History Characters / MageTheAscension

* TheBanalityOfEvil: This is what ultimately makes them a villainous faction, even after the whitewashing they received in updated revisions. They embody the sheer soul-crushing indifference of corporate culture, stamping on free will, hope, expression and wonder not out of deliberate malice but out of simple blind obedience to their bureaucratic culture. This is perhaps what really makes them so horrifying; they still think they're the good guys, but they're so wrapped up in the status quo that they blindly commit horrific crimes.

The heiresses of the Amazons, the Hippolytoi hold freedom above all: death is preferred over slavery. They revere life and have been healers and liberators all throughout history and prefer nonaggression over violence, but do not consider self-defens as violence. Their practices are a mix of ritual, martial arts, shamanism and witchcraft, with rituals held in ancient Greek as befits their origin.

* PowerBornOfMadness

* RealityWarpingIsNotAToy

* UnEqualRites

* TranshumanAliens

The high-ranking Technocrats and their retainers caught on the other side of the Gauntlet during the Avatar Storm, [[FisherKingdom causing them to metamorphose]] into embodiments of the Conventions' ideology...devoid of any restraint or humanity, completely alien to their human counterparts. And they want to come home.

* MagicalSociety

! Nephandi, Marauders, Crafts & Orphans

The Hollow Ones stand somewhere on the border between Orphan, Craft and Tradition, devoting themselves to the cause of Romanticism as they see it - individualism, self-expression, and the championing of romance - with a decidedly eclectic approach to magic.

* TheAntiNihilist: They may think life is meaningless, but they're still mages, still driven to make their mark on the world.
* {{Goth}}: Associated with the subculture, which has dated them a bit, but it's not all they are. They do tend to have a taste for the macabre, though.
* GothGirlsKnowMagic: While their history is linked to subcultures reaching back to the flappers and Bright Young Things, and their magic style is basically chaos magic, they're tightly linked in with Goths in the present day.
* RomanticismVersusEnlightenment: You can guess which side the Hollowers come down on.

[[folder:Marauders]]

* InsaneEqualsViolent: A Marauder's mere existence is violence upon reality.
* TheMadHatter: the saner ones.
* PowerBornOfMadness
* RealityWarper: Even more so than most normal mages, considering their near-immunity to Paradox.
* RealityWarpingIsNotAToy
* TragicVillain: One does not choose to become a Marauder, nor are all people who join their ranks evil individuals themselves. It can happen to anybody almost immediately when they Awaken, and worst of all, it is completely irreversible.
** A choice is made, even if subconscious. The potential Marauder is given a choice by its own Avatar to surrender their sanity, usually in order to escape the harshness of reality. Marauders are chaos incarnate, rather than actively evil, slotting into the Dynamic role to the Technocracy's Static and the Nephandi's Entropic roles. In fact, one of the few things that can be predicted about Marauder behavior is that they will always attack Nephandi on sight.

[[folder:Nephandi]]
* 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 Special Snowflake Syndrome]] and two cases in canon.
* AsLongAsThereIsEvil: Sure, you can destroy their members in the thousands, but their next incarnations will always feel the pull to join the ranks once again once they awaken, ensuring that they will never completely disappear.
* BlackMagic: All their magic is dangerous to reality.
* CardCarryingVillain: Nephandi are not misguided, uninformed, or misunderstood. Becoming a Nephandus requires a deliberate choice to invert one's Avatar and serve their monstrous overlords by causing death and destruction.
* DeaderThanDead: The recommended way to deal with them, because inverted Avatars reincarnate just like regular ones.
* EldritchAbomination: Just one of the potential flavors of masters they serve.
* EnemyMine: If a Nephandus is in the area, Tradition and Technocratic operatives will put aside their conflicts to kill it.
** So will '''[[UpToEleven Marauders]]'''.
* EnemyToAllLivingThings: Sort of. According to the first Book of Madness, Paradox tends to hit Nephandi especially hard. Reality knows who its enemies are.
* EnfantTerrible: Widderslainte, the reincarnated Nephandi, often start out as these.
* EvilSorcerer
* EvilerThanThou: They serve as this to every other evil faction in the [=oWoD=].
* FaceMonsterTurn: Normal mages can be forcibly turned into a Nephandus by being forced into a Caul...but the Nephandi generally don't like to do this in most versions of the game, given how [[DyingAsYourself inefficient]] it is (the initial stages of the process involve embracing the worst aspects of the thing you hate the most, and that provokes many mages not bent on going Nephandi anyway to fight back or run, which provokes the Caul into killing them).
* FateWorseThanDeath: Whatever happens after a mage accepts the Caul's offer is explicitly said to be far, far worse than anything the Nephandi can come up with.
* ForTheEvulz: A fairly common hobby among them.
* HellSeeker
* HumanoidAbomination: Once they are Nephandi, mages are almost completely different creatures, bent on pure evil.
* MindRape: The caul (a shrine of unspeakable evil) does this to the recipient. It's flat out stated that nothing a Nephandus can do to another person can equal the horror of the caul.
* MoralEventHorizon: In universe, once more. Passing through the caul irredeemably turns a Nephandus pure evil, even unto their later incarnations. Nothing, in any lifetime, can ever redeem the Nephandus, which is the point of the ritual. The earliest Nephandi intentionally sought out pockets of pure evil in the universe in order to make sure they were dedicated to the cause.
* OmnicidalManiac
* ReligionOfEvil: Whether they worship demons, [[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse The Wyrm]], or simply oblivion itself, they all fit this trope.
* TheSociopath: Becoming Nephandus means inverting everything good about yourself.
* StupidEvil: They have no goal that they ultimately benefit from. They're alright with destroying themselves along with the world.
* TragicVillain: Widderslainte, reincarnated Nephandi who are born evil, with no choice in their fates. It doesn't make them any less horrific and evil, but the fact it's their previous incarnation's fault makes them slightly pitiable.
* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: The most evil and heartless faction in the entire TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness, even defined as such in the sourcebooks. In a world as crapsack as this, that really says something about how repulsive these guys are.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Orphans]]
Orphans are a catch-all term for an independent mage who does not follow a formal Tradition, and has instead created his own unique paradigm. They have no particular strengths in any sphere of magick, but make up for it in flexibility. Efforts to unify them as a single group are repeated but short-lived.

* UrbanFantasy: the best representation of classical urban mages.

[[folder:Solificati]]
* AlchemyIsMagic: The major practitioners.
* FoodPills
* ForgivenButNotForgotten: The Solificati are eventually allowed back into the Traditions post-Avatar Storm, albeit in reduced capacity as House Solificati in the Order of Hermes (allowing the Etherites to retain the Seat of Matter). Everyone watches them very carefully.
* HealingPotion
* LovePotion
* TheMissingFaction: They held the Seat of Matter on the Council at its founding, until one of their exemplars betrayed [[{{Hermaphrodite}} their]] cabal to the Order of Reason, triggering an internal rift over whether the betrayal had been justified, and the Solificati collapsed, surviving as the Children of Knowledge craft.
* PhilosophersStone
* PhlebotinumPills

* FaceMonsterTurn: Normal mages can be forcibly turned into a Nephandus by being forced into a caul. Depending on the version, sometimes having the fortitude to resist means [[DyingAsYourself merely dying]] rather than [[FateWorseThanDeath being turned]].

* ForgivenButNotForgotten: The Solifacti are eventually allowed back into the Traditions post-Avatar Storm, albeit in reduced capacity as House Solifacti in the Order of Hermes (allowing the Etherites to retain the Seat of Matter). Everyone watches them very carefully.

* EnemyMine: Though built on largely-conflicting philosophies, Technocrats and Mages are, at heart, not terribly different from one another, and they will cooperate to deal with problems like [[EvilSorcerer Nephandi]], [[MadOracle Marauders]], or just plain ol' human evil like child pornographers and slavers.

* {{Mediator}}: Post-Avatar Storm, the Progenitors see themselves overall as this - they feel that they've won, more or less, the Ascension War, and now they have to treat the problems (the in-fighting, the wounds of the Storm) of the Technocracy itself.

* CyberneticsEatYourSoul: Averted, actually. It is not the cybernetics that destroy Iteration X'ers who go off the deep end, but their anti-humanist beliefs.

* GoKartingWithBowser: Organizationally, the Traditions and the Technocracy don't get along, but individual Technocrats (particularly Void Adepts, though others do it do) can and do get along with local Mages of good character... assuming that a [[ThePurge Pogrom]] isn't at hand.

* CreativeSterility: An unfortunate side effect of their reality policing and debunking. It's done a good job of making people not believe in magic, but, unfortunately, the Technocracy hasn't been so great at making people excited about science in its place.

* AncientConspiracy: Not as old as most traditions, but older than most governments.

* FallenHero: The faction as a whole. They were once the heroic Order of Reason, and they fought on behalf of God and the common people against the cruel {{Sorcerous Overlord}}s to build a brighter future. Nowadays, while they haven't quite turned into complete villains yet, those past glories serve as a sad reminder of what could have been.. or, for the optimistic, what might one day be again.
* HeroAntagonist: While the Technocracy certainly has their fair share of genuine villains out to crush imagination, a lot of them are just trying to protect humanity from things that are even worse, or to bring "supernatural" solutions to the {{Muggles}}.

* ThePurge: The fate of the Craftmasons, who founded the Order of Reason.

* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: They created a world that's safe for [[{{Muggles}} normal humans]] by denying absolute freedom and crushing dissent in favor of a more rational and scientific worldview.

* TheEngineer: Their speciality.
* GadgeteerGenius: for the Technocracy.

* MachineWorship: The old-tyme master craftsmen, not so much, but many of the newer members all-but worship the Great Computer they have built with their own hands.

* FaceHeelTurn[=/=]HeelFaceTurn: They specifically have a Procedure to rapidly turn a mage into a loyal Technocrat. They'll also try less forceful methods when possible - in fact, the current leader of the convention is a former Cultist of Ecstasy who switched sides after repeatedly teaming up with the NWO against Nephandi during World War II. Of course, whether they're the face or the heel in the tropes in question depend on what side of the Ascension War you're on.
* GovernmentConspiracy: They influence governments.

* MindManipulation: Their preferred method of dealing with most opposition is just about every type of mental coercion listed on the index. They were also the driving force for ending the Pogrom (the Technocratic push to kill all "Reality Deviants"). They do it to all their own allies, too - every Technocrat goes through "Processing" when they join.
* SmugSnake: More than a few.
* TheSocialExpert: Their field of expertise.

* ArtisticLicenseMedicine: What their Procedures let them do, though they think it's just hyper-advanced medicine.

* BerserkButton: Why they are the most gung-ho about wiping out the Traditions: Homeopathy and other pseudomedicine ''really'' cheeses them off.
* 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 is only a problem if you explicitly take the disadvantage that you have a complex about it.
* DeadlyDoctor: Most of them honestly want to help you stay healthy, and just as many know exactly where the pain centers are.

* HerrDoktor: One of the darker legacies of the convention as a whole is that they were perhaps the most gung-ho supporters of Nazi Germany, as there were plenty of avenues for medical experimentation. Naturally, this resulted in several Progenitors that fell into this stereotype.

* KnightTemplar: The true tragedy of the Syndicate is that they honestly don't understand how flawed their philosophy really is.

* UnclePennybags: They view themselves as this, and indeed their primary goal is based around ''creating'' worth, not exploiting it.

* TokenGoodTeammate: They retain most of their curiosity and are much more respectful of their counterparts in the Traditions.

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

* AccidentalTruth: The splatbook dedicated to the Syndicate notes that there was one hidden upside to the Avatar Storm cutting off the various Horizon Realms - some of the top-level Technocratic operatives in these realms had spent so much time removed from humanity that they were developing lines of thought that would be detrimental to the Technocratic Union as well as humanity in general. [[spoiler: In short, they were able to extrapolate Threat Null's existence and its ''raison d'etre'', and they probably could predict their ''modus operandi'' and possibly even effective methods to combat them if they only realized the weight of their observations.]] Ties into FailedASpotCheck below.

* EvilutionaryBiologist: Quite a few have... fun with their research.

* TheVirus: Transhumanity's traditional offer is to make you "perfect", ie another Transhuman. Given how this results in a complete loss of individuality and free will, everyone sane turns them down.

[[folder:Sons of Ether]]

Mad scientists who embrace the [[WeirdScience weirder and more fantastic]] side of Science. The original Etherites were members of the Technocracy who defected to the Traditions, feeling constrained by the limits of the Technocracy's regimented form of science. To an Etherite, discovery and imagination are the main scientific goals, and anything is possible.

* FallenHero: The faction as a whole. They were once the heroic Order of Reason, and they fought on behalf of God and the common people against the cruel SorcerousOverlords to build a brighter future. Nowadays, while they haven't quite turned into complete villains yet, those past glories serve as a sad reminder of what could have been.. or, for the optimistic, what might one day be again.

* TheSocialExpert: Their field of expertise.

* HeWhoFightsMonsters: As of the updated ''Convention: Progenitors'' splatbook, they have the faction most dedicated towards neutralizing Reality Deviants besides Tradition mages that threaten humanity (e.g. [[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade vampires]] and [[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse werewolves]]). These Progenitors are notably at risk of becoming... rather extreme in their methods.

* EveryoneHasStandards: For all that the Syndicate is amoral and corrupt, they are still loyal Technocrats, and despise the Nephandi. When Syndicate investigators discovered the Convention's defunct Special Projects Division had been in bed with the Nephandi, they found it monstrous. (What ''happened'' to SPD, no-one knows - only that they stopped taking the Syndicate's calls after the Avatar Storm, that attempts to investigate their offices got the investigators disappeared, and that its dividends keep being sent to the Syndicate.)
* FailedASpotCheck: Their Convention splatbook strongly hints of this being a Convention-wide problem. They're deliberately comparatively hands-off with their own personnel as long as they keep raking in profits. This can backfire in numerous ways, such as two Syndicate members doing a proxy war over the same materials (although said proxy wars aren't considered a problem until it starts cutting into profits as a whole). One notable example would be the Special Projects Division, which was descended from a company that they created out of a merger - [[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse Pentex]]. Given how quickly Pentex became Wyrm-infested (or Nephandus-infested, in you prefer to think in ''Mage'' terms), the fact that it took over a century for the Syndicate as a whole to catch up to the problem speaks volumes as to how widespread the problem is amongst the Convention.

* TheManBehindTheMan: In general, the Syndicate prefers to operate as "consultants" rather than being a CEO of major companies. They also see themselves as this to the Technocracy as a whole (though everyone else sees through it).

* ThereAreNoTherapists: Explicitly averted, as they have an entire arm of the convention devoted to providing therapy to others in the convention. They retain this in no small part because they highly distrust the New World Order, who are generally the therapist option for the Technocracy.

* DealWithTheDevil: The Residents' (Null Syndicate) ''modus operandai.''

* DefectorFromDecadence: left the Technocracy due to their refusal to compromise on their goal of personal science.

* EverythingIsOnline: they can hack your room's wallpaper given time.

* TokenGoodTeammate: they retain most of their curiosity and are much more respectful of their counterparts in the Traditions.

* HermeticMagic

* TheMenInBlack: The basic grunts; the ones that run the Convention are the Men in White. The traditional outfits are enhanced by "enlightened science" to tap into he part of the [[{{Muggles}} Masses']] brains that leads them to overlook things, making them subtly difficult to spot.

* AncientConspiracy

* HeroAntagonist: While the Technocracy certainly has their fair share of genuine villains out to crush imagination, a lot of them are just trying to protect humanity from things that are even worse.

* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: They created a world that's safe for [[{{Muggles}} normal humans]] by denying freedom and crushing dissent in favor of a more rational and scientific worldview.

* CyberneticsEatYourSoul

* TheMenInBlack: The basic grunts; the ones that run the Convention are the Men in White.

* SmugSnake: more than a few.

* GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke

* ObliviouslyEvil: They honestly believe they are the Sleepers' partners, not their rulers.