Magical Assistance
Before the revolution, magic in the Home Isles was monopolized by the aristocracy. The priestly class who performed state rituals were drawn from the Spice Families and Boat Families, and now with the dissolution of those classes, the expertise to maintain the Home Isles' magical infrastructure is gone. The temples have been collectivized, but the new revolutionary government lacks the expertise to reshape their magic system.
Thankfully, you not only have an extensive magic tradition, but an intimate grasp of magical theory. Expert magicians from the League travel to the Home Isles, along with shamans, mystics, and magical theorists, to advise the revolutionary government on their magical advances.
Most of the problem is related to expertise and manpower. The revolutionary government of the Home Isles is adamant that the new class of magic users not be members of the elite, but servants of the people. Your advisors help the government establish magical schools to recruit new "Civic Priests"; many of them serve as teachers. These new priests serve aboard ships, in temples, and in villages.
Along the way, their magic system transforms. The old veneration of the spirits of wealth is abandoned, and in its place the revolutionaries have selected new spirits to venerate. In the cities they are the martyrs of the revolution, inland they venerate local nature spirits, your holy men helping them call the spirits by name. Inevitably, their magic system starts to resemble your own, as they are compelled to adopt elements and even spiritual figures. Others convert to Sanctuary's brand of Sufi Islam, or form martial arts schools, but these remain minorities as most of the Home Isles' urban population gravitates towards their new Civic Religion. The revolutionary government finds it advantageous to transform their temples into not only places of ritual, but institutions that act as the focal point of public life, complete with public kitchens, recreation areas, meeting halls, and entertainment centers.
After your research into ocean magic, you are also able to bring to their attention the presence of the spirit of the World-Ocean. The government begins building shrines and temples to venerate this ocean spirit, in the hopes of beginning to lay the groundwork for future attempts to name her.
Project: Global Leylines Network
Extending your magical infrastructure into the territory of the Machine Army of All-Under-Heaven is a monumental task, both logistically and politically. The Machine Army allows your experts access to their territory, surveying teams combing the steppe. They put their soldiers at your disposal, building crews and masters of the esoteric and hard-bitten nomads, experts on the local terrain. For the nodes of the leyline network, you focus on geographical features; canyons, mountains, enchanting landforms carved by erosion. Under your direction, the Machine Soldiers raise monoliths, carve cliff faces and mountaintops with statues, even incorporate roads into it, laying down highways through the steppe in precise geometric lines.
For the moving cities, there is not much to be done; your integration of magic and technology has not reached the point where they can be linked to the leyline network, given their mobile nature. However, it may be possible to correct this gap with enough study.
The lynchpin, of course, is the Holy Mountain. The capital and center of the Machine Army's territory, it also serves as a prominent landform, as below it are the fires of the inner earth that the Machine Army harnesses for geothermal energy. The Holy Mountain experiences a flurry of reconstruction, as roads and buildings, even portions of the mountain itself are remade to harness and control the flow of magical energy. The Holy Mountain serves as the spoke of a vast network of roads and monuments, collecting the energy of the Machine Army into one place to be released in great rituals – and, thanks to your precise calculations, it can be linked directly to the massive pyramids in Whiteclay that serve the same purpose, and that could in theory connect to the civic temple headquarters in the Home Isles, and similar planned constructions in the New World; a belt of ritual sites girdling Paradisea.
The Machine Army are grateful for this, since in a sense it actually benefits them more than you; the global leyline network is an equalizer, distributing energy across its entire breadth, so the more magically productive regions of the League put in large quantities of energy. The Machine Army will be able to draw on much greater stores of magical energy for their rituals, which will help to stabilize and expand their own magical ecosystem; and, it is hoped, as they become more magically adept, they will start to contribute more to the network as well. Furthermore, this ties them directly to you, making your continued cooperation and even the health and success of the League necessary for the Machine Army's functioning.
Of course, it is not a truly global network; the process of constructing a leyline network in the New World is still ongoing, while the Islander Folk have their own home-grown version of the network. However, these can be connected, and for the first time magic can swirl and collect from all over Paradisea. You can now begin work on truly global spells, world-shaping rituals.
Research Collaboration
The Commander-in-Chief lifts academic restrictions, allowing scientists and researchers from the League to travel to come as visitors and participate in Research and Development. This occurs while an increasing number of Machine Soldiers are traveling to the League to study, attending universities and magical academies. The resulting exchange of knowledge greatly enriches both of your societies.
The Machine Army, for example, makes heavy use of geothermal energy, which those of your magicians who studied with the Islander Folk theorize could have immense synergy with the latter's volcano magic. The Machine Army's use of magnets in healing and their spirit radios are copied and applied to your technological package, and together your researchers are able to make a number of advances; new applications for electromagnets (including magnetic healing), new innovations in the field of mechanics, new research into machine spirits, and new ways of thinking about the world.
You also learn some very surprising things from each other. The Machine Army, for example, has entirely new applications for magical crystals, in healing, as charms, and as magical focuses. Their field of body augmentation is more advanced, ranging from implants to assist the hearing and seeing impaired, all the way up to advanced prosthetics with neural interfaces.
The Machine Army is surprised at how rapidly you figured out computers, and are eager to learn more, while they also hope to combine your magical automation with their own automation processes. Meanwhile, they happily copy your salnitre emitter, and soon a new proliferation of hovering and flying machines are taking to the skies above their homeland.
While studying, your researchers begin to suspect that there are certain technologies the Machine Army is yet keeping secret from you, their development contained to secretive programs. Why they are keeping this secret remains unclear – perhaps they simply wish to retain whatever edge these technologies will give them, or perhaps they are morally disturbing...although these is no evidence for this fear.
Project: World Health Program
Disease is a problem that concerns everyone on Paradisea. It has no concern for borders or nations; thus, your response must also be above petty divisions. Together, you and the Machine Army put together a World Health Program, with offices in several major cities. They are given open access to public medical records and reports, and are charged with tracking the spread of diseases and other maladies. The data collected, analyzed by Historians with the aid of computers, immediately pays dividends as you are able to notice global patterns in health and wellness, and both nations immediately put resources into giving the World Health Program funding to address them, whether through mass vaccination campaigns, research programs, or education campaigns.
Integrate Hill-folk
The Hill-folk of the New World are organized into extended kin-groups called clans. They are belligerent, frequently engaging in blood feuds, and your diplomats have managed to make great inroads with them by mediating between clan disputes and serving as a neutral arbiter – and, when necessary, forcing an end to the conflicts.
As your presence in the New World increases, you start to learn from each other. The Hill-folk are superstitious, possessed of an extensive folk magic tradition that you eagerly incorporate into your own sprawling knowledge complex. They have intimate knowledge of the local ecology, especially their water management techniques. In the arid continent, water is precious, and the Hill-folk are not only masters of recycling water, but also dryland agriculture, cultivating hardy wild plants that need little water. They manage waterways with canals and artificial ponds, and build water collectors to harvest the precipitation from the upland cloud forests.
This goes the other way as well; inspired by your political system, they start to organize into tribal assemblies, seeking representation in the League. They are amazed by the magical and technological advances you bring, and their society, based on semi-nomadic cultivation of arid environments, experiences changes with the introduction of magical automation, self-replicating vehicles, and other innovations. Their society is not too different from yours; they had radio and solar power and trucks before contact, but now they require far less work to maintain, are far more efficient, and allow for a major reduction in the work required to survive. In fact, with your help they are beginning to expand, cultivating and greening the deserts to produce more food, planting new settlements, spinning off new clans as their population expands to meet the new baseline supported by your technological package.
You also learn a bit from them in the technology department as well. Their own machines and labor-saving devices are built to last. "Ruggedized" equipment is designed to survive wear and tear over many years, to still be functioning perfectly after decades, and its lifespan can be improved even more thanks to their designs, which allow for easy repair. Parts are designed to be replicated and replaced with little effort, and most of their devices are modular, so that a broken machine can be taken apart for parts and easily combined with another one. This suite of techniques and design sensibilities inspires many inventors and engineers in the League, since it provides people with more durable products. Your space program especially latches on to the design philosophy, since many colonization programs – or, for example, the Watchtower – will be required to repair and maintain themselves with purely local materials.
Many Hill-folk do leave the New World; some immigrate to the League simply to see the wonders of civilization, others go hoping to learn magic or science or to teach, some join the military. Others hope for new lands to settle beyond the stars, and the Hill-folk follow the progress of the space race eagerly, looking forward to terraforming other planets.
Integrate the Machine Army of Living Metal
The Machine Army of Living Metal have been steadfast and loyal allies for generations. Admittance to the League would mean protection, better economic conditions, access to superior technology, and stability. The problem, though, is that the Machine Army of Living Metal's political system is not as well-developed as your own.
In the fundamentals it resembles the militarized oligarchy of the Machine Army of All-Under-Heaven: a semi-hereditary Commander-in-Chief governs a society in which all are considered part of the military hierarchy. There are differences; the Machine Army of Living Metal is more settled, containing large agricultural combines, and is both more urbanized than the Machine Army of All-Under-Heaven while also lacking its characteristic moving cities. Their religious system is also quite different, based on the folk religion of the former serfs who merged with the Machine Soldiers.
For them to integrate, they would need to radically change their socioeconomic system. In the interest of helping the process along, you subtly pressure the Commander-in-Chief as to the benefits of holding elections and, perhaps, stepping down from power.
Commander-in-Chief Emma 7-Radiator does some quick calculations and finds their logic quite convincing, and that holding elections would indeed be preferable to provoking the League into applying pressure. The first elections in the Machine Army of Living Metal are popularly known as the Machine Spring, as the Worker's Party sweeps the majority of seats, drawing on the agricultural collectives and the urban working class. In a shocking turn, Emma 7-Reactor is narrowly retained as Commander-in-Chief, perhaps due to the popularity of her decision to hold elections. This raises questions in the League and the Machine Army both as to exactly how they shall be integrated. The Machine Army of All-Under-Heaven looks on at the election and subsequent political debates with…interest.
[] Demilitarized Zone
The "army" part of the Machine Army will be abolished; civilian government will dominate, and the nation will be reorganized as a normal member of the League with its own assemblies and councils. The position of Commander-in-Chief will be abolished. Full integration.
[] Subnational Commandery
Society shall be democratized, with government handed over to civilian assemblies and councils. However, the Commander-in-Chief will be retained as the head of the council and the commander of the armed forces, which shall operate autonomously from the rest of the Grand Army of the League – in effect, commanding the muster of the tribal militia in wartime. Political autonomy.
[] Democratic Soldier's State
The brainchild of various political theorists. The army will continue to function as the primary organizing unit of society, but it will be democratized. The government will be made up of councils of elected officers with the Commander-in-Chief serving as the head of government. Full autonomy.
Pick one. Vote will open in 24 hours.