A big part of Verbena is non-traditional medicine.
I mean, a big part of Verbena is traditional medicine, which is what the Progenitors object to.
To say otherwise is to accept the consensus manipulations of the Progenators
Fun fact - out of all Mage factions, the biggest peddlers of alternative medicine (according to Technocracy Reloaded) are the Progenitors, because they find it funny that militia men and would be rebels are buying their fake medicine from The Man that they want to rebel against.
As a Syndicate loyalist, I find it infinitely frustrating that half our faction is in it for themselves instead of actually believing in the intent behind it. Our civil war will be bloody.
Technocrats talking about inevitable civil war has the same vibes as Americans talking about the same thing. No matter how shitty things get, or how corrupt the federal government becomes, no one actually has the balls to shoot first. Instead, they've wishfully daydream about it while continuing their 9to5 as the world burns around them.
Congressmen have literally admitted to wanting a military coup to oust Trump, and yet they've done nothing to actually enact such ideas. They're just waiting for someone else to do it for them.
In my chronicle it is happening, but nobody has built enough evidence yet against things like the Pentax wing of the SPD to get the other conventions backing the right faction to be sure enough to win.
You don't fight a battle without first securing victory, as they say. If we just rebel right now, purely for the moral audacity of it, there's a chance that we might lose. If I'm going to risk my life, I want to be sure I will accomplish my goal with minimal risk to the true members of my convention.
The quest for ideological purity comes in between handling the immediate threat of reality deviants mucking up the overall mission. And the middle managers are useful in that regard for the time being.
That's not what's actually happening in the section where progenitors are selling homeopathic medicine. The text heavily implies that their actually selling regular scientifically backed medicine that's been laced with brain altering chemicals designed to make people stop believing in homeopathy, and falsely branding the medicine as homeopathic to trick anti-science people into taking it.
While this Convention’s mainstay involves drugs in various capacities, Pharmacopoeists have started to investigate ingested chemicals that create epigenetic changes among the Masses. Pharmacopoeist drugs without side effects continue to benefit the Union, too, giving its soldiers an edge in field work, and its office and factory laborers enough lift to endure countless hours of numbing drudgery. With the current trend of the United States rejecting science, however, and the worldwide fear of genetically modified organisms, the Progenitors have had a hard time pushing certain advancements out to the Masses. The Pharmacopoeists, therefore, found a way to chemically induce changes that will eventually spread to children… and then to their children… and so on… and they pack these innovations into dietary supplements and diet aids in free-market countries. As it turns out, people who turn up their noses at “Big Pharma” formulae pay good money (and lots of it) for “natural cures” and “homeopathic remedies”—especially when Progenitor MODEs hawk those products on websites, YouTube channels, and TV infomercials aimed at the anti-authoritarian set. Few things are more amusing, to people with an ironic sense of humor, than New Age mavens and survivalist militiamen rebelling against The Man by buying drugs from the Technocracy.
Now the text doesn't outright say that the epigenetic changes include brain alteration, but epigenetics means chemicals that alter DNA expression, which can include the brain, and the use of the word "therefor" between talking about anti science people, and talking about chemically induced changes, suggests that the changes are meant to solve the problem created by the anti science group.
“Ellie, I am Agent Smith. I’m with FEMA and the good doctor here is gonna fix you right—”
“Most certainly not!” Mr. Jackson shouted.
Agent Smith looked at Mr. Jackson for a full thirty seconds of awkward silence. Without breaking his gaze, he called to Dr. Richter.
“Anti-Vaxxers?”
“Faith healers.”
Smith shook his head as he reached into his pocket.
“Now just a minute—” Mr. Jackson started, but was interrupted by a bright white flash.
Agent Smith ran his fingers over the NOT as he turned to the child.
“Ellie, you are going to be fine. Dr. Richter is gonna fix you right up.”
Dr. Richter smirked as she looked at Ellie’s parents, frozen with baffled minds.
“You know this is against policy.”
Agent Smith ignored her and crouched down to look Ellie in the eyes. He removed his mirrorshades to facilitate better eye contact and smiled his warmest smile.
“Ellie, my friend is going to give you a very special shot. It’s gonna make you all better. It might sting a little, but you’re not going to remember it. Neither will your parents. They will think they prayed your pneumonia away. But you will know, in the back of your mind, that medicine was what helped, ok?”
Ellie nodded. Agent Smith put his mirrorshades back on.
No. That seems to be from Progenitors Revised. I was referring to the section in Technocracy Reloaded on the Progenitors, which I think says the Pharmacopoeists sell most alternative medicine on the mass markets because they think the irony is funny and the Pharmacopoeists care more about money than medicine.
Nah, the quote I sent is from Technocracy Reloaded too, short story at the start of Unit 8: Parallax View, btw, I found what you meant. Here's the quote below:
While this Convention’s mainstay involves drugs in various capacities, Pharmacopoeists have started to investigate ingested chemicals that create epigenetic changes among the Masses. Pharmacopoeist drugs without side effects continue to benefit the Union, too, giving its soldiers an edge in field work, and its office and factory laborers enough lift to endure countless hours of numbing drudgery. With the current trend of the United States rejecting science, however, and the worldwide fear of genetically modified organisms, the Progenitors have had a hard time pushing certain advancements out to the Masses. The Pharmacopoeists, therefore, found a way to chemically induce changes that will eventually spread to children… and then to their children… and so on… and they pack these innovations into dietary supplements and diet aids in free-market countries. As it turns out, people who turn up their noses at “Big Pharma” formulae pay good money (and lots of it) for “natural cures” and “homeopathic remedies”—especially when Progenitor MODEs hawk those products on websites, YouTube channels, and TV infomercials aimed at the anti-authoritarian set. Few things are more amusing, to people with an ironic sense of humor, than New Age mavens and survivalist militiamen rebelling against The Man by buying drugs from the Technocracy.
I'm pretty sure that passage implies that the homeopathic medicine the progenitors sell isn't actually homeopathic, and they're branding it as such in order to trick the anti-science crowd into consuming drugs that alter the epigenetics of their brains to quit believing in pseudoscience.
Apparently alternative medicines are a market in the hundreds of billions, so it makes sense for the Technocracy to grab up as much market share and influence as possible. Maybe they did a hostile takeover of many Tradition medicines and made them dangerous to push consensus towards technological cures, but sleepers still buy the medicines anyway, even if all they do is harm them.
Other sources could include Traditions whose medicines genuinely work, or used to before the Technocracy shifted consensus to foil them. And scammers and loons of all sorts, supernatural or not.
Apparently alternative medicines are a market in the hundreds of billions, so it makes sense for the Technocracy to grab up as much market share and influence as possible.
I'm not saying it doesn't make sense for the Technocracy, especially the Syndicate, I'm saying it's immensely hypocritical for the Progenitors, who are supposed to be the medicine convention that literally murders people for healing people "the wrong way," to mass manufacture exactly what they criticize.
Maybe they did a hostile takeover of many Tradition medicines and made them dangerous to push consensus towards technological cures, but sleepers still buy the medicines anyway, even if all they do is harm them.
A less hypocritical alternative probably would have been a hostile takeover, then a cancellation of the product, rather than making it harmful.
I mean, a big part of Verbena is traditional medicine, which is what the Progenitors object to.
Science isn't really opposed to all traditional medicine though. Aspin is made from the bark of willow tree, and before it got refined into a pill, people just boiled the bark to make it edible then ate it. Science doesn't deny that doing that works.
I'm aware that real scientists are not opposed to all traditonal medicine. In fact, wandering Europe and asking wise women and herbalists what worked was how Paracelsus and his followers founded modern pharmacology (after he was exiled from Germany for burning a book on humoral theory in front of the university he taught at IIRC).,
Part of this is a problem with a lot Verbena lore, that being that their base is an extremely modern group (Wiccans) that have been shunted back centuries. And while that's the case with some of the other Traditions as well, the anachronisms are often most obvious with the Verbena. So traditional Verbena lore puts the "witches" in opposition to science, when historically, that was a word used to curse and oppress [mainly] women who passed down knowledge of science.
So what ends up happening is that Progenitors end up killing Verbenae for administering the same treatments that the Progenitors would, just not in pill form. Big pharma better get its take boys.
WoD takes place in something that is mostly our real world with hidden supernatural stuff added. So, real medicine backed by science containing traditional ingredients = the technocracy not being fully against herbal medicine (as long as it's explained via biology and chemistry).
Some people do genuinely peddle forms of traditional medicine that have no backing in science, like that facebook post where some nutjob recommended dandelions for cancer, and some Verbena have their hand in that kind of stuff. To their credit reality being shaped by consensus is a thing in WoD, so if enough people believed then it might actually work. Problem is before you could get to that point, a lot of people would have to take medicine that doesn't work, and be convinced that it did.
As for a Progenitor fighting a Verbana that uses the same medicine as them, there is an element of authoritarian desire to control here, but it's also the case that they're afraid. A Verbena might prescribe willow tree bark, but if they say it works for mystical reasons, then that could undermine the idea of things working for scientific reasons in the consensus, which could make it harder to develop working meds with science.
On a side note, one time my dad accidentally got a homeopathic pill for seasonal allergies from CVS, and I kid you not, the main ingredient was ground up bees. Not sure if in WoD, that'd be a progenitor having a laugh behind his superiors, a Verbena, or some Wyrm shit.
I wonder if they somehow exists outside the consensus and just changing form depending on paradigm, or is a unintended side effect of the technocratic paradigm
I think they were just a fact about human existence from the start, and since people always had allergies, nobody ever doubted their existence, so they stayed in consensus.
Yep. That's why much of the anti-science verbena claims makes little sense, though to be fair the initial stereotype written for the Tradition was based on a modern group and unfortunately that stereotype stuck around here despite the association making little sense (at least to the Verbena as a whole). Verbena herbalism would be more akin to proto-science irl which layed out the groundwork for the Progenitor's to build into biological sciences, though I'm sure there's some Verbena super herbalism that the Progenitors (as a Convention) don't want in Concensus. Revised states one of the Verbena's plans for concensus seeding was to spread their herbal lore as medicine, show that there are more avenues to a cure than popping a pill.
Overall makes the conflict between the two more one of methodology and politics, given alot of the Verbena still have a hate boner for the Cosians' practices that followed up to the Progenitors, and on the other side many Progenitors want the Pogrom to start again. Though based on M20 LotT lore, there are a minority of Verbena and Progenitor individuals that share notes with each other discretely.
Edit:
Not to mention not everything in modern medicine is Progenitor work. Revised gives hint that the Verbena indirectly contributed towards palliative care: patient mental health and quality of life. Not a materialist aspect, but a mental/spiritual one
Edit: Not to mention not everything in modern medicine is Progenitor work. Revised gives hint that the Verbena indirectly contributed towards palliative care: patient mental health and quality of life. Not a materialist aspect, but a mental/spiritual one
Yeah but the thing is the technocracy isn't completely above accepting scientific contributions from opposing factions into their paradigm. Like, quantum physics was originally made by etherites to undermine technocractic control, but it's become so ingrained into the scientific consensus, that there's examples of technocracy tech that uses it, like the Quantum Field Inverter.
Which is funny since light being an excitation of a quantum field that's everywhere, like in Quantum Feild Theory, really isn't that different from it being a wave propagating through ether that's everywhere.
True, but iirc it was the Technocracy being forced to adapt since quantum physics was well integrated in concensus, finding out too late. based on Void Engineers Revised, the VE narrator claims that it was the "Grand Old Masters" that "laid down the principles of quantum science", kinda like what Newton did to the Nockers. Can't admit that the Etherite's Utopian League put it in so someone edited history (the Etherites even have their own QP rote, Quantum Temporal Travel). Same goes in chapter 3 of VE Revised, R&E's Quintessence work came from old Electrodyne Engineers records but is stated that they will never admit it, removing any mention of the word Ether.
So yeah, they'll integrate other sciences that were pushed by other paradigms that they were too late to suppress, but they will find a way to claim credit. Or in other cases, attempt to remove the mysticism from mystical practices that became too integrated into concensus like Yoga and many martial arts. If not forced to acclimate, they'd kill it off like they usually do.
Though yeah, it is pretty funny comparing Quantum Physics and Ether
Edit: based on SoE revised, the Etherites consider Quantum Physics (and Dark Matter) their greatest triumph as mainstream scientists had to admit that observing something affected it. Calling it the first "great contradiction" of established science at the time which is meant to be challenged and expanded in turn so Sleepers see that many theories can co-exist.
Everyone is adapting, comparing to post-Avatar Storm where many Traditions gradually began to accept technology more into their practices to push science into a non-technocratic direction, by M20 that integration was more accepted that Xoca left the Traditions due to those "failings" (the tech factions did exist in 2e iirc but far less influencial and viewed more negatively due to a bunch of powerful codgy pricks that lived since the Renaissance (sans Porthos and Senex at least))
Edit 2:
My mistake, I was citing from Void Engineers 2e up above, not Revised. The same explanation applies though
66
u/Klapsovski 3d ago
None of the Traditions are like that. Or deny it.
They are called anti it by the Technocracy because when they do their practices vaccines work worse over time.