I find this reaction strange as they would be familiar with steam works and an engine sounds very similar to that, just a little more intense.

He seems to be getting closer to being like Darth Vader, what with the constant pain, exo-suit and magic abilities. Or perhaps we will get to see him become more like a spartan from halo.

At this point he will become very similar to Darth Vader what with the constant pain and life support.

They should try harder to combine their knowledge of physics to magic as it would reduce the mana cost by a lot. They also could have a reactive barrier that is semi-active and only activates in full in a small area when a projectile is detected. This could be done by having a detection magic area outside the shield that detects projectiles, then have computers predict the path of the projectile and discard irrelevant data. Then you will have a shield that is not only mana efficient but can also increase your shield strength by 8 times at minimum (8 times cause you only need to shield one quadrant on a sphere in the direction of the attack instead of all directions at once). The only problem with this shield type is that if a projectile is fast enough to bypass a magic detection field before it sends the signal that it detected something, then your shield will not be reinforced in the area so you are back into regular shield strength.

Let us hope the Outsiders will last and take their revenge on the Islanders for what they did. It should be satisfying to see.

If they use fragmentation rounds or small RPG rounds for their guns like in Astartes 1-5 they will get this over with very quickly.

Just wait until that religion grows. Then it will be like the orc's psionic power up in Warhammer 40k where they just need to paint an object in yellow to get extra damage.

A terminator is too weak. Now if he became something like the commandos in the short film Astartes from Warhammer that would be awesome.