From: thanatos@interaccess.com
Newsgroups: alt.games.whitewolf
Subject: The Connection between the RCC, Vamps, and the Technomancers
Date: 6 Dec 1993 04:21:44 -0600
Organization: InterAccess, Chicagoland's Full Service Internet Provider
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Technomancers:  The Hidden Past

Does anyone but me get the strange impression that White Wolf isn't
being completely open in their history of the Technomancers?  I
mean, I really can't see their actions in the ebb and flow of time.  For
all we know, Newton was more of a Son of the Ether than a
Technomacer.  How did they get so powerful so fast, with nobody
noticing?  You can't really hide behind the veil of the Industrial
Revolution, (they used it to force technology down mankind's
throats) since that seems much more like the effect of their influence,
and not the cause.  The Technomancers need "humble"
understandable roots, before we can strap on cybernetics.  Thus, the
current conventions, in my opinion, rose up in the period after the
"great victory," (the industrial revolution), but there still exist a few,
like the Kindercolt, and the guys who made cars so prevalent, that
are riding on the gravy train of their success.  Those they mention
seem to be the ones with "works-in-progress," which will continue to
expand the powerbase and further entrench themselves in reality, but
to see how they can be defeated, it might be worthwhile to look at
_how_ they got so damn potent.

Now since we can't look it up in a history book, let's look at what
we know, and, using the coincidental nature of the WoD, infer
connections that probably aren't there (but should be).

At the time the Technomancers overcame the other Traditions, three
things were happening that would reshape the World of Myth into
the World of Darkness:

1)  The Technomancers were seducing young "scientists" into
reshaping the nature of cosmology, no longer making mankind the
center of all things.  Realize that humanists like Erasmus were doing
this anyway, but on an intellectual, intangible way.  If it could be
observed by the common man with no training, things could be more
"real."

2) The Inquisition was winding up in Europe, as its power slowly
ebbing across Europe.  Why, we as free minded individuals in the
real world is easy:  People got tired of getting pushed around by the
clergy wielding intangible forces.  The less people believed, the
weaker the clergy seemed to become.  The call of science, with its
reliance on rationality and realism, was very seductive.

3)  The Council of Thorns was being called, and the Camarilla, and
thus the Masquerade, was being established.

Now my postulate is that these three effects are linked, planned in
such a way to put the Technomancers deeply entrenched in power,
while forever weakening their greatest opponents.  Let's look at
each group:

The Church:  Okay, despite the bad rap, they were a tangible force
for good in the Dark Ages, linking disparate communities, and
uniting feudal lords ready to sacrifice serf warriors in pointless
chivalric fights.  The power of the Divine washed over the land, and
the aura of Dominion was a beacon for the common man.

And then the Dominion seemed to fade.  Why?  Did God lose faith
in her chosen representatives?  Nope.

Think science for a moment.  What is the most scientific application
these people were capable of?  Building.  The information on how to
build was so prized that secret societies formed, at first resembling
unions, to keep and alter the math necessary to create such wonders
as the Gothic cathedral.  Further, to create this "magic," required a
century of work, as well as the complete devotion of the people who
contributed to its building, the clear majority of whom would not be
alive when it was completed.  But were the people doing it in the
name of God, the name of the Church, or in fact to form the physical
_structure?_  We can see the earliest twinges of the Technomancers
here, in _Masons._

It didn't help that these structures were usually build on the remnants
of the old churches, which were build on the remnants of pagan
sites, in an attempt to show reverence for such places.  Thus, the
cathedrals were build on caerns and nodes.  As you could guess, the
Garou weren't thrilled by all this.  Most chose to live with it,
breaking into the old churches when the need to visit a caern arose. 
Magi did not dare to cross the Church, so they stayed away. 
However, the Masons had a proposition for the Church.  Their
understanding of math and materials would allow them to create
buildings that were slim yet strong, cold stone yet beautiful, and most
importantly, potent enough to keep the Garou away.

They had devised a way to use mathematical constructs, as well as
the materials, to artificially raise the Gauntlet in an area. 
Subsequently, they could guarantee that the Garou couldn't break in,
and demons (spirits) would have a tough time in entering.  However,
they did not tell the clergy that it also prevented the power within to
flow to the populace without.  Thus, without the free flow of reality
altering quintessence, reality became static in these regions.  In short,
not only had they seduced the populace with the beauty of the
structure, but they had dammed the flow of quintessence through the
node, diminishing the effect to the Dominion, and bottling it up.

Vampires:  Ah, the Masquerade!  Go out and tell your friends that
for the time being, you'll deliberately pretend not to be yourself. 
You'll meet in secret, but cannot speak of it outside your hidden
havens.  Once you were all powerful, but now you sweat at the
approach of humanity.  The Garou have it easy; they can walk
openly amongst humanity, but you, you must make a conscious
effort to keep the curtain of secrecy up.  It's incredibly hard, but you
do it.   You trick humanity, making it see things that are not there,
and destroy or Embrace those that discover your true nature.  And
oddly, it worked. It shouldn't have, but then again, you got that
assistance from those nice bunch of mages, on how to do it.

Why did the Technomancers have such an easy time subverting
reality, when the other mages struggled all the while?  Easy. 
Someone else was reinforcing reality for them.  Basically, through
good advice, the vampires were seduced into actively reinforcing
reality in favor of the Technomancers.  All the Technomancers had
to do was fit their schemes around the Masquerade of the vampires,
an easy enough task.

Of course, this does have its penalties.  They had to keep the other
mages from finding out the effect the vampires had on reality, so any
attempt on the part of the Traditions to stem vampires was resisted
with great force in the opposite direction, leading them away from
the true threat.

Basically, for those who still don't understand, the Kindred's job is
to keep the Sleepers asleep, doing everything in their power to
_consciously_ control the media and the masses that "Nothing's
wrong...move along...just a hedge...move along."  The recent
development of cameras and video equipment in the hands of
Sleepers may mean that the Technomancers are arrogant enough not
to need the Masquerade anymore, or it could mean that the virtual
adepts are displaying greater control on reality than realized.

The Technomancers:  Imagine a group of men, sitting around a
room, reading old, moldering scripts.  Some are arabic, some are
greek, some even egyptian.  They are discovering something
awesome and breathtaking:  reality has order!  Reality has function! 
Reality can be changed and affected in a finite, discreet manner,
consistent from application to application.  With their data, earth and
fire, when added in proper amounts over proper times, produce the
same product over and over and over.  The ancients knew about, it,
and yet the Traditions, especially the Order of Hermes, who assisted
in the Translation of these works, laugh at these notions.  They claim
that reality is _far_ from predictable, as their legends show them. 
Chaos came from the Umbra, spilling into this world in the form of
horrid invaders.  The Order stated that the only way that reality
could be seen as constant was outside the influence of such forces. 
They left the technomancers alone then, free to ruminate, free to
plan.
	"If the Umbra is our obstacle, then it must be eliminated.  So
be it."
	In the past, the architecture they now studied with religious
fervor was once used to take the power of the Spirit, and focus it
into the Divine.  By examining openings and apertures at umbral
bodies at certain times, the flow of quintessence could be regulated. 
One merely had to look at the Megalith of Stonehenge.  The peculiar
structure was intended to focus a huge amount of quintessence
embodied in the heavenly spheres when they shone in at certain
times.  What was critical was shaping and materials.  If they could
understand how to trap and contain, they could understand how to
_shield._  How to produce regular effects, that happened time and
again, without fail.
	At first it was their laboratories.  Shaped correctly, with
mathematical perfection, they were free from the chaotic forces
which once dominated their lives.  However, these items they
created soon rusted or decomposed when exposed to the outside
world.  It became necessary to expose larger and larger parts of the
world to the concept of mathematical regularity, to structure and
materials.  If they could create pattern where there was none, and
then influence people LOTS of people to follow these patterns, then
people would change their reality and their perception around these
patterns.
	They found opportunity within the Roman Republic. 
Exploiting what they had learned (stolen) from other cultures, they
build roads and aqueducts.  Wow.  Big deal.  How did a bunch of
stones concentrate the effect of the technomancers?
	With the advent of roads, it became much easy for the
Romans to rule large masses of people, and to mobilize troops. 
With this, it became easier to reinforce the Roman way of thinking,
over a steadily larger area.  The insular thinking so prevalent in the
Greek City-states were no more.  People began to realize that they
were part of a greater community, linked up with wherever the roads
went.  
	 The water the aqueducts provided allowed the populations
to swell.  With more and more people believing in the ideology of
the city, it reinforced the power of the technocracy.  However, since
they never planned the actual structure of these cities, they never
gained a fraction of the total power they could have, and this was
ultimately their downfall.
	Before we discuss that, we can see that this was the
beginning of the tacit relationship between the Kindred and the
Technomancers.  With the increase in population, the Kindred were
allowed to grow in greater numbers in the city.  With the advent of
roads, spanning the Wylds, the Kindred felt safe enough to travel
and establish relations.  Thus, the Technomancers had a great
influence on the growth of Kindred.
	What went wrong?  Some say the lead piping in the
plumbing the technomancers created.  Others blame the rise in
Christianity.  Still other say too many machinations on the part of the
Kindred lead to a wretched balance of power that the attacks of the
Garou supported barbarians brought down.
	In truth, it was none of these things.  What happened was
not quite sure, but basically, the only thing that can be said correctly
was that the Technomancers did not create a closed system.  It was
a hollow construct, a walled fortress with an open back door. 
When a powerful force of the Wyld opened within, it flooded the
Technomancer's pattern with Entropy and chaos.  Everything fell
apart horribly.  The Technomancers were determined not to let it
happen again.
	It slowly reconstructed itself, tacitly establishing connections,
and reforming old structures.  It could not let the Church get in the
way, nor could it let the Kindred exploit its works, which the
vampires had done in Rome.
	The Technomancers further searched the world for signs of
repeatable effects inherent in nature.  Oddly, it found them closer
than they had expected.  The Church was having an incredible effect
on the populace.  It taught the people that they themselves, through
God, had the power to repel the forces of darkness.  Strange spirits
in the form of angels and holy forces would manifest to fight these
creatures, such as vampires and demons, to defend humanity and the
status quo.  The Technomancers respected this power, and realized
that they could wield it to their own ends.  They realized that it was
not necessarily a power of the Church as much as the power of the
people who supported and believed in the Church.  However, the
Church was far too entrenched in power to affect.  The
Technomancers needed to take down the Church, break its power
over the people, and appoint a new overseer to control humanity. 
The efficiency which Rome operated showed them who to ally with. 
Vampires were the best at herding humanity, since they blended in
well.  However, they needed to be more subtle.
	The Technomancers turned to their friends, the Church, and
told them of their plans to build vast cathedrals based on the
mathematical perfection of God.  They also covertly raised the heat
on the Kindred, making the need for the Masquerade uniquely
critical.  The results are seen above.  The Technomancers stole the
embodiment of the human spirit, seen in the Paradox spirits, and
harnessed it as efficiently as a steam engine.  They continued this
concept of reinforcing the Grand Pattern by finding substances more
effective than shaped natural rock.  With the rail system, huge areas
were contained and reinforced in iron.  The ultimate expression was
reinforcing the pattern with asphalt ribbons that go everywhere in the
world.  Humanity see potential and opportunity within the ability to
travel anywhere, go anywhere, talk to anyone on the invisible
patterns that now surround the world, spinning high above the
surface.  They no longer know any better, so they settle for what the
Technomancers offer.
	Occasionally, a human bucks the system, forming a reality
pattern outside the framework the technomancers have devised. 
Because he is maintaining a static pattern outside the realm of the
Grand Pattern, he is not affected by Paradox spirits.  As long as he
never dips into the Spheres, or spends quintessence, he is capable of
many feats of power.  This is how hedge magic works, as well as
True Faith.  In opposition, those who seek to change pattern face
the resentment of reality and the Grand Pattern, and subsequently
pay a horrid price for their power.
-- 
thanatos@interaccess.com        /  "I don't mind being the smartest man in
DeathUrge, Master of Unknown	\    the world.  I just wish it wasn't
Time and Space.			/     this one."  -Ozymandias
            "It's a Zen thing.  You wouldn't understand."