#technocratic union

[tlwebb]

[bethanythebogwitch]

My favorite magic system from a game I haven't actually played is from Mage: the Ascension. It kind of fits as both a hard magic system and a soft magic system at the same time because there are some hard rules, but its mostly very open. To become a mage you have to realize that reality is not what it seems. In MtA, reality is whatever the majority of people believe it is, known as the consensus. The consensus in modern days is pretty uniform everywhere, with small variations based on where you are, but it used to be wildly different based on the cultural beliefs of the local people. A mage is a person who realizes that the consensus isn't true reality and gains to power to act outside of its rules. Any given mage's abilities come from their own personal view of reality, known as their paradigm. A mage's magic can do basically anything, as long as it is accounted for in their paradigm. So a mage who's paradigm includes the classic Aristotelian elements can perform magic based on that, but if their paradigm doesn't include animistic spirits then they can't commune with those spirits even though other mages could based on their own paradigm. The problem with this is that the consensus doesn't like it when you go around breaking its rules and will punish mages by slapping them with an effect called paradox. Paradox can be anything from a spell failing to getting shunted into your own personal pocket universe. Nothing generates paradox like being seen doing magic by sleepers (people who are not mages and still live fully within the consensus). Most mages either only use magic around other mages or, if they need to cast around sleepers, will disguise their magic as a mundane effect. Someone throwing a fireball from their hands will generate major paradox because the consensus is that people can't do that. However if a mage holds a lighter up to a spraycan before casting their fireball, the sleepers can rationalize it as something that exists within the consensus and not as much paradox will be generated.

In the dark ages, magic was part of the consensus and mages could openly rule over the sleepers because everyone believed in magic and therefore magic was part of the consensus. In response to the tyranny of the mages, a group was formed called the League of Reason, who wanted to introduce a new form of magic to the consensus that everyone could use. This form of magic was based on logic and reason and was called science. This led to the ascension war, where the League of reason sought to remove magic and superstition from the consensus and a very loose coalition of mages called the Council of Nine Mystic Traditions want to keep magic in the consensus. And the League of Reason won. A mostly rationalistic, scientific worldview has become the consensus worldwide, forcing the Council into operating underground. The League of Reason has become the Technocracy, a worldwide secret organization ruling the world from the shadows and trying to stamp out magic and any other form of "reality deviants" to keep humanity safe, even if they have to suppress basic human imagination to do so. Notably, the earliest books for the game very much said "Traditions good, Technocracy bad", but later books went for a much more grey approach to the conflict between them, making it clear that both sides really are doing what they think is in humanity's best interest even if their ideas for how to do so are fundamentally incompatible.

What's really interesting is that science and technology really are a form of magic and technocrats are mages, even if the Technocracy would vehemently deny this. Technology is a form of magic that everyone can use because its part of the consensus and science doesn't discover new facts about the world, It creates those facts and applies them to the world. The Technocracy's super-advanced technology creates paradox just as much as magic does because personal anti-gravity suits and mass-produced clones violate the consensus just like throwing around fireballs and conjuring demons does.

Mage: the Ascension is a super fun setting because just about any fantasy or sci-fi trope can exist here. Classic pointy hat and wand wizards can battle cyborgs armed with self-replicating nanotechnology. Anti-authoritarian punks can hack your wallpaper to spy on you because they believe all reality is part of a unified mathematical whole that the internet gives us access to. A group of spacefarers can ride the luminiferous aether to mars only to encounter Aztec shamans who asked the spirits to carry them there thousands of years ago. A powerful mage can create a time loop by convincing their younger self to obtain enlightenment through the power of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Two people can have an argument over whether the guy they just met was an alien from Alpha Centauri or an elf from the Norse nine realms and both of them can be right. Animistic spirit-callers can upload themselves to the internet to combat spirits of malware. And an angry mage might just teleport you into the sun because they believe distance is just an illusion and therefore have the power to make anything go anywhere with a thought. It's a wild ride.

[mel-155-a]

"Okay, you want to hear something really weird? There is a guy who no joke uses the complete, long form 1987 Canadian census as his source of power. He is convinced it's the encrypted key to a Library of Babel and once-what? Yeah, like the Borges short story. No, I don't understand how that works, how would I know? Anyways, last time we tried to catch him, he shouted out an address somewhere in northern Alberta and the HIT Marks got turned into cake. No, not like they were then shaped like a normal cake, like those fucked up videos on the Internet where someone cuts into a skateboard and reveals that it is secretly cake? What do you mean you haven't seen those? Man, these will fuck with your head worse than the RDs, get over here and I will show you."

[spectrolitha]

I have MtAs brainrot. Specifically, Technocracy brainrot. Send help these bastards won't leave my mind... N.W.O., is this your social processing kicking in? 🥺

Context under the cut:

This picture is honouring the fact that I got my hands on Revised edition Iteration X book and the way their relationship with Syndicate was described is hilarious to me. Check this out:

I adore how in-universe when ppl talk about Syndicate they sound like a gun is held to their heads 🤡

Oh, a bit more of explaining the picture.

Two people on the upper part are ItXers. In the lower part we have some proper Syndicate buddie. Behind him are a Syndicate Enforcer and a MiB (without his suit, a pity).

You might say: "Okay, Enforcer is maybe playing a bodyguard or smth for the higher-ranking Syndicate member, but what is N.W.O. agent doing here?". Well, here's the thing. Both him and the Enforcer actually share and amalgam with girl in upper right corner. So even if they aren't related to Iteration X needing Syndicate's money, they are still quietly mourning the fact that they probably aren't getting any financing ever again just by association with this mess.

[mizziix]

In Mage the Ascension one of the most interesting conflicts for me is between the Technocratic conventions of the Syndicate and the NWO. To quickly summarize both, the Syndicate are the money wizards who provide the funding and materials for the other conventions to use, they control economics and the private sector. The NWO meanwhile charged itself with controlling culture, human thought, psychology and the development of new ideas.

They hate eachother, and seeing the ways their conflict plays out is so so so fun.

If you asked the Syndicate, the NWO is a bloated convention that needs to be reorganized, split apart between its disparate elements and have its authority redistributed and refocused. The Syndicate book makes it clear that they see themselves as essential, they are constantly playing up their own value, their own necessity to the whole union, and phrasing the actions of the NWO as an attack on their territory. But in doing so, they belie an anxiety undercutting everything, their convention is only useful so long as they are providing a service. It behooves them then to monopolize that service, the production of funding, Prime energy, and material goods, even at the expense of other conventions. They even admit that their applications of Primal Utility aren't the only possible ones, but they refuse to engage with those because they would fall under other conventions territory and thus lose their monopoly.

The NWO on the other hand don't even fight on the same level. Small aside, the NWO book is one of the best pieces of in universe propaganda and psychological manipulation written in all of Mage the Ascension, befitting the House of Mind. The NWO do not acknowledge the conflict between them and the Syndicate as a conflict, they only point out the Syndicates repeated failings and screw ups. The NWO doesn't need to fight the Syndicate, all they need to do is control the battlefield, control how people think about the conflict in the first place. They never mention their necessity to the Union, they don't state it directly but instead continuously imply it repeatedly, it's not a question, it's not something that could be replaced. It's a fact, and you agree with it.

[theonyxpath]

On this day in 2022 we released Melody Through the Mirrorshade Lens A Fiction Anthology for Technocracy Reloaded in POD and PDF via our partners at DriveThruFiction https://www.drivethrufiction.com/product/418384/M20-Melody-Through-the-Mirrorshade-Lens?affiliate_id=13&src=OPPTumblr This book contains four short stories focusing on the Technocracy!

[spotimy]

A recent emoji I made for a personal server, this is my character Richard Madden. He’s creator and head of the Technocratic Union’s OSHA department. This is called :OSHAapproved:

[nothingheregonowplz]

Can you imagine how pissed the Techocracy must have been at themselves after they caused the Dimensional Anomaly? I have to imagine that one of the conversations went like this:

New World Order: What the FUCK did you DO?!

Void Ennegineer: What did we do? THE FUCK DID YOU DO

NWO: WE were containing a MAYJOR HEMOPHAGIC ENTITY threat to reality!

VE: Oh, a Vampire huh? Well guess what GENIUS? Your dumbass orbital sun death laser cracked open the vaults to HELL

NWO:...

NWO: The what.

VE: YEAH. Now we got Demons just, out there now. What are they doing? HELL IF I KNOW.

NWO: Well thanks to your Spirit Nuke stunt, we can't contact Managment AT ALL.

VE: ...

VE: You what?

NWO: YEAH. All contact with everyone in the Horizon Contructs? Gone. Can't find them, can't detect them, zero communication.

VE: ...

NWO: ...

VE: We'll contain the Demons if you get the PR team to cover up management being gone

NWO: Deal. Let us never speak of this again.

[ascensiondifficult]

[znarikia]

I don't think think the Tychoidean Cosmology properly accounts for the implications of relativity in a universal model that's subject to change via observation.

[tlwebb]

[bethanythebogwitch]

[mel-155-a]

"Why doesn't the cafeteria serve vegetables? Why the hell would they-oh, right. You are new. Yeah, "nutrition" isn't a thing, we just had a bunch of useless weeds that kept growing everywhere, so we had some NWO guys convince people that they needed to eat a bunch of them to stay 'healthy'. Ha! Like that means anything we don't tell them it means."

[spectrolitha]

So. Uhm. Remember MtAs one-shot I've storytelled months ago?

There was an NWO agent who was really close to becoming one of Technephandi.

Well, my players managed to redeem him. And get him away from Technocracy for a while. So he has spent some time with Cult of Ecstacy of all people. And now he's one of them.

He's currently on a run from both Technocracy and Traditions, because the former is obviously not glad about the betrayal and potential information leak and the latter would like to "ask him a few questions" since not every day MiB turns Ecstatic, they need to make sure he's not a double agent and also get some information about Technocracy from him. And he doesn't want to give any information to anyone, he wants to be left alone. Oh, and also Technephandi are curious about where has he disappeared to as well, but they haven't caught up on the latest events or his traces. Yet.

For now he stays with one of Ecstatic loners and desperately searches for a way to blackmail each and every organisation looking for him in a way which will allow him to have some peace. Good luck for him, I guess. I mean, he has a chance since I, the Storyteller, am rooting for him. I blame my players for making me really invested in life on an NPC who was meant to die at the end of the one-shot. What a bunch of people ��� /affectionate

So yeah. Have a weird conceptual piece about personal growth and putting yourself in danger for it. From NWO agent to almost Technephandi to Ecstatic. What an insane character arc.

[tinkerbitch69]

This post was made by the technocracy.

[theonyxpath]

On this day in 2021 we released Technocracy Reloaded for Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition. Put on the last suit you'll ever wear and report for duty, agents! Anything less would be...unmutual. https://drivethrurpg.com/product/354689/M20-Technocracy-Reloaded?affiliate_id=13&src=OPPTumblr