A concept I've been wanting to use is steam and thaumaturgy powered augmentations and implants. There is the obvious stuff, like steam powered prosthesis and replacement eyes, but I was wondering if anyone had some ideas for more exotic augmentations.

Clockwork nanotech? Don't know how that'd work exactly, but I'm thinking it might go along the same lines as "Fantastic Voyage" or maybe some kind of microscopic engineering. Also, what about steamtech devices for neural interface with machinery?

--dreamshell--

China Mieville's "Remade" have all sorts of clockwork "augmentations" given as punishment. But some ideas may be: Some sort of thaumaturgical tissue implant that cleanses/heals the body. A few straitforward ones, like clockwork limbs and perhaps a metal body shell. For a neural interface, a brain in a jar with all sorts of odd chemical tubes protruding from it may work. Perhaps metal is fused to flesh to create a permenant shell encasing someone inside. A steampunk voice box may resemble a cross between an early phonograph and telephone. As for steampunk nanotech, perhaps some clockwork automatons hit by shrink ray or thaumaturgy? They might even be implanted into other cells for some desired effect (IE neurons in the brain for neural interface). Hope that helps!

Thanks for the responses.

One idea I've been kicking around is using thaumaturgy to engineer biological implants. An example is thaumaturgically engineered bone marrow that produces enhanced red blood cells (higher oxygen carrying capacity, etc-actually I stole the idea of making augmented blood from a lot of other people).

What kind of stuff did the Remade get implanted? From Iron Council I got the impression that while the implants they got made them more useful for manual labor they were also so grotesque that no one in society would want to associate with them even if they weren't convicted criminals. I guess I don't see people volunteering for something like that, and I'm not sure my writing is punk enough (or at all) for that.