Chapter Text

In the parlance of Aerb, “magic” is usually used to refer to a systematized practice which can be learned and developed into an expertise. This is in contrast to an entad, which cannot be learned, developed, or duplicated, or a “free” spell which is essentially immutable and static once learned. Environmental effects are sometimes called magic, but that’s an improper, imprecise use of the term. Warders’ definitions also include entads under “magic”, but that professional definition is somewhat broader, including anything that they can see with their monocle and affect with their wards.

Latent, Passive, and Active magic

Magic can be divided into “latent”, “passive”, and “active”.

Latent magic is essentially nothing more than the possibility of magic, or some interaction with magic. In physics terms, it’s somewhat equivalent to potential energy. By metaphor, it might be more similar to a loaded gun or a mousetrap at full tension.

Passive magic generates some constant effect. If someone’s skin is tougher to pierce through some magical effect, that’s likely passive magic. In physics terms, it’s somewhat equivalent to a constantly applied force, though the actually effects aren’t necessarily physical as such. In programming terms, passive magic might be thought of as a property of something.

Active magic is usually some short-term effect, representing a spike of magic. If latent magic is a mousetrap that’s ready to snap closed, active magic is that moment of snapping. Generally speaking, active magic is unstable, and presents as drawing on a store of magical energy in one way or another. If not, then it’s a temporary tapping of magical energy from somewhere else. In programming terms, active magic might be thought of as a method call.

The latent/passive/active distinction is largely unimportant, except as it interfaces with various meta-magics, the most important of which is warding.

Species Specific (Specic) Magic

A number of creatures on Aerb are capable of practicing their own magic which is specific to their species. This “specic” magic is defined by the ability of the practitioner to learn and grow their ability with it. One example of this would be a unicorn, whose ability to distort time grows more powerful over time. There does not appear to be any substantial difference between the specic magics of the mortal species and those of so-called “magical creatures”, at least in principle. If a species is capable of producing an effect which is not subject to learning, growth, or development, that is instead a “specic effect”, though common parlance will tend to call both phenomenon “magic”.

Bloodline Magic

Where specic magic is confined to a species and common among all members, bloodline magic is instead controlled by lineage, mediated by the soul. While at first blush they might appear similar, or it might appear that one is a subset of the other, they’re quite distinct from each other in terms of how who can and cannot use the magic is determined. Because they utilize the part of the soul which contains lineal information, bloodline magics tend to share many similar properties to entad inheritance. In contrast, specic magic tends to exclude those potential practitioners whose species is too diluted from crossbreeding (with specific dilution for ineligibility dependent on the specic magic).

[Juniper’s Notes: Not to be confused with bloodline magic, which acts on a person’s bloodline. Pretty much no one knows about bloodline magic, and it’s excluded, so it’s a confusion of terms that only affects a very few.]

Pseudo Magic

There are a number of skills which are supernatural in some sense, systematized, and which can be learned and practiced, but which are not generally regarded as ‘magic’, given that they’re outgrowths of other skills. The two most notable examples of such phenomena are the blade-bound, who have supernatural attenuation to a blade, prescient ability to parry, and enhanced cutting power, and the Elon Gar, who have a near-complete control of typically automatic reactions. These ‘pseudo magics’ do not interact with meta-magical phenomena such as warding.

Major Magics

Air Magic

Air mages have a fine-tuned telekinetic control of air, particularly in separating out slightly different aspects of the air and manipulating particulates. Generally considered one of the more underwhelming magics, much of its practical utility has been superceded by wards, leaving only a relatively small community of practicing air mages. Their primary specialties are operating at high altitudes where the air is thin, breathing air that would otherwise be poisonous, altering temperature, creating extremely local weather, and killing people by making the air unbreathable.

Blood Magic

Blood mages use their own blood (or more rarely, someone else’s) as a conduit for gaining access to their powers. At the lower levels, this means drawing on attributes of the blood, particularly motion and heat, which give rise to the two classical signs of a blood mage, a blood-swiftened strike and a flaming finger.

Continued use of blood magic depletes the body’s quantity of blood, eventually leading to anemia. Prior to anemia, the blood itself can become drained of magic through the use of too much of any particular attribute: too much motion results in sluggishness, while too much heat results in chills.

The more difficult applications of the magic involve controlling the flow of blood to prevent bleeding out from wounds, control over clotting, and control over immune response. All of these abilities are useful to one degree or another in healing, especially with a line going between the blood magus and their patient. Where bone mages serve as the primary healers of Aerb, the blood mages generally supplement that skill, especially with their ability to ‘burn out’ toxins and diseases. With a venous connection, skilled blood mages are often useful in surgeries in order to prevent blood loss, or to supplement blood flow and oxygen distribution in the patient. For these reasons, it’s common for blood mages and bone mages to work together in the healing arts.

At the upper tiers of blood magic, practiced by a relative handful of mages, the blood becomes a tool, capable of being drawn out of the body and shaped to whatever purpose the blood mage desires. Spears and swords are typical combat applications, wielded by high caliber blood mages in the field of combat, and notable for the fact that they carry their undetectable weapon on them at all times. Defensively, these blood mages can harden themselves against attack, resisting a blow with the strength of their will alone.

Overall, blood magic has something of an identity crisis, given that its abilities are poised between practical combat and healing utility. The difficulty inherent in study, and the ease with which various aspects are accessed, means that novice blood mages have access to a fair amount of athletic and combat utility, journeymen have access to healing, and masters are once again tapping into combat-oriented powers. This zig-zag while moving up the ranks has made blood magic one of the less favored of the magics in recent, more peaceful times.

[Amaryllis’ Notes: I do wish that I had gotten an extra few years at Quills and Blood. When I met Juniper, I had just the bare amount of knowledge necessary for Aarde’s Touch and the Crimson Fist. Once you have those first three years under your belt, you’re allowed to train on your own, but I was always busy with other things, and didn’t have the time to dedicate to eking out more utility just by working through the exercises on my own. Having access to one of the magics is pretty common among the Lost King’s Court, and blood magic is one of the more popular ones, but it’s the defensive abilities that really make that the case. Being able to burn out poisons is helpful, if you’re a noble of Anglecynn.]

Bone Magic

All bones contain latent magic, linked to the soul, which a bone mage can ‘burn’ for various benefits. This is typically done by holding or touching the bone in question and concentrating on the aspects of the bone, which can be felt by the bone mage. The easiest task for a bone mage is ‘tapping’ physical attributes, which can be used for increased swiftness, strength, and vitality. The latter of these is particularly important, as sufficiently increased vitality allows for rapid healing, and forms the basis of the majority of medical solutions across Aerb.

Bone mages can tap fast, which increases the effect at the expense of effect duration, or tap slow, which increases the duration at the expense of the effect’s power. The typical rule is that fast is for combat situations and slow is for utility, though there are certain edge cases. The rule exists due to the “total effect” curve, which dips down sharply with a faster tap. The majority of the edge cases are for situations in which a slow tap would be inadequate for the circumstances. Note as well that bones can be burned in vivo, either by touching the exposed bone of a creature or adversary, or when a bone mage burns their own bones.

Beyond “physical tapping”, and requiring significantly more skill, there is also intellect and focus tapping, as well as memory tapping, which belongs in a slightly different class from the other attributes. Intellect tapping enhances an individual’s intellect, though the short time it applies for and the necessity of taking bones from an intelligent individual make it unworkable in all but the most dedicated setups. Similar constraints apply on focus, though this is much more workable, as focus can be found in abundance in a handful of domesticated animals. A number of tests during the Second Empire led to the discontinuation of regular intellect and focus tapping, citing extremely high expenses and unclear benefits in the real world, despite the promising results of isolated testing.

Memory tapping is somewhat different, and rather than enhancing any attribute, instead causes a flood of memories to flow through the bone mage. These memories are particularly difficult to deal with, and besides that, fleeting as soon as the bone has been burned, which makes use of memory tapping vanishingly rare in practice, despite the benefits it would otherwise appear to offer.

Finally, bone mages can tap into specific magics held by magical beasts, as well as by various members of the mortal species. This ability is considerably less useful than it might first appear, because the bones do not transfer requisite skill, nor do they make any biological modifications, nor do they allow access to stored magic. A vitric bone would be useless unless the bone mage had electricity stored in their veins like a vitric does. Similarly, the bone of a water mage would be useless to the bone mage, as water magic requires significant skill to use. This leaves a rather narrow number of organisms whose bones can be used by bone magic to produce a magical effect.

Because of the existence of bone magic, almost all animals harvested for meat or that otherwise die are stripped of their bones, which are then used by bone mages around the world. In the modern era, it is relatively rare that a bone mage will use bones from an animal which has been specifically bred or hunted for that purpose, as bones from domesticated animals harvested for their meat are quite common and cost-effective for the primary purpose of a bone mage, which is healing. In some polities, bone mages are nationalized, with bones provided by governmental departments, but in other places, a bone mage is tasked with securing his own bones.

Combat bone mages typically serve as medics, often with storage entads capable of replenishing their bone supplies. Because a bone mage must touch a bone in order to use it, bone mages tend to wear their bones on their exterior, held in place by straps or long pockets, rather than concealed.

Carapace Magic

Carapace magic is a companion to skin magic, available only to those creatures covered in hard exteriors. Though the school is informally called carapace magic, to the extent that this term is found on official documents, it is typically considered to extend across all kinds of hard coverings and exposed parts of the mortal species, including those made of dentin, keratin, bone, chitin, and other materials. Formal publications often refer to this collection of hardened exteriors as exobiology, though such terms have not penetrated into the general public, and most carapace mages will refer to themselves as such.

Like tattoo and scar magic, carapace magic involves making modifications to the material, in the case of carapace magic, typically by either carving out the carapace (similar in function to scar magic) or by inlaying the carapace with magical materials (similar in function to tattoo magic). If the carapace is inlaid, the effect is much more likely to be temporary or single use, with the carapace restored to whole through the use of the effect. Like both tattoo and scar magic, the designs required are exact, made difficult by the irregularities of the bodies they’re placed upon.

Carapace magic initially developed with the harmonia, an insectile humanoid with massive shells on their backs. Because they could not reach their shells, all processes were done through the labor of others, and it was common for there to be a division of labor between those who altered the carapace and those who used their powers. Following Uther Penndraig’s war against the Harmonian Nest, carapace magic became widespread among those of the mortal species with hard exteriors, eventually including those with large antlers or horns. In the modern day, there are even human carapace mages, utilizing their nails or teeth for minor effects, though this is often seen as an example of Human Derangement Syndrome rather than a sound investment in education.

Essentialism

Widely regarded as the single most societally damaging magic, essentialism, or “soul magic” is a method of manipulating a person’s soul. These manipulations can result in changes to the body, interactions with other magics, changes in personality, loss of hard-earned skills, loss of memories, and at the extreme end, effective death.

The good news is that essentialists take a fair bit of time to actually affect a person, they must be touching their victim, and it takes the entirety of their focus. The real risk of an essentialist is that they will kidnap or bind their victim, or get them while they are asleep or drugged, at which point the essentialist can spend that time creating a convert to their cause. Essentialists require time and effort for each person affected, as many changes will naturally revert to baseline and some elements of personality are difficult or impossible to change, which further limits their ability to act as a major threat.

During the time of the Second Empire, essentialism was widely accepted, though the actual number of practitioners was fairly small in comparison to other magics, in part due to the Second Empire’s desire to keep the field limited to those whose loyalty was assured, and in part because it’s simply a difficult and complex magic which takes significant time and effort to have a handle on. Nevertheless, the Guild of the Essential Soul made ample use of essentialism, in many cases converting their political enemies, stealing land, making soul-altered alliances, creating various monsters, and in general providing the backbone for imperial power at the time. Soul mages would work on dissidents for a day and get them to reveal everything about their networks, protocols, and plans. Soul mages would sometimes take part in trials and compel those involved to tell the truth. In many ways, the power of the soul mages was utterly intoxicating for the empire at large.

Following the Manifest exclusion, the majority of the most senior soul mages perished or were captured. Those who were captured were stripped of their abilities by skilled anti-imperial soul mages. Once this was accomplished, the majority of the anti-imperial soul mages voluntarily stripped themselves of their power, with only a small cadre left for ensuring that important functions could be carried out (especially including the rooting out of imperial elements).

Special note must be made of the anolia, whose specic magic allows them to see inside souls. This process takes them a fair bit of time, though less than a soul mage, but it allowed them to confirm whether or not someone’s soul has been tampered with by a soul mage, and beyond that, whether or not they are a soul mage. Without the anolia, it’s unlikely that manipulative soul magic would have been so thoroughly eradicated.

In the modern imperial era, soul mages are tightly controlled and strictly licensed, authorized to perform only a few functions which are considered vital to the functioning of the empire, such as protective soul-linking to a ‘brute’, or which have been deemed harmless (such as the soulbinding method of transferring effects).

[Amaryllis’ Notes: Soul magic is too damned useful. After the fall of the Second Empire there were a lot of hardliners, vicious fucks who had allegiance to no country and would come kill you and your family if you so much as thought about loosening the regulations against soul magic. Time wore on, and the hardliners died or lost that spark of vengeful hatred, which meant that eventually soul magic lost a little bit of its taboo, especially among people who didn’t live under the spectre of the Second Empire. Now, it’s creeping back in, bit by bit, except now it’s with loud proclamations of how we won’t repeat the mistakes of the past, how we have oversight and ethics. There are, naturally, covert soul mages in practically every polity on Aerb, since they’re too useful for that not to be the case. Sometimes the best solution is to soulfuck someone, and it’s unlikely that’s ever going to change.]

[Juniper’s Notes: The brute soul linking thing is weird. In game terms, it’s, I don’t know, equivalent to hitbox chicanery, making it so that your hitbox maps to a different character. From everything that I’ve read, the soul contains a whole bunch of information, all the data that makes up “you”, but the fact that soul linking is allowed means that your soul also contains information about the position of your body, and this information is somehow used by the world at large to, say, calculate damage. Which is kind of nuts. On Earth, someone shoots you, and the damage to your body is just physics interactions, but on Aerb, your soul is involved somehow. But what’s especially bizarre is that this doesn’t work all of the time, because if it did, then any force at all would be transferred to the person that was linked. It might actually be the single most game mechanical thing in the entirety of Aerb. Of course, souls have to logically contain a lot of information, because they’re what a huge variety of magics interface with in some way. A druid turns you into a sparrow? It’s your soul that remembers who you were before. An entad resizes to fit you? It’s checking your soul (most of the time, anyway). Essentialists aren’t able to manipulate or even see all the stuff that the soul does, partly because there are a ton of micro-exclusions, partly because it seems like they just didn’t ever have the breadth of ability it seems like they should have had.]

Flower Magic

All farmers and gardeners have some potential toward flower magic, which comes simply as a result of having a connection to and understanding of a flowering plant. Despite that, flower mages were vanishingly rare before Vervain, namely because of the difficulties inherent in forming and maintaining a connection to even a single plant. Following the founding of the Vervainium, flower magic began to be more well-understood, which allowed for far more of the mages than there had been in the past.

Connection to a plant is the first step for a flower mage. In abstract terms, this means seeing and understanding the plant in a true way until a part of it is bound to you, and you to it. In concrete terms, this means spending time with the plant, nurturing it, watering it, and expressing yourself to it. This connection can be hard for a novice to detect, and is formed (or not) when the seed is planted. Flower mages who are starting out sometimes plant dozens of plants in sequence, suffering through the failures.

Once there is a connection, that connection must be carefully maintained, and the plant must be carefully cultivated. When the plant produces a bud, that bud can be pinched off before it flowers, taking some or all of the connective strength between the mage and the plant with it. The bud can then be used for an effect which depends upon the connection and the strain of plant, though the typical effects of flower magic are nature-oriented in some respect.

[Juniper’s Notes: ‘Nature-oriented’ is doing a lot of work there. From what I understand, there are a whole host of books that you could get from the Vervainium on the exact possible scope of what flower magic can do, and a whole library that catalogs all of the effects of known strains and who all the flower mages connected to those strains were. As a magic system, it’s horribly constrained, because you only end up with, at most, a dozen spells at your disposal, each of which takes a lot of time and effort to ‘prepare’. The trade-off is that the spells tend to be pretty damned good.]

Fire Magic

Despite its name, and the rather dramatic method by which fire mages are created (namely, immolation), “fire” mages actually have control over a large number of chemical processes. Unlike some other magics, these “alternate” effects are available without much additional training, and can be exercised independently of any knowledge of fire, including underwater and in hard vacuum.

As they progress, fire mages typically gain a better and better intuitive understanding of the potential chemical reactions around them, which increases their ability to utilize their power. Further, after several years of modest training, a fire mage can begin to offer some share of either catalyst or reactant, incurring a chemical debt that must be paid down later. The simplest example of this is with fire, where a fire mage can provide the fire with oxygen and increase its heat. He will then incur a debt, which he must pay back by gathering oxygen over the next few days, lest he get “fire sickness”. This collection is done through the skin. Because a fire mage can provide reactants, it is possible for very skilled fire mages to create chemical effects from nothing.

Fire mages are created through intense trauma, typically with burns covering a large portion of their body, though a few instances of extensive chemical damage have been recorded as well. This damage is not a guarantee that someone will become a fire mage, as only roughly one in one hundred people who suffer in this way become fire mages. In order to make a single person become a fire mage, this process, which typically brings a person close to death, must be done sixty-nine times to have a fifty percent chance of working. [Juniper’s Notes: Nice. Though actually, it seems like that’s just because of how the math works out.] Thankfully, the process can be done with the help of various magics, allowing it to be minimally painful and non-fatal.

A fire mage’s range increases with their training, up to fifty feet at the upper end of skill. Experienced fire mages are also capable of supernaturally sensing chemical reactions as they occur. Fire magic has difficulty affecting chemical reactions internal to people, as the soul causes interference.

Gem Magic

By holding a cut gemstone in hand, a gem mage can cause it to emit beams of hard light with various properties dependent upon the cut, clarity, color, and carat of the stone. The largest difference among gems is in their color, with their properties dependent on the spread of colors along human-oriented RGB lines.

A pure red gem will fire a constant laser-like projection of force, half of which will be directed back at the user. This beam will have 0 spread.

A pure blue gem will fire once every eight seconds, emitting fifty projectiles at a spread of 180 degrees, which will alter course toward user-intuited targets up to 90 degrees.

A pure green gem will project force in a cone away from the user, expanding with distance at a roughly 45 degree angle (90 degree cone) with commensurate weakening of power. This gem requires one quarter the usual expenditure of power.

A pure magenta (combining red and blue) gem will fire once every four seconds, emitting twenty-five projectiles at a spread of 90 degrees, which will alter course toward user-intuited targets up to 45 degrees. One-quarter of projectile force will be directed back at the user.

A pure cyan (combining blue and green) gem will fire once every four seconds, emitting twenty-five projectiles within a 120 degree cone. Projectiles will weaken with distance from origin in accordance with half of the inverse square of distance. Projectiles will alter course toward user-intuited targets up to 90 degrees. This requires one half the usual expenditure of power.

A pure yellow (combining green and red) gem will fire a constant projection of force in a 45 degree cone with force reduced by half of the inverse square of distance. One quarter of the force will be directed back toward the user. This requires one half the usual expenditure of power.

A pure white gem is special, and can be used to boost other gems when channeled. Because most gem mages can only use one gem at a time, white gems are either used through special techniques, or with a second gem mage.

A pure black gem is special, and can be used for countering other gems at half the cost of what the offensive power takes.

Using a gem like this requires skin contact with the gem mage, which is often accomplished by placing the gems within jewelry that rests against the skin. The projected force naturally comes from the palms, though an experienced gem mage can project from their fingertips, eyes, mouth, forehead, or even feet, given enough skill and training. Generally speaking, projection is easiest closest to the site where the gem makes contact, and this is standard procedure for all gem mages. A starting gem mage can fire only one gem at a time, but more experienced gem mages can fire two or more at once.

Gems have many properties, all of which alter their effects when used in some way:

Clarity: how clear the gem is. Clarity has a sigmoidal relationship with force per unit power; the first few points of clarity provide ever-increasing force per unit power, while the last few points of clarity provide ever-decreasing force per unit power.

Cut: how many facets the gem has, and what their arrangement is. Cut has two components, facets and symmetry. A lack of symmetry in the cuts typically results in force projection being off-balanced or warped in some way, though one axis of radial symmetry is enough that the effects are much less noticeable. The number of cuts increases the “sharpness” of the force projection.

Carat Weight: how big the gem is. Larger gems require more power to use, but have greater force per unit power at superlinear rate.

Color: see above

In short, more clarity is always better, a more symmetrical cut is almost always better, more cuts are almost always better, a greater carat weight is better so long as you have the power available to use it, and color is variable.

Gem magic comes at the cost of mental fatigue, with intensity of fatigue dependent on the particulars of the gem. Experienced gem mages experience less fatigue, and are better able to cope with it.

There are a variety of different approaches to gem magic. For many users, it is primarily a weapon used in self-defense, given the onerous nature of the costs. For others, it’s a single (or double) use weapon for circumstances in which that’s all that’s needed. Combat mages with a focus on gems are quite rare: it’s usually a contingency of some kind, or a readily-used burst of offensive power. Because gem mages depend upon their gems to be functional, and because more powerful gems are more rare and require specialized artisans to make better, most gem mages are either wealthy or sponsored by someone who is wealthy.

Gem magic doesn’t tend to be taught at athenaeums, in part because the actual practice of gem magic spread too far and wide to be contained, and in part because tutoring or instruction are of limited use in comparison to the gains in skill that come from repeated and consistent training. As a consequence, there are a number of gem magic tutors and instructors, but they are only loosely affiliated with each other and have nothing like the monopolies that the athenaeums hold. This is not to say that there are no institutions of learning for gem magic, as several exist across Aerb, with their own specialties. The most famous of these is the Spectral Monastery, which specializes in the use of many small chips of gems, rather than larger individual gems. The technique was developed by the archmage Alvin Xoppet, who takes a very different approach to his craft than most athenaeums take to their own.

[Juniper’s Notes: Gem magic looks cool, but is super lame in practice, in part because it’s incredibly draining to use more than a small handful of times. The fact that it uses RGB values is really odd, because there’s nothing special about RGB in a physics sense, that’s just the standard that the human eye uses. Also, one of the things that drives me nuts about Aerb is that there are little hidden anagrams, references, and jokes all over the place, enough that I sometimes think that some of them are false positives from my mind trying to draw connections that aren’t actually there. That said, I’m pretty sure that Alvin and the Chip Monks is an intentional pun.]

Gold Magic

A relatively simple and widespread spell can be used to mark a quantity of gold greater than a single pound, after which the caster will become a gold mage. Gold mages have tactile telekinesis whose power is based on the quantity of gold they have marked, while their ability to manipulate that telekinesis is based largely on innate mental attributes and learned skill.

A gold mage must respond to the ‘call of the gold’ in order to keep his status as a gold mage. Described sometimes as a voice and other times as a feeling, the call of the gold will demand certain tasks of the gold mage, which primarily include securing their gold, attaining more gold, and marking attained gold. It is unclear whether the call of the gold represents a psychosis that universally afflicts gold mages, or an entity (or entities) associated with gold magic. Either way, the call of the gold appears to come with extrasensory perception, which notably includes the ability to find non-warded gold in a fairly large area, and an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the gold cache.

The general lifecycle of a gold mage starts with an initial collection of gold, securing that gold, then ruthlessly gathering more and more gold until the requests/demands of the call of the gold become too great. At that point, the gold mage will cease to be a gold mage, usually at an inopportune time for them, and will be forever unable to access the magic, even if they somehow collect the gold that was previously required. The longest known duration for a gold mage was eighteen years, aided in part by her location away from many sources of gold.

Attempts to utilize gold mages have historically been unsuccessful, primarily due to the compulsion to adequately protect the gold, mixed with the compulsions to attain more. The gold mage is, of course, free to ignore the compulsions at any time, but this quickly results in a loss of power. Additionally, the call of the gold will often angle for bleeding the host dry, if the gold comes from a polity. Some polities still keep stashes of warded gold on hand so they can create a gold mage at will, but such are only used for short periods and not relied on long-term.

Ink Magic

Despite the name, ink magic has virtually nothing to do with tattoo magic. While both use magical inks made from magical materials, these ink-making processes and reagents have very little in the way of overlap. Tattoo magic involves the rote replication of standard tattoos with uniform expressions, while ink magic instead involves the temporary creation of objects which must spring from the creativity of the caster in conjunction with his available 'palette'.

The first thing that ink mages learn is the processing and ingestion of ink. While it’s not strictly necessary for ink mages to create their own inks, it’s often considered to be a part of the creative process, and works as an aid to the eventual manifestation of magic. Unlike with tattoo magic, the magical inks are not strictly associated with any particular ‘spell’ or effect, instead being symbolically linked to effects on an individual basis which can shift over time or through changes in approach. Once a mage ingests these inks, he can learn to store them in the body, periodically replacing them as they go bad or wear out their welcome. This collection of inks is known as the ink mage’s ‘palette’. Use of ink magic does not drain from the palette, but repeated use of the different inks within the palette will naturally make them weaker by using the symbolic space available to each distinct ink.

At heart, ink mages are creators, with their limits being a function of the power of their inks and whatever they can imagine. Each ink mage will tend to have specialties, but common themes are armor, weapons, animals, and contraptions. Stability and duration of these creations depends largely on the creativity involved, but ‘creativity’ is a delicate and fraught word for ink mages, who will sometimes replace it with terms like ‘artful’. Ink mages require a certain mindset to engage in creation, a mindset that they sometimes have to invoke while under stress, which creates one of the major complications for the magic.

In practice, an ink mage’s creations are the result of their particular aesthetic focus, the inks that they’re able to make and hold, and their creative bent. Because an ink mage will often change their focus in order to “stay fresh”, many of them are generalists, adapting to their creative whims in order to leverage the creative power as much as possible. Others will stick within a central conceit, hoping that variations on a theme don’t creatively sap them.

Note that for an ink mage, “creativity” is a somewhat nebulous internal feeling, which means that so long as the ink mage still feels their creations to be the product of creativity, it doesn’t actually matter whether they’re producing rote replicas of what they’ve made before. For this reason, mind-altering substances are common among professional ink mages, as altered states can enhance the internal feeling.

[Juniper’s Notes: The fact that ink magic and tattoo magic both exist here really puzzled me, until I realized that they were meant to be opposites from one another. Tattoo magic is rote, it’s basically just copying instructions from a book onto someone’s flesh, over and over again, with maybe a bit of skill required in finding new spells, which pretty much never happens anymore, or in mastering known spells. Ink magic, by contrast, is all about creativity, but in practice, it’s about the demands of having to be constantly creative and inventive. Now, I was just a DM, not actually an artist per se, but maybe you could divide these two magics up into crunch and fluff, rules mastery and imagination.]

Passion Magic

Passion magic is, in some sense, actually multiple different fields of magic with strong overlapping conceptual space and cross-applicability of skills. In fact, at the dawn of passion magic, it was widely believed that these schools were incompatible and in tension with one another, which led to considerable infighting before a passion mage made a detailed attempt at a synergistic approach.

In practice, each emotion is tied to a particular expression, with complex emotions giving access to complex expressions. These expressions are not uniform between passion mages, being shaped by the particulars of how each passion mage feels and processes these emotions, but in general:

Anger typically allows for some variety of telekinesis, with the exact form depending on the nature of the anger and the particulars of the individual. The telekinesis can be pushing, pulling, squeezing, crushing, cutting, or some other manifestation, usually quite limited.

Sadness allows for environmental control, though the specifics of this control are varied even more than usual for passion magic. The differences in range are enormous, from miles-wide control of the weather to a radius of meters. The differences in environment include but are not limited to temperature, gravity, wind, texture, humidity, air composition, decay, and in a few rare instances, the spontaneous generation of life. These manifestations, more than others, appear to be influenced by cultural factors.

Fear allows for greater speed, with manifestations being highly variable, and a far cry from the sheer movement allowed by velocity magic. Reaction times are typically heightened, sometimes to the level of precognition, or at least reaction without stimulus to react to. Movements are typically faster on instinct, though some manifestations of fear’s power involve perceptual slowing of time.

Contentment allows for a very crude level of emotional state reading and emotional state projection. A content passion mage might push their contentment weakly to a wide crowd, or powerfully at an individual, though typically only one of those. If there is emotional blending, this “pushing” power can be used either in whole or in part, but this technique is extraordinarily difficult. Emotional reading is more straightforward, but comes with its own variations.

Love allows for personal enhancements, typically shielding in nature, though that’s culturally dependent. A love mage might grant skin of stone, a blade in hand, wings, or any other manner of enhancement, typically temporary and reversible. Love is also sometimes associated with growth, though this is sometimes thought to be the domain of a separate emotion, happiness.

[Juniper’s Notes: I’ve never been a fan of magical realism, at least so far as I understood it, but passion magic seems to be something like it. I can imagine a society with a lot of people who had an aptitude for passion magic just living in a world where things get weird at a time of high emotions. You get sad, and suddenly the wind picks up, the place gets cold, and everything is just a little bit darker. Or you get angry, and your gesture causes a window to break. Of course, because this is a weakly systematized magic, you have the Reimer’s of the world coming by and trying to tear it apart to see how it works, and passion magic isn’t so ineffable as druidic magic, it’s just personal and hard enough to pin down that there are models with holes in them, rather than a grand unified model. And of course the powers that be have tried to hammer it into shape.]

While it’s often said that every passion mage is unique, general trends have been observed, and in the years since the Athenaeum of Ink and Ardor was founded, much progress has been made in harnessing what appears to be a scattershot and unruly discipline.

The first innovations in the field, in place before passion magic was a unified practice, were simply matters of understanding and controlling emotions. Passion mages would practice different methods of provoking their emotions by various means, as well as operating under the cognitive impairment those extreme emotions would sometimes cause. In particular, much attention was paid to sustaining emotional states during times of crisis when there were events or objectives that might conflict with those emotional states. Because of the difficulty of doing this, many of the different threads of passion magic were relegated to times and places where the “natural” emotion lined up with the use of that emotional magic: for example, anger magic and fear magic were commonly used in battle, as anger and fear were typical emotional responses to combat.

Starting around 15 BE, passion mages began to make greater use of mood and mind altering substances and techniques. This required even greater skill and control than before, which might explain why the innovation took so long into the history of passion magic (though some examples predate the alteration era, such as imbibing alcohol). A wide variety of substances and drugs from an expanding world, as well as greater understanding of chemistry and medicine, helped to cement alteration practices as a core part of passion magic over the next fifty years.

During the time of the Second Empire, soul magic was used to make for better passion mages, though soul magic did not seem to be entirely the right tool for such an endeavor, as there was no direct mechanism to affect emotion within the soul, and indirect methods necessitated changes in personality and values. Still, for much of the time of the Second Empire, it was common for specialist passion mages to be employed, typically within a single sphere of emotional magic, and oftentimes with signed agreements to revert them back to their former selves. Today, such practices are tightly controlled and audited, effectively ending the practice in all but the most necessary circumstances.

Pustule Magic

Pustule magic is often considered a companion magic to flower magic, as they share many similarities. In the same way that a flower mage cultivates a connection with a plant, a pustule mage cultivates a connection with their body and their personal microbiome. While a flower mage typically uses a flower bud to expend that connection, a pustule mage will instead use some outward or inward symptom of a microbiome imbalance as a way of expending connection. The similarities continue, as pustule mages often talk about strains in a similar way to flower mages, and benefit from keeping long-running strains and trading with other pustule mages in the same way that flower mages do.

A pustule mage must carry all of their strains with them at one time, giving them far superior range when compared to a flower mage, who is usually bound to his garden unless he has a form of fast travel. In that same way, the pustule mage is limited by the side effects he experiences and the ability of his body to handle various afflictions.

Typical “expressions” of a pustule mage are biological in nature, though there are some exceptions to this rule. Gouts of acid, warping of flesh and bone, and the summoning of creatures from the skin are all hallmarks of the pustule mage. While some expressions eat through built-up connection with each use, others are permanent additions to the pustule mage’s abilities, with power commensurate with connection and no drawbacks or costs associated with use aside from the side effects.

In practice, pustule mages tend to be fanatics about their own bodies and experts in maladaptive conditions. They carefully track their food intake, supplement their meals with medicines, vitamins, and remedies for their side effects, and do as much as possible to understand all of the side effects they are under so that they might better manage them (and in so doing, increase in power). As pustule magic is a well-studied field, there are common strains that are shared between pustule mages, though the personal nature of the magic has prevented true standardization.

One offshoot of pustule magic, which has been banned from study following the collapse of the Second Empire, is so-called macropustules. To wit, there are a wide variety of organisms on Aerb which have a parasitic relationship with the mortal species, most of them either insectile or rodent-like. A sufficiently skilled pustule mage is capable of making the jump to these macropustules, though there are inherent mental risks to doing so, which the Second Empire discovered to its chagrin (which did not stop them, naturally).

Pustule magic is taught at the Vervainium, alongside flower magic. It is primarily used offensively as a combat magic, though there are specialized pustule mages who are suited for extreme conditions such as high or low heat, underwater exploration (where aquatic mortal species would not do), adaptations to poisons or venoms, high altitudes, and various other situations that would result in biological peril for others.

Note that pustule magic works on a fairly wide variety of phenomena, including viruses, bacteria, any of the variety of nearly invisible mites and other insects commonly found on the surface of the skin, the macropustules, and beyond that, certain conditions of the mortal body which are caused by imbalances, even when those imbalances are not “foreign” in nature.

[Juniper’s Notes: Pretty sure that I had a bad case of acne when I came up with pustule mages.]

Revision Magic

In general terms, revision is the localized reversal of physics, limited by what material is available, the amount of time to be reversed, and the volume of material to be reversed. Revision mages are, like some other mages, limited by an internal well of power, though their abilities are much more constrained by their hard limits in terms of volume and time spent.

One of the major secondary limitations for the revision mage is what does and does not count as ‘physics’. Generally speaking, revision mages can reverse magical effects, but cannot reverse magic itself. This distinction is a difficult one, but instrumental in understanding the use cases for a revision mage. In general, revision magic will properly reverse almost anything mundane in nature, or with only latent magic.

When passive physics-altering magic is involved, the reversal will occur as though the passive physics-altering magic was not present, and if a physically inconsistent state would be reached, reversal fails entirely. The easiest example of this is a hypothetical entad which increases the acceleration of a thrown object, such as an apple. A thrown apple will follow a parabola through the air, and when altered by the entad’s magic, will follow a different, likely shallower parabola. If a revision mage revises the apple, the apple will not go backward through the air following the shallower parabola, but rather, follow a parabola which the apple would have followed if it were not affected by magic. This backward path will have the apple end up in a different position than the one it began in, sometimes radically so, though often it will be stopped in its backwards, ahistorical journey due to inconsistencies or ambiguities that cannot be resolved.

Another classic example of interactions with revision magic is that of steel magic. When a steel mage has used their magic to expand their facsimile, a revision mage is virtually unable to affect the structure at all, because reversing the action of physics on the structure has almost no effect (similar to how the action of normal time-forward physics has almost no effect on a properly built structure).

Revision mages do not need to touch their targets, but their range is typically measured in tens of feet, with mages capable of more being quite rare. They are limited to “whole” targets, meaning that they could not, for example, revise the motion of the top half of a person to kill them. This revision is within the privileged reference frame of Aerb, making it difficult to use within other reference frames (the classical example being while on a train or ship).

In modern imperial society, revision mages are often given the role of bodyguards and medics, as they are capable of reversing fatal bodily damage in most cases, if done within thirty minutes post mortem. Revision mages are common as first-responders and hospital workers, especially for major trauma. They are also sometimes hired on retainer for industry, where they can reverse major accidents, and occasionally work to exploit the asymmetries that accompany magic.

Revision mages are limited by an internal well of power which grows with the revision mage’s experience.

Rune Magic

Rune mages create runes using magical materials. These runes have particular properties that allow them to harvest and redistribute energy in various ways while in the possession of the runemaker. Runes must be made at a runeforge, of which there are only five in the world. In practice, a runemaker will spend a large amount of their time working with the runeforges until they’re happy with their creations and setup, then spend time out in the world using their runesuits, runeblades, and runerifles. Over time, runes will break down, especially with heavy use, necessitating another trip to the runeforge, typically with a new design in mind.

While the runes themselves are entirely static and replicable, the runemaker must make the runes themselves on a runeforge, and the typical cases for use of runework heavily benefit from being tailored to the specific runemaker who will be wearing, wielding, or using them. Runework designs then fall into several broad categories: mass-manufactured designs, adapted designs, and bespoke designs.

In terms of practical effects, runes are capable of absorbing most types of energy, then processing, redirecting, and storing that energy. To that end, a system of runes can passively absorb and store energy, convert it from attacks of various kinds into harmless forms, and output that energy in various ways. This leads to different builds for runemakers, leaning toward either defense, offense, or utility. Because runemakers are constrained by the amount of time it takes to make their runes, and because they’re limited to what they can carry, trade-offs are often made in terms of function.

Runes can be put onto many different materials using the runeforge, with different rates of decay and different amounts of effort needed to inscribe the rune. Metal is most common, longest lasting, and most difficult to do. By contrast, prepared vellum is easiest to inscribe, but won’t stand up to repeated use. Because breakdown of runes is uneven, runemakers will often create modular parts that can be swapped in at common failure points, allowing them to continue on without having to make a premature trip to the runeforge.

The runeforges themselves are immense ziggurats, each the size of a stadium. They are inviolable and labyrinthine, though their mazelike nature is undercut somewhat by the maps that have been posted throughout them, and the fact that they are all laid out identically. Throughout the runeforge there are numerous stations ready and waiting to be used, as there have been for as long as the runeforges were known. None of these stations are complete, and a runemaker must move between them in order to complete their work, or alternately, make compromises on design in order to finish their work without continually moving between stations. By analogy to woodworking, it would be as though the jigsaw, bandsaw, miter, router, et cetera were all separated from each other by hundreds of yards of cramped, twisting passages.

[Juniper’s Notes: I’m pretty sure that this was based on one of my first attempts to make a magic system of my own, back when I was a fledgling worldbuilder. I had been watching Fullmetal Alchemist and was enamored with equivalent exchange, so I tried to sketch something out that would basically be that. It had way too many rules and probably would have been broken in a half-hour if I had shown it to anyone, plus it didn’t really work within the confines of D&D, but it was fleshed out enough that it made sense to me, and I had a whole group of villains who were runemakers. Really, I would have been better served not making rules and just saying, “okay, this guy has fire immunity and shoots lasers, this guy is resistant to bludgeoning and has double movement speed with two attacks” or something like that, but it really scratched an itch to have all this background.]

[Amaryllis’ Notes: The runed spike that’s commonly used to pull souls from bodies is, technically speaking, a part of rune magic, in that it registers as such to a warder and is created through (apparently) simple means in the runeforge by a runemaker, but it’s so-called ‘free’ rune magic, not tied to any runemaker. There have been numerous attempts at expanding the field of ‘free’ rune magic, but so far as I know, all of them have failed. The spikes were hammered out pretty quickly once they were discovered, and there are probably as many as there are people. If rune magic ever gets excluded, there are other methods of post-death soul removal, but none as fast and cheap as the spike.]

Sand Magic

The fundamental utility of sand magic is the manipulation of time in various ways, though the most iconic among them is the time chamber, which can speed up time inside it to an absurd degree, so long as enough time has been stored inside of it. Sand mages spend large amounts of time building structures which internally manipulate time, usually by speeding it up, slowing it down, or transferring it, though many of these processes are fatal to living creatures.

Generally speaking, structures are built of sand with other materials for reinforcements, with the power of the structure scaling with the size of the building, and the skill of the sand mage determining the precision and power of the effect. Sand mages most often have a team of people working for them on the construction end of things, as the amount of work necessary to create such a structure would be too onerous for a single person.

The primary use cases for sand magic are in speeding up time-intensive processes and slowing down time-critical processes, though the latter does not work on people, for unclear reasons (thought to possibly be related to an exclusion or proto-exclusion). Sand structures are capital-intensive, given how many people are usually involved in their construction and the amount of materials they take, especially as sand purity and origin plays a large role in precise function. For this reason, most of the sand structures on Aerb are actually created and used in industrial processes, rather than the more publically well-known time chambers. Typically, these industrial sand structures are run without any personnel involved, and without the limits that are inherent to mortal-survivable sand structures, allowing the quick aging of cheeses, liquors, and various other products. Similarly, some specialized sand structures can be used for the quick aging of animals and growth of plants, though this also requires very well-engineered internal conditions to ensure survivability.

[Juniper’s Notes: I’m tempted to call this part of the utility magic trifecta, but it’s not clear to me that there are only three of them. Sand magic is great, but the primary people who benefit from it aren’t the casters. Same goes for water magic, which is largely used for weather manipulation (and admittedly has some combat utility depending on the circumstances). The last would be steel magic, which is used for construction. But I guess you’d have to include bone and blood as being utility, since they both have healing aspects, and warding is obviously ninety percent utility. The distinction I’m trying to drive at is that there are a lot of magics that are very nearly only utility, nothing more. It was the kind of stuff that you didn’t really see that often in D&D, where most magics either fit into five-people-walking-through-a-dungeon archetype or got axed.]

Skin Magic

Skin magic is divided into two distinct, broad categories, the first being tattoo magic, and the second being scar magic. The latter is only usable by elves, except in some specific circumstances.

There are three primary constraints on tattoo magic. Firstly, and most seriously, tattoos require inks from magical sources, including magical plants, magical animals, and magical minerals, sometimes with additional magical processing along the way. This can make the costs of certain tattoos extremely expensive, especially given non-sustainable practices used in the past, and certain reagents that are by their nature limited. Secondly, tattoos require a skilled and steady hand to produce, though there is technically no requirement for them to be done by a tattoo mage. Third, there is limited space on the body for tattoos to be placed.

In formal definition, a tattoo requires two things. The first is a set of instructions which define the tattoo’s exact dimensions and dimensions of each component piece, while the second is a list of ingredients and the processes necessary to refine them, if applicable. Specific inks are used in specific parts of each part of the tattoo, and when the tattoo is completed, it will gain its magic. Every tattoo has a third aspect, the effect, which is the same in every instance, though control and knowledge of a tattoo’s effect depend somewhat on the skill of the tattoo mage, as do the rare variations. Effect may also vary on the basis of tattoo size.

[Juniper’s Notes: I’m telling you, SVG graphics. Now, I don’t actually know jack shit about SVG graphics, but I do know that it’s a programmatic method of reconstructing pictures, and it seems like it fits really, really well.]

In contrast, scar magic is highly variable, with a proficient scar master required to get the most from each individual subject and no two patterns of scars exactly alike, though there is some repetition of theme. Generally speaking, scar patterns are stronger the more skin they cover, and are stronger when made using the smallest possible component scars. Because of the precision necessary and the way that minute changes in bodies can invalidate a pattern, elves are the only species on Aerb that regularly use scar magic, though the practice was more common during the Second Empire when skilled soul mages had a method of temporarily boosting individual soldiers through scar magic.

The actual effects of the tattoos vary widely and are idiosyncratic in both their reagents and effects. Discovery of new tattoos is extremely difficult given how few working tattoos there are in the space of all possible tattoos.

Star Magic

Star magic is, simply put, the most prominent ability capable of interacting with planar and dimensional forces. The connection to stars occurs largely with relation to the changing constellations, which provide a map to how certain rites and rituals might be performed. By following and interpreting the stars, a star mage can travel to another plane, pull in things from other planes, interact with the ethereal realm, banish creatures that come from other planes, and make standing portals between planes.

The stars above Aerb are the same anywhere on Aerb, with their multicolored configurations often changing, a few major constellations excepted. However, the exact nature of a star mage’s rituals and procedures varies significantly on the basis of their geographical location in non-obvious ways, to the extent that star magic was independently invented five different times without the clans that formed around the magic understanding how it might work beyond their borders. In the modern era, star mages have among the best location determining equipment available, including detailed maps of whatever location they’ll be working in, meaning that a star mage can adjust to their location much better than in times past. The stars must still be observed, because their shifting positions alter the rituals and procedures. A star mage’s power is variable with the stars, as certain rituals and procedures become more difficult, or sometimes impossible, as the stars move around in the sky.

In practical terms, a star mage’s work largely consists of laying down lines, typically using metal pieces. These lines must be positioned properly in accordance with the stars, sometimes in three dimensions but typically in two, and once the laying of lines is done, the effect will come into being, usually over the course of a few hours. These lines can be straight or curved, connecting or not, though if not connecting, they will usually need supports of some kind. The actual material used for the lines doesn’t matter, so long as it’s sufficiently distinct from the surrounding material and sufficiently uniform that it makes a line. As a consequence, star mages are entirely capable of laying lines with nothing more than a pen and paper, which they almost always have on hand to do their calculations and to chart out the relevant stars.

Once lines have been laid, the dimensional or planar effect will typically last until the next movement of the stars, weakening and then eventually failing, sometimes catastrophically. If the effect is meant to work until it fails, certain steps can be taken to ensure that failures are graceful and safe. Conversely, it has sometimes been the case that star mages are employed for the destructive force they can bring to bear with a calibrated closure, though star mages tend to be exceptional at warfare in any case.

If the circumstances call for a permanent solution, star mages are capable of laying additional lines for “untethering”, which allows the effect to persist even beyond the movement of the stars. This tends to be a much, much more complicated process than the simple laying of lines, and for larger projects, intermittent steps must often be taken during the untethering to ensure that the effect will remain, which means shifting the lines that have been laid down or laying new ones in a different configuration that accomplish the same thing.

In practice, star magic is primarily used for large, expensive permanent installations, or for one-time speciality applications. The holy grail of star magic has long been the establishment of ‘corridors’ to connect major metropolises, though so far various efforts have proven prohibitively difficult, as well as being thought to risk exclusion.

[Amaryllis’ Notes: The relationship between the stars and the rules for star magic is unclear. Obviously the stars move and the rules change … but why? Does the position of the stars create the rules? Is there some higher order rule that causes the rules of star magic and the positions of the stars to change? No one knows.]

[Juniper’s Notes: In D&D, dimensional effects are super high level, unreliable, and costly. The same seems to be true of Aerb, though a lot of the planes serve as unifying forces for entads and magics, meaning that they can technically be accessed by normal channels even if you can’t manipulate the plane on a more raw level. In practical terms, star magic isn’t used for a lot, simply because it’s so finicky and unstable. I remember a campaign I ran back on Earth where there was a whole city riddled with extradimensional spaces, strange, non-Euclidean avenues and places where more and more extradimensional space got built up because of the real estate rule about location, location, location. Not so much on Aerb.

It also occurs to me that star magic is kind of twisted, on account of how the sky is the same no matter where you are. I would naively expect an astrological magic system to vary on the basis of what’s in the sky above you, maybe changing with what constellations are visible, but that’s not possible on Aerb, so the instructions as given by the stars get interpreted differently on the basis of geography, even though the stars themselves don’t change. It’s weird.]

Steel Magic

Steel mages are capable of rapidly creating structures and objects by first making a facsimile in steel. For most of Aerb’s history, the production of steel was time, resource, and labor intensive, which led to steel magic remaining undiscovered for a long time, and once discovered, relegated to special cases. As time wore on, the cost to create steel went lower and lower, opening up new areas for steel mages to effectively operate within, and expanding the ranks of steel mages, which in turn allowed for a greater diversity of techniques, better instruction, and further advancements in the realm of steel. This eventually culminated in the work of the steel mage Bessemer, whose new process for steel production cut the price to an eighth of what it had once been. This ushered in a new era of steel magic, one in which the majority of new large buildings are made by steel magic.

Before a steel mage starts creating a facsimile, he must first decide on a scale. Smaller scales take less in the way of materials, tools, and time, but are prone to warping and imperfection. Larger scales are, for this reason, generally prefered, though the exact scale is down to the determination of the individual steel mage. For large structures, a steel mage might work on as large a scale as 1/10th, while for a crude or mass-produced application, he might work on a scale as small as 1/1000th. Any irregularities in the form of the facsimile will be magnified, which is another reason that larger scales are generally preferred for anything approaching precision work.

Creation of the facsimile starts with the steel, which the steel mage must handle personally at the point it’s molten. From there, the steel must be worked in various ways until it’s in the form of the facsimile, with the most common method being casting the steel and then spending significant time cutting and sanding the structure, as well as removing the flash. This process must also be done personally by the steel mage, rather than an apprentice or hired hand, and represents the majority of the steel mage’s actual labor. A steel mage can make a facsimile using any number of pieces of steel, so long as they are joined together with steel and nothing else, and so long as both pieces have been personally handled by the steel mage. These joinings are technically difficult and often result in problems with enlargement, so are used sparingly.

Once the facsimile is finished, the steel mage will bring it to a specially prepared site of the structure’s exact dimensions, place it at a precise point, and then begin the process of enlarging it. For a large building this can take as long as half a day, but for something smaller, it might be as little as half an hour. The process of enlarging is the only point at which the steel mage is using anything that a warder would call actual magic, and once started, it cannot be stopped without losing the facsimile and creating a structurally unsound mess that would need to be cleared away. Once the enlargement is finished, the steel will have been transformed into magestone, a magically inert material, and the structure will be complete. This process of enlarging exerts very little force.

In practice, steel magic is largely artisanal in nature, with the knowledge and skill base required to be a steel mage incredibly varied. A steel mage must have an in-depth knowledge of steel manufacturing, steel casting, and steel working, as well as a solid grasp on steel magic itself, particularly the problems inherent to expansion. On top of that, a steel mage is often asked to play architect, building planner, and engineer as well, though a successful steel mage will likely have a team of experts to do that part of the labor. Special care needs to be taken with the site of the structure so that it’s prepared to take the weight, and everything needs to be leveled and cleared in preparation. Beyond that, the structure that a steel mage creates is not “finished” in any sense of the word, especially in the modern era when electricity, plumbing, phone lines, and elevators are all expected as basic amenities. In essence, the steel mage is only building a shell or a framework, and while it’s the most important part of the structure, it’s far from the only part.

The other major purview of the steel mage is in creating defensive structures, which naturally take relatively little planning, artisanship, and care. Given the ease with which a steel mage can make a wall, there are very few major cities without one. In earlier times, this was the primary use of the steel mage, since they could reshape a battlefield to a greater extent than nearly any other mage.

Special note must be given to the varieties and purity of the steel mage’s steel, which informs the precise properties of the magestone in the final product. Formally, steel is iron with a certain carbon component, but there are other “alloy steels” that fall under the umbrella and powers of steel mages with additional components added, including but not limited to manganese, nickel, chromium, molybdenum, vanadium, silicon, boron, aluminium, cobalt, copper, cerium, niobium, titanium, tungsten, tin, zinc, lead, zirconium, starmetal, feymetal, bloodmetal, ironwood, necrium, dragonscale, laberthium, vervainium, utheralt, and voidstuff.

[Juniper’s Notes: This is another of the utility magics. Whoever designed the magic system had been very careful about making sure that there wasn’t much in the way of combat application, though there’s a huge amount of combat utility, so long as what you need is a structure or a barrier of some kind. Supposedly that was more common in prior eras, and there are, per Amaryllis, places where steel mages littered the countryside with different defensive fortifications in the course of various wars. One of the neat tricks they did was making tall towers that were easy to knock down if you knew the trick, so that they could be collapsed when the steel mage left. The fact that the enlargement process exerts practically no force at all is really restrictive and means that you can’t, for example, use a piece of steel to lift up or break down a door, not unless you do some tricks like having the enlarged steel on a lever, or used as a weight. The fact that the magestone sticks around is a pretty big problem, since it means that you can get stuck with a bunch of it.]

Still Magic

After approximately a week of meditation in the Li’o’te Temple, a person will become a still mage, capable of stopping any movement (or more generally, any change). The two big limitations on this power are first that it requires continuous, intensive training to increase in power, and second, that it only applies to those things that the still mage is directly or indirectly touching. Additionally, a still mage has a great deal of difficulty in affects things which are not whole objects. A still mage’s capacity to still objects always has an upper limit, and when that limit is reached, whatever change they’re attempting to still will ‘spill over’, meaning that using sufficient force is a valid tactic against them.

Still mages are often bodyguards and warriors, though their magic is almost entirely defensive in nature, and as stated, requires close contact. In terms of utility applications, they are often used at construction sites or other places where big, heavy things are moving around and might benefit from being stopped or slowed. Still mages are also prized as police or enforcement, given the non-lethal nature of their magic.

At the higher levels of the craft, still mages are capable of stilling more esoteric things, aside from just kinetic effects. Uther Penndraig was known for his legendary feat of stilling both lasers and lightning, a feat which has not been replicated to this day, though lesser feats are possible for masters, including the stilling of heat and chemical processes.

Velocity Magic

Velocity mages control and manipulate speed, the time it takes for an object to move from one place to another. Generally speaking, this control and manipulation of velocity involves simple trade-offs which conserve both power and force, meaning that velocity mages are, technically, manipulating multiple different aspects of physics.

In the naive case, a velocity mage will increase their own velocity at the expense of mass, conserving power. This allows for much faster movement, at the expense of an ability to affect the world. A velocity mage at ten times speed will punch with one tenth the mass. At high speeds, the movement of air becomes a serious consideration, and a velocity mage must use an ever-increasing amount of their power to push the air aside, using a similar process of making the air easier to move. This process has been noted to work more on intuition than raw physics, in part because the power is mediated by the intellect and will of one of the mortal species.

Beyond this simple manipulation of physics, velocity mages have naturally enhanced mental acuity, especially when using their powers. In popular conception, the velocity mage sees the world as being immensely slowed down, but most velocity mages report a feeling of incredible speed and actions taken almost before they’ve been thought of, with little time for deliberation. This has often been compared to the way that a grandmaster swordsman moves without conscious thought, his reactions born of long training and a lot of experience, though velocity mages do seem to use higher functions, even if they internally feel as though you’ve been compressed down to twitch reflexes.

In the modern empire, velocity mages are often couriers and first responders, though velocity mages typically have little ability to transport sick or wounded. When a velocity mage takes a combat role, it is typically one involving hit-and-run tactics, and while their magic prevents them from being able to do much physical damage with their velocity manipulation, there have been numerous strategies crafted by the Athenaeum of Might and Motion, including but not limited to: needles to inject poison, contact poisons, planted explosives, and firearms used while still.

To become a velocity mage, you need to travel faster than the previous person who became a velocity mage, with a few requirements such as not using magic. With every new velocity mage, the benchmark increases, and a current ongoing problem is that the supply of velocity mages is, ultimately, finite.

[Juniper’s Notes: Velocity magic is at least in part based on Tiff’s character from our Mutants & Masterminds, Hummingbird, a speedster that I wrote a bunch of rules for. The big problem with speedsters is that velocity is extremely powerful, since power equals mass times velocity. Increase velocity and that means that you’re increasing power. Archetypal speedsters aren’t brutes though, the Flash doesn’t punch like a train and splatter anyone he touches, at least in most incarnations. So this was, more or less, what we came up with.]

Vibrational Magic

Created by the touch of an entad known as the Rod of Whispers, vibration mages have the ability to control oscillations within their range, altering either amplitude, frequency, or both. This manipulation comes at the cost of their internal store of magical energy, which they call ‘breath’. Modifying down is nearly costless, and used with abandon, while modifying neutrally (amplitude for frequency or the reverse) takes a small amount of power. The vibration mages are most known for their power multiplication though, making sounds louder or amplifying oscillations for destructive effect.

The vibration mage serves three vital roles within imperial society. The first is as spies, given their exceptional ability to dampen certain frequencies and amplify others, which gives them auditory access to nearly any unwarded space. The second is as engineers and analysts, given their fine senses, though they are usually partnered with a large firm rather than cross-specialists themselves. The third is as combat specialists, given their decided range advantage, which combines well with their ability to do reconnaissance. While the empire is in a time of great peace, there is still ample demand for combat specialists for deterrence, planning, training, homegrown threats, and extra-imperial actors.

Warding Magic

Warding is one of the ‘keystone’ magics of Aerb, responsible for a large portion of infrastructure and industry. As a result, it’s one of the more common magics, and the Athenaeum of Barriers is one of the most important, though journeyman warders are much more common than true warding magi.

A warder has two basic implements, a wand and a monocle. The wand is the mechanism by which they interact with wards, while the monocle is what they use in order to view magic. These two implements correspond to the two primary functions of the workman warder, the first being the construction and maintenance of wards, and the second being observation and analysis of magical phenomena.

When constructing wards, the warder consumes a personal resource known as concordance. Concordance replenishes over time, typically going from ‘empty’ to ‘full’ in the course of a week. Better warders are capable of producing wards with equal effect using less concordance, but they also have a larger pool of concordance, one which they’ve expanded through effort and time. Different wards require different amounts of concordance, with temporary wards requiring far less than permanent ones, and more specific wards requiring less concordance than more general ones. A ward against a specific spell or entad takes far less in the way of resources than one against an entire field of magic. Wards can either act as barriers against the specific magic, or they can act to annihilate or suppress the magic that passes through them, with the latter costing far more concordance and taking considerably more training to use.

Two or more sufficiently skilled warders can link together, adding their pools of concordance together, but this process is difficult and time-consuming to do, with fairly minor benefits, and so isn’t practiced often. The linked warders are capable of producing more complex and stronger wards than a single warder alone, but a single warder can already create wards that are as good as they need to be, in most circumstances.

In addition to their wands, warders typically also construct a warder’s monocle, which allows them to see magic, filtered by parameters, including wards. Warder’s sight is useful not only for security, but for diagnosis of various magical effects, and is considered one of the greatest assets of a warder. Sufficiently skilled warders can utilize the warder’s sight without the use of a monocle, though this is relatively rare. The monocle has some adverse effects from overuse, including blindness, which is one of the reasons that the preferred form factor is something that is only ever temporarily held up to the face.

[Juniper’s Notes: Warding has just a buttload of rules, both first-order and second-order. It’s something that I’ve talked with Grak about a number of times, both because I want to know more, and because I want to know him. I think the biggest revelation I had was when I asked him how a velocity ward could stop one person and not another on the basis of who their grandfather was. He explained that you sometimes have to weave wards together, which kind of blew my mind, especially when combined with the pass-through principle. Trying to conceptualize some of the powerful wards we’ve walked through: they check blood, which gives access to the soul, which contains information on lineage, which gets checked to see if it follows the rules set in the ward, which then interfaces with the velocity portion, which either stops a person or lets them pass. But we’re not done, because it needs internal logic that lets everything they’re carrying through, not to mention the parts of their body that aren’t blood, and if you want someone to be able to designate a friend … well, I’m not so sure on that part yet, but it probably involves more rules.]

Water Magic

Water magic is a bloodline magic which occurs with highest frequency among the humans of Francorum. Its primary and defining feature is macrohydrokinesis, the ability to manipulate large quantities of water, which is most often used for weather control and defense against water-based natural disasters. A water mage’s area of effect, level of control, and raw power are based partly on their talent and natural attributes, and partly on the amount of water near them. In other words, a water mage standing in the middle of a lake will have far greater control, range, and power than a water mage in the middle of a desert. The chart of the effect would be sigmoidal, with power ramping up significantly as more water is added to the environment until eventually it levels out, typically when water makes up at least a quarter of a sphere around the caster.

[Juniper’s Notes: Strong in theory, weak in practice, mostly because the control is lacking for all but the masters. Strong utility, certainly, I would never dispute that, weather control is amazing, but it’s actually pretty limited weather control, because it’s only water-based, meaning that it wouldn’t likely save you in a desert, and is kind of sketchy if there’s no large body of water around. Curiously, it’s the only bloodline magic that I have available.]

Wood Magic

When a tree has died, something of it lives on in its wood, even after it has long since dried and lost any spark of life. A wood mage can tap into this elemental essence for various effects, chief among them the wood’s desire to grow, though other applications are also available for more skilled wood mages.

There are two primary paths for a wood mage. The first is construction and fabrication, where they can use the natural growth potential in the wood to make rough cuts into precise, unbreakable joints, or shape and harden the wood to make armor or weapons that rival steel. The second is in combat, where the strengths of the wood are pulled on more intensively, and in shorter bursts, almost always in a melee capacity.

Unfortunately for the wood mages, their ability at construction is largely outclassed by steel mages, who, since Bessemer, can create more and better structures for cheaper. There are still wood mages working in construction, but it’s far more niche than it once was, typically chosen for aesthetic, or to complement a steel mage’s work. Similarly, the fabrications of a wood mage are often outclassed by either entads (at the high end) or mass manufactured goods (at the low end) with little room in-between.

In terms of combat, the wood mages are arguably even worse off, having been left behind by industrial and technological advances, and particularly hard-struck by the ravages of the Second Empire, which endangered many of the most important tree species that wood mages relied on and caused a few of them to go extinct through unsustainable practices and/or incompetent management. Of note, ballistic technology continues to improve, much of which is capable of killing a novice wood mage in their armor outright. Other magics have grown more powerful, while wood magic has been left behind. It’s widely regarded as a “struggling magic”, in part because barring another magic being excluded or an advance in wood magic, the art will continue on its downward trend.

[Juniper’s Notes: One of the things that I find funny about Aerb, in a funny-weird way, not a funny-ha-ha way, is that there are some magics that just don’t seem to do all that much. Magic getting left behind by the industrial revolution is a pretty uncommon trope, as compared to magic fading from the world, but here on Aerb it’s not just that wood magic got left behind, it’s that the benefits of technological and scientific advancement, as well as economies of scale, have been applied to the various flavors of magic in really unequal ways. But yeah, wood magic isn’t very good, and doesn’t seem like it gets much better in combination with other magics or entads, most of which just outclass it. In any other setting, I might ask what the point was, but on Aerb, it’s pretty clear that is the point.]

Free Magic of Note

Throughout Aerb there are also “free” magics, those which are not associated with any particular school, and formally, those which occupy a narrow band on the magical spectrum. These are typically spells, performed with specific ingredients and done according to a ritual, which may be either simple or complex. There are very few ‘free’ magics, but they are, as a rule, widespread, except where the necessary materials provide a meaningful constraint.

Bulk Teleportation: Given the proper ingredients and a copy of the ritual, anyone can teleport a volume of space to nearly anywhere else on Aerb. This teleportation will fail if the destination location is high up in the air or if the destination location is already occupied. Across Aerb, bulk teleport is used on a daily basis to get goods from one place to the other, usually with careful prearrangement by both parties to ensure that the spell doesn’t fail. Bulk teleportation sterilizes whatever was teleported, making it unusable for the transport of living things.

Touchstones: Touchstones are a (non-entadic) magic item, capable of being produced en masse. Originally created for cultural reasons, they were found to have a curious property: they had strange interactions with a variety of magic items. An entad map that filled in coastlines and cities on its own would show the touchstones even when they were a long distance away. An entad that counted sheep would include nearby touchstones in its count. In various ways, touchstones appeared to interact with entads, usually counting it as something that it was not, or including them in magically created lists or tallies. Now, because of their application for teleportation keys, they are heavily regulated and placed only in major population centers, each heavily warded and guarded.

Infernoscopes: An infernoscope is a device that allows a person to look at the hells. This is done through simple mechanical means using a unique crystal capable of reflecting light from other dimensions. Invented during the time of Uther Penndraig, the infernoscope is basically still as it was, generally in the form of a large table with a flat viewing surface onto which the reflection is projected. An infernoscope can look at one hell at a time, and is limited in where it can look by its geographic location on Aerb, though a typical infernoscope will have levers and controls that allow for some degree of freedom in what is shown, especially as minute movements of the crystal inside can produce large amounts of lateral movement. As the infernoscope looks into deeper and deeper hells, it becomes harder and harder to make out details, until eventually it is impossible. Thankfully, infernals themselves do not appear to have an equivalent way to spy on Aerb.

Void

Though not magic in a technical sense, void is often grouped with it, as its effects approximate magic to a layman’s understanding. Around the world, in thirty-one cataloged sites, there are purple-hued crystals which, when stimulated electrically, will produce a void effect. This void effect completely destroys matter, leaving no trace behind, and can be directed depending on the specifics of the stimulation. When first discovered, void was used for everything from weapons to carving to removal of material, but in 472 FE, star mages at the Athenaeum of Mathematics and Metaphysics discovered a growing discrepancy in their planar charting, which eventually revealed a creature of enormous size and destructive power heading on a collision course with Aerb through fourth dimensional space. When the correlation between increased use of void tools and weapons was uncovered, charted, and verified, several attempts at stopping or contacting the ‘Void Beast’ were made, until eventually the Empire of Common Cause passed legislation completely banning the mining of void crystals and use of void technology, which appears to have stopped the threat in its tracks.

Void is notable for its interactions with magic, namely in that it appears to bypass or simply not interact with a large number of magical defenses. Additionally, because it isn’t magic, it cannot be warded against.

Souls

All of the mortal species possess a soul, detectable through inference by a wide variety of magic, and removable by a runed spike (known as a dejang, though this term is considered somewhat old-fashioned). Classically, the soul has been divided into the anima ipsa, the thing itself, and the anima exa , the soul as it exists outside the body. This distinction is important for a number of reasons, especially as it relates to magic and magical effects. There is some evidence that animals possess an anima ipsa, but there is no known way to extract the soul from their bodies.

Once a soul has been removed from the body, it presents as a small white ball the size of a large coin. If left exposed to the air, it will fairly quickly fade from the Prime Material Plane, whereupon the person whose soul it was will appear in one of the hells, a fact confirmed by infernoscope during the time of the Second Empire. If not removed upon a person’s death, the same will also happen, but it will take thirty minutes rather than the ten or so minutes that it takes in open air. If the removed soul is instead placed into a glass container with a glass stopper, it will slowly decay, until eventually fading out entirely, which takes roughly three years. This will not cause the person whose soul it was to appear in the hells, who will instead completely cease to exist in any measurable way. This fate, commonly called oblivion, is widely — though not universally — considered far preferable to continued existence in the hells.

When a soul has been put into a glass container, it gradually decays, and this decay gives off energy, which can be harnessed through the use of a thin filament. If rotated, this filament can actually speed up the decay process, generating more power at the same time. Given the ability to artificially grow souls, this has become the dominant method of generating electricity throughout Aerb, especially as it requires relatively little engineering and produces no byproducts. There is some question of moral hazard involved, as these artificial souls do go to the hells if exposed to air, and apparently continue to mature somewhat there, meaning that industrial accidents, car accidents, and general malfunction have resulted in eternal tortue for beings that have never known the relative comfort of Aerb. Some efforts were made to switch over to alternative fuel sources following the fall of the Second Empire, but the most promising of those, blackthornes, used the necrotic field effect, which was excluded to the Risen Lands. Short of severely curtailing electrical generation, it appears that soul power is here to stay.

[Juniper’s Notes: The hells were known before Uther’s time, mostly through demons and devils coming up to the ‘surface’, the occasional possession, and some entads, but the infernoscope roughly dates to then, and though it changed the world less than I might have thought, it did change the world. The discovery that you could bottle souls and prevent them from going to the hells was another major landmark in the understanding of post-death, and marked another major revolution in how people treated the dead. A lot of different traditions have sprung up around the bottling of souls, from deathwatches so the soul can be taken immediately on death, to euthanasia, to keeping labeled bottles in homes in the same way that we’d use an urn. People still don’t act quite like they actually believe that they’re going to hell, but I guess the same is true in the real world, and denial is a powerful thing.]