I love Ascension. Love it. It’s a capstone for the whole corpus of roleplaying, a love letter to taking on a strange, alternate persona, and a meditation on the problems gamers run into. Its politics were never particularly focused and often based on wacky interpretations of the source material, but were provocative enough to piss  off people years later.

The Magic(k) Test

That doesn’t mean it was an entirely successful game. There was always an inverse correlation between Ascension play and discussion. It got to the point where I developed a basic test to determine whether someone played the game to any significant extent, since you sure as hell couldn’t tell from post volume. It’s pretty simple, and I’ll share it with you now. Just ask yourself:

Has this person alluded to the fact that Mage: The Ascension‘s magic rules make no goddamn sense?

If you play Ascension 2nd or Revised for any length of time you’ll immediately notice that the magic rules are — and I usually hold this term in low esteem — “broken.” The power of a magical Effects are determined by the number of successes. These average less for higher-Ranked Effects (with a capital “E” — guess I still remember the style guide) because those use a higher difficulty on the die (in old World of Darkness games the number you had to roll on each die to succeed varied, instead of always being 8). It also made coincidental Effects less powerful than vulgar ones, which contradicted the role of vulgar magic. Instead of being the moment where you bust out and damn the consequences, it was just a bad decision.

This isn’t immediately obvious if you don’t play the game regularly. It looks like ascending difficulties should make sense, and the odd combination of type and intensity governed by Sphere ranks might disguise it for a couple of sessions, but the problem sticks out like a sore thumb in ongoing games. It’s also something that you’re kind of stuck with as a legacy issue, so I don’t really blame anyone for it sticking around through most of the line’s existence.

When the discussion doesn’t address the fact that Ascension‘s mechanical bones are rotten, it often means the participants may be into it for the conversation over play. When staunch defenders of 2nd Edition (a compelling game!) don’t seem to know that it introduced almost everything they think Revised “broke” it makes me think lots of them stopped supporting the line once they gave up on playing the thing, and it started to stumble.

(That’s right. Chris Shy once told me that he’d been encouraged to do what he liked because he was told 2nd was “a failing line.”)

It looks like Phil Brucato (who this isn’t written to diss — I very much enjoy his work) carefully preserved funky space shit while he let everything blow up in the background of development as a “nuclear option.” Well, something happened that probably involved talkative fans not buying the funky space shit they would later claim to love, so somebody pushed the button that made explosions n’ things which had floated in some canon-indeterminate novelspace waveform collapse on top of everybody’s Free Pegasus Rides.

From here we get into some kind of conspiracy theory involving making Mage like Vampire. This is kind of an assholish claim because you can’t do it without implicitly accusing a bunch of folks of lying. We said this wasn’t the case repeatedly.

Still, Mage Revised had problems out the gate with editing, content and a chunk of opening fiction that could have been better (and in the intro story that appeared on White Wolf’s old website, actually was better). I heard that massive overwriting was part of the reason why the book took the shape it did, but nothing about developer headbutts or anything.

The Matrix proved that Ascension‘s time had come, but but it didn’t suggest a version of the game that existed or could be easily salvaged from the wreckage of 2nd Edition’s metaplot. Jess Heinig set things up to rebuild the game as gritty urban fantasy with a focus on  the moral choices of freshly created characters. He planned to build a full ladder of setting options to replace the ones destroyed in the previous edition. This not only involved retooling the Umbra but making PC Technocrat characters viable without ruining the Union as an antagonist. (This arc was fulfilled through Bill Bridges’ run, so the idea that Ascension was fundamentally rebooted in mid-stride is wrong too.)

Science Ninja Team Motherfucker

Now people really fuck up the Technocracy because they want to be seen as rational folks defending  Truth from the religious Right, but that conflict is just a stupid dog and pony show pushed by participants who don’t want to deal with shared, urgent problems with their worldviews. Baptists and Brights don’t oppose the omnisciently selfish homo economicus even though it should be morally offensive to the former and empirically absurd to the latter. When it comes to actually wielding force they still align based on crass political interests, and both sides have been historically willing to prostitute their supposedly deep convictions to do it.  That’s why you have prosperity theology and BP’s funny estimates of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The problem with the Technocracy isn’t that it fails to be your League of Feeling Superior to Creationists. It’s that it doesn’t have sucker Creationists willing to send mercenaries to Iraq for Jesus on tap.

The Technocracy represents the Western tradition’s ductility in the face of realpolitik, as well as its habit of saving face by redefining its own historical narrative to portray itself as consistently progressive. This is hard to talk about because people have bought into it completely, especially as America has shifted to the Right over the past decade. For example, over on RPGNet I read the usual silly things about constantly accelerating progress, even though actual history shows back and forth fluctuations in height and life expectancy until the early 20th Century — including declines directly related to urbanization and industrialization. For example, the First Nations who met European colonists on the Atlantic Coast were probably 4-5 inches taller than the diseased gnomes who’d give them trouble later.

Even this ignores the fact that averages don’t take into account the large populations who were exterminated in the course of colonization, and imperialist wars, and the lasting, more subtle damage done to subject cultures’ overall utility. Mage Revised runs on the premise that these events are not merely impersonal historical forces. They grow out of moral choices. Calling the consequences the necessary outgrowth of a metaphysical position is moral cowardice. We suffer from strong inducements to be cowards, but that doesn’t remove the fact that we choose to stigmatize other ways of knowing to justify the bad things done in the name of our own positions.

In the Western tradition these choices are framed within a distinct urge to systematize societies — to make them Utopian (or at least egoistic) projects. Another stupid thing people say about Ascension is how if some Tradition were in charge we’d be eating our own babies. Fact is, the Traditions were almost never in charge. (This also means they weren’t really responsible for various bad things, though they were irresponsible about them.) There’s a reason every Tradition is heterodox or heretical compared to the baseline beliefs of its related cultures. The Celestial Chorus isn’t the embodiment of monotheism. It’s a global monist conspiracy with a decided bias against the doctrinaire positions of its component religions.

The desire to progressively engineer cultures is not universal. The Technocracy is that urge, and it’s not an inherently good urge. You cannot ignore the fact that even though science is a force for good, this is the urge that pays its bills, and it is this urge that especially lends Western civilization to centralized control by elites. (Other civilizations may be be controlled by a central group of oligarchs, but alternatives like Tianming aren’t progressive, and represent popular cultural standards to which they can be held accountable.)

When you combine the urge to engineer a better society with political ductility, you get the problem the Technocracy represents, including its adoption of the most effective  instruments for change — tools based on scientific methods (and no small amount of pretense — lots of Technocracy “science” looks like bullshit for the same reason that lots of management and QA techniques look like bullshit — they use hoodoo with fancy lingo). The Technocracy are supposed to be the guys behind screwed up hegemonic systems that blur the division between science and ideology. It’s supposed to be a bitter pill to swallow because you already read that system’s propaganda and have to contend with its slant in every political matter.

The Goodish Guys

Mage: The Ascension never quite finished the job of taking that Technocracy and sifting out a group of idealistic science advocates. The bad-guy Technocracy is more relevant than ever. (BP is using the Coast Guard to suppress media around the oil hole right now after its scientists lowballed the effects. That situation covers every branch of Technocracy operations in the game.) Still, there ought to be high tech guys who aren’t into VR, orgone and pyramid power.

But none of the factions should be untainted good guys. If we say that there’s a nice “pure” science faction it breaks the tone of the setting (where no faction is pure) and ignores an important theme: that people necessarily conflate ideology with the way they interact with the world. This is true in Mage, and true in the real world, too. For example, it’s a safe best that no Pioneer Fund research project is ever going to end in results that defy white supremacist thinking. And when our society switched to “scientific” management, it did so to satisfy entrenched interests and their Fuck You Buddy ethos.

Hell, just watch The Trap.

Redeemed “magical” scientists need a virtuous ethos to influence their work, and Mage doesn’t do that for any faction. The Traditions are good guys because they do not oppress humanity in any organized fashion and say that you get to choose whatever belief system makes you happy. This doesn’t recommend any of their paradigms or internal workings as models for society, but the game’s stance is that people ought to decide these for themselves, based on whatever lets them navigate the world while adhering to a basically compassionate stance.

The Traditions don’t necessarily do compassionate. They’re a collective insurgency with a hierarchy that was once designed to pass on traditional knowledge, but is now the ranking system of the strangest army in the universe. The Sons of Ether are ignorant of colonialism. The Akashics can use abstraction to excuse themselves of anything. The Euthanatos . . . well, you know. The Traditions’ collective goal — give Sleepers the freedom to decide what they want and not come to a universal consensus, even — is a good thing, but the Traditions are self-absorbed and amoral until the PCs do something epic to turn them around. Good Guy Science should be in a similar place, with some underlying ethos that is compelling and a bit dangerous. That’s what I designed the Transhuman Adepts to do. in the Dirty Version.

Paradigms don’t make good or bad people. They serve as props that allow people to commit wonder or horrific acts because they act as conceptual frameworks for moral decisions. They don’t determine what those decisions are going to be. That’s why the game never got into “paradigm wars,” and why thinking along those lines isn’t that relevant to game play. It’s a very attrractive field, but the game’s about getting past it. There’s no denying you could do something cool with it, but it would probably be less cool than designing specific situations and stories to play in.

NoMo PoMo

It’s too bad that talking about them and about Ascension in general is always going to be marred by the game’s fairweather postmodernism (which it isn’t all about — I think I’m the guy who worked on the line who used that point of view the most, and there’s at least as much pop philosophy, New Age and 90s occultism in there) and the fact that lots of fans don’t actually know what postmodernism is.It’s not a free for all, not a way to create your own reality (though that’s in Ascension — see how I said it’s not all PoMo?) but an acknowledgement that we act in a context provided by the facts of our histories and the stories told about them. The context features biases, hidden implications and lots of other wacky stuff. Some of these things will piss you off, since they will imply unkind things about you. This is a feature, not a bug.

As far as getting postmodern, the mage is a Pharamakos: an ambiguous figure who may be an influencer and leader, but is himself a product of a narrative outside of himself (his paradigm). These narratives shouldn’t just be a matter of “voting,” since mages and Sleepers alike are subject to these big stories that tell them who they are and assimilate new information in ways that avoid contradiction (or Paradox). Working subtly from one’s own subject position nudges the feedback loop between self and culture, but doing the vulgar magical jack move is what really establishes Pharmakos status: that of the sorcerer-scapegoat who is at once confined to the subaltern, but necessary to keep society dynamic, and away from the trap of total systemization in the service of elites, rather than the polis/culture/world as a whole. I have my way of tweaking the game to support that better.

I think the sorcerer-scapegoat angle is important. I think Ascension is a great game, an almost accidentally important game, and I’m going to enjoy running it for the first time in six years.

I felt like my blood twisted in its veins when I first mouthed that prayer. Tonight I feared a terrible error for the last time: that the old false image — horns, cloven hooves and all — would come and cut me open with its sharp, garish pentacle.

But they were only words. True words recalling true deeds, worn into insane legendry by propaganda and the warp of ages. It wasn’t easy to serve God. The masters of the world made it so.

Ave Baphomet.

“Oh, it’s all true.” I remember my sergeant grinning as he said it, right before he locked me away for the vigil. “Or true at the roots. If you lived in an era when one man loving another inspired vicious hatred, wouldn’t you gladly shed some secrecy when you found us, living for a higher Law, beyond that prejudice?

“When our Law intruded on a life enslaved to empty rituals, the Masters administered a ritual to set the soul right — trampling the Cross, or spitting upon the Host to assert one’s power over restrictive symbols.  And when the Law revealed that God was truly One there was no need to hate the Saracen, or anyone else a prince or bishop might order us against on bloody adventures. To save them and ourselves, we struck alliances.

“We are perpetually baptized by the flames of martyrdom not because we were falsely accused, but that we were virtuous in a sin-blinded world. Remember that.”

Ave Baphomet.

I didn’t care about dogma per se. My two years at the seminary had been a disaster because I could talk myself out of doctrine, not into it. Oh, I always believed in God, and feared him because I found theology so unconvincing. No man could know what that inscrutable Creator wanted of us.  He, She, It was the rogue-ruler of the universe.

Yet I believed in evil and feared it, too. There were too many dark possibilities, from Satans to hellish rebirths. And as far as most mundane faiths were concerned, the Templars wore evil proudly, calling it as unblemished as the white of their ritual cloaks. What if those religions were right?

But no; this doubt is a last induglence, a memory of what was sincere. It’s nostalgia. I no longer fear the name.

Ave Baphomet.

I’ve been pretty sick for about a month off and on due to strep. That’s why this blog’s been silent. What’s going on?

Aeternal Legends: It’s available in print and PDF, still. Stew and I are slowly talking about some cool stuff to come, but we’re both pretty busy. Why don’t you buy that sonofabitch?

Knights of the Hidden Sun: Still on Chapter Three (not many in the book, so this is further along than you might think). Looking at the engineering and programming aspects of soul manipulation. It’s coming.

World of Darkness: I did some work on World of Darkness: Mirrors and the Mage Chronicler’s Guide. Some of it’s very rules heavy. Some of it involves creatures made from the still-bleeding wounds of the dismembered universe.

Eclipse Phase: I did some work for an upcoming book, but can’t say much more.

Other RPG Thing: I’m working on an adventure for a TBA client. Should be fun.

Other Other RPG Thing: I have in my files an amazing game from a Famous RPG Designer. I hope I have time to do him a small service, because the game is amazing, and I would like to help with it.

Other Other Other RPG Thing, What For Charity: I’m currently in the early stages of designing a game as a permanent charity effort — this is what I wanted to get to in February. If you’re a non-flaky creative interested in this sort of project email me.

Conventions: I’ll be at Anime North again this year. Details to come.

Electronic Projects: I recently finished the first phase of concept and setting design for an ambitious multimedia property but again, I can’t say too much.

Playing: I’m still playing Cinnabar, the warforged ranger. 7th level now. Still enjoying 4e. I tease Steve about it not being the Best Thing Evar, but I like it.

Running: Star Wars Saga. One of the PCs is Darth Vader’s artificially created sibling. The PCs just got captured by the Death Star, which contains 6 million Dark Side Adepts trained to use the Force in concert, not a giant laser.

Planning: Might be the SF game, Indigo. Might be World of Darkness. Might be a light fantasy game. Chris Huth said something about playing a mix of old-style D&D and GUMSHOE. I am very interested in this and might try it myself.

Mage: The Dirty Version: I plan on getting back to entries here.

Bloggage Reading: I finally headed to Zak Smith’s D&D With Pornstars blog. I think the mashed up game and visual bricolage is cool, even if the tone and dungeon focus doesn’t appeal to me.

Your Game: I still judge it and find it wanting! I still think your desire for structure comfort and easy answers is making you bad at playing RPGs and really appreciating what they are, and I’ll tell you why at length!

Seriously though, I have some ideas, you have some ideas. Let’s work so hard it turns into play.

Although it’s loaded with inaccurate connotations, the Consensus is still a useful shorthand term to describe the elements of existence that are most vital to the Ascension War. It isn’t as simple as majority rule, though the instincts of millions exert undeniable power over the nature of things. To survive, you must combine of intellectual rigor, ideological commitment and a tolerance for enigmas. Knowledge is the foundation, and this work begins by exploring the roots of ecumenical occult philosophy to strengthen it.

The Tellurian and Necessity

The Traditions and Hegemony both call the sum total of existence the Tellurian. Theoretically, the Tellurian contains all possible universes, though what constitutes a “possible universe” is subject to debate. As the ground of all being, the Tellurian contains those elements of reality that must exist for sentient beings to construct narratives, and for the most part, these are the only “raw” components of reality that sentients can perceive. These include the exoteric manifestations of physical laws. Gravity has always existed as a force that causes things to fall, for example, though its rationale and less common manifestations may arise out of narrative threads. Technocrats call this necessary base the Anthropic Principle – it only works this way because we could not exist in a universe that didn’t – while mystics refer to manifestations of the mind, ideal Forms, or the influence of deities.

The primacy of consciousness and individual agency should be noted here, as it must exist as an aspect of the raw Tellurian. Sentient minds (that is, those of beings perceiving the world, not just interpreting it through sapient thought) are not directly subject to the Consensus and prefigure the Tapestry, though they can be manipulated through social pressures and direct magical working. This has been experimentally verified through the ages, particularly when Kyriarchs have attempted to turn specific peoples into “subhumans.” The Tapestry can’t satisfy their wishes, and the intended victims remain as intelligent, strong and self-willed as ever.

The Tapestry and Consensus

Acting within such cosmological preconditions, sentient beings shape the Tellurian’s manifold possibilities into the Tapestry: the defined or semi-defined content of the universe. Every thread in the Tapestry is a narrative created to explain the teller-seer’s life and everything he, she or it encounters. Nonsapient animals weave threads based on their immediate perceptions and instincts. Sapient beings such as humans are capable of consciously telling stories about themselves and the world around them, giving them the potential to impose changes beyond the routines of biological and ecological niches. Together, they add specificity, complexity and restrictions to existence.

The Tapestry’s threads aren’t completely defined; elements that are less meaningful aren’t as fixed in the narrative continuum. This is why a sorcerer can weave a coincidence out of a conveniently placed object. The object was nowhere in particular until it had to be in a particular place. The less narrative importance a facet of reality possesses, the less defined it is. A map sets the territory in place – prior to being defined, it only has a tendency toward a location or specific nature. Technocrats say that reality in this type of flux has an eigenstate, and this term is widely use beyond their labs.

What creates an eigenstate out of unbiased potential, or makes it difficult for most people to impose any narrative they desire? Nonsapient sentients create powerful eigenstate biases based on their own experiences, forming ecologies with spiritual as well as physical significance. Human mages must contend with the resultant natural principles. That’s why theories of spontaneous generation have never been true – at least in this Cycle of existence. Nature knows the truth. Before a human begins to tell his or her own tale, she must take into account the reality of the natural world.

(Then again, some believe that everything permitted within an eigenstate does in fact happen, and that there are many worlds based on every way in which a narrative thread might “collapse” one into itself. Due to the subjective problems involved in exploring these possibilities, it’s difficult to determine whether evidence showing this is true is discovered or manufactured, or whether the two possibilities are even contrasts.)

Sleepers face another limitation. They instinctively weave narrative threads that only minimally conflict with others, particularly those that are a part of their direct historical situation. Sleeper threads are intersubjective, based on interpreting what has come before and what surrounds them in light of their own experiences. In a way, the human sense of history an culture is a trap, tangling people in its tendencies – a property The Hegemony exploits. Common trends throughout these related threads create the Consensus mages shape and defy, but this is not to say that Sleepers always agree with it. They resist in private worlds of the imagination and might see “impossible” events, but they lack some vital combination of will, instinct and intellectual patterning to disrupt the efforts of their ancestors and contemporaries.

Awakening and Spiritual Reality

Enthusiastic mages characterize Awakening as a state that liberates them from the instinct to weave intersubjective stories into the world, but the truth is that they’re never wholly free and barring Ascension, can’t be. To truly believe the world is arbitrary would drive them insane – and when it occurs, that’s exactly what happens.

Mages draw on alternative explanations of the world, minority histories and sincere fictions that not only make sense of Creation as it is, but encode the possibility of radical change within them. This new paradigm establishes primacy over his or her ordinary intersubjective state. Many draw upon an established mythic Tradition, but a strong minority construct their own paradigms out of various elements, devising an syncretic base upon which to explore their inspirations within consistent praxes. No sorcerer is wholly orthodox, however; like Sleepers, they establish unique relationships with the narrative threads they value. Simply interpreting a paradigm as a static model restricts the sorcerer to rotes and conservative routines. To progress, a mage must reach beyond his or her established mythology.

Obviously, Awakening depends on consciousness, because a Sleeper on the threshold must choose to plunge his or her life into an alternative thread. Don’t assume, however, that only sapient beings can weave meaning into the Tapestry beyond the boundaries of ordinary experience. Ecological patterns are far older, stronger and more pervasive than human desires. They generate spiritual beings and realms of existence. These belong to a substrate of meaning running through the Tapestry and while often studied, remain one of the least understood manifestations of reality.

Paradoxes and Blurred Boundaries

The more a mage reaches beyond historical narratives and their most plausible extensions, the more he or she comes into conflict with the established Tapestry. When a magical narrative resists assimilation the Tapestry is said to “fray,” causing a Paradox. Reality responds in unpredictable ways until the Tapestry reweaves itself to swallow the contradiction by fiat, turning miracles into accidents post hoc, even to the point of altering Sleeper perceptions. The likelihood and power of a Paradox depends on the nature of convergent narrative threads and their relative strength, along with the eigenstate’s bias in the situation to be affected by a magical working.

A region long associated with the mage’s paradigm inhabited by Sleepers who belong to a compatible cult might blunt a Paradox or render it a non-issue. In a populated area long beholden to Hegemonic interests, (that is to say, most of the world) magically interfering with a notable object can provoke a severe fray. In this scenario, the mage generates a conflict with current “running” threads (the active self-stories of witnesses) and the entrenched history of the object and region.

In a more hostile scenario such as a busy city street, a sorcerer might still avoid a Paradox if he or she manipulates the eigenstate in a plausible fashion – it’s easy to define the location of an unexceptional tree in the forest, for instance. Unfortunately, the mage can’t employ self-deception or misinformation to manipulate the presence of undefined elements. For example a mage can’t “coincidentally” conjure something he or she knows isn’t there by reaching into a pocket, even if it’s a common object, and can’t get around it by asking an accomplice to randomly stuff his or her pockets – they both know what’s inside them. The precise limits of this are not always consistent, however. An important object might devolve to a less defined state after a narrative thread stops focusing on it, for example (but this isn’t guaranteed, as important events leave a more lasting influence). Ultimately, these are matters of meaning and sentiment, not immutable laws.

Can magic manipulate the raw Tellurian? Mages doubt it, and most scholarship states that the unmovable nature of the Tellurian is a tautological property, necessary to define the “unmoved” as something distinct from the Tapestry of narrative and myth. On the other hand, there is no strict division between the two and myths credit mages for making permanent, large scale changes to the nature of things. Generally speaking, the more fundamental a change and the more it violates broadly held principles, the more likely it is to impose a Paradox.

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.

We Are All Beautiful Information

Immortality is a dream as old as Gilgamesh. Scholars have hungered for transcendental knowledge from the most ancient days, and didn’t separate numinous enlightenment from their pragmatic studies. The Transhuman Adepts may be a new movement but they partake of that most ancient impulse – the same felt by Plato, Pythagoras and William of Ockham.

The Enhanced know their legacy but they don’t look back; archaic memes are for the archives. In the here and now, science and technology prune away the most egregious mistakes in human thought. The Tradition’s efforts rest on dozens of pragmatic technologies, but take their unifying principles from a smaller number of powerful ideas. First, there’s the idea of a computational cosmos. There’s no difference between a sufficiently accurate mathematical model and the object it represents.

Subordinate to this grand idea are others: universal evolution via mathematical replicators, the denial of a “mind essence” so that consciousness can be limitlessly expanded, and the body-as-information’s mutability via genetic engineering, practical nanotechnology and more. All of these tools focus on overcoming physical, mental and political barriers to human development. Abandoning the natural, evolved state is essential; the Enhanced believe the Ascension War is a battle between memes stuck in the Darwinian game, lashed to the human mind’s limits. Victory relies on becoming more than human, thereby developing a vision greater than the rest.

History

It’s easy to forget that Great Betrayal grew out of virtuous motives. With the Kyriarchy’s help, the Order of Reason turned away political collapse, total war and threats from Beyond. They prepared Sleepers for the coming Utopia – an age of peace and plenty that the Hegemonic Time Table delayed again and again. A few scientists of conscience became dissatisfied with the status quo’s glacial pace.

Many members of this faction belonged to groups that the Kyriarchy discriminated against. The Hegemony’s elders told female, homosexual, Jewish, and non-European members of the Order of Reason that policies repressing their Sleeping counterparts served the greater goal of cultural unity. It was supposedly no statement on their personal abilities, but it was more telling that scientists from these groups never rose to a position where they could change the policy.

The Æther Society’s defection did little to inspire the discontents. Ætherians were eccentrics who lacked a constructive vision for the world. Still, they demonstrated that there was room for Awakened Science outside of the Technocratic fold. The Utopians developed into a semi-formal faction that the Hegemony was forced to tolerate – it couldn’t stand another defection.

The Second World War was the Utopians’ watershed moment. Every state had its sins, but the Axis was a study in unalloyed evil – and the Hegemony supported it. Officially, it was a purely pragmatic decision that had nothing to do with the Axis’ foul ideologies. It would just be easier to guide a few totalitarian regimes than a shifting political mosaic. The Utopians not only believed that no rationale could justify the choice, but knew that true Fascist sympathizers populated the upper ranks. The Utopians abandoned the Technocracy, supported the Allies and at the war’s end, negotiated an alliance with the Traditions.

The Utopians kept their name until 1979, when cultural and scientific changes prompted the Tradition to debate its purpose and reassemble on the basis of the rising belief that members could create a better world by attacking human limitations over any specific political goal, but a significant faction believes this was less of a constructive development than appeasement designed to snatch talent away from the Technocracy. The remaining Utopian Engineers continue to be the Tradition’s conscience.

Appearance

Some Transhuman Adepts are moderately fit and rail thin – calorie restriction is a proven life-extension method and they hope to survive long enough to attain Consensus-accepted immortality. Others don’t care about a future where they might live forever with Sleeper-friendly technology. Some neglect their bodies, caring more about life on the plane of abstract information. Another group uses drugs and genetic therapy to gain superhuman abilities, but the benefits are usually short-lived or exact a penalty in medical and psychological complications.

Homemade surgery is an initiation rite for some, who carry scars and other obvious signs of the results: strange ports and studs erupting through their skin, or wires visible just beneath the flesh. Smart Transhuman Adepts learn to hide any sign that can’t be explained away as radical body art, and many camouflage their efforts with ordinary body modification. Meat is a mutable decoration.

Style-wise, Transhuman Adepts are all over the map. Older members cling to the punk fashions that were in vogue during the 1980s, but the majority either care nothing for fashion or accent a mainstream look with oblique references to cutting edge technology.

Paradigm

The Tellurian is a computational medium: a cosmic bestiary of equations that range from galaxies to atoms. Conventional science sits on the verge of seeing reality’s basic unit of representation, but even then can’t view the computational states beneath – much less alter them without the crudest of tools. A Sleeper scientist or engineer is like a blind watchmaker adjusting his creation with blacksmith’s tongs. The goal of science is to behold the cosmos’ pure mathematical forms. The ethos of science is to apply the results to humanity, freeing it from the savage evolutionary games that prevent it from transcending its boundaries.

Sleepers lack a certain degree of . . . inspiration. They might want to improve the species or have the capacity to view their own consciousness as an objective target for study, but they don’t combine both desires with a signature spark of genius. Theoretically, anyone could study science and technology while cultivating an objective view of consciousness but in practice, few attain the refinement to become mages. Sleepers can become experts in a narrow, static field, but psychological barriers prevent them from truly Awakening.

Magic? There are only technologies: methods that manipulate the universe’s mathematical forms by affecting their external manifestations. There’s little need to exert one’s will on the pure Telluric substructure when enlightened applications of biology, chemistry and physics will do. There are a few numinous operations that break down the divide between individual consciousness and the rest of the cosmos, but these are so rare that some Transhuman Adepts doubt they truly exist.

Nevertheless, there are crude ways to hack reality through direct psychic command and proto-science. That’s what other mages do. They manipulate symbols that happen to be effective memes or accurate models of an object, and catalogue these correspondences in their own traditions. They’ll never attain the breadth and efficacy of true technologies, but they serve and occasionally even inspire.

The computational cosmos’ one flaw is that it can accept multiple models – and some models have more potential to improve the human condition than others. Limited paradigms leave much to the dumb operation of cosmic forces by appealing to a great mystery or incompleteness principle. Once confirmed by observation, these models gain standing in the meta-Darwinian competition between cosmological models. That’s why the Consensus exists, and why less desirable models still dog Enhanced efforts to go farther, unlock the fundamentals, and give all humanity the power to master them.

Foci

Computers, scientific instruments, synthetic drugs and other chemicals, surgery, laboratories

Spheres

Correspondence or Mind

Sects

The Enhanced’s factions are political, with each accepting scientists and engineers of any specialty, though each group attracts specialists in particular fields. Transhuman Adepts routinely drift from one faction to another as their opinions shift.

Posthuman Front: A direct action cadre of the physically enhanced, the Posthuman Front serves two vital roles. Members recognize the importance of the human body. They “upgrade” their own with a variety of technologies and apply the results to research that may help Sleepers overcome disease, aging and disability. They’re also the Tradition’s most effective soldiers, strong and fast enough to counter comparably augmented enemies. The Posthuman Front’s members are the most likely to carry serious Paradox backlashes, since they apply radical experiments to themselves.

Reality Hackers: Peerless computer scientists and programmers, the Reality Hackers are the most devoted to the Tradition’s metaphysics over its numerous applications. They wish nothing less than to make the universe programmable by everyone, breaking down the division between physicality and information. In practice, many show disdain for “meat” issues. Matter is just a particularly obstinate form of data, and it might be better to disdain it entirely by creating a new universe with more tractable “permissions.” They develop better ways for people to interact with computers, improving the number of “digital natives” able to transcend the physical world.

Utopian Engineers: Utopians carry the Tradition’s original torch, urging it to pursue its efforts in a socially responsible context. The global majority is more concerned with daily survival than novel technologies. Without political activism, the Enhanced will only benefit the already-privileged, making them nothing more than a Hegemonic tool with delusions of independence. Utopian memeticists, anthropologists and economists focus on how to make scientific development relevant to the needs and values of all cultures, instead of the elites most able to skip to the head of the line when it comes to reaping the rewards.

Concepts

Hacker, scientist, backstreet engineer, information broker, technology smuggler, doctor, designer drug merchant, social scientist, Web activist

Stereotypes

Æther Society: Science isn’t a set of personal preferences, but you have to admit that their obsessions bear the odd fascinating fruit.

Eumenides: I like my justice without porn. Reincarnation is strangely plausible – replicators are everywhere – but I doubt it goes that far.

Order of Hermes: It’s failed science, but they make up for it with pure attitude. Sometimes the math even works.

Templars: If we’re living in a simulation, there is a God. If it’s all about randomly spawned replicators, there isn’t one. In CERN We Trust.

Vajrapani: They stretch the potential of unimproved minds and bodies to their very limits, but they won’t take the obvious next step: Improve the potential!

Verbenae: There is no memeplex so silly that someone won’t sacrifice a goat over it. Just saying.

Hollow Underground: RTFM.

Still, Luc cut himself a mix of modafinil, phenobarbital, and pinkie nail’s worth of Manila Shabu dipped in slow-release caplets, just to keep his hands steady. Maybe he’s not quite ready to heap contempt upon his unimproved flesh. He wipes drool from the left side of his mouth – it’s slackened by the nerve block – and clamps back his eyelids on the same side.

The Wire’s smart enough to find its way home but too weak to make it through the first few layers of protective tissue. Luc calls up the manual again; it calls for an “assertive push.”

So Luc stabs himself in the eye socket.

Tremendous pressure. The sensation of weeping on half-numb skin (Luc knows it’s watery blood and wipes it away like the drool – another messy flaw in the meat). He knows the brain feels nothing, once you get past the guardian nerves, but he imagines the sensation of something slithering along bloody paths to clutch his left parietal lobe.

It’ll branch out from there, ruthlessly pruning unused connections: a second wave of neural Darwinism for a parallel mind. But even now, at its simplest, the Wire hums with potentiality. It sings to the world’s currents, and Luc answers.

Love, Death and Justice Until the End of the World

Death is a lover and a lesson, walking with us all our lives, teaching the value of every moment – and when life ends, Death gives us a chance to explore the universe again, atone and learn. Still, this incarnation is critical. As a human you have the best chance to Ascend. Pursue ecstasy fearlessly, ferociously; every blissful second is a spark in the darkness of Sleep, illuminating a greater world.

And, if anyone wards the gates of ecstasy with oppression or abuse? Kill them.

This is what the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones, the Left Handed believe. The body and mind are instruments they tune with sensations: pain, starvation, sex, drugs and other acts that arouse extraordinary states of consciousness. Ecstasy harmonizes a mage with other spiritual states: the souls of the gods, the earth, visible and invisible powers. Every entity plays its role in the Wheel of Creation, but the Kindly Ones have the occult tools to play them all – as do we all.

Enlightenment has enemies: abusers, moral tyrants. The Tradition fights them in the cultural sphere and through direct action. The Eumenides ethos holds that any consensual act between adults is permitted (though some are not necessarily wise) and that to bar any of them is an offense against the spirit. Foolish taboos and abuse make it difficult to pursue every suitable path to enlightenment.

People who cannot find their bliss have one option left: The Good Death. The Eumenides reserve this for psychopaths (who will never find bliss through pleasure, but only the base domination of others) and people so damaged in mind or body that nothing can renew the capacity for ecstasy. The Left Handed kill influential preachers and other leaders who advocate immoral positions like homophobia but this – along with the murder of Hegemony agents – is simply pragmatic assassination.

History

In almost every large civilization, some men and women reject arbitrary moral codes. They look for truth in experience: hallucination, orgasm, carefully inflicted pain-turned-pleasure. These outcasts found gods in moments of bliss and developed supernatural gifts.

Since the proto-Eumenides rejected moral orthodoxy, people asked them for help to circumvent tradition. Sleepers deserved revenge, but the target was a lord or priest. They wanted prosperity but came from a despised caste. The early Left Handed made a new moral code, where mainstream religious and political concerns meant nothing. All that mattered was how an act shaped the capacity for ecstasy.

Many cults foresaw that unless they took the initiative in enforcing the new law, their parent cultures would forever persecute them. They became killers and disaster bearers, shapers of civilizations, though always hidden in fear of the reprisals that would surely come if anyone discovered the great work. Sleepers attributed these deaths and curses to divine punishment, and it was at this point that certain mages claimed the titles of Fury or Kindly One from the gods that bore them.

Not every sect followed the code, but those that did formed alliances against enemies, from Kyriarchs to rival Traditions. In 400 BCE, disastrous contact with the Vajrapani led to countless conflicts in the so-called “Wheel War” across incarnations. Tensions still exist between the Traditions, though most members now acknowledge that both are valid paths to Ascension.

The Eumenides were still not a fully formed Tradition by the time of the Aurora Tribunal. Other mages still distrusted them, thought them as insane or depraved – but after the Great Betrayal, these mages sought them out nonetheless, desperate to find allies against the rising Hegemony. Bound by similar beliefs and a common, degraded social state in comparison to the great magi of the Grand Convocation, they stepped forward as one Tradition at last, with a name that reminded all of their purpose.

Appearance

Unless they use Life magic to alter themselves, Eumenides bear the marks of their practices, such as whip scars, tattoos, piercings or signs of habitual drug use. It all depends on the mage’s journey. Left Handed mages rarely become addicts or suffer prolonged illness and injury from what they do, but one does not become skilled in the Art without making a few mistakes along the way. Some of these signs are only transitional, representing a particular ecstatic focus. Eumenides can turn from being skeletal from intense fasting or heavy from gorging themselves in a matter of weeks.

The Tradition’s devotions manifest in members’ styles. Many gravitate toward rave or fetish clothing, or wear signs of affiliation with certain artistic scenes or sexual subcultures. The mage usually keeps elements of her favoured mythology on hand for ritual purposes, but these can be very subtle tokens – the real signs of divinity are found in one’s soul. A large number of Left Handed mages pursue aesthetic pleasure by following fashion. They blend in but have an air of the deviant about them.

Virtually all Eumenides keep knives at hand as foci, tools and weapons, with mages split evenly between special ritual implements and purely practical blades. Most own a handgun because it’s an efficient way to inflict the Good Death – or ordinary profane death, when necessary.

Paradigm

The Tellurian is the Wheel of Creation. Driven by inescapable karma, the Wheel determines the nature and fate of all beings, even gods and natural forces. But the Wheel is more than its edge; it’s a complex design whose depths correspond to natural forces and forms of spiritual awareness. Fire is a god, a chemical reaction and a refined spiritual state, all at the same time. Fate sets it all in motion, and transforms entities to take their proper place – but humans find it easiest to be many places at once.

Human beings could access these states of being to master supernatural, elemental forces but they’re afraid of losing a sense of self-identity, afraid of censure from their families and societies – even afraid of themselves. That’s the Consensus, favouring the fetishes and rules of a few over the full, wild garden of moral human desires. The Hegemony intensifies these fears and forces people to rely on external tools – especially those they cannot reproduce without the structures it put in place.

Magic is a state of being where one assumes the consciousness of a divine power. The mage actually becomes a god – but the god is no different from a specific human spiritual state. Focused ecstatic experience creates the divine mind. It’s best attained through real ecstasy: pleasure, pain and other consciousness-manipulating acts at the moment of spellcasting and beforehand or to recall through, meditation and symbolism when desired.

Other mages perform this type of magic but most of them don’t recognize it – they focus on tools, tricks, and other ways to keep from taking responsibility for their actions. If they acknowledged that magic was a passion within, they might have to confront truths within themselves they’re unwilling to admit: secret appetites perhaps, or long-buried insecurities.

All things reincarnate according to their karma, changing in each cycle according to previous acts, but death and rebirth always contain a chance to reach Ascension, the state of eternal bliss that encompasses all states of being, forever beyond the limitations of one mind and body.

Foci

Art, bones, ascetic practices, dance, drugs, knives, mantras, meditation, music, sex, yoga (and similar disciplines)

Spheres

Destiny or Life

Sects

The Tradition’s synthetic history means it accepts a great deal of variation within its ranks. Groups draw upon religion and myths from virtually every part of the world. The following groups are prominent but don’t contain the majority of Eumenides mages. Many do not even follow a particular cult – a choice that is more common in recent times.

In India, the Chakrasarpa are often confused for Aghori: ascetics who live in poverty and reputedly eat the flesh of corpses. The Wheel Serpents swing between sensual worldly lives and the extremes of the burial ground to enact the cycle life and death within their own bodies. Thus, their lives flow through every part of the Wheel. As ash-covered renunciates they confront ghosts and the energies of Death; as wealthy decadents they master their own sexuality and manipulate social relationships. Chakrasarpa mages focus on the Tradition’s belief in reincarnation more than most, and are said to drive individuals toward particular future births by influencing their lives and deaths, even to the point of staging ritual Good Deaths.

The Golden Chalice is the Tradition’s premiere league of assassins. They’re responsible for the (false) legends that during the Crusades, Nizari Ismaili warriors ate hashish and dwelled in a secret paradise. The drugs and the garden are real, but the attribution is wrong; the proto-Chalice used the Nizari as a cover to give important targets the Good Death and protect its temporal interests, but members are not orthodox Muslims.

By the late 14^th Century the conspiracy moved to Venice, using its mix of ascetic discipline and Islamic alchemy to dispatch enemies and enrich itself. It aims to create Paradise on Earth through political murder, manipulating society to dismantle unnecessary taboos. Any Eumenides can join the Chalice if they prove themselves loyal and survive its gruelling training.

The Knights of Rhamnous’ name comes from a medieval disguise; they’re the latest manifestation of an ancient Greek cult devoted to punishing moral offenses and protecting those promised to a certain destiny. Knights honour Nemesis, the Furies and chthonic deities with orgiastic rites: mysteries where they actually become these gods and earn the authority to act on their behalf.

As divine servants, Knights act in situations that demand the gods’ attention. In ancient times, the list of offenses against the gods included familial killings, breaking an oath and violating the laws of hospitality. Modern Knights enforce extreme violations of the Tradition’s code.

Concepts

Artist, assassin, cult leader, drug dealer, globe-trotting aesthete, musician, sex worker, yogi

Stereotypes

Æther Society: We like their toys. Oh yes. But where does their spirituality enter into it?

Order of Hermes: Their fetish for tools and formulae isn’t bad in of itself (Who are we to criticize a fetish?) but they mistake it for ultimate truth.

Templars: If I kneel and tremble before God, it shall be as a lover does – and no code will stop me from taking Him or Her into my embrace.

Transhuman Adepts: It’s foolish to escape humanity when you haven’t sampled its true pleasures, and futile to run from death.

Vajrapani: Let them approach enlightenment in fear and moderation, as long as they stay out of our way.

Verbenae: They take their legends at face value, crippling their potential to become gods instead of worshiping them.

Hollow Underground: Magic is bliss, not fashion.

Markus twitched and shifted so Jude’s partner (T-something or other – some fake-ass Midwest gangster handle) tightened his full nelson up, but that was a misunderstanding. It wasn’t the hit. Markus just hated it when his cock scratched right up against the denim like that. He grunted and wiggled his hips.

“Say again?” Jude smiled and bunched a fist again; the stomach punch hit like a mallet on a taut drum. The force bounced down to Markus’ perineum and up sweetly to his crown, bursting into the outline of a flower on his skull. “Where’s my product?”

The hot flower in his mind bloomed and Kira was with him, crowned as well, tipping a skull of wine down his throat while she straddled him.

“Well I tried your shit, J,” said Markus, giggling in the rush, “But it was so pure. My heart stopped. That’s what happened to those kids, right? You barely cut it. Heh. I flushed the rest.”

“A very, very wrong answer. I’m gonna feed your fuckin’ heart to my dogs.” Out came the cleaver. “You’re one ignorant bitch, son, ‘cause yours won’t be the first one they ate.”

“Not big,” said Markus, then he barked out laughter. He was drowning in the wine now and her tusks cut his cheek.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jude slapped the flat of the cleaver against his palm.

“You play big, think the people you fuck up carry an indelible mark, like you own them, right? But they’ll get better. You’re little.”

“So? You’re dead.”

“Yes? Yes.” Markus didn’t struggle with the man holding him but dislocated both shoulders around the other way. He popped the wet bone knives and entered the Goddess in his memory and death, death death stained the sweet air of one long, orgasmic exhalation.

Traditions of the Council of Eight

Æther Society: Scientists and adventurers devoted to forgotten, “obsolete” and fringe theories who are convinced that True Science has limitless scope. Metascientists are famous for their eccentricity — as obsessives who master one field, or polymaths who make bizarre connections between disciplines. Spheres: Forces or Matter

Eumenides: Accused of decadence and immorality, the Left Handed believe they follow the shortest path to spiritual power through ascetic extremes, drugs and refined sexuality. Without arbitrary taboos, they behold fundamental justice, acting as its executors. Spheres: Destiny or Life

Order of Hermes: Originating in the Western Magical Tradition, the Thaumaturges embrace high ritual from a number of cultures now, to make up for declining numbers and renew their organizational vigor. The Tradition’s factions are its Houses. Some claim a legacy beyond the limits of precognition, but a few are decades old, if that. Spheres: Forces or Mind

Templars: Born of medieval heresies that put God beyond all mortal creeds, the Apostles preach radical tolerance, but often find themselves tangled in dogmatic zeal. Factions honor particular theological traditions, but believe these are mere reflections of an ultimate truth. Spheres: Correspondence or Spirit

Transhuman Adepts: Cutting edge scientists and engineers that make themselves the subjects or radical experiments, the Enhanced look forward to a world where immortality is commonplace and the barriers between the biological mind and sea of information dissolve. Spheres: Correspondence or Mind

Vajrapani: The Brothers and Sisters practice deep meditation, arduous yoga and punishing martial arts to hone their psychic facilities. To them, magic is a manifestation of enlightenment, not its object — in theory, at least. The Tradition contains a mix or psychics, devotees of physical disciplines and monastic isolation. Spheres: Life or Mind

Verbenae: The Sacred Branches hold to traditional religions and a few reconstructions that stay true to the principles of ancient faiths, were there’s no divide between sorcery and worship. They are called shamans and priests, but their militant tendencies earn them the title of Witch and they don’t shy away from that name’s power. Spheres: Life or Spirit

. . . and the Hollow Underground: a sect born of the detritus of the Victorian occult revival, postmodern magic and streetwise superstitions. The Hollowers are unreliable allies, but at least they aren’t traitors — the Traditions have felt that sting before, and value even casual loyalty.