Schools of Magic
Current doctrine divides spells based primarily on their effect rather than their basic construction and function, and fall into the following categories, known as "schools of magic":
Clairvoyance – Currently a relatively unexplored school of magic, Clairvoyance covers spells which attempt to perceive the future or past, see things at a distance, analyze things too large or too small to otherwise perceive, or otherwise attempt to gather information using magic. Surprisingly, this school of magic is extremely inter-related and have a large number of similarities on a functional and implementational level despite their considerably varied effects. Ponies tend to have considerable difficulty with spells of this school that deal with places they have not been to before.
Tracking – A specific subset of spells, these deal with the locating of objects or entities. Very few ponies appear to be capable of these spells to any degree of accuracy, making this sub-school little more than a curiosity at best.
Farseeing – It bears mentioning that ponies are surprisingly capable when it comes to extending their visual range or their arc of vision, but have considerable difficulty when it comes to seeing locations at extreme distances, especially ones they have never been to. The greater the distance, the more difficult the spell.
Prediction – A specific sub-set of spells which attempt to determine the future. The exact mechanism of such is unknown to me and beyond my ability to perform.
Illusion – This school of magic covers all forms of creating real and true projections for the senses to perceive such as visual projections, sound, smell, tastes, and physical sensations. Normally involved in overlaying an existing object with the illusion of the sensations desired.
The hallmark of Illusion magics is that they do not actually alter the world, merely the perception of it and are incapable of truly harming
There are two sub-categories of function within this school. The True and the Percieved. "True" Illusions are those that create audible, visible, or olfactory sensations as they truly create the sources of these sensations in the world. The gustationary and tactile sensations however fall under "Percieved" Illusions, as they do not physically alter objects, rather creating a field that interacts with the sympathetic nervous system to create the desired sensation.
Sendings – Sendings refer to a specific sub-school of Illusion Spells, specifically to those that involve a Tracking component to relay an illusion to another. While these spells exist, due to ponies difficulty with Tracking spells, they are a currently unexplored niche and more of a fancy than worth dedicated study.
Evocation – This school covers all forms of direct energy conversion and emission. Generating and controlling energy such as electricity, heat, light or entropic energy. The latter aggressively and quickly accelerating the entropy of something touched. "Cold" energy falls under this category as well, the mana rapidly ripping the thermal energy from anything it touches. While normally perceived as a school of "battle magic", many weak evocation spells have been worked into every-day items such as refrigerators and ovens.
Telekinesis – While, in theory, a sub-set of Evocation, the natural propensity of Unicorns towards this school of magic has caused them to separate it into its own dedicated school. The studies into its effects, its usage, and the best ways to achieve both. The difficulty of a task depends on the delicacy required, the precision required, and the amount of raw force required. Any considerable amount of one or another amount of these increases the effort required for a task and in many cases, the amount of mana used up, though not necessarily the amount used in the task as the amount of 'wasted' mana may change depend on the difficulty of the task.
Medical – This school of magic is actually built from multiple smaller spells from different schools of magic such as Blood Magic, Telekinesis, Clairvoyance, Alteration, and even Reality Warping. These replace tools such as defibrillators, scalpels, medical analysis tools, warmers, and more. Given the amazing power of Growth-Encouragement spells (which fall under the purview of Blood magic) ponies have an ability to heal things which were unthinkable to humans "modern medicine".
Counter-Magic – This school of magic is built around the un-doing magic and its effects. The most common form of this involves using concentrated mana pulses to safely unravel spells or magical effects in existence.
Reality Calcification – I've got to admit to a mistake here, Reality Calcification is not a true school of magic, rather, a sub-school of Counter-Magic. Reality Calcification involves using mana reinforcement to cause the laws of reality to solidify and become more difficult to alter with external magic. Few spells outside of Reality Warping actually do this, and as such, has little effect on spells outside of that school. I was taught it as its own separate school due to its particular use to me personally.
Alteration – This school of magic refers to spells which physically alter objects or materials without altering the laws of physics. The magics involved normally do things that are perfectly possible with dedicated work such as staining glass, altering the composition of materials, and non-telekinetic changes in an objects shape or size.
Some spells in this school have elements of Blood Magic to them, the spells that alter the shape, size, or composition of living beings all have some element of Blood Magic to them, tapping in the living energy and self-healing nature of the body to ensure that the extremely delicate work on another living beings body can be done with relatively little actual knowledge of the task. Emphasis on the relatively. Seriously you need a Bachelors in Anatomy to do anything but the most basic of body-Altering spells.
Charms – This school of magic refers to all forms of magic which affect the mind of a living being. Ponies that put effort into this school can achieve surprisingly subtle and powerful works in anothers mind. But thankfully, the magical resistance of ponies as well as the most common ways of countering these magics are widely spread. It takes considerable amount of raw power to actually overcome these basic defenses to the point that others won't realize that some have been affected.
Reality Warping – This is one of the most powerful and difficult schools of magic. It is in truth, extremely broad and encompasses a massive swath of magical functions. It involves many things simply not covered by other schools of magic, but at its core, it is defined by usage of magic to alter physical laws of reality such as Gravity, temperature coefficient, density, mass, inertia, the creation of matter from nothing, the laws of thermodynamics, and so on.
Teleportation – Teleportation involves altering the nature of the quantum foam of reality within a bounded area to allow for a specific kind of wormhole to encompass the area and connect one location to another. The material between the two locations is swapped, passing one another in the wormhole in a brief instant before the wormhole is closed. The magic-resistance of most entities is such that it is impossible to teleport only a portion of a living thing. Time travel works similarly, and instead of simply designating another point in the X, Y, Z coordinates to transport, it designates a fourth dimension to travel along. The greater the travel distance, the more energy required not to create the spell, but to designate the target position with the spellcasters own mana.
Conjuration – A specific subset of Reality Warping, Conjuration refers to ether teleporting a distant object to the spellcaster, or to creating objects whole-cloth from nothing. The energy required is considerable, but the latter is actually simple from the Construct Understanding of magic, it merely takes a considerable amount of mana, being a minimum 4th circle Spell.
In addition to the 'accepted' schools of magic, the following are forbidden in normal teachings to varying degrees.
Boons – Spells which alter probability negatively or positively, commonly called "curses" or "blessings" are a difficult and powerful form of magic, but the potential disaster involved and the lack of ability to counter these spells has caused Celestia to suppress the knowledge of these spells. The difficulty in properly implementing the spells has assisted in this suppression. While a part of this school falls under Reality Warping, the breadth and vague nature of these spells separates them from Reality Warping in both function and in form.
Blood Magic – Blood magic refers to all forms of magic that directly affect and interact with the life force and biology of living beings. There are several major sub-sections of these magics.
Power from Blood – This subsection deals with converting the power of life-force and the structured bonds that create a living being directly into mana. While symbolically using blood in this process, it is truly converting down the biological molecules down into their component parts throughout a being.
Life Link – This subsection of magic deals with the linking of functions of a spell to the biological and magical predispositions of a living being. This is one of the few acceptable forms of Blood Magic, as it is commonly used to create safe-guards in spells that alter the composition or nature of a living being.
Power to Blood – This is the reverse of Power from Blood, and involves converting mana into generative and reconstructive power for living beings. The difficulty is in bounding these effects. These form the entirety of "healing" magics, those that regenerate wounds. But a some of the principles of this subsection are also applied to Alteration spells that deal with living beings.
Runic Magic – A mostly forgotten rather than forbidden school of magic, runic magic isn't truly a separate kind of magic so much as an application of magic. It is the use of runes, symbols, and "magical coding" to transcribe a spell into an object in some fashion. This school of magic has almost entirely fallen into disuse, as there is almost no reason for its usage in modern Equestrian society. The things which runic magic is good at, enhancing objects, imparting spells into them, or creating wards are things which the other tribes can do (Earth Pony construction) or special materials can make far easier (crystals and certain metals for infusing heat or cold spells into).
Soul Magic – This magic refers to the spells which directly affect the mana flows of an entity, as well as their soul. I don't have any definition of a soul that can be translated well, but to put it simply, this is the power of binding souls to tasks, to objects, and is in many ways, a horrible school of magic that is rightfully forbidden.
Greenfire Magic – The name is not indicative of what this school of magic covers. But it encompasses all forms of spells that must be powered by hatred, greed, the 'darker' emotions. These spells are oftentimes dangerously powerful but also self-destructive. There are exceptions, but these spells are truly corrective, actively changing the mana flows of the user and adjusting the chemical balance of their bodies with every usage. They're like a drug, and an extremely dangerous one at that. Spells in this category tend to have effects a full Spell Circle above what their input would indicate.
Battle Magic – A "special" school of magic that is really a selection of spells from other schools as well as several merged spells. Spells to conjure items from nothing and imbune them with evocation magic in the process is battle magic. The ability to convert mana and willpower into temporary physical constructs is battle-magic. The usage of special telekinetic structures to create armor of force is battle-magic.
The only real link between the spells of the "Battle Magic" school are their use in war and combat.
Name Magic – A horrifying school of magic that involves using the proper designation of an object or living being to gain a certain degree of control over it, generally reducing its magical resistance to nearly nothing. It is a simple, but terrifyingly powerful school of magic whose very existence has been removed from history.
