The Archmage's Engine

The morning after the world broke, you wake beside a dying campfire at the lip of a canyon that was not there yesterday.

Far below, the Rift glows: violet on one wall, ember orange on the other. In the barrel by the fire, a leather-bound journal is waiting. Beside the fire, a pale figure flickers. It is the echo of Orren, the last archmage, and the man who built the Convergence Engine: a machine that was meant to bind magic and engineering into one. Something went wrong. The Engine took Orren with it, and the world split open.

His students scattered. His wards died. His journal is all that is left, and it starts with you.

The Archmage's Engine is a story-driven magic + tech questing pack for NeoForge 1.21.1, built around one rule: magic and machines need each other.

What makes it different

Magic and tech are woven together, not side by side. Every tier of technology needs a magical part, and every tier of magic needs a machine part. Each story chapter ends by crafting a lens, and the next tier's biggest machines consume it. You never get to "finish magic" and then "do tech".

A real story, told in the quest book. 11 story chapters, each with its own painted background and Orren's journal on every quest. Short, dry, occasionally funny journal lines from a three-hundred-year-old wizard who forgot to eat for nineteen days.

Echoes that talk back. Orren, his students and an old dwarven smith appear as echoes in the world, with dialogue that changes as you progress. The students write you letters. Some of them are hiding things.

Choose an oath. In Chapter 4 you choose a master:

• Sereth, the Light: Hexerei, Eidolon: Repraised, Enchanted: Witchcraft, and the Holy school of Iron's Spells.
• Varro, the Shadow: Blood Magic, Malum, Occultism, and the Blood and Eldritch schools of Iron's Spells.

Each side's mastery blocks are locked to your oath, but nothing later in the pack demands one side only, so both paths reach the end.

Places built for the story. The game carves the Rift at your spawn when the world is created. Further out, you'll find a grove, a crypt, a buried dwarven workshop with machines to restore, and a workshop lost under the sea. /locate finds them all.

Realms open with the story. The Nether opens after Chapter 1, the End and the Cataclysm realms after Chapter 4, and the Aether, the Undergarden and the Otherside after Chapter 5.

A boss ladder that means something. Mutant monsters, Frostmaw, the Night Lich, the Wither and the Dragon. Then realm guardians, then L_Ender's Cataclysm bosses in rising order. Their drops are what you build the endgame from.

Three endings. The last chapter has three endings. The third is hidden: to reach it, find all 22 Torn Pages of Orren's journal scattered across the story and side chapters and bind them back together.

The chapters

The Story

• 00 · First Light
• 01 · Apprentice's Hands: Ars Nouveau and the Create andesite age
• 02 · The Silent Forges: Embers, and a dwarven key
• 03 · Leylines: Nature's Aura, Theurgy, Forbidden & Arcanus
• 04 · A Choice of Masters: the oath
• 05 · Iron and Arcana: Immersive Engineering, Mekanism, Create: Crafts & Additions, and the dwarven workshop
• 06 · The Fractured Realms: five shards from five realm guardians
• 07 · The Broken Students
• 08 · The Logic of Everything: automation with AE2, Modular Routers, Mekanism and Powah
• 09 · The Convergence Engine
• 10 · Epilogue

Side Chapters (in-depth walkthroughs with Learn, Build and Master quests and real objectives, not checkboxes) The Kitchen at the End of the World · The Cartographer's Journey · The Bestiary · Relics and Artifacts · Gems and Affixes (Apotheosis) · The Growing Fields (Mystical Agriculture) · Mind and Spell (Psi) · Steel and Steam · The Camp Becomes a Town (MineColonies) · Heal the Leylines

Tech Chapters The Factory Floor (Industrial Foregoing) · The Conduit Bundle (Ender IO) · The Particle Ring (Oritech) · The Long Way Round (Modern Industrialization) · The Refinery Floors (Mekanism)

The Notice Board Repeatable bounties in four tiers. Earn Archmage Marks and spend them at Hilde the Quartermaster's stall.

About 950 quests in total.

Also inside

• MineColonies: turn the camp into a town. Colony research and the Nether Mine are tied into the story, so the colony can't skip ahead of you.
• Create and its add-ons, including Steam 'n' Rails, Big Cannons, New Age and Enchantment Industry
• Adventure: When Dungeons Arise, YUNG's, Repurposed Structures, Dungeons and Taverns, Mowzie's Mobs, Born in Chaos, Bosses of Mass Destruction, Aquamirae, Artifacts, Relics, Simply Swords and Better Combat
• World: Terralith, Tectonic, Regions Unexplored, Oh The Biomes We've Gone and Serene Seasons
• Building: Macaw's, Chipped, Rechiseled, Handcrafted, FramedBlocks, Supplementaries and Create Deco
• Performance: Sodium, Iris, ModernFix, FerriteCore, Lithium, C2ME, ScalableLux and ImmediatelyFast
• Quality of life: EMI and JEI, JourneyMap, Waystones, Sophisticated Backpacks and Storage, FTB Ultimine and Carry On

About 290 mods, plus optional shaders and resource packs.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1, NeoForge 21.1.259
• RAM: 6 GB minimum, 8 GB recommended. In the CurseForge app: Settings → Minecraft → Java Settings → Allocated Memory.
• Start a new world. The Rift and the story sites are built when the world is created.

Playing on a server

The pack works in multiplayer with FTB Teams. Quest progress is shared per team, and each player chooses their own oath. Story chests are per player (Lootr), so everyone gets their own loot.

• Set spawn-protection=0 in server.properties. The camp barrel sits on spawn, and players who aren't ops can't open it otherwise.
• Set allow-flight=true so flying items and mounts don't get players kicked.
• Don't claim the story sites (the Rift camp, grove, crypt, dwarven workshop and drowned workshop) with FTB Chunks. Other teams need to get in.
• A server pack is provided as an additional file.

This is a Beta

All content is in, but the full pack hasn't been played start to finish yet. Expect balance to shift and bugs to turn up, especially in the later chapters. Please report what you find in the comments.

Credits

Thanks to every mod author whose work is in this pack. The full mod list is on the Relations tab. Quests, story, scripts and art by Metzicle.

Beta testers: Luxurioussss, ImGonnaCryy who are helping test the early chapters and multiplayer.

Made with AI assistance: Claude (Anthropic) helped write the quest text, KubeJS scripts and pixel art, all directed and reviewed by Metzicle. Every screenshot on this page is a real, unedited in-game capture.