Magical Prostheses

Let’s say someone loses a limb: what option do they have?

Standard medical magic works to accelerate/boost natural healing, so a whole new limb is basically out of the question. Transmutation magic could shape your mangled arm into a functional arm, but the problem would be to make the transmutation permanent, which would need a combination of sigils and potions assumed regularly, something quite expensive. A transmutation used for medical purposes was used to save the life of Lord Abraxas who, despite having half of his body turned into a salamander, was so impressed that he gave the ok to found the Valley of Delight.

So, the regrow option is not practical. Transplants or grafts are more feasible. They should need some “maintenance” but less onerous than a “regrown” arm. Possibly, it would take more time to have the limb working, as the body has to adjust to something new. The problem would be finding donors since the limb would have come from a live body, otherwise, some necromancy would be involved. The reattaching seems like an orc thing, with the field medic literally sawing up the wounded, but maybe it’s also Angelic, it resonates with the self-sacrifice ethic (from the limb donor).

Having a “zombie” arm is taboo in every culture, but that wouldn’t stop the most ruthless necromancer from delving into such practice if needed: surely some demons or some deranged experimenter exiled in the Confederacy have resorted to corpses to fix some mutilation.

The Elves of the Kahante have an even more disconcerting approach to undead prostheses: phantom organs. In some cases, the “mana imprint” of a person can be preserved intact even if the body is not. The body can be made to work as if the organ were present: a phantom hand can sense things as a real arm and, with some concentration, it can pick up and manipulate things. People with such conditions are afflicted by subtle and constant bloodlust, a drive to kill to feed the missing part life force. Beautiful girls with ghost hearts that will seduce and murder you are a common trope in the campfire tales of caravaneers traveling across the Ash Steppes.

Artificial magical prosthetics would have degrees of complexity, similar to other magic tools/objects: the simpler the prosthetic, the more magic skill has to put the wielder.

An artificial leg you can “plug and play” would need years of working, being a “proper” magic object. It would probably have other features (eg. embedded spells, castable at will) and be an extremely prized family possession or something akin to a medal to confer to some valiant soldier.

Simpler prosthetics need some training: a complex magic tool can “pre-knot” the mana, allowing the user to cast a spell using a simplified incantation. This is the principle underlining the artificial limbs used by the War Mages of Erebus: these hyperspecialized wizards have already trained in “half spells”, using them to power their wand-rifles, so they have the forma mentis to add one or two to their repertoire and have fully functional artificial arms or legs.

These prosthetics are cutting-edge arcane technology, born out of the meeting of Axam’s and Uxali’s magic traditions. But Uxalian artificers usually are not particularly interested in this compromise solution: they either work on mundane artificial limbs or highly sophisticated and powerful contraptions, workable only by magic adepts.

The mundane prostheses can be made more efficient through the application of medical magic: even if the range of regeneration is limited, making tendons and other connective tissues grown “into” a prosthesis can allow for improved control.

Artificers with prosthetics want to access all the advantages of having a construct stapled to their bodies. Dwarves can have different hands with different tools attached to them: cannons spitting fireballs, drills with disintegrating effects, syringe-fingered gloves, etc. They don’t care about look but performance, looking for fast and precise control but also power, directly funneling their life force into the device for a burst of potency.

Gnomes, on the other hand, like to create perfect replicas of the missing limbs eventually “power-ups” under unremarkable appearances. The “plasticines” substance used for homunculi is the ideal base for an arm or legs that looks and feels real. But inside the artificial limb, there could be anything, from hypnotic gasses to illusory projectors.

Gnomes’ best works are small parts and sensory organs, fingers, eyes, and ears, but also teeth, tongues, toes, and noses. Gnomes had some success with artificial organs (like hearts, lungs, kidneys). Dwarves had also experimented on that front, but it usually involved bundles of cables and tubes connected to cabinet-size “vitality machines”.