Virtual Adepts

Mages of Virtual Adepts are technological adepts capable of informational wizardry. They are masters of the sphere of Correspondence, magic dealing with three-dimensional location and space, communications. The Virtual Adept philosophy resembles the real-world Hacker Manifesto, and the imagery and style of the Adepts was influenced by the cyberpunk movement, including works like Neuromancer and Ghost in the Shell. The Virtual Adepts also have a great deal in common with the "hackers" in the movie trilogy The Matrix. Outside of fiction, many ideas from transhumanism, including brain-computer interface and "mind uploading", can be found as tools in the Virtual Adept arsenal.

The majority of Virtual Adepts sooner or later find themselves amidst the Digital Web, a virtual plane that exists just beyond the flat 2-d Web Pages the "bleaters" see. It is here that they plan to free humanity from the bonds of reality outside. However, the Web has been greatly damaged over the previous few years, due in part to the actions of sleepers and in part of the major destruction of the Umbral chantry known as "Doissetep." Doissetep, having back-doors into it from the Deep Umbral plane that the Web in fact is, allowed chaos and destruction into the Web. Now, quite a bit of the Web is corrupt data, known as junklands. Younger Adepts are warned against these places, as they are often in a Nephandi format.

Virtual Adepts are the newest of the Nine Traditions, having taken the place of the Ahl-i-Batin in the seat of Correspondence (who were, coincidentally, the oldest tradition). As a former subset of the Technocracy, many of the other mage traditions are more than a little suspicious of them. Likewise, the Virtual Adepts find most other traditions of mages to be too old-fashioned, superstitious, or just plain crazy. They find the most in common with the Sons of Ether, who are also a former Technocracy group turned mage tradition, and are similarly technologically minded. It is common for Virtual Adepts to get useful techno-gadgets from Sons of Ether friends, and in turn, lend them their own style of expertise in computer systems.

Virtual Adepts believe that communication and information are the keys to success. They argue that information should be free and available to everyone, which is represented in their primary sphere of correspondence - that everything is everywhere and that distance is meaningless.