✎ science_and_technology [curiosity]

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====== Science and Technology ======

===== Summary =====
  * Technology level is near-future space sci-fi.
  * People can interface directly with machines, allowing them to focus their lenses through the machines and magnify the effect of their abilities.
  * The following technologies exist:
    * Space travel sufficient to travel between worlds (rare, expensive, the preserve of governments or the richest and largest guilds).
    * Cybernetics (either for enhancement of physical capability or restoring function lost to injury/disability).
    * VTOL low-orbit shuttle craft.
    * Equivalents to most real-world technology, except as noted below.
    * Other technologies may be added with the permission of the LARPO team.
  * The following technologies do not exist:
    * AI.  Attempting to make something sentient requires sufficient input of Spirit (Energy in the Human Lens) that the results are often unstable. Computers are limited to calculation.
    * Mass production. All work must be crafted.  Batch production is possible at a lower standard.

===== Technology ===== 
All technology is based around manipulating the elements.  While the "Physical Lens" will be mostly used to identify the elements, most technology is made by crafters using the Metallic and Prismatic lenses.  The materials used are generally metals and gems which approximate how the elements are seen through the respective lenses (because, for example, silver the metal you wear around your neck is not Silver the element, but merely very strongly aspected to it with impurities of the other elements).

Technology and crafting is focused around introducing materials aspected to specific elements, in such a way that the properties of those elements harmonise to give the intended results.  This will generally require materials aspected to several elements, and those materials generally need to be refined to aspect them more strongly to the element than their common forms.  For example, in the design of an engine, movement is clearly necessary - so it will be primarily based on materials aspected to Water (e.g. mercury and ruby).  However, Water alone does not provide any direction to the movement, so material aspected to Salt is required to provide structure to the movement.  Material aspected to Metal provides enough structure to the engine to keep it attached to the vehicle and hold the apparatus together, and material aspected to Energy provides the power needed to keep it running. While no materials aspected to Void or Air are added, since all material contains traces of all 6 elements, those elements will be present in the final construction.

Power for crafted works is provided by materials aspected to Energy.  Materials which are strongly aspected to both Metal and Energy provide storage for power (e.g. a battery), materials strongly aspected towards Water and Energy are useful for moving power around (e.g. a wire), and materials strongly aspected towards Salt and Energy will allow the power to be used to make calculations (e.g. a computer).  Attempting to manipulate the Energy aspects of a construction to provide both power and emotion to a computing device, and so approximate something sentient, inevitably results in an excess of one or the other.  Such experiments are characterised by colossal explosions or arcing which destroy the experiment, or machines so full of rage that they cannot be reasoned with and must be shut down for the sake of safety.

Air is particularly hard to use technologically.  It is difficult to refine a material strongly to air in a way that can be integrated into crafting - such materials tend to be highly volatile.  One consequence of this is that no way has been found to make something which is actually alive by artificial means.  Materials weakly aspected towards air may be incorporated into crafting, which will allow the synthesis of natural life and technology - i.e. cybernetics.

===== Cybernetics =====

Cybernetics are limited to physical augmentation.  Interfacing with the brain to allow mental improvements is highly experimental, often fatal, and completely forbidden by law.  Cybernetic enhancements((that is, cybernetic components which aim to do more than the equivalent natural component could)) are generally strongly aspected to a single element, or weakly aspected to two.  Such enhancements can make a person tougher (Earth), faster (water), stronger (Energy) or allow limited self-healing (Air).  "Enhancements" aspected to Salt and Void are possible, but Salt provides no useful benefit, and Void aspected cybernetics are inherently harmful.

===== Interfacing =====

Any person with sufficient skill in their art can interface with a machine designed for that art to amplify their abilities.  The most notable example of this is that a Starfarer can interface with a starship to allow them to warp the whole fleet through space at incredible speeds.  More prosaic examples include a crafter interfacing with a tool rig to allow them to produce several items at once.  There are even rare cases of monks interfacing with specially crafted weapons, allowing them to push their skills to the limit, though the talent required to do so is immense.
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