Thaumaturgical facilities like oil refineries. During the First Age Solars put thaumaturgical engineering onto an industrial scale. Including weapons engineering. Artefacts made the Exalted even more mighty, but thaumaturgical weapons armed their armies. Magitech is a half-way point between artefacts ad engineering. It works mechanically but needs to be infused with Essence to become activated. The world was dotted with factories producing thaumaturgical items during the First Age. As time went on ore and more of them were uesd for producing weapons and other military hardware as the Exalted became more and more antagonistic towards eachother.
Witht the requirement of Essence attunement and even hearthstone power, it was inadvisable to use magitech for disposable weapons but thaumaturgy was a viable option.
Producing these weapons however was far from safe, especially the more dangerous ones. These were also difficult to produce and their place of manufacture, sometimes their very existence were kept secret. Due to the dangerou, unstable nature of the substances often involved, research and production were usually expensive with a large proportion of resources spent on exotic safety measures.
The energy used in magitech came from the power of Creation itself. Using Elemental and Celestial enegies they powered the magitech devices that made the First Age an unparalleled era of civilisation and later decadence.
