Institute of Aeronautical Research and Technology

The Confederal Institute of Aeronautical Research and Technology is an agglomeration of facilities in the northeastern coastal plains of the Bep cultural domain, claiming numerous prestigious achievements annually, and boasting an impressive number of highly reputable staff. Headquartered in a former snake fortress, it enjoys horrid weather conditions and has accumulated ~200 years' history of successes, mostly in unpropelled windfaring. The Institute is considered one of the more prestigious organizations in existence, a great success of decentralization & the rural populations, and it is also an actual shitpost. While a few of the staff sport relevant formal educations to airfaring, the institute initially started as an in-joke among a group of mycology enthusiasts exploring their abandoned snake fortress, and employs whoever feels like showing up. As it stands today, it is best thought of as a successful fully open research facility, overwhelmingly populated by self-taught dilettantes and bored passers-by. The only properly hired staff of the Institute are occasional medical staff, brought in using research funding to patch people up after periodic rediscoveries of gravity and other key aeronautical concepts.

While the institute is slowly making progress on actually figuring stuff out, it is still primarily successful on paper. It owes a great proportion of this success to its remote location: Given that it's in the middle of nowhere, the founders were able to gain some initial legitimacy and funding by sending wordy letters about bureaucracy and experiments that may or may not have taken place as described. The funding then went to doing whatever, which they then inflated in writing to get more acknowledgements and funding. So far, every person sent to inspect or visit the Institute has left agreeing it's way funnier not to say anything about their modus operandi.

From its fabricated beginnings, gradually, the Institute is becoming an actual scientific organization these days. The general population and academic structure has yet to realize that everybody there hasn't got the foggiest what they're doing, and it remains to be seen what comes first of them getting busted and methodical, intentional studies. For now, a considerable proportion of their spendings still consists of perishable hydroxylic fuels and "personal safety equipment".