✷ Magitech

Magitech

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In a world pervaded by the Shroud, the use and practice of magic are inexorably linked to the technologies found across the land. Difficult to craft and expensive to maintain, magitech items are often treasured as keepsakes and heirlooms.

However, some more common artifacts see everyday use. Contraptions like a cookfire-ring, used by savvy adventurers, might be easy to find forgotten on well-traveled roads. With runes etched carefully into copper, silver, or gold, waiting to catch the Shroud woven by an apprentice weaver, or fed by a resonant shroud-stone. Just as one might spot a skimmer craft, set to propulsion by a crystal-fueled resonance engine, its wing-sails full of wind, and its lift-balloon carrying its wooden hull off the ground as it skims across an open valley.

Magitech can help those without the ability to weave make use of the shroud, just as it can help a weaver reach greater potency, or efficiency in their weaving. Ingenuity, know-how, and access to the right materials are just some of the constraints that govern the use of these technologies, alongside the laws of existence that bind the Shroud, and all who weave it.

Risks of Magitech​

Just as there is a cost to a weaver’s casting of magic, so too is there a cost to magitech’s interaction with the Shroud. Whether a resonance engine affects the environment and the users around it, or simply interacts with a Shroud-stone that must be replaced once depleted, is based on a multitude of factors.

How the contraptions are designed, the quality of its construction, the materials used to put it together, and the skill of its user, are just some of the factors that might determine if a piece of magitech is one and done, or a treasured heirloom passed down through the generations.

The most common pieces of magitech are those that perform simple functions, and require small amounts of Shroud, be it from a Shroud-stone, or a weaver’s manipulation. However, people may eschew safety and stability - instead choosing high-risk, high-reward constructions that have a much higher rate of failure, but burn as bright as the Belt while they hold together.

Often, this style of device leads to catastrophic failure. Many an excitable tinkerer has lost digits, and whole limbs in pursuit of their craft, and just as many are the tavern tales of sky-pilots whose resonance engines rang too high, and turned their airships to dust clouds and splinters.

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Art by Igor Kieryluk​

Magitech Augmentation​

and the Homunculus’ Dilemma

Of the many expressions of magitech that can be found throughout the world, the practice of physical augmentation is amongst the most controversial. In part, due to how clear and direct the results of its abuse can be, but also, because of a curious condition referred to as, the Homunculus’ Dilemma.

A prosthetic limb, woven into the flesh of a maimed stone mason, made all the more effective by its shroud-stone core. Delicate runes of life and transference scrawled along its copper plating, anchored into flesh and bone. It all costs a pretty penny, and is produced and maintained by a renowned atelier.

But the mason begins to hear whispers in his head. Voices beyond any tongue he’s heard. Maybe it was weeks after the new hand was attached, maybe it was years. He can’t really say when the voices began, but he can hear them now. Clear as any other voice around him.

While this is a rare condition, there have been many well documented cases of those who have been augmented with magitech succumbing to this phenomenon, causing mistrust to root in many a person and institution alike when concerning an individual who has undergone magitech augmentation, the practice even barred entirely in some locals.

Some cases where in the augmented person loses their sense of self, or "succumbs to the shroud fiend within the magitech" have been refferred to as possession by those of a more spiritual world view.

It is believed that Weavers, more so than those further from the pull of the shroud, are more susceptible to the Dilemma, and may suffer its symptoms more intensely. While many dismiss this as baseless superstition, Many a magical school has barred entry to its applicants if they have been augmented with magitech.

Airships​

Perhaps one of the most renowned uses of Magitech are the airships found across the whole of Khurun. From the fast skimming Ornithopters of Miradj’Dah, to the lofty sailing Sky Carracks of the Free-Cities, these vessels of wind and cloud make use of Magitech at every level, and can range from a wagon set to sail with a lift-balloon and an intrepid weaver, to sophisticated crafts manned by crews that are the pride of kingdoms and city states.

The gamut of Magitech used in airships is as wide as the world’s history itself. A rudimentary wind-siphon may help a weaver cycle the air of lift-balloon’s bladder, tied to a wagon laden with cargo ready to be traded. Meanwhile, a relic resonance engine from the Era of Promise may speed along the props and wings of a fast flying ski-craft, only carrying a single Weaver.

While small trading vessels are not uncommon, Airships fit for war or major trade are extremely rare. The means and materials to produce, maintain, and crew them are at a scale only feasible to the most influential states.