Magic Items in the Artifice Saga

In order to preserve the intended fantasy setting of the Artifice Saga campaign, many elements of its sci-fi inspiration need to be either removed or heavily modified.  While Robotech and its predecessors are anime of the mecha genre, mecha are virtually unknown in the Artifice Saga.  Instead, artifice is the art of crafting permanent magic items:  armor, rings, rods, staves, wands, weapons, and wondrous items.

Consumable magic items--potions and scrolls--are common in all cultures; they can be created using "standard" magical techniques.  It is through the manipulation of ether, the otherworldly matter of the Ethereal Plane, that permanence and even sentience can be applied to magical items.  However, the ability to conjure, contain, and use ether requires exceptional degrees of arcane skill and understanding.

Ether is a stand-in for the Protoculture of the Robotech Universe.

Planes of Monvesia: Ethereal Companions

The Pyrosphere contributes its energy to four of the Transitive Planes:  Faerie, the Abyss, the Empyrean, and the Inferno.  Faerie and the Abyss share the Lithosphere as well, grounding them in earthly realities.  The Empyrean and Inferno, on the other hand, both fuel the fire of the Pyrosphere with the wind of the Aerosphere.  There are both engulfing flames that reach eternally--one into the light of the Hierosphere, and the other into the void of the Necrosphere.  For this reason, they are commonly called the Fire Above and the Fire Below.

Though not in opposition  to each other, elementally or temperamentally speaking, they are still treated as a rival pair:  The Empyrean a plane of "righteousness" as the home of the Celestials and theer Virtues; the Inferno a plane of "wickedness" as the home of the Fiends and their Vices.  This is not the dichotomy of good and evil however; it is closer to Freud's pairing of the Superego and the Id--with he Material Plane as the Ego caught in between.

Both the Empyrean and the Inferno are composed of an otherworldy form of matter called aether (sometimes luminiferous aether).  This is the matter through which light travels.  In the Empyrean the aether in infused with light, while in the Inferno it is devoid of light.  These planes have therefore also been called the Aetheric Planes:  distinguished as the Empyreal Aetheric and the Infernal Aetheric.  As such, they are the Ethereal Planes of Monvesia, bound in part by the solar dominion of Helyon.