Editing Mage: The Ascension (section)

===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.