The Encyclopedia Foundation

Official Seal with Motto

**The Encyclopedia Foundation** was a group of academics, scientists, spies, outcasts, and separatists organized by Petra Keith that sought to accelerate and then escape the destruction of The Mage Imperium and rebuild civilization from the ground up.

## Members

### Petra Keith

After her mother's death, Petra began using the resources of Karaval and the Keith family to compile a compendium of as much knowledge as she could - collected and edited by her faithful companion Lucia Lianor. The foundation she created, ostensibly to facilitate the writing of a history of the Imperium, was secretly a front for an escape route from the Inquisition run by her husband Grigori Levin (who extorted Imperial power from those whom he passed onto the Encyclopedists) and a black operation which conducted military and industrial espionage in order to discover as many technological secrets under development as possible.

She persuaded her cousin Clara Keith to use the facilities on Dolorn to build a portable manufacturing base to be sent to a new colony outside the Imperium, founded by her close friend Signa Somille, which would become the foundation for a new, reorganized Imperium.

### Selene H. Veer

Veer had little investment in the compilation of information, or the rebuilding of society. Veer's almost exclusive goal was to bring about the doom of the Mage Imperium after the death of her friend, Lady Astrid Keith.

### Clara Keith

Though she, like Selene, was driven mostly by revenge, Clara also accepted the final order of her commander and hero Astrid Keith: Keep Petra Safe. To her mind, the best way to accomplish this was to pacify the Hybern Sector and then shove Petra out into space with her Foundation project. She and Selene could then be off to take revenge, topple the empire, and bask in the sublime beauty of mind-bogglingly deadly weaponry.

Clara used the influence she gained from continuing Astrid's weapons development programs to insulate herself and her supporters from service in the wars and build up the colonial endeavors which Petra intends to turn into the Second Imperium.

### Anselm Trobe

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### Other Minor Members

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## Goals

### Encyclopedia of Knowledge

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The eponymous goal of the Encyclopedia Foundation was to compile a large amount of Knowledge that the Mage Imperium possessed within one massive multi-volume manual, the Encyclopedia Imperia. Petra, like her mother, had sensed the impending doom of the Imperium. Unlike Astrid, who thought it might be saved from within, Petra decided that it should be preserved for the sake of the future. Thus, the first step was to gather all of the important (and as much of the unimportant) knowledge of the Imperium in one place, copy it out, and squirrel it away somewhere so that someday it might be found.

### Destruction of the Mage Imperium

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Several members of the Foundation, most notably Selene H. Veer and Clara Keith, decided that the Imperium must be destroyed, both to complete their revenge and to ensure the safety of the Second Imperium. The development of the Planet Buster, the ultimate fruit of Astrid's research programme, was a key component of their plans.

### Creation of the Second Imperium

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As part of Petra's plans for preserving the knowledge of the Imperium, she devised a faster route to Imperial recovery - if some fragment of the Empire survived to rise again, then maybe a hundred thousand years of destruction could be shortened to ten, or even one. Petra believed that it would be possible to build a self sufficient society based on the egalitarian (in particular, racially egalitarian) and meritocratic views which her mother had passed down to her. Thus, in the very best case, the Second Imperium would rise to even greater heights than the first, free of the shackles of religious orthodoxy and racial animus which had torn apart the First.

### Backup Strategies

Petra realized that there were many risks to the Second Imperium and that it was entirely possible that her Foundation project would fail. In order to make sure that at least the Encyclopedia and its knowledge escaped the destruction of the Imperium, she created the "Time Capsule" - a self sustaining emplacement that used Selene Veer's stasis technology and the brain structure preserving Glass Minds to preserve volunteers, copies of the Encyclopedia, and some of their equipment until a safe moment arose for them to leave. If all went well, the volunteers would wake up in a flourishing second Imperium. Petra cautioned against such hope - it may be centuries before the Imperium is reformed and much could happen in between.

The time capsules were well hidden on many worlds, and most of them still have not been discovered. There are two notable exceptions:

One of the "time capsules" was activated some centuries after the sundering by a curious farmer. His culture remembered the Imperium fondly as bringers of agriculture and welcomed the team of scientists who had been preserved in the capsule. Recruiting from the populace and intermarrying, these Foundation members used their knowledge to form the Academy of Saldan.

Another infamous time capsule was not, in fact, deployed by the Foundation, but was passed by the Foundation in a trade with a faction of Ascensionists and used by the rogue Prince Siebern on the planet Sierna. This capsule remained until the expedition to defeat Aztlan uncovered it and activated it, unleashing the revived Siebern on the world.