Magic

Magic is commonly known as the phenomena that occurs when mana refined and purposed by a Magi. These Magi study and practice the arts to cause various, wide ranging effects. It is involved in all aspects of life within Meranthe, from warfare to religion, and the scientists (alchemy and artificing).

Schools of Magic

Feats of magic can be be broadly categorized within the following schools.

Evocation: The method of conjuring magic by instinct, repetition, feeling and practice. All magi can sense the mana around them and within their own body when focusing, and manipulate it by force of will to some extent. The more familiar they become the greater their mastery; like a trained muscle, a person who has practiced an element for years will typically be able to evoke greater effects than a beginner, barring the impact of potential. Aids to evocation will often include the environment itself, such as submerging yourself within the ocean for Water Magic, or practicing during a storm for Lightning.

Sorcery: The practice of prepared spell casting. Sorcery relies almost entirely on the manifestation of Magic Circles, complex instructions and theorems manifested by the magi. It strictly employs runecasting as the style and requires a keen mind that will not only diligently study the countless layers of magic and its formulaes, but effectively manifest the chosen spell in the moment. While the demands of this school are great, the precision and high ceiling of limitations has led to the pursuement of its advancement by many scholars. Grimoires for study are publicly available within most nations, though potentially more destructive spells are safe guarded.

Empowerment: There are often outside forces at play, be it a divine blessing, or a curse. The ability to tap into and channel it is known as Empowerment: this might be a complex ritual or a minor enhancement. Outside of the the influences of the Beyond, objects also sometimes contain special properties. Whether it's a well crafted suit of armor with resilience, a legendary sword, or something else entirely. Tools of magic are greatly valued necessities.

• Ethereal
• Elemental
• Metaphysical
• Physical
• Arcane (Chaos & Order)
• Divine
• Wayfinding
• Riftmancy
• Black Magic
• Faith (White Magic)
• Necromancy
• Druidry
• Biological
• Medical
• Alchemy
• Artificing

Affinity

There are hundreds of types of Magic throughout the world, and they often have a defining 'affinity'. Within these are the Primary forms of Magic, the four pillars.

Elemental

The four elements that make up the physical universe, such as the oceans, sky, forests, and volcanoes. The building blocks of the world: Fire, Earth, Water, and Air. These are often the most approachable for an apprentice magi due to their primordial aspect.

Ethereal

Magic in an unrefined form, such as the raw, blue energy of mana, or the golden rays of cosmic magic. Unlike elemental magic, rather than taking this innate mana and shaping it, ethereal magi will reinforce it and conjure it as is; this is an especially malleable type of magic in that sense.

All magi are capable of using ethereal magic to some extent, even if it's as simple as causing ripples in the water by generating mana at the fingertip.

Metaphysical

The unseen mechanisms of the world, such as gravity, the timestream, or even a person's senses. 

Workings of Magic

Magical Anatomy

The Soul

An incorporeal, immortal vessel that lives through many different lives, all of which are connected. A person's soul is what gives them life: it's their consciousness, and it provides the energy for the magic circuit to operate. When a person dies, their soul heads toward the netherworld, which can be accessed through the stars, to be cleansed and rejoin the world once more in a cycle of reincarnation.

The gospels of The Faith tell us that the Angels weave new souls under the guidance of the Creator, through the use of divine magic.

The soul is linked to the Magic Circuit, and it can provide a limitless amount of mana... however, this is restricted by how much the circuit is able to tap into: the stronger it is, the more it can access at once. If a person goes over their limits, it will drastically tire the mind and body.

As a result of the soul being protected by a barrier of divine magic, it is not possible to manipulate the soul directly. Though certain processes that disturb its reincarnation cycle can have a subtle effect (such as the Occult).

The color of the soul varies depending on the person, but most are silver. A person's eye color might hint at the potential hues that might occasionally shimmer within their soul, if it were made visible.

The Essence

While the soul is a collection of lifetimes, each individual one is called an Essence. This is an individual's memories and their state of being.

When the soul's body dies and it leaves for the astral plane to enter a cleansing process, if the Essence feels great unrest they may lead the soul wayward and explore the planes of the netherworld. It is easy to get lost in the spirit realm and some may explore for centuries before they finally rejoin the stars to begin anew.

Magic Circuit

Once attuned to mana, a person's Magic Circuit becomes active. It's an intricate pattern of lines and shapes that connect a person's body to their soul, the wiring of their magic.

By closing their eyes, a Magi is able to visualize their circuit and they can see it light up when they try to use their magic, almost like watching muscles react to movements. As a spell's complexity goes, so does the signals sent to the Magic Circuit. Many techniques are recorded with diagrams explaining the specific steps to replicate the effect.

There are roughly 3100 connective lines in a human's Magic Circuit, though the number and layout varies slightly from person to person. Casting a sphere of Wind Magic at a target would involve the following steps: 1.) Produce Air, 2.) Rotate the Air, 3.) Locate the Air around the target, 4.) Direct the Air toward it. While in practical terms it might seem straightforward, but the spell would require the use of at least a hundred circuits, each of which is a micro-step on the spiritual level. The mind, body, and spirit must learn to process each step quickly if the spell is to be effective.

There are also several points of 'convergence' on the circuit. The crown/forehead, the throat, and the heart, are all key points where the circuits concentrate. These translate to different casting styles as well.

Casting Magic

Symbolic - Feeling | The Heart

Symbolic magic is the most basic of all casting technique and can be combined with others due to its nature. The style uses emotion to amplify and control magic... such as adrenaline, hatred, and love. To advance beyond beginner level almost all magi will learn a second casting style.

Visionary - Visual | The Eyes

This style has a close relationship with the magical circuit. While all experienced magi can view their circuitry by closing their eyes and concentrating, a visionary caster is able to do so in battle, with their eyes wide open. They use a demanding amount of cognitive energy to navigate mana through the many thousands of 'tunnels' in the circuit - linking them up to spell-cast.

Basic spells might involve ten instructions/commands that the caster has to consciously navigate, while advanced ones can require hundreds - the best visionary casters can do so in moments, and it can take several minutes for an inexperienced magi.

Notably, this style of casting causes the irises to glow with mana (in whichever color the irises happen to be). The eyes are, after all, a window to the soul, and by extension they're a gateway to the magical circuit.

Runecasting - Mind | The Temple

The written language of the divine, otherwise known as runes, is the code of all matter and even existence itself. While humanity's overall knowledge in runes is only a small fraction of the overall picture, it is nonetheless a potent tool.

Spell writing involves the design of magic circles that can be conjured in battle to cast different abilities, with the mana manifested as spinning discs of magical energy that is typically wielded by the hands. The magi activates the different runes on the spell circles mid-battle, channelling their mana (and the runic instruction) for an effect.

This is for combat only. Other areas of runic expertise involve rituals, enchantments, and most forms of technology.

Wordcasting - Voice | The Throat

The voice is a tool of expression, and can be used to amplify or initiate spells through song and incantation. Mana is carefully channeled through the vocal cords while the magi says their incantation, often giving a synthetic effect as their will and desire is vocalized by the commands they utter.

Conjuring something like a sphere of water, then channeling mana that connects the magi to the liquid - with an emphasis on the vocal cords - will 'link' the command they say out-loud. For instance, willing it to spin. The more creative and compelling the incantation, the more the person themselves believes it, the better the outcome, too. This is usually a good fit for charismatic, confident magi, such as performers and singers.

Magic Power

Whether or not someone is capable of harnessing mana, they passively generate magical power as it is required to live. Certain magitech can even take a read on how much of this energy flows through a person, though it's purely a measure of their raw magical potency rather than their overall combat skill. There are five tiers that individuals might be placed under depending on this reading.

• Basic: Minimum of 10 Magic Power.
• Intermediate: Minimum of 50 Magic Power. Above average.
• Master: Minimum of 100 Magic Power. Higher than 90% of Magi.
• Exalted: Minimum of 300 Magic Power. Higher than 99% of Magi.
• Mythic: Minimum of 1000 Magic Power. Among the millions that live in Meranthe, there's rarely more than few dozen at a time within this tier.

Quantifying the above would be something like the following, though it naturally varies from person to person as specializations differ. This is meant to act as a rough guide and base line for a character's speed (including reflex) and how much power a charged, concentrated attack delivered by them might pack. Generally speaking if they generate that much force they're also durable enough to defend against similar impact from another person.

• Basic: Avg. sprint of 20MPH, a focused attack generates enough force to crack stone.
• Intermediate: Avg. sprint of 30MPH, a focused attack generates enough force to destroy a wall.
• Master: Avg. sprint of 60MPH, a focused attack generates enough force to destroy a small house.
• Exalted: Avg. sprint of 100MPH, a focused attack generates enough force to destroy a large house.
• Mythic: Avg. sprint of 150MPH, a focused attack generates enough force to destroy a mansion or similarly giant structure.

A magi's power scaling can be between two tiers, naturally, rather than one or the other. The attack force is also their standard, focused strike, rather than their absolute limit. It is their baseline.

Runewriting

A rune is a magical instruction, typically charged through a ritual, imbued onto an object, place, or person.

Runes are the primary method an artificer employs to interact with the laws of the universe and influence them. It is the closest branch of magic that humans have to divine magic, the written language of the gods. There are two main types of runes: a primary sigil, then the supporting glyphs, and there are tens of thousands of commonly used symbols, with an endless amount of potential combinations. This highly sophisticated language is written in mana by the conjurer's hand. Sometimes a different type of substance is used depending on the ritual, such as a person's blood if it's specific to them and a connection is necessary.

If activated, runes require a mana source. For something simple like strengthening an object, the energy can be derived directly from the artificer, but more complex rituals may need something more potent to harness. Magical crystals that have stored energy over the years are a common choice, whether it's an insignificant fire attuned shard or something much greater. These crystals, for full effect, have one use in a ritual and are measured based on total mana points (MP). Common crystals may measure in at no more than 10 MP. Artificers have specialized scales for measuring crystals overall mana to properly value their worth.

Runemancy is used in all forms of daily life, from empowering a warrior's armor to adding cooling runes to ice boxes for food storage, even street lamps and wind mills. This naturally makes the demand for magic crystals high.

More advanced (and expensive) uses include basic golems, from carrying out every day tasks such as cleaning to acting as defensive guards. These expectedly come in all different shapes and sizes depending on their functionality.

Arcane Magic

Reality is governed by certain basic physical laws – time, space, gravity, etc. Metaphysical mages know that these laws can be tinkered with in certain minor ways: force amplified or decreased, focus redirected, etcetera. But those who have delved deepest into the realm of metaphysics understand that even the underpinnings of reality itself are subject to change, via the art of arcane magic.

Order Magic

Order represents that which reaffirms the natural laws of the world – magic of structure, logic, and stasis. Practicing order magic can lead one to overly rigid and dogmatic thinking, blind to new possibilities and the value of change.

While order magic could be used in a freeform fashion to achieve just about any effort that involved reinforcing existing rules/laws, it does possess several established subschools:

• Contract/law magic. The ability to bind individuals who agree to contracts. The powers of Helheim utilize advanced contract magic in their nefarious deal-making, proving order is not always synonymous with good.

• Truth magic. Magic that can be utilized to ascertain the truth of various facts – i.e., if certain beliefs or statements match up with the genuine state of reality. It is rumored extremely advanced practitioners can even perhaps speak truth into being, in the manner of minor prophecy.

• Stasis magic. Order magic is capable of preserving things in unchanging form, locked away from any possible influence of time. This is not an ability that can be used typically on the living; stasis is death in an inherently dynamic system. Yet an order mage might be able to reinforce the reality of an object to such an extent that it proves nigh-impossible to alter, for good or for ill.

Chaos Magic

Chaos, on the other hand, represents that which denies the natural laws of the world – magic of randomness, whim, and change. Practicing chaos magic can lead one to mental instability, difficulty observing even desired rules of behavior and demeanor, and even flat-out insanity. It is significantly more dangerous than order magic as mortal minds are not truly equipped to handle the breakdown in logical cause-and-effect thinking it demands. Nonetheless, chaos mages have similarly defined a few subschools:

• Decomposition magic: form of destroying things that does not simply eradicate them, but reduces them to their components. (For example, turning a tree into wood, water, and light.) Truly advanced decomposition magic may be what Ymir used to divide himself into the ten deities of the Pantheon.

• Alteration magic: Chaos can eat away at the raw sense and logic in the world. If decomposition magic is the raw ability to unmake, alteration magic is the raw ability to change. Alteration magic distorts reality all around it, influencing anything non-living to take another form. The things created by alteration magic are often incapable of existing permanently in the world, too incompatible with its rules – but they can do a lot of damage on their way out.

• Madness magic: Chaos mages are particularly able to influence the mind, a thing already more governed by chaos than by order given the sheer flexibility of human thought. Sharing their peculiarly unpredictable forms of insanity with others is one thing at which chaos mages excel.

The Duality of Order and Chaos

But while most practitioners start with either order or chaos, true arcane mastery requires at least some comprehension of both. The real beauty and power of the arcane unlocks when one is able to both selectively destroy existing rules of reality, and build ones in their wake:

• Transmutation magic. Arcane mages are able to change the characteristics of non-magical items fairly extensively by selectively deleting and/or adding different components to their definitions. This is more difficult for magical items, but minor alterations can still potentially be performed with great effort.

• Transformation magic. Especially advanced arcane mages can apply some of this same logic to the bodies of living beings, such as changing their racial blessings. To enact such complex changes on others inevitably leaves a scar, however, unlike the cleaner transformations possible with divine magic… or via corrupt contracts with the powers of Helheim.

The full capabilities of arcane magic are in theory limitless, but even the abilities listed so far require a tremendous amount of study and practice to perfect. One could study the arcane for a lifetime and never manage more than minor alterations of the world. However, even the smallest stone cast into a pond can ripple out to great consequences.