Which side the Legacy members land on that Eternal Conflict between Angels and Demons is dependent on them. Only the highest leadership in the fragmented Legacy or those who stumble across their associations by accident know that the Eternal Movement is the God-Machine and its servants. The Eternal Movement continues as time passes. There they serve their enigmatic and alien master with complicity. Officially they are banned by the Diamond but many are Apostates in the fringes of mage society. Clockworkers who are skilled at disguising their mechanical nature (or eliminating those who become suspicious) have been known to infiltrate the order itself. One favored tactic is to infiltrate the ranks of the Labyrinth and steer the Sleepers toward the Austere’s agenda. Among these Austere, observing, disrupting and damaging the operations of the Guardians is a primary goal (since they are not willing to do what is necessary and the Order tried to wipe them out). Some Clockworkers do seek to improve the functioning of the Great Movement, based on their particular understanding of it. The first generation of the Austere cooperated closely as followers of a greater cause, but today many Clockwork Mages now operate solo, following a personal agenda that includes acts of wanton cruelty and violence intended to test or reinforce their lack of humanity. Murder, torture, terrorism and other immoral actions would be used s tools to shift the Eternal Movement into its proper configuration. Mages careless about Paradoxes would be eliminated Sleepers who glimpsed hidden truths would be sacrificed. While the Guardians nipped at the edges of the Abyss with their subtle and ineffective schemes, the Austere would seize control of it by spilling blood without hesitation or remorse. By replacing their body parts with superior mechanical analogs, the Austere would advance their detachment from their own humanity and increase their sympathetic connection to the Eternal Movement. He and his inheritors would need to become machines in fact as well as in outlook. They must reject all trappings of mercy and compassion, which obscure one’s ability to perceive and correct the flaws that prevent the smooth functioning of reality.įurther contemplation - or derangement - convinced the Prime Mover that simply attempting a detached, mechanistic view of Creation was not enough. To restore the smooth functioning of the Mechanism of Creation, he concluded, mages must become Austere: pitiless, free of sentiment, even machine-like in their outlook. In his view, the Abyss was a misalignment of key elements in this Eternal Movement (aka the Great Movement). The first of these Clockwork Mages, an agent of the Dragon’s Eye who became known to his followers as the Prime Mover, developed a metaphysics that envisioned the Tapestry of Creation and the Diamond Wheel as an immense and intricate clockwork mechanism. Theirs is a creed that eschews compassion and self-sacrifice, whose members seek to replace morality with machine-like detachment even as they modify their own bodies with mechanical constructs. The legacy of the Austere crossed that line long ago. Guardians must always be mindful of the line between necessary evil and self-serving cruelty. It’s a difficult way to live, balancing the positive virtues that the order expects all mages to pursue against the immoral actions required for the greater good. The Guardians of the Veil sacrifice their own moral status so that other mages are free to cultivate Wisdom.
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