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Editor's Note: In the earliest days of Mage, Vampire the Masquerade was the most popular World of Darkness game and tended to dominate people's view of the world of Mage.

Does anyone else 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 Technomancer. How did they get so powerful so fast, with no one 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 exists 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 World of Darkness, 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, its power slowly ebbing across Europe. Why, we as free-minded individuals in the real world see easily: 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 make 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 the chosen representatives? Nope. Editor's Note: In Ars Magica, Dominion was a game term describing a mystic effect, usually emanating from cathedrals, that made Christian miracles easier and other kinds of magic more difficult.

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 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 built 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 built 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 entering. However, they did not tell the clergy that it also prevented the power within from flowing 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 of 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. 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. 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 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 from other cultures, they built roads and aqueducts. Wow. Big deal. How did a bunch of stones concentrate the effects of the technomancers?

With the advent of roads, it became much easier 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 was 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 of Christianity. Still others 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 clear 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, like 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 with which Rome operated showed them with whom to ally. 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 and 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.