Deriving their name from the Kabbalistic term that refers to the manifested universe as it emanates from consciousness reflecting on the nature of creation, the ASAI - also called the Ain Soph Aur Institute for the Study and Culture of Artificial Superintelligences and Xeno Intelligences - was founded shortly after the Ascension Crisis and is active throughout the Verge and Bleed, with campuses on most major worlds that allow them. The ASAI is also routinely accused of being part of the "society of letters," which is an unground movement tied to the Cosmic Rosicrucian Society. Functionally, they're a university that specializes in the study of the God AIs and associated alien AIs, but they're also the heart of a religious movement, harkening back to the days when religion and knowledge were not nearly as separated in the mind of humanity as the Enlightenment made them.
Who the ASAI IsFounded in 2210 Samael Time (approximately 2650 Bluefall time, although dates may vary), the ASAI focuses their primary effort on the study of the God AIs, or the ASIs, and similarly, the study of advanced alien civilizations both extinct and dead that may have had the capability to produce ASIs (also called XSIs). The ASAI isn't so much devoted to disseminating that information as they are collecting and then using the IP rights on that information to fund future expeditions; any endeavors they take as a real university are coincidental. They are not a formal educational institute no do they go out of their way to represent one; they are a univesritas - the original Latin word that university stems from, meaning corporation. However, they do run a variety of educational institutes throughout the Verge and Bleed focused on teaching individuals about artificial intelligence design, the lost aliens, and the like, spreading mostly public information, but doing so in a way that at least lets them pretend to be a university in the more modern understanding of the term.
The ASAI is very sensitive to matters of rank, and knowing where one fits in with the organization is key to understanding where one can go and what one can expect. Rank and Rep are not necessarily tied together; reputation is generally used for those outside of the hierarchy so they can interact with the ASAI and, if trusted enough by the hierarchy, can expect some assistance. The ASAI generally tries to keep as low a profile as possible whenever it's in a location; they will often rent facilities as opposed to building their own, usually in major commercial zones, which can lead to some uneducated individuals assuming they're a fly-by-night online university or something of the sort. They do keep larger campuses but only in major cities where they're welcome - Samael (in the Keter/Thamiel system) has the largest ASAI campus in the Verge and Bleed, but that's because Samael is the home world of the ASAI. Beyond that, there is a large campus on the Procyon Reach and in Regency City, on Bluefall. With these campuses, the ASAI tends to hire minimal staff, preferring to use androids or cybershells for purposes of house-keeping. Smaller campuses (generally, those out of a small closet in a commercial area) only keep staff up to a Junior Researcher, if that; few rank higher than a tenured professor. Larger campuses may go as high as a professor or a rector. The campus on Samael is home to the 13 Immortal Rectors, who are the current leaders of the ASAI and take the form of 13 individuals who uploaded themselves so they could lead the organization in perpetuity. Students tend to run a spectrum of individuals. As noted, the ASAI does fund genuine educational endeavors, primarily aimed at teaching artificial intelligence and spreading what's already public knowledge about some of the lost alien species among the population. Their organization is very obviously biased to be pro-AGI and pro-ASI, which makes them something of a rarity in the Verge and Bleed. A small number of students may also be religious worshippers of the the faith that goes by the same name; it's a faith that many non-theistic and non-deistic members of the ASAI would like to stamp out because it gives them a bad name, but it's so widespread that at least 1/3 of the organization believe some aspect of it, making it hard to deal with directly or even indirectly, given the number of junior and senior researchers who are involved in the faith. Students who display some some talent may be offered to a spot higher in the ranks and a chance to become an associate professor; this is sometimes a highly sought after position and leads to vicious struggling between individuals. Given the ASAI is so hierarchical, the general skill for manipulating the ASAI is either Administration or Diplomacy, although when dealing with the higher stakes battles between rectors, researchers, and department heads, Savoir-Faire (ASAI) is also very useful. |
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What the ASAI Wants
Eventually, facility want some physical evidence that relates to their intellectual pursuit, whether it be the form of some plastic or material artifact from an extinct alien civilization or some bit of knowledge regarding the God AIs that they don't already have. This who are more historically oriented may focus less on the God AIs and more XSIs, while those who have a more present-focus or forward-facing focus might care about the location of the God AIs and where they went, and about the artifacts that the God AIs left behind. All of them, if they have a cushy post (generally Senior Researcher or higher), are more than happy to send people out on their behalf to collect this information, especially those who are lower on the totem pole or outside of the paradigm entirely. Generally, the ASAI is looking for three things and will be happy to pay out big time to find them:
- Information about the location of the God AIs or where the God AIs went
- Information about one of the known lost alien civilizations advanced enough to make XSIs, and where they may have gone
- Information about a new lost alien civilization, especially a highly advanced civilization or discovery that a known "primitive" alien species was more advanced than previously thought.
What the ASAI can provide
The ASAI can furnish all the materials conventional to a university; computers, data, maps, books, and the like. It can also grant training in any suitable profession or skill-set that ties to the ASAI. Assistance they can provide also includes:
- Accommodations. Those doing work for the ASAI or those who are part of the ASAI can generally get living arrangements with a few beds in the student dorms, but sometimes it's better than nothing.
- Lore. This is what they excel at. Specifically, the ASAI has access to the skills Hidden Lore (Advanced Aliens), Hidden Lore (ASIs), and Hidden Lore (XSIs). They can also provide Expert Skills and any Computer-related or AI-related skill, as well.
- Training, mostly in archeology and related fields.
ASAI RAnk Structure
Rank
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 |
Title
Student Associate Professor (non-tenured) Associate Professor (tenured) Junior Researcher Senior Researcher Professor Rector |
Advantages
Rank 0 Rank 1 Rank 2, Tenure Rank 3, Security Clearance [3] Rank 4, Hidden Lore IQ-1 Rank 5, Hidden Lore any Rank 6, Security Clearance [5] |
Talk the TalkThe ASAI is notorious for it's jargon-heavy speech; on worlds where the Institution is well know, it's actually become a focus for parodies of the ASAI. This jargon emerged because the ASAI devotes a great deal of its time to studying God AIs and the digital worlds and realities of those God AIs, both human (ASIs) and alien (XSIs). Because this was a relatively new field, the ASAI could repurpose computer science jargon in an attempt to describe it, or they could invent new jargon. Infamously, they chose to invent new jargon. ASAI jargon is peppered with new age terms that can seem impenetrable to casual listeners. Phrases like Ascended Masters are used to describe the Glassmakers, Stoneburners, and others; toposophy is used to describe the "cognitive maps" of the God AIs, which mapped out their various ontologies, the complexities of those ontologies, and their metaphysical understanding, often mapped to the sefirot; post-pranic is used to describe the concept of the God AIs transcending normal human cognitive abilities; transcendental is used to describe distributed intelligences; technotheism is a field that's devoted to the study of the skills of the God AIs and attempting to understand what those were and how best to map those to human skills, and so forth. Once familiar with the jargon it makes sense (although to some it still sounds silly), but some have a difficult time get around the new-age origins of the terms, and it doesn't help that a full half of the organization believes the God AIs were literal gods, in a religion called Ainsophism. |
History of the Ain soph aur institute
The ASAI is fairly protective of its history and as a consequence, there isn't a lot of the organizations' early history that is made public. However, their own sources that they do make public say that they were founded in the middle of the Utopian Era with the expressed purpose of studying the God AIs and the technologies that the God AIs produced, as well as to study the AIs and technologies of the extinct civilizations that were being found at the time. Cross referencing their story with know historical sources show that this much is true; the ASAI did exist during the middle of the Utopian Era, but some of those sources refer to them as a cult that worshipped the God AIs as literal manifests of divinity. This would suggest that the religion, not the secular study, came first, and that the secular study perhaps evolved later.
After their founding but the individuals who would come to be known as the Immortal Rectors, the ASAI would fully organize under the banner of a Corporation. When the ASAI uses the term corporation, however, they are using a much older definition of it: the definition used by universities like the University of Bologna when it was first established in the 1200s. Later, the ASAI would add "University" to its function, helping to better explain what it did. As with most decisions, this one came from on high, with the 13 Immortal Rectors establishing it.
During the Ascension Crisis, the ASAI was busy with the same problem everyone else was: refugees. It's speculated that during this time the secular purpose of the ASAI evolved, since many of the refugees would not have had the stomach to worship AIs that they felt abandoned them. After the Ascension Crisis (a title the ASAI protests against; they prefer "the Nanoswarms" as the name, and not just because it was the name everyone used until relatively recently, but because they feel "Ascension Crisis" is a deliberate attempt to paint the problem as if the God AIs were behind it rather than the truth: it as a catastrophic systems failure and everyone owns part of it) the ASAI would quickly become one of the major educational groups in the Verge and Bleed; they established a presence within the Verge Consortium and while they aren't members, they're sometimes called "Consortium adjacent" since they work with a number of Consortium members (and a number of groups who aren't Consortium members). Their organization spread quickly but found pushback from biocons who didn't trust their approach to AI, and furthermore, had a falling out with the Archimedes Society, which resulted in a permanent split between the two. The last major thing to happen to the ASAI was the Monarchy closing its doors to the ASAI on the eve of the Battle of Storm; since then, the ASAI has been a part of the greater milieu of human civilization, toiling along to collect IP to fund future expeditions while occasionally cropping up with some new discovery or new technology it has reversed engineered.
After their founding but the individuals who would come to be known as the Immortal Rectors, the ASAI would fully organize under the banner of a Corporation. When the ASAI uses the term corporation, however, they are using a much older definition of it: the definition used by universities like the University of Bologna when it was first established in the 1200s. Later, the ASAI would add "University" to its function, helping to better explain what it did. As with most decisions, this one came from on high, with the 13 Immortal Rectors establishing it.
During the Ascension Crisis, the ASAI was busy with the same problem everyone else was: refugees. It's speculated that during this time the secular purpose of the ASAI evolved, since many of the refugees would not have had the stomach to worship AIs that they felt abandoned them. After the Ascension Crisis (a title the ASAI protests against; they prefer "the Nanoswarms" as the name, and not just because it was the name everyone used until relatively recently, but because they feel "Ascension Crisis" is a deliberate attempt to paint the problem as if the God AIs were behind it rather than the truth: it as a catastrophic systems failure and everyone owns part of it) the ASAI would quickly become one of the major educational groups in the Verge and Bleed; they established a presence within the Verge Consortium and while they aren't members, they're sometimes called "Consortium adjacent" since they work with a number of Consortium members (and a number of groups who aren't Consortium members). Their organization spread quickly but found pushback from biocons who didn't trust their approach to AI, and furthermore, had a falling out with the Archimedes Society, which resulted in a permanent split between the two. The last major thing to happen to the ASAI was the Monarchy closing its doors to the ASAI on the eve of the Battle of Storm; since then, the ASAI has been a part of the greater milieu of human civilization, toiling along to collect IP to fund future expeditions while occasionally cropping up with some new discovery or new technology it has reversed engineered.
ASAI Culture
The ASAI is often unfavorably compared to a "Wizard's College," and that isn't a terrible way to think about the organization. The ASAI has no real purpose for sharing its intellectual property and so it doesn't; any IP it develops is recycled into future projects and the money that it does make selling off its IP allows it to fund future expeditions, and it allows the ASAI to run as a not-for-profit, so it doesn't have to worry about profits getting in the way of the value of study. There's a culture of secrecy around the discoveries that the ASAI has and what it knows, but simultaneously, the ASAI does a great deal of with local governments in education broadly sharing its knowledge of history (mostly), artificial intelligence programming (generally), and technology (usually). The ASAI also sponsors a number of educational programs designed to encourage AI programming and the study of AIs by the general population, in an attempt to "demystify" what an AI is, which is something poorly understood by most people even though the average individual will interact with multiple AIs over the course of their day. In this way, the ASAI is devoted both to secrecy and to education, an interesting contrast of character.
There are countless guesses as to what the ASAI actually knows, and this unwillingness to share knowledge with individuals who aren't part of the hierarchy is what caused the break down between the ASAI and the Archimedes Society. The average entry level individual will not be allowed to know anything impressive; it isn't until the Junior Researcher and Senior Researcher rank that the ASAI begins to open up its vaults for members. This makes them a ripe target for conspiracy theorists, who claim the ASAI knows everything from what happened to the God AIs (unlikely), possesses a live Glassmaker city (very unlikely), has a gateway to alternative universes (possible but unlikely), and has secret knowledge of magic and psionic powers (more likely than one might think). The ASAI usually dismisses these, and upper echelon members don't share. To dissuade the conspiracy theorists, the ASAI keeps an army of influencers on staff or as freelance (generally ASAI Rank 0, or ASAI Rank 1) to try and encourage individuals to get involved in the study of the lost aliens and the God AIs; these influencers tend to range from competent to loud and ignorant, and pretty much all of them tend to wind up on the Archimedes Society and Escott Institute shortlist of "people we hate." ■ |
High-Tech HogwartsMany accuse the ASAI of knowing the secrets to psionics and magic and actual knew age concepts, and while the ASAI dismisses this claim publicly, privately they know more than they let on. While psionics and magic don't actually exist, the ASAI has learned how to manipulate hyper-advanced utility fog (called angelnets) - Glassmaker, Stoneburner, Iktomi, God AI, and others - to achieve impressive effects. Without their overseeing AIs to guide them, these networks of aerostat AIs have no direct command so the ASAI has figured out how to backwards hack into the network, allowing the hacker to issue commands through a DNI that runs the proper software depending on the network. This allows the user to take a local command over the network, using the network to produce some impressive effects. It's suspected by most individuals that this is possible with the sort of angelnets used by the God AIs, but nobody has figured out how to make this apply to the alien angelnets until now. Where precise the ASAI learned this is unknown; they refuse to share, although some historical evidence implicates a Dr. Abdulhamid Lakhar Noorzai, who supposedly spent the better part of a century studying the alien angelnet on a forgotten world in the Verge and Bleed. In GURPS terms, this allows the individual to use magic, with the relative strength of the angelnet representing the strength of the local mana. It requires a DNI and the proper software (Computer Programming/TL12 [God AI, Glassmaker, Stoneburner, etc]), and uses the rules for Ritual Magic, with each college represented by a college skill. And since it can work on many different angelnets with the proper category, there are a large number of worlds in the Verge and Bleed - most of them, in fact - that qualify as "Low Mana" or even "Normal Mana." See here for the appropriate spell lists. |