Article ID: DD-11

Last updated: 2026-11-02

For most people, a Rift is little more than an anomaly. They may see its effects, encounter the creatures that have crossed through it, or find an area closed while the Guild investigates, but they cannot see what our researchers and adventurers see. That is where our Magi-Tech comes in.

The Guild’s Magi-Tech program is focused on developing the equipment adventurers need to safely interact with another reality. Some of these tools already exist as early prototypes. Others are still being designed, tested, or researched as we learn more about the Rifts and what lies beyond them.

The goal is to eventually equip an adventurer with everything they need to identify themselves, perceive the alternate reality, interact with it, defend themselves, and return with information that helps the Guild prepare for whatever comes next.

Here is where that equipment stands today.

Rift Lenses — Seeing Beyond Our Reality

The most important tool in an adventurer’s kit is also the one that changes how they see the world. Rift Lenses are the Guild’s augmented-reality eyewear, designed to reveal the parts of Shattered Bounds that overlap with our reality. Through them, adventurers can see enemies, Rifts, objectives, magical effects, environmental changes, and other information that would normally remain invisible.

Rift Lens technology is still in its early stages.

For current development, we are using commercially available mixed-reality hardware as our prototype platform, beginning with the Meta Quest 3. It gives our technicians a way to test how adventurers see and interact with Rift activity before dedicated Rift Lens hardware becomes practical.

The prototype allows us to develop the important parts first: how enemies appear, how adventurers interact with them, what information needs to be visible during combat, and how the alternate reality remains aligned with the physical world around the player.

Where We’re Going

Future Rift Lenses are intended to become fully connected pieces of Guild equipment rather than simply displays. An adventurer should eventually be able to put on their lenses and have the Guild’s systems recognize them immediately. Their equipment, party, mission, and surroundings can then become part of one connected experience.

Future capabilities are expected to include:

• A dedicated adventurer HUD showing important information without overwhelming the wearer’s vision
• Voice recognition for commands, communication, magical interactions, and other systems
• Movement and gesture recognition so physical actions can become part of combat and interaction
• Direct connection to Guild networks and an adventurer’s active profile
• Information about nearby enemies, objectives, Rifts, and environmental hazards
• Communication with other Magi-Tech equipment in the adventurer’s loadout

Adventurer Card — Your Guild Identity

Before equipment can respond to an adventurer, it needs to know who is using it. The Adventurer Card is our current solution.

Each card identifies an individual adventurer and connects them to their Guild profile. When equipment is issued for a deployment, the adventurer’s identity can be associated with that equipment for the duration of the mission. This allows the Guild to connect the person entering the field with their character, loadout, party, records, and eventually a much wider collection of persistent information.

Where We Are Now

The Adventurer Card provides the foundation of that identity system. The card can act as the link between an adventurer and the equipment they are assigned, allowing Guild systems to retrieve the appropriate profile rather than storing everything directly on the physical card. That also means replacing a lost card does not mean losing the adventurer who carried it.

Where We’re Going — Adventurer Pendants

Cards are useful, but we do not expect them to be the final form of adventurer identification. Our longer-term plan is the Adventurer Pendant.

Rather than carrying a conventional identification card, adventurers could wear a Magi-Tech pendant containing their Guild identity. These pendants are intended to become personal pieces of equipment rather than identical access tokens.

Different designs could reflect the adventurer who carries them, with themes ranging from elemental affinities to summoning, combat disciplines, magical traditions, and other aspects of the Shattered Bounds world.

More importantly, the pendant is intended to keep the adventurer connected to Guild systems wherever compatible Magi-Tech is available.

Weapon Hilt — Building an Adventurer’s Arsenal

Seeing a monster is useful, but eventually somebody has to deal with it. The Guild’s Magi-tech Weapon Hilt project is focused on creating a physical Magi-Tech controller that can serve as the core of an adventurer’s weapon.

Unlike a conventional game controller, the Weapon Hilt is being designed around actual physical movement. When an adventurer swings their weapon, that motion becomes part of what the system understands.

Where We Are Now

Our first prototype is being developed around a basic sword configuration. Starting with a sword gives us a controlled platform for testing the fundamentals: movement sensing, weapon orientation, communication with other Magi-Tech equipment, physical feedback, durability, comfort, and the connection between an adventurer’s real movement and the weapon they see through their Rift Lenses.

Where We’re Going

The Weapon Hilt is being designed as a core rather than a complete weapon. In the future, that core could be fitted into different physical weapon bodies, allowing the same underlying Magi-Tech to support a much broader armoury. Potential configurations could include swords, daggers, axes, staves, spears, and other weapon types developed by the Guild.

Customization is also part of that direction. Rather than every adventurer carrying an identical weapon, future equipment could support interchangeable physical components that change its appearance. Hilts, guards, pommels, grips, and other parts could allow adventurers to personalize their equipment while retaining the Magi-Tech core inside.

Over time, an adventurer’s weapon should become something recognizable as their weapon, not merely the controller they were handed when they arrived.

Rift Crystals — Holding the Boundary

Not every Rift can simply be closed. Sometimes the first priority is keeping it from becoming worse.

Rift Crystals are being designed as containment tools, positioned around a Rift to restrict its growth and help prevent the surrounding area from falling completely under enemy control. Adventurers will first encounter these crystals during Shattered Bounds: Battlegrounds events.

Within Battlegrounds, the crystals help establish the controlled area around an active Rift. While adventurers defend the location, the crystals work to keep the breach contained and prevent additional forces from gaining unrestricted access to our reality.

Where We Are Now

The physical Rift Crystals are currently under development.

Their design needs to serve two purposes at once. To an adventurer, they should look like recognizable pieces of Guild Magi-Tech. To the equipment around them, they also need to provide useful information about their position and the area they are helping define.

For this reason, the crystals will be inscribed with specialized symbols that can be recognized by Rift Lenses and other Guild equipment. Those markings help the system understand where the crystals are located and, in turn, where the boundary between the two realities has been established.

Where We’re Going

As our understanding of Rift behaviour improves, Rift Crystals could become increasingly important pieces of field equipment.

Future versions may help adventurers identify safe operating areas, stabilize temporary Rift sites, support Guild research teams, or establish controlled zones where interaction with the alternate reality is possible without allowing the breach to continue expanding.

Battlegrounds will give us our first opportunity to see how adventurers interact with them in the field.

Rift Cameras — Giving the Guild Another Set of Eyes

Adventurers are not the only people who need to see what is happening beyond a Rift. Researchers, Guild Masters, and technical teams also need a way to observe the alternate reality without standing directly inside the encounter. that is where the Rift Cameras come in.

Rift Cameras are specialized observation systems intended to give Guild personnel an external view of areas where Shattered Bounds overlaps our world.

What They Do

During an encounter, a Rift Camera can observe the physical environment while Guild systems combine that information with what is known about the alternate reality. This gives our researchers another perspective on what adventurers are encountering. The information gathered by Rift Cameras can then be used to improve what adventurers see through their own Rift Lenses.

As new creatures are encountered and studied, Guild researchers can record information about them and gradually provide adventurers with better field intelligence.

That may eventually include information about:

• Known enemy types
• Observed behaviour
• Threat warnings
• Weaknesses or vulnerabilities discovered by previous adventurers
• Rift activity in the surrounding area
• Changes researchers have observed between encounters

An adventurer entering an unknown Rift may initially know very little about what waits beyond it. The next party should be able to benefit from what the first party discovered. That is one of the Guild’s most important responsibilities.

Portals — Crossing the Boundary

Seeing another reality is one challenge. Entering it is something else entirely.

Portal research remains one of the Guild’s most ambitious Magi-Tech projects.

Rifts demonstrate that connections between realities are possible, but naturally occurring breaches are unstable, unpredictable, and frequently dangerous. They are not something we can simply treat as doors.

Our researchers are therefore investigating whether a connection between realities can be stabilized long enough for controlled passage.

Where We Are Now

Portal technology remains firmly in the research stage. We are still investigating how these connections behave, what causes them to expand or collapse, and how long a stable link can safely remain open. There are many questions that need answers before adventurers will be permitted to rely on them.

Where We’re Going

The eventual goal is not unrestricted travel between realities, at least not yet. Our first practical portals would be intended for brief, controlled expeditions.

An adventurer or party could cross into the alternate reality to complete a specific objective, investigate a location, recover something important, or accomplish a Guild assignment before returning through the stabilized connection. These visits would initially be limited in duration and scope.

The Guild has learned enough about Rifts to know that forcing a connection before we understand how to stabilize it would be a particularly poor way to begin an expedition.

Building an Adventurer’s Field Kit

Individually, each of these projects solves a different problem. Together, they begin to form something much more important: an adventurer’s complete Magi-Tech field kit.

A future deployment could begin with your Adventurer Pendant identifying you to the Guild network. Your Rift Lenses connect to your profile and loadout while providing the information required for your mission. Your Weapon Hilt recognizes the equipment configuration you have chosen, while Rift Crystals define and stabilize the area in which you are operating.

Rift Cameras allow Guild researchers to watch what happens and learn from the encounter. Eventually, a stabilized portal may allow the mission to continue somewhere beyond our own reality.

The individual pieces are still at very different stages of development. Some are being prototyped now. Some are being designed. Others remain research projects whose final form may change considerably as we learn more.

First Field Deployment: Battlegrounds

Shattered Bounds: Battlegrounds will be the first place where several of these ideas begin working together in a real adventurer experience.

Battlegrounds gives our technicians a controlled environment to test equipment while adventurers do what that equipment is actually being built for: moving, fighting, communicating, and responding to creatures crossing through a Rift.

Every successful encounter tells us something about what works. Every awkward interaction tells us what needs to change. Every piece of equipment that survives repeated use teaches us something about what the eventual Guild-standard version needs to become.

What’s Next

Over the coming stages of development, the Magi-Tech program will continue moving these systems from concepts and prototypes toward equipment adventurers can rely on.

Our immediate work is focused on the technologies required for Battlegrounds, particularly the Weapon Hilt, Rift Crystals, Rift Lens integration, identity systems, and the equipment needed to observe and understand active encounters. Beyond that, the requirements become considerably more ambitious.

The Tower will ask more from adventurer identity and equipment over longer missions. Rift Walker will eventually require Magi-Tech capable of operating outside controlled Guild facilities. Future Grand Dungeon expeditions will combine physical environments with much deeper interaction across the boundary between realities.

Our job is to make sure that when adventurers are finally asked to cross it, they have the right equipment in their hands.

Guild Magi-Tech Division