Magic
From ElanVital
This page is to help everyone understand how magic works in the world of Elan Vital- both ICly and OOCly! If you have any questions not covered by the information here, try asking a staffer in-game, sending a +str, or emailing Elan.Vital.Staff@gmail.com
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Magic Theme
Magic is a central part of the world of Voltumnus. Almost every human on the planet is able to use it, given some practice; every Sessuyan seems to possess the ability as well. It has become nearly mundane in its ubiquity, with most people choosing to study it to at least some extent. Though a mystery, it is not excessively mystical - no strange words or arcane rituals are required to use it, merely focus and willpower.
The History of Magic
Magic's Discovery
For the first two centuries of mankind's settlement on Voltumnus, they avoided the reclusive Sessuyan, thinking them to just be another of the planet's strange animals - and the Sessuyan in turn avoided them. When conflict began around 200 AT, however, it soon became apparent that they could wield inexplicable powers over their surroundings. The Sessuyan controlled fire, water, air and earth, as well as teleportation, electricity and beasts - abilities that worked without any kind of visible technology. Human interest was immediately piqued in the mystery of magic.
Magic Among Humans
However, no one could figure out any way to harness it. Many early theories suggested there was some form of invisible technology bolstering the Sessuyan's abilities. Attempts to duplicate them inevitably ended in failure until 574 AT.
Jacob Linden, later to be known as the father of magic, had visited the Sessuyan during a peaceful period in the 550s. Awed by their power, he returned home from his brief diplomatic post determined to discover magic's secrets. He spent two decades trying to figure out; for most of this time period, he made little progress as he erroneously assumed it had some sort of required gestural or lingual component. Finally, in 574 AT, he discovered the truth: magic if anything was like a muscle - it must simply be exercised to work. His years of practice, faltering as they had been, had at last paid off.
Astonished, Jacob took a discipline named Alfred Kandora, and the two of them worked together to streamline his findings into an actual methodology, usable for teaching mages without the extreme difficulty Linden himself had had in learning. The end result was presented in secret to the High Council in 580 AT, and it changed the world.
Immediately, projects began to teach this methodology to other individuals. There was strong resistance from some political forces that saw magic as dangerous or even evil due to its link with the Sessuyan, but its sheer efficacy carried the day. By 600, magic classes were not terribly difficult to come by, and social opinion was warming up to them considerably.
Each decade of progress widened magic's scope and accessibility. By 650, a sizable majority of all Titanians were actually capably using magic in daily life. In 675, the Militia began an extremely ambition plan to study the complete alteration of their tactics and technology, attempting to work in magic as a new trump card in secret for the next time war began with the Sessuyan.
And they were successful - by 690 AT, a new tactical plan and technological retrofitting had swept the Militia, leading to the conflict that would end in the Peace of 693.
Current Events
Now at the beginning of this new century, magic is a fact of life. Skill at it is considered no differently than skill at any other profession - a learned ability that can be very useful in the right places. Most individuals study magic at some point in their life, though not everyone will choose to put in the time and effort for professional levels of ability. How magic itself actually works is unknown - but it's enough for most people that it does work.
The Use of Magic
The Learning Process
To learn magic, individuals take lessons from private tutors or classes. It's pretty common for people to take a magic class as an elective in school. These classes first teach execises on mental clarity and focus, as magic seems to work essentially on the basis of exerting one's willpower on the world. Then, they teach specific simple abilities such as lighting candles with pyromancy, making waves in water with Hydromancy, etc, to start learners off simply. Once a mage is able to do the simple task reliably every time, they work on increasingly harder exercises until basic competency is then perfected. At that point, the mage is encouraged to couple study of magic with study of some practical use of it - learning how to fight with magic, how to fix technology with magic, how to heal with magic, etc. This is magic's most common use: as supplement to other skills.
Mana
Every individual has an innate endurance for producing magical effects. Using magic induces fatigue, followed by dizziness and outright exhaustion at higher levels. Every individual is taught how to sense roughly how exhausted they are (not in numbers, but in terms such as 'feeling fine', 'can keep at it for a little while longer', 'near total exhaustion') and how much they can manage, as failure can be deadly; pushing yourself beyond the limit can cause internal hemorraghing that tends to appear as bleeding from the eyes, nose and mouth. Few mages have ever died from the practice of magic, however, most losing consciousness long before they can inflict life-threatening injuries.
Like any other kind of exhaustion, magical exhaustion is cured by resting and taking a break.
Magic Systems
This information concerns the OOC things to keep in mind about magic- how it interacts with our skill system, etc.
Philosophy of Magic/Systems
Magic is something that our theme emphasizes the normality of - it is just an area of knowledge like anything else. Strange things can be done with it, especially at high power, but these are strange things people are accustomed to.
Keep in mind that our magic does have a number of common-sense limits intended to keep people from using it for 'insta-win' type scenarios while still maintaining flexibility. For example, you can't target what you can't see (no boiling somebody's blood inside them).
Rolling Magic Skills
Here's the meat of this topic- how does one go about actually -using- their magic in a roleplay sense? There are two ways- using magic to aid a mundane action, or using magic for a unique magical action.
Aiding a Mundane Action
If you are using magic to aid a mundane action, you simply roll the mundane action and pose its magical nature. I.e., Stealth via Illusion will consist of rolling your Stealth and describing yourself perhaps as being a blurry blob moving past. Note that you must pose reasonably based on your roll. If you have Legendary illusion but roll Poor Stealth, you don't know what you have to cover up with your illusions to be stealthy - so you might well make a lot of noise or have an imperfect illusory cover.
Rolling a Unique Magical Action
For situations where a Celestian wishes to do something that cannot be represented by a mundane skill, the Celestian will roll the magical skill itself.
Examples would be combative applications of the powers to attack, reshaping/controlling a pre-existing substance with an elemental magic, creating an illusion just to mislead another individual, advancing plant growth through extreme biochemical modification, etc. These are all things that simply cannot be done by mundane means, and hence require a magical roll. As before, if there is any doubt, please contact a staffer before the roll.
FAQ
How are difficulty/effect determined when rolling a magic skill?
The in-depth wiki files on each magic skill will involve roll result charts people can consult. If you're doing something not covered by the charts? Typical difficulty is Mediocre for success, so rolls above that can be considered to generally succeed. Try to generalize from a similar chart what the result would be; if you're still unsure, ask a staffer!
So how do I...
...change the phase of a substance?
With the magic of its original phase.
That is to say, if you're turning the water vapor in the air into water? Roll Aeromancy. If you're turning pre-existing water into ice? Roll Hydromancy. Etc.
-...play with temperature?
Roll the phase of whatever you're playing with. The ambient air temp, roll Aeromancy. To create your very own magical heated blanket, roll Geomancy. To boil your tea the easy way, roll Hydromancy. Pyromancy can also heat things, but not cool them.
...change the weather?
To affect the wind strength/direction, roll Aeromancy. To affect whether or not it's raining, roll Hydromancy. Keep in mind that, even with a great roll, the effect will be minor and localized.
So, like, can't I...
use geomancy/hydromancy/aeromancy directly on people?
You can attack someone with any of those abilities, yes. But you can't use hydromancy to boil someone's blood, or geomancy to transmute someone to stone, or aeromancy to change the air in their lungs to poison gas. For one, the phase magics require a visible target, and you can't see inside someone's lungs or their veins. For two, the phase magics can't directly affect living tissue. No transmuting a living being, be it a plant or a person.
