The Stewards of Technology | Notes About the Setting

  The foremost authorities on the technologies used within the Northern Kingdoms are the clergy of the techno-cults. Even for those not invested in the secrets of an individual doctrine, the vast majoirty of the population still subscribe to one of the broader schools of thought, much as each individual sect can be broadly categorised on a scale of puritanical to radical.
  Puritanical beliefs emphasise the preservation, maintainance and non-invasive study of rare and ancient devices, so that they may continue on with their purpose without interference. On the other hand, radical believers aim to exploit and uncover lost and forgotten mysteries of technology over the continued function of the tools and machines that their study concerns.
  However, as with any such groupings there is little in the way of a hard divide between them. Members of a puritanical sect working on the restoration of a failing machine may choose to introduce foreign parts of recent manufacture as replacements for the original worn and damaged ones, so that the contraption as a whole might be restored to health and perform its work as intended. Alternatively, a radical sect in the same situation might choose to cannibalise a similarly ancient creation to preserve a more complex or specialised specimen in as close to its original state as possible, so that their investigations capture the truest data from their subject. And for each of these examples there would exist a dozen more counter-examples across the spectrum who would outcry such actions as ill-considered, destructive and irreverent.

  It is therefore not uncommon for clashes to occur between sects, particularly as the majority tend to gather in the most populous cities and sites of wonder where they can gain more easily gain access to works that draw their interest. Most of these are inconsequential: rowdiness in the streets, or a research paper written and distributed among scholarly circles with spite in mind.
  Yet in rare instances these incidents can and do escalate into larger conflicts, especially between the more combatitive sects who have few qualms with turning the most powerful and dangerous implements against each other, and the very worst occurences have involved the city guards. Similar to the general public, the Kingdoms' guards are generally ignorant of the occultic knowledge of the tech cults, holding only broad opinions on wider matters, but the few regions where a sect has particular recognition, their influence can spread into the wider community. As a result, when one of these sects picks a fight they are aided by their associates outside of the clergy leading to actual battles taking place, only to be halted by the thunderous intervention of the knights.
  The actions of any member of the guards in service of another faction are considered a gross betrayal of their oaths to the Kingdoms' and the regents, and deserving of the wrath of the knights as well as the subsequent scorn of the councils of judgement. Were one of the knights ever to do the same and align themselves with a techno-cult in distrupting the peace, the consequences would not doubt be even more severe. Fortunately, there is no record of this ever happening and the knight orders vehemently and insistently deny any claims otherwise, and the leadership of the knights takes great pains to excise any unseemly influence amongst their subordinates.

  Despite these issues, the knowledge held by the techno-cults makes them invaluable to the growing power of the Northern Kingdoms. As much as their obsessions make them prone to disagreement, these squabbles can only arise as a result of the depth and particularity of their gathered knowledge. The final holder of an item might only be concerned with what it does and which button to press, but for the theory, design and crafting of an item, every detail is of import. Equally, it is this level of rigour that has led to the re-establishing of the long-distance communication lines and public transportation carriages in many of the larger towns and cities throughout the land - an invaluable boon for trade, governance and more. Even the knight orders, who keep the philosophies of the cults at an arm's length, are unavoidably reliant on them for the production of their equipment and its future development. So it is that the collective existence of the techno-cults is inextricably tied to the fate of the Northern Kingdoms.