“For that matter, the elements found in a human being is all junk that you can buy in any market with a child’s allowance. Humans are pretty cheaply made.”
-Edward Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist
The Reckoning
Putrefaction is the step before a greater refinement, and the Children of Knowledge admit that by the advent of the Reckoning, they were mired in a putridity all their own. Caught between centuries old alchemists in their Realms toiling wishing to maintain the pure art of alchemy and their apprentices who were more than willing to embrace modern chemistry as the apotheosis of the art, the Craft was at something of a stalemate. The Storm and the Pogrom changed all that. Labs were raided, the parties were shut down, and alchemists all over the globe fell to Technocracy bullets. Traditionalists in the Umbra hoped this would be a lesson to their rebellious children who were sorely wrong. The Realms that had sheltered the centuries old Masters were mostly blown away by fiery winds. The cauldron of the Crowned Ones got too hot and nearly boiled them alive. Those who survived, however, found they were made of gold.
Current Status
The feud that divided the Craft was forced to a breaking point in the late 1990s. Those few traditionalists were welcomed back into the Order of Hermes by members of the Craft who had been in hiding there since the time of the Betrayer. The now House Solificati took with them what few Realms remained and much of the Craft’s ancient libraries (which is how they gained their House status so quickly). Their younger, relatively speaking, Children of Knowledge sought refuge elsewhere: among the Batini and the Hollow Ones. Like the Batini, they saw the Alliance as a step towards greater unity, but like the Hollow Ones, have always existed on the lunatic fringe of club and drug culture. Ever willing to experiment, the Children of Knowledge have joined the Disparate Alliance to see if they can refine it into something better than the Council or the Technocracy.
Crowned Ones of Los Angeles
The Solificati in Los Angeles are based out of the Advanced Technological and Holistic Nexus of Research (acronym ATHNR, pronounced “Athanor”) an independent think tank operating out of Silverlake. ANTHR is headed by Dr. Nadzia Koenig, the highest-ranking Master Alchemist on the WestCoast. ATHNR is dedicated to “moving mankind forward”, a bland way of stating its goal of helping ease people through the current age of putrefaction and into a new golden age. ATHNR tackles everything from examining the failures of 20th century approaches to social problems and lobbying for new paradigms of problem-solving through legislative reform, to examining new mental problems that are arising in the 21st century, like the endemic and largely unaddressed issue of technological addiction.
Extending out of ATHNR, the True Solificati are invested into academia and medicine, where they compete with the Traditions and the Technocracy, though grant funding means little to the Children of Knowledge.