History Characters / MageTheAscension

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: In the "Judgement" scenario of ''Ascension'', the head of the Void Engineer and most of his Convention peace out of both the Technocracy and the universe en-masse, rejecting Ascension itself in favor of moving into another world to "map the new void." But he also leaves the PCs with a bunch of useful tools to get the good ending to that scenario, recognizing that, at little as they want to be a part of the transhumanist quasi-merger mankind is becoming, the Traditions and Technocracy collaborating against their common enemies is still a better outcome for humanity than the Marauders coming out on top.

* DyingMomentOfAwesome: In "Ascension", the entire Order of Hermes go out in a massive magical battle against the forces of evil. The Order is wiped out and Earth is engulfed by Hell, but if the [=PCs=] did it right, the Order's sacrifice leads to a glimmer of hope.

* MyGreatestFailure: Most major Awakened organizations had [[StupidJetpackHitler Axis defectors]] during World War II, but the Progenitors ended up falling so badly that they had to [[EnemyCivilWar purge]] a lot of their Convention's infrastructure and personnel after the war. The good news is that the modern Progenitors are proactive in keeping fascist ideas out of their Convention. The bad news is that (since EvilIsOneBigHappyFamily and the nazi Progenitors rubbed shoulders with [[{{Ghostapo}} nazi Hermetics and Verbena]]) trying to reach across the aisle to make peace with the Traditions is considered a warning sign.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: All Nephandi are depraved and evil psychopaths bent on destroying reality, sometimes from birth. No exceptions, except for the very rare cases of SpecialSnowflakeSyndrome and two cases in canon.

* EvilerThanThou: They serve as this to every other evil faction in the [=oWoD=].

* BlackSheep: Materials sciences (chemistry, metallurgy, and the like) are still represented in the Convention, but they're generally treated as its pitiful throwbacks (and, to some extent, as throwbacks of the Technocracy as a whole).

* CreatingLifeIsAwesome: Lots and lots of technocrats are actually grown in labs, nowadays. But most of them are decent, well-adjusted, ordinary people. Notably, being a clone or vat-grown agent only affects your character in anything but a role-playing sense if you explicitly take the disadvantage that gives you the CloningBlues about it.

The Syndicate are the economic sciences experts of the Union, and as such, they're its main bankrollers, managing most of the Union's sources of revenue and providing the funding for the other Conventions' projects. Being the ones with the power to give (or take) money, they're generally [[TheFriendNobodyLikes the most disliked Convention]]. It doesn't help that [[CorruptCorporateExecutive many of the Convention's members do deserve the reputation of being shady assholes]], especially when [[LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub some of their endeavors can involve organized crime]].

* LightIsGood

** The post-Pogrom Technocracy has come to realize that most Reality Deviants, such as werewolves and ''especially'' vampires, want to keep the {{Masquerade}} just as much as they do. So when some neonate gets the idea into his head to throw around superpowers in full view of the camera, the local Technocratic supervisors are as likely to deliver him to his elders as they are to stake him themselves. It's just neighborly, and the vampire elders can be trusted to make a creative example out of their wayward childe.

** The post-Pogrom Technocracy has come to realize that most Reality Deviants, such as werewolves and ''especially'' vampires, want to keep the {{Masquerade}} just as much as they do. So when some neonate gets the idea into his head to throw around superpowers in full view of the camera, the local Technocratic supervisors are as likely to deliver him to his elders as they are to stake him themselves. It's just neighborly, and the vampire elders can be trusted to make a creative example out of their erstwhile childe.

* CensorshipBureau: [[DefiedTrope Defied]] in the modern era. While they will still try to throttle videos and pictures that could serve as proof of the existence of the supernature in the crib before they can become viral, they are, InUniverse, ''well'' aware of the power of the StreisandEffect and know that outright censorship can and often does backfire on in the internet. Their main tactic these days is to instead stage astroturfed {{Internet Counterattack}}s using Enlightened AI-powered botnets, and by destroying the credibility of the whistleblower by making them either look like con-artists, tinfoil hat-wearing crackpots, or both.

* GodzillaThreshold: They've got several terms for this, such as "AFET 6" and "Code Ragnarok." They basically mean the same thing (though possibly to different degrees): forget about [[CollateralDamage Collateral Impact]], sacrifice as many operatives as you need to, and destroy the problem.

* ConspiracyKitchenSink: The Union as a whole has shades of this, but this is the NWO's whole aesthetic, complete with subliminal messaging, MenInBlack, [[BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy suppressed histories]], [[KillAndReplace celebrity doppelgangers]], the whole nine yards.

* VastBureaucracy: The New World Order consists of no less than five loosely related Methodologies ([[MenInBlack the Operatives]], [[MissionControl the Ivory Tower]], [[SinisterSurveillance the Watchers]], [[CulturePolice the Feed]], and [[ItemCaddy Q Division]], [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg plus]] [[MindManipulation Psy Ops]], whose exact place in the Convention's hierarchy is unclear) bound together by a labyrinth of red tape so dizzyingly complex that the [[MundaneMadeAwesome bureaucratic structure itself]] is often used as an apparatus for Enlightened effects.

* HeWhoFightsMonsters: As of the updated ''Convention Book: Progenitors'', they have the faction most dedicated towards neutralizing Reality Deviants besides Tradition mages that threaten humanity (e.g. {{TabletopGame/vampire|TheMasquerade}}s and {{TabletopGame/werewolfTheApocalypse werewolves]]). These Progenitors are notably at risk of becoming rather extreme in their methods, as per their FatalFlaw.

* NobleProfession: Zigzagged. They were originally, reflecting the anti-establishment, pro-New Age slant of the first editions' writing teams, just as evil as the rest of the Technocracy, reflecting the worst aspects of modern medicine at best, such as drugging the Masses into sleepy compliance and suppressing alternative medical cures for no good reason, and mustache-twirlingly evil at worst, gene-engineering dangerous monsters with no practical purpose or literally trying to give all humanity nasty pollen allergies to cut us off from Mother Nature. But it's telling that, of all the Technocratic Paradigms, it's the ''doctors'' who've had the most CharacterDevelopment (and been the most [[CharacterizationMarchesOn rewritten and reworked]]), and become the most [[CloserToEarth practical and humanistic]] as of the Revised and 20th Anniversery editions... though they retain a FatalFlaw that keeps them from becoming ''fully'' heroic. Also, the alternative medicine thing is treated with much less sympathy by most modern writers, since the real world equivalents are AllNaturalSnakeOil.

* HalfHumanHybrid: Possibly. It's implied that part of the process of "Void Adaptation" that transformed Threat Null was the assumption of some [[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse Weaver]] spirit-like traits.

* TokenEvilTeammate: The Technocracy as a whole is more [[GreyAndGreyMorality Grey]] than purely heroic but the Syndicate is worse than the rest of them. Their still accepting money from Pentex despite being fully aware that something has gone horribly wrong with the company.