Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-1173941-20130216005034/@comment-10390252-20130614105528

13th madman wrote: true, but that does not guarantee that in-universe Myrtenaster is actually running on magic, and not some kind of alchemy or science. It's just that calling it magic is the simplest and most straightforward way of explaining what they were doing. If Mytenaster is crystal-powered magi-tech and these crystals have inherit magical properties then you could have a situation like the Canadian animation Storm Hawks, where you don't have people with inherit magical powers of their own but you do have people who can use the various types of crystal with such skill that they appear to have magical powers. Others can only use appliances that use crystals to power tham such as vehicles and weapons. This seems very similar to what we're seeing so far in RWBY.

Remember: sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.