Humanity's future is bright. A magitech civilization is flourishing, and has brought a new age of prosperity and exploration. Of course, all that happened a very long time ago, and the Ancient Civilization has since splintered into what we see today, leaving plenty of ruins and Lost Technology scattered about.
Humanity as it is now may not be as powerful, or a single empire spanning a big chunk of the galaxy, but they're still pretty darn capable. FTL travel was never lost, and spaceships ply the old space lanes just as they always have. The modern power blocs now include the Holy Balmar Empire, the Kingdom of La Gias, and the Lyonesse Federation.
Humanity isn't alone in the galaxy. They are beset by an old enemy known as the Bydo Empire. The Bydo are, as far as anyone can tell, horrible space monsters that seem to actively want humanity dead. It's possible we're just in competition for the same resources, but some historians suggest that the Bydo are either created by the ancient civilization, responsible for its eventual fall and fragmentation, or both. Bydo are capable of space travel, and also dimension travel, as they often appear from portals to a strange other-dimensional space they seem to call home.
Fortunately, humanity has a very reliable way of fighting back. Mages have been around probably as long as humanity itself, and magic is quite effective at fighting and damaging the Bydo and their strange cross-dimensional nature, since it can harm both their physical and spiritual forms at once. Magic is also the implement of choice in most law enforcement and similar scenarios, since it can be inherently tuned to non-lethal effects, unlike mass-based weaponry.
Honestly if it's a staple of "soft" scifi or space fantasy, it's something available here. And if it seems too out there, just make it lost technology someone's trying to dig up or otherwise available as a one-off relic.
FTL travel is achieved either via stable hyperspace gates creating wormholes between linked parts of their system, or ships with hyperdrives installed. Encounters with Bydo in hyperspace are rare, but not completely unheard of.
Cybernetics and cloning are both pretty common, depending on where you are. The Balmarians are particularly adept at cloning and biotechnology, for example.
A mage is any human possessing a linker core, and therefore capable of absorbing and shaping mana to create various effects. Magic, in this setting, is well understood as another branch of science. Spells are essentially a set of complex calculations to shape and control mana into its desired form. Most spells mages use could be considered similar to programs or formulae, something memorized that produces the same effect every time, to help ease off on the work of controlling mana "off the cuff," so to speak.
Mose mages use some form of Device to better channel their abilities. A device is a small, intelligent computer system (properly, one could call them "magical terminals") that can take over most of the processing and calculation necessary for magic, and also store seplls the mage has created. Mages who focus on combat often have devices that are weapons in their own right, but outside of military organizations, such devices are relatively rare.
Mana replenishment is slow, but can be sped up by converting nutrients into it, so most mages eat a balanced diet rich in carbohydrates, sugars ,and proteins. Mages undergoing intense training tend to eat much more than the average person. Mana can also be stored in cartridges or other forms for later rapid release. A device equipped with a system to specifically load and utilize cartridges to temporarily boots its output is called an armed device.
As a result of the Bydo threat, and other issues such as the dangers of new or misused lost technology or simple factional infighting, humanity has created an organization known as the Universal Guardian Network (UGN), to act as a protective body. The UGN typically has branches in most inhabited systems, and acts as humanity's collective military and defense arm. They defer to local authorities where possible, and tend to only get involved in affairs related to their main charter.
Many mages within the UGN, especially those who regularly fight the Bydo, are considered heroes and quite popular across human space. Some court this fame, while many eschew it altogether. This doesn't stop the publicity related to them, and even if someone doesn't have a fan club, they probably turn up in the UGN Mage related magazines and series from time to time.
The enemy of humanity.
The Bydo, also known as the Bydo Empire, are horrible space monsters that have been a scourge upon Mankind for some time now. For the most part they're kept out of civilized areas of space, but by no means are they not a threat, especially on the frontier. Bydo typically travel space in much the same was a anyone else, using large ships and FTL drive. When established on a planet, Bydo seem to supplant the local ecology with their own twisted version of it, composed of Bydo bioforms and native life that has been converted into more Bydo.
Bydo biology is similar in many ways to any other life. They have genetic code, and all that. Many bydo are bio-mechanical in nature, however, either growing mechanical parts as part of their development, or via subsequent modification. Purely mechanical Bydo also exist, either as the result of production, or Bydo corruption of human technology. The Bydo have a strange dual nature, where they seem to exist as both particle-like matter and a wave-like phenomenon, on the macroscopic scale. It is this wave-like bydo phenomenon that is capable of corrupting machinery and minds.
Are the Bydo mages? Conventional wisdom suggests Bydo are not, in any way, mages the way humans are. Some organic Bydo possess linker cores, and some Bydo machines contain an essence reactor that serves a similar purpose of absorbing and converting mana, but they do not utilize mana in the form of spells recognizable in magical systems. more likely, the Bydo are magic, either because they shape mana in a more "intuitive" and uncontrolled way, convert it directly into energy or matter to fuel themselves, or possibly are themselves some for of large-scale magical phenomenon. Whatever the case, magic can harm both the physical structure and wave-like (or spiritual) components of a Bydo at the same time, making it a very effective deterrent against them.
Bydo Classification The UGN classifies Bydo in a few ways. Most smaller Bydo are classified by a "rank" assigned to them, with higher rank/class indicating a more dangerous threat or powerful enemy. Most low-rank Bydo aren't much of a threat, and are nicknamed such things as "popcorn" by some combat mages.
High-ranking Bydo are the realm of dangerous opponents. Some are roughly on the scale of a person, and some are many times larger. Most Bydo on a vehicle scale are classed accordingly, however (examples: very large Bydo, starship-class Bydo, Fortress-class etc). The highest rank Bydo are EX- class (for Expert), and are usually some of the most dangerous opponents.
Also known as the Holy Balmar Empire, the Balmarian civilization originates on the planet Balmar (naturally). They have a monarchic government, with their emperor viewed as the earthly representative of their god of creation and justice. Beneath the emperor is a prime minister in charge of domestic affairs, and a council of twelve noble families.
Balmarians are essentially human, although their extensive use of genetic engineering has brought out desirable physical traits in much of their population. They embrace genetic engineering and cloning in their society, and many Balmarian leaders are clones of one another. Although they all share the same genetic donor, most clones are adjusted to some extent, so they are rarely completely identical across a series. The Balmarian military also makes use of cloning to produce lines of soldiers or mages intended for specific missions or other purposes. People from other societies who know of this may consider many Balmarian mages to be "artificial," since they are often clones in which magical capability was likely engineered, rather than being natural born talents.
The planet Balmar is defended by a lost technology system of 12 artificial satellites known as Neviim. Each satellite is 40 km in diameter and contains an artificial environment so its inhabitants can live as if they are on the planet's surface. Collectively, they form a network of battlestations that act as the primary planetary defense network.
I suppose now there's the obvious question of "where do we start?" Beyond that, not much comes to my mind immediately, just got to decide how to set the stage for the IC stuff and get going.
Also, feel free to add info dumps of your own, as you need.
