Tech and Magic
In the smog-choked cities of Aurumreach the clang of industry heralds an age of progress, yet the old ways endure. The master swordsman’s honed intent cuts deeper than any rifle’s bullet and armored tanks roll out beside veteran battle wizards on war scarred horses. Here magic and machinery vie for dominance, each shaping a world where an apprentice weaver operates an enchanted loom next to an industrial wool spinning machine and nascent corporations rise and fall with the accuracy of their divination spells.
Technology
Aurumreach stands at the precipice of modernity, its landscape transformed by the relentless march of the industrial age. Soot-stained skylines bristle with towering factories, their chimneys belching smoke over burgeoning cities where laborers flock from rural hamlets to fuel the continent’s engines of progress. Nearly half the populace now toils in these mills and workshops, forging steel, textiles, and machinery, while the other half clings to agrarian traditions, their plows and pastures feeding those who left for the assembly lines.
Electricity crackles through the wires of metropolises, illuminating the ritziest avenues and powering rudimentary grids, but its reach falters at the edges of slums and vanishes entirely beyond city limits. Ice wagons trundle through urban districts, delivering frosty blocks from industrial freezers to those wealthy enough to chill their larders. Coal stoves warm cramped tenements and opulent estates alike, though hinterland communities still rely on timber and peat to stave off the biting cold. In villages candlelight and hearth fires endure, and electricity still feels like magic.
The continent’s veins pulse with steam-powered locomotives, iron rails stitching together mines, factories, and ports in a web of commerce. Yet innovation still races forward as diesel engines hum on experimental lines, and arcane marvels sporting glyph-etched boilers rumor to outpace even thunder itself. Automobiles remain curiosities for the elite, their clattering engines fed by special-ordered fuel, while the masses traverse cobbled roads by beast back, carriage, or the relentless rhythm of boot soles.
The crack of gunfire has become the grim anthem of Aurumreach’s battlefields, where mass-produced rifles and semiautomatic carbines dominate military arsenals. Soldiers as devoted to the gun as their ancestors were to the bow or sword are common, and many learn to wield the most powerful and exotic weapons available. Precision-machined rapid fire rifles and devastating rocket propelled grenades grant the power formerly reserved for wizards to anyone with the capacity to point them and pull the trigger. War is changing, as the formal battle lines of the past are reinforced by protective trenches and coils of barbed wire, or forgotten entirely as mobility and accuracy take the place of volume fire. New war machines called "tanks" join cavalry in their charges and artillery platforms bring siege weaponry to new levels of destruction. Technology is outstripping the accepted understanding of the battlefield, forcing tacticians and strategists to reconsider how war is waged.
Inherent Magic
Magic pulses through the veins of Varnhald, an ever-present force as vital as breath. Every living and non-living thing possesses magical power within it, and this power responds to dedication and commitment. This manifests in the ability of any person to attain skills and capabilities through practice and experience that defy the physical laws of the cosmos. Mastery of ones inherent magic demands discipline and cultivation. The focused intent of those who truly hone their craft, constantly practicing, developing, and pushing their limits, shapes and grows the magic within them. The nature of their focus determines the nature of the magic and its expression. Few are aware of this process as it happens, the changes are often incremental not easily noticed, but the power of inherent magic is common knowledge. Those few individuals who rise to the upper levels of their craft wield the power to change the world.
The depth of one’s magical cultivation shapes their very essence, enhancing their ability to forge enchanted wonders, pierce supernatural defenses, and endure forces that would shatter lesser beings. An untrained laborer might fall to a stray bullet, while a battle-hardened warrior could weather a rifle barrage unscathed, their flesh and spirit fortified beyond mundane limits. The same is true of objects produced by artisans who cultivated their craft to the utmost, allowing swords to ignite with flame when swung and armor to sprout bird-like wings when the wearer falls from a rooftop.
External Magic
Those who walk the path of external magic, collectively referred to as magi, adhere to four ancient traditions. The arcane tradition thrives on rigorous study, weaving magic through structured rituals and exacting formulae. The divine tradition channels the might of deities, its power flowing from reverence and sacred oaths. The primal tradition harmonizes with the natural world, its practitioners drawing strength from the earth’s timeless rhythms. The occult tradition defies categorization, its secrets gleaned from shadowed pacts, enigmatic spirits, and the whispers of realms beyond mortal understanding. No two occultists practice exactly the same methods.
Mastering external magic requires the same rigor as any other craft, and it yields the same cultivation of the practitioners inherent magic. The most obvious expression of this development is the expansion of the mage's magical reserves, allowing them to cast larger quantities of spells, more powerful spells, or both, between periods of rest and restoration. Magi who devote their magical arts to combat develop resilience and deadliness in the same way a master soldier or warrior does, albeit to a slightly lesser degree.
Magitech
Magitech represents the marriage of intent and ingenuity, a fusion where enchantment breathes life into cold steel. At its most discreet, this union manifests as subtle enhancements relying on the artisan’s infused intent to transcend mundane limitations. These include armor plates humming with latent energy, clockwork limbs animated by whispered incantations, and innumerable other marvels . In bolder forms magitech binds raw elemental essences or eldritch forces to its core, as with boilers housing captive fire spirits or rifles that fire starlight siphoned from the void. These marvels demand vigilance to maintain, their arcane matrices fray and require skilled hands to mend them. At the extreme, some are even tethered irrevocably to their creators’ mystical signatures and will operate for no other.
The inherent reliance on personal magic or esoteric components renders true magitech resistant to replication. Even so-called mass-produced variants emerge not from assembly lines but from painstaking labor by guild-trained artisans, each piece a testament to weeks of ritual and refinement. Nations hoard such treasures as strategic assets, their operation sustained only by covens of magi and engineers who alone understand the delicate dance of spell and gear.
Necromancy
Necromancy in Varnhald diverges from traditional portrayals, in that necromantic magic comes in two very distinct forms. Neither type of Necromancy is loved by the people of Aurumreach, but Generative Necromancy is at least accepted well enough that magi who practice it won't break any laws by doing so, nor need they fear the threat of mob-justice in most communities. Traditional Necromancy, however, is forbidden in every corner of the continent, abolished even before slavery. Those who dabble in that dark art are among the most hated villains in all of Varnhald.
Generative Necromancy
The accepted form of Necromancy re-frames the manipulation of life’s echoes as a solemn communion with the Well of Souls. Rather than desecrating the souls of the departed, practitioners of Generative Necromancy channel raw soul-stuff mixed with void energy into vacated vessels to reanimate them with something entirely new, weaving nascent proto-souls through spiritual pathways to animate life forms devoid of their original essence. These creations harbor no stolen identities, their existence sustained by the borrowed soul energy that cascades back to the Well of Souls upon their destruction. Ghosts can likewise be created this way by using the spiritual channels of a body as a template, then removing the created proto-soul from the body and binding it to a location, item, person, or other anchor. Even intelligent undead arise from this method. It must be noted that the void energy used to anchor and fuel the proto-soul does impose an undead hunger on the animated creature as normal, and that can lead to violent and destructive behaviors, which is why this form of Necromancy isn't well-liked or widely employed, despite being considered acceptable to perform.
Awoken
The emergent complexity of these proto-souls will, on rare occasion, crystallize into a true soul and genuine person-hood. Should a true soul spontaneously arise in such a way, the undead should be treated the same way a player character with the basic undead benefits is treated in regards to destruction, and rather than returning to the Well of Souls as raw soul stuff would, this Awoken soul will pass on to the afterlife as a born soul would. This is a possible backstory for a player character with an undead archetype or ancestry, and a new player character could take the Awoken background if they are freshly arisen or want to reflect the importance of their origin on the character's history.
Traditional Necromancy
The older method, commonly called Traditional Necromancy but termed "Enslavement Necromancy" by adherents of the Generative method, employs spells and rituals that prioritize expediency and power over ethical constraints. This approach forcibly extracts souls from the afterlife, binding them to corporeal forms or anchors through void energy, inflicting great harm upon the bound spirit in the process. While this method yields stronger undead at reduced cost (granting a +1 increase to possible level of undead produced by the Summon Undead spell or Create Undead ritual), it is universally classified as an Unholy act due to its inherent violation of spiritual autonomy and the systemic suffering it imposes. Practitioners risk condemnation and execution, though the allure of stronger, more controllable undead persists among the unscrupulous.
Undead Transmission
Undead entities capable of transmitting their condition through methods such as ghoul fever or vampiric transformation subject victims to spiritual harm analogous to Traditional Necromancy. In such cases, the afflicted soul is denied passage to the afterlife and becomes bound to its corporeal form via void energy inherent to the contagion, mirroring the forced enslavement of souls in Traditional practices. Historical analysis indicates that Traditional Necromancy’s methodologies were developed through the study of these natural undead contagions, replicating their void-based binding mechanisms to artificially induce similar states of undeath.