Rather than saying magic is a particle, it might be more accurate to the rest of your explanation to say that magic is a force, like the hypothetical unified force that underlies electromagnetic, gravitic, and nuclear forces.
Here's something I've had in the back of my head for a long time, but could never really make use of.
"Aether", the motive force for "magic" is produced by fusion reactions, which in nature means stars(but if a civilization were to develop fusion bombs or better yet fusion reactors, they would in turn generate mana) similar to neutrinos. It is in turn influenced by electromagnetism such as the geomagnetic flux common to tectonically active planets("nodes" and "ley lines"), piezoelectric substances such as quartz... and complex electrical systems such as the electrochemistry of chordates. Therefore, complex and repeatable thought patterns(high intelligence) can utilize aether to effect changes in the environment both short-term("spells") and long-("enchantments" or "curses"). Artificial sources of magnetism can disrupt these reactions(cold iron AKA "north-pointing iron") but an artificial electromagnetic system(such as a computer) would have to approach the complexity of an organic brain in order to manipulate aether artificially.
As a side note, stars do not produce aether continuously, but only while they are fusing hydrogen to helium. At certain times when one of those elements runs low, fusion stops, the sun cools a bit, shrinks a bit, the core gets denser and hotter, fusion starts again, the new warmth inflates the sun. Thus, sunspot cycles are closely tied to the natural prevalence of aether. Lots of sunspots, more aether, warmer weather. Few sunspots, no mana, colder weather.
And for the record, we are currently in a low-sunspot period IRL. According to the fossil record, there were periods a few hundred thousand years ago where England was a jungle and there was no polar ice.
Here's something I've had in the back of my head for a long time, but could never really make use of.
"Aether", the motive force for "magic" is produced by fusion reactions, which in nature means stars(but if a civilization were to develop fusion bombs or better yet fusion reactors, they would in turn generate mana) similar to neutrinos. It is in turn influenced by electromagnetism such as the geomagnetic flux common to tectonically active planets("nodes" and "ley lines"), piezoelectric substances such as quartz... and complex electrical systems such as the electrochemistry of chordates. Therefore, complex and repeatable thought patterns(high intelligence) can utilize aether to effect changes in the environment both short-term("spells") and long-("enchantments" or "curses"). Artificial sources of magnetism can disrupt these reactions(cold iron AKA "north-pointing iron") but an artificial electromagnetic system(such as a computer) would have to approach the complexity of an organic brain in order to manipulate aether artificially.
As a side note, stars do not produce aether continuously, but only while they are fusing hydrogen to helium. At certain times when one of those elements runs low, fusion stops, the sun cools a bit, shrinks a bit, the core gets denser and hotter, fusion starts again, the new warmth inflates the sun. Thus, sunspot cycles are closely tied to the natural prevalence of aether. Lots of sunspots, more aether, warmer weather. Few sunspots, no mana, colder weather.
And for the record, we are currently in a low-sunspot period IRL. According to the fossil record, there were periods a few hundred thousand years ago where England was a jungle and there was no polar ice.
Heh, I had a idea equal to that, the only difference was that magic is based on chemical accumulation due to the processing of aether in the mytocondrias, so you can trace the magical lineage through female lines.
Heh, I had a idea equal to that, the only difference was that magic is based on chemical accumulation due to the processing of aether in the mytocondrias, so you can trace the magical lineage through female lines.
In the beginning, there was only Wind and Void, and they warred unceasingly in the endless empty world until Water appeared, separating them with its calm depths. Warmed by the Wind's divine radiance, simple life appeared within the Water, until great masses of Wood floated on the surface. Pierced by the Void's lightning, Fire sprang up on the Wood, burning it to smoke and ashes. Swirled by the Wind, the ashes collected and became Stone. Crushed by the Void's force, Stone became Metal. Cooled by the Wind, Metal collected Water, and the shape of the world was complete.
Animals appeared with the world now stabilized by the cycle of creation, and at the center, where the balance of the Wheel of five Elements that spun on the Axis of Wind and Void, Minds developed all on their own. Minds used Water's coolness to calm the Fire, Fire's heat to forge the Metal, Metal's sharpness to cut the Wood, Wood's resilience to shift the Stone, and Stone's endurance to channel the Water, and the wildness of the world became controlled and life was able to spread to every place.
The Void was outraged that Minds would dare to meddle with the primal forces of the World, and drove a fragment of Death into the core of every animal. The Wind was amazed at what Minds had devised without the planning or intervention of greater powers, and gave each animal a portion of its radiance, to hold off Death for a time and to create new lives before that glow dims and returns a record of each Mind to the greater whole from which it came.
Thus balanced at the center, with Life and Death as their fulcrum and Mind to give direction, all Animals have the potential to spin the Wheel of the Elements and with them the World itself.
Not exactly a magic system as such, but the elemental system on which one would be based, along with the justification for why magic is a usable thing and why random sub-sapient (but sentient) monsters may also have it, while (most) plants do not and places only have it in the form of raw elements that need to be appropriately channeled to do anything but exist and do what they'd normally do but more. Though the detailed notes were lost in a house fire, the original system was created to go with a video game idea, so despite all the pompous mystical blathering it would have boiled down to three tiers of combat magic, one good and bad status effect, and a utility spell for each of them, plus an extra over-rank combat spell for Wind and Void.
Because I'm one of those weirdos who actually liked it, collecting and stockpiling these would have worked largely like Final Fantasy 8, with a little of collecting elemental cores/crystals/etc. from defeated monsters like FF10 or, more recently, xianxia web-novels, and somehow absorbing them to improve the affinity for that element. A highly imbalanced affinity lets you use spells of that element innately while conferring the strengths and weakness of that element, while Mind magic is skills based on having balanced affinities that burn magic points rather than being innate or collected and used directly like the elemental spells.
The elements produce/reinforce or dissipate/control each other according to the Wheel as described (and IIRC as standard for Chinese mythology) while Void and Wind are strong against all of them individually but weak to themselves and combinations of the others. Those more esoteric effects without a strong elemental theme got bundled as Mind-aspected mixtures and function at the lowest value of the required component element affinities, and are neither especially strong nor weak against the five Elements on their own.
Taken as a whole an Elementalist's greater focus will outperform a Mentalist's need for a broad base to work from while getting steamrolled by Wind or Void's sheer power, while a Mentalist can baffle Wind and Void with their deep bag of tricks and the damping effect of all five elements combined when receiving Axial attacks, essentially a miniature form of the Wheel/World that divides them from each other to begin with.
Aside from that, the only other real note is that the system is set up to be its own reason for why gods and devils are not big on meddling in mortal affairs; they don't hand out divine or demonic weapons much because they're not very good at hurting their opposite number and are most effective when captured and turned against the creators, while Mind magic easily allows tricky mortals to run rings around them despite the relative lack of dakka - Besides, Void already wins through attrition since every animal has Death slowly undermining them from within, while Wind's whole deal was wanting to see what those wacky Minds come up with next on their own.
So time travelers and oracles will always be drawn towards the specifictimes which have already been visited and/or observed by multiple other time travelers and oracles?
This seems ripe for bootstrap paradoxes, where it turns out the famous event was actually caused on an originally perfectly ordinary date by large numbers of time travelers suddenly simultaneously appearing, knowing only that something very important was about to happen.
I was trying to think of a magic system based on Quantum Darwinism with a generous helping of artistic license. For reference:
Quanta Magazine said:
...our ability to observe some property depends not only on whether it is selected as a pointer state, but also on how substantial a footprint it makes in the environment. The states that are best at creating replicas in the environment — the "fittest," you might say — are the only ones accessible to measurement...
It's because of this redundancy that objective, classical-like properties exist at all. Ten observers can each measure the position of a dust grain and find that it's in the same location, because each can access a distinct replica of the information. In this view, we can assign an objective "position" to the speck not because it "has" such a position (whatever that means) but because its position state can imprint many identical replicas in the environment, so that different observers can reach a consensus.
The idea would be that magic users are the ones who can perceive and manipulate 'imprints' (or possibilities) that are otherwise too faint to show up in consensus reality. At the low end, you get some sort of probability manipulation. Since this is a world of magic (probably urban fantasy), those 'imprints' also include esoteric phenomena - they're basically 'alternative facts' that you can tap into. It even gives you an excuse for magic being self-censoring.
This would also play into time travel mechanics, embracing the idea of multiple pasts and futures each leaving their mark on the sands of time, doing away with strict causality. Perhaps if you go back in time and change the past, it creates a 'ghost' timeline that exists only as a very faint imprint, but can potentially grow stronger and stronger, imprinting more and more information, until it starts destructively interfering with the present.
TL;DR: in the world of Tei Ura, the physical planet is intertwined with an unseen spirit world, formed from a substance known most commonly in-setting as vāra or vaara. The physical and unseen worlds maintain one another through the continuous, cyclical exchange and renewal of vāra, and magic is practiced by channeling vāra - an ability everyone is born with to some degree, but that only some can develop into a true power. Spirits, the sapient denizens of the unseen world (a little like alien ghosts, a little like angels, and a little like forces of nature), are naturally drawn to humans with exceptional channeling ability in a phenomenon known as pairing.
There are two main types of spirit pairings: fixed and mutable. Humans paired with fixed spirits exert, using their channeling ability to in some way apply their partner's core nature to the physical world. Humans paired with mutable spirits enhance, using their ability to amplify their existing skills or talents.
(Ex. - telepathy? Not in as many words, but an enhancer with a knack for intuiting the feelings of others could, depending on their skill and capacity as a channeler, elevate their knack to a full-on extra sense. Laser vision? No, but an exerter paired with a spirit of glass and radiance might be able to achieve something close.)
This is actually going to have to be part one of [???] - I had no idea how much I had to say about all this until I started writing! I haven't even gotten into the subject of anchors, or the difference between channeling and mantling, or the pale spires, or how magic on Tei Ura interacts with science and technology, or - anyway.
Detailed explanation:
Tei Uraani magic is shaped by the nature of their world, which consists of a physical planet and another, not-so-physical world layered over it - the world of spirits, formed from the unseen element vāra and anchored to the physical world like a soul to a body. Though unseen, vāra permeates every atom of the material world. While vāra in its ambient state passes harmlessly through inanimate objects, any living being must have enough channeling capacity to metabolize the small amount of vāra that constantly seeps like background radiation from the unseen world to the physical. All living beings (including plants and other non-animals) must metabolize a baseline amount of vāra to keep their souls active and tethered to their physical bodies; the greater a being's channeling capacity, the greater their capacity for sentience and sapience. (Every living being on Tei Ura exhibits some degree of bioluminescence. The glow doesn't come from any chemical, bacterial, or other organic process; channeling causes vāra to manifest visibly, and Tei Uraani 'bioluminescence' is the visual effect resulting from the baseline channeling that is the soul's equivalent of breathing. This is also why the glow disappears upon death; unglowing is unliving.)
As the physical world is populated by humans and animals, the unseen world is populated by spirits of varying nature and magnitude, who are drawn to humans born with exceptional channeling abilities as part of their life cycle in a phenomenon most widely known as pairing. Though both mortal souls and spirits are formed from vāra, souls disperse when the body is destroyed; spirits, lacking physical bodies, cannot die unless they tether their existence to a mortal life, which causes them to dissolve into ra (the raw, unchanneled version of vāra) alongside their paired human's soul when that person dies. The death of a paired spirit returns their vāra to the unseen world as ra, renewing what is effectively the soul of the physical world and ensuring that both halves continue to exist.
Because spirits are formed from concentrated vāra, the only humans who can pair with them (or at least pair with them and live) are those with exceptional channeling capacity. The greater one's capacity, the greater magnitude of spirit one is likely to attract, and the greater a spirit one pairs with, the bigger a "reserve tank" of vāra one can potentially tap into (though most Tei Uraani would be repulsed to hear a spirit described as such).
Over the course of its life, as a spirit grows older, accumulates more vāra, and becomes stronger, it also begins to center its existence around a idea or handful of ideas gradually gleaned from humanity's collective consciousness (which radiates from the physical to the unseen world, just as ambient vāra radiates from the unseen world to the physical). Because these ideas are the core of a spirit's form and nature, they also become the core that defines their paired human's abilities. Spirits that have found their core are known as fixed spirits, while mutable spirits are those that have yet to find their core. Both fixed and mutable spirits can pair with humans; which of the two main types of magic a paired human can practice depends on the type of spirit with which they've paired. Only a fixed spirit can pair with a human while retaining its individuality; a mutable spirit lacks any core identity to anchor itself during contact with a human soul, and so loses its individuality upon pairing.
A human paired to a fixed spirit is one who exerts. They use their channeling ability to in some way apply their partner's core nature to the physical world, and their powers reflect their partner's nature. Because fixed spirits are usually older and have accumulated more vāra than mutable spirits, humans paired with fixed spirits generally have more powerful (and, often, more visually impressive) abilities. However, the range of their abilities is defined by their paired spirit's core nature, and extensive use of powers takes a greater toll in fixed pairings than in mutable ones.
A human paired to a mutable spirit is one who enhances. Rather than working with or through a separate entity to affect the world, an enhancer affects themselves. By entering the right mental state and saturating their body and mind with vāra channeled from their absorbed partner, mutable pairings can amplify their existing skills or talents. Because mutable spirits generally have less accumulated vāra than fixed spirits, humans paired with mutable spirits aren't as obviously powerful as their fixed-pairing counterparts. At the same time, humans in mutable pairings have much more choice in how to use and develop their abilities, and suffer less if they overextend themselves.
From a setting I've been thinking on, off and on; the important point is that rather than conventional entities everything is made of combinations of a small number of Primal Elements, including Chaos, Order, and Presence. For example, Chaos + Presence is Time, while Order + Presence is Space. Which brings me to:
Aetheric Manipulation: The Aether is a quasi-substance composed of the bound particles of the primal elements Chaos, Order and Presence. It is not directly bound or defined by Time or Space, but allows interactions between places and times far distant from each other with no conventional linkage between them. Its Chaos aspect ensures that it is constantly changing and causing change; while its Order aspect gives those changes pattern and purpose - and allows them to be controlled to a degree by those who know how.
Many forms of what we would call "magic" are based on manipulation and perception of the Aether. Both perception of possible futures and the creation of "destined paths" leading to prophesied success or disaster are possible due to the Aether's nonlocal, transtemporal nature. More actively, it is possible to "reach through" the Aether and influence the world through it, if one knows how.
Notably, this happens naturally all the time. Great events will resonate backwards in time though the Aether and cause disturbances in the past; an indirect method of utilizing the Aether is reading such "omens" and interpreting their meaning ahead of the actual event. In the same way sometimes phenomenon with no apparent cause will manifest due to resonance though the Aether of some distant event.
There are many methods of manipulating the Aether, but the oldest and most fundamental is mentally. The Aether interacts with the mind like everything else, and it is possible to learn to think in ways that allow usage of the Aether. The difficulty is that without any feedback, figuring out exactly how to do so is more a matter of luck than anything else. There are many mental exercises designed to point a person in the right direction, but ultimately it's largely a matter of luck if they ever succeed. Usually the initial success is something random and trivial, but someone can do it at all they have feedback on what they are doing and can hone the effects. They often have difficulty expanding the range of what they can do however, so the usual result is somebody with a handful of related "Talents".
Another method is to discover resonant events, and then learn to manipulate them. For example, people wishing good fortune will perform acts that are known to be good omens, in hopes that the resonance will work backwards and create the omened good fortune instead of the other way around. If disturbances at one location are known to cause related ones at a distance location, carefully manipulating them can affect that location in a controlled fashion.
The next step of course is to create such resonant links artificially; there are three basic methods for this. The first is to shape a place or object in a way that is known to resonate though the Aether; a technique which is arbitrarily powerful but also inherently rigid. The second is the occasional Talented person whose gift lets them create such resonant links. And the third, derived from the second is to use objects with such artificial resonance and arrange them in a fashion that has the desired effect of the world through the Aether. Simply put, one carefully calculates the desired result and then arranges the resonant objects according to those calculations, which if done properly will cause the desired resonance through the Aether and the resulting effects.
The latter technique lends itself well to elaboration. If one is willing to invest in the needed calculations and construction, it is possible to build an almost arbitrarily complex array of resonant effects.
Today I'm going to talk more about the magic system I started describing in this post (AKA the one two replies above this one). In other words:
Tei Uraani spirit arts...
TL;DR: The previous post covers vāra, the unseen element that fuels all life and magic on Tei Ura; the relationship between the inhabitants of Tei Ura's physical world and of its unseen (spirit) world, which is a fundamental part of the magic system; and channeling and spirit pairing, the methods through which all humans practice magic. You should probably read that first (or at least the TL;DR summary at the beginning). This second post is going to focus on anchors, the physical objects that tether paired spirits to their human partners and the instruments through which paired spirits can affect the physical world. This post covers the most basic elements of anchors – what they are, their function in spirit-human pairings, and how anchors fit into Tei Uraani society – as well as a bit on the types of relationships that develop from spirit-human pairing-bonds, and a bit about the slightly special relationship spirit-paired humans develop with time and aging.
The average Tei Uraani human first makes contact with their spirit partner at around age seven. Some paired humans begin an active relationship with their spirit right away, but it's most common for the spirit to exist in a kind of dormant state for years after pairing. A dormant spirit can awaken at any point in its human partner's lifetime; typically, this happens when their human turns fourteen or twenty-one. Once a spirit has awakened, that spirit and its paired human might be the closest of confidantes; they might simply have a relationship of mutual respect; they might have a more distant one, more like a professional contract; they might consider each other family. It's not even unheard of for romantic attachments to form. Pairings are usually positive relationships; however, like any interpersonal relationship, they have the potential to become toxic and destructive. No matter how different they might be from humans, spirits are still essentially people – with all the diversity that implies – and so no two pairing-bonds are the same.
When a spirit pairs with a human, it also develops a bond to a physical object known as an anchor – a spirit's tether to its partner and the physical world, and the instrument through which it affects that world. Anchors must be inanimate objects – an anchor cannot be a living animal or plant. In some pairings, the anchor is something to which the human partner has a strong attachment. With others, the anchor in some way reflects the spirit's nature, or the nature of the pairing-bond as a whole. At other times, the anchor is an object that will take on greater importance in the future.
Many Tei Uraani believe that an anchor reflects, in some way or another, the nature of a paired human's soul. To pair with a spirit is to become bonded to it by the soul, leading many Tei Uraani to view anchors as an externalization of a paired human's soul, or as somehow representing the shape of one's soul. Some believe in this about as seriously as they believe in the results of personality quizzes; others believe it's pure nonsense; others may form hard-line judgements on paired humans based on the shape of their spirit's anchor.
Although spirits care little about the concept of where as the physical world understands it, for a paired spirit, its anchor becomes the center of the unseen world as the spirit experiences it, the closest a spirit can ever come to having a physical body of its own. What this means is that an anchor is always deeply imbued with its tethered spirit – saturated with that spirit's nature and presence, somewhere between an electrical charge and an aura. This means that touching a paired spirit's anchor is only a few degrees of separation away from touching the spirit itself, and should never be done by anyone but that spirit's paired human. Anyone else who touches a spirit's anchor (without being explicitly invited to do so) deeply violates the boundaries both of the spirit and of the paired human; doing so transcends cultural differences and is universally recognized as wrong. While there may be some seeming exceptions to this, such as when an anchor is used as a weapon, the difference is a matter of intent. (For example, when an anchor is used as a weapon, the other person is not touching that anchor but is instead being touched by it; the paired human wielding the anchor means for their weapon to make contact.) Touching another person's anchor by accident is also not as bad as willfully laying hands on it, since it was done without conscious intent (but it should still be avoided whenever humanly possible).
Because an anchor is imbued so heavily with its tethered spirit, anyone who touches any spirit's anchor causes a mutual exchange where their selves brush together (this is the only way spirits can truly 'contact' or communicate with humans). For a spirit's paired human, this is a non-issue, since the two of them are already bonded, but for a third party, the sudden vulnerability and alien presence is an unpleasant shock with unpredictable effects. In rare instances, such an accident can even prove fatal to an unpaired human.
In most spirit-human pairings, the human rarely lets their partner's anchor out of their sight and carries it with them constantly or almost-constantly. To facilitate this, spirit-human pairs develop a kind of shared telekinesis-like control over their anchor, a power that exists separate from any other abilities the two might develop through their relationship; all pairs have it to some extent, with virtually no exceptions. Paired spirits are able to move their anchor about in relation to their partner, while the human partner always has a sense for where the anchor is and can hold it and pull it to them with their mind. Fixed spirits, who have a will and identity of their own in the context of the pairing-bond, can take more active control over their anchors, and a fixed spirit can work with its paired human to move an anchor in more complex or independent-seeming ways. Mutable spirits have a much more limited range of control over their anchors that usually doesn't extend much further than the basic ability of find-and-keep-close.
Spirits don't experience time as humans do (age, the feeling of moving 'forward' each day, the idea that the past is over or gone, etc); if a spirit were a stone dropped in a pond, time as spirits sense it would be the ripples that spread out from that stone across the pond's surface. One side effect of this is that humans paired with spirits become slightly unanchored from time. They live far longer than average – often around 250 years – and generally stop aging around their mid-twenties to mid-thirties (no paired human ever stops aging before their frontal lobe has finished developing), though some age further before stopping, as the real "cue" to stop aging has more to do with how the paired human sees themselves than on any number of lived years. Some paired humans don't stop aging until they're much older, while others who have already stopped aging may suddenly age further after experiencing some kind of upheaval or trauma in life.
Although paired humans can age forward, they can't age back; any increase in the age of their physical body is permanent. Barring death by disease, sudden illness, or the like, paired humans typically know when their time is coming to die; though they don't know exactly when, they will know when the time is drawing near and when they need to start making preparations for it. Paired humans frequently see to their own funeral arrangements, and when the moment of their death comes, they pass quickly and quietly, in a way that almost seems less like dying and more like abandoning a physical vessel – which isn't too far from the truth.
I've been working on a magic system for a while now, and it has thus grown complicated as hell. To begin with, there are five forms of supernatural energies: Mana, energy of the world, Soulforce, power born from memories of ensouled beings, Qi, life force and energy of self used to increase strength and durability and quickly heal wounds, Favor, Divine power offered by higher beings in exchange for devotion or sacrifice, and Aura, the result of Mana coming in contact with Qi, used subconsciously to augment ingrained motions, protect the body, and direct and store Mana as needed to perform Magic.
Soulforce is used in Soul Arts, and is effectively casting from EXP. All those small things you can't remember? Turned into Soulforce. Overdrawing results in permanent memory loss. Soul Arts can do basically anything, but can only be done so often due to how absurdly slowly Soulforce is generated.
Favor is used in Miracles, with the Favor offered by a chosen Patron God, of which there are an incredible number (true gods represent a concept, but sufficiently powerful spirits representing objects or places can do the same). Miracles a devotee can perform are directly related to the domain of the patron. The more tangential the Miracle, the higher the cost.
Qi is life force generated by living things, and is extremely personal to the one to generate it. Qi is most often used for body reinforcement or self healing. One can however use it otherwise, cultivating an excess of power used for deliberate techniques. This is basically Xianxia stuff. Power is directly proportional to how the user limits themselves.
Aura is the result of atmospheric Mana meeting an individual's Qi, and becoming attuned to that individual. It will absorb blows, repel Mana, and enhance the user when they make a movement they have sufficiently trained. The more ingrained the motion, the more efficient it is. The property of repelling Mana is the most significant, allowing one to capture and channel Mana.
Mana is the power of the world. It tends to maintain different coherent states, self reinforcing behavior based on location. Streams of Mana tend to drag peripheral Mana with it, forming large and slow currents when undisturbed. Atmospheric Mana is free floating and unfocused, with no set behavior. Stagnant Mana has grown still and heavy, settling into materials and changing them in odd ways. Stagnant regions are results of an extreme lack of living things to inspire motion, and enforce that by being unhealthy to be within. Spontaneous transmutation of the components of the body is not good for your health. Mana can have properties altered in many ways, but the most common is a form of attunement to material it has been channeled through or stored within. Some forms of magic eliminate attunement.
Magic use is classified into four schools; two formal and two informal.
Runic magic is a formal magic focusing on the use of a special language to create effects. The spoken language is long forgotten, but enough examples of the written form remain to be used as a psudo-programming language. Runic magic is interesting in that it neutralizes all original properties of the Mana when used, altering it into an elemental state. Such elemental Mana can have those properties, but it must be after elemental conversion. Elemental Mana degrades back into normal Mana when loose for long enough. Cost depends on element and number of symbols. Effects always originate from the caster. Runes can be placed on an object to create an effect whenever Mana is passed through it.
Geometric Magic is a formal school centered on the use of pattern and geometry to cause semipermanent effects. Unlike Runic magic, geometric Magic has some give to it. A single shape can denote an element, but the exact manner of invocation depends on the caster's intent. Geometric Magic causes Mana to form a resonance with the associated element, thus influencing it from afar. This resonance doesn't go away after the caster is finished, however. Cost is dependent on distance between caster and effect, element used, an effect magnitude.
Arcane Magic is the informal school focused on brute force manipulation of Mana. Arcane Magic uses the effect Mana has on materials directly, throwing Mana around hard enough to actually hit things. This may seem simple, and it is, but no less effective. Getting hit with a massive dose of fire element Mana resonant with lightning and attuned with poison will do nasty things to you. Constructively, this school is used for Alchemy, doing artificially and controllably what stagnant Mana does naturally. Alchemic metals are incredibly useful. This is also the form most often seen in animals, alongside the last school.
Speaking of, Wild Magic. This informal school is all about associations, metaphors, connotations, and unpredictable effects. This is the realm of witchcraft and rituals. Potions and curses also lie in this area. Using wild magic is hard. One must consider an incredible number of variables to accomplish any major feat. Wild magic thus tends to be the stuff of fairy tales, of curses laid down on the night of the autumn equinox by dark rituals. It is also the realm of summoning and binding.
There also exist specialized skills connecting various disciplines. For example, Soul Magic is the use of Soulforce to shape Mana rather than Aura, but tends to invite discussion of soulburn, Which converts Soulforce into Mana. Thaumaturgy is the use of Favor to amplify or simplify traditional casting, Blood Magic is the art of converting Qi to Mana to perform Magic, some Aura manipulation can be done to increase Mana storage, etc.
A Fic idea I had about vampires has actually got me looking into Numerology, with the various meanings assigned to numbers (and sometimes letters along with them in gematria). Most people are probably familiar with 7 and 13 being lucky and unlucky, 666 and Satan, and you may have heard about the East Asian association with 4 and death. Here were a bunch of other number meanings I thought to jot down, feel free to bring up others:
108 - Fairly common in anime, it has several connotations in Buddhism but is usually the number of earthly temptations
801 - Considered God's number as opposed to 666, due to Omega having a numerical value of 800 in gematria and Alpha obviously having 1
9 - I'm noticing quite a few curses linked with this number, such as the 'Curse of the Night' superstition with Classical symphonies, or the Nine of Diamonds playing card being called the Curse of Scotland
27 - Another 'cursed' number, being the age many famous musicians died at
72 - The number of transformations Sun Wukong had in Journey to the West, but also the number of demons sealed away by Solomon
180 - Reversal, Flip
360 - Cycle, Full circle
11 and 101 - Excess, one overboard
12 - Not only the number of months, it also has Christian significance due to the number of Apostles. Also of the Zodiac (sans Ophiuchus)
23 - Prominent number in Discordianism, said by superstition to pop up nearly everywhere
69 and 420 - You know where this is going
On Numerology for my Fic, I was originally gonna take more inspiration from gematria by having the equivalent numbers to the letters in a person's name add up to their 'Soul Number', also a thing in numerology. People have gone even deeper with this, by also adding up the consonants and vowels in a name to get different total numbers for more specific things, like your 'Heart Number'
The problem though is the fic's gonna be set in Japan, where names and words are usually composed of syllables (or brush strokes, breaking it down further) rather than individual letters. At the same time SV is a mostly English-speaking site, so having name numerology be based off hiragana, let alone kanji, is gonna get a lot harder to follow than just basing it off the English alphabet. Given the villains are from a global organisation of vampire hunters, I could just have them gather Soul Numbers using the English alphabet anyway, but that leads me to another problem
Being able to find out a person's Soul Number just by doing maths with their name would simultaneously make things too easy and impersonal for both the villains and Quest voters (not so much for the heroes since one's bad at maths while the other's ignorant of humans though), while at the same time making it harder and more tedious for me as a writer since I'd have to make sure that each character's name adds up to exactly the right number
So I decided to simplify Soul Numbers in this Fic down to just 'whatever number is most significant for a person'. I feel this is an improvement story and mechanics-wise since it's more personal to each character, easier on me as a writer, while at the same time not instantly able to be figured out by heroes, villains, or voters, requiring actually interacting with that character to do so (though the villains would try pulling 'Hey, give us your most important Number and we'll totally get rid of your worst fear for you'), plus it ties in better with the theme of how maths can have personal meaning
Been redesigning Fairy Tale characters and in the process thought up how Fairies, Or Fey, in this world would interact with humans.
Fey could be said to be the underlying drive of cause and effect of the world. The forces of nature, the chaos of the universe even, given thought. Or at the very least a general idea.
If a person wishes to gain power over these forces they must first find a way of trapping a certain type of Fey and ask for a contract or favor giving them both a vessel to attach to and a name to give them purpose. Those capable of that minimum feat are thus called Witches.
Fey are separated into two alignments which thusly also describes how one can trap them.
First is their nature, ranging from Sky to Land and Life to Death. Spirit Fey are those that sit in the middle and have abilities that are more conceptual. Fey can align with one to three natures but not of opposing lines. EX.: Sky-Life and Land-Death.
Second is their body or the element of nature they are closest to: Wind, Water, Earth, and Fire. These are always set but their natures can shift over time. EX: Water Fey of rivers or the Ocean are of Land but can shift to Sky as rain or clouds.
+Ways of capturing Fey:
-Keep the first light of dawn in a reflection until past nightfall.
-Keep the last light of dusk in a reflection until sunrise.
-Collect a bolt of lightning in a bottle or other small container.
-Hold a breeze in one place until it asks to be let go.
-Keep a mound of snow formed on the winter solstice until the summer solstice.
-Make a death Fey understand love.
-Make a life Fey question its place in the world.
-Give breath to a plant.
-Collect the light of the full moon in a pond until dawn.
-Make a stone move of its own will.
-Have a group of Fey believe you are one of their own.
-Convince a part of you they are their own separate being.
-Sleep in one spot for over one year straight without waking up.
-Consume something magical in nature and not die from it.
-Promise to find something a Fey lost and return it.
-Kill a Witch and have their Fey move their contracts to you.
-Be given a Fey by another Witch.
-Keep a fire lit for one full week or until it asks to be moved somewhere else.
-Etc.
The longer a Witch can keep a Fae the stronger said Fey become, which is rare. Rarer still are those that keep contracts with multiple Fey of vastly different alignments for a long time.
-Grandma was a witch trying to seal a dangerous wolf like death Fey in her dying body but LRRH interrupted the spell and caused the wolf to possess her. However Grandma's soul also came along and their combined effort has pacified the death Fey. Years later LRRH's using the wolf's strength and Grandma's knowledge in her youthful body as a monster hunter.
-SW was the apprentice to a powerful Sorceress having a high aptitude to all Fey. After gaining a magic mirror the Sorceress went insane for an untold reason and attacked SW causing her to flee into a deep forest. There she's trained and acquired seven loyal Fey in order to combat her teacher in hopes of saving her from the mirror.
- A wood Fey's tree is turned into a doll and accidently given life. They are somehow their own witch and must understand human emotion if they wish to stay alive and not turn back into a tree.
- SB is forced into a coma by a witch and this somehow sets up SB to become a witch herself gaining the ability to manifest her dreams into reality for a short time (Revise).
+Fey Partner: (unnamed as of yet): Water-Spirit Fey
- Young girl falls into a Fae realm and contracts the two arguing Fey Lords, one of Commerce and one of Games, which she must now mediate while balancing out her daily life. This is slowly driving her insane.
- An adventurous sea Fey saves an overboard prince and accidently becomes their partner but are separated. LM must take on a human form and travel the land to find the prince again and undo the contract. (Have her start liking the surface as a character growth point).
- As a baby Peter was raised by Fey making him think he was one of their own. As a teen he defends the Fey's realm from people hoping to take said Fey. His partner Fey is his shadow that came to life as he thought it was its own separate person and give him the power to fly by removing themselves from Peter. (Revise)
-H and G kill a Witch hoping to kill them and gain their oven Fey. H makes incanted weapons and G makes living food to fight. Have a stamina meter that only refills as the other is on field. H is slow with large weapons while G is fast with summoned gingerbread men.
+Fey Partner: Backerin: Fire-Land/Spirit/Life Fey
- After selling their family cow for beans Jack is sent to bed without dinner but sneaks out and eats some of the thrown away beans allowing him to produce and control bean seeds and sprouts from his body. Somehow still ends up killing a giant (Maybe?).
- Dorothy is a world traveler and ends up on this one. Toto, Scarecrow, Tinman, and Lion are her Fey (?) or something else from another world. (Retool)
- A vain Prince gets cursed to look like a frog and is seeking a cure.
+Fey Partner: (None): Water-Land/Life Cursed Human
- A kind but unlucky and mistreated girl gains the pity of a powerful moon Fey allowing her to become a Magical Girl. Cinderella uses this power to become a vigilantly. In game her transformation either has its own gauge or a set time limit where she turns normal again for a short while.
The Thaumaturgy* of Sufir, the main setting of The Faraway Shores, is definitely on the soft-subtle side of the spectrum, although it has its moment of flash and power, and my aim is to make it subtle and flavorful.
The foundations of thaumaturgy are 3:
1. The Gods are part of the fabric of the universe, the sentient and sapient forces of the natural law and emotion.
Gods are independent; they don't need beliefs and prayers to sustain themselves. What shapes the mortal expectations give them are just that, the shapes - not an essence.
Gods are perceptible: At least to those with the gift of Sight. When the thaumaturgist work their miracle, they may appear like the gods themselves. Occasionally, one can witness the manifestation of gods in their glory. And rarely, gods do walk among the mortals in disguise, leaving faint, barely perceptible clues of their identities.
2. Reality has layers, and the layers have inhabitants other than humans. They are Jinn, although there may be more beings yet to be discovered by the mankind.
The Jinn are not a race. You don't call the entire ecosystem of Earth a race, don't you? There are Jinn people, Jinn animals, Jinn plants, etc... All of them have strange powers - shapeshifting, elementalism, flight, possession, etc.
Some Jinn are good. Some are bad. Others are just like animals. All of them have morality very different from that of humans. The gods call the certain Jinn as their servants.
Some Jinn are born out of human existence and actions. Qarin is one, Ghul is another. Beware the Ghul.
3. The Humankind lacks the natural abilities of Jinn, but has the gift of words, image, and numbers. With prayers and talismans, they can command the reality and the Jinn. Some use more scientific style, although the underlying methods are the same.
The Thaumaturgy is centered around the blessings and enchantments, curses and hexes, illusion and shaping, and the binding and bargaining with the Jinn.
The main limit: Gods are inviolable. They are the sources of thaumaturgy, and they control its usage. Do not incur their wrath, as they have infinite ways to punish you.
*Magic (Sihr) has a highly negative connotation in Arabic. The Faraway Shores are based on Pre-Islamic Middle Eastern cultures. So, I'll avoid using that word in respect to the people I am drawing inspiration from.
Special Thanks to: @Codex. Good luck with your End Times reading.
It might be a bit of a stretch to include my idea of The Gameboard in here, since it's more half-magic half-worldbuilding, but this is the most complete (non-spoiler anyway) description I've written on how it operates, and how it can be transplanted to settings other than Persona:
To explain what 'The Gameboard' is, it's a pocket dimension in the Collective Unconsciousness that the plot of my completed Quest Persona: The Beautifulrevolves around. It serves as a manifestation of human conflict, of wills strong enough to lead cognitive Empires that clash against other Empires.
On the Gameboard there are Players and Pieces, Players being people summoned onto the Gameboard, and Pieces being cognitive manifestations of well, basically everyone else, specifically those under the Players' influence in the physical world. Most Players are Rulers, people with strong wills and visions of how the world should be, and so are able to manifest their own Empires on the Gameboard from this will and vision, with the Pieces of those they had influence over in the physical world becoming their Subjects.
The Rulers of Empires can clash against each other to grow their Empire's territory. Clashes mostly happen in one of two ways, the first is all-out War between Rulers and their Subject Pieces. However, destroying a Piece on the Gameboard also means destroying that person's psyche in the physical world, so a Gameboard War usually leaves a blatant, masquerade-wrecking mental shutdown count. So the second, more 'humane' form of clashing are Duels, where two Rulers fight each other one on one in an Arena at the Heart of an Empire, usually the Empire of the challenged for fairness's sake. Duels are used to solve disputes and aren't necessarily fatal, but can often turn out that way. other than clashes, stealth missions to spy on each others' Empires are a common Gameboard activity.
In Persona: The Beautiful, each Ruler was an All-Ace, a group of the most popular students at Hanataba High. If we changed the setting to a different series, then presumably the most influential or visionary characters of that setting would be the ones to gain Empires, and presumably that setting's powers in place of Personae.
Note that not all Players are Rulers, hence the distinction. People unable to form Empires can still be 'chosen' by the Gameboard to enter it for various reasons, often confidential, and are usually given a special power to compensate for them not being able to win the Gameboard. For example, in Persona: The Beautiful all Players were Persona-users, yet only the MC was a Wild Card (able to switch out Personae), which in a non-Persona series could be replaced by their setting's respective powers. The Gameboard also has an Overseer as a referee, and an Emissary native to it to contact players.
Another type of non-Ruler Player is the 'dethroned Ruler' who has lost control of their Empire and can no longer win the Gameboard. Aside from just killing them, a Player can lose their Empire when their social influence in the physical world is shattered, for example a promising top student losing their reputation upon being expelled. Dethroned Empires don't just vanish, as the other Rulers still have to venture into and conquer them personally, and can spawn dangerous monsters called 'Scourges' if left unchecked. There's also the 'No One's Land', any area of the Gameboard not occupied by an Empire, that unlike Empires has no fixed form beyond its checkerboard floors.
What form an Empire's terrain takes depends on their Ruler's psyche, particularly their vision of how the world should be run. In Persona: The Beautiful we had (note that each Empire's name changed a couple of times):
Martial Empire, whose aesthetic borrowed from various Bronze Age cultures, such as China, Greece, Rome, and Babylon. Built on the vision of 'Might'
Virtual Empire, which resembled a Tron-like VR world. Built on the vision of 'Genius'
Criminal Empire, a winding series of back-alley slums decorated by giant instruments. Built on the vision of 'Passion'
Shopping Empire, a chain of neon 80s megamalls. Built on the vision of 'Wealth'
Divine Empire, a fleet of Japanese pagodas and castles floating atop a lake. Built on the vision of 'Ancestry'
Cultured Empire, a castle-sized theatre covered in thorns. Built on the vision of 'Charisma'
Galactic Empire, a Jules Verne-esque recreation of the celestial spheres, complete with zero gravity. Built on the vision of 'Morality'
The Gameboard is 'won' when a single Empire covers the entire board. No Player is exactly sure what will happen upon victory, though from what the Gameboard is already capable of, people assume victory will gain the winning Player mass mind-control.
In the world of Antiel there are people that can manipulate Hembrion Fields. Hembrion Fields can disrupt the laws of physics within their influence in one specific form: connection. This means that an Antielim mage can strengthen or lower the "intensity" of any particular connection inside their fields. For example; a mage might erect a field to decrease the binding energy of water molecules. Such mage must be very careful as this field can have many effects, from forcefully crystalizing any solute, to creating explosions by turning water to steam, to enacting spontaneous fission.
As such, any mage is required to undergo significant amounts of training and qualification exams; which the government is more than happy to pay for as they are the biggest employer of magi. Thanks to this, Antiel has been unified under a world government, and the average citizen enjoys the benefits of megastructures supported by gravity limiting Fields, cheap power generated by stations equipped with fusion enhancing Fields, medical facilities with entropy reducing Fields, and more.
There are some limits to Hembrion fields:
1. Magi cannot create a connection between objects, forces, or concepts, only manipulate what is inside their field.
2. Magi cannot completely eliminate a connection, only lower it to a fraction of normal. Equally, a connection cannot be enhanced to infinity, only raised by a set amount. Beyond those limits the power required to sustain the field changes from a linear progression into an exponential increase that quickly approaches infinity.
3. Fields need to be charged regularly by magi. Power drainage is affected by the intensity and size of the field. There are no known alterative methods for recharging than mage power.
4. Hembrion Fields are not mobile. Any attempt to move a Field, or any object it is anchored to, will result in (likely catastrophic) field failure.
5. Hembrion Fields are not stackable. The very nature of the Fields destabilizes Reality, so stacking multiple fields will result in (likely catastrophic) field failure of the Eldritch variety.
6. Hembrion Fields affect everything in their range. This includes energy, matter, information and life, intelligent or otherwise. The only known exception are magi who are resistant to the effects.
Is there a sensory component to magical ability - do mages have an inherent ability to sense the physical forces and interactions (connections) in their vicinity? If so, what does that feel like?
In The Faraway Shores, there are no distinctive and separate 'class' of wizards or sorcerers. The thaumaturgy is instead studied and wield by various kinds of skilled experts.
They are priests, chymists and physicians, philosophers and scribes, artisans, magistrates, and the occasional wandering healers and exorcists. The most esteemed of these experts and mystics are called Rabi in Lessana Aradenaya*, Mu'allim in the Al-tajiyyah**.
Some of them are person of wealth, who could afford to seclude themselves and focus on esoteric studies. Others may be inheritors of mystic traditions running in their family. Most, though, are products of clergy and temples.
The workings of thaumaturgy is still mysterious, but it appears that one's beliefs are essential in that. Images, letters, and numerals have powers to shape reality, but the mental intents of the practitioners must actualize them, who in turn must simultaneously convince themselves of their worthiness to shape reality. Religious institutions and livings are effective at instilling these necessary memeplexes into the thaumaturgists.
Of course, not every wielder of thaumaturgy is on the side of good. Power tempts and corrupts, or the thaumaturgists start out with ill intents. These dangerous individuals deserve to be called the Witch - Sahir. The most dangerous of them are ones in the positions of power, or convinced of their own righteousness and purity.
Some Sahir are both. These villains tend to become the greatest tyrants known to the men and the world.
Divination is an entirely different kind of power, and a far rarer one. A random chance or gift of the Sight allow these few to see things others, not even the most capable of thaumaturgists, cannot see. From these visions, of thoughts and dreams, past and future, gods, signs and portents, and any number of other arcane and bizarre apparitions, the Diviners and Dreamers gain revelation and weave the new spells into legible form of letters and sigils.
That's the question... Well, there wouldn't be one type of magic, but many different Ideas and Schools inside them. I've spent a lot of time on all these magic-related thoughts. However, it's still important what kind of story it is, because I don't think it possible to fit and show all possible kinds of phenomena, which can be described as magic. If we are not writing an encyclopedia or textbook.
Even something as simple and straightforward like Mana, which used so often, in so many forms and rules... I think, I am not in right mood for it right now, but going to look for this thread.
Is there a sensory component to magical ability - do mages have an inherent ability to sense the physical forces and interactions (connections) in their vicinity? If so, what does that feel like?
Yes, magi can "hear" connections. Reality sounds like a grand orchestra to them, with specific connections being specific tones or instruments. Like gravity is a trombone while light is a guitar.
When they enact a field they can select a tone and change the volume. The important thing is that they cannot alter the "sound". For example, if you assume that gamma rays are G major on that guitar, the magi cannot change it to B flat, because that would be infrared, and the Field just doesn't work that way.
BTW I know next to nothing about music, so the example might be gibberish if you do. Sorry.
The interesting thing is that, depending on what the mage is trying to modify, they could hear a hauntingly beautiful melody, an upbeat, disco-like song, or just dial-up modem noises
Edit: Almost forgot but magi cannot affect a connection they aren't aware of. So, in the Middle Ages equivalent of Antiel there were no magi messing about with fusion Fields or the like.
Don't wanna give nukes to the knights.
The universe is a room of unknown dimensions, its walls lost in shadows. At its centre lies reality. It is a marionette, hanging limply on countless strings, and above it Physics holds them in his hands, ever manipulating the world in all its stunning complexity. He tugs on the threads in accordance with a set of simple rules, observing the results and reacting, and from this endless cycle come countless patterns and complexities, people among them.
And these residents may learn of Physics' principles, and they may take advantage of them in every way that they can, cause elaborate ripples of change. But at some point, these quirks of the marionette may desperately wish that a string be pulled, or that another not be. And that is entirely impossible for them to decide, for they have no power. They are not even the marionette itself, only the patterns within its movements, and to defy the marionettist is paradox - for all their actions and thoughts result from the marionette's inanimate compliance, all that they are is what Physics intended.
But let us suppose that this does not continue. A hand emerges from the darkness, and it pulls on a string that Physics did not intend to be pulled.
But how does this new entity decide what strings to pull?
If it acts on simple, mindless principles like the marionettist, then a new, compound pattern emerges, and stabilises, and reality settles on another course. And perhaps quirks emerge here, too. And perhaps when they study their world and learn of its workings there will be new, novel ways to harness them. But if they wish for true change - none will be forthcoming. For the newcomer is like the old, and they, the inhabitants, are but an intended result of a world spun jointly, a world unrecognisable to the one that came before it.
But perhaps the hand acts with thought and intent - perhaps it seeks only to follow wishes, to maintain the old order but subtly defy it. And in this case, what compels it? What are its criteria, what are its ethics, its thought process. Its ambition.
And the answer is that there are none to be found, for such notions do not exist in the bone, sinew and muscle of a hand - they originate from elsewhere, the signals pulsing through its nerves their emissaries in foreign lands. And so we must look up from the hand, and follow the arm that extends from it to a body, an individual.
And we must wonder from what shadowy corner of the room they came from. Or what door in the wall, what world outside in which Magic was raised.
