Virtual Adepts

*It's all in the code: You, me, the world, 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/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.

## Factions

* Chaoticians
* Cyberpunk
* Cypherpunks
* Nexplorers
* Reality Coders

## 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.

## Glossary

* **Abbreviations:** To save time, a lot of Adepts abbreviate. Traditions become "Trads," the Cult of Ecstasy "CoE," eto. They also substitute numbers for letters -2 for "to" or 8 for "ate:" For example, "H8 Technos? Call RentAdepts."
* **Alt:** Short for alternative lifestyle. Used to describe political factions within the Adepts.
* **Bodybags:** Derogatory term for people.
* **Coding:** Altering an object's behavior with pre-set instructions. It's most commonly used to describe computer programming but may also refer to the use of magic to alter reality.
* **Digi-Web:** Short for Digital Web, referring to environments created in Virtual Space.
* **Elite:** A Virtual Adept or someone exceptionally talented.
* **Hacker:** Someone adept at coding.
* **Hypersphere:** A way of describing reality using theoretical physics. Space and time exist on the "boundary" of the hypersphere. Virtual space exists within it.
* **Kibo:** Knowledge in, bullshit out. In Adept slang, it refers to someone who specializes in information gathering. It can also be used as a curse -"buried in kibo" is the same as saying "buried in bullshit."
* **Lame:** A non-Adept, but it can describe a new Adept as well. Also lamer.
* **Meatspace:** Normal space-time, also known as realtime.
* **Misspelled words:** Adepts routinely misspell words to confuse filters and authoritarian searches. For example, ph\*ck instead of fuck, $h!t instead of shit and so on.
* **Virtual Space:** Inside the hypersphere, a place removed from space and time. Virtual space contains the Digi-Web.