Material culture and technology

While there is high technology (in many cases much higher than real-world, or even much science fiction) and magic available, there is not an equivalent to modern-day consumer culture of technology. The following guidelines are to give the players an idea of what kinds of technology and magical items are available. Eventually, I will be adding new equipment options to this section.

Upper Levels and Types of Technology Available

• Computer and information technology is uncommon and not favored. You won't see much in the way of monitors or displays, databases of any kinds, keyboards, etc. There are people specially trained to be savants in terms of calculation and feats of memory. Many powerful people have an assistant who can recall the contents of an entire library in impressive detail, and handle massive amounts of mathematical calculations in seconds.
• Genetic Engineering and vat-grown life forms exist.
• Power supplies of effectively infinite duration are possible, although they do have a maximum sustained output.
• Faster than light travel and teleportation exist, but cannot reliably be replicated at the current time.
• The Lizardmen had psionic technology with telepathic interfaces, although it has never been (and may not be able to be) adopted by humans.

Teleportation and Propulsion

There are three major forms of highly advanced travel, which are possessed of their own unique advantages and disadvantages.

• Teleportation is instantaneous, but very, very energy-intensive. It is impossible to move much mass by teleportation. You cannot send non-living matter unless it is being carried by a sophont. This does mean that the undead effectively cannot teleport.
  • Dynamic teleportation is directed by a sapient mind. The most common type is a spell of teleportation. This is generally somewhat inaccurate as to target, but you can choose the target at the time the spell is cast. You could, for example, choose a city to teleport to. You won't have much choice as to where in the city you appear. Finer control than that is difficult or impossible.
  • Static Teleportation requires a gate at each end. Each pair of gates is linked; you cannot change the destination of a gate once it is built, and they must be built as a pair. If one gate is destroyed, its partner-gate is rendered useless. A typical loadout for a gate is 8 roughly human-sized sophonts, none of whom can carry more than 5 stone. Their range is limited, and they can't teleport someone further than, say, from the planetary surface to one of the moons.
  • The Cidrian Gates are a specialized type of Static Teleporter. They are huge, comparable in size and mass to a modern-day Main Battle Tank. They can only activate approximately once every 24 hours. They send their targets to their opposite gate (an activation drains the capacity of both gates, so you can't pop forward and back in less than 24 hours.) These are used to send riders to other planets, or possibly other planes. It is an extraordinarily bad idea to activate a Cidrian gate if there is any other Cidrian gate within fifty miles (measured in a sphere that ignores all material obstruction.) For this reason, the known ones are scattered about the world, and are rarely moved. You never know if another one you don't know about might be in the way.
• Inertia, Mass, and Gravity Manipulation (IMG) is probably the most common form of non-mechanical technologically advanced travel available. The upside is that it is very cheap in terms of energy required. The downside is that it tends not to be very quick in comparison, and doesn't necessarily work as well in the lower parts of gravity wells.
  • Out in very low-g space, you can use Inertia and Mass manipulation to move VERY FAST, by cranking your mass down to nothing and adding a relatively small amount of inertia. Some extraterrestrial demons, and most in-system craft, use this to travel from planet to planet. You can't break the light barrier or make much of a ramming attack, but you can travel an AU in a reasonable amount of time.
  • Deep in planetary or lunar gravity wells, Gravity Manipulation lets you "flip" the orientation of something's weight. Essentially, Gravity Manipulation only allows various forms of Levitation. It won't let you move perpendicular to the direction of gravity. Usually, a spacecraft or demon will levitate from the planetary surface out into space, and then use Inertia and Mass manipulation to travel to their destination, where they levitate down to it.
  • Most forms of IMG are not very maneuverable.
• Faster Than Light travel. FTL propulsion cannot currently be replicated by any terrestrial civilization. Knowledge about it is typically lore that has been handed down. It takes massive amounts of power, and more importantly is HUGE. It is impossible to make miniaturized FTL drives, even to move very small ships. The minimum sizes of FTL craft start at several times the size of the Empire State Building or Sears Tower, and go up from there. Assume half of the volume of the ship is taken up by power generation and the FTL and IMG drives (the latter used for in-system travel in some ships.) Even then, typical maximum velocities are only a few times light speed. They cannot make landfall and expect to ever be in a condition to take off again, and so generally carry very large cargo vessels. The human colonists or precursor races probably game to this system using FTL craft, and seeded the planets with the Cidrian Gates.
  • There is known to be one FTL craft still in the solar system, which is an active deity. There may be others, but probably not more than a few.