Shatterloop

(( Deprecated, but maybe useful ))

Like the rest of my conworlds, the origin story is that a pretty technologically advanced humanity fled away from their home universe into a large cluster of pocket universes known as the "Dodecaverse". The reasons for this are pretty technical, but basically the original universe was infinite and hyperbolic, which in the short-term led to expansion and in the long-term led to entire causality lines snapping off and/or being annihilated. Whole groups of people, civilizations, even whole star systems started blinking out of existence because in the universe's perspective, they never existed in the first place.

This didn't affect memory though, so humanity was able to find solutions -- those that weren't already protected from this effect in some way (like those under the influence of the Sra tree) decided to flee into universes with parabolic or flat geometry -- there's a particularly large complex of these that spreads out in 12 dimensions known as the Dodecaverse, many of which had stable (albeit weird) physics systems that could support life.

The Shatterloop was one of those. Known as the time as The Loop, it was a finite plane that reached back around and intersected itself after ~9 quadrillion km (about 7,000 light-dog-years, iirc) in two dimensions, and collapsed into a singularity in the other two directions after not far at all (like 500 miles in either direction). While these singularity-type dimensions were dangerous, the physics were set up very very well -- the second singularity had a gravitational pull exactly 9.79m/s stronger than the first one, which means gravity was about perfect provided you had enough countermass to keep your landmass afloat. Like many other habitable universes, there was a band of self-illumination -- no need for a sun that could explode at any minute, instead you just get a nice sky that provides light for you. As an added bonus, earth technology seemed to work most of the time, so humanity was able to transport things slowly and maintain their level of civilization.

The final nail in the coffin for not going though was the ease with which matter could be converted into energy and vice-versa -- that meant that building things just required energy rather than building materials, and if you needed energy you could just tear down useless structures to provide it. You could also expand your planet given enough time and energy -- which the self-illuminating light band would provide.

In the end, they decided to move a Conical Ark -- a cone-shaped landmass with the pointy end sticking down. A lot of civilizations sent these out because they were quite easy to create from planets (just detonate the core, and there you go). So they gathered in one big continent on their planet, detonated the core, and used the ensuing energy to transport the whole thing into The Loop (with a lot of shielding of course).

For some reason, though, when this happened, space shrunk around the Ark so instead of having a big cone surrounded by void, you instead just had a continent-sized landmass that looped back on itself. The Shrinking, as it was called, also knocked out a bunch of technology, particularly the ability to move back into the old universe.

What technology still worked was used to construct six enormous machines known as Pivots to probe spacetime from slightly outside of it and figure out what the hell was going on. What they learned was that the universe was still a thousand light-years wide but anywhere there was matter, spacetime would curve slightly, with more matter meaning more visible curving. Meaning that the singularities themselves were probably the reason the universe was so small -- though they couldn't find a space outside of it. Horrifyingly though, this curving wasn't stable -- meaning that any time the land could rip apart as space decided to randomly expand.

Working feverishly, they spread the Pivots out and used them to turn energy into mass or vice-versa to correct these ebbs and flows. In staving off these natural corrections though they caused something much much worse which they didn't realize until it was already happening.

Their little shell of a world expanded across the length of the far-more-stable 1,000 light year universe, tearing their cities apart, generating so much energy that new land formed in the cracks, and otherwise just heavily scattering things.

If that's not bad enough, all causality itself became Uncertain -- with the exception of the Pivots, the one expanded and chaotic universe split into 2^54 variations of itself, some with different physical laws and even inherent Uncertainty themselves. With some exceptions, technology failed or was just way too scattered across this new enormous multiverse to be useful anymore. People also split into 2^54 copies, becoming hopelessly confused as their memories split off into whichever copies could actually retain them. People forgot who they were, where they were, how to do things and basically had to relearn all of the above. Crops scattered and changed, domesticated animals mutated into feral or hideous monsters, the very physics of almost all materials changed drastically on a dimension-specific basis.

Over time, people were able to pick up the pieces, though the damage had been done. What technology could be found was used to try and rebuild civilization again -- ways to move to far physically-distant places, ways to move to adjacent dimensions, ways to probe at materials and figure out how to use them again. At the time the game begins, people are this strange mix of medieval agrarian and connected by portals (some interdimensional) to a vast network of other agrarian societies. For over a hundred years since the Expansion, people have had no idea whether they're trading with other towns or other versions of themselves.

(( Deprecated, but maybe useful ))

While everything is subject to change, items are relatively stable so I'm going to describe how some of the different magical items work.

Crystals

Crystals, also known as Spelljewels, are the foundation of personal magic. Without getting too much into how mana in general works, they're basically concentrations of mana currents -- crystallized material forms of nonmaterial forces. While energy can be turned into matter relatively easily, having this happen naturally is pretty rare and involves some really unlikely scenarios.

In any case, having access to concentrated mana currents allows a mage to shape their own personal mana into various effects.

Scrolls

Crystals can be smashed into a kind of powder -- while this makes the currents dissipate over time, it allows the crystals to tap into World Mana instead of personal mana. Highly useful if your own mana is weak or a spell is just too far out of league.

Scrolls are created by mixing crystal powder with ink, and then using a quill to set it to paper. The most effective scrolls are those that use symbols linked with the element in question -- triangles for ice, circles for water, crosses for wind, spirals for fire, rectangles for earth, stars and other complex shapes for wood.

To use a scroll, it must be ignited. The best way to do this is to just concentrate your own mana in a spiralling helix on it. This uses so little mana that it's replenished pretty much instantly. If you have a torch, you could just drop it on there or w/e.

Wands

Wands are created by fusing crystal powder with carved sticks, in a process known as the Wanding Ritual. Essentially, various patterns are cut into a still-green stick -- notches, grooves, spirals, etc. The stick is then rotated while crystal powder is poured on it. This process repeats until all of the crystal powder has stuck to the stick. It's then dried, either manually or by fire, and it turns into a Wand.

Like scrolls, there are different types of stick carvings that improve different kinds of spells, though these are minor differences compared to the material of the stick, which makes a huge difference.

Wands are used in a fast motion that rotates them while roughly slashing them in a certain direction. This will dislodge some of the powder in that direction and cause it to activate, creating some kind of channeled ranged effect. While not enough powder is lost to matter, this kind of violence to the crystalline structure will eventually deplete its power and the mana currents inside it will dissipate.

Soul Mirroring / Summons / Quartz

Since energy can be turned relatively easily into matter, various magical techniques over the centuries have developed to exploit that. One of the ways is to create something known as "shadow matter", which functions similarly to matter but uses way less energy and is also less permanent.

Central to this mechanic is Quartz, which is less a distinct material and more just a way that various things form sometimes (leading to things like "Quartzing" to turn something into quartz, or "Quartzed X" to refer to X that has turned into quartz), particularly in Caves due to the lack of light.

Quartz has the property of being able to copy a miniature version of a physical object in its molecular structure, whether it's inanimate or animate. It isn't a perfect replication, but it's enough to allow a mage to then turn it into a shadow version of that object or creature. For inanimate objects this process is known as "Ghosting" while with animate things it's known as "Summoning". Meanwhile putting things into the crystal is known as "Mirroring" or "Soul Mirroring" respectively.

Soul Mirroring seems to be the most effective when a creature is closest to death -- soul mirroring healthy creatures or dead creatures tends to have really unpredictable effects.

There are some weird theological and metaphysical implications of soul mirroring, but overall the consensus seems to be that a new creature is born and only exists while summoned, though each time you summon a creature it'll be the same creature.

Scout and Mountable animals

These are similar to summons, but work a bit differently.

Basically, there's a variety of animals that have been domesticated for use in various tasks. These were already domesticated pre-shatterloop and after the Expansion, enough of them were still around (in some different variations) to re-domesticate them.

While you can find their eggs in the wild and train them yourselves, there's a guild that's been doing it a long long time and has the most specialized and trained animals out there. Whatever their prized animals are, they'll soul mirror it into quartz while healthy, modify the quartz a bit to add an "Igniter" and ship them out as items.

While these animals don't require mana at all, you only get a limited amount of uses before the Quartz shatters. The animals are also unusually persistent -- birds can be sent out and come back years later so there's probably something quantum happening to keep them from taking on full form.

People that have tried to replicate the Guild's work have looked into why, but the Igniter is this dense web of spells and shadowed objects, and the Quartz itself is carved into symbols that have crystal powder rubbed into them. Whatever is happening, it's apparently extremely complicated.

Thinking about it, the way Scout Animals work is probably via the memory tech -- this would explain seeing a map of their experience rather than anything physical or permanent. I need to develop that idea more, but the basic idea is that they have some kind of magical implant that turns their trained scouting into whatever memories are and then on their return transfers them to you. Their training can similarly be a kind of mental implant that's added to them at the domestication station. This would also explain why they need mana to cast -- the memory-pushing effect is fuelled by that mana.

A good open question is what mana actually is. My initial way of thinking about it is some kind of controllable energetic field based on the high-energy properties of shatterloop. Using mana is transferring that energy to some kind of object that then uses it in a quantum way to make alterations to objects or the environment. The variety probably has something to do with the subatomic geometry of whatever is fuelling it, and things naturally crystallize in useful ways because of shatterloop's weird quantum properties.

Starshards and Crystals are both solid forms of energy where it has concentrated and stabilized from quantum effects (particularly via the weird seams every few meters that gets represented as tile borders).

When making jewelry (which will definitely be a dedicated fixture in the full game), you're imbuing concentrated energy into the item's geometry, which means that when you run additional flowing energy through it it gets emitted as certainty fields that do different things.

Similarly, when you fracture, you're releasing that stored energy and reconcentrating it into a Starshard.

The energy itself isn't exactly light, it's instead something exotic that's emitted from the singularity at the top of the world when matter flows into it. A kind of hawking radiation I guess. For whatever reason, it cascades and pulls in more native energy to concentrate itself, until it eventually collapses and turns solid. There's a bunch of weird shit happening to certainty fields all the time because of how shatterloop is set up, so that's probably causing the cascade.

Mana is a similar form of that kind of energy, however the "singularity" that's causing it is instead the rapid feedback loop that causes/is caused by consciousness. This energy then circulates the person's neural fields, which keep it flowing in a kind of aura around them. This explains the conscious control as well and can also explain memory effects -- subjective experiences can leak out over this connection (or be pushed out), and then eventually can crystallize into physical objects because magic energy can as well.

I don't want to dive into the scientific understanding of consciousness too much in the game's lore, but the basic idea is that subjective experiences are a kind of exotic material that gets influenced or influences objective ones. This happens in all dimensions, but in shatterloop the weird quantum effects can make it a lot more physical or transfer physical objects into subjective form (which explains things like potion effects that make you better at something).

The naked singularity is also an entity, and is hinted at to be one with the self-illumunating band singularity, so essentially a lot of magical energy is coming from her unique consciousness. This would explain why mana is distinct from starshards, though they have similar properties.

Speaking of Currencies, Aether is another substance that needs to be pinned down in advance of this update because of how structures depend on it.

The Atomizer is a tool that rips a substance apart, atom by atom, and turns it into a kind of dense superplasma. This substance (aether) can then create or seed structures, creating physical buildings. It can also localize quantum effects, allowing things like instant transport, entanglement, or dimension hopping. It's an ancient technology that predates Shatterloop, but is particularly effective here because of the quantum madness.

Before I talk more about it (and yes I know I'm already way off topic here and several posts need to be moved) I'd like to take a moment to explain the differences between technology and magic in shatterloop, and the overlaps between them.

Technology has a "machine" aesthetic -- they're handcrafted tools that fulfill very specific functions that have been exhaustively studied to maximize their output and escape uncertainty. They're really more of an import from the original universe and the human thinking back then. Quantum field effects were well-understood before Shatterloop, and early explorers into the dimension mapped out its unique variety on those effects so the tech that came in could be retrofitted to those systems. The school of thought on tech is accuracy and precision, controlling for mitigating factors, and making it accessible to anyone trained to operate it.

Magic is a lot weirder. It's a lot closer to shatterloop's physical systems, but it's a lot more unpredictable and is also highly influenced by outside factors. Additionally, control of it is a subjective experience and it also ties too much into subjectivity in general. Magic tends to require training as well, although it's a far different training process that emphasizes subtle subjective cues rather than hard data.

They're both dealing with the same exact physical laws, so they're definitely not distinct things. Shatterloop tech and magic both interact with uncertainty fields and quantum fluctuations, and magic has elements of science (like automation) and vice-versa. The difference is more in implementation and perspective.

The maintenance guild has a near-total monopoly on tech because they have the facilities and knowledge to manufacture, repair and use their highly precise machines. Meanwhile people with slightly weird subjective perspectives can stumble into highly powerful magic by accident. Its subjective nature makes it hard to teach others or replicate. So magic ends up being a lot more decentralized.

Magic schools have developed over time to with some amount of accuracy teach people to use things like Potions or Megaliths effectively, however this magotechnology is definitely in its infancy and can't be automated recursively -- somewhere in the pipeline of automated magic you have a highly skilled magic user creating Enchantments and channeling things. This also tends to make these pipelines highly corruptible by the skilled magicians, as their work can't exactly be double-checked for backdoor because of its subjective nature.

The maintenance guild trains magicians because of its utility, but they use it more as a supplement to their technology rather than realizing the full potential of it. Their tech is powerful and highly useful and can be used very easily, so they stick with that to maintain their political dominance.

Guilds have a weird relationship with magicians. Magic effects have a ton of utility, particularly Enchantments and automation that they can control easily themselves, however magicians can very easily slip out of their control and threaten their well-being. Even guilds based on magic aren't immune from this -- they specialize in accessible magic and are wary of powerful inaccessible magical effects. Thus they tend to persecute magicians, particularly those that demonstrate some kind of potential outside what they explicitly control. Wiping their memories is a good way to get rid of them. That said, those with exceptional loyalty they will keep on a tight leash to power their magical goals.

Because of their utility and accessibility, bootlegged tech is particularly valuable. Using it openly will definitely cause the maintenance guild to come down hard on you, punishing you even after the tech has been retrieved. Additionally, the maintenance guild has installed tracking and security to their tech to prevent this, and/or incorporated its use more into their unique biologics. Despite this though, tech does occasionally get stolen or repurposed. Guilds will never admit this, particularly to you in the game since you're maintenance guild.

Subversive groups, meanwhile, will use their tech openly. They've perfected their immunity to raids to an art because of how persecuted they are in general, so as a general rule the maintenance guild won't get involved unless something really egregious is happening (such as the Clone Cities incident). Guilds however have no such restraint because of how badly the subversive groups hurt their bottom line.

Speaking of subversives, they have a greater tolerance of magicians than any other group. There's no better way to alter a society than to possess powerful and inaccessible magic, so they tend to be led and staffed by highly skilled magicians. Unfortunately for them, the attacks on all fronts and the fickleness of magicians (and their own well-placed fears about persecution) leads to an overall air of paranoia, pre-emptive backstabbing, and conflict. The ones that do well have virtues and dreams and shared culture that preserve those fragile interpersonal bonds. Outsider suspicion is particularly high, and loyalty and friendship and family ties are highly valuable rather than skill or talent. You definitely cannot join them in the game.

The main character himself is a rare blend of tech savvy, inventiveness, Adventurer skill and highly proficient magic use. This is why you're able to do absurd ramps and powerful crafting in-game. A lot of the reason for this ties into the actual story - it's definitely not luck that you're such a great blend. Similarly, your wife and kid have useful potential and ability that have made them useful pawns for the powers at play.