That a person exerts his will over another is instinct, but how he structures the act is technology, and his justifications? Magic. Therein lie the roots of the Hegemony: a network of Awakened who uphold modernist values – including those the great Masses, its protectorate, rarely speak of but firmly believe. The Hegemony is the Consensus’ guardian and shepherd, devoted to a Great Work that would whip and bribe Sleepers to the cusp of Ascension as clients, not creators. They guard the Pure Forms of ultimate truth from assault by anarchists, unearthly beings and other threats to the Great Chain of Being.

Part of the Hegemony is truly ancient. This Kyriarchy claims descent from ancient priest-kings and culture heroes: the first lords of fire, agriculture and medicine. They learned that true power lay not in discovering wonders, but capturing them within a structure of control. The enlightened deserved undiluted access to the source of power – everyone else lived to serve. Over centuries, lord and sacral officiant drifted into two distinct roles and the Kyriarchs diversified into numerous factions. By the Middle Ages their secret orders (In Europe, the Cabal of Pure Thought and the Sangreal) dominated the world in secret, acting through kings and bishops, soldiers and scholars. Serfs toiled, nations went to war and it was good.

As long as inventions and spiritual studies reinforced the Great Chain of Being, the Kyriarchy had no quarrel with them. If they challenged the order of things they deserved death or exile. Most renegade Awakened chose the latter, and why not? The world was vast, mostly unexplored and filled with spaces where sorcerers could study in academic covenants. Where magi and philosopher scientists could not physically relocate they hid among the people, fearful of exercising too much influence lest Kyriarcy warriors respond.

As the late Middle Ages bloomed into the Renaissance Europe brimmed with wild ideas and rebellions, challenges to sacral authority and rule by oath. The opportunity wasn’t lost on the exile wonder-worker, who plotted to expand long-constrained dominions. Behind a crusade against heresy, the Cabal of Pure Thought raised armies at Languedoc against Mistridge and Carcassone – an error, for the resident Hermetics and Artificers gave no thought to an alliance until a common enemy battered at both their doors.

The seed bloomed, attracting other covenants until a truly dangerous idea took hold: that a world without aristocrats and serfs could exist. At the Alliance of the Ivory Tower, dreams coalesced into worldwide ambitions.

This wasn’t the first time the Kyriarchy had faced this kind of challenge, so it used a practiced response: It bought half of the rebellion. In truth, it had long since seduced some of the newer mysteries – those of the merchants and explorers – to its side. It was easy enough to bring the majority of Artificers across with the promise of wealth, influence and the freedom to pursue their most ambitious projects. The life-scholar Cosians were already strongly associated with the Church, and were offered indulgences against all sins in perpetuity, and freedom against the earthly punishments they would normally demand.

Never numerous, the Solificati alchemists were offered nothing more than the opportunity to survive behind the promise that win or lose, the Kyriarchs would take pains to extinguish them utterly.  Philosopher scientists from all factions switched sides, but the Solificati pretended to stay with the alliance until they opened the Ivory Tower to invaders, on the day of the Great Betrayal.

The Kyriarchy made concessions. It incorporated the technologists as equals and aligned certain occult ideas to match the newcomers’ obsessions. It didn’t matter. From the dawn of their order the Kyriarchs knew that bringing fire to the people was nothing without the power to deny it, to ration the merest sparks as rewards for obedience.

The Hegemony changed greatly in the intervening centuries, but it still reflects the unity of two former enemies that uneasily manage the world. The modern Kyriarchy and Technocracy are more ideologies than factions now, and adherents of both systems inhabit every Convention.

Conventions

The 21st Century Hegemony consists of:

The Cartel: They’re masters of economics down to its purest form, where value is relative, finite, manipulable and beholden to desire, not moral principle. The Pragmatists employ formulae that reduce everything to a unified abstraction and manipulates it to serve their wills. Cartel prodigies use Platonic-mathematic rites, economic power blocs and the social structures of sanguine utility made manifest.

The Curia: Descended from the Cabal of Pure Thought, the Curia applies moral absolutes in the name of a remote God, creating taxonomies of sin drive obedient behavior. The Exarchs rarely believe every value they insinuate into the populace – one law applies to the common Sleeper but another rules the Elect. Their theurgy, though subtle, still disturbs atheist allies.

The Illuminati: The  Administrators overthrew the aristocratic Sangreal, replacing divine right with applied science and political theory. Still, many of their techniques are simply rituals and biases inherited from a world that believes in reason but doesn’t practice it, from cult-like managerial techniques to applied “evolutionary psychology.” Their Men in Black are some of the most feared operatives in the Hegemony.

The Ingenium: The Engineers concentrate apply physical science the problems of power. The Hegemony needs AI to monitor its possessions, machines to measure, move and work, and weapons to kill their enemies. Some “engineers” devote themselves to pure research, but the Convention’s primary focus is application in the service of the Hegemony’s agenda. The Ingenium possess some of the purest Technocrats: mean and women who believe that human destiny is best entrusted to scientific principles – and the fact that they create and interpret them is merely the advantage of superior knowledge.

The Progenitors: Despite reductionist efforts, living things continue to hinder the dream of a unified Enlightened Science, to the Progenitors maintain their place. They apply their particular expertise to drugs, genetic engineering and surgery to everything from human enhancement to agriculture, defining subjects by the most obvious potential in their genotypes. Deviation is disease. The Physicians will cure it.