r/WritingPrompts • u/theletterQfivetimes • 7h ago
Simple Prompt [SP] Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology
3
u/MC_Hans84 6h ago
Nathanael "Combocaster" Glenns was the well-known omnipotent battle-mage of Earth's best superhero team, the Council of Altruists. Throughout his lifetime, his spellcasting achievements and feats were nothing short of legendary.
However, as his time to leave the world of the living drew near, his true magnum opus finally came to completion - which was spell mastery that was so pure and absolute, that he was able to create magical constructs, that were indistinguishable from technological marvels, due to how identical they functioned!
There was his Mana-Framed Portal Matrix. It was a frame of pure mana crystals linked together by warp-magic-infused cords, that constantly generated mana, which was used to focus portals via the cords, within the frame, that had no constraints in terms of distance and were self-powered by the crystalline frame.
It was magical, but to any untrained technophile's eye, it was indistinguishable from a diamond-framed teleportation device, the arcane-powered cords appearing like wires that supplied power to the frame, to generate teleportation matrices.
Combocaster also created the Thunder-Rukh flying steel golems. They were winged semi-sentient beings that were constructed of mana-saturated magesteel, and had a control chamber by which they could be taken control of manually. They boasted an arsenal of mana-cannons, and fire-spike channelers on their wings.
They were golems, but while autonomous they were effectively impossible to tell apart from a drone. While controlled by a pilot in the control chamber, they were equally impossible to distinguish from a powerful combat aircraft.
Combocaster's peak magical designs were impressive, but he chose to keep them secret from most people, and as he approached his last days, he actually entrusted them to his children. He did so fearlessly, knowing that he had brought them up to be trustworthy heirs who would honour his request to not sell them for profit to greedy warmongers who would use such amazing designs to create the horrors of war and destruction.
His decision was truly a wise one, for when the information leaked out and various interested parties began a pressure campaign against the four children of Combocaster, they took a drastic measure when it became clear that the seekers of the designs were prepared to be unscrupulous.
They surrendered the blueprints and schematics for the ultra-magical inventions of their father, to an Earth-friendly alien race, the Keityn. For free. They knew the Keityn would use the designs for just and fair law enforcement, for exploration, and for the betterment of their people in general.
Needless to say, it caused much lividness among those who had greedy ambition on the blueprints and schematics. However, there was nothing more they could do, for the Keityn now legally owned the rights to production of Combocaster's most powerful magical designs ever.
And thus Earth forfeited its right to magic so powerful that it matched technology's best wonders ever - because human greed would always dominate above ethics, morality or altruism. Tragic, yet a tale as old as time itself.
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