Topic: [RMU] Treasure Law - Industrial revolution!

[Thot]

Treasure Law's Adept base list "Mechanical Mastery" opens the potential for all kinds of progress! You can:

• Create a clockwork that runs forever, effectively turning magical energy into mechanical and, by proxy, even eletrical energy (if you know how to build a turbine).
• Create a reservoir that never runs empty... so your car's fuel tank runs forever!
• Enchant a magic item that can cast spells... for example, enchant other items!

I can see mighty empires being built upon this magic... what caused such powerful civilizations to fall?

Beautiful!

[JakeM.]

K’ta’Viir of ancient Shadow World infused technology with magic but they didn’t last forever.

[Thot]

K’ta’Viir of ancient Shadow World infused technology with magic but they didn’t last forever.

There are, of course, always reasons why great civilizations fall. The above examples require relatively high-level, well-educated adepts (essence alchemists) with plenty of free time to enchant such marvels. The empire's enemies (from within or without) might just hunt them all down and burn the books of their lore, or the system they built might just break temporarily due to external shock, and fail to keep the alchemists alive in the trouble that follows, which in turn causes greater trouble, and so on.

Or the civilization might just grow decadent and reliant on enchantments that no one bothers to even learn how to renew, until they inevitably break.

Or mago-ecological catastrophe might follow, when too much magical energy of the world is consumed by a vast number of such magic items. The energy might be needed for spirits or even gods to exist, and if it is used up without having time to replenish (if it replenishes at all), that might even threaten and thus anger the gods, or spirits. (Glorantha's god learners are the famous RPG example here, I think).

When there are great wonders, there is great opportunity for conflict. For story.

[jdale]

My players enchanted a wagon to animate the wheels, give it sentience, and grant it to the ability to record what it "sees." When they want to keep it from being too obvious, they have the world's laziest draft animal that just walks in front. But otherwise they can tell the wagon to go hide itself out of sight, and run away if anything threatens it.

There is a good chance they are going to lose that wagon now because they aren't going back to where they left it. So maybe in the future I will have NPCs tell stories about a haunted wagon wandering through the wastes.

An open question is how prevalent such usage would be. You could move your setting towards more magitech if you want, but there are numerous reasons that could be invoked if you don't.

Anyway, those spells are permanent as long as all the parts are intact, but if it isn't unbreakable or self-repairing, eventually it will wear out and cease to function. That may never become relevant in the lives of the casters, but over historical time most of that infrastructure will eventually fail. I think regular wagon wheels don't last even one lifetime without any repairs, especially if they encounter rough terrain.