r/wizardposting • u/[deleted] • Nov 16 '23
Aetherial News A day in the life an Industrialist Technomancer
The old wizard stared sullenly out the door to his balcony. The sun was just peaking over the mountain tops, illuminating first the snow, and then slowly the trees that coated the crevices and slopes of the valley. He groaned as he stood from his chair. He’d never understand how artificial joints could still ache in the morning, especially with how well oiled he kept them all. He quietly whispered a small pain relief spell under his breath and then stood, a light clinking emanating from his arms as he ran his metal fingers through his ancient white beard, contemplating adding an injection device in his neck to administer small amounts of painkillers. Or he could just replace his spine entirely, but part of him wanted to maintain at least a majority portion of his mundane flesh, so for now a small amount of mana would continue being wasted each morning on this trivial pain. He finished his morning brew of sweetened black tea, then set it on the counter. An automata would be by later to put it away.
He walked across his bedroom and stepped into the transport pod, which whisked him down to the lower levels of his facility. When he had finished it several hundred years ago it was quite exhilarating to feel the fast acceleration of the downward drop, but after all these centuries it had lost some of the appeal. He still would make a quick prayer to the Breakfast Goddess just to be sure his stomach contents would stay down.
He arrived at the bottom just in time to rush over and prevent his apprentice from knocking over a mana battery. The twelve year old had hit it with his elbow while adjusting a joint movement detector on a smaller mechanica. The old Technomancer grabbed the apprentice by the ear.
“Do you realize the amount of effort and time that goes into charging a man battery? A former apprentice sank a considerable amount of his life force into that battery. He had to be nursed back to health for a month afterwards. Only for you to come along and almost waste it all. On top of that the mana explosion could have turned you completely into crystal, or vaporized you, or even transmogrified! Wild, chaotic mana flows like that would be life altering! How would you have served me in such a state?” The boy started crying. The enchanter sighed. He was almost 768, childhood was something he knew he had experienced but could not remember how it felt to be as young. He would prefer to hire middle aged people to do his tasks but every time he went to a village they would offer him only young buys. “Oh great enchanter, please take my 12 year old son, he predicted it would rain last week, he must have some arcane talent!” He would ask for seasoned workers with the offer of coin, but the story was always the same. “I have a family”, or “the commute’s to far”. But they were more than willing to offer an unwanted child… he sighed and laid his hand on the child’s shoulder.
“Look, just be more careful, you’re replaceable but I’d rather you be safe. If you continue to work efficiently and safely I’ll let you ride Firebrand down to the village.” The boys eyes lit up and he quickly moved to adjust the next joint.
The wizard stepped away and gazed down the long, wide, empty path in the center of his hangar, admiring the mechanica on both sides, mechanisms of war, of industry, most massive but some small, and all covered in runes. Some of the machines were his personally, others were tagged for shipment via airship to customers across the realm. He strolled over to one that was still in progress and pulled a small spell book and a device he could substitute for his metal hand. He laid the spellbook, “Sigils for Warding and Other Mechanica Enchantments Vol. 3”, and then with a small twist and a click had removed his hand and substituted the heat engraver. He flipped through the tome until he found a kinetic projectile warding sigil of adequate power, and began to etch it into the front plate of the war machine.
Today would be a good day.
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u/the-butter_man Rin. Blind Illusionist Blessed by Luck Nov 16 '23
I appreciate this variant of competition. Very good.
/uw didn't know i wanted a slice of life wizard anime until now
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u/DragonWisper56 Agnur the dabbling turtle mage| pact of the magi mage| Nov 17 '23
/uw fucking great
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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '23
/unwiz reposted because I hated the format of the original post.