The Eldraeverse

Badass Bookworm: There are a lot of these about; after all, Imperial society as a whole tends towards the relatively geeky and nonphysical, for reasons which have a lot to do with historical culture as an outgrowth of demographics and the hideous waste that is using a sapient brain to operate a push-broom-equivalent when you can instead use that brain to build a machine to do that, writ large across time.  Or, more relevantly, properly construct and use this ingenious repeating-clockbow-slash-fireoil-projector.

Raw musclepower has never got you very far, therefore; only the kind that has a brain behind it, and therefore the personality types which tend to trend this way.  (See also Cultured Warrior, Warrior Poet, et. al.)  And, too, the martial arts (with gun, sword, and fist) have always been part of the basic education, Everyone Is Armed, and emergency parapersonalities are common issue.  The result is… played pretty damn straight.

(It also helps that the Eldraeverse in general is built on scientia potentia est, philosophically speaking.)

…also, played even straighter with fortunately small in number Cyprium-ith-Gislith lineage, who are just are little cracked.  In a manner that leads most of them to take up designing unstoppable – or at least humorously ironic – superweapons for fun, belike.