Editing Genius: The Transgression (section)

==Lemuria==
The Enemy Genius faction. Lemurians are all Unmada, loosely united in Baramins based on what exactly they think is wrong with the Mundane world and certain that they're not crazy at all, thank you very much. They originated as a conspiracy under the command of snake person manes, who accidentally destroyed their home Bardo (essentially a pocket reality based on an obsolete scientific theory, brought into existence by its own disproving- in their case, it was the general idea of a "lost continent" originally meant to explain how lemurs came to live exclusively on Madagascar, but one conflated with other ideas about hidden islands of enlightened secret masters of history) through time travel and tried to manipulate human history so it would come about once again while still allowing them to be "real" with the help of Geniuses sworn into their service. This did not work, and thanks to the effort of the original Peerage the Lemurian species is now mostly extinct, with the few survivors scattered and unlikely to regain their former glory. But their human servants remain and continue trying to fix what they think went wrong with human civilisation, and they still have control over the vast network of supplies that their masters set up, which gives them a bit of a leg up in creating Wonders. After all, you can't get a research grant for doing mad science. 

===Atomists===
The Baramin of 'why don't we have flying cars and jetpacks yet'.  Atomists may not always be fans of nuclear power, but they are all united in their belief that technology can do anything, even create utopia. They're kinda upset that humans still do bad things, no matter what anyone invents. Even beside their disregard for the human factor, their insanity means that they have strange ideas of what 'Utopia' is- to some, living in the Matrix isn't such a bad idea. They were formally founded in the 1960s after it became clear that nuclear power wasn't the perfect energy source they hoped for, and their Grant enables them to ward off Havoc rolls better than others, to represent how determined they are to use their technology on the world at large. Their favored axioms are Automata and Apokalypsi, to better aid in the creation of the perfect technocracy, run by beings free of human frailty.

===Etherites===
The Baramin of crackpot "scientific" theories and conspiracy nuts. They believe that a single unified theory can explain anything in the universe, without stupid things like 'relativity', 'quantum mechanics', and 'genuine magic' butting in. What that theory is depends on the Etherite in question, but it can range from somewhat plausible, to based on the Luminiferous Ether (this is a popular one, and the faction is named after it) to 'UFOs set up Earth as a science experiment and occasionally beam up humans as samples' and '[[Racial Holy War|The Jews control Big Pharma in order to trick people into believing in vaccines]]'. They're a riff on the [[Mage: The Ascension|Sons of Ether]], with science for them not being about forming theories based on facts but instead forming facts based on theories, along with some of the worse Victorian era attitudes. They also tend to go from charming and quaint to homicidal and rabid in seconds flat the instant someone questions one of their pet theories, and for this reason are the favored assassins of the Lemurians.  Their favored axioms are Katastrofi and Skafoi, the better to build a jetpack to go find the people who tell them they're wrong and a raygun to zap them with.

===Mechanists===
The Baramin of fatalists. Mechanists believe that everything is predestined according to physical laws or some other outside force, and therefore nothing they do is their fault. The fact that this is scientifically ''disproven'' (truly random numbers do exist in physical interactions, for example) even in the real world, much less the World of Darkness, does not matter. And being Unmada, one has to wonder if they really ''don't'' have free will because their own insanity makes it so. All of their technology and attitude is based on the idea that there's a single set of derivable laws for everything, making them act dour and repressed. Their favored Axioms are Automata and Prostasia, which along with their Grant (which adds durability to Wonders) makes them among the best makers of rock-hard, [[Necron|tanky robots]].

===Phenomenologists===
The Baramin of 'I reject your reality and substitute my own', even by Genius standards. Phenomenologists believe that [[Chaos|there's no such thing as a consistent, objective reality]] outside of their own perception, and so make up their own ideals as it suits them. This makes it very hard to tell when they're lying, because they can just make up a reality in which they're telling the truth, and then believe in it so hard that they automatically gain an extraordinary success on a Subterfuge role. Their favorite Axioms are Apokalypsi and Epikrato, which helps them control the environment to suit their current beliefs, and aids in their role as Lemuria's spymasters. They're also somewhat of a dig at the Cult of Ecstasy, and an even more obvious dig at postmodernism (look up the "Science Wars" for context).

===Oracles===
The baramin of moral fundamentalism. Oracles are a more philosophical branch of Lemuria, and the sort that refuse to believe that their ideas might be just a little bit out of touch, or that they might be wrong. They know many mystical secrets, most of which have been disproven, are completely contradictory to reality, or are just utterly ridiculous. But they do know a lot of normal things too, and their grant is the ability to spend Mania to learn one mundane fact that a world-class specialist in the field might know after several hours worth of research in a good library. They're still upset that new philosophies have replaced those they believe in, like Christianity replacing Roman polytheism, or Aristotle's theories replacing Plato's, or just the fact that Taoist alchemy was wrong about mercury granting immortality. They're counterparts to both the Hermetics and the Celestial Choir of [[Mage: The Ascension]], blending together old-fashioned philosophies that don't realize they've been superseded by better ones, and the bad attitude that results from people believing that they're absolutely and definitively right. They're currently fading away, as the Atomists are growing in power. Their favored axioms are Exelixi and Metatropi, to help them 'fix' things and change them to be the way the Oracles think they should be.

===Other Baramins===
A lot of Baramins have followed the route the Oracles seem to be on: the core book writeup mentions the Numinologists, who mourned the end of polytheism and tried to made Wonders that could imitate the old gods, who may have become a subset of the Oracles, but the last of the original apparently died off around the Renaissance. There's also a mention of a Baramin devoted to warped readings of history which exalted their nations, ideals, or [[/pol/|ethnicities]], which eventually evolved into the Phenomenologists. 

The most important dead Baramin, however, was the Dharmists. A group supposedly founded to [[Inquisition|oppose new and dangerous ideas]] in the Indian Subcontinent, their closeness to the original Lemurians (snake-people) and their natural ability to control other Inspired meant that they became the de-facto leaders of Lemuria, with their runes-and-crystals aesthetic becoming dominant. On a more metatextual level, however, the Dharmists took control because they were the archetype of the idea that created Lemuria--a mysterious foreign order of enlightened sages, who controlled the world in secret. For obvious reasons, the Dharmists were all [[Exterminatus|hunted down and disposed of]] after the Peerage finally won the war against the Lemurians, and none survive. Their favoured axioms were Epikrato and Metatropi, which allowed them to perform feats to dazzle the mind, and then slip inside said mind once dazzled.

Then, there's the Numericals, the Baramin of...well, it's not entirely clear yet, but probably eventually something related to contempt for regular mortals. Right now, it's the Baramin of [[Fags of 4chan|oldfags]]. To understand the early Internet, you have to understand that until 1993 it was essentially a private club. Usenet, the only discussion forum and main site on the Internet at the time, could only be accessed by university students, and as such only a small amount of new members joined each year, mostly [[Summer|in September]]. This meant that a single code of etiquette was easy to enforce. But when AOL started offering Usenet access, the site was soon overwhelmed by a massive horde of new members, breaking this once-exclusive club wide open for everybody. The frustration from watching what was once meant to be a shining virtual city on an e-hill, populated by a virtual elite, turn into just a part of regular life, created the Numericals. Right now, they're just a small group of [[butthurt]] Geniuses constantly whining about [[Grognard|how much better things were in the old days]], and it's  something of a stretch to call them a Baramin--they don't even have any powers or favoured Axioms. Then again, the same could be said of the Atomists in the Sixties.