Everything

What is real? When you see something,

touch something, know something, is it real, or is it simply a collection of signals, bits of information, pieces of data that come together in your mind and make you think “This is real”? To the Virtual Adepts, everything – buildings, tools, plants, animals, people – can be represented as information. Figure out the code behind something, the Adepts claim, and you can figure out how to manipulate that thing, how to change it, improve it, or delete it. Since information is abstract, you don’t even need to touch the thing you want to change. If you know it, you can adjust it just by changing the code. And you can change the code from anywhere.

The youngest Tradition began as a Technocratic Convention that was alienated by its former allies. Too radical for their peers, these Difference Engineers questioned too much and aspired too far. And for their presumption, they were punished; Alan Turing, an elite mathematician and cryptographer, was disgraced and destroyed. His death created a martyr, and that martyrdom – combined with other persecutions – led to the Engineers’ defection and their rebirth as the Virtual Adepts.

That Technocratic past left a stigma that many mages remain unwilling to ignore. In return, most Adepts scorn the primitive

methods of the other Traditions. Humanity, the Adepts believe, should not be subjected to limiting philosophies like religion, government, or nature. Instead, the Adepts strive toward a technological singularity in which humanity’s limitations get dumped as people remake themselves into something better, brighter, and post-human. Why focus on getting back to nature or praying to absentee gods, after all, when you can change the world – and yourself – so that you no longer need nature and can become a god?

As their moniker implies, Virtual Adepts spend lots of time in a virtual world. If you can interact with other people or even control objects of the real world from your online telepresence, then why bother with the dismal reality of a leaky apartment building and a body made of limited, mortal meat? Even in this banal Meatspace, however, Virtual Adepts surround themselves with computers, monitors, digital notepads, smart phones, and all the latest technological toys. The most elite among them, though, have learned to manipulate reality without tech… a feat that highlights the group’s command of the God Code inside Creation.

For all their futuristic acumen, these Adepts still consider themselves mages in the classic sense. Their Arts remake reality through vision, technique, and Will. A modern Adept might not call what she does magick (though many of them do), but she regards herself as a child of Mercury, the Trickster/

Stereotypes

Fellow Traditions: Ghosts in the machine – noisy, cranky, old as fuck, but haunting nevertheless. There’s so much they have to teach, and so much more they have to learn.

The Technocracy: We’re at war for the heart of this world… and the next. So respect the allies but take no prisoners.

The Disparates: *singsong* I know a see-cret…

IT’S ALL IN THE CODE:

YOU, ME, THE WORLD, EVERYTHING.

Messenger God in the Machine. Like the Adepts, Mercury is everywhere at once, undermining assumptions with the audacity of his Arts. Especially in this era, when technology is both a road to freedom and an instrument of oppression, the world needs audacious tricksters. And so, the Adepts of the 21st century are growing far less virtual and far more real.

Organization: Merit-respecting anarchists, Adepts avoid standard organization and loathe conventional hierarchies. In the ‘90s, they based respect on eliteness: a form of peer recognition won through attitude and accomplishment. Though the tradition has matured and diversified since then, an Adept’s personal achievements – rather than titles or seniority – still mean everything in this group’s esteem. Cleverness, wit, technological creativity, and an astute sense of sociological reform mean more than a snappy handle or a keen online icon. There’s a special reverence for Adepts who tear down oppressive social structures… and a vituperative loathing for ones who support such structures in Meatspace or the online world.

Initiation: Virtual Adepts have a socially brutal initiation process. The idea of physical deprivation, master-apprentice challenges, or meditative spirit quests strikes them as absurd. Instead, Adepts typically give their aspirants and initiates cryptic missions to sabotage authoritarian structures, steal classified data, and create amusing pranks that undermine corrupt bastards and expose pompous windbags. At some critical juncture, the initiate gets left to fend for herself; a suitably imaginative (and hopefully stylish) resolution to the problem earns the accolades of peers and a place among the Adepts. In short, then, most Adepts enter the group through the grand Internet tradition of trolling.

Focus: Everything is Data. Thus, in this Mechanistic Cosmos, every tool or practice an Adept employs focuses on shaping, altering, manipulating, gathering, storing, collating, influencing, or destroying information. Such tools range from the obvious computer gear (generations ahead of conventionally available tech), clouds, holograms, implants, nanotech, energy drinks, and sense-altering stimuli to the understated chic of dark hoodies, manga-influenced haircuts, fashionable androgyny, and provocative masks. All Adepts, however, keep the implements of their technomagick handy. For many Adepts, computers are a more important part of one’s identity than any attire or accessory. An Adept’s personal devices are almost always the most heavily customized and stylized elements of that Adept’s ensemble.

Perhaps the most accomplished reality hackers alive, this Mercurial Elite also employs various forms of cybernetics, hypertech, weird science, martial arts, chaos magick, gutter magick, and sometimes shamanism, Voudoun, crazy wisdom, or witchcraft with a technological flair.

Organization

Merit-respecting anarchists, Adepts avoid standard organization and loathe conventional hierarchies. In the ‘90s, they based respect on eliteness: a form of peer recognition won through attitude and accomplishment. Though the tradition has matured and diversified since then, an Adept’s personal achievements – rather than titles or seniority – still mean everything in this group’s esteem. Cleverness, wit, technological creativity, and an astute sense of sociological reform mean more than a snappy handle or a keen online icon. There’s a special reverence for Adepts who tear down oppressive social structures… and a vituperative loathing for ones who support such structures in Meatspace or the online world.