Editing Genius The Transgression/Chapter Three:Systems and Foundations (section)

===History:===

Tinkers, builders, and smiths have existed since the dawn of human civilization, and taken thematically, the Artificers are probably the oldest foundation. Groups whose ideas went into the formation of the Artificers have been recorded in ancient Egypt, China, and Rome, all over Medieval Europe from Byzantium to the Iberian Peninsula, and in Japan, India, and the Polynesian islands. Any time geniuses have been more interested in building things than in understanding, using, exploiting, or even perfecting them, the spirit of the Artificers has appeared.

While legend holds that the Artificers appeared in North America in the mid-18th century (and ties them closely to the founding of the United States), the Artificers are actually the result of a great convocation of tinkers, smiths, and builders from all over the world, which took place in Philadelphia in 1752. These individuals―often poor, many foreign, usually eccentric, always ingenious―argued for nearly a month before rejecting Lemuria and founding the Brotherhood of Artifice and Mechanism. Over the next half-century, the Invisible College took interest in the rough-and-tumble group, referring to them as the "Little Brothers." The Artificers were one of the groups to join the Peerage when it was officially created early in the 19th century, after which they adopted their current name.

Always a loose-knit foundation, the Artificers took in geniuses that other peers didn't want to touch: Africans whose rootwork hoodoo medicine the aristocratic Demiurges scoffed at, Jewish watchmakers, tinkers of Rom or other unusual descent, Yankee gunsmiths, and early steam pioneers, none of whom fit in with the clean, reasonable Renaissance Man image of the Invisible College. As new foundations appeared and the Peerage developed and grew more inclusive, the Artificers refined their image, eschewing philosophy (those who would not accept that change became the latest iteration of the Mechanist baramin) and focusing entirely on the creation of wonders. Throughout the 20th century, while the Inspired wars raged, the Artificers were the poor, eccentric auxiliaries to the rest of the Peerage, building what they wanted for the sheer joy of creation, asking little in return, and not being much of a philosophical threat to anyone―though their wonders did occasionally get out of control.

It wasn't until the late 20th century that things started to change. With Lemuria in shambles, the simple "make stuff" philosophy of the Artificers spread to places previously strangled by the Lemurians or wrapped up in the war, such as southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The Artificers also found a following in the traditional territories of the Peerage―the cities of Europe and the Americas―but with a new audience, one that did not traditionally catalyze. The poor, the desperate, and the angry came to the Artificers from slums and barrios, war-torn hellholes and depopulated villages, and their coming transformed the foundation.

These new Artificers were angry, broken, frightened, and desperate. They weren't, as the peers like to believe of themselves, the world's intellectual aristocracy, but a new sort of creature, lean and hungry and very, very dangerous. Born into want and rage all over the world, they had been ignored and derided by the other foundations, enslaved and exterminated by the Lemurians. While the rest of the Peerage reorganized itself and purged its corrupt elements, the Artificers had no natural defense against these New Makers, the scions of the desperate and the disaffected. The Artificers had, since their inception, been the poor, patient cousins of 
the other foundations, too humble or obsessed to ask for much, and all that changed overnight. Today, the Council of Artifice is a disorganized medley of anarchists, cast-offs, failed scientists, and post-punk engineers, desperate for resources and respect.