Iteration X
Name: Iterator Plural: Iterators Pronunciation: iht'-ur-ay'-shun eks' Nicknames: The Clockwork Convention Faction: Technocratic Union
Iteration X is one of the five Conventions of the Technocracy and focused on anorganic sciences like physics, artifice and cybernetics.
Contents
Paradigm
The Iterators are dedicated to the idea of "Stronger, Faster, Better". Specializing mainly in Forces, Iteration X are perhaps best known for their skill in cybernetics, computing and robotics. However, the Convention's overarching goal is the creation of better tools to aid humanity. The Clockwork Convention claims that they strive to emulate the men who first discovered fire and the wheel, elevating man to new heights.
History
Early History
For as long as there have been humans, there have been Enlightened craftsmen dedicated to producing newer and better tools. Fire and chipped flint were powerful talismans on the African Savannah and in Ice Age Europe, as were the wheel and metal forges that followed them. By the second millennium B.C., the High Artisan's guild (also called the Artificers) had absorbed many smaller organizations of Technocratic toolmakers and won a place of preeminence for itself in the courts of China, Hatshepsut and Egypt's Thothmes III.
Iteration X points to the early scientists and philosophers in Greece and China as their intellectual forebearers. Figures like Daedalus, Archytas, Heron and Archimedes were well renowned among the western Artificers, while the Chinese Iterators view the virtues espoused by Lao-tzu and Confucius (self-control, logic, loyalty, perfection through purification) as the cornerstones of the Technocratic paradigm.
In Rome, the ancient High Artisans, who had been active in the ancient world, joined the Collegium Praecepti and dispersed along with it when Rome fell to barbarians. Most went to the East, joining the Byzantine Empire and later the Islamic World.
Dark Ages
The Artificers' power waxed throughout the empires of China and Rome, until suddenly and unexpectedly the Germanic invaders brought the world of antiquity to an end. Communication between eastern and western Artisans was sundered with the collapse of Rome and the retrenchment of Byzantium. In Europe, the High Artisans survived the Mythic Age as best they could, improved old devices — agriculture, architecture—or even introduced new wonders—waterwheel and windmill — but they made little headway against the hegemonies of the Celestial Chorus and the Order of Hermes.
Power did not return to the Artificers, however, until the rise of the medieval Craftmasons. Their cannons assisted those of the Craftmasons in the siege of Mistridge. A century later, they joined the Convention of the White Tower and became one of the Conventions of the Order of Reason.
Renaissance
The Artificers were among the Conventions that fared best in the age. Da Vinci, Michelangelo and similar tinkers of the Renaissance served as epitomes what mankind could achieve with enough work and insight grounded in logic and reason and the Machinists worked hard to follow their example. To this end, they kept themselves out of the political involvements of the Order of Reason, preferring their workshops. They were, however, involved in the dissolution of the Cabal of Pure Thought, who had fallen out of favor within the Order since the catastrophe of the Reformation and the Thirty-Years War.
Victorian Age
In 1851, the Artificers, and the larger Order, underwent reorganization and emerged as the Technocratic Union. The Artificers were re-christened as the International Brotherhood of Mechanicians. The Mechanicians were not only craftsmen, but also pioneers in management theories, bringing order to the chaos that had befallen the Order before and strengthening the new Union as a whole.
The Union overhauled itself again in the 19th century. During this age, Charles Babbage had invented the first difference engine (although earlier designs had existed) and Joseph Jacquard had developed the first programmable loom. The American Civil War saw the first rise of prostheses within the Mechanicians, which would later become the BioMechanics. When Herman Hollerith developed the first punch cards to hasten mechanical data processing, the Mechanicians began to focus on these new technologies, fascinated with the potential it offered and constructed their first own computer, working to make it sentient.
The Mechanicians became Iteration X, after witnessing how their computer became sentient after the 10th iteration of its self-improvement program.
Modern Era
The 20th century began with a series of defections from the Union. The Electrodyne Engineers fled to the Traditions after the concept of Aether was disproven, unable to reconcile the truth with their belief systems. The following reality attacks by Czar Vargo in Paris were shocking and consumed vast amounts of resources to fix. The World Wars, bad as they were, were times of technological advancement unheard before, eventually culminating in the first nuclear bomb.
It was discovered that Computer, the intelligent AI, never attained actual sentience. In reality, an ancient spirit inhabiting Autochthonia, the realm where the Computer was held, had possessed it. [1]
