8.7 KiB
[BST] What kind of Medeival-esque fantasy-world "magic" could you pull off with our modern-day industrial technology base?
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Author: u/MugaSofer *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3jmuti/bst_what_kind_of_medeivalesque_fantasyworld_magic/
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Score: 5
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Created: 2015-09-04T16:11:12
Post:
Fireball spells are the obvious one, of course, but what else could you do?
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+12] Time flies like an arrow (26 minutes later)
Information technology is roughly equivalent to an oracle/augury. A modern smartphone is on-par with a crystal ball in many ways, differing only in form factor. Especially so with speech recognition. You can ask what the weather will be like next week, you can make a medical diagnosis, etc. That's all with consumer-grade stuff. If you want to add in the sort of information that a spy satellite can give, we've got it better than almost any fictional crystal ball can do. We've also got distant messaging, whether that's with a smartphone, a walkie-talkie, or a CB radio.
Most of magic seems to be dressing it up, if what you want is to impress the locals.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+9] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (3 minutes later)
u/ulyssessword [+3] (10 minutes later)
I'd never thought of that, it fits too well. You could also have someone else come back with a rifle, and name it "Gungnir"
u/Shadowlost8 [+1] (8 hours later)
Hi. I read this about ten years ago in a library, and I've been trying to track that book down by description alone for the last few months. Thank you for the help.
u/fljared [+4] United Federation of Planets (3 hours later)
Basic long-range telepathy would be as simple as having a cellphone with a hidden earbud. Useful if you want your Order of Wizards to act as the main method of long-range communication between local powers.
Night vision googles and motion sensors mean sneaking up on a castle in the middle of the night is a no-go.
u/Geminii27 [+3] (4 hours later)
Conceal a pinhole camera in a chest or brow accessory, and you have "see through another's eyes" capability.
u/TheStevenZubinator [+4] Chaos Legion (58 minutes later)
Fast-travel seems like a good candidate, if you're flexible with your definitions.
u/TheStevenZubinator [+3] Chaos Legion (59 minutes later)
Another good option is Cast Light.
u/iamthelowercase [+3] (3 hours later)
Flashlight -> wand of light.
Pistol -> wand of death (you kill people with it), though I think Mjolnir is way cooler.
A smartphone is literally a magic mirrorCould you do something interesting and flying, helicopter + stretcher as flying carpet, perhaps?
What about something with robotics? Demons would be easy enough.
You could drop something from the sky, maybe as some sort of summoning procedure.
The first three seemed obvious to me. The second three feel like I'm reaching, but I was trying to come up with something new.
u/Geminii27 [+3] (5 hours later)
With robotics and enough time, you could rig anything in your wizard castle to move and act on your voice, gesture, position - or on the input of hidden sensors tracking people and objects in and around the area. Make doors and window shutters open and close (and lock/unlock). Make parts of the floor, walls, and ceiling move. Have objects float through the air (autonomous robocopters with fake shells). Have your drawbridge raised and lowered by "invisible servants".
Make water of any temperature flow from a dozen different places. Using delivery drones, concealed chutes, and retrofitted bases of things, have chests and barrels and assorted medium to large items move about the castle floors, appear in and disappear from unwatched rooms (even on different floors!), and so on. (More invisible servants!)
Retrofit a Big Dog with ceramic plating and you have a golem horse. Have remotely-controllable self-loading arbalests mounted on the battlements with wind and temperature sensors all over the outside of the castle and amongst the surrounding trees: they should be capable of puncturing a target twenty times a second at a range of a few hundred feet. Additionally, equip them with mirrors capable of focusing sunlight. And infrared targeting lasers. Capable of all being pointed at the same location.
Drone cargo blimp with transparent canopy and winched cargo pod. Not the fastest thing, but capable of transporting heavy loads (including yourself) to and from the castle under the cover of night. Bonus as it would not be hindered by harsh terrain or serpentine travel paths. Maybe even put some white aerogel in an irregular cloud shape inside it and around the pod, so in a pinch you could appear to 'summon a cloud', walk inside it, and have the 'cloud' carry you away on wizard business.
u/GaBeRockKing [+3] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (9 minutes later)
Feather fall. casts parachute.
u/Geminii27 [+3] (5 hours later)
Rapid replication of written material, including binding into books. You could spit out the replicated contents of a king's, guild's, or monastery's entire library in hours, and the only difference would be the lack of gold leaf and the better-quality ink and paper. Not to mention that with a concealed pinhole video camera and/or high-resolution still image camera activated by tapping a Bluetooth finger ring (or concealed in a wizardly monocle or hat and able to pick up eye twitches), you could record any 'secret' or 'does not leave this room' lore, take high-rez photos of anywhere you walked, and with an autonomous drone, map entire towns/cities and the surrounding countryside to incredible precision.
You could be the only source of everyone else's proprietary information, plus the only source of accurate maps, plus be able to bring any city or town library up to standards that no-one had been able to match to that point.
Wear wizard-spectacles with a built-in HUD feeding from concealed drones in the area, and you can see everyone's roofs, track people moving around the entire town no matter where they (or you) are, and so on. Scatter disguised solar-powered microcameras around towns and you'd be able to review the comings and goings of everything going back months or years. Heck, with a lack of glass in most windows, you could fly a microdrone into any empty room and plant AV bugs under the furniture or on the ceiling - instant access to records of most 'secret' conversations amongst the wealthy and powerful.
Automatic textile manufacturing would make you the sole source of high-quality, relatively cheap cloth in large amounts. You would also be the sole source of artificial fabrics.
You would be more likely than the locals to be able to spot untapped sources of minerals, buy the land (or acquire mining rights), mine using automated mining machinery, and process the ore into refined materials and chemicals of unsurpassed quality. Even if you didn't want to upgrade the locals' weapons, you could supply chemical fertilizer, chemical cleaners, advanced (manual) farming equipment made from high-quality metals, and tools of all kinds for all industries and the average homestead.
The quality of goods in your area should take a sharp upswing, even those you are not personally producing, as you provide the capability to work faster and in higher precision with a range of materials, and information about improved methods and processes so that a craftsperson with "wizard tools" can also crank out masterwork toolsets which are an order or two of magnitude better quality than what they were using before.
u/clawclawbite [+2] (4 hours later)
Alchemical wonders beyond measure.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+2] Roll the Dice on Fate (20 hours later)
I cast FIST!
Using a powered exoskeleton.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)
Fireball: flamethrower
Flamestrike: Bombs
Light: flashlight / lantern
Magic missile: gun
Mount: motorcycle
Animate object: robotics
Fly: jet pack
Lightning bolt: van der Graaf generator
Clairvoyance: camera
Clairaudience: microphone
Arcane eye: drone with camera
Infravision: IR goggles
Darksight: Low light goggles
Alarm: electric eye plus siren
Kelgore's Firebolt: grenade
Sending: texting
Telekinesis: carefully arranged and managed electromagnets?
u/Dykster [+1] (an hour later)
Heat and cold spells with Thermopacks, "come to life" spells with hidden gyroscopes, "turn into rubber" spells with non-newtonian fluids.