ITT: Veeky Forums forms a low fantasy setting

There is a secretive militaristic order of monks who invented and produce 100% of all the world's firearms. The rest of the setting is Iron Age to early medieval period at best.

Infusing magic into weapons is a long and difficult process, without much apparent reward due to its weakness. It doesn't add any special damage or curse or anything like that. However, the durability of that weapon stretches on for a great deal of time. Enchanted weapons can be past down from generation to generation of warriors, each one using the blade with very little sharpening or care needed on it compared to a normal blade.

Psionics takes the premise of the thread, the idea of weak and subtle magic, magic meaning the art of causing a supernatural change in the firmament of reality, which includes Psionics and shits upon it and irreversibly changes the tone.

Maybe I prefer things that way. Truly low fantasy is boring and trite, and the plot of most of them usually ends up being something to the effect of "90% of the problems could be solved by these people just sitting down and talking to one another."

Blegh.

The monks practically worship the guns they make, seeing them as the true magic of mankind, preaching a prophecy of what is basically an industrial era world. Yet at this point in the setting's history, the guns, while powerful, are still cumbersome and more trouble than they're worth, in the eyes of many outside of the monks.

The monk's firearms, commonly referred to as "lance tubes" are accurate, reliable, and deadly revolvers and carbines. The monks, believing themselves to be the only ones enlightened enough to wield their devastating power, do not allow non-monks to so much as touch a lance tube, let alone disclose the process of manufacturing them and their ammunition.

The order hires themselves out as mercenaries of the HIGHEST price, refuse to fire upon fellow monks, and refuse to accept contracts or commands the order deems immoral. Despite this, the monks are worth their weight in aluminum on the battlefield, and every aspiring warlord and wealthy merchant has at least one in their retinue.

Despite their best efforts, smith's and alchemist's across the known world have been unable to reverse-engineer the order's lance tubes, managing only to create crude, misshapen hand-cannons, prone to exploding in the user's hand every other shot. Due to their total lack of accuracy, five minute reload time, and tendency to maim their user, no-one but the most foolhardy of men dares to even hold a "handheld maimer."

Instead, they rely on more primitive projectile weapons to defeat their enemies, and as the order refuses to associate with those who publicly fund the development of these handheld maimers, they are almost never displayed and fired, and even rarely seriously used in combat. Due to the difficulties smiths and alchemists have encountered attempting to create firearms of their own, many believe the monks employ sorcery to forge them.

To ensure work, many mages need to also take up fortune telling and future prediction, two skills that are completely rubbish, but seen as real by the religious of the world. It gives them a greater sense of credibility when combined with their actual magic, which alone could be seen as underwhelming. Some kings and queen will not let their advisors be anyone other than mages, which actually can be harmful, as they often lack actual training or knowledge when it comes to politics, strategy, ect.

Why don't you start by defining what the setting IS rather than what it IS NOT?

These handmade majestic weapons are often unique and full of perils. Uninitiated may trigger traps that wreck both the carved wooden stock and the smooth metal barrel, often taking off a few fingers or an eye.

These monks are never seen without their weapons, and should they fall, there is always a rescue. They safeguard roads and protect mankind from monsters, but their ways are inscrutable and their paths hidden.

An average monk, not that it's a thing, has a thunderstaff and a dozen or so flintlock pistols hidden on their person. In battle, they are shrouded in clouds of noxious smoke, filled with thunder and angry sting of flying metal.

Fair enough, and understandable, it's a very niche genre, but as a Veeky Forumstorian, I find it compelling.

We're doing so in the thread, so far it's cranking up to be quite interesting.

It really isn't.

In some sects of monk order, they actually DO use sorcery in their craft, but not as a method of making the gun itself. Instead, like magically infused swords and spears, a magic infused gun is simply far less likely to degrade and fall apart over time, and magically infused bullets can carry light curses that poison the injured.

However, these magic using monks are not looked on fondly by the majority of monk kind. They believe that to taint their creations with magic goes against the prophecies of the industrial age.

The origins of monsters are shrouded in mystery. Some say that they are just like any other animal, they're just more likely to be humanoid shaped and desire human flesh. Others say that monsters are the remnants of an ancient age when magic was once powerful. Some (such as monks) describe monsters as a lower form of life that sinful men and women are reincarnated as, and take great pleasure in slaying them.

> The blonde-haired, black skinned, and wide-faced Numin are an honorable people, whose society is based around the preservation of family and the advancement of their God-King's will.
> The Numini Kingdom is based on the Mun'ti river running along the eastern coasts of the southern wastes, where they have built a strong and prosperous civilization along its banks.
> The Numini are said to be quick on their feet and quicker to anger, but soon to forget a grudge.

Magic is divided into a combination of four things.

Pseudo-science [such as astrology, divination, and alchemy], only in this setting it works.

Rites and rituals that bring good or bad fortune, or manipulate chance. The weakest would be rites that 'bless' or 'enchant' things to perform marginally better then unenchanted versions, or to bring generic luck. Curses and the evil eye would play a roll.

The ability to perceive, speak to, and summon supernatural beings to serve you. Demons, angels, elementals, and djinn being the most common. In all cases, the Magician is not the unconditional master of the beings he commands. Often there is a pact, or an enchantment to control the spirit, or a magical item [like one of the Rings of Solomon] that forces them to obey you so long as you wear it.

And lastly actual supernatural abilities such as shapeshifting, levitation, and ultimately as the very heights of the Art, elementalism.

The average magician is probably an alchemist who can produce salves, glues, greek fire and the like, an astrologer who can divine the broad facts of certain futures with some accuracy, and commands at least one Familiar Spirit, usually serving only as an invisible spy, not an active enforcer.

The High Magician may know the rites to summon, [but frequently dares not!] the stranger things of the world, and likely has a handful of supernatural powers, such as astral projection or the ability to take the form of a horrid creature, or through certain rites to control the weather.

Anyone who has the gift to channel magic can theoretically learn any of these skills with enough years of hard study and practice, yet it appears that some ethnicities of people are better at certain skills than others. A Numin has a much easier time creating a familiar than other races, while the white haired Yaran people are more likely to learn enchantments and curses with little trouble. This has led to the common belief that some races are simply meant to only handle one magic, and racial tensions form over who is superior based on the magic they learn.

However, it is interesting to note that someone who can channel magic who is not of a nation's dominate race, but is raised in said nation, will be more likely to learn the form of magic most associated with that race with ease as well. This had led some to believe that it is not the race of the person that matters, but rather the land itself.

Some, among both the noble wise men and the peasantry, believe that the monsters were spawned from magic gone wrong in the distant past. This, along with rumors of magician's transmuting themselves into strange things, and of terrible curses they put upon their foes, fuel a paranoia of magic in many regions of the world, something those who employ it do nothing to dissuade.

>Maybe I prefer things that way. Truly low fantasy is boring and trite, and the plot of most of them usually ends up being something to the effect of "90% of the problems could be solved by these people just sitting down and talking to one another."
>human history in the nuttiest of shells

Magical beings are known to exist in this world, and though they rarely make themselves public, they are known to come in many forms. One such form is the Wisp, little flame spirits that follow those on the path to understanding magic. It starts off as one wisp, about the size of a pointer finger, casually appearing by a magician's side and observing them. As the magician learns more magic, more wisps begin to follow. They are peculiar beings, never speaking, never directly interfering with the magician, mostly playing amongst themselves. Yet they are always around, always going where the magician goes. Some believe that they bring good luck to the wizard, increasing their magical capabilities with each new wisp. Others say they are magical parasites, feeding off of the magic the magician creates and breeding more of their kind.

>In the tropics of the setting, numerous gigantic bones litter the landscape; remains of magical beasts who roam the land when magic was once strong, and died out when magic waned.
>In addition to these gigantic bones there are also gigantic fossilized trees.

This setting went to shit pretty fast.

>most of them usually ends up being something to the effect of "90% of the problems could be solved by these people just sitting down and talking to one another."

You just described real life. Yet there is still war and political intrigue.

How so?

Yeah, my point exactly. I'm not interested in seeing "real life during one of the most horrible times to be alive (i.e., most of human history) but the vaguest of hints that maybe things could be more fantastical, but all these people are too swept up in their own petty lives and problems to make things better, and also there's a nonzero chance that someone important is boning their sister because these days we all suck GRRM's cock".

You wanna make a low-fantasy setting that actually sounds fun? It's low-fantasy, with low-magic, but there's a bunch of people somewhere who have just realized that if magic were more common then they could drastically improve everyone's life, and so they're getting together and studying magic and basically trying to transform their low-magic setting into a high-magic setting.

>Hitler is born in medieval times and unites the german states. Aryan blood magic is real.

Sounds like you have a serious escapism problem

>escapism
>problem
Life sucks why not forget it for a little while at a time