[b][i]Past Lore - Organizations active before 2019[/i][/b]

[hider=Defunct Groups]
[hider=Arms of Nobility] An organization bent on pushing the importance of Noble Arms and Arms Masters, and is the chief backer of their rights globally. Many of its supporters are wealthy and well-known, however, they often face strong opposition from non-Arms Masters due to the agendas they push and the number of benefits they desire for Arms Masters.[/hider]
[hider=Organization for Disarmament]An organization determined to limit the use of Noble Arms and the suppression of Arms Masters. Their main goal is to abolish schools and facilities dedicated to Noble Arms and to limit the occupation of Arms Masters to the military only. Often, they are supported by many labor unions and social media outlets.[/hider]
[hider=The Hammer of Masters] A terrorist organization bent on creating a world where Arms Masters are the rulers. Their ideology is that Arms Masters are not, in fact, human, but a new superior race that deserves to be in power. The current number of members was unknown, however, they had 2 confirmed A-ranked Arms Masters in their ranks, a fact that worries many countries.

In 2014, the Hammer obliterated an up-and-coming group of Muslim Terrorists, took over their territory, and expanded it to encompass large portions of Iraq, Syria, and portions of Lebanon and West Iran and proclaimed 'The Malikate', a nation where Arms Masters can rule over Normal Humans. Five years of hard battle followed until the Paragons of Science and Seven Virtues emerged in 2018 - 2019 and demonstrated the ability to give Noble Arms to ordinary people, undermining the Hammer's worldview and ideology even as Loyalist Arms Masters and Normal people worked together to whittle down their territory to a single city that eventually fell, destroying the 'Malikate'.[/hider]
[hider=The Disablers] A terrorist organization bent on erasing or otherwise oppressing Arms Masters. Their ideology is that Arms Masters are not, in fact, human, but a race of monsters born with nothing but the ability to bring misery and destruction and as such must be culled or otherwise strictly controlled. A cause that many have joined and more have supported, and because of the support they have garnered from the masses, they are able to move through countries and cities with relative ease.[/hider]
[/hider] 

[b][i]Misc Lore - Present Day[/i][/b]

[hider=Background Lore for use in Character Creation]
[b]The Spartan Training Programs[/b]

As Noble Arms are created through life-changing personal growth in my version of it, various governments have created 'Spartan Training Programs (STPs)' to turn 'trainees' into Arms Masters by forcing personal growth. These are not the same as Arms Master Academies, although there is overlap between them and the STPs, with some establishments having separate 'Normal' and 'Arms Master' classes where those of the former can join the latter when they grow a Noble Arm. Note however that the STPs vary in methods and severity; some of them are mere 'Military Schools with more steps', and others are torture factories where abuse is a constant theme.

Singapore has the largest STP in ASEAN, where parents and orphanages regularly 'volunteer' their children for harsh training, both physical and spiritual, in order to have a chance of an Arms Master in the family. However, although the Singapore STP is not as bad as the ones ran by various authoritarian regimes, it is infamous for having dropouts who later join Anti-Arms Master terrorist groups such as the now-defunct Disablers.
[/hider]

[hider=Occult Programming Language]
[b]Occult Programming Language - Mechanics[/b]

The Occult Programming Language was developed by Alan Turing in the closing years of World War II, as a chance discovery that one-upped and exceeded the Nazis' own attempts to harness mysticism and the occult for battle. Basically, it treated Reality as a giant computer, and one 'string' of the Language was able to alter or add one existing fact, but cannot directly destroy a physical object or even concept. Multiple strings of these accidentally infected the collective Human Subconscious like a computer virus, which Alan Turing discovered too late, and this infection altered all Human Souls to be capable of manifesting a Noble Arm.

[hider=Deeper Explanation]
[b]Noble Arms' Core Power System (Summary expanded by[@Lewascan2], with minor edits from me)[/b]

On a cosmic level, the reality that underlies all of existence in Noble Arms is like a computer of unfathomable scope. Self-propagating and self-maintaining, it shapes every facet of life from a plane no mortal was meant to access. Every law of reality is a line of core code. Every individual is a bundle of programs running their course. No piece of "data" is ever truly gone, even when relegated to -and deleted from- the "recycle bin". Everything that exists also exists in the form of data simultaneously, shaping the system and being shaped in return.

The system is not sentient (as far as anyone is aware). If there is a cosmic consciousness ruling over all creation with any motivations to speak of, they are hidden. There is only The System, and, alone and unmolested, it does what it is meant to, nothing more or less. It is assumed by all but the Big Three that is no higher existence than it; for what could be higher than the very bedrock of reality?

This solitude, however, presents an interesting weakness. Alone, unmolested for countless millennia, the System has never been at risk of threats of its level. It does not have any "anti-virus/malware" protection to speak of, which presents those with the means the opportunity to challenge, twist or alter the rules of the "programs" it uses to run our reality (but never directly 'delete').

This methodology of manipulation, discovered by Alan Turing, has been widely called the "Occult Programming Language", an art of equally mystical and technological means. Through effectively exploiting "bugs" in the System, caused by performing certain "unpatched" acts, the result is known traditionally as "magic". These bugs, however, tend to be niche, and more serious manipulations must be used collectively. This collective use results in the ability to directly manipulate the strings of reality's data, able to insert new "truths" into the System or alter existing ones.

One result of a new "truth" was a "virus" that added an "update" to human souls, which would birth what are now called Noble Arms. A Noble Arm, in essence, is a preexisting series of strings of code that allow access to a narrow application of OPL. In a technical sense, this is what every Arms Master does, limited by what strings of code can safely integrate with them according to physiological and psychological compatibility.

Unlike a practitioner of OPL, however, Arms Masters fundamentally do not understand what they are doing, wielding their abilities instinctively and without conscious awareness of the "background programs" running according to their desires. It would be comparable to typing on a keyboard. A typical Arms Master simply knows that by pressing a specific button, they will make a letter. An OPL practitioner, however, could manipulate the code such that pressing that button results in a different letter or even multiple; they can actively interfere with reality's unpinning according to their understanding... Of course, the advantage Noble Arms have over such is that they grant immediate power and function instinctively without any mental strain required in the majority of cases. The average Arms Master is a specialist overpowered in their area of "expertise" that makes the average OPL practitioner look like a half-assed jack of all trades.

The weapon of an Arms Master acts as a "casting focus" that does most of the heavy lifting for their wielder. Where an OPL practitioner must create their own focuses from scratch or rely on memory, a Noble Arm comes prepackaged and functional. Noble Arms only take the form of WW2 or prior weapons, tools or other important items according to the collective human understanding of "what is a weapon" at the time. As the "virus" was passed to humanity and altered the limits of what a soul could accomplish, it brought with it the existing archive of weapons. And as a one-time program, there has been no "update" since.
[/hider]

[/hider]