* [[ScrewYourUltimatum The Great Refusal.]] Back in the day, the Free Council was just a collection of Apostate mages calling themselves [[TrueNeutral the Nameless,]] who didn't care for either the Pentacle Orders or the Seers of the Throne, instead focusing on implementing modern mortal ideas in the study of magic. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, the Seers approached the Nameless, [[WeCanRuleTogether asking them to join together against the Diamond Orders]] so they could hoard all the magical power for themselves. The Nameless reacted poorly, as the name suggests, slaughtering large numbers of Seers and formally aligning with the Pentacle Orders by declaring themselves a new mage Order.
** All the other Diamond Orders were having extreme doubts about the Nameless Orders, and in places were actually preparing to fight with them. Then, at the eleventh hour, the Silver Ladder - the people who, theoretically, should be the Free Council's greatest ideological rivals - sent a message to all corners of the Earth: [[TrueCompanions Accept the Free Council as allies]]. [[TheCavalry Help them fight the Seers]].
** Not only that, but this conflict crippled the Hegemonic Ministry, weakening them to such a degree they are still having a hard time recovering nowadays.
* You can say whatever you want about the Exarchs, and you're probably right to boot, but know that they broke reality's spine and bent it to their will, know that they killed and enslaved gods, know that they have been grinding down humanity since time immemorial, know that they have won. Truly, truly, won and mankind has paid for their hubris forever since.
** Which of course also adds more weight to the actions of those who oppose them - from the humble Order mages to the Exiles and Oracles who stormed the Celestial Ladder and forged the Watchtowers in defiance of them.
* The ''Seers of the Throne'' corebook reveals the time just after the Fall of Atlantis was the DarkestHour for the Pentacle; Atlantean mages were scattered and weakened, many of them actually ''joined'' the Seers, and it really seemed like the Exarchs had won, to the point most Seers of the Throne were convinced they would never find a serious threat again. And yet, when the Seers, feeling like they no longer had an enemy, [[EnemyCivilWar started fighting each other for petty reasons]], the Pentacle managed to stay united, rebuild themselves, and eventually strike back. They did so much damage to the Seers the entire conspiracy was almost destroyed, being saved only by establishing an uneasy truce between its various pylons. By the time the Seers were done with damage control, the Pentacle had finished rebuilding themselves enough that they were a credible threat again.
** Even better, the aforementioned Pentacle mages who had joined the Seers? Many returned to their respective order when that happened. For some of them, it was because they had recovered hope the Exarchs could be defeated. For others, it turned out they had been infiltrating the Seers for ''years'', only waiting to strike.
* An awesome case of [[PayEvilUntoEvil Paying Evil Unto Evil]]: The Left-Handed Path book describes the story of the mage Einar, whose entire cabal was wiped out by the Seer Ministry of Geryon. When the other Pentacle mages refused to help Einar get his revenge, he [[StartofDarkness turned to the Abyss]] and became a [[NightmareFuel Scelestus]]. Renaming himself Angrboda after the Norse giant who spawned many monsters, he proceeded to summon dozens of Abyssal monstrosities and slowly but surely tore the Ministry apart, pylon by pylon, until he personally cast the Tetrarch down into the Abyss.
* Becoming an [[PhysicalGod archmage]]. You must be a prodigious master of at least one Arcanum, have a great understanding of magic (Gnosis), gain enough experience ''and'' find a Quintessence, Mystery, which will allow an aspiring mage to begin his transformation. Then you must ''successfully pass through the Abyss'' (failure will doom you to a FateWorseThanDeath), pass to Supernal Realms and form a Lustrum - a subjective experience of Realms or you'll be [[RetGone retgoned]], and pass a test, which would transform this Lustrum into a Cintamani - your personal Watchtower and door to Supernal Realms. The pass to archmastery is hard, and ''extremely'' dangerous, but well worth it.
** The most basic ability of archmages which all of them use as part of their first practice of Imperium is to [[RealityWarper alter the universe]] so that it has been retroactively always been the way it is changed to. At ninth level archmages can learn the extremely difficult (even for them) Transfiguration spell which lets them do ''literally anything under their Arcana's purview''. And even without that, archmages can and will break existing limitations of non-archmages without much effort. When archmages are called gods it is [[NotHyperbole not hyperbole]].
* When the Exarchs took over the Supernal, they [[SealedGoodInACan imprisoned, enslaved or drove away most Supernal Gods.]] Most. Some Supernal entities were so powerful the [[NoSell Exarchs couldn't cast them out]] and they continue to live in the Supernal, albeit with massively reduced influence over the Fallen World. The most notable example is the former gods representing the Time and Fate Arcana. The Exarchs banished them and they [[BeyondTheImpossible continued living in the Supernal anyway]] because they are the gods of time. They just came back from the past from before the Exarchs, the future after humanity is extinct and alternate timelines with no Exarchs.