The Free Council, a young organization of mages who espouse democratic ideals and seek magic in human culture and science.
Order Rote Skills: Crafts, Persuasion, Science
Humanity is Magical
Magic exists in the Fallen World, like a tree stunted by The Abyss, growing ever upward to touch the Supernal. The Awakened have always been sensitive to the spirit of an age, and the modern age is one of power and promise. All of humanity’s knowledge can be held in a pocket, while revolutions are given wings by invisible birds.
Mathematicians and theoretical scientists grasp the fundamental nature of reality, straining against the impossible. The Fallen World is a chain on human souls, but any chain can be reforged into a key…or a sword.
Upheaval and innovation lead to occult Wisdom: This is the basis of the Council of Free Assemblies, an Order comprised of modern idealists and ancient rebels united by a shared love of humanity and the belief that the traditions of the Fallen World hold a place equal to the Supernal. Geniuses, rebels, malcontents — all have places within Assemblies, fostering a flourishing idealism tempered by practical iconoclasm.
Larger and more varied than all other Orders, Libertine Sancta ring with competing voices of anarchists, free-market capitalists, and doctrinaire demagogues. Ancient Legacies and formerly-Nameless societies that predate the Diamond share a table with cutting-edge technomancers, bound by the Libertine Creed and a vision of the future.
Mages join the Libertines when they want to fight for Sleepers and democracy, when they find more value in the works of modern-day humanity than those of ancient mages, when they’re deeply invested in a Sleeper magical culture.
Core Beliefs
Libertine Creed
The Free Council is comprised of mages with deep ties to the Fallen World — they believe the ancients possessed extraordinary insights into magic, but prodigies exist in the world today, and new symbols are forged in the Supernal to accompany human achievement.
The past is gone and the future ever-mutable, but the present is the most exciting time to be a mage. Despite thousands of different occult praxes, conceived of at any time from thousands of years ago to yesterday, one Creed binds Assemblies with three tenets
Humanity is Magical
Sleepers in groups evince Supernal inspiration. Other Orders hide within, control, and inspire Sleeper societies; but Council mages invest in them, finding new occult secrets in culture, science, technology, and art. Sleeper art corresponds to Supernal symbols that never existed before the moment of artistic inspiration.
Libertines admit that Quiescence can damage individual Sleepers, while insisting that the communal spirit of humanity reflects the Supernal. Even hardcore Libertines know it’s dangerous to teach secrets to the unworthy, so they strive to make all Sleepers worthy.
Libertines rarely work to uplift Sleepers individually; direct communion with the Supernal means the Awakened are, ironically, less capable of reflecting Above and Below. Instead, Libertines work to bridge the gap between Sleepers and Awakened by destroying the pernicious Lies that crush the human soul.
Doing so will draw forth the Abyssal shard within every human soul simultaneously rather than piecemealed Awakenings. Revolutions may centre on powerful individuals, but they are movements of peoples entire.
Destroy the Followers of the Lie
Sleepers are enslaved by Quiescence. The world is trapped under the power of hostile forces, further dilating the relation - ship between Supernal and Fallen. Libertines aren’t content with seeing though the Lie themselves — it forces humanity into a hierarchy of Awakened and Sleeper merely by existing.
Radical columns advocate open war against the Seers (and, sometimes, the Silver Ladder), but the Council as a whole cannot agree on the best way to reform Awakened society away from authoritarian origins. Most have settled on the idea that peaceful cooperation within the Pentacle will gradually grow the Awakened community away from outmoded governance. The Pentacle’s formation is a victory already, after all.
Democracy Seeks the Truth
Democracy stands in total ideological opposition to tyranny — only by rejecting all elements of their power can the Exarchs be defied. If humans working together draw on the Supernal World, then hierarchies — even Awakened ones — dilute and neuter that power, reducing it to a mere trickle. The Free Council believes in making group decisions and elects temporary leaders in response to specific societal needs.
In practice, this isn’t much different than deference to experienced mages (and thus, Libertines can comfortably co-exist within a Consilium governed by representative democracy), but the Free Council’s doctrine of experto crede — trusting the experts — doesn’t always mean a master rules supreme in an Assembly, and if one does it is seldom for very long. Many Libertines honestly believe that a decision made by a group, or one directly empowered by a group, is more likely to be right than one taken alone.
Origins
For most of recorded history, mages who conflicted with the Diamond’s Atlantean dogma found themselves shuffled into dead-ends within the Orders or left bereft of Order membership entirely. Powerful Legacies grew outside the shadow of Atlantis, secure in their praxes but solidly in the minority. Others took a hard stand against the Diamond, branded as heretics or Left-Handed. Many formed Nameless Orders — cults and schools that were, at best, regional powers.
The democratic revolutions of the late 18th century and 19th century changed everything. In the bombs of London anarchists, the creak of the wind against Chinese warships, and the flashes of Parisian gunpowder, mages found new and unique praxes. These revolutionary mages chafed against the Diamond, but found allies in the Nameless Orders. Ancient mystery cults and occult traditions unchanged since the Bronze Age met with mages who extolled the scientific method and were eager to escape the stifling Diamond dominance.
Both parties found themselves transformed, catalysing the formation of a new worldwide Order. Globe-trotting revolutionaries and charismatic leaders — themselves symbols of a new order — took advantage of advances in mass travel to cross-pollinate the Libertine Creed, forming the Nameless cabals into cells capable of rapid communication with each other.
Drawn into these cells (called columns, rather than cabals) and held together by their shared focus on human culture, the Nameless Orders formed column democracies to oppose Consilia. Membership grew rapidly, sparking conflicts across the globe and threatening to consume the Awakened world in arcane conflagration. The Nameless War was poised to be the dramatic Awakened conflict of the 19th century.
Seeking an advantage in their millennia-long cold war, the Hegemonic Ministry of the Seers offered the Nameless an alliance against the Diamond. Emissaries offered a marriage of human culture and technological control, sweetening the deal with wealth and temporal power. The attraction was obvious: Nameless mages embraced Fallen fashions and technology as praxes, and were deeply entrenched in mortal culture and fundamentally opposed to the attitudes of the Diamond.
The Seers saw their chance to rid the world of the very idea of the occult, sealing the Fallen World’s cracks and completely controlling the Awakening. The simultaneous answer of the Nameless came on New Year’s Eve, 1899:
No. The Great Refusal was unanimous (if only because the columns who accepted the offer were quietly, brutally purged) and refocused the nascent war efforts against the Seers. Within a decade, the Nameless Wars had ended. Convocations offered support and assimilation to Nameless columns, while the Silver Ladder worked to support the allied Assemblies and Nameless Orders as a true fifth Order. The Diamond became a Pentacle, albeit with a point that drew on the Supernal weight of human society and innovation rather than magically emulating a caste of an Awakened City.
Mysteries
The Free Council looks for Mysteries within scientific and cultural innovation — supernatural fringe sciences, retro-history, new theories, ancient civilizations, and social movements. Radical occult theories discarded by Diamond Orders find purchase and, occasionally, success within the Council.
They were born in an era when political thinkers wrestled with notions of anarchism and communism, when occultists invented the tarot (which even the Diamond grudgingly admitted was a success), and when Western and Eastern religions fused into new forms. As the Hellenistic era gave birth to the Diamond, so too did globalization give birth to the Pentacle.
As the Free Council seeks to mix magic and science, the Libertines hold dear the institution of the Lorehouse, university and occult repository combined. Every mage of the Free Council is tasked toward improving the dissemination of magical discovery throughout the Lorehouse, requiring constant research and magical activity.
Magical Symbolism: Culture
Human genius drives the praxis of Libertine magic, considering the complex occult and scientific traditions of the Fallen World to be reciprocal Supernal symbols. Power and value ascribed symbolic importance by Sleepers creates magical resonance.
Derided as techné (“Craft,”) by the conservative elements of the Diamond Orders, the Libertines adopted the term as a badge of honour, their unity and recognition of human power enabling a powerful and versatile Order praxis.
The Libertines dedicate complex Sleeper phenomena as magical tools, constantly seeking and inventing new Instruments to probe the Supernal, valuing their cultural power over potential Atlantean symbolism. Mathematical formulae hold a place alongside (and complementary to) Platonic gematria.
Stonehenge and Baghdad batteries can be occult devices as much as solar panels and microwave power emitters. Libertines exalt the process of science itself as a tool of wonder, humanity’s reach exceeding its imagination.
Hubris
Born of violence, hubristic Libertines cling fast to an ironically intolerant viewpoint in their zeal to fight the Lie. A factitious Order made of ancient Legacies and contemporary philosophies, Libertines often find themselves unable to agree on a single methodology and unwilling to take action. Lack of a hierarchy means the community responds with a singular purpose, but cannot take necessary actions that are unpopular.
Mistakes stem further from abdicated responsibility for group actions, or justifying deaths in order to battle the followers of the Lie. Lone voices questioning an Assembly invite censure at best and violent expulsion at worst; most Libertines accept a great many things they might be less than comfortable with in the name of social unity, preserving their political capital for a more important vote.
Concepts
Radio Free Libertine
The antenna clicks as I unfold it, spots of rust dotting an iron frame too dull to reflect the night sky. I grasp the iron and begin to speak, my will transforming words into waves across the night sky. Sleepers don’t need magic to hear me, just a working radio. This city needs a voice who can tell it like it is, one who didn’t blind herself in the sunlight when she left the cave. It’s easy to forget the people on the street when you’re in a tower.
It’s easy to forget what’s worth fighting for. Every night, I remind them. When I walk the streets these nights, I see my words painted over gang tags. The war for reality is won with hearts and minds.
Dreamer
I tell the stories of long, long ago, when time first began for people after creation. Every night, I stoke the fire, telling all who will listen — Sleeper or Awakened alike. I speak of how the spirits made the world, placed man there, commanded obeisance.
Idly, my hands trace sigils on a rock, speaking of how the spirits live within, how new life exudes from the stones to be reborn as men. There is power in stories, that much the Diamond tells true. Truth resides in the listener, though, not in the speaker. When I’m done speaking, I always ask the listener what he thought, and I’m not satisfied until I’ve learned something new.
Stereotypes
Arrow:
No man is an island, no matter how strong the fortifications.
Guardians:
Magic is to be shepherded, not feared.
Mysterium:
What good is hoarded knowledge if you don’t share it?
Ladder:
How does one exalt the equality of all, then claim to be first among equals?
Seers:
Our antithesis, our great cause. The Great Refusal was our Calatafimi.
Lore Bite
Another video of a riot.
The media treats it like it’s a new occurrence, yeah? But if you live long enough, you see the same image every few decades. Fists raised in rebellion. Flaming chunks of something hurled against anonymous soldiers, ones with no face but authority.
It’s not enough to throw the Molotov cocktail, it’s gotta be seen. The act of viewing rebellion changes the rebel and the viewer. The medium is the message, and fire carries one hell of an argument.Just because it’s cyclical doesn’t mean there isn’t meaning. That kind of fire runs deep in societies and culture. That’s where the Supernal is closest to the Fallen World, when passion and power circle a symbol. It’s like a photo of a mountain and a lake, yeah? One reflects the other so clearly you can’t always be sure what’s real.
Throw a rock in, you start seeing the ripples and the currents. You learn more about what you’re looking at by the whole picture than just one side or the other. That’s how you separate the two — throw a rock. Not literally, y’know?
Not always, at least.The Hierarch is advocating against doing anything about what’s going on in the industrial district, but lots of people still live and work there. Not just the working class — tech-savvy start-ups buy out old buildings cheap, revitalize neighbourhoods. Old and new bringing life is what we’re all about; so is throwing fire when necessary. Let’s raise a fist and make some noise, shall we?