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Xetares, Third Redeemer; World Drinker
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I haven't participated in this thread in a while, but here are my thoughts reading through what others have written:
>Circles of Magic are cliche. We can do better. Part of the vibe I was going for was that when people drew magic out of their soul, it was colored (for lack of a better term) by their mind (which I see as the interface between people's mind and soul). So when a calm man and a raging bastard draw magic out of their soul, they are drawing on the same colorless magic that is then transformed (kind of like a DAC) into fire or water-natured mana. The consequences is that even two fire mages won't have the same 'kind' of fire. A hateful man who is patient and calculating might manifest freezing flames, while a raging bastard might take more after thick lava of the volcano.
Also, this means that people can have strange, one-of-a-kind affinities. The ditzy, airheaded girl might manifest her arcane energy as faries and other fantastical familiars she can control.
The idea then is that people can train- through meditation and the like- to not only squeeze more juice out from their souls but also to 'uncolor' their magic. In a deep state of almost hypnotic rest, an experience fire mage might be able to draw out pure arcane magic and then manually color it into earth/water/air magic outside of his body. This would naturally not be as easy or as quick as just letting his mind do it automatically, but with time and effort Archmages and the like might be able to do it automatically.
This would make our mages significantly different from the rest of the mages in the world, who draw arcane magic from the world and shape it outside. We'd be stronger- much stronger if we 'overclock'- but less versatile until you hit the leadership Archmage ranks.
(On 'overclocking'- the way I've figured it is that pulling too much or trying to force your mind to 'color' your magic differently than it naturally does causes mental damage, wearing down the mind until it snaps and reconfigures as an uber-powerful beast because our people have so much power they can't normally tap lying around in their souls)
>Second, and I don't mean to rag on @bioticgrunt, but all this talk of democracy and republics is premature. We're a tribal leader of an expanding confederation of tribes ruled by powerful mages. Our division of labor and society should be still protean. It's too early and there hasn't been enough conflict or reason for an advanced governmental form to occur. This makes more sense if you think of societal configurations like democracy and autocracy as societal technologies.
>Circles of Magic are cliche. We can do better. Part of the vibe I was going for was that when people drew magic out of their soul, it was colored (for lack of a better term) by their mind (which I see as the interface between people's mind and soul). So when a calm man and a raging bastard draw magic out of their soul, they are drawing on the same colorless magic that is then transformed (kind of like a DAC) into fire or water-natured mana. The consequences is that even two fire mages won't have the same 'kind' of fire. A hateful man who is patient and calculating might manifest freezing flames, while a raging bastard might take more after thick lava of the volcano.
Also, this means that people can have strange, one-of-a-kind affinities. The ditzy, airheaded girl might manifest her arcane energy as faries and other fantastical familiars she can control.
The idea then is that people can train- through meditation and the like- to not only squeeze more juice out from their souls but also to 'uncolor' their magic. In a deep state of almost hypnotic rest, an experience fire mage might be able to draw out pure arcane magic and then manually color it into earth/water/air magic outside of his body. This would naturally not be as easy or as quick as just letting his mind do it automatically, but with time and effort Archmages and the like might be able to do it automatically.
This would make our mages significantly different from the rest of the mages in the world, who draw arcane magic from the world and shape it outside. We'd be stronger- much stronger if we 'overclock'- but less versatile until you hit the leadership Archmage ranks.
(On 'overclocking'- the way I've figured it is that pulling too much or trying to force your mind to 'color' your magic differently than it naturally does causes mental damage, wearing down the mind until it snaps and reconfigures as an uber-powerful beast because our people have so much power they can't normally tap lying around in their souls)
>Second, and I don't mean to rag on @bioticgrunt, but all this talk of democracy and republics is premature. We're a tribal leader of an expanding confederation of tribes ruled by powerful mages. Our division of labor and society should be still protean. It's too early and there hasn't been enough conflict or reason for an advanced governmental form to occur. This makes more sense if you think of societal configurations like democracy and autocracy as societal technologies.
. I also made Internal Alchemy mystic Kung Fu