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Futuristic/primitive technology in the same world.

Earthright

Acolyte
Hello, I was hoping to get a few other opinions about a world that incorporated both a "futuristic" and "primitive" civilization among the races. There was going to be 6 races in my world, each having their own unique advantages for battle. There are the Humans, Dwarves, High Elves, and Dark Elves allied with each other. Then there will be the Orcs and Netherian allied together.

I won't give away what the story is about, but basically there was a great war between the races. The Human civilization was considered the most powerful and used most of the worlds resources to produce things like hover bikes, forcefields, and weaponry like modern guns.

The High Elves were the second most powerful and used magic. They never bothered with the technology that the humans used. Instead they lived in an enormous city along with the Dark Elves in an ancient tree that provided the High Elves with the use of their magic abilities.

The Orcs in my story will be enormous to make up for the fact that they use primitive armor and weaponry. They aren't very smart, and are being used by the Netherian. The Netherian are few in numbers, but like humans have modern technology, which they arm the orcs with.

The main Human stronghold, Grand Rosenguard, will be attacked by the Netherian and the Orcs. The High Elves turn on the Humans and help the Nethrian and Orcs attack city. The leader of the city told a few survivors a code that they must use in the future when they return to open a secret section of the city. The survivors escaped to the sewers and established a new underground base with very few people alive.

During the siege on Grand Rosenguard, the Dark Elves were exiled from the tree, and alot had been killed while fleeing from the High Elves. The Dwarves, on a frozen continent in the north now stand alone between the High Elves, Netherian, and Orcs. However, the Dark Elves and Humans meet and plot to take back the city and strike at the heart of the Netherian, Malmortus.

While that's all happening there's also the main story line, but I wanted peoples opinions if it would make sense to have both a Futuristic and Primitive feel to the story after they heard a little of what it's about.
 
Hi,

It sounds a little confusing to me. But I don't see why it can't be done. My thoughts about what you've described are firstly, why does each race seem to have only one city? The elves you said live in one city, the dark elves have a tree etc. I don't see it. At the very least each should have a realm or a country. They may have one city or tree that is their capitol of course, but also many more.

The other thing I would wonder about is how o magic and futuristic science oppose one another in this universe? I mean you're blurring science fiction and fantasy here, not that I have a problem with that. But my thought is that magic by its very nature is something that breaks the assumed laws of the universe by which science operates. So either you now have to make magic a sort of unknown science (psychic phenomena?), which would be the science fiction work around. Or you have to make something less than complete, i.e. science is simply a crude tool no matter how advance, that those with magic pretty much scoff at. This would be the fantasy approach.

Hope that helps,

Cheers, Greg.
 

Ophiucha

Auror
I think it could work, particularly if some groups use magic to compensate, but it's worth remembering that unless your world has no trade to speak of or the humans guard their technology closely, there will always be a little crossover. An elf girl who finds a discarded laser gun and decides to tinker with it, maybe using magic, maybe just with a twig to see what makes it tick. Enemies often design sort of cheap knockoff weapons of what the other has, too. Historically, many poorer nations would see European guns and kind of get the gist of it and design something that isn't as good as what we had, but performs the same basic action and looks about the same. It's also worth remembering that invaders are always at a disadvantage, no matter how much more advanced they are. After all, colonizers for America honestly weren't doing that well until they managed to kill off most of the native population with small pox. Numbers and territory familiarity are often the best weapons.

They can all co-exist, but maybe in less of a bubble kind of way. There would be crossover, but with the armies opting for whatever works best for their people. Even the humans would probably find magic kind of cool... I mean, force fields? Sounds like something you build because you saw a wizard do it once. They just wouldn't have it, so they'd build and use tech to do the job instead.
 

WyrdMystic

Inkling
Mixes of futuristic and primitive races work perfectly well. If you look at things like Phantom Menace, Avataar, John Carter - they all have primitive races set against more technologically advanced races. Real world comparisons can be drawn as well between the developed world and the few remaining amazonian tribes.
 

Nihal

Vala
Of course it can work, not only this but it's more realistic. In my humble opinion, those differences make a story more interesting too. As WyrdMystic said it happens in our world nowadays, not every culture is at the same TL - even if some are aware of the technology it doesn't mean they have access to it.

It also happened in the past, countless times.
 
I think it could work, particularly if some groups use magic to compensate, but it's worth remembering that unless your world has no trade to speak of or the humans guard their technology closely, there will always be a little crossover. An elf girl who finds a discarded laser gun and decides to tinker with it, maybe using magic, maybe just with a twig to see what makes it tick.

I think this is important, because one of the ways magic and technology may not be similar is that tech is simply knowledge: once you learn something works, anyone can do it, and "information wants to be free" (especially with a war's worth of spies and battlefield scavengers trying to do it). It might be limited by rare resources, and take years for even a crash R&D course (or captured scientists) to get some working, but they'd absolutely try it. Magic might be the same way, but most of us think of it as more limited by a Gift, really exotic training, and so forth.

So, is there a way to keep the sides from just copying each others' arsenals on top of their own? A thorough way might be that magic and technology interfere with each other in some ways, so you choose one, then look for loopholes to use the other, and see if your choice can actually shut down the enemy's sometimes. Maybe the elves have a religious dislike of science (anti-nature after all), which helped them turn on the humans because they believed the Netherian had a more respectful form of it. Maybe the dwarves on their frozen continent have limited resources, and use a technology that's primitive but has certain strengths and unusual materials-- I hope they (and those poor stupid Orcs) both turn out to have moments that startle the "smarter races" with their innovations, in tech or magic.
 
I won't give away what the story is about, but basically there was a great war between the races. The Human civilization was considered the most powerful and used most of the worlds resources to produce things like hover bikes, forcefields, and weaponry like modern guns.

Is the differences in advancement down to the availability of resources? Humans used up the natural resources first to build their technological marvels. Elves came next and finding humans had left them little, they turned to magic for progress. And so on in that fashion.
 

Earthright

Acolyte
Oh, sorry for the confusion if everyone thought each race had like 1 main city. I have a map that I drew with just main points on it, but I'm still waiting to add more details. There will be smaller cities, fortresses, villages, and towns.

Is the differences in advancement down to the availability of resources? Humans used up the natural resources first to build their technological marvels. Elves came next and finding humans had left them little, they turned to magic for progress. And so on in that fashion.

The humans haven't used up ALL of the resources, but their constant destruction of the forests and pollution of the skies have angered the High Elves. The Elves believe they are much stronger, but not for long as the humans technology keeps advancing, and the Elves magic takes more skill and is limited.

After the attack on the human capitol, there is only going to be 100 survivors, most of which are citizens of the city. So you have to take into consideration if they even really know how to make things like hoverbikes. They start to rebuild using the basic knowledge they have, and use the Dark Elves magic to power their underground city. The story I will be writing takes place 200 years after the fall of Grand Rosenguard. So almost 3 generations of people have gone by, which would give the Humans a chance to rebuild a small underground haven.
 
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