Editing Genius The Transgression/Chapter One: The Cosmos (section)

===Fundamentals===

Sometimes it seems like the modern world is all about brand identity. The ancient one was, too.

Even if it doesn't matter―especially if it doesn't matter―it's important for humans to have tribes, to divide themselves into us and them, and to maintain nested dolls of familiarity and distance. A genius might be walking around with an entire universe in his head, but he's still a human being and possesses the same needs and impulses as any other.

But the foundations―the divisions of the Inspired―do more than just give geniuses a team to root for. They provide a set of core assumptions that a genius needs to not go mad. Foundations provide axioms as well as Axioms, setting the genius on the path to understanding Inspiration, Mania, Obligation, and the wider world into which she has emerged. Further, each foundation offers a clear focus and identity. This is part of a deliberate effort by the Peerage to help a new genius quickly find a place and a purpose before she succumbs to one form of insanity or another.

The Artificers are the tinkerers, the kitbashers, and the compulsive builders and fiddlers. They focus on mad engineering. The least likely of the peers to possess a formal scientific education, Artificers are nonetheless gifted mechanics, architects, roboticists and (increasingly) computer hackers. Anything that can be torn apart and rebuilt delights the Artificers. An old but loosely-organized group, Artificers are united in seeing the 
creation of the new wonders as primary: theory and application are secondary concerns to the unfettered joy of creation.

The Directors see themselves as the peers' organizational head; the other foundations' opinion on this matter are mixed. Directors study mad psychology. Among their numbers can be found Utopian visionaries, malevolent hypnotists, techno-voyeurs, diabolical masterminds, benevolent despots, and powers behind many thrones. This foundation possesses a sinister air―other geniuses imagine smoke-filled back rooms and secret meetings―but newer Directors are more interested in managing research teams than ruling obscure foreign nations.

The Navigators are travelers, explorers, and adventurers, as willing to use wonders as to create them. They are students of mad physics, producing hideous energy weapons, vehicles of all sizes and purposes, and dimensional gates. Navigators might be soldiers of science, crime-fighting guardians, or twisted researchers who explore the far reaches of space and time. Their origin in the fires of the Last Invisible War gives them a militaristic cast that can trouble the other foundations.

The Progenitors are the youngest of the foundations, having recently undergone a bloody and horrific purge. Their focus is on mad biology: transplant surgeons, cloners, animal uplifters, toxicologists, and genetic researchers make up their ranks. The organization preceding them was annihilated after the rest of the Peerage discovered the extent of their corruption; the reformed group is intrigued by self-transformation and by becoming the philosophies they embody.

The Scholastics are philosophers and questioners, as interested in what Mania is than what it can produce. The oldest extant foundation, these proud descendants of Europe's Invisible College focus on mad philosophy, from cutting-edge mathematics and experimental philosophy to the darkest, most ancient secrets of long-dead occultists. Younger Scholastics view themselves as trickster-figures and take on the guise of Loki, Coyote, Prometheus, Lucifer, or other light-bringers, demiurges, or riddlers. Older Scholastics find the younger generation's penchant for riddles and games insufferable, twee, or even blasphemous.

The organization for each foundation is loose and non-hierarchical, which was the intent of the original organizers of the Peerage: they wanted to escape the cliquishness and power-jockeying found in the Inspired salons of Europe and replace them with egalitarian orders that anyone could join.

Instead of ranks and hierarchies, each foundation instead offers an organon: a book (or, nowadays, a series of downloadable files) that contains useful information about the foundation. This is enough for a new genius to 
master his first Axioms. It also provides valuable information about regular science and technology, and―most importantly―how to convert that information to the development of wonders. The foundations are intended to give the genius a loose sense of belonging and gives him a go-to point for questions, while not stifling him with protocol and an oppressive sense of membership and obligation.

Despite this loose organization, each foundation is riddled with internal divisions between young and old, tradition and revolution. Even mad scientists have their traditions and their customs, passed down from the earliest days of the Peerage, and as the generation that cast down Lemuria gives way to a new, mercurial group, raised in a technological landscape that 20th century peers could only imagine, the tranquil edifice of the Peerage is starting to crack.
Lemuria's baramins are structured differently, with a stricter hierarchy and more ideological trappings. Their groupings―Atomist, Etherites, Mechanists, Oracles, and Phenomenologists―are based on when and where the genius thinks mortal society went wrong. They offer no organon, but rather direct tutoring in the philosophies and doctrines of the baramin.

''"The Word EARTH indicates One, Entity or Singularity, but Earth is not an Entity, for the Half of Earth seen from Space cannot exist without the Opposite Half NOT SEEN - existing only as opposites with a plus & minus zero existence. As an Entity, the Opposites will cancel each other out to nothing. Teaching that Earth is an Entity equates to a Doomsday induced by Educaters upon Humanity. Earth is not a Singularity, it is composed of Opposites."

''-Navigator Organon: "Introduction to Skafoi" (aka "Time Cube Volume 1 of 36")''