Technowizard

Magic: harnessing the arcane energies of life itself to create effects that defy or even violate the laws of the physical world.
Technology: implementing the laws of the physical world to achieve desired ends.

Where enough magic is applied, the laws of the physical world start to become less coherent and predictable to those who know either magic or technology. But what if I told you that there was another science in which these interactions make perfect sense? One in which these interactions can become not only predictable, but repeatable. This science is talled Technowizardry. Unfortunately, in order to even begin to study these interactions, one must be born with a certain exceptional sense; a sense others don't have, not even other arcane casters. Perhaps it is a latent capability, like some form of autism, that we never noticed until the ley lines erupted. This capability to understand the interactions between the arcane and technology does not usually affect the personality or sociability of technowizards, unlike autism, so its origins remain a mystery.

Career

Qualifications

Technowizardy is a practical science and a proper Technowizard must have a formal education. The very first and most famous place for Technowizardry education is the Kepner School of Technowizardry, located in the City of Hope in the Colorado barony of Hope. They typically have anywhere from a dozen to two dozen students in attendance at any time.
The city of Stormspire also has a school for technowizardy that rivals or even surpasses Kepner in the number of graduates.
Finally, the city of Tolkeen has Evergreen university, where Technowizardy is but one of the schools in the College of Applied Magic.
There are no schools of technowizardy outside of North America. (with the exception of a single secret house of shinobi in the Republic of Japan) While there are some technowizards whom have made names for themselves in Russia, such as Robur the Conqueror, they achieved their training merely through self study, cooperation with others, and experimentation. As such, barring the occasional prodigy like Robur, they are generally much less capable than North American Twiz.

Career Progression

There are countless technowizard-capable people in the world who never realized their abilities or just never got the education they needed to put their abilities into practice.
A novice technowizard is one who is recently graduated from a full course of Twiz formal education. Novices typically apprentice under a master Twiz, but some employ their education in more adventurous endeavors.
A journeyman/seasoned Twiz is one who has worked as an apprentice in a Twiz workshop or who has put their education through extensive practical trials.
A master/veteran Twiz is one who has been able to establish an independent workshop and takes on apprentices of his or her own.
A grandmaster/heroic Twiz is one who runs a Twiz guild, one who has accomplished tremendous feats of technowizardry, or one who has exhaustively explored the limits of technowizardy in practice.

Payment & Reimbursement

There will always be a market for the design, manufacture, maintenance and repair of Twiz items. This is one of the most secure professions and Twiz are always in demand wherever they go.

Operations

Tools

Every Twiz has their own personalized set of tools. No two sets are the same, but some things are common among most:

• Soldering Iron
• needlenose pliers
• hammer (or steel-toed boots)
• cold chisel
• wood chisel
• knife (preferably a multipurpose tool)

Workplace

A technowizard, like any inventor, tinkerer, engineer or mechanic, prefers to work in a custom workshop. While they can scratch together working gizmos on the fly, proper construction and testing requires the proper tools, time and isolation from distractions.
A technowizard with a full or custom workshop will get a bonus on the success chance of their build roll when costructing items.

Provided Services

Because of the innate understanding of the fusion of magic with technology, a Technowizard need only a comprehensive reference library to implement a wide range of arcane powers, far wider than any spellcaster would have access to. They only need to know what the powers are and how they intend to put them into practice in order to arrive at a proper design. Put in terms easier for you to understand, dear reader, it would be like an engineer being able to use an entire reference library's worth of equations, integrals, trigonometric identities and transform functions, material properties, etc., applied with all the appropriate safety factors and constraints necessary for it to work reliably, to design and build, a radio, a warship or a sanitation system.

Legality

Technowizardry is legal everywhere but within The Coalition States. Technowizards will be prosecuted in the Coalition, but are typically saved from the full force of the Coalition enforcement. Because Technowizards must use their inventions to put their arcane use into practice, they are not viewed as complete arcane-using aberrations like Ley Line Walkers are. They are more pitied than hated; but they are deported from the Coalition Territories nonetheless if caught.

Related Technologies

• Technowizardry