Fighting the Good Fight
Hope is in many ways the greatest asset both sides have, for people who hope believe in something. For while a lucky few of the masses born in the right ethnic groups in the right social classes and the right countries the vast majority of mankind suffers under poverty, famine, disease, war and oppression. It was partly the promise of a better future, a better tomorrow that allowed the Technocracy to come so far in the conflict, but now that tomorrow is here for many the world is no better and no safer. Disillusionment is potentially the greatest enemy for almost everyone, for if the Sleepers believe change is no longer possible then nobody can win.

If hope is important, ideas are the real weapons in the war, and while global communications have made it easier for the Technocracy, they have made it easier for the others too. Its quite easy to get ideas into the Masses, but much, much harder to get them out again. While some ideas can be "debunked" they still tend to be clung to by small groups. More importantly it becomes harder and harder to talk about what the Masses believe as whole when so many people believe so many different things. This was always to some extent the case but historically belief (and some Mages even claim reality itself) used to be regionalized. Now however even that distinction is gone. Removing something from the consensus becomes increasingly difficult as it becomes increasingly not one thing believed by everyone but a collection of sometimes contradictory things believed by different, even overlapping, groups. Each group can claim a certain amount of metaphysical "turf", it is the number and strength of the believers that slowly shifts with the tides of the war. One of the greatest threats is not that any group will win or lose but that it the beliefs of the masses will become so varied and fractures that the whole conflict grinds to a halt, with nobody able to make much headway.

It is also important to realise very few Sleepers beliefs mesh completely with any one factions. Most Sleepers beliefs probably include parts of several groups paradigms. Indeed it is frequently not as clear cut as it would seem amongst Mages, almost everyone believes in technology and their are Technocrats who believe in God. The Mage factions are for the most part influenced by Sleeper beliefs at least as much as they influence them. After all they are made up of Mages who where once Sleepers. When an idea takes hold of the masses some of those people will in time Awaken and join the various faction so the idea becomes part of the Mage community. Mages themselves who have any degree of human interaction will pick up ideas too. So it is not a question of the Mage factions leading the Sleepers, but more interacting with them, albeit without the Sleepers knowledge.

All these comments that follow are of course generalisations, Mages are after all individuals first and foremost.

The Traditions
Battered and worn the Traditions are far from being truly defeated. While the Technocracy seems to hold the upper hand consider for a moment how many people believe in things beyond its doctrine? Count all the people who have some superstitious belief, who read horoscopes, who phone psychic hotlines, who believe in ghost or faith healing or tarot readings. Count all the people who still go to church with genuine belief, or to a mosque or a synagogue or a temple. Count all those who think, or hope, that the wonders of the internet or radical new technology will make the world a better place. The Traditions have a bigger basis of support than many might think, the fact that unawakened can still work acts of magic is a testament to the fact there is still belief in it.

Unlike their main foe the Traditions do not have an organised approach, no central command tells them to go off and spread the word or change Sleepers minds. Most Mages do it simply because that is what they believe. Its easy to lose sight of the fact that a Verbena curing a few people in her town with traditional remedies is, in her own way, taking part in the Ascension War, quite possibly without intending to. If her remedies work than that is more people who believe in her paradigm and it is strengthened that little bit. It might only be barely perceptible locally but a difference has been made. Many Mages who claim the Ascension War is an act of hubris and are not involved frequently are in small ways making a difference to it.

Pop culture and the new age movement are both a bane and a blessing to the Traditions. Many old ideas have been repackaged and successfully taken a firm root amongst the Masses. Yet many Tradition members feel that dumbing down the sacred truths to make them easy for mass consumption ultimately does them as much harm as good. However now they have Awakened members who group up with these new beliefs who can make them work as well as any of the old ways.

Another great problem they face is that even in the Mythic Age magic was not something everyday people regularly practiced and even the most devoutly religious rarely had any actual experience of the divine. The occult arts, and the science of the newcomers, is by nature rather and elite practices. While they can often get Sleepers accept some of the basis of those arts they never envision a world where everyone practices them and they are frequently too personal nature to be mass produced to reproduces for wide scale benefits. Medicine demand is easy, miracles on demand is not.

Akashic Brotherhood
For some reason wisdom from elsewhere is always seen as being better than the local kind. The west has become captivated with the idea of eastern mysteries and wisdom. Martial arts, Yoga, meditation, Buddhism, acupuncture, all these things and more have made their way into the western consciousness, even if many people don't really understand them.

In their home turf the Akashics have it even better. In countries where sky scrappers are built according the dictates of Feng Shui and buildings of major corporations contain shrines evidence of their paradigm can be found all around. Even the Technocracy seem reluctant to attempt to dislodge this hold, although they can claim marginal success in parts of Communist China.

The very nature of their philosophies rather prevents them from leveraging from this potential support. The belief that each individual must find their own way that cannot be told to them pretty much precludes trying to change things on a large scale for the Masses.

Celestial Chorus
If the strength of a Tradition was measured in terms of the number followers the Chorus . While Christianity does not hold the same grip as it did on Europe in the Mythic Age, it has spread over much of the world and Islam is currently the worlds fastest growing religion. Despite this atheism and apathy eat away at the Choristers support and although the total numbers of their followers grows, in relative terms they are slowly being pushed back. More dangerous to them than total lack of belief is the increasing marginalisation of faith in western society, many people go to church without having any real belief in it. Religion is frequently trivialised and often starts to lack conviction in an attempt to be politically correct, in an age where moral absolutes are frequently looked down upon their message becomes harder to get across..

Many modern Choristers work with small congregations rather than vast organisations, helping to restore and kindle faith in their flock on a personal level and bring to them a touch of the One.

Cult of Ecstasy
The Ecstatics really hit their peak in the '60s and '70s in the western world as many of their ideas seized the public consciousness. Ecstaticsm as religious worship is and always has been a very minority thing, but the idea of expanding the bounds of consciousness and freedom social taboos became a popular idea, for a while. The dream may have crumbled, but it has not gone completely.

Some Cultists, with surprisingly respectable public personas, have been quite actively involved in the public debates over the legalisation and responsible use of drugs. Some have worked hard encourage responsible sexual freedom. Others work on a purely personal level, expanding the mind and senses of those they think can handle it, or sometimes just the people they hang out with, not every Cultist is a model of responsibility.

Dreamspeakers
If politically correct apologist attitudes has harmed the Chorus it may have saved the Dreamspeakers. Once it seemed their very cultures would be wiped out, their people destroyed or enslaved and the beliefs eradicated. Now their people are encouraged to take pride in their heritage and they can get government grants to protect sacred sites. Its been a long hard struggle with some whole cultures effectively destroyed and much work remains, prejudice and discrimination are rife in the World of Darkness.

Many Dreamspeakers are more concerned with protecting their people and their culture, either in some supposed 'pure' form or adapted to the modern world, than spreading those beliefs to everyone. They work hard to help their people know, be proud of and preserve their heritage as something living not a foot note in history. Still they have benefited from the radical change in perception the western world has had to the indigenous people it conquered.

Euthanatos
If one member of the Traditions shows no interest in imposing a global paradigm its the Euthanatos. Indeed in the Euthanatos' ideal reality they would not be necessary, the cycle would never become clogged and the Good Death would not be required. The very nature of their sacred duty is so based around the individual that in most cases the idea of reaching the masses is meaningless to them.

One area some Euthanatos do get involved in is the debate over euthanasia and the right to die. While many are concerned that Sleeper can have this right, they are also involved in making sure that if it is their it is used responsibly.

Order of Hermes
Since the fall of the Mythic Age the Hermetic Houses influence over the mortal world has been waning. In the Mythic Age they enjoy a position rather like the modern Technocracy in that although the Masses did not understand what they did, they believed it was possible. The Hermetic Arts have always been the provenience of the elite few who could afford the time to study them and had the intelligence and skill to understand them, and this has not helped their cause. The decline has been slow, during the Renaissance many great scientists were also alchemists, and the beginning of the 20th Century saw a large number of Hermetic groups even if they had exclusive membership. In these days of quick fixes and desired easy answers the years of study turns off most Sleepers. Still the Orders members work to put ideas to the Sleepers in shapes of forms that will catch on.

The Hermetics still wield a degree of influence over the moral world, universities and places of education a quite common for them and it is still not that unusual for a new scientific discovery to crop up that bears more than a passing resemblance to a mystic truth. The Hermetics also benefit from the fact that many aspects of their Arts, particularly their tools, are quite deeply embedded in the western cultural conciseness.

Sons of Ether
As well as fighting over getting published in Paradigma many Sons try to get published in Sleeper science journals. Some bypass the Scientific community altogether and use the trust in science and scientific pop culture the union has created to appeal straight to the masses. The scientist as celebrity is something some Sons have used to great advantage and several of their ideas, most notably in areas like quantum physics, have made their way into the public, much to the Technocracies dismay.

In some ways though they are their own worse enemies, a Sons theory is a likely to be attacked by another Son as by a Technocrat and with no coordinated message or strategy they are far more fractious than Union. Still even this sometimes helps, the Union can never seem to predict just what the Sons will come up with next.

Verbena
If any group has prospered from the New Age movement it is the Verbena. New Ageism, Neo-Paganism and other movements have brought many of the old beliefs back to the people in a new may. Some older Verbena have utter contempt for this as they feel these that these things have none of the historical roots they claim and are creations of the 20th centaury. the ignorant Sleepers, they feel, are a travesty. Other see this not only as a chance to get their message across but to breath new life into old beliefs and that their new way is as valid, and possibly even better, than the old ones.

The Verbena have had other successes too, their are still places where the old wisdom never completely went away and people still trust to traditional ways as well as modern ones. Better still modern science can be used to "prove" that old remedies have a sound medical basis and a reason to work, helping restore Sleeper belief in them. A growing distrust in artificially created food and drugs and more people using homeopathic or natural remedies has helped the Verbena.

Virtual Adepts
The newcomers to the Council, the Adepts are in a most enviable position. The use and acceptance of the internet is progressing at an incredible rate and soon it promises to be a part of the daily lives of even greater numbers of people as more and more go online to do more things. Sleepers talk about virtual communities, online personas and even putting the consciousness the net. Reality 2.0 seems closer day by day.

The Adepts have a fight ahead of them though, while the Void Engineers have been their main foe in the Digital Web, in the real world the Syndicate and the New World Order. The former as big business moves in, the latter as governments seek control and try and impose legislation. Some Adepts lash out at these causing chaos and destruction, despising many of the Sleepers as not understanding the world they are entering. Others try and put forward the need for responsibility and self government on line, amongst Sleepers and Awakened alike.

The Technocracy
The Technocratic Union has had unrivalled success in the Ascension War. Science and Technology have become so firmly entrenched that even the Traditions have mostly given up hope of ever removing them. The Mythic beasts have gone, fled to other dimensions or driven to extinction and the creatures of the night that remain take human form and hide in the shadows, fearful of a discovery that could lead to their destruction. Although they have reduced the hold superstition and religion hold on the Masses the Union is still a long way from removing it. Indeed there own successes seem to have brought about something of a backlash from Sleepers many of whom feel the need for some greater spiritual fulfillment.

Unlike the Traditions the Union does have an organisation and its infamous Timetable. Enlightened operatives are too rare and valuable to try and convince Sleepers on an individual basis or in small groups. Instead the Union employs and influences the tools it has created of the media and the ability to mass produce technology. These allow them to convince people by the thousands, millions and even billions. They are also experts at getting Sleepers to promote their ideas and technologies by themselves and to each other. It would be wrong to think of them controlling the media, the government or business, it is too vast a complex for that. Rather they know how to plant and foster ideas, to make Sleepers want things and to make the Sleepers want the things they make. Although they can reach a lot of people quickly, the Union knows better than to try and move too fast, slow gradual progress has got them where they are today.

Indeed the Technocracy has had such success that many innovations are entirely Sleeper driven, building on existing technologies or research to reach new results, or finding new ways to apply old things. In theory this is a sign of their successes, and of achieving the original goals of the old Order of Reason, empowering the Masses. The Order's modern successor is rather wary of this however, for it is something they do not control.

Everyone knows of the Pogrom, the most overt sign of the Technocracy's battle for reality. Other parts of the war are just as important. Debunking or downplaying the supernatural or the occult to the masses, clouding the message of the Traditions through commercializing or marginalizing it and presenting threats to themselves as threats to stability and the status quo to make most Sleepers reject them.

Iteration X
Strangely the Convention most accused of ignoring what Masses are ready to accept is in some ways the most insidious. People think of cyborgs as science fiction, yet can accept an artificial heart or limb. Computing devices become more powerful, smaller and Sleepers become more reliant on them. They also become more anthropomorphic, the more they look and act like humans the easier it becomes to accept them and the easier the line is blurred.

Efficiency is important, with the limited resources Sleepers have, the more efficient they are with them the more people who can feel the benefits that the Technocracy can bring. This benefits the Sleepers and strengthens their faith in technology as a solution to their problems.

New World Order
Masters of information, the Information Age has not been as beneficial to the Cloak and Dagger Convention as they had hoped. While mass media was easy to influence to get the Unions message to millions, it has also helped their opponents and the Sleepers spread ideals they are opposed to. It is simple to remove a person but much harder to remove an idea. The internet has only worsened the problem. Added to which the balance of power has continued to tip from governments to business and people have become increasingly cynical about the information that they are given. Still the NWO exerts vast influence over both the Sleepers and the rest if the Union,

The New World Order do not control the governments or the media, but they do have people in the right places to exert influence. Its agents are responsible for planting the ideas and ideals of the Union into the public consciousness and preparing to accept the innovations of the Union. They also do their best to promote trust in authority and order and reduce the impact of those who oppose them by debunking supernatural claims, marginalising religious issues and encouraging conformity amongst the Sleepers.

Progenitors
In some ways the Progenitors have had more recent successes than any other group. Diseases have been identified and cured, gene therapy holds the promise to cure many conditions. Cloning is a medical reality and the Human Genome Project unveils more discovery and knowledge to the Masses all the time and millions of people eat GM foods. The Sleepers certainly accept huge possibilities that the biological sciences offer. However this success is causing its own problems, Sleepers accept what the technology can do, but seem sharply divided about what should be done with it. Moral outrage, not lack of belief, seems to be the greatest threat to their advances.

Also while Sleepers seem to except individual diseases to be cured, disease itself seems to be fixed too firmly in their minds to be done without. For every condition cured a new, treatment resistant, superbug comes from nowhere.

Syndicate
If one group has prospered more than any other in the modern age it is the successors to the High Guild. Politics and philosophies come and go but money remains, the great force driving the world along. The 20th century settled the any debate about the superiority of free market economy as the most desirable economic model and now the Syndicate nurtures and encourages it the best it can. Their greatest fear is that as the world's economies become more interdependent another great crash in one region will plunge the world into a recession and smash the Sleepers faith in the system.

Individual Enlightened Syndicate members are rarely concerned with individual companies or street gangs, except as means to an end, they are much more concerned with the bigger picture. Still they realise the big picture is made up of little pieces. Unlike other groups the Syndicate do not really need to convince the masses of anything, money is not going anywhere. Their latest area of interest is the internet, trying to wrench the unorganized and anarchic domain of hackers, geeks, Virtual Adepts and increasingly ordinary people into one dominated by big business to advance the economic paradigm.

The Syndicate has also had some of the greatest successes against the Traditions. By commercializing the things they are seeking to protect and the messages they wish to spread they can dilute and devalue them. If their message cannot be stopped it can be clouded in white noise.

Void Engineers
Probably the least interested in winning the hearts and minds, the Void Engineers tend to wage a more direct and brutal war against the forces that threaten mankind both outside the Gauntlet and within. Some work with other Conventions helping them understand the Web but rarely bothering much about the Sleepers. Many feel if they do their job properly the Sleepers will never have to worry about the things they deal with.

Some Engineers have expressed concern over the lack of interest in the space program. Others have pointed out that half a decade after the Wright brothers flew there was not huge interest in aeroplanes, but they were simply accepted. Space travel is now in the same league, its no longer new but it is accepted, and increasingly reliable.

The Others
The Ascension War spreads beyond the Council and the Union, even to some who do not see themselves as taking part.

The Nephandi
If one group does not follow the methods of the others it is the Fallen. While the two largest factions seek the Sleepers to believe in their paradigms, the Nephandi have a different goal. They seek to be able to bring their masters to this reality, creatures of such epic power that they will make up the world's mind for it, shortly before it ends. In the mean time they promote entropy, destruction, hate, fear, greed and all the things that strengthen their dark masters.

Marauders
If the Nephandi have a different agenda the Marauders have apparently none at all. Certainly most individual Marauders are too divorced from reality to have anything like comprehensible goals. Still some have postulated that their serve some higher power, and embodiment of the Dynamism they seem to represent and the possibility that their Avatars still have an agenda beyond simply causing chaos. Some at least are supposed to be trying to restore the Mythic Age, possibly by removing the mass of humanity that does not believe in it.

The Crafts and Magical Societies
Much as they might distain the war or even be ignorant of it these groups all play a part. Every person whose belief is affected by these groups, though deliberate manipulation, membership, contact or maybe without even knowing it shifts, however minutely, the balance of belief. Many protect or hold onto to long legacies of belief, and if they do not challenge the Technocracy's domination of the consensus, they at least help protect places from it.