This is one of a series of posts intended to show what various mage groups believe, how they think, and why they think the Sleepers ought to prefer their vision of reality. It is not intended as a complete picture of each group, or a 'fair' portrait. It's written as propaganda by each group, but honest propaganda. They won't lie, but they won't list their own flaws in detail either :) Naturally, these posts represent my own idiosyncratic views which I believe to be reasonably compatible with canon, but given my memory is at times rather sieve like, I may forget stuff. If you see a contradiction between this or the appropriate Trad/Conv book, it may or may not be deliberate. If you have suggestions for more questions that should be covered, please let me know. Sons of Ether and a bunch o' other stuff is all copyright of White Wolf, of course. You can find the ones done so far at: http://www.maison-otaku.net/~rhea/WW/index.html Enjoy! Ascension 2000 Campaign Pamphlets: Sons of Ether o/~ Talent and imagination/Weird Science/Not what teacher said to do/Makin' dreams come true/Living tissue, warm flesh o/~ I guess you guys hear that song a lot. In my spare time, I am building a robot to seek out and annhilate Oingo Boingo. You're kidding, right? Actually, it's a group project. I am in charge of the part of the robot which will beam classical music directly into their brain until all the bad music is driven out. But enough of that. Bring me your questions, and I will show you the road of True Science. Okay, so you guys are the mad scientists, right? Dr. Frankenstein crossed with Dr. Moreau, Lamark, Dr. Doom, and Captain Nemo, right? Trying to make all the theories science has discredited actually work? 'Discredited' is exactly the right term. Note that something can be discredited without actually being FALSE, merely believed to be so. The Technocracy did not prove the Ether did not exist, it merely conducted a con game to convince the Sleepers of such. Their combined wills then destroyed the Ether which had once filled Consensual Space within the Horizon. However, beyond the Horizon, the Ether still exists. It is an empirically observable fact there as it once was inside the Horizon. Why the Technocracy thought a destructive void was better than the Ether, I will never understand, leaving us only to conclude it was simply a political ploy by the New World Order and the Syndicate, with whom we had fallen out. We practice True Science, unlike the fools we left behind in the Technocracy. Unlike them, we realize that the pure objectivity of which they dream is an illusion. Even they begin to realize this; witness our successful insertion of the principles of Quantum Physics into the Consensus. The act of observation always effects the thing observed, and as the existence of Paradox even when no Sleepers are present proves, something is always watching. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that nothing is ever 'discovered', but rather, to a greater or lesser extent, created. Currently, reality seems to function by objective laws, but that is true only because the Sleepers have been convinced that these laws exist, and thus they will them into existence, creating the Consensus. This requires the elimination of anomalies, and thus the Technocracy conducts its Pogrom, in order that anything that might shake the belief of the Sleepers in the Consensus will be removed from it. The Technocracy has also forgotten the other major aspect of Science. It must always be for the good of mankind, not simply for personal benefit. They abuse their power for personal gain, seeking to rule mankind instead of helping it. Can you go into some more detail on what 'Science' is? I'm still not clear on how that's different from Technocracy science. Certainly. The difference between our Science and their science is that we recognize we are, to at least some extent, creating the laws of nature. They fail to understand that totally objective empirical observation is impossible. To some extent, one will find what one expects to find. To take an example. A Chorister, a Dreamspeaker, and a Void Engineer all decide to go to a bar (obviously they didn't intend to go together). Unbeknownst to them, Sam the bartender is actually a Nephandi, and the drinks he hands out cause the patrons to be possessed by spirit entities that also serve his Nephandic Master. The three Awakened beings arrive and sense by their respective methods that something isn't quite right here. The Chorister prays and gazes into the Umbra. He sees many demons are present. The Dreamspeaker waves his fetish about, and it tells him that many banes are present (Banes are a sort of nature spirit that is entropic in nature). Finally, the Void Engineer scans the room with his tricorder and determines that malicious alien intelligences have possessed many of the patrons. Are the servants of the Nephandus demons, banes, or alien intelligences? Perhaps all three are different names for the same thing, as the Void Enginer would tell you. I can assure you, however, that if only one of those three was present, their perception would heavily influence the true nature of what he or she was perceiving. Of course, in the case of sentient spirits, capable of percieving themselves, it is harder for the observer to impose their view of reality than it is on nonsentient matter. That is why we begin our studies with Matter, for it cannot percieve itself, and thus there are fewer complications with preventing the contamination of results by observing minds. This is also why we frequently perform our research in isolation, thus causing our bad reputation as mad scientists: the presence of other observers, if they do not agree in the fundamentals of the theory to be tested, can result in the mind of each observer skewing the experiment in different directions. Only once we have worked out the bugs in our own personal conceptions do we then submit our theories to the observation and judgement of others. We aid each other by pointing out self-contradictions, unanticipated applications, and the feasibility of its introduction into current reality. We recognize that our theories must eventually be brought into forms comprehensible to the Consensus, or they will never be able to be made part of it. While we are not bound by the laws of static reality, the theories of each of us must be compatible with it. They can transcend it in the same way that relativity transcended Newtonian physics, showing it to be a more limited special case, but we know that if we simply ignore the Consensus, it will never accept our theories, and we will be unable to use them to help mankind. Some theories have gained wide credence among the Sons of Ether, and some of us mainly devote themselves to working out the implications of the theories of others and applying them. Still, the greatest honor goes to those among us who most elegantly create new theories that incorporate the best ideas of previous work along with original thoughts created by the Scientist himself. So basically, you judge your scientific theories by how elegant they are instead of whether they're true? That isn't science! A sufficiently accepted theory becomes true once it is accepted into the consensus. There is no pure objective reality, because the mind of the Sleepers collectively, and the minds of the Awakened individually reshape reality. This is not to say that 'Anything goes' within our Tradition. Our theories must be rational and demonstrable by empirical means (even though we recognize that any observation is influenced by those observing). They cannot rely on things which cannot be observed, quantified, or measured by some means (keeping in mind that our means of observation, quantification, and measurement are far broader than the cramped tools and methods available to the Technocracy and mundane scientists). They must be congruent with the Consensus, or else they will be useless, since they will never be able to be introduced to it. We change the Consensus by introducing systems which transcend, but also incorporate it, not by trying to smash it with a sledgehammer. Let me use telepathy as an example. A Sleeper scientist would say it was impossible. A Chorister would tell you it was possible, but it was enabled by the fact that a shard of the One existed within all beings, and that those shards were connected by virtue of still being part of the One. Thus, since the One can obviously talk to Himself, therefore his shard of the One could talk to your shard of the One, thus causing telepathy. The Chorister's theory is magick, not science. The One cannot be directly observed, measured, or quantified. The very thought of doing so would send a Chorister into conniption fits. The beliefs surrounding the one are dogmas, the result of revelation, not reason, and thus not Science, full of paradoxes and contradictions. True Scientists do not create theories that contradict themselves, and many a Scientist has seen his theory collapse when a previously unnoticed contradiction was revealed. Here is one example of how a True Scientist would produce and explain a telepathic effect. Every mind produces an electromagnetic field, as the Consensus itself accepts. Every possible thought corresponds to a unique electromagnetic field. These fields themselves disturb the Ether, producing waves. A True Scientist can build a device which detects these waves and translates them into sonic waves, thus enabling him to literally listen to what a person is thinking. By adding a device which stimulates the Ether, one could influence that person's brain produced electromagnetic field, causing them to hear 'thoughts' in their head. Or to take another example, that of curing lung cancer, which you posed to most of the previous people you interviewed. The first step would be to load you into a bioscanner, which is similar to a CAT scanner, but more thorough. Having located the cancerous growths, I would use triphasic hypersound (an advanced form of ultrasound which uses Ether for propogation) to destroy them. Your own body could then flush out the shattered cancerous cells. I would then inject your body with nanomachines which would seek out the damaged regions and conduct cellular level DNA surgery to prevent a relapse (after all, cancer is the body's own cells going mad due to errors at a time of cell division) and stimulate healing. I'd also recommend you take up smoking Dr. Blair's 'Lucky Star' cigarettes, which are non- carcinogenic. Why have a relapse? One can see the usefulness to Science of the existence of luminferous Ether, from which we take our name. It has become universally accepted among our Tradition because it is highly aesthetic and utilitarian. Ether? Isn't that used to knock people out? Ether is the primal essence from which everything is made. In its raw solid form, it forms a field which permeates the entire universe. Everything that happens creates ripples in the Ether. The void between worlds is full of unprocessed Ether in its raw gaseous state. In its energetic state, it is much more rare, and is known as Quintessence. When gaseous Ether assumes a pattern capable of percieving itself and thus stabilizing its own existence, it becomes Mind. Mind can then percieve the universe and reshape it through observation. Because Ether permeates all things, the science of Correspondence, which tracks linkages through the Etheric Field, is possible. The influence of Mind on raw gaseous Ether induces it to solidify and become Matter and Spirit (These two spheres are strangely linked, and I will say more of them later). The influence of Mind upon raw Quintessence typically transforms it into Forces, though Quintessence, being a form of Ether, can be reshaped into anything. Mixing gaseous and energetic Ether under the influence of Mind results in Life, a form of dynamic, yet solid Ether. Time is made of Ether in the sense that it is the means of measuring and comparing of different, successive states of the Ether. And finally, Entropy is the process by which processed, complex states of Ether break down to simpler, less processed ones. If everything is permeated by Ether, why can't I see it? And where did the void of outer space come from? It is the medium by which you see. In its raw state, it is not directly percievable by the senses, any more than you can see gravity. One requires scientific equipment to observe and measure it. If you could see it, you would be unable to see anything else, since it would be in the way. The void of 'outer space' was created by the Technocracy. They convinced the Sleepers that it was a void, and so their collective minds altered the Consensus and turned space into a void. But, even the collective minds of humanity can only reach so far. Only within the Horizon, the region known as Consensual Space, is space a void. Beyond the Horizon, space is still filled with luminferous Ether, and our fleets fight with the Technocracy to prevent the further expansion of the Horizon--at least until Ether returns to the Consensus. The Horizon? What's that? Three barriers cut humanity off from the vast majority of the Universe. What is known as the Gauntlet seperates the regions known as the 'Penumbra' and 'Near Umbra' from Consensual Space. A second barrier, the Shroud, seperates the dimension inhabited by ghosts from our own. A third barrier, visible to mortal science as the asteroid belt, seperates Consensual Space from Etherspace, which makes up a majority of the observable universe. The Horizon is fundamentally different from the Gauntlet in that it can be seen through without the use of Science (or Magick), if one is gazing from Consensual Space into it or vice versa, though the means currently available to Sleepers can not yet penetrate it. That's not true. Voyager passed the Asteroid belt without using any Magick, or Science, or whatever. Voyager is a classic example of how the Technocracy convinces the Consensus of the truth of its lies. It simply acted as a relay station by which the Technocrats fed NASA the data which would reinforce the static theories which they had already convinced NASA were true. NASA then released these confirming 'discoveries' to the public, who added them to the Consensus. The process of altering the universe by altering the Consensus is not instantaneous, of course. It will take further 'exploratory voyages' and satellite missions for them to push the Horizon out further and convert more of Etherspace which remains in the state that balances Matter and Spirit, into the two seperate worlds of Spirit and Matter. Pushing the Horizon out does WHAT to Etherspace? I'm confused. Spirit and Matter reflect the dynamic and static potentials respectively of solidified Ether. Where they intermingle freely (Etherspace), they are, in fact, indistinguishable, constantly changing back and forth. Reality is easily malleable there, and Paradox does not exist, for all things are possible. At some point in the past, the Consensus created the Gauntlet, which tore apart this unity, shoving Spirit and Matter into two parallel dimensions. These dimensions remained linked despite the Gauntlet, so they tended to mirror each other, and destroying something in one world would eventually lead to its destruction in the other. The Material world (Consensual Space) became more static, for it contained Matter, Ether infused with the highest level of order. The Spirit World, or Umbra, remained dynamic, though less than before, for Spirit could no longer become Matter very easily or vice versa. Parts of the world of Spirit were reshaped by the sleeping minds of the Sleepers to resemble their dreams, for it was easier for individual sleepers to unknowingly alter the Spirit World, which was full of dynamic solidified Ether, and it became the regions known as the 'Near Umbra', while the part that remained a spiritual mirror of the material world is known as the 'Penumbra'. Due to the Gauntlet, it remains invisible to the Sleepers. You can think of Consensual Space as a bubble in Etherspace, with the Horizon as the membrane of the bubble. The bubble is hollow now, with only tiny clumps of Matter to fill it, since the Technocracy convinced the Sleepers to will away the gaseous Ether which once filled the gaps between the Sun, Moon, Earth, Venus, Mercury, and Mars. Shouldn't the bubble collapse under the weight of Etherspace? Since most of it is empty? In the gaseous state, Ether is weightless because it is massless. It conducts gravity without creating it. It does exert a certain gaseous pressure, but the Horizon is strong enough to resist that. However, if a sufficiently large hole was poked in the Horizon, it would erupt through the hole and refill the gaps in Consensual Space because Nature abhors a void. Why don't you just poke a hole in it and refill static reality with Ether? I bet the Technocracy couldn't cover that up! An interesting proposal, but it has several problems. First of all, the resulting gaseous jet would disturb the current celestial mechanics of the Solar System, possibly flinging planets about like billiard balls. That would be bad. Anything small enough to not have potentially destructive effects would be found and stopped by the Technocracy before it could have observable effects. Secondly, it would let through a variety of creatures best kept out of humanity's backyard. The Horizon keeps out the Nephandi and other things best not encountered by the Unawakened, who cannot defend themselves adequately. Better to refill Consensual Space with Ether by altering the consensus, and prepare humanity to face the universe before we punch open highways through the Horizon. While the Gauntlet eventually needs to come down if the universe is to achieve a fully healthy state, the Consensus must be fully altered to allow for the use of Science without the Paradox effect, and humanity better prepared for the age to come before it will be ready to face some of the Things that live in Etherspace. So what would this Age to come be like? The seed from which our ideal world will grow already exists. It is called the Gernsback Continuum. I will briefly summarize it here, but a much better description can be found in Dr. Alexis Hastings' _Book of Worlds_., still available from Paradigma Press. [OOC note: The Book of Worlds is an actual Mage sourcebook, written in the style of an IC book produced by a team of experts assembled by Dr. Alexis Hastings, a Daughter of Ether. Pages 120-125 describe the Gernsback Continuum, which also is briefly described in the Sons of Ether Traditionbook, on pages 40-67. I have further expanded on the descriptive materials given in those places, such as in my description of the micronized stars] The Gernsback Continuum is named after Hugo Gernsback, noted inventor and editor. With eighty patents to his name, he also created Modern Electric Magazine (now called Popular Science) and Amazing Stories, the first science-fiction magazine. The Hugo Award is named after him. With its primary access point the Great Hall of our Tradition, the Gernsback Continuum is the City of the Future. It is here that our most important meetings take place, and here that ten special Research Centers, the most prestigous of our Laboratories, explore each of the ten spheres, constantly expanding our knowledge of them. The Electrodyne Towers, our Forces specialists, in cooperation with the Scientists at the John W. Campbell Center for the Study of Dimension Zero (Correspondence), created the five micronized stars which provide the chief power supply for the Realm. But what you really want to hear about is what is like to live there. Our power is supplied by power taps that fully exploit all of the energies released by five stars which have been trapped in correspondence bubbles. While they are full scale stars, they exist in pocket dimensions which interface with our world as if they were only five feet across through the use of highly advanced Correspondence Scientific Techniques. This method is absolutely safe, as a failure of the Correspondence fields would simply seal the stars off in their own pocket universes. By this method, the Continuum has as much energy as it could ever need. This power is put to many uses. Transportation takes place through an elevated highway system used by aircars, known as phaetons, and through an efficient flying shuttle network. There are also zeppelins, but they primarily serve for sightseeing and duelling. Buildings occur in an variety of advanced architectural style, designed for both form and function. Sewage is efficiently disposed of by an automated sewage system. One's need for food and other material supplies is met at the giant shopping mall and general mess on the north side of the city. The General Mess produces and sells the majority of the food available in the Realm in both traditional and nutri-pill modes. The shopping mall has three miles worth of shops on three stories. If you want to buy it and can't take time to go back to Earth, you will find it here. We have our own unit of currency, the Gernsback Coin. Debate continues on the creation of an electronic banking system, but the need has yet to arise. If our mode of civilization is exported successfully to Earth, however, I suspect it will become necessary. Currently, however, only about 1100 people live in the Continuum. Housing is typically in the form of apartments of varying size, provided free to any approved resident in good standing. Periodically new housing is constructed on the western side of the city. Size is determined by a combination of rank within the Sons of Ether, family size, and willingness to pay an additional fee for larger housing. The majority of the population are non-Awakened personel who provide a variety of services from technicians to salesmen (at the mall). All of them perform skilled labor; unskilled labor is performed by specialized robots. In our ideal world, manual labor will no longer be necessary, although a variety of crafts will no doubt survive as hobbies. Any Son of Ether can appreciate the feeling of accomplishment gained by making things by hand. As we head into the fourth generation, there are some children born and raised in the Continuum, so we have opened a school which combines sleeptraining, human teachers, and computer-assisted learning. Family life is much the same here as anywhere; marriage is monagamous, and children are raised by their families. In some things, we must admit, we remain quite traditional. What about politics? Who's in charge? The Gernsback Continuum is run by the Assembly of Science, which is in theory a gathering of all those within the Tradition who hold the rank of Professor or Doctor. In practice, it is difficult to assemble more than half of those august ranks for anything short of a total crisis. Usually, the Gernsback Continuum Oversight Committee, which has eleven members, does most of the work of setting laws and policy for the Continuum. In our ideal world, of course, this would require changes, as we would have no time for our research if we attempted to govern the entire Earth with an assembly of all Professors and Doctors. For that matter, in our ideal world, a sufficient proportion of the population would ascend to those ranks of achievement that trying to bring them all into one place would be ludicrous. Our ideal world government would be a democracy. The GC, however, as I'm sure you can see, while a model for a future world, remains largely a research institution, and thus is governed as such, through 'faculty democracy', rather than full democracy. That all sounds really cool. But there has to be SOME kind of downside. Building the world of the future will take a long time and require much work. Unlike some Traditions, we cannot snap our fingers and *bamf* things into being. Those who lack any education or skills will largely be out of luck, however, we plan to offer free reeducation for all willing to take it. And I must regretfully admit that Science can be abused. Some of our members through selfishness or insanity become a danger to others. When the benefits of Science also become available to the Sleepers, there will be the danger that such benefits will be abused. Only the best Sleepers are to be found in the GC, but the transformation of Consensual Space will include many who are insane, fools, or both. Still, one cannot pluck the rose without risking the nettle. Finally, while we hope for the Enlightenment of all humanity, we are quite aware that a vast majority of Sleepers will never awaken. From our studies in the GC, we believe that if Consensual Space is altered to our standards, perhaps some 10% of humans will actually awaken with proper education. This is VASTLY more than at present, but many people will, even with training, lack the Vision necessary to Awaken. Still, once the Consensus is properly altered, even the Unawakened will be able to reap the full benefits of Science, though the creation of new Science will be beyond their reach. So what do you think of the other Traditions and the other mage groups? If they were not impossible to confine and study safely, the Marauders would make excellent research subjects in order to determine how they gain immunity to Paradox. As it stands, they must be avoided or destroyed. Still, they have been at times great allies against the Nephandi. The Nephandi, on the other hand, make great ways to test Microwave Cannons and Flesheating Bacteria. They are utterly corrupt, utterly evil, and utterly destructive. They are the Black Plague with a mind. Wipe them out. All of them. Kill them on sight if you can, escape and report back to the nearest Club if you cannot. Under no condition trade information with them or attempt to study them. We are Scientists, not Infernalists. We have abandoned any hope of redeeming the Technocracy. Individuals might be saved, but they have fallen from Science to science, and many of them do not even practice the latter. How does the bureaucracy and mind-control of the NWO benefit the Masses? How does the poorly engineered garbage sold by the Syndicate help Humanity? It was their jealousy that led to the destruction of the Ether in Consensual Space. They will be destroyed in their turn. The other Conventions, especially our noble rivals, the Void Engineers, may perhaps be redeemed. Our closest allies, as you might expect, are the Virtual Adepts. While most of them are spoiled children, they understand the proper use of Technology to aid Humanity. Their vision of Virtual Reality is fascinating, though we prefer to work to alter the Consensus so we can create our vision in this reality. The mystic blatherings of the Akashic Brotherhood, Celestial Chorus, and Dreamspeakers remain incomprehensible to us. They seem to work at becoming deliberately incomprehensible and non-rationalistic. The Adventurer faction of our Tradition do frequently study with the Akashics to learn their unarmed combat techniques, though they never quite seem to work as well for us as they do for the Akashics. The Cult of Ecstasy, while being self-indulgent wastrels, can also be fun if you need to celebrate completing a large project. The Verbena fall in the same category, except for being less fun, and more cranky. The Euthantos, on the other hand, are simply creepy. We find their morality morally objectionable and their methods to be primitive. I suspect they all pretended to be The Shadow when they were children; I wonder how they would like it if someone judged them and gave them the Big Bad Death. The Order of Hermes, we find to be a sort of mirror of ourselves. They too are rationalists, though of Magick instead of Science. If they didn't often hate us on sight for our former allegiance to the Technocracy, we might find much to talk about. House Thig, however, is more open to us, and we find them useful for aid in approaching the other houses. You have seen our vision of Science. We hope to change Consensual Reality in order to accomodate it, and in that way open a new age without having to lay waste to the old one. Unlike many of the other Traditions, we offer the future instead of the past, a world of better living through Science. Will you join us in building it?