Demiscient

"They don’t steal secrets—they drown them in sunlight and call it justice. What they are is a ransomware cult with a conscience problem. The worst part? Half our interns would join them if they thought they wouldn’t get caught."

— Alder Narin, Security Chief, Vanguard Dynamics

From Team 7 to Digital Robin Hoods

Demiscient began its life in the shadow of legitimacy, as a covert espionage unit called Team 7, operating on behalf of the innovative but underfunded design collective Yute, Seneca, Lister Unified (YSLU). Officially disbanded in 365 following a brutal campaign by Vanguard Dynamics' black ops division Fury, Team 7’s field agents were outed, many captured and forcibly uploaded into Ghost Mind Emulation containment, and their operations dismantled. But defeat bred evolution. Scarred—physically and psychologically—by their confrontation with the corporate war machine, the surviving members cut ties with YSLU, radicalized by their own ideals. From the ashes of Team 7, Demiscient was born: a rogue collective dedicated to the total abolition of intellectual property rights and the public liberation of all technological knowledge.

Weapons of Information, Tools of Liberation

Demiscient now functions as an independent insurgent movement. Its members—many recruited from disgruntled low-level gigacorp employees, student radicals, or Cyberjack enclaves—conduct black-ops cyberwarfare, physical sabotage, and high-risk data heists. Their goal is deceptively simple: to steal corporate R&D and distribute it through public fabricator networks and Solarnet nodes, making once-guarded designs available to all. They also engage in blackmail of corporate officials, data leaks, whistleblower Protection, and the liberation (or erasure) of enslaved Ghost Mind Emulations. In rare cases, they intervene directly in sabotage operations against technologies or projects they believe would tip the balance of power further into corporate or aristocratic hands. Demiscient justifies all actions—no matter how bloody or destructive—as necessary steps in the pursuit of technological equality.

Beneath the Halo, a Shadow

Despite their “freedom-fighter” image among much of the general population, Demiscient's track record isn't spotless. Civilian casualties, unintended economic fallout, and collateral damage have plagued many of their operations. The bombing of a Vanguard Dynamics datacenter in Year 411 caused a cascading blackout across a mid-tier habitat, resulting in dozens of civilian deaths—many of them children on life support systems. Likewise, their penchant for public data dumps has ruined lives for offenses ranging from moral corruption to mild corporate policy violations. Critics point to this as evidence that Demiscient is less Robin Hood and more technovandalism with delusions of grandeur. Still, their glamor persists in the minds of the underclass: a ragged collective of underdogs with the gall to steal fire from the corporate gods and hand it back to the people—scorched fingers be damned.