The Botherhood

The Botherhood is both a memetosociological cornucopia and a worldwide conspiracy whose objectives are unknown, possibly even to themselves. Scholarly consensus is that the organization—a term they earn by the thinnest of margins—did not exist in any significant capacity even as late as the ninth century. With the AES 715 discovery of alien ruins on the south pole, societies worldwide were aware of ancient alien presences. However, it wasn't until AES 923 that popular consciousness embraced the idea of aliens interfering in every part of history and/or contemporary society. The idea of the Botherhood, a mysterious conspiracy carrying out the whims of its alien overseers, grew out of this fervor. The meme seems to have spread initially via space enthusiast magazines before making the jump into conspiracy culture in the 50's, where it would gestate before reaching its current form.

A brief diversion before we continue: conspiracy culture is rather interesting from a memetosociological standpoint because to engage in conspiracy is to directly challenge the prevailing memetic narratives of your society. The actions a conspiracist takes from that position illuminate to us the limits of the influence of both the master narratives and the counternarratives which the conspiracists employ. Memetosociologists speak of "command narratives" that have the ability to shape society; conspiracy theorists are an excellent weathervane for whether a particular narrative is a command narrative, as they might verbally deny a command narrative, but still act in accordance with it.

I explain this to shed light on why the first Botherhood cells were found in Iurezza. In Barcu, the command narrative about otherworldly threats is essentially one of self-preservative collusion, e.g. in the case of the Killer Bus of Kingsland North. In neighboring Flandre, the command narrative about threats is that they are assessed and then efficiently dispatched. At the intersection of these memetic vectors—which arose mostly in northern Flandre—conspiracy theorists began to create their own Botherhood cells, hoping to get absorbed by the true Botherhood and influence them from within. These cells were eventually absorbed, not into the "true" Botherhood, but into other imposter cells hoping that the resulting increase of prestige would bring them to the attention of their notional alien overlords. This trend has continued into the present day, with the Botherhood becoming a convoluted international conspiracy—still, one assumes, waiting for the aliens to contact them.

Outsiders to the Botherhood mostly find them perplexing, as they will occasionally undertake arbitrary endeavors in case they serve the aliens' agenda. The lack of any overall agenda means these plots happen essentially at random, making them a convenient scapegoat for state actions like the 986 Bring Your Daughter to Work Day Incident or Queen Beneficent the Plenitudinous's secret police disappearing her citizens. Some commenters also suspect some overlap between the Botherhood and The Esoteric Order of Florists, but saner scholars withhold judgement, as there is literally no evidence whatsoever for that hypothesis.