The Origin Story of one of the Empire's heroes
Néogicia is a Spin-Off of the French Noob franchise. The parent franchise is centered around a fictional MMORPG named Horizon, that has its own Non-Player Characters and is set in a world named Olydri. In Néogicia, Olydri is the real world and its inhabitants living and breathing people.
The work focuses on the Empire, the technology side of The Magic Versus Technology War and the faction in which the Noob protagonists are playing. One of the faction's trademarks is neomancers ("néogiciens" in the original French version), people who underwent Bio-Augmentation that enhances greatly their physical and mental capabilities at the price of cutting them off from the world's magic system and can transmit the feature to their children. The story is told from the First-Person Perspective of Saly Asigar, a young woman who decides to become a neomancers. When the procedure has unsual results, Emperor Keynn Lucans get her enrolled into Memoria, the prestigious academy for neomancers that he founded.
There is Comic-Book Adaptation as well. As of 2016, there are two books.
Néogicia provides examples of:
- Bio-Augmentation: All neomancers are the direct or indirect result of this.
- Blessed with Suck:
- There's a certain prestige at being born a neomancer, but it keeps one from leaving Centralis before the age of twenty-five except during education-related missions. This greatly annoys Loreley.
- The physical features enhanced by becoming a neogician include feeling pain.
- Brains and Brawn: Saly wants to become a doctor at first, Loreley a soldier.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: When Saly finds a couple of nice dresses from Keynn destined to her an Lorely in their dresser, Saly asks Loreley to guess who the dresses are from. Loreley's guesses are Albius, Loster and Nox. The two first are actually friendly to them, Nox is at the very least a Hate Sink by that point of the story.
- Can't Live Without You: The second novel estblishes Tabris needs Saly's body alive to have a suitable host and Saly needs Tabris' mind to avoid constant sensory overload.
- Compressed Adaptation: The first comic is basically the first half of the first novel minus a lot of the Info Dump.
- Curtain Clothing: As nice as the clothes given by Helkazard are, they are not very warm. After using a curtain to protect herself while breaking a window, Saly has to use it as a cape to protect herself from the cold.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The attitude of people born from neomancer parents towards new neomancers is phenomenon similar to what can be found between second generation and later immigrants towards new immigrants in countries subject to immigration from poorer or more unstable countries, which include France.
- Fantastic Racism:
- Born neomancers towards those who underwent the procedure within their lifetime.
- Plenty of members of the Coalition towards neomancers.
- First-Episode Twist: The procedure that makes people into neomancers also has a decent chance of being fatal in the very short term. Even for those that didn't get to see Saly's Early-Bird Cameo in the third Noob novel, it's quite obvious that the story would have been much shorter is she weren't going to survive.
- Foregone Conclusion: Saly and Loster were introduced in Noob as the most advanced type of neomancer possible short of "Lucans family" level. Saly is satisfied with the basic neomancer package at the beginning of the story. Loster is introduced as a teacher that happens to adore Loreley and Saly is shocked to discover his actual rank. She's also not very interested in diplomacy, but her first appearance in Noob: Le Conseil des Trois Factions has her doing just that.
- Heroic Bastard: Discussed. When a teacher that hates Saly outs the fact that Keynn is sponsoring her without actually mentioning the reason, two of the theories that emerge among the other students is Saly either being Keynn's bastard daughter or pregnant with Keynn's child.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Saly and Loreley care more about each other than anyone else in the world and many people outside of their Limited Social Circle are persuaded that the two are an item. This is not helped by the fact the two of them like different sexes, the lesbian of the pair being the most vocal about how close they are and Saly having a crush on a man for whom there is a lot of pre-existing competition.
- Immortal Procreation Clause: Albius Loy suspects this is the reason for which the Lucans keep the genetical Longevity Treatment for themselves. He also speculates that after Sirius Lucans died of old age at more than a thousand years old, Keynn may have reached the point of becoming sterile, hence his lack of hurry for having a child.
- The Magic Versus Technology War: The same downplayed version as that from Noob, with plenty of magic users within the Empire and technology attempts on the Coalition's side.
- Mercy Lead: Helkazard gives one to Saly after she gives him a demonstration of her telekinesis.
- The Mentor: Albius Loy to Saly in the early part of the book. Her evolving ambitions hint that Loster Brom may take on that role later.
- Mistaken for Gay: Appears as the typical pitfall of being Heterosexual Life-Partners with an openly lesbian and currently celibate woman.
- Mistaken for Pregnant: Has happened to Saly in a subdued way in both of the first novels. In the first one, one of the rumors spawned by the discovery of Keynn's sponsorship of Saly's Memoria education is that she's pregnant with Keynn's child. The second one has her mistaken for the abandonned Sex Slave of a Coalition noble and getting pregnant is one of the reasons assumed for her getting abandonned.
- No, Mister Bond, I Expect You To Dine: After making Saly prisoner in the second novel, Helkazard lets her sleep in a nice room and gives nice clothes and a good meal so he'll know what to expect from a telekinesis-capable neomancer in relatively good shape. The second he gets what he wants, his generosity limits itself to a Mercy Lead in esacaping his castle. Afer this, Saly has to improvise even in getting the extra layer of clothing she needs to stand a chance in the Glacesang winter.
- One-Word Title
- The Outside World: Any place outside Centralis to any born neomancer under 25.
- Psycho Sidekick: Keynn Lucans is being the Benevolent Boss while his brother Nox is doing the dirty work.
- Really 700 Years Old: Keynn Lucans, more than 1000 years chronologically, estimated to be in his early thirties by Saly before she found out.
- Replacement Goldfish: Discussed by Albius Loy after admitting to having a daughter who left home and that he misses very much. He assures Saly that she's not this.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Better screening of applicants is given credit for the injection process failing much less often than it used to. These two things did indeed correlate, but those who observed this are wrong about which new neomancer selection process has gotten better, as nobody safe for the screener himself is aware that the other screening process even exists.
- Saved by Canon: The Noob novels basically give Plot Armour to Saly Asigar, Loster Brom, Saryahblööd and both Lucans brothers. Loreley has made a cameo in the Noob comic, which works in favor of her survival as well.
- Science Fantasy: Magic and high-tech both exist in the work's universe, but being focused on the non-magic users makes it a little closer to Science Fiction.
- Selfless Wish: A variation. When Saly decides that the events from the first novel entitle her to a favor from Keynn (who already got her and Lorely luxury dresses for the end of year ball on his own initiative), she asks him to give Loreley's father an expensive medical treatment for free.
- Sex Slave: Apparently a frequent practice of Coalition nobles with captured female neomancers. The nice clothes given by Helkazard combined with her stolen winter coat gets Saly mistaken for an escaped or "thrown away" one.
- Sharing a Body: That second information processing level in Saly's mind is not only a second personality, it's basically a piece of the original Tabris' mind.
- Ship Tease: Between Saly and Keynn. Saly is very interested in Keynn as a human being and sometimes blushes if he come up in conversation. Keynn seems to have his mind set on having at least one dance with Saly at each of her end of year balls until she graduates.
- Shower Scene: For obvious reasons, Saly's first shower as a neomancer is much more fan-service laden in the comic than in the novel.
- Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Played with for Saly. She's a redhead and had green eyes before becoming a neomancer, which is a period that didn't last long in the story proper.
- Trauma Conga Line: The second novel seems entirely dedicated to pushing Saly to her physical and psychological limits. It starts with her getting kidnapped, then getting a Mercy Lead that gets followed by a series of From Bad to Worse and Out of the Frying Pan situations, even after a rescue party reaches her. Dealing with the new situation always spends more physical and mental energy than what she managed to recuperate after the previous one, to the point that her Post-Victory Collapse becomes more of a Post-Victory Several Month Long Coma.
- Wham Episode:
- The fact that Saly will become one of the high-ranking neomancers is a given (see Foregone Conclusion), but the last chapter of the second novel throws the reader quite a surprise as to how it happened. Giving Saly the N02 to N04 injections, which are normally given a year apart from each other, becomes necessary to keep her alive after her antagonistic other personality gets kicked out. This makes her technically a rank 2 teknögrade (the second highest non-Lucans neomancer rank out of five) two years earlier than the expectation that had been given the reader so far.
- It is also one for the whole deal with Tabris, who turns out to have been impacting the setting long before the Centralis battle enabled him to escape the city's underground.
