User blog comment:GrandMethuselah67/Mage: the Awakening tribute sheet: Oliver Skarsgard/@comment-4867780-20151018024029/@comment-26322734-20151018043447

Okay, so:

Mages are humans with a divine soul. This is because they have the ability to call upon the power of the Supernal World (which, put basically, is Alpha Reality) down into the "Fallen World", or the mortal world. This is because all things done in the Supernal World will be reflected into the Fallen World (as above, so below). Each mage has a path, which is a specific part of the Supernal World that they go to when they awaken. In Oliver's case, it's Pandemonium, which is a Hellish dimension that's more along the lines of Purgatory (torment by your inner conflicts and demons so that you become a better person by overcoming them). In these Supernal Realms, there are two dominating concepts -- or Arcanum. In the case of Pandemonium, it would be Mind and Space.

Now, mages have their own society too. There are the five diamond orders (also called the Pentacle Orders), the ancient mage organizations that have existed since Atlantis (the first mage city -- supposedly). The Diamond Orders consist of the Silver Ladder (who are the leaders and priest-kings of mage society), the Adamantine Arrow (the warriors), the Guardians of the Veil (the secret police) and the Mysterium (the keepers of arcane artifacts and lore). The sixth order is the Free Council, which appeared recently (December 31st, 1999 in-universe), and they're the more rebellious lot who want to modernize magic and don't believe in Atlantis or myths of mage society.

Mages, being reality warpers capable of shaping the world to their will have it pretty good. Except whenever they do magic, especially in front of a normal human, they have a risk of triggering Paradox, which is basically reality actively attacking them for their transgressions. Furthermore, there's the Abyss, which is the gulf between the Supernal and Fallen Worlds, and inside are a bunch of eldritch abominations that want to turn reality into a hellish playground. The Diamond Orders -- plus the Free Council -- have enemies like the Seers of the Throne, who are Authoritarian mages who want to take all of the magic for themselves and rule reality, and follow the Exarchs (tyrannical mages who, during the time of Atlantis, climbed to the Supernal World and took a good amount of the magic for themselves).

Each mage, when they awaken, find a Watchtower in the Supernal World. These Watchtowers have been made years ago by the Oracles, who are the counterpart to Exarchs, mages who have ascended to the Supernal World to give humans a chance to awaken. I suppose you can imagine how humans with reality warping powers would go down, so there's whole societies designed to help mages interact with each other, trade arcane lore, and the whole ten yards. A city of mages working together is called a Consilium, consilii officials act as mediators between cabals (groups) of mages.

Other factions include the Banishers, who awaken like every other mage except something goes wrong and they end up getting traumatized by the experience, only to become crazed witch hunters who use their magic to hunt down other humans with magic abilities. There are also the Scelesti, who are mages that draw from the Abyss. They tend to view the world in terms of "Order vs Chaos" and see the Fallen World as an illusion with no real consequences (and in comes Blue and Orange Morality).

The game is based on the premise that reality is a lie, and this Lie is a reflection of the Supernal World (think Plato's Theory of Forms), and the Supernal World is the true reality where all humans truly belong.

That's the gist of everything without going into too much detail. Anything else you wanna know?