My bard's taken an interest in alchemy after finding a book of recipes recently, which led to chatting with a couple of other PCs about fact there was little in the way of alchemy or herblore knowlege generally available.
With the fall of Montezzi, and Ghyrrt's decision to sell off his library, I though it would be a good time for Lower to get its own faction dedicated to research and archiving. Not heavy defensive/magical things and svirf tech like the Spellguard, but a group of citizens interested in practical subjects for adventurers such as plantlore, basic alchemy, cooking, and survival.
The long-term aims would be to locate interesting texts, map the surrounding caverns for safe routes, dangers and natural resources and encourage druids and rangers to teach useful survival skills to the explorers of Lower.
The short-term aims would be to get regular-ish meetings of PCs interested in herblore and alchemy together with the goal of locating recipes and reliable sources of reagents.
Anyone interested in producing your own explodey doom weapons, looking to explore the caverns, learn about the plants of the Underdark or make the perfect sporebread, this would be a faction for you. I'm not looking to do something with a big PvP setting, but obviously there'd be the chance for more devious members of the faction to try unsanctioned tricks like "recovering" information from other factions and the like.