In the vast expanse of the Core Worlds, magic and technology are not opposing forces but two sides of the same coin—distinct, yet inseparable aspects of reality. Technology is the mastery of the universe’s physical laws, a science of predictable, repeatable results. Magic, in contrast, is the science of bending those laws. It is a controlled “cheat,” a method of momentarily rewriting the source code of reality to achieve an effect that physics alone would deem impossible. Like any science, magic has principles that can be studied, learned, and mastered to accomplish wonders. This chapter outlines the fundamental principles governing both forces and the symbiotic relationship they share.
The Principles of Magic
Magic is the act of channeling supernatural energy to manipulate the fabric of the Manifest, the material reality in which all life exists. While its effects can seem miraculous, its practice is rooted in a set of core principles governing its sources, methods, and the inherent risks involved in its use.
Magical Sources
All magic flows from a source, and in the modern era, these sources trace their origins back to two pivotal cosmic events: the Covenant and the Intervention of Losteroth.
In ages past, before the great Expansion, the deities of the multiverse grew weary of constantly maintaining the machinery of reality. They conceived of the Manifest as a perpetual machine, a self-supporting universe that would allow them to pursue their own designs without needing to micromanage existence. To achieve this, they enacted the Covenant. This divine pact granted free-willed mortals a tiny fraction of divine power, entrusting them with the crucial role of anchoring and stabilizing reality through their faith, will, and actions.
However, the Covenant created an unforeseen opportunity. Other powerful, non-deific entities—demons, archangels, fey lords, and ancient dragons—saw a new path to influence the mortal world. They began to forge their own pacts, offering power in exchange for service, thus corrupting the original purpose of the Covenant. As these pacts proliferated and sorcerous bloodlines arose from their influence, the balance of magical power began to shift unpredictably.
To restore equilibrium, the deity Losteroth intervened. Rather than grant power directly, Losteroth taught mortals how to access the fundamental arcane energies woven into the fabric of the universe itself. This act created the first wizards, establishing a path to power through intellect and discipline, independent of gods or patrons.
Methods of Magic
From these foundational events, four primary methods of accessing magical power have become established:
- Granted: The most common method, this magic is bestowed upon a mortal by a more powerful entity. Those who receive their power from a deity usually do so as part of the Covenant, while others make pacts with lesser celestials, fiends, fey, or other powerful beings that may make greater demands.
- Inherited: Some individuals are born with an innate connection to magic, or obtained through some outside neutral source. This power may manifest due to a bloodline tracing back to a magical ancestor, a latent psionic potential that awakens under specific circumstances, or be transferred to them from an outside source.
- Intuited: Some possess a deep, inexplicable, and intuitive understanding of the fabric of reality, the fundamental nature of the universe or of magic itself. They do not study or receive it as a gift but simply know how to shape magical energies, much as a gifted artist understands color and form without formal training.
- Taught: This is the path of the scholar and the scientist. By studying ancient formulas, cosmic principles, and the underlying structure of reality, these practitioners learn to manipulate arcane energy through rigorous practice, intellectual discipline, and precise execution.
Principles of Technology
Technology is the application of scientific knowledge to achieve practical ends. It is the framework upon which the civilizations of the Core Worlds are built, from the simplest personal datapad to the most complex interstellar dreadnought.
Technological Baseline
The prevailing technological level across the Core Worlds is incredibly advanced, so much so that for the average citizen, it is simply a part of the environment. Energy weapons, such as laser and plasma pistols, are common. Hard-light holograms serve as communication interfaces and entertainment displays. Starships, powered by highly efficient reactors, can operate for months without refueling. Medical science is capable of regrowing tissue and curing diseases with injectable medpatches. Data is stored on crystalline chips of immense capacity, and nearly every citizen carries a com unit or datapad, providing instant access to their local grid and a suite of personal tools.
FTL Travel and Wildspace
Faster-than-light travel is made possible by the feydrive, a specialized engine that allows a starship to slip out of the material plane and into Wildspace. Wildspace is a transient, featureless void that exists within the Wild, the realm of the fey. By traversing this dimension, where the normal laws of physics do not apply, ships can cross vast interstellar distances with impossible speed. A journey to a neighboring star system takes only hours, while crossing the entire expanse of the Core Worlds is a matter of weeks. Navigation is typically handled by onboard computers that lock onto navigational beacons broadcasting from settled worlds, though skilled pilots can plot courses to uncharted coordinates.
The Echonet and Local Grids
Communication across interstellar distances is facilitated by two distinct but related systems.
- A Local Grid is a planet- or system-wide information network, equivalent to a planetary internet. Access within a Grid is instantaneous, providing citizens with news, entertainment, and public data.
- The Echonet is a galaxy-spanning network of communication relays that transmit data through the Astral Sea, allowing for near-instantaneous, long-distance communication. The Echonet is primarily used for person-to-person voice and video calls. While the Echonet also distributes syndicated data like news reports to local Grids, it cannot efficiently browse them. Attempting to access a specific file on a distant Grid via the Echonet is a slow and unreliable process due to incompatible protocols and signal degradation.
Magitech & Technomancy
In a universe where magic and technology coexist, their fusion is inevitable. This synthesis manifests in two primary forms: Magitech, the creation of hybrid devices, and Technomancy, the practice of using magic to influence technology.
Magitech refers to any device that integrates magical principles with technological construction. This can range from a starship’s power core that uses a bound fire elemental as its energy source to a rifle that fires magically conjured bolts of force instead of physical projectiles. Arcane seals that function as computer passwords, enchanted alloys with impossible durability, and teleportation pads that bend space are all examples of magitech. These items are often the product of collaboration between engineers and arcane scholars, resulting in devices that are greater than the sum of their parts.
Technomancy is the specific magical discipline of interfacing directly with technology. A technomancer is a spellcaster who sees the flow of data and the hum of a machine as just another part of the natural world. They can cast spells to decrypt encrypted files, overload systems with a surge of magical energy, or even take control of a hostile drone with a mere force of will. For a technomancer, a computer network is a landscape to be explored, and a machine’s code is a language to be spoken.
Levels of Technology & Magic
The two most significant measures of a civilization’s advancement are its Technology Level (TL) and Magic Level (ML). TL measures scientific and engineering capability across six key fields — communications, energy, materials, medicine, transport, and weapons — while ML measures the prevalence, sophistication, and cultural integration of magical practice. Both scales run from 0 to 11, where 0 represents the most primitive possible baseline and 11 represents effective omnipotence. The two scales are independent; a civilization may be highly advanced in one and primitive in the other, or anywhere in between. The established baseline for the Voidfinder setting — the Core Worlds and most galactic societies — is TL 6 and ML 6.
Magic Level
Magic Level (ML) measures how deeply magic is woven into a civilization — not merely how powerful its strongest practitioners are, but how common, understood, and culturally integrated magical practice has become. The scale runs from ML 0, where magic does not exist or is entirely inaccessible, to ML 11, where the distinction between civilization and divinity has ceased to exist.
ML 0: Unawakened
Paradigm: No magic. Any superstitions are simply psychological placebos with no arcane weight. Practitioners: None. Acquisition: None. Artifice: None. Societal Role: None.
ML 1: Latent
Paradigm: Sympathetic & Superstitious. Belief and natural materials hold power, operating on instinct and localized phenomena rather than understood mechanics. Practitioners: < 0.001% (one in a million). Zero proper spellcasters. Acquisition: Strictly involuntary or circumstantial (accidental awakenings). Artifice: Unique, unreplicable natural anomalies or items crafted by higher powers. No active crafting. Societal Role: None.
ML 2: Secretive
Paradigm: Hedge Magic & Tradecraft. Magic operates without knowledge of the underlying principles, functioning as a seemingly random or wholly misunderstood phenomenon. Practitioners: ~0.1% minor. Proper spellcasters are once in a century flukes and often become legends with exaggerated claims of their abilities (< 0.001%). Acquisition: Mostly innate, granted by a higher power or accidentally obtained through impossibly rare circumstances. Artifice: Rare, heavily guarded minor charms, alchemy, or cursed items. Societal Role: Practitioners may be shunned or revered, with few every meeting one. The existence of a practitioner in a community may be the spark that ignites any number of sudden changes, from witch hunts, new religions, political upheaval or war.
ML 3: Emerging
Paradigm: Transactional & Devotional. Power is knowingly borrowed, gifted, or bargained for from powerful entities. Rigorous study focuses on theology, appeasement, and contract law. Practitioners: 0.1–1% minor. < 0.01% proper spellcasters. Acquisition: Gatekept by exclusive clergy, secretive patrons, or master/apprentice dynamics. Artifice: Uncommon. Crafted by masters or specialists (basic potions, simple enchanted weapons). Societal Role: Practitioners act as specialized, misunderstood and mysterious profession.
ML 4: Integrated
Paradigm: Applied & Institutional. Magic acts as a rare but reliable, standardized tool for military or industrial application. Practitioners: 1–5% minor. ~0.05% proper spellcasters. A rare few, once in a generation or more, achieve a high level of power and become legendary figures. Acquisition: Formal academies and widespread temples exist, but often require a high price (absolute devotion/loyalty to a deity, extreme education costs, or a significant sacrifice made to an exploitative entity. Artifice: Extremely rare, and usually found in the possession of legendary heroes, in the vaults of political dynasties or in the treasure hoards of powerful monsters. Societal Role: Proper spellcasters tend to hold positions of prestige, such as local religious leaders, acting as advisors, counselors or diplomats, or may serve as part of a special military unit. Rare and legendary practitioners of extreme power may rise to become political leaders, be the heads of their own religious faith or similar positions of power and authority.
ML 5: Prolific
Paradigm: Early Academic & Theoretical. Magic is studied openly in organized institutions. Practitioners: 5–15% have minor/innate abilities. 0.1–1% are proper spellcasters. < 0.01% have access to high-level spells. Acquisition: Magical colleges and religious orders are common, and other less academic avenues to mystical power are rare but well known. Artifice: Artifacts from past ages exist. Magical gear that serves practical purposes is available in major hubs. Societal Role: Magic occasionally substitutes for mundane means. A practitioner or two is commonly found within most communities and they may or may not hold positions of power or authority. Powerful practitioners are tend to become famous/infamous figures.
ML 6: Ubiquitous
Paradigm: Integrated. Magic functions as a science governed by predictable and reliable formulas. Spells are calculations and algorithmic manipulations of reality, or a known and understood expression of faith. Practitioners: 15–20% minor/innate. 1–2% proper spellcasters. < 0.1% reach high-level casting. Acquisition: Anyone with innate talent or high intelligence can learn through any number of academies, colleges or through apprenticeship. Religious orders offer rituals to bond with celestial beings or forces of nature. Psychics are common. Artifice: Minor items are ubiquitous. Major items are rare but commercially available. Societal Role: Magic substitutes for industrial/technological needs interchangeably.
ML 7: Consolidated
Paradigm: Unified Mastery. The source of one’s power — deity, nature, academia, instinct — is a personal expression rather than a defining category. All spellcasters are functionally equivalent in role and capability. Practitioners: 20–50% minor. 5–10% proper spellcasters. ~1% high-level. Acquisition: Magical academies, monasteries, and churches serve as institutions of mastery rather than origin. One attends to refine and specialize, not to become. Artifice: Civic infrastructure replaced wholesale by permanent spellwork. Ambient fields handle repair, climate, and sanitation automatically. Memory and experience are extractable, storable, and transferable as discrete objects. Societal Role: Magic governs politics, economics, and industry at every level. Mid- to high-level practitioners hold positions equivalent to engineers, executives, and generals. Exceptional practitioners become cultural icons.
ML 8: Instinctual
Paradigm: Ambient Integration. Spellcasting is a general skill, like literacy. The distinction between magical traditions has become largely academic. Magic fills any role technology cannot match as well. Practitioners: 50–80% minor. 20–40% proper spellcasters. 5–10% high-level. Acquisition: Taught as part of basic education, or passed informally from parent to child alongside language and social customs. Artifice: Demiplanes serve as cities, storage, and transit hubs. Stable planar gates replace roads and ports. Elemental engines power civilization by tapping directly into adjacent planes. Societal Role: Geography is largely irrelevant. Physical industry is obsolete wherever magic is more efficient, which is nearly everywhere.
ML 9: Sublimated
Paradigm: Forensic Mastery. The underlying architecture of reality is studied the way physics and biology are at lower levels. Practitioners cannot rewrite its laws, but know them well enough to force temporary, self-correcting exceptions. Practitioners: 80–99% proper spellcasters. 20–40% high-level. Acquisition: Deep, esoteric comprehension of the universe’s foundational structure, pursued through institutions that have replaced conventional science entirely. Artifice: Ubiquitous and functionally equivalent to technology. Localized physics inversions maintained as tools or weapons. Conceptual artifice — objects that sever a target’s relationship with gravity, memory, or time — are available but rare. Societal Role: Indistinguishable from any other advanced society at a glance. The most powerful practitioners may be leaders, or simply the equivalent of celebrated athletes or successful entrepreneurs.
ML 10: Transcendent
Paradigm: Inherent Reality. Magic is not practiced — it is inhabited. The distinction between caster and spell no longer exists. Practitioners perceive and navigate the structure of reality fluently and without conscious effort, though they remain bound by its architecture. Practitioners: 100% proper spellcasters. 50%+ high-level. Acquisition: Innate. There is no learning to cast — only the ongoing philosophical exploration of what to do with that ability. Artifice: Everything is an artifact. Cities, tools, clothing, food — all are magical constructs, out of necessity as much as preference. Societal Role: Technology is entirely superfluous, rendering this civilization effectively TL 0 by choice. Magic is not an industry — it is simply existence.
ML 11: Divine
Paradigm: Axiomatic. These beings authored the rules magic obeys. The concept of spellcasting is as meaningless here as asking how a writer casts words onto a page. Practitioners: 100% divine entities. Acquisition: Intrinsic to their nature. They did not learn omnipotence; they are its origin. Artifice: The universe itself. Every physical law, every plane of existence, every foundational constant is their handiwork. Societal Role: Not so much a civilization as a pantheon. They govern the flow of magic for every civilization below them, whether those civilizations know it or not.
Technology Level
Technology Level (TL) measures scientific and engineering advancement. The scale runs from TL 0, representing the most primitive baseline, to TL 11, where technology and divinity are indistinguishable.
TL 0: Primal
Comms: Gestures, vocalizations • Energy: Captured fire • Materials: Stone, bone, hide • Medical: Raw flora • Transport: Walking, natural rafts • Weapons: Found objects
TL 1: Developing
Comms: Language, writing, and the deliberate passing of knowledge across generations. From earliest inscription to mass-produced text, the medium changes but the function is the same — preserving and transmitting what is known. Energy: Fire, wind, and muscle. Whether animal or sentient labor, all meaningful work ultimately traces back to one of these three sources. Materials: Metallurgy and basic chemistry, textiles, and ceramics. Early and late examples within this tier represent genuine refinements, but functionally belong to the same level of material capability. Medical: Herbalism, wound care, and accumulated folk knowledge. Trial, error, and tradition do most of the work; progress is slow and frequently lost between generations. Transport: Animal-drawn carts and wagons, rowing and sailing ships, paved roads and established trade routes. Geography still dominates politics, economics, and war, but it can be navigated with some reliability. Weapons: Spears, swords, bows, siege engines, early gunpowder weapons, and organized military doctrine.
TL 2: Industrial
Comms: Telegraph, radio, and the printing press. Information begins to move faster than any physical messenger. Energy: Steam engines and early electrical grids. Mechanical labor scales beyond anything muscle can provide. Materials: Steel and vulcanized rubber. Mass production becomes possible; industry reshapes society as thoroughly as any war. Medical: Germ theory and basic vaccines. For the first time, disease is understood as something that can be systematically prevented. Transport: Locomotives and early automobiles. Geography shrinks; urbanization accelerates. Weapons: Black powder firearms, ironclad warships, and early artillery. War industrializes alongside everything else.
TL 3: Atomic
Comms: Global cell networks and the internet. Nearly instantaneous communication becomes an assumed baseline of daily life. Energy: Fossil fuels and nuclear fission. Civilizations gain access to energy outputs that dwarf anything previously possible, along with proportional risks. Materials: Plastics and silicon processors. Computing transforms commerce, science, and warfare within a single generation. Medical: Antibiotics and organ transplants. Lifespans extend dramatically; previously fatal conditions become routine to treat. Transport: Jet aircraft and chemical rockets. The planet is fully connected; the edge of space becomes reachable. Weapons: Precision-guided munitions, nuclear arsenals, and autonomous drones. Destruction becomes capable of outpacing any defensive response.
TL 4: Interplanetary
Comms: System-wide tightbeam lasers. Real-time communication across a solar system becomes practical, if not yet instant. Energy: Commercial fusion. Clean, abundant power becomes the dominant energy paradigm. Materials: Graphene and superconductors. Engineering at the molecular level becomes routine. Medical: Early cybernetics and cloned organs. The body begins to be treated as a system subject to upgrade and replacement. Transport: Torchships and the first permanent off-world colonies. Humanity — or its equivalent — is no longer confined to a single planet. Weapons: Railguns and bulky directed-energy weapons. Kinetic and energy-based weapons begin to replace chemical propellants.
TL 5: Interstellar
Comms: Sub-space radio. Messages can now outpace conventional travel, though FTL communication remains imprecise. Energy: Advanced fusion and early Spectrite refinement. Exotic energy sources begin supplementing conventional fusion. Materials: Plasteel and other engineered composites purpose-built for the demands of deep space. Medical: Early medpatches and mechanical cybernetics. Battlefield medicine takes a significant leap; augmentation becomes elective. Transport: Primitive Feydrives and continuous-thrust engines. Interstellar travel becomes possible, if slow and expensive. Weapons: Heavy plasma weapons and the first compact energy sidearms. Directed energy becomes a practical battlefield standard.
TL 6: Galactic
Comms: Planetary communication networks, The Grid, and EchoNet FTL relays. Information moves across star systems in near-real time. Energy: Spectrum Cells and Cores. Compact, high-output power sources are mass-produced and commercially available. Materials: UPB, force fields, and hard-light constructs. Matter and energy are increasingly interchangeable as engineering feedstocks. Medical: Instant medpatches, universal vaccines, lifelike cybernetic prosthetics, and pharmaceutical enhancement. Injury and illness are largely inconveniences for those with access to care. Transport: Mass-produced Feydrives and jump drives. Interstellar travel is routine, affordable, and fast. Weapons: Directed energy, plasma blades, and drone artillery. Personal and military-scale energy weapons are the dominant paradigm.
TL 7: Megastructural
Comms: Megastructure-scale hive-mind networks. Communication is no longer a discrete act but a continuous ambient layer of shared awareness across entire installations. Energy: Dyson spheres and stellar lifting. Civilizations harness the total output of stars as a matter of engineering rather than ambition. Materials: Programmable matter and stabilized pure energy. Matter is a medium to be configured rather than a fixed resource to be processed. Medical: Functional immortality and distributed consciousness. Death by biological failure becomes optional; identity is no longer strictly tied to a single body. Transport: Planetary displacement engines. Entire worlds can be repositioned within a solar system as a logistical rather than theoretical exercise. Weapons: Star-killers and system-wide integrated defense grids. A single engagement can sterilize a solar system.
TL 8: Multi-Dimensional
Comms: Instantaneous cross-galactic communication. Distance becomes meaningless as a constraint on the exchange of information. Energy: Zero-point extractors and dimensional vacuum tapping. Energy is drawn directly from the fabric of spacetime itself. Materials: Hyper-dimensional alloys — matter engineered across multiple spatial dimensions simultaneously, with properties that have no analogue in three-dimensional physics. Medical: Complete bio-reconstruction and dimensional sleeve transfer. The body is effectively a preference; consciousness can be migrated, copied, or restructured at will. Transport: Instant point-to-point gating and stable wormholes. The concept of travel time effectively ceases to exist. Weapons: Spatial-tear projectors and reality disruptors. Weapons operate not on targets but on the space targets occupy.
TL 9: Reality Forging
Comms: Temporal messaging — information can be transmitted backward and forward through time, making sequencing and causality active engineering problems. Energy: Parallel universe harvesting. Energy is drawn from alternate timelines and adjacent realities, effectively making scarcity a solved problem. Materials: Adaptive sentient matter — materials that observe their environment, make decisions, and reconfigure themselves in response. Medical: Spontaneous life creation. Biology is authored rather than treated; new organisms and ecosystems are designed from first principles. Transport: Universe-folding. Space itself is creased and compressed so that any two points become adjacent. Weapons: Timeline erasure and physics manipulation. Enemies can be removed not just from a battlefield but from history, or the physical laws sustaining them simply switched off.
TL 10: Ascendant
Comms: Universal instantaneous communion. All entities, everywhere, are in continuous contact with no latency, no medium, and no possibility of interference. Energy: Ex nihilo creation — energy and matter are produced from nothing as a routine function, without requiring any external source. Materials: Concept-matter. The raw material of creation is abstraction itself; ideas given physical form without requiring conventional matter as a substrate. Medical: Existence as pure thought or energy. The body is entirely optional; life is a state of will rather than biology. Transport: Omnipresence. Location is a choice rather than a constraint; a TL 10 civilization exists everywhere it intends to simultaneously. Weapons: The alteration of fundamental physical constants. The rules governing how reality functions are themselves the ordnance.
TL 11: God-Like
Technology at this level is indistinguishable from true omnipotence. The engineering of realities — creating or unmaking them in their entirety — is no more remarkable than any other act of will. The distinction between a civilization and a god has ceased to be meaningful.