Magick and Science:

Magick and science in Everwealth are not rivals, but conspirators, two hands tightening the same noose around the world’s neck. Once, they promised miracles, now, they barter with ghosts and mystery. The Great Schism severed more than nations, it cut knowledge itself into fragments, scattering the memory of how things worked and why they should. The survivors of The Lost Ages scavenge scraps of brilliance from the wreckage the Schism made of them, machines that still hum though their makers are dust, spells that answer only in half-remembered words, tinctures that heal as often as they poison. Relics of The Lost Ages endure like gods, worshiped as much as studied. Radios that once sang across continents now hiss with the voices of the dead, their signals echoing from somewhere no one can reach. Airships drift above the trade routes, patched with canvas and fleeting enchantments, their engines coughing flames into the sky behind them. Handfuls of Firearms still exist, old, corroded things salvaged from the vaults of forgotten kings, each shot a miracle, each misfire a funeral. The Scholar's Guild maintains the last working presses, printing textbooks they no longer fully understand, diagrams copied from copies until they are more superstition than science. What once soothed now scars; What once healed, now merely holds decay at bay.
  Every spark of innovation burns in the shadow of what was lost. A single working radio receiver can command a noble’s ransom, a functioning engine is enough to start a war. Once-common conveniences, streetlamps that never dimmed, trains that ran by arcane power, Healing Potions brewed without cost; All are now myths spoken of in envy and disbelief. The few laboratories that remain in operation resemble tombs, lit by candlelight and trembling with the hum of unstable resonance. Inside, apprentices chase the spectres of formulas written in dead languages, convinced that if they can just replicate the right reaction, the world might remember how to mend itself. But each discovery brings another wound. Cures wither into curses. Machines that should carry grain instead grind bone. The magick that once fueled creation has grown spiteful, and science, robbed of its restraint, keeps feeding it new ways to lash out. And yet, Everwealth persists. The people still build, still invent, still pray to both steel and spirit for another morning. Because hunger is a better teacher than history, and hope has always been the most reliable anesthetic. When our last few Locomotives we have pull into station, no one asks how many souls it took to get them there. When an alchemist pours an untested draught down a child’s throat, no one thinks of what it will cost if it works. Progress here does not mean improvement, it means endurance, the will to keep trying even as the world gnashes its teeth around you.