Mercurial Elite

“In the 60s we were rowdy children and in the 90s we were rowdy teens.

In the 2020s we’re now rowdy adults and the Council sometimes listens to us; it’s frankly terrifying.”

— Catherine Blass, Mercurial Elite Master

Game Note: According to M20 the Virtual Adepts are on the cusp of becoming the Mercurial Elite. In-game we use the new name "Mercurial Elite" though reference material primarily refers to this tradition as Virtual Adepts.

Province name: 8L455 Integrated Development Environment

Organization	Initiation	Affinity Spheres	Focus
Sects	Architectural Themes	Characters

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 (Mercurial Elite) 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.

Affinity Spheres

Correspondence (Data); Forces.

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.

Sects

Chaoticians (A.K.A. Grey Men, Arithmecians, Probability Engineers): they focus on probability, calculating the odds of some situation going well or bad or altering them.

The Cyberpunks (A.K.A. Mutualists, Collectivists, Anarchists, Social Reconstructionists): favors the use of extreme forms of hacking, cybernetics, and violence to achieve its ends. Recently, they have began using Ideological War to fight the Technocracy, trying to dismantle the political mindset that allow their hegemony to endure. Game Note: The Technocracy doesn't exist in Unity like it does on Earth (Earth still exists?).

Cypherpunks (A.K.A. Cryptogramics, Cyphers, Crypts, the Thought Police): are a faction of the Virtual Adepts that focuses on information.

Nexplorers (A.K.A. Cybernauts, Console Cowboys, Runners or Newplorers): focus on the exploration of the Virtual Space (Digital Web).

Reality Coders (A.K.A.: Reality Hackers, Reality Crackers): focused on the transformation of our current reality. They are one of the principal contributors to the project of Reality 2.0. Game Note: Might be the easiest Sect to play in our theme.

Characters

None

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NPCS

• Sliver (5L1V3R)