I suppose my most interested in questions is what's the common forms of magic, aside from the body enhancement Laurel and co uses? If that's too spoilery, then I'd like to ask who some of the big players in the UCNV are.
Don't worry, that's not super spoilery! So, common forms of magic…well, let's start by defining a mage. A mage is someone with the willpower to translate belief into reality, who has worked hard enough at it to do so. If that seems like a vague requirement that could be very easy or very hard to achieve - Congratulations! It is! Some people take to magic like fish to water, some struggle incredibly hard to produce even the smallest pieces. This isn't based on intrinsic characteristics or anything - It's about mindset and character and internal beliefs and all that. A lot of people genuinely don't bother if they don't have "talent" for it - It's a lot of work that takes up a lot of time, and they still need to eat.
Body enhancement does legitimately cover a lot, because it also covers mental and 'conceptual' enhancements so to speak. If someone's magic is focused on making themselves stronger, faster, more perceptive, luckier, better reaction speed - It all falls under body enhancement! This also means it varies. A lot.
Necromancy is obviously fairly popular in certain locales, but it's hard to call it 'common'. Runval is basically the only place that is churning them out in significant numbers, because it's pretty hard and requires a relatively guarded resource in everywhere but Runval! Necromancy is hard to do
well, too
. Funnily enough, it is also one of the most 'standardized' forms of magic, because Runval is the only place that's managed to institutionalize teaching it, and so all the practitioners who filter out into the world from them, even with their varying forms of necromancy, tend to share elements from their tutelage.
Let's see…magic you haven't encountered yet…oh! Rhetoric-focused magic. Magic is, in a lot of ways, believing something so hard that you will it into reality. Rhetoric-focused magic is focused on not just believing it, but getting other people to believe in what you're saying, too, so as to enhance the effect/ease the requirements. Rhetoricians work in groups, since that's the most efficient way to ensure you'll have a suitable audience. They can range a lot in execution though - From Greek philosopher types making assumptions about the nature of reality and using the effect of their belief to warp reality around them, to more legalist types trapping their enemies in literal magical chains of Aleria's shockingly complex legal system (for [REDACTED] reasons we'll get into later) out of sheer faith in the law, to sergeants and ideologues enhancing their comrades ability to function before going into battle, or to even 'anti-mages' - People whose faith in magic not existing is so strong that when they're able to make a convincing argument to others/themselves that it shouldn't work, it
stops working (while they're there). Rhetoricians fighting each other can be very interesting to watch, though, because it looks like a group debate, right up until one of the groups manages to succeed at being convincing enough to successfully cast a spell, and then their opponent gets wrapped in chains or bursts into flames or somesuch.
Folk magic is probably the most 'common' type overall, even though nobody actually practices it. It's very subtle, though. It's all the little local traditions and superstitions of a place coalescing into minor spells and enchantments. "Rub this statue in this spot for good luck." "Confessing your love in this spot guarantees success." "Don't go into this place at night or you'll get cursed." Nobody really 'practices' it, but everybody 'powers' it, if that makes sense. Some folks make a habit of
studying it, to be sure, but it's genuinely very hard to "force" a beneficial superstition into existence or to take advantage of a beneficial superstition en masse. Quite a few of the attempts to do so essentially wound up curdling themselves/existing folk magic into curses, which mostly serves as a cautionary tale about "don't try and force folk magic to serve you". At this point, it has been genuinely suggested that folk magic as a concept has enough general belief that people can't force it that it sort of self-reinforces that.
Now, of course, magic has to compete with the noblest of weapons - The firearm. And quite a few mages have decided "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Item-focused magic has become more and more prevalent over the years. Enchanted items always existed, but they were difficult to make unless you also wanted to invest a ton of time into becoming a great blacksmith or carpenter or whatever (since you have to believe that whatever you make is magical in some way, and that necessitates enough of a hand in its creation to infuse it with that), so they stayed relatively rare. The advent of industrialization has, while vastly altering society, enabled these mages to get a real leg up. Now, they can focus on just one component of a larger machine, and get all the benefits of enchanting the entire thing once it's put together. Enchanted items have therefore proliferated to be "actually purchasable and commissionable, if ridiculously expensive" instead of "you have to personally know the right guy and wait several months to a year, or else you're fucked". I will note that enchanted items are different from magical items. Magical items are things like necro-mechanisms, where the very item/machine itself is a magical construct (like a canal mechanism made of bones). Enchanted items are otherwise normal items that are infused with power significant enough that they provide a benefit to any user - A gun that shoots exactly straight, a soap bar that never wears down, a telescope that can see across the horizon - That sort of thing. Of particular importance to you: enchanted items would all be Resources, but most Resources are not enchanted items. The scale of power is very different.
Hm…what else am I missing. Oh! Right. God-building. Well, that's a bit dramatic - Let's call it "spirit-building" instead. So, some very clever folks figured out that if instead of putting your belief into your own magic, you put it into something else, like a concept or a god or a person, if you had a few reasonably powerful mages involved, you could wind up actually
creating it and using it as a source of power. Think like a cleric or paladin in your RPG of choice, except your church or cult or whatever explicitly created the spirit you draw power from. Now, this has some drawbacks - Gotta both believe in and agree with your group's spirit of choice to draw power from it. Can't draw power from a spirit created out of a desire for compassion and healing to murder someone, can't draw power from a war and death spirit to heal someone, you get the gist. The fact that other churches exist also means that most monotheistic spirits tend to self-contradict in a way that can't be reconciled without way too much power and therefore magically explode (mostly metaphorically and not literally, though there have been a few cases of that), so most spirits are…loosely alright with pantheistic believers, but the ones who only 'worship' (which can widely vary in terms of requirements) them will obviously get their favor. In addition, most spirits are…pretty stuck to their local place. Why bother worshipping a spirit from over there if you can get your own church going, with blackjack and better magic? The sentience and ethics of creating of such spirits is widely debated, but that hasn't stopped people from doing it. It's also really hard to create one unless you devote yourself to it (you'll notice this is a running theme with magic) - And even then, it takes years of devoted belief and prayer and power to get one actually capable of doing things like 'powering magic'. Still, once the initial investment is done, it's a lot easier to get power from them then it is to develop it on your own, so people do it.
Now, is the Conglomerate of Infinite Disdain one of these? Perhaps! Or maybe it's something different entirely. These are just the most
common forms of magic - While it's about belief, it's also about identity, willpower, your soul (I am also going to take a sidenote here: Soul is a term I use because it's very convenient. Nobody actually knows if there's an afterlife in MGFH, I'll confirm that now. Quite a few people believe there is and that the soul is important to it, but nobody knows), and a bunch of other stuff. Everyone's magic is a little bit different, even if they choose to tread the same path as others, and some people choose to be
really different. Like you! Speaking of - Don't worry about "fitting into" other categories here. Feel free to mix and match if you want, but you're essentially (as far as you know) a magical tradition of one. Your magic is your own, don't worry about fitting into these ill-defined categories. The world is your oyster!
