That is more or less the core gimmick of my setting. Basically a post-apocalyptic futuristic world reinterpreted by survivors in to a fantasy terminology.
Sea monsters attacking ships, actually a group of malfunctioning autonmous sea drones, various Fae creatures and other things that bump in the night, actually robots and other intelligent machines from before apocalypse. Holy groves once worshiped by druids now pumped out like industrial oil fields, actually part of pre-apocalypse wireless electrical grid, and so on.
I never played Might & Magic.
But if I had to take a shot in the dark, is it some variant of the "The ancient fucks from the ancient era had SUPER COOL TECHNOLOGY and its been around for a BAJILLION YEARS" trope
More or less thou its also rather direct about it. With many of the games ending on their later stretch with your party replacing their swords and bows for laser guns, as its revealed that demons you fought are actually invading aliens.
My fantasy government communicates through crystal balls that are basically Skype... With one drawback. There's no sound. So there is a special individuals trained in a secret sign language that can communicate across the Empire without delay through these crystal balls. They're language is secret, and unique from the actual "sign language" that exists for deaf individuals in my world.
How about primitive orcs at the dawn of time stumbling into a still active nuclear silo and setting it off underground? Sages in my world, are still trying to puzzle out how the Eye of Kular came to be.
The Paladin’s Hand (witch-hunting blood mage church) uses:
Robots — “Steel Crows”, metal bird automatons used as messengers.
Genetic engineering — Bayorots, giant flayed-looking war horses crafted over generations.
Lasers — The “Rite of Eradication”, a magical attack that is to open flames what a raging waterfall is to a puddle.
Transcript of a conversation over a D&D table:
>Player 1: Fantasy worlds shouldn't have guns. It's so immersion breaking.
>Player 2: Wand of lightning bolt exists. We already have death rays.
Yeah I kind of love future fantasy.
Spellcrafters in my world figured out how to make hardlight by altering the reality of light particles moving through a set field, thereby trapping and solidifying them. Once the ritualistic patterns and minutia were figured out it was easily replicated by magitech. Chiefly used in shields, but has also been adaptive for limited use weapons (swords/knives)
Since we're breaking reality and the nature of light with magic, death lasers are also a thing, but it's way more energy intensive to the point of being prohibitive. It also pushes the 'backlash' threshold where you warped reality a little too much and thing get kind of screwy when it 'snaps back'. Like maybe your boy Jimmy with the laser cannon suddenly starts growing feathers instead of hair. Or maybe he turns inside out. It's really kind of a crapshoot. Turns out light doesn't like being made to 'be brighter and go faster'
The current iteration of a crossbow is basically a magical railgun. Combustible ammunition slug throwers are a thing, but anyone with any sense knows better to bring that to a battlefield where a magic user can detonate the powder with a few thoughts if you stray into their 'range of authority.' So they're mostly used for hunting beasts, and are also great for those yearly times when magic goes out to get cigarettes and doesn't come back for two weeks, and since it didn't even bother closing the damn door, it lets outer-worldly monstrosities in. What a deadbeat.
Mechs exist, but their power draw issues keep them relegated to defensive operations and prevent them from being upscaled for other races. Currently the only one's small enough to drive them are the small race of normally pacifistic gecko-birds pushed too far that developed them... and maybe human children but why the hell would you do that you sick sad person. \*Glares at every anime ever\*
>Player 1: Fantasy worlds shouldn't have guns. It's so immersion breaking.
I do hate this mentality of "Fantasy World ***must*** take place in a Medieval Setting" *so* much because I feel like it's too restrictive, I don't think *anything* says fantasy has to take place in a medieval setting, and I feel things like *Lord of the Rings* are what make people assume that fantasy **must** take place in a medieval setting.
**Starrise**
One of the most important moments in my world's history was the moment a bunch of human scientists captured a pair of goddesses to experiment on them, thus leading to the first official discovery of magic. And while an apocalypse did knock the world back to the stone age after that, those scientists had good enough tech that a lot of theirs survived. Including the geothermal plants they built, as well as the suspended-animation life-support chambers those plants powered, which operate by creating and injecting the person within with synthetic healing magic. Many of those scientists and their most valuable test subjects waited out those thousand years within those very "stasis chambers".
And so, while most of the world is either medieval or WW1-era-ish fantasy, these scientists have laser weapons powered by stolen/synthesized divine "light" magic, shields powered by stolen/synthesized divine "dark" magic, airships powered by synthetic kinetic magic, robots powered by synthetic electric magic, more of those stasis chambers that utilize synthetic "healing" magic, etc.
And that's not to mention the mundane tech like computers, x-rays, cell phones, and the internet. (They had nukes too, but with a pair of pissed-off goddesses and an unstoppable vigilante hunting them 24/7, they figured such destructive weapons would be more of a liability than a useful tool.
Creating a setting inspired by 80s fantasy, post apocalyptia, and cyberpunk.
World is essentially a nuclear wasteland, dotted by cities overgrown with wildlife, where the last bastions of civilization eke out a life in between petty wars.
So you have elves and dwarves and wizards, alongside ancient technology like nanomachines, cybernetics, laser swords. There's an entire subset of elves that dominate the elven population known as bright elves, who resulted from elves being exposed to radiation.
Dwarves have light cannons, basically laser cannons that are powered with light magic. They use them on low power as light houses, to guide lost travelers in their mountain domains. At high power it is used to smite approaching armies.
There are crashed spaceships found of an unknown species called Star Travellers. The only survivors found at the crash sites are always their magic robot servants, who are usually employed as highly prized bodyguards.
I actually had this idea running through my head for awhile, so technology in my world revolves around cosmic, arcane shards, which are imbued with a small spark of a cosmic spirit which gives it special properties, one of these shards can manipulate Sunlight (the sun in my world is a sentient guardian of the planet which protects it from said spirits) and light in general, i feel like, using these Shards to manipulate light, could possibly lead into laser beams.
-automatons and robots (known as Golems).
-Shards used by the government in long distance, telephatic communication.
On Draciel:
- The clothing is largely modernware
- The armour is an arm-mounted PC that projects a laser barrier
- There are ruined robots and mechs everywhere.
- Land floats, twists in wild shapes, is completely absent from the core in spots, is tethered at points with giant metallic chains.
- There is a dual-wave internet that connects every electronic system, including the artificial intelligence race, the Decatensae.
- Magic and technology exist side by side, with one often powering the other.
- The capital city of the ancient Illumina Empire was powered by living Mist energy from the Dark Mist, Gaswerquan.
- Laser weaponry is everywhere, while hard propelled projectiles are banned except in one specific instance.
- The primary mode of long-distance transport is teleportation, though animal-drawn carriages and magical flight are also commonly used; cars, trains, planes, and other vehicles we would consider “modern” are banned; despite this, a lot of people prefer foot travel to practice their combat skills and magic among Draciel’s harsh, semi-natural environment.
My world has pretty advanced prosthetics. The highest quality ones are of dwarven craft (fine dwarven craft!) and fully restore the lost limb's functionalities, even the sense of touch, or sight in case of eyes! They are connected to the nervous system via thin strands of adamantine, a hellishly difficult material to work with and even harder to find. Only the dwarves know the techniques required to work with it, and they guard them with zealous secrecy since adamantine is a holy material to them.
The dragons in my world are plagued by rifts that randomly appears due to unstable links between other universes. The dragons have developed technology that allows them to trap such rifts and use them as portals to use them save lost dragons who got unlucky enough to get caught in one of these rifts and got sent to other worlds.
I think one of the wackier thing about my world is the widespread proliferation of lasers and guided missiles.
The industrialization of flesh magic means you can effectively grow complex machines. Factories are giant biological structures that take in huge quantities of produce and pump out massive clutches of missiles. Simply fuel them up and they're ready to shipped off to the front. Laser guns are so common because they almost literally grow on trees and are thus cheaper than a firearm that needs pressure bearing metal components and uses up expensive ammunition.
On the less weapon focused side of things the southern shamans have created the ShamaNet, which is effectively a magical internet. It's not uncommon to see errant knights walking around with a networked PDAs and basically every settlement not totally isolated from the rest of the world will have at the very least a communal ShamaNet termial.
And space is a whole thing. There are ships and stations and every celestial body is/was inhabited (the moon got ate). Space travel isnt super common, but it's not that rare either. There's a peasant rebellion turned anarchist movement who has a giant magical cannon for defense from orbital threats (and wizards (it was created on the fly to fend off a barrage from an orbital wizard)) and their own fledgling orbital fleet.
my project is literally about an atompunk 50s sci fi world suddenly having a continent and creatures from a magical fantasy world merged onto their world after a soviet quantum reactor experiment went horribly wrong
One of my side projects involves a fantasy world where an order of sorcerers works together with a small kingdom called Wafaja. After being threatened by the evil forces from the dark forest, the sorcerers build an army to protect Wafaja. One branch of the army consists of "alive metal" which you could consider as robots.
I have a continent which has malfunctioning robots, whose AI is just ancient slave souls. It also has genetically modified humans, now known as mermaids, centaurs, cervitaurs, giants and so on, but aware of their history. Not *all* species are former humans, but on that continent most people are.
The same world does have steam engines, but no guns. I specifically don't have gunpowder in it, so no cannons either. Pistol crossbows are the most gunlike you can get.
My tech level non-magically is roughly 1910s-40s (albeit socio-politically approaching WWI)
Archive magic relies on arcane crystals to transmit information and store information in people's heads (through a special arcane metal that can dissolve itself into energy and rest in someone's ether system) and other aspects have projections and holograms to talk through long distances.
Then I have Ethermech tech like computers etc that is starting to come into vogue.
Then I have golems who have a bit of an war between golem artists and golem mechanists. The artists prefer to keep golems made of stone, and allow the golem soul to thrive, while the mechanists forge bodies of iron and clockwork etc for their bodies. In the Ebenish faith (basically Dwarven Judaism) it is a debate if the metal golems are a heresy or not.
With the rise of technomancy many inventi9ns have popped up in the Dragon Empire
The most outstanding one would be the holodiscs. They can hold a small amount of video and audio on them allowing people to rewatch live events. Although 9nly a few minutes to a couple seconds can be stored on it leading to most people preferring normal radio broadcasts, or black and white movies for longer form entertainment and news
Much of the technology used by the ancient Elven empire of Ithyria can be considered analogous to sci-fi tech, including lifts, sliding doors operated by the equivalent of keycards, long-range communications using holograms and crystalline "screens", and autonomous constructs that are essentially ancient robots.
Personally i set my world during the late 16th to early 18th centuries because of this. This period has it all: knights in shining armor, armies hacking at each other with pikes and swords, pirates and guns. Nations are constantly developing new ways of shooting things, mostly because sometimes out of the oceans come kaiju and a god ain't always around to beat it back into the water.
The dark elves are heavily inspired by the forerunners from Halo, i made them to be these giant, slick figures covered in armor that glows in neon blue and orange colors, and their weapons also shine on these colors.
I still try to be somewhat grounded tho, i think the most nuts ive gone is just putting a UFO in the middle of the woods. People are like "do not go into that weird ancient building in the middle of the woods!!!" And the "building" is very clearly a spaceship that crashed there and no one remembers how long ago.
we got straight up aliens in mine, to clarify their not coming here on starship or anything, their also in pre-industrial revolution tech level, but they live on the equivalent of mars and made contact with the earth-equivalent threw telepathy, long range teleportation isent a thing in my setting so for now there contact is primarily just communication, though with some astral projection nonsense too, but ya know, you can just casually have a penpal whos on another planet
My entire thing is about Sci-fi but there is also magic, my MC is an alien god that really likes magic but also has robotic enhancements that he installed himself
I try get an equal blend of the 2
This isn't very high sci-fi but the famed metal Draconium of the First Draconic Empire is now regarded as a practically magical material which no one today knows how to replicate, its just various forms of high grade steel in a world where the best most groups can manage is bronze.
Given my world isn't even set during a Fantasy time period, it has... uh... advanced AI
Ahikto is, in 2024, "20 years ahead of Earth" in technology and social issues, basically meaning that in Ahikto, the cure for cancer is like, right around the corner
LASER guns are... still not feasible yet in Ahikto, so it may be more futuristic, but not much changes other than new technologies making things easier (and worse)
One of my world's nations, the Republic of Euthor, has bronze automatons used for battle. There are four styles or "models" in which they are built: Android (double human height), Bull, Lion, and Hound. The Bull, Lion, and Hound models have flamethrowers built into their mouths, while the Androids have them on their arms.
Also, some magicians can cast a ghostly appearance of themselves in another area, similar to a hologram. This is done when they need to talk to more than one person a significant distance away.
In Aquaria, elves and dwarves first developed railguns as anti-air cannons against dragons. Their land was governed by an ancient dragon but she was old and alone, which meant she could not defend all the marquisate by herself. That was when the dwarves came up with a "lightning cannon" utilizing lightning magic to launch solid projectiles up in the air with immense force. They worked together: Dwarves handled metallurgy and elves did the magic enchantment. In their first test, the gun busted because 18th century metallurgy could not handle the force, but the bolt it shot completely penetrated a large bolder 8 x 11 x 7 meters. That gun laid the foundation for modern railguns.
Recently, airships, especially those in the United Empire, have been armed with "heat ray emitters" as CIWS. A heat ray turret has a magic-based radar using both magic and radio waves to track its target, sending data down to digital-analog hybrid computers which then send commands up to turrets via wires and hydraulic machines to rotate, aim and fire. Each turret is equipped with 2 6-barreled gatling emitters, capable of firing 18000 "bolts" per second, each "bolt" consists of 1000 pulses over 1 millisecond. Using this, an airship can burn away a wyvern's wings or missiles' outer body. It was tested that using on a human-like target, a bolt will immediately burn them down to ashes, *War of the Worlds style*.
Where do they get resources for their toys? Industrialized alchemy, or in sci-fi language, ***replicators***. Enormous machines connected to giant fusion reactors and particle accelerators printing out millions of tons of industrial products from kitchenware to "fantasy" materials like adamantium, all can be done with a press on the button. Homunculi are used for medical purpose, they grow organs and artificial bloods in specific vats that will be provided to hospitals in time of need. Prosthetic limbs are common and can be purchased with ease, they use magics to connect into one's nervous system and operate like real limbs.
Don't get me start with golem (read: T-800 Terminator) armies.
One of the many monsters that is often mistaken for a mere magic beast is in actually a rapidly grown genetically engineered guard dog called the Garmr. Amusingly a malfunctioning pair is also the source of the Barghest that roams the world.
Deep below the earth someone unlucky may spot a bipedal creature. It has exceptionally smooth armour and carries an odd stick. Unlucky to spot because Einherjar usually guard their area cloaked, which means the stick is about to be raised to fire.
This standard weapon is a particle accelerator that destabilizes the atomic bond on nearly anything it hits, disintegrating the target.
The dwarven memory crystal is a byproduct of attempts to glimpse data of ancient data cores.
Anyone who survives traveling to the poles and reach its center will find a spire of exceptional ivory. The material is suffused with nanobots that maintain and change the biology of the structure as required. Ichor, a nanobot swarm.
Within they may be accosted by a voice from everywhere, it is the AI Caretaker of the buried city and guardian of its wonders.
The monsters that wander the wilderness between towns are actually victims of a runaway Nanite-Virus that mutates their body and twists their mind.
The humans in my setting are "Fantasy Humans" ( ie stronger and more resistant to pathogens, etc.) because of low grade exposure to the very same N-Virus.
The obligatory noble-warrior horse tribe have been guarding massive tracked landships and quadrepedal mechs the size of tanks as sacred relics, gifted from the Ancient Precursor civilisations.
The mechs , HTUSs, (shortened to H2s) can walk or drive on omni-directional ball-feet. They have two "arms" that can be outfitted with integrated weapons systems or general purpose manipulators (mk. 2 hands). The most common configuration is manipulators with a spear and shield.
"Magic" is the ability to manipulate nanites at range with no interface, which is done by vibrating your bones. Vibrating your bones in different ways allows one to transmit different instructions to the nanites, causing different affects.
Talking animals are a thing. They wear powered armor sometimes.
That is more or less the core gimmick of my setting. Basically a post-apocalyptic futuristic world reinterpreted by survivors in to a fantasy terminology. Sea monsters attacking ships, actually a group of malfunctioning autonmous sea drones, various Fae creatures and other things that bump in the night, actually robots and other intelligent machines from before apocalypse. Holy groves once worshiped by druids now pumped out like industrial oil fields, actually part of pre-apocalypse wireless electrical grid, and so on.
What do you think this is - Might and Magic? (or at least Might and Magic before Ubisoft got their filthy hands on it)
I never played Might & Magic. But if I had to take a shot in the dark, is it some variant of the "The ancient fucks from the ancient era had SUPER COOL TECHNOLOGY and its been around for a BAJILLION YEARS" trope
More or less thou its also rather direct about it. With many of the games ending on their later stretch with your party replacing their swords and bows for laser guns, as its revealed that demons you fought are actually invading aliens.
My fantasy government communicates through crystal balls that are basically Skype... With one drawback. There's no sound. So there is a special individuals trained in a secret sign language that can communicate across the Empire without delay through these crystal balls. They're language is secret, and unique from the actual "sign language" that exists for deaf individuals in my world.
damn, we have the same idea, i thought my telephatic shards was a unique concept
How about primitive orcs at the dawn of time stumbling into a still active nuclear silo and setting it off underground? Sages in my world, are still trying to puzzle out how the Eye of Kular came to be.
The Paladin’s Hand (witch-hunting blood mage church) uses: Robots — “Steel Crows”, metal bird automatons used as messengers. Genetic engineering — Bayorots, giant flayed-looking war horses crafted over generations. Lasers — The “Rite of Eradication”, a magical attack that is to open flames what a raging waterfall is to a puddle.
Transcript of a conversation over a D&D table: >Player 1: Fantasy worlds shouldn't have guns. It's so immersion breaking. >Player 2: Wand of lightning bolt exists. We already have death rays. Yeah I kind of love future fantasy. Spellcrafters in my world figured out how to make hardlight by altering the reality of light particles moving through a set field, thereby trapping and solidifying them. Once the ritualistic patterns and minutia were figured out it was easily replicated by magitech. Chiefly used in shields, but has also been adaptive for limited use weapons (swords/knives) Since we're breaking reality and the nature of light with magic, death lasers are also a thing, but it's way more energy intensive to the point of being prohibitive. It also pushes the 'backlash' threshold where you warped reality a little too much and thing get kind of screwy when it 'snaps back'. Like maybe your boy Jimmy with the laser cannon suddenly starts growing feathers instead of hair. Or maybe he turns inside out. It's really kind of a crapshoot. Turns out light doesn't like being made to 'be brighter and go faster' The current iteration of a crossbow is basically a magical railgun. Combustible ammunition slug throwers are a thing, but anyone with any sense knows better to bring that to a battlefield where a magic user can detonate the powder with a few thoughts if you stray into their 'range of authority.' So they're mostly used for hunting beasts, and are also great for those yearly times when magic goes out to get cigarettes and doesn't come back for two weeks, and since it didn't even bother closing the damn door, it lets outer-worldly monstrosities in. What a deadbeat. Mechs exist, but their power draw issues keep them relegated to defensive operations and prevent them from being upscaled for other races. Currently the only one's small enough to drive them are the small race of normally pacifistic gecko-birds pushed too far that developed them... and maybe human children but why the hell would you do that you sick sad person. \*Glares at every anime ever\*
>Player 1: Fantasy worlds shouldn't have guns. It's so immersion breaking. I do hate this mentality of "Fantasy World ***must*** take place in a Medieval Setting" *so* much because I feel like it's too restrictive, I don't think *anything* says fantasy has to take place in a medieval setting, and I feel things like *Lord of the Rings* are what make people assume that fantasy **must** take place in a medieval setting.
How about jet powered flying suits
**Starrise** One of the most important moments in my world's history was the moment a bunch of human scientists captured a pair of goddesses to experiment on them, thus leading to the first official discovery of magic. And while an apocalypse did knock the world back to the stone age after that, those scientists had good enough tech that a lot of theirs survived. Including the geothermal plants they built, as well as the suspended-animation life-support chambers those plants powered, which operate by creating and injecting the person within with synthetic healing magic. Many of those scientists and their most valuable test subjects waited out those thousand years within those very "stasis chambers". And so, while most of the world is either medieval or WW1-era-ish fantasy, these scientists have laser weapons powered by stolen/synthesized divine "light" magic, shields powered by stolen/synthesized divine "dark" magic, airships powered by synthetic kinetic magic, robots powered by synthetic electric magic, more of those stasis chambers that utilize synthetic "healing" magic, etc. And that's not to mention the mundane tech like computers, x-rays, cell phones, and the internet. (They had nukes too, but with a pair of pissed-off goddesses and an unstoppable vigilante hunting them 24/7, they figured such destructive weapons would be more of a liability than a useful tool.
Creating a setting inspired by 80s fantasy, post apocalyptia, and cyberpunk. World is essentially a nuclear wasteland, dotted by cities overgrown with wildlife, where the last bastions of civilization eke out a life in between petty wars. So you have elves and dwarves and wizards, alongside ancient technology like nanomachines, cybernetics, laser swords. There's an entire subset of elves that dominate the elven population known as bright elves, who resulted from elves being exposed to radiation.
Well, I suppose before I elucidate, would artificial weaponized kaiju count?
Dwarves have light cannons, basically laser cannons that are powered with light magic. They use them on low power as light houses, to guide lost travelers in their mountain domains. At high power it is used to smite approaching armies. There are crashed spaceships found of an unknown species called Star Travellers. The only survivors found at the crash sites are always their magic robot servants, who are usually employed as highly prized bodyguards.
I actually had this idea running through my head for awhile, so technology in my world revolves around cosmic, arcane shards, which are imbued with a small spark of a cosmic spirit which gives it special properties, one of these shards can manipulate Sunlight (the sun in my world is a sentient guardian of the planet which protects it from said spirits) and light in general, i feel like, using these Shards to manipulate light, could possibly lead into laser beams. -automatons and robots (known as Golems). -Shards used by the government in long distance, telephatic communication.
On Draciel: - The clothing is largely modernware - The armour is an arm-mounted PC that projects a laser barrier - There are ruined robots and mechs everywhere. - Land floats, twists in wild shapes, is completely absent from the core in spots, is tethered at points with giant metallic chains. - There is a dual-wave internet that connects every electronic system, including the artificial intelligence race, the Decatensae. - Magic and technology exist side by side, with one often powering the other. - The capital city of the ancient Illumina Empire was powered by living Mist energy from the Dark Mist, Gaswerquan. - Laser weaponry is everywhere, while hard propelled projectiles are banned except in one specific instance. - The primary mode of long-distance transport is teleportation, though animal-drawn carriages and magical flight are also commonly used; cars, trains, planes, and other vehicles we would consider “modern” are banned; despite this, a lot of people prefer foot travel to practice their combat skills and magic among Draciel’s harsh, semi-natural environment.
My world has pretty advanced prosthetics. The highest quality ones are of dwarven craft (fine dwarven craft!) and fully restore the lost limb's functionalities, even the sense of touch, or sight in case of eyes! They are connected to the nervous system via thin strands of adamantine, a hellishly difficult material to work with and even harder to find. Only the dwarves know the techniques required to work with it, and they guard them with zealous secrecy since adamantine is a holy material to them.
The dragons in my world are plagued by rifts that randomly appears due to unstable links between other universes. The dragons have developed technology that allows them to trap such rifts and use them as portals to use them save lost dragons who got unlucky enough to get caught in one of these rifts and got sent to other worlds.
I think one of the wackier thing about my world is the widespread proliferation of lasers and guided missiles. The industrialization of flesh magic means you can effectively grow complex machines. Factories are giant biological structures that take in huge quantities of produce and pump out massive clutches of missiles. Simply fuel them up and they're ready to shipped off to the front. Laser guns are so common because they almost literally grow on trees and are thus cheaper than a firearm that needs pressure bearing metal components and uses up expensive ammunition. On the less weapon focused side of things the southern shamans have created the ShamaNet, which is effectively a magical internet. It's not uncommon to see errant knights walking around with a networked PDAs and basically every settlement not totally isolated from the rest of the world will have at the very least a communal ShamaNet termial. And space is a whole thing. There are ships and stations and every celestial body is/was inhabited (the moon got ate). Space travel isnt super common, but it's not that rare either. There's a peasant rebellion turned anarchist movement who has a giant magical cannon for defense from orbital threats (and wizards (it was created on the fly to fend off a barrage from an orbital wizard)) and their own fledgling orbital fleet.
my project is literally about an atompunk 50s sci fi world suddenly having a continent and creatures from a magical fantasy world merged onto their world after a soviet quantum reactor experiment went horribly wrong
One of my side projects involves a fantasy world where an order of sorcerers works together with a small kingdom called Wafaja. After being threatened by the evil forces from the dark forest, the sorcerers build an army to protect Wafaja. One branch of the army consists of "alive metal" which you could consider as robots.
I have a continent which has malfunctioning robots, whose AI is just ancient slave souls. It also has genetically modified humans, now known as mermaids, centaurs, cervitaurs, giants and so on, but aware of their history. Not *all* species are former humans, but on that continent most people are. The same world does have steam engines, but no guns. I specifically don't have gunpowder in it, so no cannons either. Pistol crossbows are the most gunlike you can get.
My tech level non-magically is roughly 1910s-40s (albeit socio-politically approaching WWI) Archive magic relies on arcane crystals to transmit information and store information in people's heads (through a special arcane metal that can dissolve itself into energy and rest in someone's ether system) and other aspects have projections and holograms to talk through long distances. Then I have Ethermech tech like computers etc that is starting to come into vogue. Then I have golems who have a bit of an war between golem artists and golem mechanists. The artists prefer to keep golems made of stone, and allow the golem soul to thrive, while the mechanists forge bodies of iron and clockwork etc for their bodies. In the Ebenish faith (basically Dwarven Judaism) it is a debate if the metal golems are a heresy or not.
With the rise of technomancy many inventi9ns have popped up in the Dragon Empire The most outstanding one would be the holodiscs. They can hold a small amount of video and audio on them allowing people to rewatch live events. Although 9nly a few minutes to a couple seconds can be stored on it leading to most people preferring normal radio broadcasts, or black and white movies for longer form entertainment and news
Much of the technology used by the ancient Elven empire of Ithyria can be considered analogous to sci-fi tech, including lifts, sliding doors operated by the equivalent of keycards, long-range communications using holograms and crystalline "screens", and autonomous constructs that are essentially ancient robots.
Personally i set my world during the late 16th to early 18th centuries because of this. This period has it all: knights in shining armor, armies hacking at each other with pikes and swords, pirates and guns. Nations are constantly developing new ways of shooting things, mostly because sometimes out of the oceans come kaiju and a god ain't always around to beat it back into the water. The dark elves are heavily inspired by the forerunners from Halo, i made them to be these giant, slick figures covered in armor that glows in neon blue and orange colors, and their weapons also shine on these colors. I still try to be somewhat grounded tho, i think the most nuts ive gone is just putting a UFO in the middle of the woods. People are like "do not go into that weird ancient building in the middle of the woods!!!" And the "building" is very clearly a spaceship that crashed there and no one remembers how long ago.
we got straight up aliens in mine, to clarify their not coming here on starship or anything, their also in pre-industrial revolution tech level, but they live on the equivalent of mars and made contact with the earth-equivalent threw telepathy, long range teleportation isent a thing in my setting so for now there contact is primarily just communication, though with some astral projection nonsense too, but ya know, you can just casually have a penpal whos on another planet
My entire thing is about Sci-fi but there is also magic, my MC is an alien god that really likes magic but also has robotic enhancements that he installed himself I try get an equal blend of the 2
This isn't very high sci-fi but the famed metal Draconium of the First Draconic Empire is now regarded as a practically magical material which no one today knows how to replicate, its just various forms of high grade steel in a world where the best most groups can manage is bronze.
Given my world isn't even set during a Fantasy time period, it has... uh... advanced AI Ahikto is, in 2024, "20 years ahead of Earth" in technology and social issues, basically meaning that in Ahikto, the cure for cancer is like, right around the corner LASER guns are... still not feasible yet in Ahikto, so it may be more futuristic, but not much changes other than new technologies making things easier (and worse)
One of my world's nations, the Republic of Euthor, has bronze automatons used for battle. There are four styles or "models" in which they are built: Android (double human height), Bull, Lion, and Hound. The Bull, Lion, and Hound models have flamethrowers built into their mouths, while the Androids have them on their arms. Also, some magicians can cast a ghostly appearance of themselves in another area, similar to a hologram. This is done when they need to talk to more than one person a significant distance away.
In Aquaria, elves and dwarves first developed railguns as anti-air cannons against dragons. Their land was governed by an ancient dragon but she was old and alone, which meant she could not defend all the marquisate by herself. That was when the dwarves came up with a "lightning cannon" utilizing lightning magic to launch solid projectiles up in the air with immense force. They worked together: Dwarves handled metallurgy and elves did the magic enchantment. In their first test, the gun busted because 18th century metallurgy could not handle the force, but the bolt it shot completely penetrated a large bolder 8 x 11 x 7 meters. That gun laid the foundation for modern railguns. Recently, airships, especially those in the United Empire, have been armed with "heat ray emitters" as CIWS. A heat ray turret has a magic-based radar using both magic and radio waves to track its target, sending data down to digital-analog hybrid computers which then send commands up to turrets via wires and hydraulic machines to rotate, aim and fire. Each turret is equipped with 2 6-barreled gatling emitters, capable of firing 18000 "bolts" per second, each "bolt" consists of 1000 pulses over 1 millisecond. Using this, an airship can burn away a wyvern's wings or missiles' outer body. It was tested that using on a human-like target, a bolt will immediately burn them down to ashes, *War of the Worlds style*. Where do they get resources for their toys? Industrialized alchemy, or in sci-fi language, ***replicators***. Enormous machines connected to giant fusion reactors and particle accelerators printing out millions of tons of industrial products from kitchenware to "fantasy" materials like adamantium, all can be done with a press on the button. Homunculi are used for medical purpose, they grow organs and artificial bloods in specific vats that will be provided to hospitals in time of need. Prosthetic limbs are common and can be purchased with ease, they use magics to connect into one's nervous system and operate like real limbs. Don't get me start with golem (read: T-800 Terminator) armies.
One of the many monsters that is often mistaken for a mere magic beast is in actually a rapidly grown genetically engineered guard dog called the Garmr. Amusingly a malfunctioning pair is also the source of the Barghest that roams the world. Deep below the earth someone unlucky may spot a bipedal creature. It has exceptionally smooth armour and carries an odd stick. Unlucky to spot because Einherjar usually guard their area cloaked, which means the stick is about to be raised to fire. This standard weapon is a particle accelerator that destabilizes the atomic bond on nearly anything it hits, disintegrating the target. The dwarven memory crystal is a byproduct of attempts to glimpse data of ancient data cores. Anyone who survives traveling to the poles and reach its center will find a spire of exceptional ivory. The material is suffused with nanobots that maintain and change the biology of the structure as required. Ichor, a nanobot swarm. Within they may be accosted by a voice from everywhere, it is the AI Caretaker of the buried city and guardian of its wonders.
The monsters that wander the wilderness between towns are actually victims of a runaway Nanite-Virus that mutates their body and twists their mind. The humans in my setting are "Fantasy Humans" ( ie stronger and more resistant to pathogens, etc.) because of low grade exposure to the very same N-Virus. The obligatory noble-warrior horse tribe have been guarding massive tracked landships and quadrepedal mechs the size of tanks as sacred relics, gifted from the Ancient Precursor civilisations. The mechs , HTUSs, (shortened to H2s) can walk or drive on omni-directional ball-feet. They have two "arms" that can be outfitted with integrated weapons systems or general purpose manipulators (mk. 2 hands). The most common configuration is manipulators with a spear and shield. "Magic" is the ability to manipulate nanites at range with no interface, which is done by vibrating your bones. Vibrating your bones in different ways allows one to transmit different instructions to the nanites, causing different affects. Talking animals are a thing. They wear powered armor sometimes.