The Campaign Builder's Guild

The Eld World ended. What follows is so beyond the end that it is, unto itself, more a beginning than anything. It cannot be a continuation; it is too alien to what the world once was.

DISSENSION
And he held the world before him in his glass, and his machine swallowed the ocean and set fire to the air.

The world has moved on, but the echoes of the past still haunt us. The inexorable tide of time, like a great leviathan of the depths, has swallowed and forgotten the very things that broke the world so many epochs ago. In the time after, wars were fought off the dregs of what remained of the times of Eld, and in their unrelenting endurance their purpose was forgotten. Amidst this Dissension hung the algid torpor of civilization, lost and fretful in such darkling times, where the fragile artifacts that held their memories were shattered and powerless, crushed underfoot by the march of war. The last bastions of civilization were blasted from the earth beneath the hellfire of Eld weaponry, devouring the land in its process. The world was a scarred, shattered thing, broken and smoldering, and the Eld were cursed with every breath of those remaining. But like all things, time has a way of healing, and in the cosmically minute lives of the sentient things that live on this world; folk have a way of forgetting.

MENDING
She shook the dust of yesterdays off her back, and soldiered on through the ashen air.

Time passed, and old wounds began to heal. Folk crawled out from beneath their hidden places and began anew. In the heat of this convalescence, ruins and artifacts (those still with working power) gave rise to flash economies and minute-empires purporting protection and power, buoyant on their unknowingly vanishing resources. Claims of clean water, transair, electricity (or something similar) surged across the world, each eventually fading as quickly as they came about. Warlords whose hydrocore engines went out in the heat of battle, kings who threw themselves from their towers when their wells of cerulean godsblood ran dry, cities whose lights winked out, one by one, as they beheld their own cataclysmic destruction when each of the cables that suspended their aerial turbines came crashing down to the earth in fire and molten metal; such was the fate of these petty empires. Stories of the Dissension and the Eld World before it fell further into legend, at first a bitter remembrance only whispered of in the cover of shadow, eventually so far flung into the past that its own mystery stifled any emotional weight it may once have held; the past was grand and great, the now was not but a hollow echo.

Despite the ruination of the world of Eld, its legacy persisted in the meaningless Arcspeech inscriptions that were littered across its ruins. Their ubiquity belied their significance; an ownerless brand that marred the artifacts of antiquity, but some few still held onto the impossibly frayed threads of the Eld World and in their meaninglessness traced ownership to those inscriptions, much like a king would lay claim to the throne on the basis of their lineage. There were artifacts still of use to folk even now: water pumps, holopanels, generators. Allegiances were forged, spread across the land, and became the corpros; the clans that would go on to rule much of the recovered world. There were occasional battles – warcorpros that fought one another for ownership of Silverdyne or Okono or Zeeteedee, but even then the world was still exhausted from the monotony of war, and more often deals were struck in place of violence.

NOW

Times have changed. Stability has crept uneasily back into the land. People rebuilt, slowly at first. Settlements have grown large, protective, and controlled (at least superficially). Countless generations have passed since the Dissension; the Mending even: folk have forgotten the ash-burnt faces of their ancestors, of the graves they build their world upon, and of the Eld World itself. Amidst the overgrown carcasses of warmachines that blend so seamlessly with the landscape around it, across fields whose craters and debris can almost be viewed as hills and valleys, the world looks almost natural amongst its own ruin. But there is a tension in the air, like that a spring wound too tight. Folk have settled enough to lift their heads from their once ceaseless work and look around; to take in their surroundings and, having established what is necessary for them, to dream, to wonder, to scheme.

WHERE ARE YOU
From the sun-seared, desiccated hardpan of Vanlear, where the sky was blasted away by greater weaponry long ago and the sun bears down upon the land unrelentingly, to the maddening heights of the labyrinthine Omniopolis, where it is said the still-boisterous soirées of the Eld carry on deep within the half-lit depths of infra, unaware that the world ended eons ago; such is the New World, ripe with the variegated ruins and scars of the Eld.
The New World is one of rare temperance: the world was broken, and that which failed to adapt died out long ago. Extreme weather, berserk machines, and rampant mutation are in no shortage of supply, and life in the various habitable zones of the New World must be nothing if not determined. The world as a whole is a mystery; whatever lies beyond the airless peaks at the border of Vanlear is unknown, the constant blizzards at the Melori Terminals deter even the hardiest of travelers to the southernmost edge of the world, and the Omniopolis, thanks to its mindless, still-operating Architects, is so vast and dense that no one knows what might be on the other side of the city, but the New World can be more easily broken up into known parts.

Omniopolis
Though not truly all-encompassing, the Omniopolis spans thousands of miles, composed entirely of towers that reach high into the sky and penetrate deep into the ground – the fundamental concepts of "up" and "down" take new meaning when the city is layered with subskies and false bottoms, but one should not mistake the presence of architecture to mean anything civilized; certainly some sections of the city harbor inhabitants of their own, but in the often lightless depths of the city more sinister creatures dwell.

Travel across the Omniopolis is treacherous; it is as much a wilderness unto itself as a forest or mountain would be. The layout of the many bridges, rails, and walkways hints at a design once systematized, but the process has long become something random and chaotic, all thanks to the still operating and rarely seen Architects. The Architects come in many shapes, all machines of some sort, some large enough to fabricate entirely new towers within their eerily silent hulls, others smaller so as to service and construct smaller creations ("infra," as it is colloquially known) such as bridges and branching adornments to existing towers. In their mad pursuit of perfection, Architects have built sections of the city so dense and sprawling that only a contortionist would be able to fit through them, while other sections of the city remain mysteriously untouched and left to disrepair.

Vanlear
Perhaps the most spectacular of ruins, Vanlear sits beneath the Eaten Sky, where the clouds and blueness of the sky is smoothly ripped upwards and out into the open blackness of space, frozen in place. Clouds that drift to Vanlear are slowly and quietly stripped upwards and out, vanishing into the literally thin air. Mysteriously, the vastness of Vanlear is still breathable and even inhabitable, but under the glaring eye of the sun any unprotected skin burns and boils in minutes.  Mutation is frequent under the Eaten Sky, and nothing grows in the desolate hardpan but tenacious, alien weeds. Were it not for the ripe salvage spread across Vanlear, it would've remained an untouched frontier.

There is no weather beneath the Eaten Sky, just alternating periods of brutal, pressing radiance and deep, brilliantly crisp blackness cast amongst twinkling stars that the natives call "day and night." Any settlements in Vanlear are on the edges – those that wander across it for salvage make do with heavy clothing, broad hats or helmets, and Okono-brand cooling canisters made by the local corpros. The law in Vanlear is tenuous and thin, making it an ideal place for vagabonds, criminals, and salvors looking to deal in more illicit parts.

Omnus Alks
Despite the level of artifice the Eld put into the world, nature remained undeterred. The Omnus Alks is a massive superforest that bleeds into the Omniopolis and spreads for many miles onwards. In a strange imitation of the very artifice it threatens to consume, each of the Omnus Alks' trees are massive, dense, and sprawling, layered with canopies and a deep, detritus-littered floor.

More to come.

WHO ARE YOU
More info to come

THEMES

Used World
Countless civilizations have risen and fallen, ancient even in the times of Eld. Ruins crowd the landscape, littering the land with the alien debris of half-remembered calamities durable enough to stand the test of time yet old enough to have lost all sense of meaning. Settlements might be unknowingly built in the shadow of an ancient warmachine or atop the still-churning engines of some deep, underground mechanism. While individual bits of working technology may be sparse, the presence of ancient debris is ubiquitous.

Scavengers
The world was once so interconnected that any products were the result of their entire society – such is no longer the case. The knowledge of how to produce such ancient, useful artifacts is long gone, and any such remaining in working order are nothing short of legendary. Certainly, tinkers and wizards might once or twice bootleg their way into some half-working mechanism, but even then they tend towards being shoddy, finicky devices that might have one use in them, if that. Metallurgy isn't practiced in most societies with debris so commonplace; instead, blacksmiths gather and smelt together scraps of old metal and repurpose it, relying on the robust profusion of scavengers to supply them. Scavenging, in this world, is akin to treasure hunting: an often foolish, dirty pursuit, but loaded with just enough promise to draw thousands to its call. Everything is repurposed, if it can be.

The Past was Grand
While the tales of the Eld World are as many as the Roving Stars above, so too are their imprecisions legendarily vast and variegated. Of course, no one can truly say what the Eld World was like, but most can agree on the fact that it harbored technologies much greater than the current day. God-machines that swallowed oceans, controlled the weather, and swept people off to the heavens and back are but some of the many stories that circulate around the enigmatic mythos of the Eld.

SAPIENTS

Humans
The world is ancient. Cultures that were historically separate have, with the gradual advances in travel, tolerance, and communication, mingled over the epochs to the point of cultural homogeny. Where perhaps once the varied human physiognomies would lead to cultural and racial division, such divisions have been eroded by time, or at least lessened through the solidarity of humankind amidst more diverse races, some far different from themselves. Humans of the modern era are typically brown skinned with dark eyes and black hair; features found almost uniformly across all corners of the known world.

Were "expansionistic" and "rapacious" not already traits more commonly associated with the Krisa, Humans would earn them without question. But the Krisa are also simpler creatures, prone to superstitions and easily subjugated, whereas Humans represent the most spontaneous and inventive of folk in the New World. This isn't to say that all Humans are meticulous mechanical meddlers or independent proprietors of some corpros, but that in their long-standing diversity on this world, Humans have tenaciously held onto a certain propensity for progress that the more warlike Krisa or the ponderous Volk somewhat lack.

[ooc]I've considered the idea that the Eld, even in their vast advances, wouldn't allow all humankind to meld into the more melting-pot similarities that an ancient superculture would generally produce as a result of their interconnectedness. Rather, I think they would (perhaps jealously) hold onto their own unique cultural identities (in the physical sense of, say, blond hair, fair skin, green eyes or whatever) through the use of genetic procedures. This would probably be something only the wealthy could afford, but I could see the threads of such genetic preservation making into the modern era of the setting. So basically if anyone ever wanted to play a human that didn't look so clean-cut from the flock, so to speak, I'd encourage and allow it.[/ooc]

Human Variations

Ascendants (I need a better name for these)

The forges of Eld were not comprised of the hammer and anvil as today, but of the stars and the crushing blackness between them. From the cosm came their great cities and monoliths, constructions that could withstand the scouring teeth of passing eons. But their own resilience begot their weaponry, and so too could their war machines chew through and dig deep into the fundament of these creations, shredding them into unmaking. In the twilight era of the Eld World, to ensure the survival of their world and their subsequent creations, their technologies were hidden in their children so that they might breed and spread as their kin before them, but the Human form is strange and fickle, prone to deviation through evolution, and not all their technologies survived to resurface in a recognizable form. The worst of such resurgences brought prolonged, agonizing death to entire bloodlines as the integumentary reliefs of burgeoning tissue-circuitry consumed them. The best of which had nearly intact resurgences: artificial bio-technological workings grown just beneath the skin, providing unique and strange transhumanities. To the common folk, such beings may be prophets, even deities, afflicted with the stigmata of the Eld. To others, they are outcasts, aberrants of their own kin, hunted or driven out. This is a uniquely Human indisposition; Krisa, Volk, and even Scions have never shown the signs of this affliction.


[ooc]My friends have wanted to play in a more standard "fantasy setting" for some time but I haven't really shaken the idea that the standard "elves, humans, dwarves, orcs" is just tried and done for me, at least for now. I wanted design something sort of similar but with my own twist. This is the beginning so far, and while it won't have your standard elves, orcs, and dwarves, I plan to introduce some unique races. I want to keep the veneer of fantasy draped over what is otherwise a post-apocalyptic science-fiction setting. They seem on board, so, I am too. It's really a more refined work of this this. I have more to post, once I get it distilled into something I can look at without grimacing.[/ooc]

[ic=Cool compelling stuff]"Warlords whose hydrocore engines went out in the heat of battle, kings who threw themselves from their towers when their wells of cerulean godsblood ran dry, cities whose lights winked out, one by one, as they beheld their own cataclysmic destruction when each of the cables that suspended their aerial turbines came crashing down to the earth in fire and molten metal..."[/ic]
This is sentence hooked me. I understand that the tone of a post-apocalyptic (or post-post-apocalyptic) world can be accentuated by an emphasis on the comparative grandeur of its antebellum, but I hope the setting as it stands contains imagery with comparable effect. One of the most disappointing things to hear when encountering a Time of Legend™ is "All this awesome stuff happened a million years ago and you don't get to do any of it!"

Quote from: Pareidollhouse
[ic=Cool compelling stuff]"Warlords whose hydrocore engines went out in the heat of battle, kings who threw themselves from their towers when their wells of cerulean godsblood ran dry, cities whose lights winked out, one by one, as they beheld their own cataclysmic destruction when each of the cables that suspended their aerial turbines came crashing down to the earth in fire and molten metal..."[/ic]
This is sentence hooked me. I understand that the tone of a post-apocalyptic (or post-post-apocalyptic) world can be accentuated by an emphasis on the comparative grandeur of its antebellum, but I hope the setting as it stands contains imagery with comparable effect. One of the most disappointing things to hear when encountering a Time of Legend™ is "All this awesome stuff happened a million years ago and you don't get to do any of it!"

That's something I've been wrestling with a bit. On the one hand, it doesn't make much sense for all this lost technology to still be around and kicking after all this time (unless it's all made of durable handwavium) but I also don't want the world as is to appear as considerably more boring than the past before it.

I want there to be lots of strange and fantastical artifacts of lost tech that have somehow stuck around, and I probably misconstrued that by putting it under the Mending instead of the Now. I might just merge the two into one, for the sake of interest.

ALSO it's really amusing to me that you chose that blurb as what hooked you. I was trying to land on something biblical/poetic and instantly thought of what SA might write. I almost left it out.

I would totally play this.

When do we get to play this? :D

Quote from: Weaveit doesn't make much sense for all this lost technology to still be around and kicking after all this time (unless it's all made of durable handwavium)

Nothing wrong with handwavium. When my GM tells me "the ancients had technologies that could have and would have endured forever," I just take it as given, and when dormant AI juggernauts shudder to bleary consciousness and pry themselves from mountainsides toppling hamlets and diverting streams I don't think "bullshit! How're they still alive after a million years!?" I think "Yeeeeeesssssssssssssss!!!"

When building a world I always like to imagine a bunch of altered states for its coolest an compellingest elements, and consider a how my players might effect those changes (or at least participate in the change). So if "all magic is powered by pieces of ancient dragon bone" then at some point the dragons are going to want their bones back, or we're going to run out of bones, or we're going to need new dragons, and maybe we'll be those dragons, or something. The best setting fluff is always crunchy.

Quote from: WeaveI was trying to land on something biblical/poetic and instantly thought of what SA might write.

Now that's a helluva compliment!

Quote from: Weave
On the one hand, it doesn't make much sense for all this lost technology to still be around and kicking after all this time (unless it's all made of durable handwavium) but I also don't want the world as is to appear as considerably more boring than the past before it.

Storage chambers with temporal warping fields (making time run slower in there) could be a way to handwave the preservation. The present age could also have some exciting non-technological things that didn't exist before, so it may have it's own wonders without undermining the grandness of the past.

[ic=Cool compelling stuff]"Warlords whose hydrocore engines went out in the heat of battle, kings who threw themselves from their towers when their wells of cerulean godsblood ran dry, cities whose lights winked out, one by one, as they beheld their own cataclysmic destruction when each of the cables that suspended their aerial turbines came crashing down to the earth in fire and molten metal..."[/ic]

This was similarly my favorite line. It punches hard and leaves you wanting more.

Beautifully written and intriguing.

Is "Zeedeetee" a distorted version of an acronym, ZDT?

I get a sort of vibe that reminds me of Bastion and Transistor, or maybe Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

The creation myths remind me of the pre-unification Terran techo-barbarians of WH40K

Oh, hey: are wizards actual wizards? You only use the word once, and you don't use the word magic at all. Is this a 'sufficiently advanced' sort of deal? What's the skinny?

Quote from: Ghostman

Quote from: Weave
On the one hand, it doesn't make much sense for all this lost technology to still be around and kicking after all this time (unless it's all made of durable handwavium) but I also don't want the world as is to appear as considerably more boring than the past before it.

Storage chambers with temporal warping fields (making time run slower in there) could be a way to handwave the preservation. The present age could also have some exciting non-technological things that didn't exist before, so it may have it's own wonders without undermining the grandness of the past.

That's another fair possibility that I might consider adopting. At this point I have to decide whether or not these "Eld folk" had such a mastery over technology that they could shape time or if they fell somewhat short of that. Their degree of super-advancement especially shapes the artifacts they leave behind. Right now, you wouldn't find an AK-47 lying around, or probably much of anything that had physical munitions. The Eld were so advanced that even mundane things like wheels would be unheard of, since most such tech would've evolved beyond the need to conform to topographical features. Would they have developed something to have tampered with time? Possibly, but it's a rabbit hole I'm not sure I want to go very far down.

Quote from: Rose-of-Vellum

[ic=Cool compelling stuff]"Warlords whose hydrocore engines went out in the heat of battle, kings who threw themselves from their towers when their wells of cerulean godsblood ran dry, cities whose lights winked out, one by one, as they beheld their own cataclysmic destruction when each of the cables that suspended their aerial turbines came crashing down to the earth in fire and molten metal..."[/ic]

This was similarly my favorite line. It punches hard and leaves you wanting more.

Quote from: Steerpike
Beautifully written and intriguing.

Is "Zeedeetee" a distorted version of an acronym, ZDT?

I get a sort of vibe that reminds me of Bastion and Transistor, or maybe Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

Thanks to you both! I don't often think too highly of my writing, so this is quite the compliment.

Zeeteedee is a distorted version of an acronym, yes. I wanted to create a series of fictional supercorporations that had left their mark on the once corporate dominated world of the Eld, and I try to imagine how certain folk who are unfamiliar with such brands might view them. I'm trying to think of company slogans that might still have survived that the corpros would now adopt as their own battlecry or mantra or something, but it tends towards becoming comically out of place or just too bizarre. The corpros only adopted these brands because they were both widespread and they had little enough understanding of the Eld world to know that the corporations ruled like gods, so to the current day corpros, they were gods.

Also, Bastion and Transistor are some of my favorite games, so I'm super happy you think so!

Quote from: Pareidollhouse
The creation myths remind me of the pre-unification Terran techo-barbarians of WH40K

Oh, hey: are wizards actual wizards? You only use the word once, and you don't use the word magic at all. Is this a 'sufficiently advanced' sort of deal? What's the skinny?

I'm sadly unfamiliar with WH40K.

As to wizards being wizards, I don't know. I threw that in there to invoke a little dichotomy in the setting (Super advanced tech and wizards?!). It's probably more "sufficiently advanced" stuff... however, I also think that if I present everything in such a way that it seems somewhat explainable through technology (especially compared to what we can do in this day and age) then it loses a bit of that "sufficiently advanced" mumbo jumbo. I think having things that are pretty much unexplainable, even to us, works in the favor of the setting. There might be some sort of psionics or mental augmentations that some fanatical faith brutally inserts into its followers or something, but otherwise the idea that humans (and the other species that exist which I'll address soon) went beyond that and sort of "terraformed" their offspring's genetics in ways to give them powers that would fall in the realm of magic.

Quote from: sparkletwist
I would totally play this.

When do we get to play this? :D

SOON. Hopefully. It needs a sparkletwist.

Quote from: Weave
As to wizards being wizards, I don't know. I threw that in there to invoke a little dichotomy in the setting (Super advanced tech and wizards?!). It's probably more "sufficiently advanced" stuff... however, I also think that if I present everything in such a way that it seems somewhat explainable through technology (especially compared to what we can do in this day and age) then it loses a bit of that "sufficiently advanced" mumbo jumbo.

Could the atmosphere be saturated with cloud networks of invisible, nano-scale machines that were designed to provide various useful functions from controlling weather to fixing leaking roofs? They could be controllable via voice commands (what would be in a long dead language and/or using nonsensical techno jargon, hence "magical words") that have been partially discovered by the wizards, who jealously guard this secret while trying in vain to comprehend it. The machines could be self-replicating according to an algorithm intended to keep their numbers stable, which would explain why they are still around (now as the umpteenth generation, the original ones having long since died out).

This kind of nanotech could also explain other things being able to stand the test of time.

Quote from: Ghostman

Quote from: Weave
As to wizards being wizards, I don't know. I threw that in there to invoke a little dichotomy in the setting (Super advanced tech and wizards?!). It's probably more "sufficiently advanced" stuff... however, I also think that if I present everything in such a way that it seems somewhat explainable through technology (especially compared to what we can do in this day and age) then it loses a bit of that "sufficiently advanced" mumbo jumbo.

Could the atmosphere be saturated with cloud networks of invisible, nano-scale machines that were designed to provide various useful functions from controlling weather to fixing leaking roofs? They could be controllable via voice commands (what would be in a long dead language and/or using nonsensical techno jargon, hence "magical words") that have been partially discovered by the wizards, who jealously guard this secret while trying in vain to comprehend it. The machines could be self-replicating according to an algorithm intended to keep their numbers stable, which would explain why they are still around (now as the umpteenth generation, the original ones having long since died out).

This kind of nanotech could also explain other things being able to stand the test of time.

This is actually a really neat idea that I might just lift as is. It would give people some power without them having to have some old technology.

Here's all the posts that the reversion trashed

Quote from: Weave

Quote from: Ghostman

Quote from: Weave
As to wizards being wizards, I don't know. I threw that in there to invoke a little dichotomy in the setting (Super advanced tech and wizards?!). It's probably more "sufficiently advanced" stuff... however, I also think that if I present everything in such a way that it seems somewhat explainable through technology (especially compared to what we can do in this day and age) then it loses a bit of that "sufficiently advanced" mumbo jumbo.

Could the atmosphere be saturated with cloud networks of invisible, nano-scale machines that were designed to provide various useful functions from controlling weather to fixing leaking roofs? They could be controllable via voice commands (what would be in a long dead language and/or using nonsensical techno jargon, hence "magical words") that have been partially discovered by the wizards, who jealously guard this secret while trying in vain to comprehend it. The machines could be self-replicating according to an algorithm intended to keep their numbers stable, which would explain why they are still around (now as the umpteenth generation, the original ones having long since died out).

This kind of nanotech could also explain other things being able to stand the test of time.

This is actually a really neat idea that I might just lift as is. It would give people some power without them having to have some old technology.

Quote from: Sparkletwist
I second the idea of nanotech saturating everything. Quite some time ago (like, pre-CBG times, the dark ages!) I played a game set in a setting where that was the central conceit. It was more of a magitech-cyberpunk feeling, but the idea of doing "magical" stuff using them was still a strong theme. We also used the idea that Ghostman mentioned, where there was an ancient programming language that people were beginning to comprehend, which really suited the intellectual crafter wizard archetype. One other concept that we used, that you may or may not want, was that in addition to being pervasive in the environment, the nano-bots were pervasive in every person's body as well. This allowed a weird sort of combination of cyberware and polymorph magic to be quite common, and it also meant that zombies were an everpresent threat when someone's body died but the nano-bots within it kept it functional in a way.

Quote from: Pareidollhouse
If I may offer a dissenting opinion regarding nanotech: the technology's remit is too broad, while an explanation involving varied and specialised supertechs would be more flavourful and provide greater adventuring opportunities.

Part of what makes the theme of Uncomprehended Technology so interesting, at least to me, is the notion that the archaic instruments a character might encounter operate according to diverse sciences. Each new wonder is a thing unto itself and all are not governed by the same principles. This is what makes the pre-apocalypse such a rich and fascinating ruin: it is the sum of many different mysteries. (This isn't to say that I disagree with nanotech wholesale; I just find it a disappointing and rather flavourless explanation after opening with "Hydrocore engines and cerulean godsblood")

Quote from: WeaveSuper advanced tech and wizards?!

Hell, I do that all the time. Why can't sorcerers command starships or live virtual lives of pure contemplation inside quantum supercomputers? How is it that these people are intelligent enough to bend the forces of nature to their personal whims, yet dumb enough that they can't repurpose that knowledge and themselves discover steam power, electricity, radio, powered flight, interstellar travel...

Quote from: Sparkletwist

Quote from: PareidollhouseThis isn't to say that I disagree with nanotech wholesale; I just find it a disappointing and rather flavourless explanation after opening with "Hydrocore engines and cerulean godsblood"

Point taken, but there's nothing saying that it has to be flavorless, as long as there is some flavor to it, to make things kind of tautological. I mean, just saying "nanotech is everywhere, wheeeee" is pretty flavorless, so it might come across as bland, but that could just be because not that much has been written about it in the context of this setting yet. To use a modern example, just saying "everything is powered by electricity, wheeeee" (or a fantasy example, "everything is magic, wheeeee") is pretty flavorless too, yet it's possible to do plenty of interesting and fun sci-fi (or fantasy, sci-fantasy, or whatever) things with electrically/magically/whatever powered technology, by starting from there and building off of it. The nanotech can be the underlying building block behind a lot of the mysteries of the setting without diminishing their possible uniqueness. For example, cerulean godsblood could be a sort of "blue goo" of naturally occurring nano-organisms that inspired a lot of the nanotech boom, and might behave according to many of the same principles, but is also a diverse and different thing.

Quote from: Rose-of-Vellum
What if different 'schools' were in part defined (or more properly the result of) different empowering technologies? Zeedeetee magi might use said nano-web, [inset name] wizards might manipulate relics saturated with hydrocore radiation, [insert different name] sorcerers might employ nootropic godsblood to achieve supernatural power, etc. Some wizards might dabble in multiple power sources, but breadth might sacrifice depth of power -as well as sometimes create horrible synergistic side-effects (and be viewed a heretical bastardizations by both magical/cultural orthodoxies).

Quote from: Pareidollhouse

Quote from: sparkletwistTo use a modern example, just saying "everything is powered by electricity, wheeeee"

If we're talking about things being powered by nanotechnology, that's a different thing altogether. I don't mind at all what one says the instruments of a setting are powered by as long as those instruments are themselves diverse. My criticism is a particular response to Ghostman's "Could the atmosphere be saturated with cloud networks of invisible, nano-scale machines that were designed to provide various useful functions from controlling weather to fixing leaking roofs", and to Weave saying he might lift that idea as is. When I talk about nanotech I'm really talking about nanotech like that. It reminds me of... of... midichlorians. [shudder]

Quote from: Ghostman

Quote from: Pareidollhouse
If we're talking about things being powered by nanotechnology, that's a different thing altogether. I don't mind at all what one says the instruments of a setting are powered by as long as those instruments are themselves diverse. My criticism is a particular response to Ghostman's "Could the atmosphere be saturated with cloud networks of invisible, nano-scale machines that were designed to provide various useful functions from controlling weather to fixing leaking roofs", and to Weave saying he might lift that idea as is. When I talk about nanotech I'm really talking about nanotech like that. It reminds me of... of... midichlorians. [shudder]

I think you're misreading my post (or reading too deep into it) as much as sparkle may have misread yours. The purpose of my post was simply to suggest an answer to two questions:
(1) how can we have "wizards" (not magic but wizards -- I think the disctinction is important) such that their wizardry is really just using a sufficiently advanced technology they can't even begin to comprehend, and
(2) how to justify that products of super-ancient technology have remained functional to present day?

I proposed nanomachines as a possible answer to both. Making them present virtually everywhere and able to react to seemingly nonsensical voice commands allows for wizards to function as wizards (as opposed to alchemists or shamen or fortune-tellers, which would be different questions prompting different answers). It also allows visible-scale devices to be automagically maintained in working condition, regardless of the actual nature and technology behind those devices. Since the nanomachines themselves are invisible, their very existence can be left completely unknown and their effects left wide open for interpretation.

Quote from: Pareidollhouse
If I may offer a dissenting opinion regarding nanotech: the technology's remit is too broad, while an explanation involving varied and specialised supertechs would be more flavourful and provide greater adventuring opportunities.

^ In this reply in particular, it seems that you're misinterpreting the scope of my post. There was no attempt to explain everything via nanotech; it was presented as a possible answer to questions (1) and (2) alone. Other flavours of supertech (as well as other potential uses of nanotech) were never mentioned in the post, for they fell outside of it's scope.

Thanks again, Nomadic, for preserving everything. Very much appreciated!

Also, regarding the nano-machine saturation, I actually was thinking in more grandiose terms than what Ghostman provided, but, SA,  you've persuaded me otherwise. The idea of having a series of mysterious machines that function off an abundance of strange and alien power sources is more appealing. That isn't to say nanomachines wouldn't be one of those, particularly in the more limited scope of these "wizards" as Ghostman intended. I jumped the gun and got excited with the concept and wanted to take it full-bore into the crux of the setting; but that won't be the case. I'll still use them, though.

I added a bit to the original post, just to keep things in a cohesive, organized place (I probably should've reserved some posts - oh well). There's some info on humans (capital H in-setting since they aren't the only species of sentient beings). I meant to post more about the Krisa, Volk, and Scions (the other 3 main races I've detailed), but I didn't quite get around to them and I wanted to put out some info so people wouldn't think it's dead like some of my other projects that went to rust.

You could always start a new thread as the main setting post and use this one as discussion, or something, instead. Or just start a new thread, period. I don't think anyone would mind!

But anyway. I like the idea of pervasive nanomachines and I also like the idea of diverse technology, but I'd like to suggest that if nanotech is still going to be the basis of wizardry and such, it occupies a place in the setting that a lot of technology can ultimately be traced back to it or connected to it. I'm not suggesting this in any way that limits the ability to create weird and wonderful technomagical marvels (bring on the hydrocore engines and cerulean godsblood) but just to occupy the niche, of, say, "electricity." My fear is primarily that if you go full crazy town on the multiple different "sources" of technology, you may start to lose the sense that they actually had something coherent that could be called "technology" because too much different unrelated stuff and it starts to just seem like a bunch of one-off artifacts... which can be fun in a different way, but then it starts to not seem like it was a cohesive thing, anymore, and the sense I get from this setting is very much that it should be a cohesive thing.