The Aurigans were able to do some amazing stuff with Dust, like converting it into pure fire, shooting out bolts of electricity, and - if the Wild Walkers and Morgawr used it and not some other ability - to take over the bodies of less intelligent life or mind control others. So the question is, does this kind of Dust "magic" still happen by the time the interstellar age begins in the galaxy or were these abilities exclusive to those dead Aurigan cultures?

Fairly certain they do still use dust to do 'spells', they just know it is tech now. A great example is Zelevas at the end of the UE quest chain. That would easily have been considered an arcane ritual by people of Auriga.

VonRaesyr wrote:

Fairly certain they do still use dust to do 'spells', they just know it is tech now. A great example is Zelevas at the end of the UE quest chain. That would easily have been considered an arcane ritual by people of Auriga.

You mean when he becomes immortal?

Also, it still seems like a lot of those things the Aurigans could do have been lost to time. I don’t see any Imperial troops hurling fireballs during ground battles (but maybe that’s just because modern defenses make that impractical).

Yes, when he becomes immortal. 

As for why people are not hurling firebals during ground battles it is probably down to a few factors. Technology, which can also be empowered by dust, such as guns would probably make traditional "spells" far less useful. The knowledge required to do so is likely far more in depth than that to use a gun or sword. Dust is valuable; if someone has the potential power to cast spells perhaps they would be used elsewhere. And so on.

A few additional observations - the ardent mages give a good example of the use of spells. They fuel their power through pain - but are immensely powerful as a result. Now your average person probably does not want to resort to extreme masochism to be able to kill someone when they can just pick up their trusty sidearm. It is probably safe to say the greatest "mage" in the ES2 setting is Isyander, on account of his end goal and that he can do it. And I would argue his iconography is no coincidence - he looks like a traditional mage, with his flowing robes and staff. Finally, the Aurigans were far more limited by their tech. So the factions that could use magic instead would - notably the ardent mages. One could argue broken lords as well, but as they are made of the stuff and feed on it I would argue they are slightly different. Vampiric rather than Magic. 

I like these kinds of discussions! Lots of fun to speculate.

VonRaesyr wrote:

Yes, when he becomes immortal. 

As for why people are not hurling firebals during ground battles it is probably down to a few factors. Technology, which can also be empowered by dust, such as guns would probably make traditional "spells" far less useful. The knowledge required to do so is likely far more in depth than that to use a gun or sword. Dust is valuable; if someone has the potential power to cast spells perhaps they would be used elsewhere. And so on.

A few additional observations - the ardent mages give a good example of the use of spells. They fuel their power through pain - but are immensely powerful as a result. Now your average person probably does not want to resort to extreme masochism to be able to kill someone when they can just pick up their trusty sidearm. It is probably safe to say the greatest "mage" in the ES2 setting is Isyander, on account of his end goal and that he can do it. And I would argue his iconography is no coincidence - he looks like a traditional mage, with his flowing robes and staff. Finally, the Aurigans were far more limited by their tech. So the factions that could use magic instead would - notably the ardent mages. One could argue broken lords as well, but as they are made of the stuff and feed on it I would argue they are slightly different. Vampiric rather than Magic. 

I like these kinds of discussions! Lots of fun to speculate.

It really is fun :)

This does still leave a few open ended questions. Like whether other wizards such as the Agachi Shamans of the Wild Walkers had to dissociate their minds like the Mages did to achieve any power. If they could hurl decent spells, maybe masochism wasn’t necessary, but instead was like a fast track to gaining lots of power quickly.

I think the wild walkers are more on the end of insanity than masochism. It has been a while since I played them, but I think their lore states that the sharing is a bit of a double edged sword. The shamans themselves being a step away from wild animals or some such.

I think the only mage type units that can completely survive the impacts of trying to cast magic are the heroes, who are all empowered by the stuff in the first place. Hence why the Drakken heroes, for example, seem to suffer no ill consequences that we can see. The only reason we can't see this in ES is because the heroes are always in their ships, but I can't imagine them not resorting to using greater dust abilities for one reason or another. 

What would be cool is if we could deploy heroes to ground battles, and have their sprite basically just end up blasting foes with powerful dust abilities. Or they enhance their bullets so they explode.

The skill trees for the ES2 heroes imply some absolutely insane Dust magicks from time to time. They don't call it "magic" anymore, because they know they're just exploiting the stuff, but a few of their abilities are even stronger than those of the heroes in Endless Legend! I'm pretty sure it's the Vodyani heroes that are able to project their suit defense fields over entire ships/fleets.

As for the general population, I imagine it's a case of "why put yourself in harm's way with Dust in your body, when you can just use it to safely power a gun?"

I’ll pay more attention to the Vodyani ones then! And yeah, Hero sprites would be fantastic for the battlefield. Totally unecessary and probably will never be added, but we can still dream :)

Heroes snort dust, it's powerfull stuff!