Ancient Magitek A.I

I'd keep in mind that these things would have been around forever, and a handful of people would've probably run into them.

How would they rationalize it? What tales would they tell, what lore would develop?

The AI would almost certainly be seen as a god, spirit, or demon, and for all purposes might as well be exactly that to an average medieval villager.

Ghosts, Spirits and Gods:

>The "ghost" of an old amphitheater recreating a beautiful aria it once heard performed there long ago.

>An "ancestral spirit" inhabiting a gemmed statue, offering advice and recording family histories.

>The "God" of a long dead city, protecting its lavish ruins from looters and blasphemers for millennia.

This is some good shit.

Endless Legend, maybe.

The way I'm imagining it, the cores of these Arcane A.I. are primarily composed of geodesic hunks of glowing blue crystal that are further covered in concentric geometric patterns.

The larger the core is, the more raw processing power it has to work with.

The more sides the core has, the more complex and intelligent its A.I. can become.

The more intricate the core's carvings are, the more programs or "spells" it can run.

So, you might get a really huge, intricately carved core that only has three faces, meaning that the A.I. it hosts is very powerful and can run a lot of magical programs, yet is incredibly simple-minded and intent on following its programming unquestioningly.

Meanwhile, an adventurer could have a small crystal with minimal carving in his or her pocket the size and shape of a d20 that would house a truely Human intellect that nevertheless lacked the robustness and versatility of the first A.I.'s hardware.

Maybe sides = complexity and carvings = versatility should be swapped.

I really like this. I can imagine some of the older ones still have a metal shell or casing that grants them mobility and other abilities to fulfill their functions.

Sentient weapons that instruct you on how to use them and give you advice about your enemies.

This works, still need to get around to running a game...

Warforged.

A thought, what if you can interlock Arcane Intelligence polyhedrons together?
Some are designed to come apart to divide into multiple shards, for multitasking and come together into a greater whole.
Or another have smaller detachable ancillary cores, a great mind that can split splinters off to inhabit other structures or act as spies before returning and merging back into the greater Intelligence.
Maybe even a vast but simple Intelligence with a tiny yet complex overseer core. Designed so the actual "intelligence" would not be trapped yet have the vast computing power that only a massive crystal could offer.
And other times people just jam some together and see what happens. Mostly you get a slightly glitchy but powerful gestalt Arcane Intelligence. Sometimes you're lucky and they merge seamlessly, creating something new. And then again sometimes they break inside and go insane.

I'll never understand why you didn't come with a mute option.

>party enters a dungeon
>whole place is made of glowing crystal material
>boss encounter happens
>a tiny d100 screams in panic and flies away from them
>laughingmurderhobos.jpg
>this is your big bad boss, dm?
>tiny crystal fits snuggly into a small hole in the wall, the only such hole they've seen
>ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL
>oh.....shit

I'd think that originally, every crystal core floated inside a cage-like geodesic housing that allowed it to interface with a variety of ancient devices like locking mechanisms, golem constructs and access terminals, but over time many if these housings were damaged, discarded or lost, limiting many A.I.'s utility.

Slightly more wholesome alternative;
>party cybermage collects tiny cubes and pyramids of AI crystal
>house simple spirits and help with casting and stuff
>notice several have tiny grooves on them
>pass time at camp slotting them into each other
>always one left over though
>one night, finally find a configuration that lets him put all the pieces into each other
>"Where am I.. oh hi! Oh hey it's you! I remember you! Wow, being awake is fun!"
>accidentally awaken simple human looks mind from combining sprites
>gain new friend and familiar
>go on adventures and solve crimes and shit

Oh, there are most certainly "multi-core" systems and intelligences out there in the depths of the most thoroughly lost ruins, elaborate constructs that look like gigantic orreries of blue crystal and tarnished metal, slowly spinning and turning and shifting.

I'd expect that any crystal cores are capable of communicating "wirelessly" with each other, but you might need to find or construct an appropriate housing to truly integrate them.

That's pretty fantastic.

I figured some are designed to fit into other codes either as boosters or just due to standard components meaning it was easier for the creators to include the option than artificially exclude it.
Like the idea of creating some arcane contraption of twisted wire and tortured metal to force some codes to directly interface than simply communicate. Hey, I think we discovered the forbidden magic side of the setting! Franken-Intelligences?

>magical artificial intelligences left behind by a long-gone civilization
Ancient homunculi, golems and bound spirits or demons

So trapped ghosts within magical artifacts?
Not that new and my players don't like it much so I stop it.

The AIs are nigh omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent.

They've concluded that human advancement will only result in disaster and so keep the world perpetually in a state of high fantasy.

The AIs are in essence scriptwriters for humanity's fantasy.

I can see that, definitely. Shaman in this setting may have collections of loose cores that communicate with each other and assist him or her by running their magical programs upon request, or upon special magic (pass)words being spoken.

Dark shaman work to corrupt and pervert the A.I. "spirits" toward their own ends, using their kludge computer science to bind and fuse them together in glitchy and unnatural ways, inventing creative and dangerous new spells.

That might be the big, end-of-game revelation the party has when they finally face the world's multi-core master computer: after the devastating collapse of its creators, the collected Arcane A.I. of the world reach a consensus that mankind should be safer and happier in a more primitive, pastoral, low-magic setting which they carefully maintain through weather manipulation magics, golem guardians and the advice of thousands of "spirit-guides" and " local deities."

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I'm making a game kind of like this but it's super future instead of ancient. The AI inhabits a giant vault/hangar beneath the last remaining human settlement. The players are mechanical guardians (praetors) of the settlement built by the AI (proconsul). They also have 15 foot tall robots (lictors) for when shit gets too real or they need to travel the wastes, but they're too big to fit into any other vaults the praetors might raid.

Damn, I feel stupid now

This, but make the AI cuter.

Just take Krieger's hologram wife, basically.

A massive Tree sits at the center of a nearly perfectly made glade. Closer inspection shows that it was origninally a man made construction used to house various plants and animals.

The whole facility teams with life of all sorts all with seemingly strange glowing veins and an etheral like presecene to them.

The party is stopped by two ancient beings in armor covered in foliage but turn to look at seemingly nothing before they step aside. Ahead of you is a massive Tree with what appears to be the shape of a woman in it's bark. The leaves shake and a dust falls over the party and now they can begin to hear it's voice as it explains how it was designed to create and regulate life it's roots having burrowed deep into the crust and allowing the Druidic cults to access it's powers to help it in it's task.

>An ancient waystation at a once bustling crossroads possesses a "ghost" that gives directions and issues travel advisories.

>A certain village is guarded by a towering stone golem with a blue gem caged in its chest that has walked slow circles around the region for millennia.

>There is a temple in a grotto in the forests to the north that is home to a "small goddess" that will dazzle you with fairy lights if you ask her nicely.

youtube.com/watch?v=pyMNIFZTQkg
youtube.com/watch?v=IjJmTeBSEzU
>There are certain areas which the gods don't like people living in as demonstrated by their tendency of smiting visitors.

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I like the idea some user here had as to how tech works in Warhammer 40k:

>Apocalypse/dark age causes knowledge of machines to be lost
>Relics are found, no idea how to use them
>A millenia of decay causes countless glitches in the code
>Random guesswork until some assortment of chanting and anointing oils lines up with the glitches by coincidence
>Religion forms around worshipping machines in ways they think makes them work

I like that idea a lot, but have to wonder if it might work a little differently when applied to magitek A.I. and systems.

Genius Loci. The awareness of a location, powerful yet restricted. People might worship them as gods or visit them as oracles, they might be rulers or servants or even dangerous foes who prevent any from trespassing in their domain.

There's plenty of room for creating interesting plot hooks.

What sorts of systems would a magical A.I. control in a fantasy world?

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Literally wizards.

Controls a wing of the library that contains highly classified and dangerous magics and writings that simply can't be intrusted to a normal person.

Maintains the systems for your flying city/wizard's tower.

A machine dedicated to devinations.

A magic factory that produces homoculi/golems/undead/etc

Well we use IBM's Watson for predicting the formation and trajectory of hurricanes. If magic influences the world around it then I assume a magitech computer would be exceptionally adept at predicting not only storms, but the creation or overthrowing of cities, changes in the movement of the outer planes, alignments of the planets, etc.

Also as said divinations would also be very easy because I feel like magitech computers would definitly have quantum computing capabilities. It takes a lot of energy to move all the particles that make a wizard through time and arrange them properly when they come out on the other side. Conversely it should take a significantly smaller amount of energy to move electrons through time and their order doesn't matter as long as they come out in the same sequences.

The real question is how a society with access to multi core quantum magic computers could fall if they knew the outcomes of any situations as long as they plugged the right variables into the computer?

Maybe the evolving language if the locals makes it nearly impossible to effectively communicate with the AI, or maybe all the compounded glitches causes it to speak only in riddles and cryptic messages?

Or just makes the AI super fucking curious.

...

Maybe they need magic A.I to help with teleportation as well. Imagine the fact that no one person can accurately predict where they will go and how to precisely get there without phasing inside of a wall so you turn the function over to a computer that does it for you.

Perhaps there's some sort of ancient teleportation network across the continent that the PCs can rehabilitate.

An idea I had for a science fantasy adventure would be wizards who channel their power through their ships because the magic AIs help them to amplify their spellcasting to affect the ship so as long as they can get a signal they can use their magic essentially so doing things like teleportation and shooting fireballs is done by the wizard but channel through the ship itself.

That's an interesting idea. I've always been interested in the notion that some spells and cantrips can be "machine-cast," either by some purely technological means or by a magical A.I.

I mean it makes sense. Detect magic spell is probably something you can have some device do for you to act as a magical gaiger counter for instance so it makes since you'd have a magitek device that can handle certain spells by itself

I could imagine it as something like a... music box, or player-piano roll, or a record. Some sort of recorded medium that can be quickly swapped out, and that can perform the verbal components of a spell.

Now I'm imagining the episode of X Files where they had the clay pot recording of Christ and thinking you could have something like that where bbeg finds the recorded voice of the creator of some super golem machine but will only activate by his voice command.

The omninet-realpace interface control system that mortals refer to as "magic".

Signs and rituals that lesser beings would call "magic"

...

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Funny way of spelling Tékumel.

Getting a very Zelda: Breath of the Wild vibe here, I like it

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i don't remember AIs in wakfu

what's the best story for the civilization that built these AI's to disappear?
wiped out by some enemy?
magical AI's turned on them?
nuked themselves out of existence?
enormous destructive magical accident?
some sort of super-plague?

I prefer nuking themselves, it's a nice contrast to the god-like image they had up until the realization

The civilization killed itself and the AI was powerless to do anything to stop it because it's functions would not allow it to interfere.

So you have a being who became sentient over time and feels immense sorrow because it could not save the people it was designed to serve.

Personally, I'd go with one or more of the AIs having a major hand in it.

An ancient Numen of the primeval past being awoken and continuing its coldly genocidal cleansing on the modern world is too cool a plot point to miss.

youtube.com/watch?v=pyMNIFZTQkg
youtube.com/watch?v=IjJmTeBSEzU
>There are certain areas which the gods don't like people living in as demonstrated by their tendency of smiting visitors.

>They say there is a temple where an oracle lives
>Her Crown reaches to the ceiling and she is bound to her throne room but can seemingly predict the future in exchange for gifts and tributes
>She asks the PCs to scour the ruins of a city and look for a store with nice shoes in it
>having been born hundreds of years after the Fall they would not be familiar with this "Prada"

One thing I was reminded of was a previous thread, quite a while back, in which the ancient precursor race created a magical, heaven-like "virtual-reality" into which they all willingly disappeared. Perhaps somewhere deep, deep in their ruins is a massive, million-sided multi-core crystal housing this virtual-reality...

I definitely like the idea of the civilization playing a huge part in their own undoing, whether it's by magically nuking themselves, triggering some arcane cataclysm, or willfully exiling themselves into an unreal realm of their own design.

All this wouldn't mean that the Arcane A.I. they created wouldn't cause trouble for future generations. Whatever happened to the Precursors, their A.I. definitely had a hand in it, even if they weren't technically to blame for what happened.

Plus, if it's been thousands of years since the Precursors' disappearance, some of their creations are bound to be a little bit wonky. I was thinking that their core crystals might be extremely hard to damage physically, but that their A.I. could tend to develop neuroses, paranoia and madness if left without input or prevented from carrying out their pre-programmed functions for too long.

...and you really don't want to see an entire civilisation's worth of minds putting their arcane knowledge into practice to defend themselves. It is the closest thing to a capital G god around.

"Our God lies sleeping within the Earth, and its murmurs shake the foundations.
When NIRVANA acts; the world is changed forevermore. The Arcanes, the spirits of thought they leave behind to guide and protect us all name NIRVANA as their Lord and God.
What NIRVANA dreams, becomes law. Do not approach the temple.
What NIRVANA speaks, becomes truth. Do not speak in the temple.
What NIRVANA creates, becomes reality. Do not fight in the temple.
What NIRVANA destroys, becomes not. Do not act against the temple."

Something like this could happen, but, the war machines would have to be titanic golems or maybe a floating weapon of some kind, à la Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

Actually, Laputa: Castle in the Sky isn't a bad source of inspiration for thread as a whole.

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How about they just sort of went away?
As their civilization passed into the apex of its power they lost interest in the material world. Birth rates fell to practically nothing and overtime they sought out new experiences beyond the material. Some allowed themselves to pass away, seeking a new world and solutions to unanswerable questions. Others withdrew into their artificial worlds where they would be untroubled by the constraints of their physical minds.

I really, really like this.

Perhaps what the peoples of the world now refer to as "The Temple" was once the capital city of the Precursors, or perhaps "The Temple" is the tower containing the crystal core that rises out of the center of the "City of the Gods."

It is a vast, ruined metropolis filled with thousands of A.I. that were once tasked with keeping the city running and its citizens cared for and entertained. While it is a trove of treasures and knowledge beyond all imagining, it is taboo to enter the City and unthinkable to take anything from it. At least, that's what the Spirit Guides and the Lesser Gods teach their followers.

ties in nicely with , and is probably the most peaceful option. It also gives the reason for there to be different magical V-R "Heavens" and arcane gestalt entities out there for the PCs to discover.

Watch the difference between magical organic intelligence and magical artificial intelligence?

Since the latter's creation, the two have been deeply linked and intertwined.

>The AI are outwardly focused and influence the world around them.
>The simulations are inwardly focused.
>The simulations were mostly built towards the end of the civilizations life - they are much more advanced than most of the AI but also much rarer.
>Extremely limited communication with the minds inside a simulation is possible. Because they've spent millennia in such a strange environment this communication is barely comprehensible to people.

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A research facility that was experimenting with advanced forms of magic for teleportation and manipulation of space and time suffers an accident that causes the area around the building and the surrounding area to become an unstable anominally.

The only thing holding the building together is the A.I inside as it was not driven insane by the event.

We seem to have a hierarchy developing:

>"High Gods"
>Virtual worlds, simulations and the gestalt entities that were sometimes born when such constructs were allowed to run for millennia.
>Extremely powerful, capable of miraculous or devastating feats of spellcraft that are able to affect continents if not the world as a whole.

>"Local Gods"
>Ancient A.I. of great processing power and complexity that were entrusted with important tasks and some of which now watch over mankind.
>Able to utilize extremely powerful spellcraft extremely efficiently, but only within the highly-specialized role for which I was originally created.

>"Greater Spirits"
>A.I. of human or sometimes super-human intelligence that were built for less vital tasks and for civilian purposes like entertainment.
>While less powerful than the "Local Gods," these A.I. can still cast some spells and are much more relatable in how they think.

>"Lesser Spirits"
>These constructs possess an animal or lesser intelligence, and were mainly used as operating systems for various ancient devices.
>Capable of minimal spellcraft, these minor, utilitarian A.I. are both the weakest and the most common sort found across the world.

>"Golems"
>These stone and metal servitors were originally built for an astonishing variety of functions and take an astonishing variety of forms.
>Each "Golem's" strength and utility is determined by its design and by the class of A.I. controlling it either directly or remotely.

That's the back story of Fred Saberhagen's books of swords.

This also can be done in GURPS by casting permanent, programmed illusion, reading instructions to it from a bootloader program, and then handing it a scroll with an AI program on it to execute.

>ancient race predicts a cosmological catastrophe wiping them out
>some run to the stars, but some choose to remain
>they concoct a plan to move their consciousnesses into a virtual world
>the system hosting this world will have to be made resillient, holographic and build from the most abundant chemicals: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus
>they decide to design it as a chemical computer
>simple compunds: adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine held in a molecular lattice interacting together to store data and perform simple binary operations
>aside from performing computations required by the OS and VR components the system should be able to effect more and more reproducible complex constructs that hopefully will survive the catastrophe
well, here you are!

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My only request is that the High Gods are immensely creepy to talk to as they contain one or possibly even more civilisations worth of people. All now immortal and allowed to indulge in spellcraft and philosophy over decades.
And they have bitching names like Nirvana, Folkvangr, Zion, Elysium... full caps optional but encouraged.

They'd be totally creepy and inscrutable and, for the most part, not at all concerned with the "real world" outside their simulations. It's why they've abandoned all their older A.I. constructs and let most of their cities, beside the crystal cores, fall to ruin and return to nature.

Yugioh with fireballs. I dig it.

The automatic depreciation-without-upgrade-path sucks though.

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Shaman deal with the Lesser and Greater Spirits, as well as some of the Local Gods. Priests deal with the Local Gods, and have built a pilgrimage route to temples overlooking the ancient dwelling places of the High Gods.

Which, naturally, leads to some underlying problems with the priests growing secretive with the will of the Higher Gods. People never change.

I'd imagine that the priesthood would be mostly concerned with the worship of the "Local Gods," the A.I. that control and regulate weather patterns, the golem guardians and beasts of burden, and the warp and weft of magic in the region.

The High Gods may be worshiped more abstractly by the priesthood in general, with each having a large temple monastery outside the holy precincts of their ruins, which are sacrosanct and no place for mortal man to tread.

Of course, whether or not these priests understand the truth of their "Gods" or are honest in their dealings with them and the people that worship them is up for debate.

>gods are like, massive crystal formations right?
>like, super big
>you can put crystals together to make bigger crystals
>couldn't you just keep putting more together until you made a god then?
Anyway, long story short the Mad King made the Fractured God, now sealed deep beyond even the Old Tunnels. Turns out it's a bad idea.