Magic & Technology

Pre-Gap records show that once upon a time, most worlds relied on magic almost exclusively for complex and difficult tasks. Today, while magic remains a respected vocation and a means of accomplishing great deeds, technology often provides more practical, economical solutions to the same problems. Why spend years of dedicated study to cast a spell that creates light when you can buy a flashlight for a few credits? Why pay a battlemage to throw bolts of lightning at your enemies when the same funds could outfit a whole squad of soldiers with laser rifles?
This is not to say that technology has replaced magic. Rather, the two have evolved together, with inventors blending magic and technology, and corporations choosing whichever tool is cheapest and most effective for a given job. As a result, most technology involves at least a little magic, in either its functioning or its manufacture, and it’s not uncommon to see technological items bearing blatantly magical upgrades. This blending, however, means that technology incorporating minimal amounts of magic has work-arounds to remain functional even when targeted by dispelling effects—in rules terms, this means that unless an item is specifically called out as magical or a hybrid of both magic and technology, it’s considered immune to all antimagical effects. Similarly, the prevalence of minor magic in technology doesn’t prevent nonmagical classes like mechanics from working effectively on such items, so long as they don’t have extensive magical modifications.
Whereas in the ancient past, magic was broken into many different traditions, today magic is seen as a single group of physically impossible phenomena, regardless of where it comes from or how it’s manipulated. Traditional distinctions between arcane, divine, primal, and occult magic have long since been abandoned, and while different casters may access magic through very different means, from hightech reality hacking to the study of occult items or the channeling of divine power to the grafting of monstrous body parts, all are simply different means of accomplishing the same goals.
That being said, biothaumaturgy is still the primary source of magical energy throughout the galaxy, secondary only to the miracles provided by the Ministry Divine. Monsters, perhaps even more proliferate now than they were in ancient Edras, provide the raw materials for the practice of most magic and its integration into technology. You did know that your laser rifle had the focusing lens of a luminix built into it, right?