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Marie blasts 4 micromissiles at the RPGoblin long before he could fire a single shot.

"Man errs, till he has ceased to strive."
-snip
Magic System

Empire name pending, planet name provisional

Section A: Planet Kotuc

The world of Kotuc is an old world, orbitting closer to it's sun than most would consider habitable. And yet, rather than a blasted husk of a planet, it's one thriving with life and greenery, with just the same range of biomes and climates as one would expect in any habitable-zone world. Observers at first have a multitude of theories about how this is the case, but it honestly boils down to something quite simple. There is so much magical energy in the planet's atmosphere that it provides it a stronger protection against the sun's lethal rays than mere oxygen, nitrogen, methane, and assorted other gases would do on their own.

Kotuc is one of 10 worlds orbitting it's sun (debatably 11, if one counts the huge moon of one of it's gas giants), and holds a variety of flora and fauna, the vast majority of which make no sense as a living being. The sorts of fantastical creatures of myth and legend on other worlds are common. It's split into four continents representing each cardinal direction.

Section B: Pre-Empire

In some ways, the path of Kotuc's main empire mirrors that of other spacefairing civilizations. In other ways... it doesn't. The empire actually consists of at least a dozen distinct sapient species - one of which and the most numerous of which is one of the hundreds of unique varieties of human - in... not harmony, but some level of mutual coexistence and intermingling. For millenia, it progressed along a traditional path, although one augmented by actual magic. For much of it's history, magocrocies - those nations ruled by the magically gifted - were the most common form of civilization. And for millenia more, it was in a sort of technological stasis at what one would consider "medieval" level. As in other societies, the advent of a way to mass produce writing was instrumental in industrialization.

Most civilizations then move on to the steam engine. Kotuc, on the other hand, had the Spell Repeater and Elemental Container. Suddenly, you didn't need to be a mage to use magic - if you had a properly configured Spell Repeater, that spell could be cast without any magical effort on your part. Elemental Containers could be used to easily gather spirits and elementals for use as a source of heat, cold, mana, whatever else you could get a spirit to generate. Kotuc rapidly industrialized, congregating in cities built on leyline convergences where the magic was most easily gathered and elementals and spirits were naturally drawn to.

Containment of earth spirits raised crop yields, which raised populations and freed them to work in the factories where spell repeaters powered by spirits started pumping out products, at first the essentials, and later luxuries. Civilization developed on a parallel course to more mechanized societies, a world powered by spirits and magic rather than coal and electricity. It's not as if science was totally unknown; the scientific method was quite useful for alchemists, and some physical laws were observed by philosophers. But when you live in a world where the laws of physics as more vague guidelines and suggestions, it's hard to put much stock in it.

Section C: Contact

The Kotuc system did not have only one habitable planet. It had two. Kotuc had governments that were aware of this, due to long-range scrying, but no way to communicate with those other beings. Magical messages simply wouldn't cross the void with adequate efficiency. Fortunately, soon they wouldn't have to cross much distance, as their neighbor discovered a means of rapid inter-planetary (not interstellar, though) travel. Unfortunately, their neighboring world was under the heel of a martial dictatorship looking to conquer.

The war was brief but bloody - and led to rapid advancement of the people of Kotuc. Their neighboring world lacked the high magic of Kotuc, but had made high technology to compensate. During the war, as Kotuc’s people united in face of their invader, artificers and alchemists were baffled by what the technology of the invaders could do. But just as much, they were inspired. Using destroyed and damaged enemy ships as a base, their practical knowledge of tech progressed leaps and bounds. Using a mixture of technology and magic, they soon achieved interplanetary spaceflight, and fought off and defeated their neighbor.

While their practical understanding of tech had increased… they still didn’t get the principals and fundamentals on which it worked. They knew what worked, but not why, which has led to a rather unique level of tech where the holes in their understanding of natural laws are patched with generous helpings of magic and spirit binding. “Science” is a by-word for the same sort of mysticism and mystery that drapes magic in other worlds, and there is an almost cultish reverence for it in some corners of society. Kotuc tech looks like a bizzare, ramshackle fusion of old, well understood mechanics of magic and the ritualistic application of lubricant and chanting of voice commands.

+1 for Twinwolf's proposal due to essentially being magitech XCOM, but if it's possible I'd like to offer up a +1 for Empiricist's proposal as the magic system , and Twin's as the history and actual faction though..

Tarcius, want to go see what side 1 is voting. It seems this side is lost to us.

Quote from: Tech Type Votebox

Mech: (1) Taricus
Magic: (0)
Organic: (0)
Mech/Magic: (0)
Mech/Organic: (4) Unraveller, NG, Frostgiant, Doomblade,
Magic/Organic: (0)

Due to various reasons I'm side 1 now.

Quote from: Tech Type Votebox

Mech: (2) Taricus, TricMagic
Magic: (0)
Organic: (0)
Mech/Magic: (0)
Mech/Organic: (5) Unraveller, NG, Frostgiant, Doomblade, Cronos5010
Magic/Organic: (0)

[/quote]
My preferred aesthetic is machine race infested by organic material, or biotitan forcibly enhanced with metal armor and a control scheme built into the brain.

: "Tch, could the two of you not squabble over your petty grievances already? If we're going to spend the rest of our lives rotting away in this cramped cell, we might as well not waste our strength with this...childishness."
Akira let out another sigh afterwards, as he very quickly realized that neither of them were terribly likely to listen to him, and leans back against the wall.
: "For better or worse, _{mostly worse}, I came with the wannabe knight over here, neither of us took to kindly to the Corisians making a sport of punting a little child around with maces, even if the boy had a damned lucid crystal controlling his movements."

Marie uses Positronic artillery beam on Skullgob Shaman 2.

: "Tch."
Akira stared silently at the crumpled up form of the boy, partly out of shock at the sheer audacity of it, and partly because he couldn't quite decide what to do next.

Yes, it was a hopeless quarrel, it didn't take a room full of tactical genii to glance at his wounds, the unconscious state of most of the party (one of whom had already chosen to flee when they were still conscious), and the unquestionable nature of the enemy's advantage in both numbers, and morale to come to the honest conclusion that they were screwed.

And yes, his family's honor would be on the line if he did something to step out of line, but....it wasn't just his family's honor at stake here. The fair knight had a point, as hopeless as it was, they were honor bound to bring the boy, Noah, back to his family unharmed, (By a promise made to a pack of mewling children, but still) and it was quite clear now that giving the boy over to the corisian soldiers and magi would not fulfill that promise.

And that really, unless he wanted to be known as 'Akira, the samurai who stands idly while a child is clubbed into unconsciousness for being in the wrong place and time' from now on, there was really, only one thing he could do.

: "And that's enough of that."
He declared, while he briskly walks away from Arnvidar to approach the prone form of Noah, very quickly drawing his blade as he put on a defensive stance.

: "I, Akira Akiyama have sworn an oath to bring this boy back to his parents unharmed, and I'll be damned if I just stand here and let you lot make a sport of abusing his body."

: "_{That's what I think he would have said anyway.}"