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User:Yunzhong Hou/Sandbox/Mage/8
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[edit] Timeline
- 300's: First immigrants to Lorica from Earth + discovery of magic. Population in the hundreds.
- 1000's: Charmases developed. Population in the 10,000's.
- 1300's: Development of magical medicine. Population in the 100,000's.
- 1400's: Rise of the six avatars. Population around 1,000,000. The great expansion outward begins.
- 1566: The six avatars, already best friends and sworn brothers/sisters, begin compiling knowledge of magical medicine.
- 1588: The six avatars take control over the world, having forced all opponents to back down.
- 1599: The six avatars jointly complete development of the hex Prolonged Life. By then they have mastered practically all other magic conceivable in the world. Yet they do not know the secret to immortality, so they will all die.
- 1600:
- The Hex Council (comprised of the six avatars) is formed to look over the world. They agree never to divulge all their secrets to others. The revered text Prismatic is written by the Hex Council. In all cases the magic used is incredibly weak, simplified, and inflexible compared to what true magic has to offer.
- Maya spends her years telling society about her view of the distinct roles of men and women, turning it into a male-dominated society. Her legacy is now entirely found in Lorican tradition. Relationship is represented by Blood.
- Yevon sets up the first and still greatest Academy for channeling in (Invara) Ethaya, which covered channeling for all three phases plus fire (the 4 elements), but with rather dulled powers. Lesser academies have sprung up, some only a shadow of what Invara's teaches in the present day. Invara Academy's allegiance is fickle. The channeling magic is completely developed by Yevon. Channeling is represented by Fire.
- Only Andar takes the supreme role: that of sole Emperor, establishing the Prismatic Palace in (Originum) Origina. However he believes in free will, which means that the task of being just will forever be incomplete. His family then becomes the Dynasty / Imperial Family. Later on, infighting causes a few other nations to secede. At the core of his government is the magical contract. The contract magic is completely developed by Andar. Law is represented by Gold (values and punishments).
- Jessica sets up the first Institute for magic, science, learning, and research in (Eugenoye) Detaria, though never covering much in the way of hexes. Since then it and its city has fallen into disrepair, many of its secrets lost. Lesser Institutes have sprung up in rather isolated, idyllic places to continue her legacy. Science is represented by Earth.
- Melody sets up the Nexii. Each Nexus is a place to activate healing gems as well as being a node for charging them. She sets them up so that one who wants to become a great healer must travel them all and be blessed at each Nexus's altar, becoming more proficient along the way. The Nexii will later become pilgrimage points for those seeking to be healers or who are thankful. The healing magic is completely developed by Melody. Healing is represented by Water.
- Aurora sets up the first Temple in (Originum) Origina, establishing the first priesthood, and bestows fickle powers onto the priests. Since then Temples have sprung up in all major cities, and towns as well. The temples are places where people may obtain blessings real or imagined, as well as a library for holding all wondrous creations (ie. art). The prayer magic is completely developed by Aurora. Prayer is represented by Air.
- 1615: Andar dies last, marking the end of a secret era of ultra-high magic. With his death dies the last remaining complete copy of the spell Prolonged Life (an incredibly complex hex). However, in places that meant much for the Hex Council were left parts of the research that went into the spell in case any of the six wanted to make a new spell from that research. Immortality is yet to be developed. From this point on the Dynasty he sires continues to this day as ruling family of the largest and longest-established Empire.
- 1800's: Qura's journey begins. Population around 10 million. Towns and cities settled across Lorica.
[edit] The Framework
A Mage generally begins his/her journey by one of two ways. The easier by far is to be apprenticed to another Mage. Because magic is dangerous, taking an apprentice is dangerous too, and generally blood rituals are a good way for the more knowledgeable Mage to be assured of safety. That is why they are called Masters. The other way is for one to discover magic by oneself - much like reinventing the wheel (this is one reason why society is so backward and ignorant despite the advances made in the field). In either case one's experience depends a lot on chance and reason. One doing the longer track, or who is not simply studying under the eyes of a Master, is called a Journeyman.
The first step to discovering magic is the realization that faera are magical and that they should be collected. No magic can be done using just one faera's abilities; indeed, the extraction process itself requires multiple faera (or faera-stones, a subset of faera). There is low-magic, which includes Alchemy, and high-magic, which has its own developmental framework. Once the first true-magic spell is assembled, the Mage's quest is relatively straightforward: finding more faera to round out one's collection (thereby allowing casting of certain other spells that require specific functional groups), assembling one's own algorithms, and stealing/discovering algorithms created by others.
Take the creation of a light-spell. A low-magic (Alchemic) variety would be to make a liquid that, when activated, bursts into light for a short while. The way to use this would be to store the liquid in a glass vial and then throw it at target location. The light is to be confined to the place the liquid reaches. One would need crea luma (extracted from a faera) anchored to the liquid (this can be done by simply mixing the two) as well as initia (from a faera-stone), which is responsible for activating all magic pathways. (Only the tiniest bit of initia (one) is needed to activate the process, though more is slightly faster.) Upon contact of initia with crea luma's reception part (the receptor) the initia will cause crea luma's functional group to bend, much like an allosteric protein, activating it. Crea luma's other main part, the operant (a variety of Telmol) does the actual work by bringing in light waves at the functional group's spot. Functional groups are about the size of a large molecule, meaning that a liquid with crea luma in it will create light very smoothly, without any 'grains' showing. Most functional groups have these two main parts (receptor and operant) which are equivalent to the 'if... then...' statement.
Though most functional groups, including Crea luma, can by default be activated by any form of initia, they can also be modified to make it unreceptive to all initia except for one with a particular marker. Initia represents a particular condition; hence the default receptor allows for the operant to activate at once whereas a specialized receptor (the default with something added on) allows the operant to activate only when a given circumstance is fulfilled. The initia act as the messengers of the spell, directing what it does. For any complex spell there will generally be many different initia forms. Generally the amount of initia doesn't matter, provided there are at least a few in a spell's reach.
One standard functional group, apopta, periodically cleans up initia. The receptor can be set to only bind to a particular variety of initia or by default to all of them; the operant decomposes the bound initia into component stars so that they may be recycled for use elsewhere in the spell body.
Another standard functional group, e, has three parts: two of them are receptors for two distinct initia and the third is an operant that pulls surrounding initia at random, converting them into a third form of initia. This is equivalent to the binary AND operator. The functional group o is similar, except that it produces the third initia upon either of the first two activating. This is equivalent to the binary OR operator. From these the exclusive-or operator can be devised.
Other regulatory functional groups limit the reach of a particular initia. It is common practice among experienced Magi to use them to surround their spells, preventing others' spells from interfering. Other functional groups move parts of the spell, such as those used for projectile, area, or volume spells.
Still others are useful for cascading (creating instances of spell parts) such as that used for replimancy (copying spells).
Tera functional groups are limited in their reach. They cannot traverse much of the spell body by default like initia can, so they are useful for regional effects such as when wanting a spell to do something specific to a protein.
The various markers (forms) of initia and receptors are made by...
[edit] Functional Groups
| Name | Brief | Extract | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| crea luma | Create Light | Pulsphere | Undergoes a starscript reaction to Telmol light into this world at the location of the starscript medium. | |
| antia luma | Delete Light | ? | ||
| observa luma | Detect Light | ? | ||
| loca luma | Move Light Source | ? | ||
| curva luma | Bend Light | ? | ||
| electa luma | Tint Light | ? | ||
| polara luma | Polarize Light | ? | ||
| rapida luma | Speed Up Light | ? | ||
| slotha luma | Slow Down Light | ? | ||
| dista luma | Increase Light Wavelength | ? | ||
| corta lum | Decrease Light Wavelength | ? | ||
| crea ca | Heat / Create Energy | ? | ||
| antia ca | Cool / Delete Energy | ? | ||
| observa ca | Detect Energy | ? | ||
| loca ca | Move Energy | ? | ||
| ignia | Combust | ? | ||
| observa vapora | Detect Gas Phase | ? | ||
| observa licua | Detect Liquid Phase | ? | ||
| observa solita | Detect Solid Phase | ? | ||
| observa plasma | Detect Plasma Phase | ? | ||
| observa magneta | Detect Magnetic Field | ? | ||
| crea posita | Create Positive Charge | ? | ||
| antia posita | Delete Positive Charge | ? | ||
| observa posita | Detect Positive Charge | ? | ||
| loca posita | Move Positive Charge | ? | ||
| crea negata | Create Negative Charge | ? | ||
| antia negata | Delete Negative Charge | ? | ||
| observa negata | Detect Negative Charge | ? | ||
| loca negata | Move Negative Charge | ? | ||
| ? | ? | ? |
[edit] The Six Disciplines
| Name | Symbol | Related | Description | Represents | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N/A |  blood | N/A | This is the element of (power) relationships. Through a short blood ceremony in which the donor gives a bit of his/her blood to the recipient, who then say chants to activate it, the donor is given significant powers over the recipient near-permanently. During the ceremony the recipient gets a 'name' from the donor by which the recipient is referred to. Donor = master.
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| Channeler(ess) |  fire | Academies | People are able to use certain bodily movements to cause the surrounding matter and energy to shift in certain ways. All parts of the body may be useful in various forms of channeling. There are four subdisciplines in each of air, liquid, semi-solid, and fire.
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| Spellcaster / Judicator |  gold | Courts | Magic legal contracts can be established by anyone who writes one. This contract then takes a life of its own. This forms the basis of the Imperial Scroll spells. However, most people don't pay much attention to the esoteric language because they don't generally know it.
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| Alchemist |  earth | Institutions | The only one that has much to do with true magic; can be considered the one that leads to true magic (with a lot of hurdles in the way). Not a particularly common art, it focuses on converting materials and matter, mostly in a laboratory setting.
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| Healer |  water | Nexii | Standard high-fantasy treatment discipline. In almost all non-true-magic cases it is incredibly weak.
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| Priest(ess) |  air | Temples | Priests are able to give blessings. These take the form of complete sentences (not chants) uttered in prayer position. No curses. Priests spend most of their time showing their devotion by undertaking rituals to constantly grow their mana pool (see below). The placebo effect is also important.
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