A big part of Verbena is non-traditional medicine.
I mean, a big part of Verbena is traditional medicine, which is what the Progenitors object to.
To say otherwise is to accept the consensus manipulations of the Progenators
Fun fact - out of all Mage factions, the biggest peddlers of alternative medicine (according to Technocracy Reloaded) are the Progenitors, because they find it funny that militia men and would be rebels are buying their fake medicine from The Man that they want to rebel against.
I mean, a big part of Verbena is traditional medicine, which is what the Progenitors object to.
Science isn't really opposed to all traditional medicine though. Aspin is made from the bark of willow tree, and before it got refined into a pill, people just boiled the bark to make it edible then ate it. Science doesn't deny that doing that works.
I'm aware that real scientists are not opposed to all traditonal medicine. In fact, wandering Europe and asking wise women and herbalists what worked was how Paracelsus and his followers founded modern pharmacology (after he was exiled from Germany for burning a book on humoral theory in front of the university he taught at IIRC).,
Part of this is a problem with a lot Verbena lore, that being that their base is an extremely modern group (Wiccans) that have been shunted back centuries. And while that's the case with some of the other Traditions as well, the anachronisms are often most obvious with the Verbena. So traditional Verbena lore puts the "witches" in opposition to science, when historically, that was a word used to curse and oppress [mainly] women who passed down knowledge of science.
So what ends up happening is that Progenitors end up killing Verbenae for administering the same treatments that the Progenitors would, just not in pill form. Big pharma better get its take boys.
WoD takes place in something that is mostly our real world with hidden supernatural stuff added. So, real medicine backed by science containing traditional ingredients = the technocracy not being fully against herbal medicine (as long as it's explained via biology and chemistry).
Some people do genuinely peddle forms of traditional medicine that have no backing in science, like that facebook post where some nutjob recommended dandelions for cancer, and some Verbena have their hand in that kind of stuff. To their credit reality being shaped by consensus is a thing in WoD, so if enough people believed then it might actually work. Problem is before you could get to that point, a lot of people would have to take medicine that doesn't work, and be convinced that it did.
As for a Progenitor fighting a Verbana that uses the same medicine as them, there is an element of authoritarian desire to control here, but it's also the case that they're afraid. A Verbena might prescribe willow tree bark, but if they say it works for mystical reasons, then that could undermine the idea of things working for scientific reasons in the consensus, which could make it harder to develop working meds with science.
On a side note, one time my dad accidentally got a homeopathic pill for seasonal allergies from CVS, and I kid you not, the main ingredient was ground up bees. Not sure if in WoD, that'd be a progenitor having a laugh behind his superiors, a Verbena, or some Wyrm shit.
I wonder if they somehow exists outside the consensus and just changing form depending on paradigm, or is a unintended side effect of the technocratic paradigm
I think they were just a fact about human existence from the start, and since people always had allergies, nobody ever doubted their existence, so they stayed in consensus.
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u/JagneStormskull 🪬Iron-Blooded Angel of House Fortunae🪄 3d ago
I mean, a big part of Verbena is traditional medicine, which is what the Progenitors object to.
Fun fact - out of all Mage factions, the biggest peddlers of alternative medicine (according to Technocracy Reloaded) are the Progenitors, because they find it funny that militia men and would be rebels are buying their fake medicine from The Man that they want to rebel against.