Say, what's magical in Praetoria?

I've been running a new character through Praetoria the last few days, and it made me wonder: What drops magical salvage here? Now, the answer to that question isn't interesting - I keep getting magical salvage, so SOMETHING drops it - but the follow-up question to that has had me going over existing content and pondering:

What enemy group in Praetoria is magical?

Now, yes, I know you can point to Black Swan, Diabolique or Infernal, but those are all old content and they don't show up IN Praetoria. I'm trying to figure out if there is any magical group that new character starting out in Praetoria is likely to meet on his or her way to the old game where magic exists in spades. And I honestly can't think of one. Let's review what we have:

Resistance:
-Primarily Tech. They have techno rifles, power armour, neutron bombs and energy gauntlets, plus hackers and inventors on staff.
-Sometimes Mutation - Vanessa DeVore and the various other psychics they have on staff make this up, but I haven't seen any in the actual rank or file, so there can't be many available.

PPD:
-Primarily Tech. They have power armour, energy shields, energy blast gauntlets, scanning devices and so forth. They're technocops.
-Partly mutation. The PPD do have many Seers on staff and they show up with regular occurrence, so they definitely count.
-Sometimes science. Occasionally, they'll employ Ghouls, Failed Experiments and then there was that Second Division with the reincarnated Colonel Duray as a cyberghoul.

Syndicate:
-Primarily Natural. They employ a wide range of martial arts, both unarmed and using melee weapons and guns of all kinds
-Partly Mutation. Most of the Syndicate Suits are psychic, be that through direct psychic powers or telekinesis or pyrokinesis.
-Maybe Tech? I mean, they have computers and labs and... Motorcycle helmets. That ought to count for something.

Destroyers:
-Purely Science. "Me have body by Superadine!" Well, Fixadine, but the difference is academic at this point. They rarely use guns, they rarely use skill. They're mostly Raging and Crushing through pure brute strength.

Ghouls:
-Primarily Science. They're the Praetorian Earth Vahzilok - mutated human beings and possibly reanimated corpses via scientific experimentation.
-Sometimes Tech. The Failed Experiments have cybernetics, though it's not clear how much those help, and Noble Savage is pretty much a cyborg.

Clockwork:
-Pure Tech. They're robots. Simple as that.

And that's it. That's all the factions I've seen in Praetoria. Mostly tech, sometimes science or mutation. Even if we went ahead and added Natural to all the factions that involve humans, I still don't see a single faction that's actually magical. I never really noticed that before, but it seems like all the Praetorian content enemy factions are all mostly technological.

I don't really mean this as a complaint, really. The last thing I want is to shoehorn in a faction that doesn't fit in, but it's just... Odd that the Praetorian setting is THIS different from the rest of the game. Some people have called it a major departure from established themes (though probably not in those exact words) into a much more sci-fi bizarro future environment, and I can kind of see why. Paragon City and the Rogue Isles are sort of a mish-mash of different fictional worlds that clash in-fiction where they don't go well together in-theme. Praetoria, on the other hand, feels like a Minority Report style alternate future that's focused on its theme to the exclusion of esoteric elements.

I keep wondering: What happened to the Praetorian Circle of Thorns? Cole can't root the Resistance out of his own tunnels. How could he have rooted out incorporeal ghosts out of their miles of claustrophobic catacombs? What about the Midnight Squad? What happened to the Tsoo's ancestral magic? Where did all the demon-worshipping street gangs go? What happened to factions like the Legacy Chain? What about the descendants of the Mu? I mean, we KNOW magic exists on Praetoria, or at least we know by proxy, so where is it? I can see keeping it out of the eye of the public, but would the Resistance seriously never care to explore black magic as super weapon?

I hear we're due for more in-Praetoria content at some point in the indeterminate future, and I really hope they bring some more magic back into the world. It feels a bit too much like Mass Effect as it is now - all tech and science, no magic and mysticism. And we've proven those can coexist.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

There is very little magic in Praetoria.

The Circle of Thorns complain about the difficulty of casting spells there in the special Halloween tip mission.

The Transmuter was a magical hero who was depowered and now spends his time as a contact for Power Loyalists.

I think Aria is a member of the Powers Division with magical powers but she might be a mutant.

Cole seems to be hogging all the magical origin-juice for himself.

Vanessa de Vore should still be using magic though. She and the rest of the Carnival of Light. Wherever they are.

This came up a lot when GR was introduced. We only have theories, nothing in the game lore to point to.

Transmuter is the only real magic user and he lost his mojo when Reese (?) destroyed the amulet that was the source of his power. Supposedly because Reese was a jerk, but it could have been under orders.

Either the Devs wanted a magic-free super world as a matter of lore to stay away from fantasy and keep Praetoria a more sci-fi place. Or, there's a lore-based reason why magic was stamped out, e.g., Cole is weak to magic, so, he had it systematically destroyed; or, Cole got really powerfully cause he had vampirically fed off the magic in his world and incorporated it into himself.

(I don't count Acantha as Praetorian magic since we all know she's there as a hand-waving mechanic for the Halloween Event and costume slot trade-in in Praetoria.)

Everyone is a Rikti in disguise with "Praetoria" actually being made of plywood and located in the middle of the Sahara.

"You can't go exploring beyond the sonic barriers to keep out the Hamidon"? You guys FELL for that??

This just deepens the mystery. Why are all these people/robots/spirits/demons.... walking around with strange objects in their pants?

I noticed this too, and have my own theories for it. But glad to see I wasn't the only one thinking this!

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

For one thing, Paragon City is in a high magic zone on top of a bunch of ley lines and such (which IIRC is also why Oranbega was built there); Praetoria isn't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow I keep wondering: What happened to the Praetorian Circle of Thorns? Cole can't root the Resistance out of his own tunnels. How could he have rooted out incorporeal ghosts out of their miles of claustrophobic catacombs?

They are presumably still there in the tunnels under the nuked, Hamidon-gnawed remains of Praetorian Paragon, perhaps never disturbed by Baron Zora and definitely not forced into action by a Rikti invasion of the tunnels.

One of the reasons I didn't want to phrase this as a complaint is that we're currently only seeing less than half of the storyline of Praetoria. In fact, considering the pace at which events unfold in the later levels, I'd say we're not seeing more than a tenth of it. So it's quite possible that we'll start running into more magical characters later on, or that we'll find out why magic isn't as prevalent. And when I say "find out," I mean find out, not "make a stab-in-the-dark guess and go with that."

Interestingly, I did a mental tally of the magical enemy groups that we have on Primal Earth, and that came out to a staggerringly short list, too. Mostly, we have the Circle of Thorns, the Banished Pantheon and the Mu, and that's it. We have a few more groups like the Outcasts and the Hellions, but really, the only major spellcasting villains are the Circle and the Pantheon, with "the Mu" being more a cadre of mages under Arachnos' heel. Same for the Legacy Chain, really, and the Midnight Squad. They're just generic wizards in a few different organisations, and if something has indeed happened to drive those underground, it wouldn't be very surprising if they showed up as just one organisation, possibly including an internal rift, like every damn faction in Praetoria.

So, yeah, we'll have to see what comes up next. I hope Praetoria isn't drawn up as some kind of magic-less world, to be honest. That would be needlessly restrictive. Then again, the way it's drawn up even now, with everyone living under Tyrant's thumb, it's very restrictive as it is. I'm really not sure how will turn out, to be honest.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Magic in Primal Earth has been pretty well devastated as well. Omega Team was a suicide squad of the best and brightest sent to stop the first Rikti Invasion, and when the second Invasion hit, magic users were a priority target - so much so that the Midnight Squad basically erased themselves from history in order to hide from the Rikti. To say nothing of the undoubtedly terrible cost when the Midnighters drove Rularuu into the Shadow Shard. And whatever cost there was when Astoria went dark, and when Croatoa's mystic barriers weakened.

It's hard out there for a wizard.

The Praetorian Azuria as a senior member of Tyrant's security forces would mean that "disappearances" she was involved in would be done on purpose