That's for systems/sources of magic which can kind of be derived from Laws of Reality, and I've probably been more generous with it than I should be. The Mantle is not fitting into an existing Cosmic Law, though sure it works with them, it's erasing most of the Cosmic-created Outer Gods and essentially establishing new Laws.
We have so many things to do with narratives and heroic journeys that they're starting to overlap. I guess stories are sort of the theme of this setting. I do have to say they are beginning to feel a little... unnecessary? Heroes, antagonists and satisfying narratives were going to happen regardless, that's just how most fiction works!
Just to clarify, the Mantle doesn't erase the Outer Gods exactly. It just imposes a story of redemption onto them so they have no choice but to become something other than their currently pathetic and monstrous selves. If it just erased them, there wouldn't be a redemption arc. The Outer Gods as they currently exist would be transformed, reformed, but not destroyed.
In my opinion the value of overlapping stuff is to use preexisting concepts to support the new stuff, to basically combine them and add nuance. Each thing that plays into those concepts expands the possibility space of how it can work. So you're going to get a lot of stuff leaning into the same themes and ideas, because it feels more appropriate and easy to expand on older stuff than it is to just do something totally new, and whenever you do it those themes become broader and deeper overall.
Yeah, the Mantle is doing a lot of its own things, but it leans hard into the narrative concepts and evolutionary concepts because those were already there, and not contributing to worldbuilding that already exists feels bad to me personally? And probably a lot of other people too. If I were to try and come up with a magic system to push for in the next Epoch or something, I wouldn't start working from scratch even if it wasn't harder to create than working with preexisting laws. I'd base the magic system off of something like, the Unseen or the phenomena of Universal Expansion, because they're already there and the deserve to be explored, and if I made something out of theme for the world that would feel somewhat gross.
On a separate note, I'm workshopping a magic system that is based on the Unseen and spirits and stuff, anyone have ideas to help me out? This is what I have so far:
Vividry: The method of using the connection between your soul within the Unseen realm and your living body in the Seen realm to access the incredible powers of imagination. The most basic and easiest form of this is tapping into the Unseen for inspiration, as the Unseen is a plane of pure creative energy it can be used to stimulate the mind to invent new ideas and discover new concepts.
The highest form of Vividry is imposing dreams of the Unseen onto reality through Artistry, expressing pure ideas into a medium other people can experience and thus giving them physical form that can exist in reality. This can be used to summon Spirits into permanent vessels, or create powerful magical items, or any number of other more strange things. Mastery of creative workings like music and painting naturally lend themselves to mastery over the highest levels of application of Vividry.
Overuse of Vividry has side effects opposite those of Ardency, making one unable to tell fiction from reality and driving its practitioners at least mildly deranged due to constant exposure to experiences which are impossible in reality. It's not something that can be easily overcome because it's a natural result of witnessing so many weird and amazing things that the practitioner's commonsense will end up be distorted, but significant effort can keep a Master of Vividry firmly grounded in reality, and merely a little quirky in social contexts, rather than falling completely into madness.
