Technological artifacts

Technological Artifacts

Heya. Silent_Eric addressed the other day the fact that there is a concept almost completely unexplored... not really. I've seen a couple and I've been in here for only a month or so. Though later I heard that one of the people who used the concept did so vaguely, and the other one is... infamous among our famous, though I like his characters.

But anyway, we better address the issue. For me, the difficult part about thinking up a technological artifact is that I can't even wrap my mind around the concept... so here I've been working on it. What could be technological, irreproducible, and also special? I don't mean a time machine, guys, I mean something that's got a specific, comprehensible function.

This is the best I can do.

Death Hand

The most infamous nonmagical knife ever created in the multiverse, the Death Hand is the assasin's best friend. So versatile and powerful are those knives, that their production included only 500 of them before the assasins' guild that commissioned them was attacked by a convergence of rival guilds, and the factory where they were created was destroyed, all the people involved in their creation shot in the head, and all of those things. However, only 350 Death Hands were recovered and destroyed, fifty are lost to this day, and the rest was saved by an overzealous developer, hid where no one would send anyone to recover them. Can you guess where? Really? Where exactly, genius? It's big, y'now.
Death Hands were created out of a nickel-tungsten-chromium supersteel whose formula was used without permission from the patent holder; each segment of blade was shaped by drop-forge method, laser-sharpened for starters, treated with nanites for fine detail. Same went for the hilt and the nanites that make up most of it; and despite 5.000.000 were created in the factory, the tolerances were so exacting, and the testing so thorough that some good pieces actually fell short of the standards because of damage suffered during testing! Only the above number was considered fit for combat use. The other 4.999.500 were all melted for their alloy or discarded; those lesser Death Hands can't even hold a candle to the deadliness of the true Death Hands.

Each Death Hand looks like a knife's obsidian-colored hilt with a ring for the index... and no blade. However, when one puts his index into the ring, and rests the base of the thumb against the hilt, it comes into life with a whirr, a mercury-like blade springing from the front. And the fun begins...

Each of the Death Hands can automatically predict the best shape for the blade (and change to it) according to the direction and speed in which it's being moved; whether you need a punching dagger, a parrying dagger, a broad-bladed dagger, a bowie knife, you'll always have the exact knife you need. Also, by undisclosed means, it's also able to, in a nearly precognitive method, take always a shape that you'll find useful for killing or maiming your foe, exactly the one you want, even mutating its shape if your intent changes from maiming to killing!

Any blade grip technique can be used with a Death Hand, and it's optimal for all. No user has ever claimed to find the Death Hand disorienting or inconvenient. Also, its mutable, sectioned edge is made of an alloy hard enough to cleanly cleave through diamond, or through naga skin, as you need, and firm enough to allow you to cut it whatever way you want.

A Death Hand is perfectly concealable; it has no greater reaction to magnetic fields than a glass of water... or a handful of intestines. It doesn't show up on metal detectors, or any known kind of detectors. This property has yet to be reverse engineered, however.

One drawback of the Death Hands is that they have a limited amount of blade, and a limited reach; under no circumstance can the Death Hand extend any point in its blade more than 16 inches from the handle. The other drawback is that Death Hands tend to be a bit... empathic with the user, to the point that they can form blades that extend right into the wrist and then twist for maximum destruction upon any feelings of regret or guilt over killing someone, or out of the blue, silently create a thrusting blade with a safety so that you don't get blood on your suit, which can be a bit of a downer if it happens in a party when someone interrupts to propose marriage to your daughter.

The one I made a while back.

Things to keep in mind when creating technological artifacts are:

1) Currently, the highest end fully-established canon faction is the Miratans. They, while lacking space assets, can make battle mechs and the like in some way that makes them practical for combat. Their firepower is enough to drive off (I won't exactly say "Hunt down", but "Drive off" is most definite) Predators, and easily at least a match for modern earth.

2) Techno-Magic merges can be a "technological" artifact, but you need to have the technology outweigh the magic. If you've got a musket that fires magic bullets ALA Hellsing's Rip Van Wrinkle, you're basically using an enchanted item. If you're using a gatling gun that happens to use magically enchanted bullets to hunt ghosts / other ethereal beings, that could possibly count as a technological artifact.

3) Your limit is not "would it be broken on Felarya", but "can I offer any explanation for why it's there". The broken bit does come into play (for instance: Anti-matter missile spam is a big no-no), but for the most part you're going to be focusing on explaining how such a piece of technology wound up there.

4) It's supposed to be a rarity. This isn't a "if you look real good on the market, you might find one of these" type thread. This appears to be a "If you're really lucky and keep an eye out at all times, you might hear a plausible rumor of its sighting in your lifetime." Don't go for something painfully common (make another thread if you want standard technological marvels).

what about having a techno-magic machine that in and of itself is limited. meaning no one knows how to make them, but their function allows the production of other technomagical items.

the reason im saying this is that fusing magic and machinery must be very complicated, and it would be nice to have a way to make that work.

Indeed, Bael. Were you thinking of a tome, maybe? One that explains how to make it work? Or an actual item that does that?

I had another idea.

The Procrastinator

Mentioned in ancient Sagolian texts, the Procrastinator was one of Ur-Sagol's top defenses against great predators. Only a handful were made, because it was more efficient to just kill them with other weapons, and no more than a handful were necessary. Yet if a predator ever breached the defenses of Ur-Sagol, the Procrastinator was the first line of defense, allowing the Sagolians to fight the predator in their own terms without risking any damage to bystanders. At first it was assumed that all Procrastinators were destroyed during the destruction of Ur-Sagol. However, there's a rumor that a recently discovered tablet spoke of an ancient armory where a spare Procrastinator may or may not be kept...

The Procrastinator itself looked like a highly stylized, long rifle made of some sort of ceramic material, except it ends in a spike rather than a barrel. By firing one shot from the Procrastinator, the target, be it whatever size it may be, was teleported in a random direction a random distance, never under 100 miles and never above 1000 miles. This effect, being nonmagical, ignored any magical defenses, for the glory of the Sagolians.

An irreplicable form of sonic insulation was supposed to maintain the artifact strong even in the presence of gyspas or other frequency-based disruptors, and a 7-grain antimatter battery ensured it would stay potent and capable of fire in seculae saeculorum.

Locust himself has expressed the Procrastinator sounded like an extremely useful tool to have, but that it worries him that if the Sagolians were using those, and a guardian destroyed them anyway, it's probably a fact that humans will always be boned in Felarya. So he's decided to take a skeptic route and assume the Procrastinator's existence is either an exaggeration or a mistranslation, and it probably was a disintegrator, while the distance listed was the distance at which the pieces could be found. Of course, he doesn't know Sagolian, and he's probably just expressing wishful thinking...

No, I was thinking of a series of incredibly rare artifacts that allows the production of other techno-magic items. Maybe the Ur-Sagolians (its always them am i rite?) or some other group of people figured out a way to combine magic and technology, and the Negavians only know how to do it because of these artifacts. Like reverse engineering to discover the secret or something.

Maybe one of the special techno magic items is incredibly powerful, like a prototype that was lost that holds lots of power...(not like fighting power, but magical power).

The Library

Resembling a giant hunk of metal and other materials, this somewhat boxy construct would be of little importance to a "tribal" or the more feral natives of the land. However, to a technologically adept group the information contained within would be extremely valuable.

The Library is a Satellite from another universe that, somehow, crashed into the Imoreith Tundra. Whether it was due to somehow hitting the magic spot Felarya exists in the multiverse, a lucky portal passing, or whatever is unknown. What is known however is that, before it ceased broadcasting (about three seconds after it entered Felarya), those with radio devices detected a new message over their systems. Analysis of the recordings revealed - after translation - that information was being broadcast by the satellite.

Like many civilizations, the one that built The Library had intended to use their invention to make contact with another species, or leave a message for them should their own species fade out. While the broadcasting materials had been damaged by the crash, the power systems remained functional and relatively charged for some time after impact. Now, it is a race against time and the elements to procure the device before its internal systems 'decay', and any knowledge that might have been carried is lost.

This item would seemingly be of great value to the Miratans, as the possibility of it bearing the secrets to Space Travel has not gone unthought of.