Wiñetian MagiTech

The Duathians were , for a very long time the only source of this new magic. It was one of the three cornerstones upon which their power was built (the other two being: the development of the Tou Thanatuo Saurai, and the gathering of secret information through covet surveillance.

Even after others gained the ability to cast magic. The Duathians still retained the lion's share of the magic artifact and alchemy market (close to 80 % except at the very high end where they had a monopoly

About 30 Years ago, a young tinkerer, named Jacob Larabie, and his best friend (a guy named Wazniak) working in their garage, invented a device that is able to infuse any object with Mana directly and also "program" the mana so that it behaves in the way you want. In effect, anyone (with the proper training in the LOS - Larabie Operating System) can sit down at the control of one of these systems and create magic artifacts. The only limits are the size of the Larabie system being used and the imagination of the user.

The effects of this event are over the last thirty years are:

• The Duathian Monopoly was busted.
• Non Duathian Security systems became available with out (it turns out) and built in Duathian backdoors.
• The Tou Thanatou Saurai became much less effective (they sure missed al those backdoors)
• The Duathian Empire has begun to crumble (it is even rumored that the current emperor William the Gate Keeper was killed in a palace coup).
• Jacob Larabie became fabulously wealthy (his company not only produces the systems but is aggressive about hiring the best designers and is a leader in the artifact production market).

There are currently three major companies (and the gods only know how many little cottage industry start-ups) currently supplying the inhabitants of Wiñet with “magitech” (the colloquial term for all of the nifty little magical artifacts upon which everyone has become so dependent).They are:

• ACME Industries: For most of the last few hundred years on Wiñet, the Duathians were the source of most of the magical artifacts and ACME was their prophet.If you wanted something more complex than the simplest of baubles, it had to be made by Duathians or based on one of their power modules and you could only buy it from ACME because the Duathians never dealt with anyone else.

  Other companies and entrepreneurs had tried to approach William the Gatekeeper (the name taken by every Duathian emperor upon his ascension to the throne) with various too-good-to-be-true deals, but without success.Many were simply rebuffed (it is hard to beat someone else’s deal when you don’t know the details).Some withdrew offers without explanation.More than a few of the upstart companies were brought down by scandal or failed after certain of their key people decided to retire early and disappeared form the world of business (rumor has it some of them simply disappeared …period).

  Like any holder of an ironclad monopoly, ACME exploits it position shamelessly.Prices for its products are high.Product reliability is apparently not a significant corporate concern Customer service … well you get the picture.

  Not that their products are crap. Nothing could be further from the truth.They make great stuff.The best stuff available.People would save their whole life to buy an ACME Zephyr Flying Boat.Siblings would get into fistfight over who inherited the Dad’s ACM Lightning-bolt Rifle.If you want it, they have it.Unfortunately they are just about the only ones that do and they know it.According to Urban legend, the unofficial motto of ACME Industries is “ If the Gods didn’t want the little people to get stepped on, they wouldn’t have made them little”.

  Depending on whether you bought into their marketing BS (featuring that loveable old curmudgeon and corporate Spokesman Wile.E.Coyote), ACME was the Company everyone loved to hate, hated to love or just plain hated.

  This was all true until …

• Larabie Systems Inc.burst onto the scene about 20 years ago with a magitech device capable of capturing and storing mana directly into crystals with the use of a Duathian Thaumen Transfer Cell.There had been stories, mostly kept alive by leading conspiracy theorists that designs for such a device had existed for decades but had been kept from the public by the Duathians, the Trilateral Commission, the five Merchant Princes of Melat, a secret society of mages that only dress in black robes, etc., etc, etc.All of these are based on the premise that the powers that be wanted to keep magitech out of the hands of the hands of the common man for fear that the masse, so empowered, would be more difficult to govern.

  Besides being cheap and easy to use, the device was apparently simple enough to manufacture that LSI had no problem keeping up with demand.In fact, at first they almost gave the things away.The result was that within a few short months, the world was flooded With LSI mana generators (LMG).Myriad companies sprang up seemingly overnight in almost every major Wiñetian city.The device spread so quickly and popped up in so many places that apparently even the most insidious of the supposed anti-progress conspiracies were incapable of dealing with the situation.Of, course it might just be that they were no such conspiratorial secret organizations to start with, but where would be the fun in that.

  However, or whatever Jacob Larabie did to break the ACME/Duath monopoly on magitech, the break was sudden and complete.LSI had followed their first products with a variety of more intricate devices that not only captured and stored mana but also allowed the operator to program how the mana would represent itself on the mundane plain.They also brought out an extensive line of end user items targeted at specific needs of the common man.In less than five years, LSI became the dominant player in the magitech market place not by trying to steal ACME’s existing markets, rather by opening and dominating significant new markets of low end customers more quickly than the Duathians and ACME could react.

  In the last ten years, this competition for market share has turned into an outright war, precipitated by LSI decision to begin going after ACME’s high-end market segments too.Their strategy has been effective here too.Where ACME products tend to be very effective, but expensive and impossible to repair or upgrade by anyone who hasn’t devoted their life to such things, LSI products tend to be just as effective, but much cheaper, simple to use, easily upgraded.LSI also places great emphasis on customer satisfaction.Its corporate focus on making sure all of its employees work hard not just to meet but exceed the expectations of their customer has allowed LSI to take make do serious damage to ACME’s position.

  Case in point: The ACME fireball and lightning guns used to be the weapon of choice for any serious hunter.Unfortunately when Larabie brought out their line of lead-pellet projectile-weapons base on the simple expanding-air cartridge design, they not only wiped out ACME’s market share.The LSI weapons do more damage, cost less, have a much lower probability of causing highly dangerous Weird Mana effects and any idiot can operate one.In addition, their significantly higher ability to inflict damage have but pretty much rendered most of ACME’s personal body shield product line useless as well.

  Not much is know about Jacob Larabie, the man.Because of this many urban legends have sprung up from He is purported to be everything from a child genius who got lucky to an ancient mage who had been biding his time.One of the more ridiculous stories says that he is a secret agent of the Duathians charged with making society so dependent on magitech, that when “THEY” take it away, society will be willing to agree to anything to get it back.

  Whatever or whoever Jacob Larabie is, he completely dropped from site almost 5 years ago.Some say he is living in the closed off top floor of the Grand Palace Hotel in Meth; that he hasn’t bathed or cut either his hair or fingernails in years out of fear that the leavings could be used to target sympathetic spells against him.Meanwhile LSI keeps right on growing.

• Alcibaedes & Boris: this is less a company supplying magitech, than it is a catalog of the very best magitech available.Everything the idle wealthy could want (and with the economic explosion fueled by the LSI magitech revolution, there are a lot more people of idle wealth around) can be found in this catalog.Besides listing items that no one else would think to even offer (such as the toothpick that freshens breath and plays a medley of the current top 20 songs on the Midart POP charts or the solid-gold, personal flying boat with the seats that remember the shape of its owners body) most of their end user items never need recharging (as do ACME items) or the addition of fresh spell-stones (like LSI products).They also operate a tour service that has gained a reputation for providing the very best vacation experiences.

  A&B are very happy with their distant 3rd place position and seed to have adopted a corporate philosophy based on keeping out of the other two company’s way.

Magic-Tech Power (Mana Sources)

• ACME stuff is based on classic GURPS Powerstones, which recharge all by themselves.
  after DME - ACME products will work as long as you can find a charged powerstone. The powerstone will not re-charge.

• A&B - recharges seemingly instantaneously, whereas the ACME stuff needs to be left unused overnight or longer depending on the item and degree of Mana drain to recover. That's is one reason why Acme always charged so much for its stuff, cuz it had to make it's money up front (kind of like the software biz), the other reason being of course because it could (don't you love a good monopoly?!). A&B products typically have an Angel or Demon bound into the item to provide the mana.
  after DME - A&B products usually fail catastrophically as the bound A/D escapes.

• LOS - are modular and not rechargable. They use small disposable modules that include the powering element, e.g. the "bullets" for their guns.
  after DME - LOS products will work as long as you can find a charged modules ("bullets").

• Grand Unified Mana Theory
• Snippets from various catalogues