Editing Sons of Ether (section)

== Learned Societies ==
The factions of the Etherites are surprisingly quite chummy with each other unlike most other traditions, as they're all largely bound by the same or extremely similar theories, and are all mostly sniping at each other in ''Paradigma'' when they disagree with one another. Thanks to the Awakened Scientist's endless curiosity, nobody ever sticks to one all the way and often makes friends and rivals across all of the factions, even if they disagree with them; though the old guard and the younger Researchers often find themselves at odds due to the web of intrigue and office politics that protect the old guard from their rivals. 

Official entry into one of the three major organizations is a formal process, where one needs to know people while also demonstrating that you have some form of aptitude towards their goals. The other three are informal; often thought of as more states of mind than anything else, and may only need to do some significant misbehavior or feather ruffling in order to pick up the designation, after which others will flock to them like moths to a lamp. Many Scientists still see all of this as noise and prefer to immerse themselves in their own work; never joining a faction at all. Such Scientists are actually very well-respected, as even though they don't have the same resources as the myriad factions, they aren't so wrapped up in one kind of research that they can't combine or conflate different works from different factions.

==== The Official Societies ====
* The Cybernetic Research Institute, or '''Cybernauts''', the iconic machine freaks who love robots, AI, and sundry other gadgets and gizmos. They were once a lot tighter than they are now with the [[Virtual Adepts]], but the Cybernauts' obsession with reinventing the wheel made collaborations less and less frequent.

* The Royal Ethernautical Society, or '''Ethernauts''', who specialize in Etheric travel, making Etherships and conducting xenobiological research at the far corners of the Tellurian. They have an intense love-hate relationship with the [[Void Engineers]] and like their frenemies, were fucked sideways by the Avatar Storm.

* The Utopian League, or '''Utopians''' focus on large scale social policy and infrastructure, often with a decidedly Marxist bent (a number of its members are themselves former Bolshevik scientists). They are the administrators of the Tradition's large scale initiatives and run the ethics committees. Needless to say, given that the Tradition was formed so that people would stop telling them what to do, they are regarded with mild contempt by their fellows. 

==== The Informal Societies ====
* The '''Adventurers''' are an informal grouping of those Scientists who forgo life in the lab for a life of two-fisted action with improvised tech and more than a bit of grit and determination. They tend to be the first ones to accept and try to understand the other Traditions' "magick". ("Ah, this wand of fireball is forged from Atlantean Orichalcum and emits a constant stream of pyrotrons! That explains it!")

* The '''Mad Scientists''' are a grab bag of the Tradition's black sheep: doomsday devices, irradiated monsters, killbots, you get the idea. The other factions try their best to reign them in, but expelling them altogether would mean leaving them unsupervised. Besides, no one can deny that their toys are damn effective at tearing up the enemy. 

* The '''Progressivists''' actually tend to belong to other factions and are united by their opposition to the fact that, historically, the Tradition has been mostly controlled by old money French and British guys for the past century. They are slowly but surely bringing the Tradition into the ([[Atompunk]] version of) the 21st century, as evidenced by the name change in M20.

{{WoD-Traditions}}

[[Category: World of Darkness]]