What Is A Nexialist?

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The Nexialist Order was established on Earth in the Pre-Diasporic Era. A secular scientific and philosophical movement devoted to integrating the different streams of knowledge, the Nexialists rejected the distinctions that formed the basis of Pre-Diasporic academic disciplines, and promoted integrative and lateral thinking.

Their movement established free institutes on every continent to promote science education and creative thinking. Much of their infrastructure and capital was acquired through mergers with regional movements that had global reach and some shared goals, such as occurred with the incorporation of the Gulen movement based in West and Central Asia.

The Nexialists' ability to synthesize knowledge and draw conclusions across different disciplinary and scientific boundaries made their Order invaluable during the early Diasporic Era. The Star League's first interstellar long range exploration vessels were often crewed with hundreds of scientists representing the numerous branches and specialties of every discipline.  More often than not these crews also included at least one Nexialist to help the members of the different shipboard disciplines, lines of inquiry, thought and practice to talk to each other and arrive at common understandings and solutions to problems. The integrative skills of the Nexialist assigned to The Space Beagle saved the crew numerous times from alien enigmas and threats.

As the Nexialists journeyed further out into space, they encountered stranger and stranger things. Psionics, group minds, parallel dimensions, Nexus Points. In fact, the Nexialists became so adept at using Nexus Points that they started using them for even deeper exploration among the planes. More than once, Star League deep range exploration vessels entered new and remote star systems for the first time, only to be greeted by a Nexialist who had already arrived in the system through a gate.

Over time, Nexialists integrated all of the strange phenomena they discovered into their general world view, and developed new practices which are indistinguishable from magic. Their enemies call them spells; the Nexialists call them formulae.