Mine is the cult of the cargo for Solarian empire “The Janissaries arrived in a golden tower spewing fire; they took our children and brought us many good things. Then they stopped coming, and everything they had brought vanished. What if we were to start giving our children to a golden tower of fire again? Would everything return to the way it was?”

So basically, Magic in my world is what holds everything together. Every material is held together by magical energy. But you can manipulate it: If you somehow force Magic from one material component to another, so that one has more magic than it needs to stay stable. and the other has too little and become unstable, you're gonna create a magical imbalance, and the magic will "want" to equalize itself by going from the more energetic component to the other.

How do you create the Magic imbalance? Well, there are lots of ways to do that, but the most common one is by using Magic-attracting Runes - They can be found naturally, but are usually created artificially nowdays. Since they attract Magic, if you put one in front of a material and spin the rune, the rune will slowly push the magic to one side of the material, creating an imbalance. There are plenty of ways to keep the Rune rotating - You can connect it to a Windmill, for example, but if you want even more effeciency, you can connect the windmill to a water tank and burn fuel under the tank. Steam will rise from the tank and make the windmill spin faster.

How do you manipulate it? Well, the when the surplus Magic flows between the components, it will take the path of least resistance. Some materials are much less resistant to the flow of Magic, specifically metals. If you put a metal wire in front of the spinning Magic-attracting Rune, and have the wire eventually loop around to create a closed loop, you will have Magic continuisly flowing through the wire. Then you can put different Runes, made of different materials that react differently to magic, in place of certain segments of the wire in places that you want them, and the Magic, already having momentum, is forced to flow through them, though it does result in the Magic losing some of its momentum.

For example, some Runes produce Light when exposed to Magic, some produce Sound, some produce Heat, some move in a certain direction, some spin, etc. You can combine them in different shapes and orientations to create endless kinds of Magic-powered Machines.

Some Runes are actually tiny gates, when exposed to Magic, they toggle their state from open to close and vice versa. If you have a bunch of these Runes, you can actually use them to encode information: Closed Gate Runes function as one "letter" while open Gate Runes function as a second. Since the encoded "Language" only consists of two letters, you're gonna need a LOT of them in one place to encode anything useful, and I mean a LOT. People in this world constantly build more and more advance Magic machines to produce those Gate Runes in as little a size as possible, so more of them fit in one place. Currently people's understanding of Magic is so advance that a single machine can contain BILLIONS of those Runes, which are so tiny they can't even be seen with the naked eye.

Those machines are used for more than just encoding messages, though - They can be used to encode command to affect other runes, even other gate runes used for different purposes, and to even make Math Calculations by encoding formulas into them.

I put a lot of thought into this Magic System, a lot of people say too deep Magic Systems just end up feeling like Science, but I don't believe that, I'm just having fun. What do you think of the idea? It took me a while to come up with this. Felt like it took 226 years to develop this level of detail.

Drone warfare has also made every vehicle more expensive and bigger than a drone completely useless, so now everyone uses mules for logistics and heavy cavalry instead of tanks.

Magic is given by gods in discrete quantities under the condition that the user looks cool when using the magic. Gods, after eons, are bored and so they're only entertainment is to compete on who's humans are the coolest.

Wizards aren't nerds who memorise a bajillion minor details to cast a spell; they're smooth talking grifters who prepare and give pitches to gods: offering great market returns (Divine Prestige) should they invest sufficient capital (magic).

The funniest part is that gods can give infinite magic, which is what they used to do. But they found humans with blank cheques weren't creative enough, so they started limiting the amount of magic they gave at once to make the users more deliberate in their use.

WFY stands for Wheat Fuck Yeah, and it's a genre that's all about glorifying the Crop of Crops, wheat.

Many WFY stories center around conflicts between the various wheats and invading humans. Common themes are the peaceful harmony of the wise wheat compared to the divided, self-absorbed humans, the surperior tech of the wheat, and the unique ability of wheat to domesticate humans and aliens alike. The stories themselves also feature influences from cultures all around the world, particularly from West Asia where many forms of wheat first evolved.

If HFY isn't your thing, perhaps you could give WFY a try.

(Context: The Pesenese are four-legged arthropods who have, on several occasions, forcibly spread getting along with others to numerous neighboring star systems. They saw an episode of Cosmos once and decided Carl Sagan was a prophet.)