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[Jilladilla]

Core Thread


While your state is but a shadow of its Glorious Past; not all things were lost entirely. What magic, technology, tradition, or story of old did your nation manage best to retain after The Fall?
(Note: Go nuts. Remember that this is about a Pre-Fall thing, though also remember that it need not have actually exist. Though do remember that the collapse of civilization, centuries of magic fading and a lack of infrastructure will have reaped its toll; so that what you design will almost certainly not be what you get. It will make an impact of course. Think MWAR/CAR Style. But in reverse. Alternatively, make something more appropriate for your starting tech level. Please don't subvert this prompt too badly I am new. This will be the only such prompt; future turns will be more normal.)

In addition, feel free to rename your initial Magic User, though try and avoid using Grand Names; this is purely a stylistic choice (and these mages are unspecialized weaklings). Finally, Lore Contest! Describe your nation, as it is. It's culture, it's lore, it's territory, whatever you wish! Best Lore wins a Research Credit! (Disclaimer: Best is subjective; it's plausible for both teams to win; or *neither*!) You have until formal contact with the enemy to finish! Though don't dawdle too much. Oh yes, make sure you name your faction as well! Unless you wish to remain named 'West Side', of course.

Spoiler: Armory (click to show/hide)

Hunter - Sporting a simple bronze spear and basic padded clothing; this improvised soldier may not be the best equipped or trained, but they are willing to fight to reclaim your nation's glory! They also have a simple sturdy stick as a sidearm. [Common]

Slinger - The humble sling may not be the most impressive of weapons, but a strip of leather or rope is a cheap and serviceable armament. Their ammunition follows suit, being scavenged stones they find in the field. [Common]

(Magic User) - Initiates, Acolytes, Apprentices; whatever you may call them, these men and women are practitioners of the Noble Arts of the Arcane. Their talent is rather limited and unspecialized, however. Can utilize Common Spells [Rare]

Simple Raft - This piece of Naval Technology is really rather simple; being a series of logs tied together. Crude, but can keep its few passengers dryish. Usually. [Common]

Arcane Sparks - With a flourish of the arm, a series of small magical sparks surges forth, exploding on contact. They only have about the same potency as a large firecracker though. [Common]

Arcane Bolt - A stronger spell that's still basically a lump of mana thrown at the target. Much more potent than Arcane Sparks due to higher mana concentrations, though is rather inefficient. It is capable of killing a man instead of maiming at best, however. In spite of its cost, Lesser Magic Users can utilize it, though not all are capable. [Uncommon]

[Glass]

Alright, cool.
I'm going to preliminarily say that we're going to be doing artificery stuff, hopefully with magic automation after a while. (So we're clear: magic-augmented technology, basically starting with just making better enchantments for equipment and moving on to using magic to make steampunk stuff happen.)

Also, I feel like we can use the rafts - tied together, of course - to completely clog up the central river.


I propose our beginning "magic users" are Mechanists. The "Arcane Sparks" really are primarily gunpowder, albeit powered up a bit and projected by the use of magic, while Arcane Bolt is more raw magic (but which can probably be focused into a deadlier form just by forcing it through a tube, thereby compressing it!).


In the same vein, I suggest that our lost/broken technology - I guess more of a barely-functional ruins - would be the Manufactorum, a place that, given any inputs, can create any item you could design. Unfortunately, it has long since fallen into decay, and what creations it could have made that we can even still imagine have had their data corrupted and made unusable. Now, it is mostly useful for refining resources - ores into bars and stone blocks, timber into lumber, cotton into sheets of cloth, and so on. However, it could yet be remade to its former glory - if we could figure out what has broken.

[Naturegirl1999]

Design Proposal
Rune of Growth
The people of East Side learned from a mage about a rune that increased the growth of plants and animals in the area. More advanced magic users would use such runes to create large walls of trees and thorns around the cities, farmers used it to increase yield, and the smallest of the runes was a good beginner spell for those getting started in spellcrafting

Rename Proposal
Paradise Garden

I accidentally got confused and posted in the wrong side, it’s removed now but I probably need to make changes

[Madman198237]

Glass joins and immediately magitech, ask me if I'm surprised. I don't entirely disagree with magitech, though I prefer the more generalist idea of "using magic logically".

Of course, we COULD just attempt to be the magical equivalent of a random number generator and intentionally make all our spells really random and unpredictable, so as to make it impossible for the enemy to counter us!

[Glass]

Hi MM, nice to see you here

And yes, I like magitech. It's fun.


Hmn... Naturegirl likes druidy stuff. And the "Steamspout Slopes" and "Steel Forest" will likely be of interest no matter what.
How about biotech-type stuff and magically breeding animals and plants to fulfill roles we need? Think, living tanks, grenade fruits, seed bombs that cover the ground in tangling vines...

[Naturegirl1999]

What do you all think of the rune proposal and name proposal?

[Glass]

The rune doesn't seem practical enough, to be honest. And also like something we could fairly easily develop.
And the name is... eh. It's not really a name. And also only lends itself toward "we grow plants", which I think is pretty meh.

How about "The Silver Tree"?

[TricMagic]

Ancient Spark

Recreated through old scrolls that read more like myths that we've found, the Ancient Spark is an advanced form of the Arcane Sparks any beginner can learn to do. It effectively creates bolts that behave like electricity, and can be built up to launch a single bolt, electrocuting the target. One major difference from traditional lightning? It can be directed to hit a specific target, twisting like a jagged snake striking. [Also generates a roar of sound during the second it fires to hit the target]

More simply, this magic has the Lightning Element, and shares similarities to the current Arcane Bolt in the buildup of magical energy, though far simpler in being able to be built up easily over time and not needing to maintain a shape after launch. Longer ranges do require further build-up though. The abilities of the Caster determines max range and/or how quickly it can be built up to Bolt-level.

Also propose the starter name of Scholars for our magic users. Just to drive home the fact they are strudying magic based on experimentation and whatever they can get their hands on.

NG, we are West right..

Not sure about the growth style magic, given that we do have to be somewhat realistic in effectively starting from..

What magic, technology, tradition, or story of old did your nation manage best to retain after The Fall?
(Note: Go nuts. Remember that this is about a Pre-Fall thing, though also remember that it need not have actually exist.

So mine doesn't work either. Suppose the above should be kept in mind right now.

[Naturegirl1999]

The rune doesn't seem practical enough, to be honest. And also like something we could fairly easily develop.
And the name is... eh. It's not really a name. And also only lends itself toward "we grow plants", which I think is pretty meh.

How about "The Silver Tree"?

The Silver Tree is better. I’m not sure of the design though? Do you have ideas?

[Shadowclaw777]

A nature and magitech seems like an interesting mix that we could do, so that we create things like treants; werewolves, and all other sort of Druidic and shaman like power while combining it with magitech and artificers and magical engineers, seems like a weird biopunk vibe but we could get like mechanized trees and what not and attempting to mesh the two contradictory? archetypes as our base

[Madman198237]

Inheritors of Stone and Steel
Before the collapse, we were masters of runes, inscriptions, the art of storing mana in physical objects, binding them with spells fit to last for ages...or so we thought. Now we wander amidst the crumbling ruins of towers shaped from the earth itself, rotten battlefields littered with the rusted remains of swords enchanted, ancient machines whose purpose is lost to centuries of decay. Eternity has come sooner than any of our ancestors must have imagined.

Long ago we knew how to imbue inanimate objects with mana and dictate when the mana would be used, such that we could enchant swords which would burn when struck, ships that would sail themselves when someone touched the helm, doors that could only be opened with a password. These magic "enchantments", they might be called, did not leave a noticeable mark on the enchanted object, though such objects were often marked to distinguish them from, say, a sword that was perfectly safe to use in practice combat, a ship that you could lean on the helm without accidentally leaving port, and a door that wouldn't zap the user with a bolt of lightning for attempting to open it without the password.

Here's a first quick proposal; I'm not sure if this entirely meets what Nem is looking for but it's at least a possibility. It would work excellently with Glass wanting magitech and it doesn't make nature manipulation impossible.

[Jilladilla]

Yup, that's fine Madman. This is a very open ended prompt, after all. Most of the things suggested so-far are perfectly acceptable as-is.

[Glass]

We're getting C2!

[Glass]

By the way, have a Discord.

[TricMagic]

That proposal seems very nice.