by J. Edward Tremlett (Wraith: The Oblivion | Resources)
Guildmaster: Jose Julio, aka "Cybergod," has proclaimed himself the leader of this new "Clique" by right of organizing the strike that led to it. No one’s challenged him on this, yet, and if he keeps making the right decisions it may yet be a while before anyone does.
Center of Power: The Clique’s leadership is currently hiding out in the National Security Agency’s own mainframe, all but daring the Guild they left to come and get them. At least, that’s what they want the Artificers to think: in reality, they’re hiding in Las Cruces, and watching with glee as what few "house servant" web-savants the Guild has left all but fry themselves trying to hack the NSA.
Specialty Arcanos: While what they practice is, technically, Inhabit, the Clique is pushing to have their computer-heavy Arcanos - and all related electronic arts thereof - renamed Necrocybernetics.
There’s Jose, up at the top, calling himself the Leader due to his having thought of it first, and being the loudmouth around whom the others have congealed.
Below him is everyone else, and although he has a few trusted people in his inner circle (which he calls his Tiger Team) he doesn’t want to have a huge, sprawling bureaucracy. He feels that the era of entrenched specialization is a relic of the past, and only leads to infighting and stupid power games. If something needs doing, he’ll find the best person for it, ask them to get a team together and then let him know what’s going on. And when it’s done, they can disband – simple as that.
To facilitate this, those wraiths entitled to call themselves NecroCyberz are given a Relic eCard that proclaims them as a member. This eCard also has their primary skills listed and rated, just like G.I.Joe filecards. This information - which is public knowledge - is used by Jose to pick team leaders, and the team leaders also use that information to pick their teams. And that’s all the organization the Clique really wants.
None. (See above)
Since the invention of electronics, and the new worlds this opened up to the Artificers Guild, a rift within the Guild has slowly developed. On one end are the traditionalists who remember the days before computers, and when they called their Arcanos Kinesis. On the other end are the "new wave" kids, who only ever knew it as Inhabit, and have taken to the new, digital world like ducks to water.
The old-timers want to bang hammer to forge and make Artifacts, while the new breed want to dive into Virtuality and make it sing for them. Older hands in the Guild knew that the difference in outlook would probably come to a head one day, but they trusted in Lord Nhudri’s presence to keep order. They also trusted in people like Lord Ember - not to mention the zealots in the Cult of Nhudri - to enforce it.
But then the 6th Great Maelstrom saw Lord Nhudri vanish from his workshop, and Lord Ember disappear into a final Harrowing. And its aftermath saw the once-venerated Guild have to take it on the lam from angry mobs, and get absolutely no respect from the other Guilds. In the face of those harsh realities that order all but crumbled, and a schism was inevitable.
So it was that, one day, a massively talented Journeyman by the name of Jose Julio got sick and tired of being told to eat shit and call it manna from Heaven. He’d been building towards this for some time, and had cultivated enough friends and allies to call for a general strike - one that was too large for the Cult of Nhudri to quell, and much too loud to ignore.
Bolstered by the huge response, Jose went to the Guild’s leadership and gave them a list of requests - all part of a plan to bring the Guild into the 21st Century, as he put it. However, the leaders were rather contemptuous of these notions, and threw them all back in his face as "impossible," "too much" or "too presumptuous." Who was he to tell them anything...?
Then he was told to submit himself for judgment for wide-scale disruption of the Guild’s business in this time of emergency, and that was the signal the others were waiting for. With a final flourish - two fingers on both hands - Jose leaped into the Tempest, daring his would-be captors to follow him. And as word went down the chain, his followers all tossed their hammers and necklaces aside, and left as one.
In the short time since then, the Clique has gained new members, and made a lot of headway in their plans. They’ve also fought off assaults on their group by Artificers sent to bring them back to the fold, and have suffered only minor casualties. Put simply, no one knows the virtual battleground better than they do, and the old folks just can’t compete.
Right now, the NecroCyberz are engaged in the attempt to hollow out online Haunts. This is being done for their own benefit three times over: it not only provides them with a place to wait out the Storm, and a place to hide from the Guild, but also a possible "peace offering" to give the other Guilds.
They’re savvy enough to realize that all the other, recognized Guilds have to be providing some kind of free service to the Underworld, as a whole, in order to be recognized. And being able to shunt wraiths from the Storm-tossed Shadowlands into virtual reality - without making them lose contact with their Fetters - would be a major step in that direction.
The Clique has almost no real friends, but a major enemy, at the current time. The Artificers are not happy to have lost so many "promising" members to Jose and his rebellion, and are in the process of hunting him down. They figure that if they can cut off the head of the revolt, the rest of the rabble will fall back into line, and before long it will be as though it never happened.
The only problem with this plan is that the Artificers simply do not have the people, resources or time to devote to the problem. The revolt came at the worst possible moment in the Guild’s history, and was not only one more thing they didn’t need, but one more thing they really couldn’t do anything about. The best they can do, now, is send a few Masters in bad standing out to find weaknesses in their defenses, and maybe slip a few of their own "converts" towards the faction, just to gnaw at them from within.But these are only tactics of irritation; The Guild will get its people, resources, or time to devote to the problem.
The revolt came at the worst possible moment in the Guild’s history, and was not only one more thing they didn’t need, but one more thing they really couldn’t do anything about. The best they can do, now, is send a few Masters in bad standing out to find weaknesses in their defenses, and maybe slip a few of their own “converts” towards the faction, just to gnaw at them from within.
But these are only tactics of irritation; The Guild will get its people back, in time, but that time might wind up being a ways away.
