The Möbius Server

The Möbius Server is a nonspatial, nontemporal computer server. It can be accessed anywhere, anytime, using computer technology or other forms of consciousness expanding activity (like dreaming, meditation, spirit messengers, etc). It has a variety of functionalities and securities that draw on a mastery of Time, Correspondence, Spirit, Mind, Entropy, and Prime. It is designed as a fee-per-service system, charging users quintessence, willpower, or a magical energy source of another kind (like gnosis, glamour, or pathos).

Types of Connection 
Digital: Use the Computer skill to connect a digital device to the server
Mental: Use the Meditation skill to mentally connect to the server
Spiritual: Use the Cosmology or Rituals skill to spiritually connect to the server
Dreaming: Use Lucid Dreaming skill to go there in sleep
Interdimensional: Characters with Time, Correspondence, and Spirit 5 can travel to their domain within the server.

Power Sources 
Any form of mental or spiritual energy can be used to pay the costs of the server. Quintessence, Gnosis, Glamour, Willpower, Pathos, etc.

Functions

Create an Account
The user connects to the server for the first time. They choose their type of access (digital, meditative, etc). They establish a personal domain within the server. They also choose which other accounts or services they would like their domain connected to (another users, the Virtual Alexandria Project, the MUSE Network, an interlibrary loan partner, etc). Their personal domain in the server only has the information that they supply (either through mental sharing or upload) or by connecting to other domains or networks. Interested in creating an account? Click here!

Basic Uplink
Connect to the server for a moment, allowing a computational/mental task to be done instantaneously. Can upload information (making it always available upon future uplinks, even if the information is forgotten by the user) or download information they have access to (things they have previously uploaded or information from networks their domain is connected to). (Rules: costs 1 quint, will, pathos, etc, per round. Being linked into the server gives the user an additional non-magical mental action that round and +5 to mental challenges that round.)

Deep Uplink
Connect to the server for a moment in embodied time around the user, but it allows the user to delve deeply into the server, temporarily suspending the users mental world and allowing them to work out complex problems in a moment. (Rules: cost: 3/connection. +5 to mental challenges, gain an additional downtime action based focused on learning, analysis, planning, or building mental models. At ST discretion, deep uplinks may spark the awakening of an unenlightened user or a seeking for an enlightened one.)

Reconfigure
By exposing themselves to vast knowledge, users can inspire themselves to transform, learn, and grow. (Rules: cost: variable. This can be used to alter one’s nature, trade one derangement for another, buy off mental flaws, buy mental merits, rename or rebalance resonance, or acquire merits related to the pursuit or protection of knowledge (like Higher Purpose, Conditional Magic, etc). The cost of this function is equal to the point value of the merit, flaw, resonance renamed, etc. STs can set cost for natures, derangements, etc. Also, STs can require the character to visit one of the Epiphamies in order to change a significant aspect of their character.)

Pantemporal Computing
Connect to data structures across time. When reading data, this effectively grants the user a use of pre/postcognition. Can be used to auguemnt the pursuit of various forms of knowledge. (Rules: cost: 2. Allows the user to gain +1 to the use of a background that spreads or acquires knowledge. Also, knowledge seeking/spreading backgrounds can be triggered in a single turn, as the server can backdate the request so that it finishes at the time of the request.)

Visit Epiphamy
The Server is connected to the Epiphamies, a set of abstract spirit worlds that teach important lessons and concepts. The Server enables users to create an astral representation of themselves and visit the Epiphamies or other astral realms. (Rules: cost: 5. Astrally projects the user to the Epiphamy realms)

Overclock
Creative users can potentially use the server to accomplish other effects given its unique design. (Rules: cost: variable. The cost and likelihood of success are subject to ST discretion. As a base cost, add the total of all relevant spheres needed for the effect.)

Proliferation

Open Source API: The code needed to connect a computer to the server is out in the world, hosted in various places across the web. It is all but impossible to get rid of the code, and it is a relatively simple matter to get one’s hands on it.

Temple of the Mind Meme: Spiritual and mental users often share with others the success they have had accessing the server. The methods of using it spread through religious, spiritual, and intellectual communities.

Networks within the Server

The Virtual Alexandria Project

Characters can access the project from their server.

The Epiphamies (from the Infinite Tapestry)

Epiphamies are powerful, highly conceptual domains found in the High Umbra. The Server is manifested in the same astral strata. In essence, it is an epiphamy in its own right. However, it is connected to the other epiphamies. Users venturing to the Epiphamies should do so at their own risk; they are complex spiritual realms

· The World Stage
· The Continuum Orrey
· Newtonian Mechanics/Einsteinian Relativity
· Motherhood
· The Apex of History
· The Nihil
· The Well of Remembrance
· The Well of Souls
· The Fortress of Government

In essence, the Server is itself an Epiphamy, inviting its visitors to reflect on the nature of space, time, and knowledge.

Ars Potentiae

The Art of Power deals with a Mage’s true potential beyond the fabric of reality granting one the power and essence of creation. The limits to this sphere are innumerable and go beyond comprehension of this realm. The essence of creation may be studied at an Apprentice level of understanding but fueling creation requires an Initiate level of understanding. Drawing and draining energy requires Disciple training but even still the true strength of this sphere is not grasped until you achieve Adept or Master understanding. However, even masters are limited in their uses of this sphere and this must be explored further so that Archmastery may be achieved and the true strength of this sphere may be exploited.

Important things to note, Charms may be created with Disciple prime. Charms are one use items that are often consumed by either the effect or paradox. The process of creating a charm is often time consuming but also enhances your own abilities allowing charms to be made to perform effects at one level higher than your own understanding. However, charms are limited to only be able to hold one sphere. If a mage attempts to force more effects into a single object, one or both effects might backlash upon the mage. Creating charms requires quintessence to forge and to activate so be prepared.

The Oracle on Prime

There is one secret and only one secret to the understanding of the Art of Prime. This has been passed down from the time in the Cult of Ecstasy from when we created the Code of Ananda. Ananda, fun fact, is Sanskrit for Bliss. So the Cult follows the Code of Bliss. Very interesting historical fact for you. Already you are learning.

But the secret! Ah yes the secret of the base essence of the universe. The very stuff that makes us real, all the way down to our "God Particles". Listen close, for that secret is:

Be.

That's it. To utilize the reality supporting nether beyond, just be.

Be joyous. Ancients held that those in the fits of rapture could see fae, and otherworldly creatures. This is absolutely true. At our highest states of being, we can see the other sides of everything around us. As we be, so to do the things and peoples around us.

Be kind. To others, to yourself, to those in need, and to all ways of life. Never obstruct the Awakening of those around you. If you see the Bhudda in the road, kill the Bhudda.

Be free. Yourself and others. The Code says, "Thou art miraculous. So art we all." Be excellent to one another.

Be. Fucking exist. Fucking feel. Fucking touch, and experiment, and push! Achieving this higher conciousness allows one to see the unifying factors in us all. At these highest planes of existance, we gain a deeper understanding of what binds us all. What are we? We fucking are!

It is the only way.

Prime and the Virtual World

The Universal Matrix is the idea that organizes Virtual Adept thinking and practice. This vast matrix is first and foremost information. Most of what seems like the world is actually data arrays, information configured and displayed.

From this perspective, it may at first seem easy to describe how Prime works. A common claim is that Quintessence is the energy source that powers the Universal Matrix. By channeling said energy, power grids or batteries can be created and used to facilitate changing or stabilizing other data arrays.


That version isn't wrong. However, it misses an important aspect of VA thinking. VAs are nothing if not hackers, and one of the central notions of hacking is mutability. Things are arranged one way, but they can be, often easily, arranged another. To evoke a more philosophical language, most VAs are antiessentialists; we reject the idea that there is a real, ultimate, underlying reality.

This makes understanding and manipulating space a snap (as space is easily manipulated by reconfiguring arrays... because it is an array!). But it is a nasty poser when taking up the question of Prime. How does an antiessentialist account for quintessence? To call quintessence the power source for the Universal Matrix is to say that the Universal Matrix is the real, ultimate, and underlying reality. And maybe it is, but it probably isn't. Not only will most VAs fight you if you go around peddling authoritative reality, we also are wary of calling the cart the horse. Yes, we change things by flipping bits, but that doesn't make flipping bits the ultimate truth of the universe.

So, quintessence is a sticky subject. Yes, in some ways it is an energy source, as it enables arrays to be unfolded out of the Universal Matrix. You need energy to do that.

But quintessence is also data. All Juice has encrypted data built into it. That encrypted data is hidden to most, but mages, technologists, and even some second rate palm readers can read the data written into quint. So quintessence is also data.

Just to further complicate matters, quintessence is also programming. VAs change the universe by hacking or reprogramming it. There are VA methods of creating quintessence that involve puzzling out programs, and those programs are themselves quintessences. Some programs are simply more vibrant processes than others.

So is it energy, data, or process? Hell if I know. But I'll tell you what it ain't. It isn't the foundation of reality. Some folks will lecture or preach about how flowing quintessence makes the material and spiritual universe (you know who you are). But if it were, how could people in said material and spiritual universe create quintessence? That makes no damn sense. If there is some supernal world of quintessence, it is merely another data platform that interacts with other platforms (mental, material, spacial, etc).

Some folks may give me crap for not answering the question. But let me promise you this: if anyone ever gives you a definitive answer to the question of what the ultimate universe is made out of, they are also trying to sell you something. I run a library. I'd sell more subscriptions if I stuck with the "Quint is data" version. But the VA in me can't. Nobody will ever corner the universal reality market, not even the greatest library ever.

Councilor Phaedra on Prime

The world is made of quintessence or vis as it is called in older texts. Every person, place, or thing contains at least a miniscule dram of vis. While the pattern of reality fights the will worker's desire to bend it to her needs, vis empowers her. It is in a way a great cosmic joke. 

Reality both gives us the tools we need to empower ourselves in vis and the means to destroy ourselves in paradox. Paradox occurs when a will worker pulls the threads of reality too far out of sync, in which case they snap back into place so hard her hands are scarred (sometimes literally, more often metaphorically). The sphere of prime allows the will worker to see, move, and manipulate the raw magical energy of reality. All awakened should learn at minimum apprentice themselves to this field of study.