently winning due to being much better-organized than the Traditions and generally having something resembling a unified agenda. See, scientists, doctors, bankers, and bureaucrats tend to be better at the whole rational planning thing than fat Wicca chicks, drug addicts, scattered patches of Indigenous peoples, steampunk losers, Bruce Lee wannabees, and Jesus Christ an actual tradition of wizard serial killers seriously somebody stop them. 

The Technocracy grew out of the late Medieval and Renaissance-era Order of Reason, who decided that a world ruled by elite cliques of insane reality warpers, vampires, werewolves, and demons was pretty shitty if you weren't part of this 1%, so they decided to Occupy Consensus Reality. They are responsible for adapting Consensus Reality to a rational, logical, and consistent materialistic form, and uplifting humankind out of the Dark Ages with ideas and technology, but they've since decided on a much more conservative course of trying to control the world before guiding it into utopia. 

This paradigm has pissed off enough people that two member organizations eventually left the Technocracy, and those remaining are starting to split between the ones who want to make a positive difference in the world, and the tubby old farts who just want to keep their power and make everything the same forever. Unfortunately, the Old World of Darkness wasn't always that great about inter-gameline continuity, and whether or not they're heavily corrupted by the [[Weaver]] from [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]] is difficult. At the very least, though they're still aligned ''against'' Pentex and its ''Captain Planet''-villain shtick.

The Technocracy are one of the most highly praised aspects of the whole game setting; while most villain factions in the old World of Darkness tended towards pure evil, monstrous indifference, or violent insanity (the Sabbat, the Wyrm-tainted, the Nephandi, etc.) the Technocracy are relatable. Most fans either see them as misguided, corrupters  of a good purpose, or even morally superior (if still a dark gray) compared to the Traditions (to the extent that they were promoted to valid protagonists in later editions).

===The Nine Traditions===

====[[Akashic Brotherhood]]====
Kung fu Buddhist wizards. [[Awesome|They can flip over cars with flying kicks]] and their super-special martial art, which is called Dao, Chinese for "the Way," (both the suffix of every martial arts ever and a reference to Taoism, the basis of their magic). They specialize in Mind since they're basically Jedi anyway and need to do the mind-trick to make it complete.

====[[Celestial Chorus]]====
The religious, "miracle worker" class, mostly comprised of various Abrahamic religions and their followers. They focus more on the ecstatic, "spirit-filled" religious practices than on old-fashioned tradition, with the Kabbalists joining the Order of Hermes and the hyper-traditionalist Muslims sticking with their ethnic craft, the Batini. Unfortunately, given the largely-paganist bent of White Wolf's design team, this also meant they didn't get a ton of focus or cool new stuff outside of their one write-up. Their sphere is Prime.

====[[Cult of Ecstasy]]====
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, man. But, like, not for their own sakes, man, but so that they can, like, free themselves from the concerns of the material, temporal world, and, like, achieve a higher state of pure... like... I dunno, pass me some more of that ganja goodness, man. ...Yeah, can you tell that the development team was full of hippies yet? It will be a running theme in this article. 

There are ways to do the Ecstasists right (the ones who hunt down child pornographers to make pleasure as a whole more clean were welcomed for being an extension of the concept that ''wasn't'' just more of the same), but a lot of people just played them in very boring, "more of the same" ways. Have mastery of the sphere of Time, either as a play on "living from the moment," or because all the various substances inside of them make them lose track of it all the time, and they needed ''some'' way to get it back.

====[[Dreamspeakers]]====
The Dreamspeakers represent old-tyme tribal magic from indigenous peoples throughout the world. Which part of the world? ''All of it.'' Wait, so like, all the different Africans, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans get lumped together because they're all "primitive?" [[/pol/|That's racist as ''shit''!]] ''Yes. Yes, it is. Welcome to early White Wolf, you poor sap. We've got support groups.'' 

To play devil's advocate for a moment, an alternate view of this is that the various ethnic mages realized that they were too few and scattered to have any real power unless they worked together. No one is going to pay attention to the two remaining shamans of a tradition most people can't even pronounce, but a hundred of them from a variety of sources bound into a coherent group with unfamiliar powers and an ax to grind is a different story. Later versions made this explicitly canonical, with the Dreamspeakers themselves aware and resentful of the fact that the other Eurasian-dominated factions clumped a bunch of minor ethnic crafts together to make a coherent tradition for condescending political purposes. 

Their mastery is the sphere of Spirit, which mostly focuses on summoning and binding magic. Every sphere has its powerful, broken-ass exploits, and for Dreamspeakers, this means making like a [[D&D]] mage and abusing the fuck out of your ability to conjure things with their own powers to do whatever you like whenever you like it.

====[[Euthanatos]]====
Crazy Hindu/Buddhist assassin wizards, who serve the Wheel of rebirth by killing "bad" people so they can reincarnate into better people. Literally the plot of Wanted. They attracted their share of emo roleplayers and [[Vampire: The Masquerade]] immigrants, but there were always some good bits thrown in too. Their sphere, Entropy is all about influencing luck, fate, and decay, which is good because "luck" doesn't necessarily ding the oppressive system of Consensus quite as overtly as some of the others.

====[[Order of Hermes]]====
The old-tyme wizards, with the beards, staffs, and so on. Used to be the top dogs and run the world, but they were such dickheads that they more-or-less forced the modern Technocracy into being to keep them in check. (Or so the Technocracy and modern books claim. The books actually set in the Dark Ages admit that one particular cabal of mages was out of control, but doesn't actually deliver on a whole lot of dickery, and the narration actually defends their behavior; this is likely down to either retcons, unreliable narrators, or WW getting their heads out of their arses. Though the thing about them not giving a shit about non-mage quality of life is at least consistent.) Their upper guard is extremely bitter about this, and while they're more united than most Traditions their hidebound ways prevent them from actually getting anywhere. In fact, they are divided into stiffly rigid and systemized "houses" with harshly defined specialties, now more prone to infighting than combating the rise of other Traditions and the Technocracy. Just as well: they didn't do a great job ruling the world the first time around. 

They use hermetic magic, which involves old Medieval stuff like Decanic Trappings, Sepiroth, and the Seal of Solomon. They master the sphere of Forces. Tend to be pretty fun, but Hermetics also tend to explode into giblets due to Paradox pretty easily if they stick to tradition, and the politics of the Order demands that they do. They also have an embarrassing tendency to fuck up everything in the back story and create terrible splinter groups. The most infamous and important of these are House Tremere, who became Clan [[Tremere]] over in "[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]."

====[[Sons of Ether]]====
By general consensus of the player-base, the coolest tradition. They are mad scientist-wizards, each following a vision of '''Science!''' that hasn't been current for at least half a decade. But it still works, because they will it so. Formerly aligned with the Technocracy, but they defected in a huff once their brother Technocrats approved letting the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment Michelson-Morley experiment] go forward. (The joke is that it disproved the Luminiferous Ether. Don't worry, they got their revenge by slipping the wacky fun-house world of quantum mechanics into the Consensus on their way out.) 

Nowadays they've gone from Technocratic organization to being even less united that the other Traditions, constantly fighting over which outdated bit of mad science is right. This is usually accomplished through intellectual sniping in underground scholarly journals, and sometimes through actual sniping via lightning guns and disintegration beams. They have the Matter sphere. The possibilities are endless... so long as, in a bit of Technocratic heritage, it remains internally consistent with your gobbledegook non-science technobabble. 

In the 20th Anniversary edition, the Sons got officially renamed to the more P.C. "Society of Ether," though lady Etherites had been lobbying for it in the background of several previous editions.

====[[Verbena]]====
Think a ''D&D'' [[druid]] and you'll be in the ballpark since their progenitors were the original article. Full of Wiccans and tree huggers, but they also cling to the less-savory side of the druid game in blood-sacrifices and a general discomfort towards the modern world. They aren't ''all'' crazy eco-terrorists, but enough are that one hopes they don't end up on top. And because White Wolf is full of hippies, neo-pagans, and New Age-types, [[Derp|we are supposed to find them sympathetic anyway]]. 

They have the sphere of Life, naturally, and can use it to instantly cause a Technocrat's body to instantly reject all of its gene-mods or cyborg bits. [[Fail|Because of ''course,'' the neo-pagan eco-crazies need an "I win" button when taking on Team Establishment]]. [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse|How long have you been in town, mister?]]

====[[Virtual Adepts]]====
Very literal computer wizards, and the ''other'' Tradition that emigrated from the Technocracy. In their case, it was a one-two punch of finding out they'd had Alan Turing chemically castrated and murdered, and learning that the Internet was being released to the Masses. The philosophy on why this was a bad thing had its good points ("They aren't equipped to handle it yet! It'll turn them all into lazy basement-dwelling trolls [[World of Warcraft|obsessed with trivialities]]!" which was pretty fucking prescient for the time) and its bad points ("[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September Waaaaah! Newbs on mah Internets! I'm not special anymore!]"). 

Since they cast spells with programs and the Internet, they're great for nerds who want to play nerds and don't want to stretch. Masters of the Correspondence sphere, which lets them work with space and distance. Their shit works because the Internet is just the upper layers of a great Web of information that connects all things, and also cyberspace is a physical place in the spirit world which you can actually go visit in person, which is how they can hack your wallpaper and make it change color to send messages. And we don't mean your computer background.

{{WoD-Traditions}}

===The Technocratic Conventions===
[[File:Technocracy.png|350px|thumb|right|Other factions swear the statistics are wrong, if only they knew how to do statistics <strike>But House Fortunae</strike> SHUT IT THEY ARE JUST FORTUNE TELLERS IN WHITE COATS!...]]
Back in ye olden days, otherwise known as the ''Mage: the Dark Ages'' spin-off, the Daedalans of the Order of Reason formed out of the Awakened mages who ''weren't'' total asshats. Seeing that their fellow wizards were grinding the common people under heel, and, on behalf of [[Weaver|God]] and the [[greater good]], they began to create a new form of magic that ''anyone'' could use, otherwise known as '''SCIENCE!''' It was a roaring success, and it quickly became so popular that other mages' shit stopped working right via the "consensual reality" mechanics of the setting.

Unfortunately, that was ye olden days. Since then, they've become known as the Technocracy, agents of [[Stasis]], and they've gone from being the ''man'' to being the Man. There were a lot of factors involved, but the biggest one is that they started to shift away from trying to make life better for everyone with clever inventions to trying to control everyone for their own good. Nowadays, the Technocracy is basically a hybrid of a boring government agency and a greedy, money-grubbing business, less actively malicious than sullenly satisfied with the status quo and opposed to change for reasons of sheer inertia. They've even lost two of their old Conventions to the Traditions (the Sons of Ether and the Virtual Adepts) and are finding it harder and harder to get the ordinary people excited enough about their new inventions to actually stop them Paradox-ing.

Their original draft made them out to be, in keeping with the heavy Romanticism of the original ''World of Darkness'', villainous curs out to crush all wonder and joy out of the world to make room for more boring urban developments and soulless industrial complexes, but over time they gathered more and more fans who pointed out that anyone who invented public libraries, democracy, and toilet paper couldn't be ''all'' bad. And with Traditions like the Verbena wanting to knock us so far back the Stone Ages would look like distant golden eras of progress for reasons of purest dogmatism, or the Order of Hermes trying to take over the world and rule over the [[Harry Potter|muggles]] with an iron fist, they clearly weren't the ''worst'' game in town.

Eventually, White Wolf got out of their patchouli and weed-scented cave and, blinking in the sun, agreed, making them playable and quietly retconning their earlier portrayal as Tradition propaganda. It was a smart move that improved the game immensely. Nowadays, they're pretty much an alternative playable set of factions, with their own "reforming a corrupt, stagnant monolith from within" game feel compared to yet another "scrappy rebels fighting against the modern world" plot you can get anywhere else in the World of Darkness. After all, even in their original portrayals, they were the front-line fighters to keep ordinary people safe from supernatural threats, and they still have their share of people who genuinely want to make the world a better place.

A long time ago, they tried to wipe out the Traditions by force in a program of attack called the Pogrom. It was largely successful, but for a number of reasons they dropped it a while ago, and only splinter elements want a return to it. Nowadays, the Technocracy is largely committed to "winning the argument," and only intervening when local mages are getting out of hand. The Traditions and the Technocracy hate each other, but since they ultimately both want humanity to "ascend," no matter how sharply they disagree on what that means, their hearts are both in the right-ish place, and they both regularly declare truces and cooperate to fight Nephandi, Marauders, and regular-old human evils like child pornographers. And that makes them among the best foils/opponents in the tabletop gaming community.

====[[Iteration X]]====
Talking about the It X'ers inevitably means talking about the biggest divide between them. On the one hand, you have the old guard of master craftsmen and inventors, the cool ones. On the other, you have the Autopolitans, crazy transhumanists worshipping the "Xth Iteration" of the Master Computer they've built with their own hands. Naturally, there's a lot of friction there. As a whole, they are the Technocracy's R&D division, focusing on cybernetics and robotics, and they focus on the spheres of Forces and Matter.  

Unfortunately, said Computer is almost certainly some kind of rogue god possessing the Computer to control and puppeteer them rather than an "actual" Artificial General Intelligence. And it keeps sabotaging other projects to create more because they would reveal that Computer is ''not'' an AGI. It enforces a degree of conformity and anti-supernatural thinking on Iteration X that even other Technocrats find tiresome, and has left the Convention struggling to adapt and change in the face of Mundane science taking some weird, quantum physics-y directions. 

Fortunately, the Avatar Storm cut them off from their base of operations on the Umbral machine-planet Autocthonia (a counter-Earth), forcing them to get by without its dark influence and accomplishing many much-needed reforms. Unfortunately, they ''really'' want to try to go get it back, and even more unfortunately, those trapped by the Storm were effectively transformed into Drones (flesh/spirit amalgamations) and enslaved by the Computer which runs Autocthonia; see Threat Null below and note that the Null It X'ers didn't even have to change their faction name.

====[[New World Order]]====
If the Technocracy is the Man, then the NWO (no relation to the professional wrestling stable of the same name) is the Man's Man, man. They are the leaders of the Technocracy, acting as advisers around the world to governments and industries, trying to steer humanity in what they think is the right direction. Their leaders are the Men in White, and their foot soldiers are the Men in Black, the iconic uniforms using the organization's mastery of the Mind sphere to tap into the Masses' brains to make them hard to spot. They ''also'' handle the basic indoctrination every Technocrat goes through, and they're the foremost Technocrats in terms of trying to "recruit" mages. 

Not ''initially'' seen as sinister on the surface by the masses as they use government positions and political causes to legitimize their rule (they were the biggest advocates of dropping the Pogrom, and their leader is a former Ecstacist who swapped sides during the Second World War), since convincing mages to turn peacefully is their preference, but they have all kinds of ''1984'' methods in their closet for "difficult cases", and are responsible for running all the Technocracy's privacy-invading public surveillance jobs.

Ironically even while being the youngest, largest and most influential convention they are prone to [[administratum|self sabotaging]] due to [[servitor|constant brain wipes on lower staff]]  and [[High_Lords_of_Terra|their leaderships extreme  paranoia]]. They are known to delete memories and media related to methods on how to hunt monsters, the existance of monsters,[[heresy| the existance of the traitor conventions]], the past of the NWO before the industrial revolution, and any remnants of the order of reason not related to the technocracy. [[lulz|All while hunting both monsters & traitors and cutting deals with hunters affiliated to the old order]].

====[[Progenitors]]====
The biological sciences division, specializing in everything from medicine to genetic engineering under the umbrella of the Life sphere. Used to have a bunch of horrible eugenics and transhuman types, but after discovering them collaborating with [[Nazis]] and [[Nephandi]] during the Second World War, they purged that division, and are today some of the nicest, most bro-tier Technocrats... mostly. They really, ''really'', homicidally hate homeopathy, healing crystals, ''reiki'', and all that other New Age pseudo-medicine. Like, they think of it as an honest-to-God ''war crime''. This tends to make them the most predisposed towards violence against the Traditions. 

The other Conventions generally regard Traditions as either pathetic throwbacks and relics of a bygone time or a reliable, resourceful enemies who at least aren't as crazy as the Nephandi or Marauders. Not the Progenitors. To a Progenitor, the Traditions are FUCKING KILLING PEOPLE WITH NONSENSE NON-SCIENCE, and force is completely justified to stop them and save ordinary people from their manipulation. They were one of the few Conventions to actually undergo character development between editions: initial versions stressed their role in drugging humanity into sleepy, compliant docility while being moustache-twirling mad scientists behind the scenes, whereas later ones pressed on the idea that they are doctors first and foremost, hoping to heal the wounds of their faction and the rest of the world.

====[[The Syndicate]]====
Probably the Convention that hews closest to its stereotype, the Syndicate are the Technocracy's business and marketing division. Naturally, this means they're a bunch of cut-throat Gordon Gekko-types who love destructive, Darwinian competition, and are so conservative that they think the biggest problem with the Technocracy today is that their fellow Conventions are rocking the boat too much and need to focus less on what could be. (Yes, this is the same organization we called a "corrupt, stagnant monolith" several paragraphs up). 

They have a rivalry with their colleagues in the [[New_World_Order|NWO]]. Over the leadership of the technocratic union and the role of the technocracy as a whole they haven't all been brainwiped or [[Squatted|made to disappear]] due to their control of the unions finances. Their job is making sure the shell companies of the union stay profitable, the development of stagnant economies into viable business ventures and most infamously record keeping. This last part is the thing that their peers in the NWO [[rage| hate the most]] as while the NWO censors [[lolwut|The Syndicate registers what they censored]] leading to even more protection from persecution via [[Just_As_Planned|blackmail]]. 

Their trolling of the NWO aside they are one of the most mundane conventions they are not supersoldiers, a ministry of truth or engineers of scientific marvels they are simply businessmen and mathematicians their control over production, shipping, and finance is their power they can hire hordes of hunters to exterminate their enemies and buy out the loyalty of the entire populace of a city. Their actions can incentivize prosperity and economic growth for countries at the brink of financial ruin and bring billionaires to bankrupcy.

The closest thing to something sympathetic about them is that they honestly believe in being the Masses' partners rather than their rulers and that they just can't or won't see how flawed and cruel their philosophy really is: unlike their dark mirror in the Nephandi, they ''do'' believe in things besides just enriching themselves. They focus on the spheres of Entropy and Prime for their hyper-economics, but they have a lot of cross-training in other areas to look into marketing the other Conventions' stuff, so yeah, your student loan, mortgage, credit card, (lack of) savings and retirement pension belongs and depends on a bunch of not-mages with a terrible social darwinist complex, double amusing because anyone who knows a bit about finances and money knows how susceptible to consensual reality the whole thing is IRL.

====[[Void Engineers]]====

[[File:Donut-steel.png|300px|thumb|right|DONUT STEEL!]]

As the Sons of Ether are to the Traditions, the Void Engineers are to the Technocracy. Why, you ask? Three words: Wizard [[Space Marines]]. Fuck yes! 

Regarded by mages as "the good ones" and their fellow Technocrats as the loose cannons, the Void Engineers are masters of exploration. In ye olden days, they searched the bottom of the sea and the furthest reaches of the land, and in modern times they chart the Deep Umbra and run a thriving community of space stations throughout the solar system. They are masters of the spheres of Correspondence and Dimensional Science, a heavily-modified version of the Traditions' Spirit sphere. 

The Engineers are the most free-spirited of the Technocrats, and the most likely to collaborate with the Traditions (they are especially friendly enemies with the Euthanatos), but they're still loyal technocrats. In fact, while they retain informal ties to the Etherites, ''they'' were the ones who pushed to remove the Luminiferous Ether from the Consensus to keep their brother Convention in line. They also tend to be viewed by the other conventions as the "less corrupt" faction only because they don't have to get their hands dirty running the "real world" like their brethren. On the other, other hand, they are the single most likely mage-group to get a multi-faction party together to get shit done and pull awesomely pragmatic feats like frying a sub-continent darkening vampire [[Antediluvian]] by using orbital mirrors to reflect and concentrate light from the other side of the world. 

They had a whole subplot in ''Revised'' where they recruited Traditions to help fight [[#Threat_Null|Threat Null]], but it's a long story and M20's probably going to make it obsolete when it finally comes out, so long story short: a contingent of Void Engineers wandered off into the Deep Umbra (the extra-extra-dimensional realms of pure possibility- aw fuck it just good old OUTSIDE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM) and found something that freaked them right the fuck out and sent them running back home to [[Space Marines|militarize]] - a bunch of high-level Technocrats who'd fucked off to the edge of reality and became the Borg.  Worse, since Threat Null can hijack any Technocrat's conditioning to turn them into a temporary unwitting sleeper agent, they need to recruit Tradition mages to fight them, since going to the Technocracy might not only overplay their hand, but reveal that they de-program their people of any conditioning they might've undergone.

{{WoD-Conventions}}

===Independant Crafts===
Too small or specialized to join the Traditions and either disliking or outright opposing the Technocrats, the Independent Crafts decided to band together to form a power block of their own.

====Ahl-i-Batin====
The former Seat of Correspondence before the Virtual Adepts jumped ship. They were a group of Arabic mystics who had mastered spacetime; then they saw how things were going and performed a mass NOPE! ritual off to the depths of space. Whether they were legitimate Sufi mystics or Arabian Nights parodies depended on the supplement's author. 

They're often referred to as "the Subtle Ones" due to their refusal to ever use vulgar magic, in keeping with their role as shadowy (if largely well-intentioned) viziers. They're also completely prohibited from learning any techniques that require the Entropy Sphere, though the reason for this seems to change every time they explain it.

====Bata'a====
A group consisting of former slaves in the Americas. [[Meme|They got voodoo, they got hoodoo, they got things they ain't even tried! And they got friends on the other side.]] Are the servants of Les Mysteres, which translates into the Spirit Sphere. The Pantheon (for lack of a better term) of Loa they serve is one of the more comprehensively explored spirit hierarchies in the game and, as a result, their spiritual patrons come positively saturated with interesting plot hooks. The other interesting thing is that, since their practice is descended from Caribbean and Southern US folk magic, they have a pretty sizable number of Sorcerers, to the point that many of the more established Crafts and Traditions consider them little more than a Sorcerer organization.

====Children of Knowledge====
Alchemists turned drug users, using all sorts of crazy shit to power up their senses and use their magic. Party even harder than the Cult of Ecstasy. See magic as a method of improving themselves physically, mentally, and spiritually. Changed their name from some unspellable garbage (okay, "Solificati") to distance themselves from an old shame involving a big-time traitor to the Traditions back when they were the Seat of Matter. Tight with the Order of Hermes, so tight in fact that some of them recently went to join the Order as a new House.

====Go Kamisori Gama====
Ninjas who use a combination of Naruto-style ninja magic and cybernetic enhancements to become some of the most powerful assassins and mercenaries in the supernatural world. They were apparently inspired by pop culture ninjas, rather than the other way around, perhaps explaining their more flamboyant techniques.

====Hem Ka Sobk====
Sin-eating assassin cultists who worship the Egyptian god Sobek. They have a love-hate relationship with the [[Euthanatos]], keeping them from all the tasty death magic created by the mortality-obsessed ancient Egyptians. Something in the [[Mummy: The Resurrection]] storyline wiped them out by the time of M20, but I didn't read that fucking book and neither did you or anyone else, so the specifics will probably remain a mystery forever.

====Hollow Ones====
The Councilor faction has been trying to join the Traditions since the 1900s, despite not having a Tradition to join with. Stereotypical goth/emo "no future" club kids/ravers. No one takes them seriously save for the Cult of Ecstasy (gotta sell that dope to someone, right?)

====Knights Templar====
Yes, the real deal. Once part of the Order of Reason they were betrayed and went into hiding. Are a very secretive group and communicate mostly through the Internet in messages that can only be deciphered by someone with extensive knowledge of scripture and the Templars themselves. Gather in lodges, some of whom are charity-minded nuns while others are monks/soldiers of Christ. 

Very few mages, but they're one of the only societies in the series where mages (or really supernaturals of any sort) work side by side with ordinary humans as equals. One of the most unambiguously good groups in the setting, partially due to focusing on protecting normal people from monsters rather than hunting heretics these days, and partially because most of them (not many, ''most'') have the normally impossibly rare ability of True Faith, which is essentially God's personal seal of approval. 

A few went off to join the Celestial Choir and take the fight back to the [[New_World_Order|corrupted elements of the Order of Reason/Technocratic Union]], but most remained behind, not particularly caring about the Ascension War focusing on fighting monsters and continuing their responsibility to guide human progress as defined by the pre technocracy order of reason. After all, in their minds, God is the final auditor of Reality. Why fight over it when you could be saving lives and souls?

====Kopa Loei====
Polynesian mages using all sorts of stuff related to their culture to protect their lands from The Man. They're so isolationist that they refuse to acknowledge the Sphere system at all (though they still use it for gameplay purposes), instead choosing to follow their own model of the universe.

====Lions of Zion====
Orthodox Jewish Kabbalists. Normally only accept Orthodox Jewish men of age 40 or older. They have spent centuries defending the Jewish people and still do. Lost many members during the Holocaust, as they are one of the few groups in Mage that will actually [[Awesome|sacrifice their lives]] for the [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|normal people]].

====Ngoma====
Practitioners of traditional high ritual magic in Classical Africa. Their predecessors got their shit several kinds of wrecked and now seek to recover lost knowledge. Are frequently amongst the richer and more successful people in Africa. They have some serious bad blood with the Madzimbabwe faction of the Euthanatos. (But then, doesn't everybody?)

====Sisters of Hippolyta====
Descended from the Amazons, and use a mix of martial art, Wicca and Greek ritual to practice their (frequently Life and Mind-oriented) magic. At best, they are some of the most caring and loving healers in the world. At worst, they are caricatures of Social Justice Warriors. Enterprising Storytellers that want crossover with other gamelines might have them as establishing ties with some of the [[Black Furies]]' camps.

====Sons of Tengri====
An only recently resurgent faction of Mongolian spiritualists. Like most other less-organized East Asian Crafts, their entire history surrounds them getting continually and viciously [[rape|fucked by the Akashics, the Wu Lung and the Elemental Dragons]].

====Taftâni====
Persian Zoroastrian-influenced mages who think the Consensus can go fuck itself, so they enslave djinni, make flying carpets, make brass palaces out of deserts, and other overwhelmingly vulgar magic straight out of the Arabian Nights. They don't give a shit about Paradox either, hell, they consider it is a badge of honor. They also have fought the Technocracy and won, and they make their lands acceptive of Paradox. Basically, they're wizards who not only kick reality in the balls but [[Fist of the North Star|kick her in the balls a thousand times in a second and screaming really loudly]] "FUCK YOU, I'M A WIZARD" that reality got afraid of them and got the fuck out of their lands.

====Tai Hoi Li====
A sect of cave-dwelling Vietnamese survivalists. They were formed from people forced underground during the Vietnam War. They are spooky and kinda' look like human cave-salamanders, but they're actually quite peaceful as long as you don't threaten their underground communities. Nobody knows what it is they do down underground or what their Paradigm is supposed to be, and probably never will because their only writeup is ''short as hell''.

====Wu Keng====
Chinese witches, shamans and other hedge magicians who were beaten into the ground by millennia of domination by the Wu Lung, the Akashic Brotherhood, and the Dalou'Laoshi (aka the Elemental Dragons, a pan-Asian organization of technomancers that was eventually absorbed into the Technocracy). They've started to rise up, but only through some grisly deals with demonic forces best left undisturbed. 

As cool as this all sounds, their fluff was a lethal combination of [[/d/|psychosexual madness]] and touchy sociopolitical issues, handled with all the delicate care of a thermonuclear warhead in a public library (as you might expect of White Wolf). Needless to say, they were quietly retconned into the background.

====Wu Lung====
Arrogant Chinese mystics, they got blinded by their hubris and had their asses kicked during the the Opium Wars and the Cultural Revolution pretty much broke them. Now they seek to rebuild their power in the great tradition of "China takes over the world". Mages are urged to become powerful bankers and money brokers. The majority of their number are pure-blooded Chinese men, but they have begun to accept women and those of non-pure blood out of necessity. They've traditionally got a mutual hate-boner with the Akashic Brotherhood, and a few recently ran off to join the Hermetics... for some reason.

===Orphans===
Wholly independent mages; the Caitiffs of the Mage setting. These guys are completely self-taught, having stumbled into magic by themselves without ever running into a Craft or Tradition. They're a totally blank slate for those who don't really like how the other Crafts or Traditions are themed, resulting in them being Jacks of all trades with eclectic spheres. They usually don't last long in-universe before being killed, corrupted, or recruited by force.

===Antagonists===
The ''[[Metaphysic Trinity]]'' of ''Dynamicism'', ''Stasis'', and ''Entropy'' was the blueprint for antagonists in the game, with each corner of the triangle representing dangerous extremism.  For ''[[Dynamicism]]'' the extremists are the [[#Marauders|Marauders]], for ''[[Stasis]]'' the extremists are known as [[#Threat_Null|Threat Null]], and for ''[[Entropy]]'' the extremists are the [[Nephandi]].  (As protagonists the [[#The_Nine_Traditions|Traditions]] were intended to occupy the middle-ground of balance.)  The thirds of the Metaphysic Trinity are not inherently extremist though, as Tradition mages can have an Avatar type corresponding to one particular third of the Trinity while still favoring balance over extremism.  

====Marauders====
Insane agents of ''[[Dynamicism]]'' who can somehow avoid Paradox by passing it off to other people. When John the Barbarian gallops through New York on the back of his pet ''T. rex'' Gundar, blasting cars aside with his magic crystal sword and bellowing war-cries as he rides off to fight an imaginary menace (which shall, of course, cease to be "imaginary" when he finds it), it's not ''his'' problem, it's ''society's'' problem. Very powerful due to their Paradox immunity, and while they're tragic figures, they're also dangerous enough that the mages and Technocrats will team up to keep them under control. On the other hand, they drop whatever delusion they were in and attack the Nephandi on sight, ignoring everyone else.  As Marauders are the extremists of ''Dynamicism'', their moderate counterparts are the Lifeweaver faction within the [[Verbena]].

====[[Threat Null]]====
Technocrats trapped in the Umbra during the Avatar Storm succumbed to the extreme ''[[Stasis]]'' of the Umbral machine-planet Autocthonia and were effectively transformed into Drones (flesh/spirit amalgamations) in service to the sentient Computer within Autocthonia.  Threat Null is all of the negative stereotypes of conformity-enforcing soul-crushing xenocidal Technocrats.  As Threat Null are the extremists of ''Stasis'', their moderate counterparts dwell among the Earth-dwelling Technocratic mages (especially the [[Sons of Ether|Society of Ether]], and to a slightly lesser extent the [[Virtual Adepts]]).

Threat Null consists of four major factions: 
* '''Autopolitans:''' corrupt, hive-minded Iteration Xers who've become walking masses of flesh, servos, and nanomachines out to turn all humanity into obedient drones like themselves through extreme cybernetics to serve the Computer. Personality-wise, they're [[Lawful Neutral]] taken to its utmost extreme with a dash of [[Adeptus Mechanicus|Admech]] -- everyone sticks to a precise schedule, security procedures ''will'' be obeyed without question, and failure will not be tolerated. Known to be aligned with Weaver spirits, which they use to defend Autochthonia.
* '''Agents:''' The New World Order, but with all their good intentions stripped away in favour of becoming perfect infiltrators who seep into, corrupt, and destroy any organization they make contact with. These guys can hijack any Technocrat's mental programming to body-jack them like their inspiration from ''The Matrix'', meaning that the Technocracy has to resort to seriously out-of-the-box tactics to fight them, like hiring Tradition Mages. They supposedly answer to a group known as the "Agency", which is presumably Threat Null's version of Control.
* '''Transhumanity:''' Perverse Progenitors and too-good-looking creeps who'll offer to make you physically "perfect" like them. Unfortunately for you, they do so by stripping away your individuality (once again: hive-mind) and turning you into another transhuman through a virus.
* '''Residents:''' Syndicate rogues who make themselves indispensable to various spiritual courts and then drive them to destroy one another through "bush wars"  while siphoning off their magical resources for their own gain. Basically the original Syndies with their cutthroat Gordon Gekko tendencies turned to eleven and applied to the Umbra rather than the material world.
* '''???:''' The Null Void Engineers are conspicuous in their absence; this might be because the stranded Void Engineers were better able to adapt to the situation through their prior experience with the Deep Umbra and were then destroyed by the others or because ''their'' twisted overexaggeration just wandered out to explore the deepest, darkest reaches of the universe after losing all interest in Earth. 

Fortunately, Threat Null are no exception to the "everybody hates the Nephandi" thing; part of the reason they haven't invaded in force to try to breach the Gauntlet is because they're currently waging an open war against the Deep Nephandi. On the one hand, these assholes are fighting one another rather than the nominal good guys; on the other, this is very much an ''Alien vs. Predator'' situation, where being hunted for sport isn't necessarily ''a lot'' better than being used as an incubator for little fanged penises, just marginally better.

====[[Nephandi]]====
The setting's darkest, most depraved characters, amazingly even moreso than the Tzimisce or even most Baali (Most Baali are idiots or tragic villains who NEED to commit atrocities so Malfeans can sleep): Evil agents of ''[[Entropy]]'' who worship either insane demons or most of the things [[Lovecraft]] came up with, they seek to cause not Ascension but Descent, encouraging humanity to give into the darkest excesses of their worst impulses and thus [[Chaos|transform reality itself into a literal Hell, terraforming the universe as a whole into a place their dark masters can exist so that they may take possession of it.]]

They're one of the only threats that will force cooperation between the Traditions, the Technocracy and EVEN the Marauders, most famously in World War II. (Unsurprisingly, many of the Nephandi were [[Nazi]]s.)  They may actually be ''winning'' the Ascension war, since they're actively attempting to infiltrate and subvert all other factions.

The singular form is ''nephandus''; the OoC source of such is most likely the word ''[[wiktionary:nefandous|nefandous]]'', meaning "unspeakable" (as in "unspeakable evils").  Appropriately enough, in a world of grey vs. gray morality, these assholes are far and away the blacker than black. Becoming a Nephandus basically involves fucking up your soul badly enough to corrupt your Avatar (something which will persist even after your death) by confronting one's own personal idea of the worst possible evil, kneeling before it in mingled worship, reverence, and masturbation, and swearing to serve it forever. 

The kicker? This has to done ''willingly'' - a Mage '''cannot''' be forced into turning Nephandi, since the process almost always insta-kills unwilling Mages. [[FATAL|Let that set the tone for how depraved these assholes are.]]

There are Nephandi that are born with an Avatar from a former life, called Widderslainte. Most of these fucks are just a bunch of sociopathic children (until they grow up and become sociopathic assholes) unless they Awaken, and when they do, the "fun" begins. No reliable process to de-corrupt an inverted Avatar has ever been found; the only way to prevent it from polluting others is to obliterate it completely. Since this heavily conflicted with a major theme of the Nephandi (''choosing'' to be evil, rather than being ''forced'' into it), this was gently changed in later editions to be more of an "abusive parent" dynamic, with the corrupted Avatar trying to bully the Widderslainte to into evil, but them still having the choice to say no and resist. 

As Nephandi are the extremists of ''Entropy'', their moderate counterparts are the [[Euthanatos]].