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doomcatbox) wrote2021-08-22 11:08 am
doomcatbox) wrote2021-08-22 11:08 am
WITCH BUSTERS - On Magic
Modern magic is a paradox.
Magic can only exist in that which cannot be quantified, but is still known to have an effect on the world. While magic could be understood intuitively and used naturally as "magic" before the human understanding of science reached the heights it has today, due to the widespread knowledge of scientific principles the modern mage has a thought that is impossible to dismiss: "this isn't how the world works." Even when one has total and complete faith in magic, the fact that scientific knowledge of the world exists in the mind fundamentally conflicts with magic and cancels its effects.
It may be thought that, if magic is inherently at odds with the existence of science as a system that rules the world, then defining it as a form of science may be a way to cheat it into existence. This has been attempted many times, and none of them have succeeded. Once again, magic can only exist in "that which cannot be quantified." If a precise, scientific method to understand and leverage magic is ever found, the moment the theorem is completed it will cease to work.
Therefore, the modern mage is faced with a nearly insurmountable challenge in creating magic. With science as advanced as it is today, it has practically defined magic out of existence. There are a few loopholes, however. In things that science cannot quantify. Quirks in our universe that, no matter how hard it tries, science can never truly explain. Luck and fortune. Art and stories. The great expanse of the past, and the living, present moment. Identity. Miracles. There are other disciplines, as well as the unique phenomenon of witchcraft, but these are the most prevalent.
Cartomancy
Cartomancy is the most easily accessible form of magic, and the newest. Stories and symbols have a great weight in the efficacy of magic, and the Rider-Waite tarot deck's popularization has given every would-be mage easy access to a vast well of meaning and symbology to draw from—literally. Cartomancy's ability to produce verifiable magical effects is tied to its randomness (or the weave of fate, depending on how you wish to frame it). Any attempt to stack the deck immediately renders cartomantic decks powerless.
The way cartomancy actually works is through the inscription of concepts tied to the meaning of each card as the cards are infused with magic. As an example using the standard Rider-Waite cartomancy deck, the suite of Swords is often used to store wind magic due to the suite's association with wind, while The Chariot is a quick and dirty way to add a speed or force multiplier to a spell. As cards are drawn, they can either be immediately cast for a minor, quick effect, or weaved into a "matrix" pattern with other cards to produce more complex effects once the entire matrix is fired. Once used, a card is shuffled back into the deck. Any number of cards can be drawn at once as long as the total drawn is half or less of the remaining deck, but the more cards that are drawn at once, the more energy and time is required to draw.
Cartomancy is a new discipline, and often derided for how easy it is to simply pick up and use as long as you know the basics... especially with the advent of Illumina Incorporated, who mass produce prepackaged cartomancy decks tuned to a variety of specialties. While the craft of Illumina decks is fine, many experienced cartomancers prefer to make and fine-tune their own according to their needs. Some can even pick up a standard 52-card playing card deck and immediately infuse it with specialized cartomantic power, although this knowledge is slowly being pushed out and downplayed by II's propaganda arm. A few even use customized TCG decks to surprisingly devastating effect.
Despite its reputation for its magic being surface-level and shallow, new cartomantic spells, inscriptions, and matrix formulae are discovered every month by experts and new students alike. Adepts can create fantastic, new spells out of even the most terrible hand—the only limits are the imagination and how far they can stretch the interpretation of the cards.
Glyphistry
While cartomancy is as close to an exact science as magic can physically get, glyphistry is the least understood of the official magic disciplines. Not only are their effects varied, highly specific, and strange, but the process of actually forming a glyph is nigh-impossible to predict, and many of its practitioners become mages by sheer accident. The only thing that is known about how glyphs are made is that it is tied to the creation of art.
According to glyphics, who are by and large a community that the three traditional magecraft disciplines scoff at, the creation of a glyph can be achieved only by relentlessly pouring your very soul into art for art's sake. ("Art" can take any form of artistic expression, not just visual arts.) While it is possible to find your glyph through intentionally making art for that purpose, you must truly believe that the art you are making has merit on its own in order to have a chance to find your glyph. And then maybe, just maybe, the epiphany will hit you: a unique fractcal found in the hidden patterns of your art that only you can see.
Glyphistry is unique in that each glyphic can only "cast" one glyph, their own, and a portion of the glyph must be recorded on a physical material for them to activate it. (Books are the most popular medium, followed by tattoos.) Once a glyph is recorded, the user only needs to extend their mental reach towards their glyph in order to activate its effects. The exact limits of what a glyph is capable of is unknown, as each glyph manifests a power that is entirely unique to its user, often being highly specific in its use and effects to the point of seeming strange or pointless to outside observers or even the glyphic themself at first. However, as more art is created and more of the fractal is understood and recorded, the glyphic will instinctively understand more and more uses of their glyph's power even if it was vague and undefined to them at first, becoming more skilled in its use.
A glyph's power can be practically anything as long as it isn't simple and easy to understand, although they're often attuned to the glyphist's personality and nature. For example, someone who prefers not to think about anything too complicated may be able to erase anything within a swipe of their hand, even space, or a naturally kind soul may be able to reconstruct an object in any shape they want if it's broken into pieces. The only limit is the nature of the person, and their imagination.
Historical Materialization
Glyphistry and cartomancy are two relatively new schools of magic. Historical materialization, on the other hand, is as old as history. The idea behind historical materialization is a relatively simple one: no matter how much one tries, one cannot know the exact events of the distant past no matter how well they are recorded, and so the past is unquantifiable. By drawing upon the power of the past and mastering it the best you can via research, magic can be achieved.
Historical materialization is a discipline that evokes the image of a classic wizard—with practitioners literally being called wizards as historical materialization is the oldest strictly academic discipline of magic—as they're constantly hunched over tomes and poring over scrolls. In order to use the power of the historical event you wish to "materialize," you must study its effects on the world and firsthand accounts as best you can, knowing the ripples that spread history that affect your current world even if you can't precisely quantify the exact minutiae of events that took place. A layman cannot access the power of historical materialization; it takes a truly obsessive amount of study on the part of the wizard ranging from months to years to understand an event thoroughly enough to cast it. Once you know the history, enacting the magic is a matter of having the materials on which you recorded your own knowledge and understanding of the event with you when you cast the spell. Because what you can study is only limited by your lifespan and your concentration, it is hypothetically possible to draw upon more than one event or period at once within a wizard's repertoire, but this requires so much effort it's impractical in most cases.
Notably, historical materialization cannot create effects drawn from the idea of historical people, only that of large-scale historical effects. A typical historical materialization would be materializing the battle of Thermopylae to create an unbreakable shield that strengthens in proportion to how badly outmatched you are or materializing the French Revolution to create a blade with a similar effect, or perhaps materializing the Hundred Years' War to boost your capabilities to the exact point needed to stalemate the fight. However, attempting to directly invoke Leonidas or Jeanne d'Arc is in a different field entirely, that of...
Archaism
Archaism. The sister discipline to historical materialization, archaism involves the channeling of legendary figures, mythological and historical, into power. However, despite how large these figures loom in the minds of humanity, tracing their direct effects on history and reality to the present day is difficult, especially for the murkier, more mythological ones. Different proofs must be obtained.
These often take the form of artifacts, or even fragments of artifacts captured in an accessory, that belonged to these ancient heroes or were affected by their actions. A fragment of the stone that shattered when Caliburn was pulled from it, wood splinters from a compound bow that belonged to Genghis Khan himself, or if the arcanist is particularly lucky perhaps an entire blade such as Durandal. Particular lineages can treat their own family line as an artifact as well; one of Bradamante's many, many descendants could easily bring forth the power of their line's mother. Similar to wizards, arcanists can hypothetically draw upon more than one legend at once, but that would require having multiple already-scant artifacts and study on a level similar to that of wizards.
Arcanists, like wizards, must study their myths and figures intently to understand the magic even with an artifact, but unlike the broader magic of historical materialization, archaism has three strict modes into which these myths and stories are manifested: internalization, externalization, and installation. Internalization involves taking on part of the legend into yourself and embodying it; for example, using Durandal to "become" Roland and put yourself into an invincible, frothing, mad rage. Externalization involves bringing forth a symbol of that specific figure's legend into reality and using it; for example, with a splinter from Genghis Khan's bow you could summon a massive volley of arrows or summon a horse to ride. Installation involves embodying a specific part of that figure's legend, often their weapon, into an object; using a fragment from the stone Caliburn was pulled from, you could give a wooden stick the sharpness of Carnwennan or any other of King Arthur's weapons. The same artifact can be used for internalization, externalization, or installation as long as the arcanist has studied the spell for it.
Spiritual Invocation
Spiritual invocation operates on a similar principle to archaism and historical materialization, except instead of an unquantifiable past, it finds an unquantifiable present. In systems that have grown too large to comprehend all of, too complex for a human to fully understand, or have enough of a past that parts of it are unrecorded, lie spirits of that system. Spirits are sentient magic that desperately wish to be protected from the harsh force of quantification. In pursuit of that, spirits can contract with humans with genuine love (or more complex feelings of attachment, in some cases) for what they were born out of and understand the system to some extent even though it cannot be quantified.
These invokers gain powers based on the system that created the spirit and often a fraction of the spirit that follows them around, aiding them and offering them advice. In exchange, the invoker adds to the system to protect it, either increasing its size, erasing its history, or making it somehow more complex to both shield the spirit from quantification and empower its abilities as the magic grows more potent. Invokers can contract with multiple spirits at once, but that would require appeasing multiple spirits who already have a tendency to get possessive and protective over their invokers and whose demands only become more strenuous as they grow.
Spirits can grow from literally any system that fulfills one or more of the factors of size (relative to what the system is), complexity, or history. A city or county full of people living their busy, unpredictable daily lives can have a spirit due to its size. A particularly tangled and snarled office computer and communication program, perhaps with large eMail chains, can have a spirit due to its complexity. An old library with the very first records of what books were lent out can have a spirit due to its age.
However, the more powerful a spirit becomes in each of these three factors, the less interested it becomes in humans, and the requirements for finding invokes becomes more stringent as it no longer needs basic protection. Spirits for systems such as entire countries are so alien to humanity and can protect their own interests well enough that they don't need any new invokers, although all spirits have a certain fondness for invokers they've already contracted with and rarely break old contracts as long as they're treated well.
The powers invokers gain through their contracts are as varied as the powers wizards gain through their spells and are just as themed after the spirit they are contracted with as the history the wizard materializes. A library spirit might grant knowledge and allow for the manipulation and creation of paper, an office computer spirit might grant power over technology and cables, and a city spirit may allow for the spontaneous creation of structures and intense charisma. The primary difference is that spirits require maintenance and occasional bargaining and negotiation, which leaves the invoker in a comparatively unstable position in exchange for the ability to physically summon parts of the spirit to aid them.
Miracles
Miracles are odd, even compared to other disciplines of magic. Similar to glyphistry, there's no exact science to how they work or even a unifying principle that defines what they can and can't do, there is simply faith. If someone believes in a spiritual power enough, praying or meditating for one result or another, and forces align so that their request is granted... a tiny spark of a miracle's power is granted to that person, and another "miracle" is more likely to happen. So on and so forth until the practitioner can invoke miracles at will with obviously magical effects, each attuned to the practice and aesthetic of their specific faith. Hypothetically, no power is out of reach, but it must be within the bounds of whatever faith the practitioner in question subscribes to. Organizations exist to accelerate the process of spark accumulation through whatever means available to them, but their success rate is marginal at best, leaving miracles the most mysterious of the main disciplines and often excluded from magecraft alliances including the main five.
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, and all knowledge on it, is banned. The only thing known is that it's supposed to be a dark, corruptive power that turns young mages away from the light.
Other Disciplines
Other, more minor disciplines exist, but these