MAGITECH! (Or, alternatively, discussing applications of MAJICKS for technology)

[Nebulon Ranger]

Magitech, or, fully expanded, magical / magic-based technology. It's a really cool subject that's always interested me, as, practically-speaking, its applications are near-limitless. I use it to a great degree in developing cool stuff for my planet and its outlying colonies, and the other Manaverse contributors also use it to varying degrees.

For example, I have a colony on one of @Red Revolver's worlds whose main city uses magical propulsion, levitation and stabilisation mechanisms to stay hovering about one hundred feet above the sea off the colony's southern coast. It's made up of four city core platforms and an ever-expanding number of peripheral platforms, all of which are linked by movable bridges. Powered entirely by Mana.

So, I ask you, Iwaku: do you use magitech in any of your developments. If so, explain. More generally, what are your opinions on magitech as a concept?

 

[Kestrel]

Magitech is magic in tech coating. Magic is an supernatural force that can't be tracked back to science. It just does. Same principle applies to magitech, except with a slightly different aesthetic. How does this piece of absurd and/or obscure technology work? Magic! From there on, your line of questioning goes; What do you want to do, how can you make the application look tech-y, and what kind of excuse do you need to make it semi-believable?

By itself, magitech is just that. An excuse to have awesome supernatural stuff happen.

Magitech becomes interesting when it marries a theme. What if there's a specific, contrasting relationship between magic and tech? You might, for example, use up an otherwise self-recycling mana-supply, in order to power machines instead of spells. Or magic might belong to the gods, who are so old change scares them and as such limits the use and production of magitech, but they're also competing with one another over worship, so people start playing gods out against one another and technological advancement depends on their patron god's powers and their relation, bribes and desperation. Perhaps technology is linked to nature, which inadvertently decides to make machinery go haywire. etc.

The time I've used magitech for an RP was fairly simple. One of the concepts I applied was developing a more potent, artificial alternative to mana, but because mages were also a thing in this universe, the exposure to artificial mana forced them (and other supernatural creatures) to deal with the hijinks caused by it's experimental nature due to the technology's infantility. Mana itself was just a power source, it just wasn't powerful/fast enough to keep up with technology's ambitions.