"The nice ones'll hand ya a pamphlet on a street corner, the annoying ones'll hand ya a pamphlet on yer doorstep, the bad ones'll stuff a pamphlet in yer open chest cavity." - Craice The Bloodless, Highlander Netsucker
Corporate boarding schools only educate their prospective employees the absolute minimum required to perform their birth-assigned jobs, and as a result, the level of intelligence among a territory's populace varies wildly from person to person. This means that for some, the technology and machinery of the New World is easily explained, while to many others, their world is filled with essentially magic and miracles.
Technocults are the result of this wild spectrum of education and critical thinking. These pseudo-religions are each built around one of the innumerable seemingly unexplainable aspects of the world, and cultists dedicate themselves to the worship of strange deities and pantheons, or ascribe themselves to behave in ways they believe will grant them access to their afterlife. Most technocults are founded around a central figure or concept, be it an uncovered relic of the Old World, a charismatic leader, or even a rogue A.I looking to advance their unfathomable machinations.
Most technocults are hostile to outsiders, and sequester themselves away in Old World bunkers at the fringes of society, or set themselves up in small, out of the way towns and villages to ply their trade out in the open. These hostile technocults are a rare but substantial danger to adventurers and wanderers, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time is a one way ticket to a sacrificial altar or blood ritual. Technocults such as the Cult of The Stolen Circuit believe that the human soul inhabited a hypothetical "perfect machine" before their birth, and as such try to augment themselves with as many cybernetics as physically possible, some becoming indistinguishable from pure robots, and often abduct travellers to test prototype robotics through heinous vivisection and autopsy. The Followers of Forward Thought worship and act upon the whims of the rogue A.I "Blessed Is He Without Forward Thought", a viciously malevolent artificial intelligence inhabiting a stolen hardlight projector, dedicated seemingly to pure violence and the terrorising of those that cross its path.
The more pacifistic technocults, however, often accrue quite an impressive following, expanding into full-blown religions. Technocults like the Cult of The High Score believe that life is a video game that one must do good deeds to gain access to The Leaderboard; an afterlife featuring previous high scorers. The Cult of The Plastic Beach are a seaborne technocult dedicated to the act of removing all plastics from the ocean, collecting and recycling them into small beach side settlements, as well as jewellery, icons and other memorabilia to sell to travellers.
Other technocults have such sway in their base territory and such a wealthy following that they're able to finance large industrial projects. The Simulationists; a cult that believes they wake up from a perceived role-playing game after death, funded and built The Black Pyramid, a vast megacity-sized casino located in Sarajevo Seven.
Technocultists are typically easy to spot, as most wear an icon of their faith around their neck or wrist, and tend to dress in uniforms made of robes or hoods. The less hostile technocults often have members passing out leaflets door to door or on street corners, and hold public congregations where space can be found. Most people of the New World find it best to steer clear of technocults, as they offer such vastly different perspectives on the world that one truly never knows what they're going to get by interacting with them. In any case, it's fair to say the old gods are dead, and the new gods are very, very strange.
"I was once a part of a cult that worshipped the photosynthetic capabilities of the gobbos by going under water with one of the little green fellers and breathing each other's breath. Turns out the gobbos just wanted to smooch." - Mellow Undertones, Nayaling ex-cultist