The Great Compass logo of the Sons of Ether
The Sons of Ether are a group of mages who were formerly a Convention of the Technocracy, but which later defected to become holders of the Seat of Matter on the Council of Nine Mystical Traditions.
Early History[]
There have always been mad geniuses who built fantastic contraptions. Originally limited to wood and stone, they nevertheless created fantastic devices for channeling and controling mystical energies, from Stonehenge to the Pyramids. Members of many early magiickal factions and societies, they only began forming their own organization during the Dark Ages. In the late 1100's, two mages who had founded one of the smaller Houses of the Order of Hermes came into the possession of a scroll written in Arabic by a then-unknown genius, now widely believed to have been Al-Hazen. Leaving the Order to study the scroll in secret, they founded instead an organization known as the Natural Philosopher's Guild. Although the founding mages were themselves killed in an accident involving their experimental airship, the organization they had created would long outlive them, becoming one of the founding organizations of the Order of Reason.
Modern History[]
In the 1700's, under the leadership of Alessandro Volta, they became focused on the transmission of energy in all its forms, and changed their name to the Voltarian Order. But another name change was soon in the works, as a result of the great reorganization of the Order of Reason into the Conventions of the Technocratic Union, or the Technocracy, at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition in London. There, they became known as the Electrodyne Engineers, and continued their research into forces, which they now believed could be understood as movements of the Luminiferous Aether. However, although their inventions and discoveries were the backbone of the success of the Technocracy during the Victorian age,
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their leader Nikola Tesla fell to squabbling with Thomas Edison for influence and power within the Conventions in the first decade of the 20th century, which led them to come into conflict with the leaders of the New World Order. This led to the New World Order orchestrating a vote within the convetions to delete the idea of the Luminiferous Aether from Consensual Reality, and the declaration that Aether itself did not exist. Since this would undercut the power and functionality of their devices and spells, the Electrodyne Engineers rightly saw this as a direct attack on themselves, and fled the Conventions. They were soon welcomed into the Traditions, changing their name to The Sons of Ether (note the dropping of the pretentious Latinate AE) and accepting the Seat of Matter vacated by the absorption of the Solificati back into the Order of Hermes.
Gehenna and Beyond[]
Gehenna found the Sons of Ether happily inventing away in their laboratories, building the fantastic devices which got them labeled "Mad Scientists" by friends and foes alike. Along with their former Technocracy allies the Virtual Adepts, they formed the most technologically adept and modernized wing of the forces of the Council of Nine Mystical Traditions that attacked the Technocracy in the aftermath of Gehenna. It was they who created the devices and weapons which allowed the Traditions to have any sort of a fighting chance against the Technocracy and their Tech Infantry, but this also meant that their losses were heavy indeed. Forced to concede defeat, they fled to become key founding members of the Resistance movement. After the devastation of Earth by the Bug Asteroid of 2197, the Sons of Ether played a huge role in the recolonization and rebuilding of Earth, and they were emotionally and physically devastated when their Luna City headquarters was destroyed, along with the entire Moon and Earth itself, by Erich Von Shrakenberg in 2244. With their leadership mostly dead and their laboratories blown to smithereens, the Sons of Ether collapsed as a functional organization. Most of the survivors were easily rounded up by agents of Arthur Clarke in the aftermath of the Third Civil War, although a substantial minority escaped to go back into hiding, re-emerging two decades later to form much of the technological underpinning of the Terran Republic.