Thinking on Icons
I've been doing some thinking on Icons recently -- you may remember them from the distant past of this weblog, ten months ago -- specifically about how and when I should introduce them, and, more importantly, whether I should introduce them.
See, it occurs to me that Frontier as a setting is moving farther away from a space-opera feel and more toward a hard science-fiction feel, especially with all the defining and setting down that I've been doing, and I'm wondering if a system of magic, however limited, even fits into the paradigm anymore.
Of course, the flip side of this argument is that I've been doing a hell of a lot of social setting-down, but I've barely touched the technology! So all of you are reading this and thinking "what's he talking about? For all we know, technology is powered by little fairies in boxes!" (I assure you that it's not.)
On the gripping hand, I could take Icons and turn them into a sort of soi-disant psionics, especially if -- as I've been positing -- the icons (man, I really do need some more vocabulary) are actually the remnants of an ancient race who inhabited FFC1079 eons ago and were wiped out.
Hm. I really could run with this. Psionics are a time-honored tradition of science fiction, after all, and they provide me with a way to get "magic" into the setting without it tracking fantasy all over my nice clean carpet.
Any thoughts?