Broken Verge: Science and Occultism

[Superfluous Crow]

I redid the Keepers to become more unique and independent, and generally creepy/weird.

Keepers of the Coil
Wherever electricity is found, there is a Keeper. To them electricity is not just a force of nature, it is a force of reality itself. A manifestation of the divine force that animates us, and a direct proof of a metaphysical reality beyond our own.

They are guardians and caretakers of Voltaic Receptacles and the fragile drug-fuelled bodies they contain, and their duties are to feed and maintain the machines and to draw the power from them as needed by employers or the Sovereign. To them the living machines are everything, and they protect them with their lives no matter what and worship the Electrical Spirits that they are symbols of. They know all the secrets of electricity known to man and often seek to uncover more.

Although they are servants of the Sovereign, they have the power to act as an autonomous entity and have their own agenda. The control of the Repository and the many hundred of receptacles is left in their  hands alone. They are also the driving force behind the ongoing witch hunt to find and capture maruts, whom they see as gifts from the gods; gifts to be bound, examined, and harnessed by their skilled hands.

The Keepers are all female, and are clad from head to toe in rubber and other insulating material. Not a patch of flesh is left bare. Over this they often wear heavy ceremonial robes signifying their order and rank. They wear a peculiar high headdress, and often complement this with shaded goggles and a rubber veil. They are bound by oath never to touch or wield conductive metal, an oath which carries a complementary sentence of poverty as they can't handle coins (which matters little as the Sovereign will give them anything they ask for).      

[Xeviat]

Keepers are really creepy, good job. I'm having flashbacks to Bioshock here, with the cobbled together technology that is oddly ahead of its time.

How are the keepers replaced? It seems like it would be very bad if the secret of electricity got out, or the secret of what powers the receptacles. Someone's going to get curious, kill a keeper, and find out what's inside.

Oh, and I love the alchemical entries, especially the "liquid energy". Will the malglass continue to absorb oxygen if it is kept inside of a regular glass vial (I think this was asked earlier, but the answer seemed to be a misunderstanding)?

[Superfluous Crow]

It will only absorb oxygen from the "system" it's part of. If you place a small malglass marble in an airtight container it will suck out the air in the container, creating a vacuum. I'm thinking you could make layered bottles with a layer of glass, a layer of liquid vinegar, a layer of glass again, and then a layer of malglass containing some unstable liquid, so that if you throw it and it breaks the malglass is dissolved.
I'm also thinking that I might make it so that Malglass simply has anti-catalyst properties, in addition to its other qualities. That would be a substance with many uses.

Otherwise it'd be difficult to throw liquids kept in malglass without risking malglass dust.  

The Repository in Kolyaev continually take in clever orphans to be indcotrinated so that they have enough Keepers. I'd say it's difficult to become a keeper by choice unless you prove your dedication somehow.    
And I'm thinking the Receptacles are made to be very unstable if handled by someone who doesn't know what he or she is doing. Basically electrocuting anything in the vicinity and turning the electrical mummy inside into dust unless certain failsafes are taken care of. But of course it is not impossible. The keepers will of course do most anything to silence spies and retrieve their rightful property.
Some adventurers might want to rescue a marut family member, and thus invade the Repository which could prove an interesting adventure I think.

[Xeviat]

Anti-catalyst properties would be interesting. Probably wouldn't want to breathe that in, but you wouldn't end up killing everyone in the world by leaving a piece out in the open air for millennia.

[Superfluous Crow]

Hmm, yes, the oxygen will of course have to be replenished somewhere... Maybe anti-catalyst is better? If you got it into your lungs it would probably still keep the oxygen from bonding to the blood.

[Xeviat]

Or perhaps it oxidizes to a certain point, then it becomes largely useless and it needs to be cleaned of the oxidation. That way it could be mined as "malglassoxide" and it needs to be refined into pure malglass. Then if it's made into a vial, only the outside would oxidize and the inside would keep its unique properties.

[Superfluous Crow]

Hmm, yes, that's not bad. Like if a thick layer of fog/dew accumulates over time. But how do you clean it? Should vinegar still dissolve it, or should I remove that part now that it becomes inert eventually.

[Xeviat]

Vinegar should be the only thing that removes the oxidation. That would be cool. Something else could rapidly oxidize it if you need a safe counter mechanism.

[Superfluous Crow]

EDIT: This list is not canon

A small list of some of the potential thaumaturgies in my setting. Some thaumaturgies are very odd, while others have a more ambivalent relationship to the whole magic vs. reality thing. They are not derived from the same source and manipulate very different things. Most of them are in fact derived from no source at all.

Inherent Thaumaturgies
These gifts are either inborn or somehow acquired through some event (usually something bad)
Muses - Bred bloodlines infused with the blood of songbirds capable of amazing displays of aural and sonic control and force. Both performers and weapons.
Deathtellers -  Near-death experiencers with an uncanny ability to predict deaths and derive uncanny knowledge from it
maruts - Humans overflowing with, and often destroyed by, unbridled life and bio-electricity.
Happenmen - Although taught, it requires talent. Setchian Happenmen control coincidence and chance and you don't want to play games with them (literally)

Practical Thaumaturgies
Reification - controlled reification of abstract ideas which are then controlled and bound by the reifier who can access the strange and diverse powers of the living concepts.
The Immanent Word - Just like certain sensations can call up feelings of repulsion or attraction, the scholars of the Immanent Word have found the most basic and powerful symbolics that speak directly to our subconsciousness, evoking a variety of reactions.
Thymic Science - How to make ensouled machinery and artificial souls.  
Essence Distillation - An extension of homeopathy, this vile art exsanguinates animals to distill and bottle their essence; that disincarnate thing that defines everything they are. Results haven't been overwhelmingly convincing yet.  

Preternatural Disciplines
While not really magic, these skills are not especially mundane either.
Tychoestimology - Statistics-based combat relying on observation and calculation.
Obliviation - Enforced forgetting which locks the memory in the sages Oblivion Archive, to be retrieved later. They can remember much, but not at the same time.  

I have tried to stay away from particularly flashy magic, in the vein of DnD evocation. Muses can cause destruction, but mostly deafness or destruction of objects with their harmonic vibrations. Otherwise they are set up to be tricksters mostly.
Maruts are dangerous, but just as dangerous to everybody else. I'm still considering whether I want to have an option that gives you more control as a player. But it seems out of key. I'm also afraid they come of us a bit too pure/clean even if they are basically just waiting to spontaneously combust and electrocute everyone.
I haven't quite decided how Thymic Science will work yet, and likewise I only have basic ideas for some of the others but most of them I have some idea of how work.

If I were to separate them into "domains", these guys would deal with life, death, instinct, thought, similarity, coincidence, language and other similar concepts.  

EDIT: do any of them seem contrived, unneccessary or uninteresting?

[Superfluous Crow]

Revised malglass entry up in the first post (also below so you don't have to scroll too much).

[spoiler=Revised Malglass]
A nasty type of glass shaped from rare minerals from the Boreal Mountains, this material is highly valued by alchemists for its unique properties.
The glass is a powerful anti-catalyst which stills almost all chemical reactions, making volatile liquids in contact with the glass virtually harmless. It maintains an eerily cold temperature no matter how warm the ambient temperature is, and combined with its other quality this makes it extremely uncomfortable to handle.
The glass is clear when first made, but the surface oxidizes over time which makes the glass matted and inert. To restore the glass, it has to be treated with a vinegar solution which seems to be the only thing that works. Of course, it doesn't become inert if kept airtight. Even though the glass doesn't heat up physically, it eventually melts and becomes malleable if treated in a furnace.  
If ground into a fine dust and inhaled, or if shards of shattered malglass pierce the skin the anti-catalyst can wreak havoc with the human body. It can cause asphyxiation, strange reactions or gangrene. This was put to extensive use during the last Corsair Wars, to the horror of many of the soldiers who saw the direct consequences of the attacks.  
[/spoiler]

[Xeviat]

I totally dig the new Malglass. I want a shotgun that fires buckshot made of Malglass.

[Superfluous Crow]

One of the pseudothaumaturgic disciplines of my setting, this monastic order serves the now largely defunct nation of Setch. Don't know if I emphasized the superstition and faith enough, but it should at least give a good idea of their ability.    

The Happenmen

The eye of the storm
born by the Winds of Fate
This is where we stand
  - The 1st mantra from the Sekaric Prayers  

The elite order of warrior-monks serving the kings of Setch and the Murmuring Tongues, the Happenmen are also called the twice-Cursed-twice-Blessed. Their births predicted years before it takes place by the king's Augurs in their mathematical prophecies, they are taken in and trained from a young age in isolated monasteries. Said to be chosen by the Setchic gods, the children are frequent victims of coincidences already from birth, but after years of training under the Augurs this ability is cultivated to the degree where they become veritable avatars of the unlikely.

Subject to both good and bad in equal measures, both the Augurs and the Happenmen know that every choice could have disastrous results. The monks protect themselves with both prayers and apotropaic amulets, and are taught how to contain their ability to some degree, but ultimately their most powerful tool is the Halcyon Eye. A supernatural intuition which develops after suffering as the subject of the uncontained and fully manifested ability for a year or more, it allows the Happenman to intuitively feel the lingering residue of future outcomes surrounding him.
With this ability the monk can surrender himself to the winds of fate and let his hand be guided by the Halcyon Eye, which allows him to navigate around the lingering miasma of bad luck and reach out to grasp every good possibility handed to him by providence, allowing to embody luck rather than misfortune.

Wielding their abilities in this way, the Happenmen have been known to always appear at the right time, gain entrance to the most secure of fortresses,  kill skilled enemies with a single lucky strike and defy death on innumerous occasions. The most powerfully gifted of the Happenmen are even storied to have taken their gift beyond this; they are said to seemingly bend events in their favor, suddenly shift location, or even manifest multiple possible outcomes at once. That said, when a Happenman finally fails, it is often with disastrous outcomes.    

In addition to their mystical training, the monks receive extensive training both in the teachings of the church and in more wordly matters. Yet they are also soldiers, and as such the last part of their training prepares them for war. Given basic physical training in the time before the year-long and often fatal Meditation on the Auspicious Eye, the years after are often occupied by training with the traditional weapons of the order: the Sekaric Blade, a slim longsword, and crescent throwing knives. Although they also learn traditional fighting styles, the style known as the Blade on the Wind is unique to the Happenmen. The style is unpredictable and ultimately ineffective in classical combat, but the flailing almost amateurish strikes with the blade is especially susceptible to the probability-bending effect of their ability - the style is thus useless in the hands of even the most proficient swordsman, yet destructive when wielded by a Happenman.

During the days of the kingdom of Setch the Happenmen served as elite agents of the crown, often acting as spies in other countries. Some of those who escaped Setch in time now live mercenary existences or use their luck for their own sake, but most seek to help, guide, or otherwise fight for the Setchic Diaspora and their homeland.

[Steerpike]

Very cool... they feel like something out of Bas-Lag, a bit.  So the Happenmen are intrinsically attuned to coincidence and fortune, then, and the training just refines their natural talent??

[Superfluous Crow]

"like something out of Bas-Lag": major compliment. Gracias.

And yes, they are basically "born under a lucky star", but unrefined he would just be a common lucky person, not an unnaturally lucky person. Of course, in their worldview the Happenmen are blessed (and cursed) by the divine, and not just ordinary people.  

This was one of the origins I could have gone with. I already use breeding with the Muses, and didn't think it would work that well if it was substance-based (liquid luck... I have too many liquid [something]s already!)
Psuedoscience would have been an option, but then I'd have had to develop some kind of "luck field" science which didn't really suit the feel of it. So I went with a combined anomaly/training origin with a religious twist. I'm not sure if there was a better option I just hadn't noticed yet, if you have any good ideas please let me hear them :D
 

[Steerpike]

Being born under a certain star actually really fits with them, since their origins are based around fortune rather than breeding.