Technology

In the game: help technology Also tech relics old world tech

Technology in Deshret: what the Church allows, what it forbids, and why a musket can share a room with a modern rifle.

Technology is a critical part of life in Deshret. That may sound odd given Sepulchre's doctrine of control, but the doctrine does not make the city primitive. The Church's taboo is about specific sins, like joining machine and man, or trying to play god. Plenty of technology is not sinful at all, and some is encouraged, like the Tessera chips that connect every citizen to the network.

Guns

Firearms that would look familiar to us are common: pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns. But cutting-edge technology is hard and expensive to get, so much older designs are still around too. Illegal relic weapons from the old world, with far more advanced mechanisms, do exist, but they are extremely rare. Merely owning one is the kind of heresy that brings Sepulchre's Inquisition down on you.

Blades

Guns exist and are clearly more useful in some situations, but swords survive for the same reasons they did beside early guns in our history: status, tradition, duelling, and ceremony. A Deshret swordsmith would not be making a shamshir or a szabla by name, but those old patterns are fine as inspiration.

A fine Vulcani sword is beautiful as well as deadly: patterned alloys, reliquaries, inscriptions, elegant guards. Some count as true artifacts, heirlooms with rare and exotic qualities thanks to the skill of their makers and the rarity of their materials. At the other end, Suburba is full of cruder things: machetes, butcher's tools, and sharpened scrap.

Martial arts are taught openly at a school that also runs a public fencing hall, which keeps them alive and popular. Its students and graduates are famous across the city.

Symphony The Hum