Before there was a Council of Nine Mystic Traditions, before there was an Order of Hermes, even before human civilization, the Awakened were already active in and around London. Many, if not most, of the Traditions have roots nearby — the Verbena, the Dreamspeakers, the Euthanatos, and several of the Hermetic Houses the best-known among them. When the Romans arrived and founded the settlement that would become modern London, they brought with them, over the course of several centuries, ancestors of today’s Cult of Ecstasy, the Celestial Chorus, and the Mercurian magic that would develop into the Order of Hermes’ common magickal language. Some stayed when Rome departed, and others from farther-flung areas of the world arrived as England gradually evolved into a globe-spanning empire. That empire is mostly gone now, but it has left a legacy of astonishing diversity among the mystic practitioners who call this island home.
Note that London is a somewhat old-fashioned group of Awakened, and therefore the older, more Eurocentric and patriarchal Tradition names tend to be the ones used officially. There is, however, nothing preventing individual magi from using alternative names (Akashayana, Kha’vadi, Society of Ether, and so forth).
The Traditions and the Ascension War
The Ascension War has raged for centuries, but ever since the formation of the Technocratic Union in 1850, the Traditions have been on the back foot. By the mid- to late 1990s, the Union had achieved such a dominant position that they felt comfortable in declaring victory — they no longer considered the Traditions a problem on par with the other, more hostile supernatural threats they had to deal with. The eruption of the Avatar Storm in 1999 threw both sides into disarray; the Technocracy and the Traditions lost much of their senior leadership, and those who did survive often burned through a great deal of their stockpiled resources in the process.
In a few years the storm began to die down, and by 2005 things were more or less back to normal, but neither side was eager for a return to the sort of open warfare that had characterized the conflict for so many decades. The Traditions, on the defensive even beforehand, were greatly weakened, while the Union, though still clearly the more powerful of the sects, found themselves saddled with extensive obligations and a severe shortage of resources. Since many of the Technocracy’s new leaders had been key figures in the “victory” before the storm, they were understandably unwilling to reverse course, and in any case regarded the Nephandi, the Marauders, and the many other supernatural threats as much more inimical to humanity, persecution of the Traditions increasingly took a back seat.
Since then the War has become a conflict more of ideas than of bullets. The Union still pushes forward its vision for the future of humanity, albeit at a pace much slowed down by their recent setbacks; and the Traditions attempt to push back and make room from a broader spectrum of acceptable beliefs. While there are still regular skirmishes between the groups, and there are always hotheads on both sides trying to push for a higher-intensity conflict — usually younger magi who don’t remember the pre-Avatar Storm days — it is comparatively rare now to see either side pursue major offensives, scorched-earth attacks on each other’s territory, programs of targeted assassination, and so on. The Ascension War now is fought for hearts and minds, rather than primarily to exterminate the opposition.
Today, while there is still a Council of Nine, it takes more of an advisory role, focusing on the War at the grand strategic level. They rarely take much interest in events on a scale smaller than nationwide — and, increasingly, continent-wide; their primary concerns are so abstract and esoteric that most other magi find them somewhere between incomprehensible and meaningless. While they provide advice, and sometimes even direction, to the Traditions, they also view all but the most powerful and influential of magi as pawns who need not be informed of their roles in the great game in order to carry them out.
London has its own small version of the Council, made up primarily of representatives from each of the three major chantries, along with one or two who belong to smaller groups or who have elected to remain independent. Because most of the magi who make up this group are either too old or too preoccupied to show much interest — Rose Corbett being the Verbena representative bodes ill for its powers of decision, much less action — it rarely meets in person, and most matters are left to the individual chantries to resolve. Even in cases where a matter touches on more than one of the chantries, the London Council is more likely to appoint a group of younger magi to do the legwork and make a recommendation than they are to take any sort of active hand themselves.
On the Traditions’ side, therefore, the conduct of the War has become mostly fragmented, organized almost entirely at the cabal or chantry level — only in cities where the local chantries are very closely aligned is there much in the way of inter-chantry cooperation. Rather, the War these days is a low-intensity guerilla struggle, fought by individual resistance cells that are mostly unable to reveal one another’s plans (and often even existence) if they should be captured or suborned. The mysterious entity or entities known as the Sphinx and the Rogue Council — who may or may not be one and the same — still send cryptic transmissions and messages from time to time, but no one is entirely certain who or what they are, what their agenda might be, and whether or not they can be trusted.
The Union — particularly in areas where it’s most powerful — tolerates a surprising degree of this sort of resistance, right up until the point where they actually feel threatened. Ironically, it’s the further-flung areas of the world — places where the Technocracy’s grip is at its weakest — where massive retaliation is most likely. For the most part, though, the Union’s attention and resources are focused elsewhere. In their view, resistance from the Traditions is basically petty crime — rarely given too much attention as long as there are more dangerous threats to be dealt with.
Akashic Brotherhood
Not surprisingly, given Britain’s extensive entanglements in Asia, London is home to the largest community of Akashayana in Europe. Those sects originating in India, China and Tibet are particularly well-represented, but over the past two hundred years there have been Brothers and Sisters of almost every variety at one time or another — even those of non-Asian origin, thanks to the Roda d’Oro, which has hosted everything from French savateurs to Greek pankratiasts and daæmaænga from Nigeria. The influx grew more rapid in the aftermath of World War II, and the handover of Hong Kong provoked another wave of Akashic resettlement. Now, some twenty-plus years on, new arrivals can and do come from almost anywhere in the world, as the Tradition’s diaspora has been so spectacularly successful that the old stereotypes are increasingly outdated. The 2020s Akashayana can and do come from areas half a world away from where their disciplines were developed.
Celestial Chorus
London has been a stronghold of the Choristers for almost as long as it’s been a city at all. The more progressive and reform-oriented elements of the Tradition are particularly strong here, having been strong voices in support of decentralization for centuries — although most prefer that the local Chorus remain firmly within the Christian tradition. The Knights of St. George and the Order of St. Michael have a long history in the city, as does the Cult of Mithras, which claims to have maintained a continuous presence here ever since the Romans arrived. Thanks to the worldwide reach of British influence, there is also a significant segment of non-Christian Choristers; indeed, this is the only segment of the Tradition that’s seeing steady growth locally. The percentage of Muslim and Hindu Choristers in London has never been higher, causing some friction among the youngest magi. Fortunately, however, most of the Chorus’s narrowing Christian majority seem to have taken this as an encouragement to present their own faiths in a better light, rather than taking issue with their colleagues.
Cult of Ecstasy
Like the Chorus, the Ecstatics arrived with Rome, but they have been irrelevant or entirely absent for much of the intervening time. Not until the Renaissance and the revival of the Cult of Bacchus did they become a constant presence, gaining steadily in strength since the 18th century until their foundation of one what was formerly London’s dominant chantry, the Circle of St. Herodias. While both they and the chantry have declined somewhat from their peak in the 1960s, they remain one of the stronger Traditions in the city, and have had recent members in all three of the city’s better-known chantries. The Joybringers and Klubwerks are, as is usual, the most numerous, but there’s also a significant presence of the Cult’s political wing, chiefly the Children’s Crusade and the Cult of Acceptance, along with several K’an Lu who arrived in the wake of the Hong Kong handover, and who hope to be able to rebuild away from the persecution they face in China.
Dreamspeakers
The Kha’vadi like to say that they were part of London before the river was. And that’s probably true — even the Verbena and the Euthanatos, who take pride in having been in Britain since the start, will grudgingly admit that the Dreamspeakers were most likely here first. To comment on what’s gone on since is considered impolite, since the oldest of the Traditions has been rare or absent in London for centuries. Shamanic practices native to the British Isles have been extinct or close to it since at least the Norman conquest, a situation not helped by the Grand Convocation’s having seized on any excuse they could to place European magi in any of the other Traditions instead, no matter how poor the fit. Ironically, it was the rise of colonialism that led to their having a presence here again, as small numbers of shamanic magi from Africa, Asia, and Australia came to the center of the Empire along with Sleepers from their communities. Today there are more Kha’vadi in London than at any time in the past thousand years — and yet they are still easily the least numerous of the Nine.
Euthanatos
That the Euthanatos have a long and deep history in Britain surprises many who think of them exclusively as Indian and Greek. In truth, they’re one of the three Traditions who have been here the longest — the Celtic mages of the Aided and their veneration of the cycle of the seasons far predating even the earliest Roman presence. Though a handful of mystery cultists ventured this far during Rome’s heyday, it was not until the advent of the Viking raiders and the arrival of Yggdrasil’s Keepers that there would be any significant numbers added to the ranks of the death-magi. Between the mania for all things classical that spread throughout Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries and the two hundred years of British rule in India, however, there are now representatives of nearly every major branch of the Euthanatos in England, and their influence among the Nine has grown by leaps and bounds over the past two decades. Newly revitalized in the wake of the millenium, they have quietly become perhaps the single most powerful Tradition in England today, even if relatively few realize it.
Order of Hermes
In present-day London the Order has one great advantage: almost every twenty- or thirty-something in the British Isles is mentally prepared to be whisked off to a secret mystic academy to learn formulaic spellcasting from wise older magi and ancient grimoires. The wholesale insinuation of what is essentially the entire Hermetic paradigm into popular culture is one of their great triumphs, making it doubly ironic that they had very little to do with it. They need the advantage, too; after hundreds of years of Hermetic control of London, the Order grew extremely complacent in the Georgian period, preferring to take only students of aristocratic heritage and leaving everyone else for other Traditions. So long as the aristocracy held the reins in the Sleeper world, this worked out well enough, but it led to them being heavily outnumbered by the other Traditions, and, as commoners began increasingly to gain in power and influence, the Order found itself gradually marginalized and was slow to adapt. Although now recovered enough to be at near-parity numerically, Hermetic magi in England are still disproportionately likely to be young and relatively inexperienced.
Sons of Ether
The Etherites have had a difficult time in London despite, or perhaps because of, their history here. In the wake of their split with the Technocracy in the early 1900s, the city became the site of some of the fiercest and most vicious battles between the defectors and their old comrades, and the local Etherites suffered high casualties that nearly pushed them out of London entirely. Although things have long since calmed down, bitterness over the conflict lingers on both sides; both sides still believe they were wronged by the other, and while the Union has had years of success to assuage their anger, the Society very much has not. Indeed, there’s a widespread belief that some of the more common stereotypes of British horror films like Hammer’s “Frankenstein” were a Technocratic propaganda campaign aimed at making them figures of mockery even among the Sleepers, and that’s a difficult insult to take, all the more so when some older Etherites still remember fighting their own friends and family for their beliefs. Recent years have seen something of a resurgence for this Tradition, but old habits die hard, and the image of the London Etherite as someone who takes offense at purely imagined slights has more than a bit of truth to it.
Verbena
Like the Dreamspeakers, the Verbena were a part of England before there was an England. Unlike their sister Tradition, however, the Verbena never went away. The rise of Christianity in the British Isles kept their voices muted for more than a thousand years, but even at the height of the Crusades and the Inquisition, there were still members of the Old Faith quietly keeping their ways alive. Such a lengthy period of persecution made those who survived exceedingly cautious, and as late as the 20th century there were still very few Verbena who felt comfortable leaving the rural parts of the isles for the cities. Between the never-ending march of urbanization and the revival of interest in pre-Christian practices as popularized by wicca, though, that attitude became less and less feasible. The most recent generations are quite comfortable in cities, although they’re still most likely to be found in the suburbs or the outlying boroughs of London rather than the center. In some ways, their ongoing propaganda campaign has been even more effective than the Hermetics’ — less apt to capture the imagination, yes; less overt in pushing the more spectacular uses of their magick; but much of the population of England today accepts some of the basics of the Verbena paradigm as fact, rather than fiction.
Virtual Adepts
There’s no ignoring that much of the history of the Virtual Adepts is also the history of English science; mathematical and computational pioneers like Newton, Babbage, and Turing were all Englishmen, and more than any other Convention of the Technocracy — even the Electrodyne Engineers — they’ve always thought of Albion as their home. Even in the immediate aftermath of their split with the Union, they continued to maintain a presence in London, and, thanks to the not-inconsiderable sympathy that many Union higher-ups had for their reasons for leaving — neither support for the Axis nor the murder of Turing being anywhere near universally popular with the Technocracy — the Adepts never suffered anywhere close to the campaign of retaliation that the Sons of Ether had. Even today, sites like Babbage’s grave in Kensal Green Cemetery are considered by both sides to be strictly off-limits for any sort of factionalist conflict, since some Union high-ups are still hopeful that their wayward comrades can be brought back into the fold. That, in turn, has made some of the other Traditions suspicious of the Adepts’ commitment, a suspicion sometimes tinged with envy, given that the newest member of the Council has prospered while others have declined.