How do I space magic correctly?

Let's not forget the Cthulhu Genie Dragons.

Oh, yes. Also those guys.

The dragons were wiped out

Of this you can be sure, oh reader mine

>three queens

I drive myself to the edge of madness trying to explain the truth.

It's so simple. Elegant like a knife point. It explains - this is not hyperbole, this is the farthest thing from exaggeration - EVERYTHING.

But you lay it out and they stare at you like you've just been exhaling dust. Maybe they're missing some underlying scaffold of truth. Maybe they are all propped on a bed of lies that must be burned away.

Why does anything exist?

No no no no no don't reach for that word. There's no 'reason'. That's teleology and teleology will stitch your eyelids shut.

Why do we have atoms? Because atomic matter is more stable than the primordial broth. Atoms defeated the broth. That was the first war. There were two ways to be and one of them won. And everything that came next was made of atoms.

Atoms made stars. Stars made galaxies. Worlds simmered down to rock and acid and in those smoking primal seas the first living molecule learned to copy itself. All of this happened by the one law, the blind law, which exists without mind or meaning. It's the simplest law but it has no worshippers here (out there, though, out there - !)

(1/3)

HOW DO I EXPLAIN IT it's so simple WHY DON'T YOU SEE

Imagine three great nations under three great queens. The first queen writes a great book of law and her rule is just. The second queen builds a high tower and her people climb it to see the stars. The third queen raises an army and conquers everything.

The future belongs to one of these queens. Her rule is harshest and her people are unhappy. But she rules.

This explains everything, understand? This is why the universe is the way it is, and not some other way. Existence is a game that everything plays, and some strategies are winners: the ability to exist, to shape existence, to remake it so that your descendants - molecules or stars or people or ideas - will flourish, and others will find no ground to grow.

And as the universe ticks on towards the close, the great players will face each other. In the next round there will be three queens and all of them will have armies, and now it will be a battle of swords - until one discovers the cannon, or the plague, or the killing word.

Everything is becoming more ruthless and in the end only the most ruthless will remain (LOOK UP AT THE SKY) and they will hunt the territories of the night and extinguish the first glint of competition before it can even understand what it faces or why it has transgressed. This is the shape of victory: to rule the universe so absolutely that nothing will ever exist except by your consent. This is the queen at the end of time, whose sovereignty is eternal because no other sovereign can defeat it. And there is no reason for it, no more than there was reason for the victory of the atom. It is simply the winning play.

(2/3)

Of course, it might be that there was another country, with other queens, and in this country they sat down together and made one law and one tower and one army to guard their borders. This is the dream of small minds: a gentle place ringed in spears.

But I do not think those spears will hold against the queen of the country of armies. And that is all that will matter in the end.

(3/3)

Ghost Fragment: Darkness 3
-- From the Journals of Toland, the Shattered

Nevermind the fact that the Worm gods could themselves be Ahemkhara that have simply sided with the Darkness in the same way that the Leviathan sided with the light and they come into existence it seems whenever the Traveler seeds life because there was an Alien race that the Hive fought who hated the fact they had worm like gods themselves in the form of the Wish Dragons

So, is Ghaul the Queen of the Country of Armies then?

Perhaps

It's certainly the most fitting, but it could also apply to the Hive or Taken

>The first queen writes a great book of law and her rule is just
Hive
>The second queen builds a high tower and her people climb it to see the stars
Vex
>The third queen raises an army and conquers everything
Legion

Psionics, usually. The more risky and madness-inducing the better.

Toland was a big sissy who lusted for Aurash's futa cock.

—The Sky is the harder way. But it is kinder.—

Darkness worshippers are pussies.

Largely, I'm just trying to voice my distaste for people taking Toland at his word.

>8
>Only army without space magic
>Manages to fuck a group of demi gods sideways.

Why are the Cabal so based?

Ironically they're pretty much Humanity Fuck Yeah but not humans

Start with magic that someone actually believes in then codify it a bit, space it up, and twist it to be more convenient for you. Pick an actual magic though, the regurgitated D&D magic that's common in pop culture doesn't mean anything to anyone.

A lot of sci fi tropes come from the same time the Human Potential Movement was around, so if you pick something up from that (and they believed in a whole lot of loopy nonsense), you'll naturally get things that feel a bit like they fit. For example, that was when westerners found out about Buddhism and misinterpreted it as "go with the flow man" and yes that's dumb but that shit gave us Star Wars.

Rationalwiki is a good catalog of nonsense people believe in. Spirit Science is one crank's grand unified theory of crazy new age shit (try the Sacred Geometry or Human History videos).

...

Look man, he's a warlock and he wanted to get dat booty call with Xyor and he got it but then again thatnks to him probably whispering shit to Eris for god knows how long she was stuck on the moon they were able to get us the info we needed on the Hive. Hell He's like Osiris in a way but no one will give him any respect (not that he needs or wants it).

Outlaw Star also had actual sorcerers who appeared to be some sort of esoteric shamans

Because they're not trapped by some system of worship/magic/science like the Hive and Vex are. The Fallen might have actually beaten the City as well had there been more of them.

A lot of chinese space magic, apparently the Tenppa Emperor was the strongest magic user

>implying the exact orders Ghaul received weren't "crush them, o general mine"

Of course.

But he offers some of the most in-depth analysis of the Darkness itself, along with the Hive. I also rather like the card where he gets mad at the Guardians who killed Oryx.

---

Where are you going? No, wait, listen.

I was right, at first. In the ever-expanding Blighted-place, even Light must obey the sword-logic. Even you Guardians, you best and brightest of the dying dawn, you drew blood in honor of the Taken King. The Warpriest did his duty, and you did yours. Oryx was challenged, yes, but challenged in the way of the Hive, which is to say that challenge is worship — is challenge — is power. Sword-logic. You played your part well.

You were not supposed to touch the Light.

How did you find your way into the King's Cellars? How did you even recognize that benighted draught for what it was? Do you not know that the Hive pursue Light precisely for the purpose of devouring it with slavering jaws and slick greedy gulping throats? How did you take (or rather, un-Take) the Blighted Light that Oryx gathered to offer in sacrifice to Akka, and ignite it so that it burned and burned the Darkness?

It was barely Light anymore. But you took it. And when you took it, you did not keep it. You set it free.

You fools! You disastrous, bumbling squanderers! It's not right! Who now shall be First Navigator, Lord of Shapes, harrowed god, Taken King? Not you! You might have been Kings and Queens of the Deep! But you have toppled Oryx and you have not replaced him!

There must be a strongest one. It is the architecture of these spaces.

Why are you leaving?

-- King's Fall

Apparently this may set up room for Nokris to assume the mantle of King. The taken are still in D2 and then there's the fact Oryx's sisters are still out there and the Dreadnaught is still floating around Saturn.

Because only the Cabal (and the Fallen, but they're on the run) understood that the only way to properly threaten the Guardians was to attack their power at the source.

Ghaul is the Cabal emperor

He overthrew the previous guy in charge and made a beeline for Sol

They would have overtaken the City had the House of Wolves not been stopped in the Reef by the Awoken fleet and their Queen.

The guys who make the shells were different though, right? There was just something about their method that was fading from the world, hence the limited shells.

Reading about the conflict between the Reef and the House of Wolves was very satisfying and gave an awesome sense of scale. I mean, they threw a goddamn moon at the fucking Fallen but the Fallen were pulling off some slick shit against the Awoken as well

Honestly, what he did to the Traveller is gonna pan out to be a colossal mistake. Mark my words, he didn't trap the Light, he just freed it once and for all.

>It feels like lead and neutronium and electroweak matter fashioned into a moon-sized ball that you must carry as you move.

The Traveller is a prison.

yes, the group that made the shells had a different sort of magic from the chinese magic of the Kei Pirates. With the Mana drying up they had to condense the magic into shells thus creating Caster guns.

He also made the mistake of angering a system's worth of formerly paracasual space zombies.

Sure they don't have power no, but just give it a little time.

Light or no light that nigga's getting a shotty to the face. It worked on Oryx it'll work on him.

this stuff is interesting reading at least, thumbs up

-Nanomachines
-Derpium metal/alloy
-Hyrpidium particles
-Zeranderpadoo radiation

In-setting, is it seen as science or magic?
Is it a reproducible, controllable system, or something esoteric that many don't even believe in, let alone trust?
Eclipse Phase has pyschic powers, FTL gates, and soul transplants. All of which are fucking space magic as far as we're concerned, but it's all about the presentation. Most EP transhumans don't even know Psi exists, they think it's witchcraft. The Gates are treated more like 'fantasy magic' - not fully understood, definitely dangerous, but people can control them.
And soul transplants, complete brain rewriting, is considered about as banal as cosmetic surgery by most people.

(wait 40k FTL vs Star Wars FTL is a way better example)

Bene Gesserit

Isn' Rationalwiki super lefty? I mean I'm a pretty big liberal but I can FEEL the bias when I read articles there.

For whatever reason the concept of mana disappeared from the universe. Both Tao magic and the Caster shells use what little mana is left.

It's a little left by normal standards, extremely left by Veeky Forums standards.

If you need resources to pass an ideological purity test before you're willing to use them, you've got a problem.

Well, for starters you should tell folk that you don't want trouble in your place. And then if'n they don't heed your request you use them cosmic space powers of the Force Galatic to show 'em why they should adhere to your desire to be free of trouble. Trouble in your place.

The more I see this design the more retarded it looks. What happened to bungie? Why cant they into aesthetics anymore?

Conversely, there's a few possibilities that are implied by the existence of the three absolutes:

>Joker Queen; pragmatist who chooses her Queenly style to suit her needs
The Reef
>No Queen; no philosophy, just desperation for any argument
The Fallen

I'm just terrified that they'll actually end up deciding that The Traveler and The Darkness are the same thing. That is straight up the worst trope in fiction.
If that's what the story team was going for before they got Corporate Executive'd to death, then I'm not wasting tears on them.

I'm not sure what your major malfunction is.

I was thinking a bit like the force except there's no real duality like lightside/darkside more just different philosophies that aren't inherently good or evil

Very Kirkbrideish. And cool! Why wasn't any of this in the game?!

*activate autistic but true saying*

To the uneducated technology can be mistaken for magic

You use phrases like 'high-energy exotic particles' and 'synthetic singularity events' to explain all the bullhit and then get on with the story.

Best space wizard.

I think the point is that the Darkness is the Queen of Armies. Other races have tried to be the Queen of Laws or Queen of Towers, but they all fall before the Darkness and are assimilated. Every race has tried to follow the light, but they all eventually become the Darkness, the Queen of Armies, because it's the only way to survive.
The humans are still at that stage where they believe they can win without becoming ruthless and savage. But so far no one ever has.

The problem I have with destiny is the scale of it. It seems like it jumps all over the place.
Like, "oh, we only have a single planet and our enemies have huge galactic empires but they haven't brought it to bear on us, but oh look now they have, but like three people can sneak on their warship and kill their god" and "we're so thinly spread now, every loss we take is irreplaceable, but this guy killed thousands of guardians and you just capped his ass, but we're still gonna give you no street cred and treat you like you're new".
And my personal favorite, "You just killed an Archon! This could cripple the Fallen!"

Very Carefully.

The Light was winning on Fundament till the Krill totally bitched out and ruined everything forever.

Do it the way Outlaw Star did, by not explaining anything.

By not treating the magic as mundane, making it something that is 'known but not fully known'. Give the space magic a sense of awe of wonder to it, just like how you should with space games in general.

That's normal. Number of authors who can get scale to stay consistent is really low.

I thought it was pretty clear.

magic was disappearing from the galaxy the more humanity explored space because they were using the source of magic on different planets as starship fuel.

Wasn't he pretty much Evola tier irrelevant?

shiny with lots of big ass lights

I've always wanted to play a wizard in a fantasy setting who decided he wanted to get rich by creating caster guns and shells. He could charge ridiculous amounts of money to sell magical spells in the shapes of the shells, which could only be activated by the guns he also made, to users who otherwise couldn't use magic.

>that was when westerners found out about Buddhism and misinterpreted it as "go with the flow man"
No they interpreted Taoism as that.

Shiny with lots of big ass.

I'm going to write a story on a superhero setting where people are combining learned skills for the first time, like Science, Magic, Chi, and alien powers.

Won't be for a long while since I've got a long queue to work through, but it will be in the next 5-10 years.

This'd be a good litmus test for how I want to do it.

Basically science and technology are the universe's law. Magic is the law of other universes applied to our own. So fire here is not something that is alive or has any thought, but in a magical universe it might. The biggest difference is that most of those universes are "legalist" universes. They work like classic mythology.

Our universe is based off of fixed laws. We evolved, everything has rules it follows and it's the same as normal science. Magic is the science of other universes - particularly those without the concept of science.

Mad science is actually the same thing, except instead of physically bringing energy or creatures or concepts here it's putting your own brain slightly out of phase. You share knowledge with yourself in alternate universes, allowing for the development of technology from other universes that works like in that universe, and vice versa. You might get a fancy ice gun, your counterpart might build a regular gun. Mad scientists often seem mad because their values are jumbled up with their alternate universal selves.

Across the multiverse there are infinite possibilities. So there are an infinite number of universes with different laws and standards. There are also an infinite number of dead ones, or empty ones, and there's simultaneously no universes at all. So it's hard to discover new magic - that's why superhero mages are so strong and knowledge is hoarded closely. Magic can potentially do ANYTHING, it's dangerous. It's also utterly alien.

Magic can work like law, passed down by a god and imposed on reality. It can work like science, ordered and repeatable. It can work wildly and unpredictably or otherwise.

Forbidden technology.

I love that Hive Necromancy isn't just shit like raising the dead as puppets.

It's conceptual bullshit like "Hiding your death" so that reality can't find it.

Every alien race has its own strengths and weaknesses and discoveries. Some may have discovered various universes naturally attuned to their nature. So one race might have learned to integrate magic with their technology. There is no such thing as FTL Travel or magic in the natural universe, but their racial magic can potentially break any boundary. They simply teach it to everyone, naturally "get it" and even build it into themselves. The connections to magic are based on their own nature as a species.

This is why, in spite of a thousand thousand races out there just near to us there's still a galactic economy and galactic trade. Some races can build FTL drives, others can build super ships, others can build teleporters that don't kill you. It's magic, attuned to and learned by their race. Made universal and specially tuned to them.

Many superpowers are created by this process. Power from other universes is drawn by them naturally. Most races have just a few natural superpowers they engineer into their own genes based on their magic.

Humans would have a particular strength as well, which would be endurance and versatility. We're not very strong, fast or smart as unenhanced humans - but if you teach us all magic, spirit skills, psychic powers and make us masters of native technology we'll be absolute gods. Most aliens have already realized this potential and are not gods. Most races are fairly narrowly defined and specialized. They might get one or two powers and master technology to an extent. Some are generalists but get wiped out when they prove too disruptive to galactic society.

So basically:

Tech is our universe.

Mad Science and Magic and Superpowers = same thing. All are just power taken from other universes with different "natural" law.

For traditional games, either Star Wars or 40k.

I love it when people mix in cosmic horror or just straight Lovecraft references in as the method of doing that, like the world building for Cthulhutech. If I were homebrewing a setting I'd say that manipulation of zero point energy and the quantum vacuum is the first point where science gets Mad. This has a couple of funny implications for our own world.
>Emdrives are arcanotech engines, no matter how slow and shitty they are
>microwave ovens are basically extra shitty emdrives so we've been using arcanotech starship engines to make popcorn for over 60 years
>Turns out there's a simple modification which turns a commercial microwave into the Event Horizon's Gravity Drive. Cue the mother of all product recalls when some asshole posts instructions on /x/ and /diy/

I feel like there's a potential for cosmic horror with firearms, like what the Thorn from Destiny was trying to be. Like, a weapon that is more effective the better you understand how it works, but the more insane you go for knowing it. The more you delve into its inner workings, you realize that it's not so much a mechanical device as it is a focal point for twisted and convoluted realms of malevolent power. And it's not the gun itself that's evil, it just harnesses and channels a tiny avenue for these forces, but you never know for sure if those forces are properly held in check.

And there's a man, a warrior who wielded the gun for a long time, but was consumed by it and became a gibbering madman in the gutter, but the scraps of coherency you can get out of him offer a deeper understanding of the gun, at the cost of your own sanity.
And then one day, when dire forces are invading and all seems lost, and the last man to use the gun is killed, it clatters from his hand... right at the feet of the madman. He picks it up, loads it with fingers that have stopped trembling for the first time in years, looks up with a thoughtful expression, and blows four ships out of the sky.
And they find him when the battle has been won, completely catatonic.

As opposed to the Thorn, which is like "this gun is super dark and cool and drives anybody who uses it insane but there's no drawbacks and you're gonna need all three people to run it in Trials of Osiris to stand a chance"

This. Though the same could be said about magic in general.

Either go with the above user's advice, making a scifi world where magic is still awe inspiring and powerful, or level-up standard fantasy into industrial fantasy. As soon as those Gaigax humans/dwarves/orcs figured out how to make things air tight they'd try to fly up, and probably run I to star/meteor/nova elves or whatever.

You could try for Star Wars but a little better written and more subtle. Magicians operating in small numbers, their art equal parts belief and logic.

What a small riftborn.

>What happened to bungie?
The good people mostly left (or got chased out), and those that stayed are being led by a little man with a vindictive nature and an inferiority complex.

his name is loie and he is a powerful industrialist

Idea:
>all wizards do is alter the laws of reality within a set space thus allowing technology which would otherwise be impossible
eg. instead of casting a spell which affects gravity you would alter a specific space (like a space ship) to allow gravity manipulation machines to work within that space. The base universe would be hard sci-fi (or close to it) while wizards allow limited soft sci-fi technologies to be used.

Thoughts?

Read up on obsolete, premodern theories on space and science in general. Here's a start.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(classical_element)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Earth
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model

I used chakras for mine. Check the pdf, it's actually a full system and setting. That's the old version but the second version is a WIP.

>correctly

I should elaborate on what I did for the magic: it was really a combination of chakras, 4D Celestial light (space angels) vs the shade of the Demonic Hellborne (space demons). The Solarians (who you play as a member of) are colonizing a previously mostly wiped out Milky Way from a war between the 4D Celestials and the Hellborne and the Alien civs that had banded together on either side of that war. Solarians had invented a chakra based light magic system called LiMa that was particularly adept, which peaked the interests of Turning Tree, the alien species that had banded together under the Celestials using their Light. Unfortunately the Hellborne and their alien covenant of the Bonded, stole LiMa and backwards engineered it into SHaMa, shadow magic, and in the game you can choose to level up both a LiMa skill tree and a ShaMa skill tree.

You've basically described two guns: The Bad JuJu which was Toland's experiment into understanding the Sword Logic and A Touch of malice which is a gun that is made from the Heart of Oryx himself shrouded in the robes of his Death Singer daughters. He left the Book of Sorrows expressly for the purpose of having his would be killers understand him and basically continue on with the great mission of achieving the Final Shape of the unvierse and to uphold the Sword Logic.

infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

So each spaceship will need a number of wizards supporting "spells" for a ship to work at its full capacity?

Soldiers will be wizards who learn one or two tricks that work only in small radius affecting them and their equipment. Like say something that allows incredible battery capacity and much stronger armor.

Man lore can be fun when writers have fun

>FTL/teleportation via repeatable divine intervention.
>A new religion is founded. Minor at first, until it demonstrates a miracle which it can repeat on demand. Whenever people genuinely believing in the religion perform the specific ritual, they can ask their deity to relocate something in the universe and it actually works. Your spaceship engine consists of getting a cleric to pray a request that you get teleported to your desired destination.

>Ideally throw in a setting initially based off the real world for an interesting story of social upheaval and space exploration suddenly becoming comparatively easy.

>I'd just make every religion capable of this, so it wouldn't matter if you're asking Allah or Mercury as long as you really believe in it.

>"By the good graces of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, I beg of thee to guide our vessel with thine holiest of noodly appendages to our location so that we may partake of the righteous noodles of Dephanine V."
>Prayer-powered FTL works for pastafarians. Only for pastafarians. Heathens can be aboard the ship, but at least one Paladin is needed for hyperjump.
>Navigators using Meme Magic rather than Melange
>Clerics Of Kek serving as the engines for spelljammers built by SpaceX in a modern setting.

smol but incredibly motivated! highly efficient!

Out there, beyond the galactic rim are the Stars. Bright lights that cannot possibly be the stars of other galaxies for one can see them from anywhere within the galaxy you're in and they always appear to be the same distance away. There are those who say that one who follows a Star's light can call upon the cosmic power each Star bears but only a madman would follow a Star that always seems to be Beyond The Horizon.

And yet they exist. Those whose bodies glimmer with the barely contained comic power of the Star they followed, each one a force within our own galaxy, shaping and toppeling the future as they and their Star see fit. For while each Starborn, as they have come to call themselves, tells the story of how they got to their Star, they all say the same thing about why they have this power: Its up to them to shine the light of the true future on the galaxy. What is the true future? Why does each Starborn seem to have a different true future than all the others? And how did all of this come about?

The mystery is out there, young voidwalker! Go out and find your own answers on your own Star!

Go read Irregular at Magical High School and advance their technology by a few decades/centuries.

Pictured: Casting Assistant Devices(CADs). More information here:

mahouka-koukou-no-rettousei.wikia.com/wiki/Casting_Assistant_Device_(CAD)

space dragons

Yo dump me some more cool destiny shit but only the cool shit

"The Darkness" is no longer canon. They are doing a soft reboot in the lore with D2.

Isnt it just that the Darkness has taken a backseat story wise as the Cabal fuck shit up?

That was what I thought.

theverge.com/2017/6/16/15819680/bungie-destiny-2-the-darkness-luke-smith-interview-e3-2017

forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/06/15/bungie-has-written-the-darkness-and-the-exo-stranger-out-of-destiny-2/#3a684a597f2f

That's not Warframe.