Editing Mage: The Ascension (section)

====[[Nephandi]]====
The setting's darkest, most depraved characters, amazingly even moreso than the Tzimisce or even most Baali (Most Baali are idiots or tragic villains who NEED to commit atrocities so Malfeans can sleep): Evil agents of ''[[Entropy]]'' who worship either insane demons or most of the things [[Lovecraft]] came up with, they seek to cause not Ascension but Descent, encouraging humanity to give into the darkest excesses of their worst impulses and thus [[Chaos|transform reality itself into a literal Hell, terraforming the universe as a whole into a place their dark masters can exist so that they may take possession of it.]]

They're one of the only threats that will force cooperation between the Traditions, the Technocracy and EVEN the Marauders, most famously in World War II. (Unsurprisingly, many of the Nephandi were [[Nazi]]s.)  They may actually be ''winning'' the Ascension war, since they're actively attempting to infiltrate and subvert all other factions.

The singular form is ''nephandus''; the OoC source of such is most likely the word ''[[wiktionary:nefandous|nefandous]]'', meaning "unspeakable" (as in "unspeakable evils").  Appropriately enough, in a world of grey vs. gray morality, these assholes are far and away the blacker than black. Becoming a Nephandus basically involves fucking up your soul badly enough to corrupt your Avatar (something which will persist even after your death) by confronting one's own personal idea of the worst possible evil, kneeling before it in mingled worship, reverence, and masturbation, and swearing to serve it forever. 

The kicker? This has to done ''willingly'' - a Mage '''cannot''' be forced into turning Nephandi, since the process almost always insta-kills unwilling Mages. [[FATAL|Let that set the tone for how depraved these assholes are.]]

There are Nephandi that are born with an Avatar from a former life, called Widderslainte. Most of these fucks are just a bunch of sociopathic children (until they grow up and become sociopathic assholes) unless they Awaken, and when they do, the "fun" begins. No reliable process to de-corrupt an inverted Avatar has ever been found; the only way to prevent it from polluting others is to obliterate it completely. Since this heavily conflicted with a major theme of the Nephandi (''choosing'' to be evil, rather than being ''forced'' into it), this was gently changed in later editions to be more of an "abusive parent" dynamic, with the corrupted Avatar trying to bully the Widderslainte to into evil, but them still having the choice to say no and resist. 

As Nephandi are the extremists of ''Entropy'', their moderate counterparts are the [[Euthanatos]].