Magic and Hard SF

[Varyon]

You’ll really need to decide exactly what you want “ki” to be able to do - and indeed if Basic Magic is what you want to use for it (Spells as Powers, as previously mentioned, works well here - see Chinese Elemental Powers and Sorcery). For an otherwise hard science setting, you may want to define magic as a sort of physical phenomenon and only allow it to manipulate the world in certain ways, rather than allowing the default grab-bag Magic normally falls into.