The man who offered to show Gegi the ropes', Paul, sits with her, lights up a major league spliff and begins. "Alright, first up you have the Akashics, its a good idea to stay on the right side of them because they generally know how to either kick your arse or mess with your head. If you're really nice to them they'll teach you a martial art that they know that will allow you to break stuff with your bare hands. However, their whole ethos is peace and control, inner peace, outer peace, you get the idea. They can be boring company, and cryptic but they're worth having around. They channel their magick through ritual and martial arts. Perfection of body I understand but they constrict the mind and deny their true natures." She smiles. "Peace and control is definitely not my path." "Next we have the God-squad, the Celestial chorus, dupes. They worship what they call 'The one' they believe that all spirits, Avatars included, were originally part of one all powerful cosmic being which fragmented like humpty dumpty, and they want to put it back together. The idea of 'one true god' brings a lot of Christians into their tradition, some of them can be a little evangelical or even fascist. Anything is excusable in the name of the one. They channel their magick through song, symbols and rites. Even if there was a One there is no longer, and if it was so powerful why did it fragment? Losers." "The cult of Ecstacy is one of my favourites, they let loose their passions in a good way but lack the motivation and energy to carry things through. Their almost there but htey keep getting stiffed via artificial drugs. Grow your own is what I say. They're fun people to hook up with, good music, good dope, an enlightening fuck. Tend to get stuck in their own little world though." "The dreamspeakers have a good idea of what is going down but end up with a limited view by concentrating on just the Gaia aspect. They spend so much time in the spirit that they lose what is most important to us, the physical world. We're material beings, they forget that. They do understand the animal side though. Bit of work and they'll get there." "The Euthanatos, well they're in touch with their dark-side, butthey kill for a belief, not by instinct. Its not natural, people die at their alloted time, the Euthanatos interfere with that. They're trying to reincarnate a super-being or something. They recognise death as being just another aspect of life, which is good, but they take it too far." She smiles. "It's fairly difficult to do anything -unnatural-, really... but that's another debate entirely. Still, I don't think my calling leads that way." "Order of Herpes. Sorry Hermes, boring old stereotypical magicians. Robes, staves, circles, all the dusty old crap. They try to make magick a science, not magick thru science. Its an important distinction. Their understanding of forces makes them important, but they've had their day." "The props make a nice backdrop, but their stories never seemed to involve a lot of emotion, which is what's really important..." "Sons of Ether. Fun guys, creativeness is cool, but I wish they'd apply it to something else other than tool making, sooner or later they'll break away fully from the technocratic paradigm, I hope its in time. They use machines and weird devices to channel their magick." "Virtual adepts control the world through their computers, through software and unfortunately through hardware. Once they ascend to the idea of pure idea they might have a clue. The whole computer scene is too clean and orderly for me though. Also, they have this frightening idea of leaving the body behind, we need it, its an anchor, some ideas they take to far." She smiles. "I suppose you could say I've been out of my body in the computer world... and sometimes it gets a bit difficult to stuff your consciousness back in. The net's a great place to travel. Still, I don't really see how you can work magick with a computer... I mean, if the computer's alive, -it- could, but how you'd use it to... hrm. I guess I'm just not enough of a programmer." "Hollow ones are mopey Goths who put together their own depressing blend of magick, they can be OK, I prefer the other orphans, different every time." She shakes her head. "I was a Goth very briefly. It's not something I look back on fondly." "Lastly us, the Verbena. Our magick is ancient, but adaptable and like the branches of a tree we produce new shoots all the time. While they're different they are still a part of the whole. We stick together, our realm is the physical. Flesh and blood, the essence of being. Blood, sweat, tears, sexual juices, these humours are the realms of our power and life itself is our domain. My particular take leads us towards our true human nature as animals, the closer to that you get, the more enlightened you become." "Verbena. You're... witches, aren't you?" She says it carefully, in case the word is not appreciated. "Followers of the Goddess? I always wanted to.. learn..." Paul stubs out the now finished spliff and takes a sip of beer. "Lecture over." She nods. "I don't know... I mean, my take on it is that magick is channeled through the emotions, you have to -want- it to work, you have to need it. Everything else helps channel your desire. Music, dance, ritual... you use them to help guide you, to help your emotions feed on themselves and grow, to focus your intent. It can't be too unusual a viewpoint... surely I fit in somewhere?" Shane breaks in. "Speaking as a Orphan, that's magickally, not socially, I can quite safely say that unless you join up with a proper tradition or convention you can expect to be treated like a piece of garbage by practically every mage that you meet." "Any particular reason for that or is it simply traditional to be Traditional?" "It's because as far as the traditions are concerned, if you haven't been found, awakened and trained by one of their own you have a pitiful knowledge of the mystic arts and don't actually have any right to be wielding magick either." "Feh. Guess it just goes to show you that being Awakened doesn't keep some people from being as closed-minded and idiotic as the normals they think they're not..." "While it might not get on your nerves at first by the time you get to my sort of ability or understanding it gets irritating." She nods, accepting his ability as fact, not bragging. "So... if I did decide to hook up with a Tradition, and not one represented here, would they generally be willing to accept me, or am I not worth it unless they found me themselves?" "Oh, traditioners jump at the chance to train new mages, didn't you notice the recruitment drive aimed at Tessa when she said that she was interested in learning some more healing rituals? And she isn't really awakened. In your case you'd be even better from their point of view as the hard work is already done, and your own paradigm isn't set in stone yet, so they'd be able to teach you magic their way. Leave it too long and they write you off as a lost cause." "The question, then, would be how to find them... if I were looking for a group outside of the ones here. And how much importance does a tradition have in your life? Are you required to follow all of their practices and get involved in their politics?" She looks around to the other mages in the pub. "Or is carrying a membership card good enough?" "Up to you really, stay away from things like the Chorus and the Order of Hermes if you just want to carry the membership card. The dreamspeakers, Cult of Ecstasy and Virtual Adepts are fairly easy going about things, but with the VA's you've got to keep on being Elite and as far as Iteration X are concerned you are the number one target. You also need to be pretty hot with computers to get into the VA's." "Nah, I'm not elite." She grins. "VA's are cool, but I'm not quite cut out for membership." She looks at Paul. "The Dreamspeakers and CoX'ers sound interesting, though..." "Paul hasn't really covered the technocracy, so here's my take on them..." "We'll start with Iteration X and the NWO. ITx believe in the machine, and seek eventual unity with it, and are prepared to kill everyhting that doesn't wish unity with the machine. Their main weakness is that they are blind to the spirit worlds, but they do make the best weapons if you want something that has a better chance of not blowing up when you use it in real situations." "Those are the ones that cyborged everyone, and that they were planning the raid on... Autochthonia, right? Scary." "The NWO are what are usually meant when people talk about the technocracy. They seek to get everybody thinking the right thoughts. They will also turn on other parts of the technocracy if those parts aren't thinking good thoughts. The NWO are the ones behind town surviellance camera's and the like, and are also great fans of brainwashing." She shivers. "The good reasons for remaining inconspicuous." "The progenitors are as their name would suggest interested in life, generally in perfecting it, but they have several research departements devoted towards finding new dieseases and creating the same in order to help in the fight against the occult. They also do the cloning business, including creating clones for members of other conventions. On the whole they're not to be trusted." "There is also the Syndicate, but I'm currently under contract with them so I can't say anything and the Void Engineers about whom Fred can tell you far more than I ever will." "Never heard of them... but even if it were necessary to be recruited somewhere, I don't think the technocracy would be the place... So far it sounds like my reaction wasn't too far off..." "It depends, I've just generalised them. You get conventions members who are actually trying to do good things for people, just as you get tradition mages who only think that they doing the right thing." She nods. "A lot of the technos are trying to keep the world 'safe', right?" "Yeah, some of them see everything supernatural as a threat, others concentrate on the dangerous bits like nephandi and vampires who get too bloodthirsty." She shivers. "Nephandi. Somehow I get the unfortunate feeling that I'm going to be seeing more of them." "As you may have gathered by now I'm a mage for hire and work for both sides, this gives me a modicrum of protection, although if ItX suddenly take an active dislike to me there's not much that will stop the squad of Hit Marks turning up at my door." She nods. "But wouldn't working for both sides make them -both- want you out of the picture, assuming that you couldn't be trusted not to betray them to their 'enemies'?" "Not if you're honourable about it and not if you're good. If you don't break a contract then they have no reason to doublecross you unless they are incredibly paranoid, which ItX are. If you break a contract then in my opinion you deserve what ever you get. The other thing is that when people hire you they have every right to not expect you to sell them out whilst you're under contract, but any information which they have given you is fair game when you're not working for them. As a result they should have known better than to tell you anything damaging to them."