An extremely loose network of Crafts that banded together in The New '10s out of an interest in ensuring that nothing like the Technocratic Pogroms could happen again. They do not have a shared Paradigm or goal within the Ascension War, instead being bound together for simple survival.

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• Unequal Rites: Most of the Disparate Crafts very pointedly don't tend to believe that all magick is an expression of the same force in the same way that the Traditions (officially) do.

Sphere: Correspondence

A group of Middle Eastern mystics who believe in the unity of all things with the Divine, seeking to dissolve the barriers between the self and the One through understanding and enlightenment. They act as The Leader of the Disparate Alliance, and there is an increasing sense that they want to turn the Disparates from an informal mutual aid network into something closer to an alternative version of the Traditions.

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• Complexity Addiction: Their fixation on subtlety and acting with plausible deniability has been known to get in their own way.
• Friendly Enemies: Oddly, some of the Sorcerers Crusade books indicate that, early on in the Ascension War, the Batini were actually the most receptive to the idea of occasionally pulling an Enemy Mine with the Order of Reason, at least in part because the Daedalans had visible ties to the Islamic technomancers of the Mokteshaf Al-Nour, who had been treasured allies of the Batini all through the Islamic Golden Age. Centuries of fending off imperial violence and watching the Daedalans shed their better tendencies slowly muted this tendency, obviously.
• The Good Chancellor: The Batini are more comfortable as advisors than as leaders, and have excelled at subtly pushing far-flung groups toward peace and cooperation for their entire history.
• The Heart: What they tried to be in their time with the Traditions, in accordance with their belief in Unity; eventually, however, seeing their efforts to get the Traditions working together perpetually frustrated finally pushed them to breaking point.
• Humble Hero: As fits their desire to fly below the radar, the Batini don't tend to go for ostentation, and will often allow others to take credit for their work if it serves their long-term plans.
• Irony: They were arguably the Tradition most invested in making sure that the Council was unified under a single "meta-Paradigm", but as part of the Disparates, they have essentially had to promise that they won't try to reshape or alter any of their allies Paradigms, since fear of homogenization was one of the chief things that kept most of these groups away from the Traditions in the first place.
• Logical Weakness: Because of their philosophy of spiritual unity and order, Batini are incapable of using the Entropy Sphere (since they're more concerned with bringing things together than breaking them apart). Which, ironically, means they're disconnected from the Sphere that would most easily allow them to perform Coincidental Magic.
• The Missing Faction: Used to be in the Traditions, holding the Seat of Correspondence, but quit in the early 20th century when the Technocracy invaded their homelands.
• The Nondescript: There's a reason they're known as the Subtle Ones — and that other mages have trouble finding them nowadays.
• Perception Filter: While all Mages technically have the ability to acquire the Occultation background, Batini are pretty universally accepted to be the masters of the practice, to the point of jokingly being called their "real Affinity Sphere".
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: with the Taftani, the other major Craft from the Middle East that still exists in the modern day. While the Batini try to hide their existence and try to make their magic as indectable as possible, the Taftani are proudly vulgar in their magic use and want everyone to know it.
• Religion Is Magic: The Batini are strongly associated with Islam — though practitioners of other faiths also join — and often use its practices in their magic. Some Batini claim they created Islam; most, however, believe that it was indeed a Divine revelation to the Prophet Muhammad, and as such shares many ideas in common with their own beliefs.
• Space Master: How they got to be the original holders of the Seat of Correspondence.

Practitioners of voudou, they are the servants of the spirits they call Les Mysteres. Their magick is a mix of African, Native American and European beliefs combined with the hearts of the people.

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• Blue-Collar Warlock: They're expected to use their talents to better their home community somehow. That often means holding down a job while you hone your Art.
• Hollywood Voodoo: Depending on the Writer. Even when this is at its worst though, they're still generally Creepy Good.
• Our Gods Are Different: If that's how you want to characterize the Loa, they're about the chummiest bunch of Gods one could hope to work for, and can be downright cavalier in their interference in the mortal world.
• Our Zombies Are Different: They are capable of creating a Voodoo Zombie, although this is unsurprisingly considered a grave trespass against the deceased and their family, and rarely done by Bata'a who value their community's well being.
• Post-Modern Magik: The Loa are among the youngest and most active of the major Astral pantheons, and thus have more experience helping their Mage allies with modern technology and institutions.
• Underestimating Badassery: They are frequently mentioned as being both larger and arguably better organized than a lot of the Traditions, their status as a Craft only coming from the fact that the Council keeps putting its foot in its mouth whenever it tries to reach out to them.
• Unequal Rites: Averted. They're one of the few major organizations that allows Sorcerers to advance as far as True Magi, and makes no distinction.
• You Never Asked: The Bata'a aren't inflexible or isolationist by any means, and were more than happy to shack up with the other Disparates when the Batini reached out to them. All the other Disparates had to do was not be overbearing chauvinistic egotists about it like the Hermetics always were.

Formed from the Solificati and came to the foreground again back in the 1950s after vanishing centuries ago due to infighting. They are alchemists pur sang and frequently dabble in the use of drugs to enhance their senses and inspire them.

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• Alchemy Is Magic: Their connection to the original Solificati is more than skin deep, even if they've gotten pretty weird in the intervening centuries. They are still entirely capable of the same transmutation as the alchemists of old, albeit frequently tinged with more quantum woo buzzwords than it used to be.
• Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Narcotics are their primary magickal Focus.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: Often embody this stereotype even more than the actual Cult of Ecstasy.
• Psychic Powers: Another influence they've picked up over time is psionic research and psychotronics, taking inspiration from the mind-honing and spiritual refinement techniques of their alchemical forebears.

Looking to reveal the truth that others would ignore, the Hollow Ones are a group looking out for those on the fringe of society: the freaks, misfits and left-behinds. They consider art and bringing out emotions through it as sacred, and are almost always part of some subculture that revolts against the status quo, with the Goth look being a group classic. They stand somewhere on the border between Orphan, Craft and Tradition, devoting themselves to the cause of Romanticism as they see it — individualism, self-expression, and the championing of romance — with a decidedly eclectic approach to magic. They were in the running to become the 10th group in the Council of Nine, but the political play involved here caused much of the group to ditch their Council aspirations and go their own way.

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• The Anti-Nihilist: They may think life is meaningless, but they're still mages, still driven to make their mark on the world.
• Goth: Associated with the subculture, which has dated them a bit, but it's not all they are. They do tend to have a taste for the macabre, though.
• Goth Girls Know Magic: While their history is linked to subcultures reaching back to the flappers and Bright Young Things, and their magic style is basically chaos magic, they're tightly linked in with Goths in the present day.
• Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: You can guess which side the Hollowers come down on.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Even by Old World of Darkness standards, Hollows can come across as pretty mopey. It seems they didn't get the memo about Mage being relatively idealistic.
• Won't Get Fooled Again: Once upon a time, the Hollow Ones were considered a candidate for joining the Traditions. Needless to say, the experience left them with a very, very bitter taste in their mouth (mostly because certain Traditions, particularly the Hermetics, were very condescending toward them, more or less treating them as stupid kids who don't 'respect' magic), and the Hollowers have since sworn they'd never join them again, hence their membership in the Disparate Alliance.

Exclusively made up from members of various Polynesian groups, the kanakakahuna call upon their Arts to protect the land and their people, preserve the culture of the various peoples, maintain the balance between the natural world and the people living in it and protect it against invaders. They don't follow the traditions regarding Awakening and other mainstream conventions regarding Magick: they follow their own ancient ways of the Arts, though one of these ways is that of ali'i, who specialize in Prime.

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• Arch-Enemy: They despise the Technocracy for rampaging through their islands while trying to force the locals to adopt Western culture. They also hate the Celestial Chorus for doing literally the exact same thing.
• Godzilla Threshold: Like any right-thinking person, they're scared shitless of the Rokea. However, they do possess techniques for getting their attention, if they're confident they have something the wereshark will want to kill more than the meddling kahuna that summoned them.
• Nature Hero: They reject all technology as they still haven't forgiven the Technocracy and Celestial Chorus for attacking their homeland, but are just as benevolant as the rest of the Disparate Alliance.

The Ngoma stem from Classical African ways practiced in Egypt and Nubia. Forced more and more to the heartlands of Africa they were held as something akin to the divine. They were of such renown that they were offered to become part of the council, but the Ngoma left in disgust when they were inaccurately lumped together with the Dreamspeakers and other spirit talkers. Over the course of centuries though much of their knowledge was lost to war, conquest, plague, famine and death. But they endured in small numbers that are now growing, and many of their members are scientists of some kind who seek to recover or replace the knowledge that they have lost.

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• Afrofuturism: As they combine magic and science that are both rooted in African traditions, they do their best to embody this trope.
• Culture Chop Suey: Invoked. The oldest identifiable predecessors of the modern Ngoma (the "Ngo-Ami") originated as scholar scribes of ancient Nubia, a historical crossroads of most Afro-Asiatic cultures of the time, from Persia to Mali. The result is a modern craft that certainly values having some connection to ancestral culture, but is ultimately beholden only to their quest to find and preserve knowledge.
  • Notably, the political "heart" of the craft has moved from Nubia to Timbuktu to Zimbabwe to Cairo, with a growing body of trans-continental outreach centers.
• Darkest Africa: Subverted. The Ngoma would really like you to think that sub-Saharan Africa is a mix of jungles and grasslands with scattered mud huts, not worth bothering with. They are one of the most erudite and urbane magical traditions, with advanced ritual magick and high technology available to them, and they're using their wealth and magical power to sponsor infrastructural, agricultural and medical development the equal of anything that the Technocracy is rolling out in the First World.
• Hermetic Magic: One of their other early influences were the Egyptian "Reeds of Thoth", widely regarded as a direct predecessor to the Order of Hermes. Indeed, the Hermetics' refusal to acknowledge this kinship and share lore as equal is the main reason the Ngoma never joined the Traditions.
• Lost Technology: The Technocracy actually erased a great number of technological marvels from the history books of Africa, from Congolese Weather Control Machines to cloning and Bioweapon Beasts in Ancient Egypt. The Ngoma are on the forefront of rediscovering them.
• The Remnant: The Hermetic House Ngoma pretend to be all that's left of the Ngoma. Actually, the Ngoma are alive and well, but they'd rather the rest of the world not know this so they can get back to fixing Africa's problems.
• Science Destroys Magic: Averted Trope. The academic traditions of the Ngoma emphasize the mixing and matching of technology and mysticism to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
• Smite Evil: A technique still tought to new students as a matter of course, largely as a remnant of the organization's former role as the wizard-priests of Zimbabwe.

The heiresses of the Amazons, the Hippolytoi hold freedom above all: death is preferred over slavery. They revere life and have been healers and liberators all throughout history and prefer nonaggression over violence, but do not consider self-defense as violence. Their practices are a mix of ritual, martial arts, shamanism and witchcraft, with rituals held in ancient Greek as befits their origin.

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• Combat Medic: Famed healers, yes. But don't forget: they are the inheritors of the Amazons' legacy.
• Straw Feminist: Basically averted, as the Hippolytoi are usually presented as intersectional feminists with a high degree of social literacy. Still, the game's track record here isn't perfect, and the writers have been known to fumble this part.

A craft of mages hailing from the Middle East, which uses the ancient Arabian legends of genies, magic carpets, magic lamps and myriad other fantastic things pulled straight out of the Arabian Nights as the basis for their magic. They see Paradox as a badge of honor for imposing their will on the universe and practice magic as blatantly as possible to change the Consensus. And they live lives of opulence and luxury, lavishing feasts and gifts on honored guests while regaling them with tales of bottling djinn or retrieving their assorted Wonders. At least until Paradox blows them up.

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• "Arabian Nights" Days: They're based in the Middle East, and their themes generally hearken back to when this was a reality.
• The Archmage: To them, being a Mage is all about living it up to the fullest.
• Conspicuous Consumption: The Taftani believe you must first have luxury before you can offer hospitality, so they tend to this in order to prove they can afford to be hospitable.
• Crystal Dragon Zoroaster: In much the same way that the Celestial Chorus and Ahl-i-Batin claim to be much older than the religions they are most publicly associated with, the Taftani identify more with the pre-Zoroastrian polytheism of the region, albeit certainly influenced by other faiths as time goes on.
• Flying Carpet: They're famous for weaving these.
• Genie in a Bottle: They know how to make these, although failing the binding ritual is a fast way to magickally create the angriest possible djinni.
• I Know Your True Name: How they control djinn.
• In Name Only: Their incarnation in M20 deemphasizes their specifically Persian ties in favor of making them even more pan-Middle Eastern, to the point of heavily associating them with Dubai. This isn't one of the more popular retcons in M20.
• Masquerade: The Taftani believe the Masquerade to be a lie and therefore immoral. They are not immune to the Paradox that comes with performing vulgar magic in front of Sleepers, but they shun coincidental magic as cowardice, and practice magic that is both spectacular and aggressive (and often suicidal), hopefully with as many witnesses as possible.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Well, really, their goal is to make everything awesome, but they are noted to count the world's greatest weavers among them.
• No Place for Me There: They consider everything in the world as we know it, including themselves, to be a mix between Truth and Lie, and to therefore incapable of surviving in a world of absolute Truth. They also consider that no reason to not try with everything they've got to create such a world.
• Refuge in Audacity: Their philosophy towards magic. The Taftani believe it's their god-given right to use magic as openly and vulgarly as possible, and believe other magical traditions are pathetic by comparison.
• Sacred Hospitality: Coming from a desert culture, they are big believers in this.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: with the Ahl-i-Batin, the other mystic tradition from the Middle East. While the Batini try to hide their existence and try to make their magic as indectable as possible, the Taftani are proudly vulgar in their magic use and want everyone to know it.
• Stuff Blowing Up: The standard method for dealing with what annoys them.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: They hold Truth as the greatest virtue, and would rather die than try to obscure it.
• Words Can Break My Bones: A common focus is poetry.

Yes, the real deal. The Templar Knights believe in the word of Christ and believe in Him, carrying out many acts of charity to help those in need. But they are still soldiers of Christ and will fight to defend those who cannot defend themselves. Originally part of the Order of Reason, when they started to question the corruption amongst the Order they were betrayed and had many of their order killed. They are organized into lodges who mainly communicate with each other through the Internet, in code riddled with scripture and references that only the Templar Knights will understand. Some of these lodges are dedicated to Peace (acts of charity), while others are dedicated to War (armed conflict). These cover a notable part, but not the entire, of the Order, with the former lodges being all-female, while the latter are all-male.

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• Berserk Button: There exists a relatively young faction of hedonistic, vaguely witchy Nephandi known as the Baphometites or "Baphies". As the name implies, they venerate Baphomet, a figure explicitly created to frame the Templars for heresy, and who only became real when Nephandi began committing atrocities in his name. Needless to say, while the Templars obviously hate all Nephandi, they reserve a special disgust for those who would serve to bring such an entity into existence.
• Church Militant: The attitude of their War Lodges is that when Judgment Day arrives, they'll be ready to help smite the wicked. And in practice, from doing so now.
• Defector from Decadence: They attempted this against the Order of Reason. It didn't work out so well.
• Knight Templar: While individual Templars can be this, the organization as a whole aren't this: in fact, it was their concern over the Order of Reason's corruption that caused them to be purged.

The ancient mystics of Imperial China, they served the nation from the Yellow Emperor all the way up to the Opium Wars. From there on it went downhill for the Wu Lung fast, with the Cultural Revolution killing many of the ancient masters. Humbled by this all they have been silently rebuilding themselves, finding new initiates and hoarding vast amounts of gold (both for its wealth and use in Magick). Still performing the ancient rites of the original Wu Ling, the Dragons are almost exclusively Chinese men, though in the necessity of recent years they have grown to accept women and tolerate those of non-pure Chinese blood. Having foregone the strict social structure of old, they still pay homage to the T'ien Kung te Huang Ti Wu Lung (Heavenly Emperor of the Dragon Wizards) and the Feng Huan Hou Wu (Phoenix Empress Wizard) as their supreme leaders. To aid in their goal of regaining their wealth and power initiates with an affinity for finance and/or business are preferred, but all those of Chinese blood who pass the tests are welcomed into the fold.

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• Alchemy Is Magic: The form of alchemical techniques practiced by the Wu Lung are some of the oldest and most powerful in the world.
• Cultural Posturing: A habit they had to curb just slightly to make their presence in the Disparate Alliance less unpleasant for all involved.
• Elemental Powers: The Classical Chinese Elements are a common focus.

A minor Craft operating primarily in East Asia, the GKG are a fairly new society of assassins that model themselves after the popular perception of ninja, using a combination of gadgets and fantastical martial arts to complete their missions.

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• Ambiguously Evil: The current Metaplot according to Forgotten and Forbidden Orders is that the GKG expressed interest in joining the Disparate Alliance strictly to lure representatives into an ambush, but whether they did so on the orders of the Technocracy, the Nephandi, or their own short-sighted greed is not elaborated on.
• Cyber Ninja: They make extensive use of cybernetics, some of them even non-technomagickal!
• Life Imitates Art: In-Universe. They got the idea from pop-culture ninja, not the other way around. Though real ninja probably existed, it's unlikely they were anything like the GKG.
• Ninja: Their motif.
• Phlebotinum Rebel: Despite being a wholly mercenary Craft that formally stopped doing jobs for the Union in the 2000's, many of them still use Technocratic hardware that has been reverse engineered or purchased through backroom deals.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: They also make use of "ninja sign techniques" that give them access to all sorts of fancy abilities.

A truly ancient craft of Egyptian assassin-mages who worship the crocodile god Sobk, through a combination of community support and targeted human sacrifice.

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• Ambiguous Situation: In Mage 20th Anniversary, it's strongly implied that they have either been eradicate or forced underground.
• Animal Motif: Pretty strongly associated with the Nile Crocodile (and by extension the Mokole, but that's an entirely different can of worms).
• Animorphism: They are known to transform into powerful crocodilian monstrosities for their sacred hunts.
• The Atoner: How they see themselves, as many were petty criminals in their former lives, and see their ceremonial hunts of human (or supernatural) prey as an act of sacred devotion.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Hem Ka Sobk are a truly ancient order, with a very active, fairly inhuman divine patron. The result is a philosophy that was often seen as strange in its own time, and has hardly changed in the intervening millennia.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Ostensibly their M.O, as their killing is expected to improve their community in some way.
• Soul Power: They specialize in the Spirit sphere, representing their ability to both control and ritually consume and purify dead and dying souls.
• Time Abyss: When Pharaoh Thothmes ordered the creation of the Reeds and the Cups, the Hem Ka Sobk were already an ancient and feared organization. ^note This is closer to being a reflection of historical reality than one might expect, since the worship of Sobek in the Faiyum region really is much older than most of what is traditionally seen as Ancient Egypt.

A very small Craft of anachronistic Mayan Mages who recently reappeared on the Yucatan Peninsula.

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• Fish out of Temporal Water: They seem to have sent themselves to the modern day fleeing colonial expansion.
• Hidden Elf Village: They don't seem especially interested in contact with the outside world.
• Mayincatec: Averted. The Itz'At are very specifically Mayan, as their paradigm requires intimate knowledge of the Mayan Calendar.
• Time Master: To an extent even the Cult of Ecstasy has difficulty understanding. Time Travel isn't supposed to be that easy!

A group of proud Jewish magi who study the Kabbalah and protect the downtrodden.

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• Badass Israeli: Based out of Israel and as badass as any other mage.
• Out of Focus: They were described in the Sorcerer's Crusade Companion and the revised Storytellers Handbook, but did not return with the Disparate Alliance in M20.

Psionically empowered cyber-shamans based out of Japan. Only about two decades old at most (at least as far as any outsiders can tell), the Mirainohmen are notorious for apparently transforming themselves into mind-bending fusions of spirit, code, flesh, and machine.

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• Cyborg: Of a rather overtly Magitek flavor.
• The Trickster: Their methods are so arcane that what they do can really only be described as weird Magitek performance art

Orphans are a catch-all term for an independent mage who does not follow a formal Tradition, and has instead created his own unique paradigm. They have no particular strengths in any sphere of magick, but make up for it in flexibility. Efforts to unify them as a single group are repeated but short-lived.

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• Blue-Collar Warlock: Given the sometimes-traumatizing effect of the Awakening, several of them have fallen through the cracks in society and ended up poor, drug-addicted, homeless or some combination of the three. Even without states like these, Orphans are often characterized as mages of the street.
• Fantastic Slurs: Orphan is a catch-all term, but it's also a condescending, infantilizing label for anyone who exists without the protection of a Tradition or a Convention. For this reason, some well-informed Orphans look upon it as offensive and refuse to use it to describe themselves.
• Fantastic Underclass: Many mages and technocrats treat Orphans condescendingly, either dismissing their work as invalid or trying to recruit the more "promising" ones into the Traditions or the Technocracy, sometimes minus their consent. However, because many exist without the support of a faction, Orphans are often killed by Technocracy hitsquads or preyed upon by Nephandi. The fact that several Orphans are impoverished or even homeless doesn't help.
• Urban Fantasy: The best representation of classical urban mages.

A craft that reveres Lilith, originating with Vampires' human retainers who awakened.

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• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Have a kind of moral code, but outsiders would be hard-pressed to identify it as such.

A craft of Mongolian sky mystics with a deep connection to the land.

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• Blow You Away: They believe that the spirits of the sky, under the Sky God Tengri, are the highest spirits in nature.
• Enemy Mine: Averted hard. They hate the Akashic Brotherhood more than they fear the Technocracy, and never even entertained the notion of joining the Dreamspeakers.
• Genius Loci: One of their major points of disagreement with the Dreamspeakers is their distaste for the Dreamspeakers' focus on Fetishes and Totems. To the Tengrists, objects and idols can never have the vitality of the land and sky themselves.

A very small, rather young craft based out of the Cú Chi tunnel system under Vietnam.

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• Dark Is Not Evil: They live in isolated underground communities, and decades of living there has left them pale and sallow looking. They are completely non-aggressive, however, and are outright friendly as long as you don't attempt to invade their caves.
• Out of Focus: To the extreme. They are given a short writeup in one Revised edition book and then never mentioned again, likely due in-universe to their extreme secrecy.
• A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma: In their single canon writeup, no insight is given into their Paradigm, leaving questions of their cultural ancestry, motives, and even whether they are mystics, technomancers, both or neither up in the air.

An organization compromised primarily (but not entirely) of sorcerers. Based out of West Africa, the Uzoma are a truly ancient coalition of mystics who revere the Orishas. They maintain a distant but relatively friendly connection with the Bata'a, their cultural descendants, but have otherwise been politically quiet until fairly recently.

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• Divergent Character Evolution: On a culture-wide level. The Bata'a began as Awakened slaves synthesizing half-remembered Uzoma lore mixed with the requisite amount of Catholicism for the time. Cut to four centuries, several generations of cultural exchange with indigenous American mages, and several national revolutions later, and the two are clearly still related, but distinct organizations nonetheless.