Glimmer

Breathe deep and live deeper, and may your life be full of lanterns and glimmer.

There exists a phenomenon in Levis that is normal to the locals, but fantastic to any visitor. Able to bring joy to the strongest hearts, it is wonder and whimsey made airborne.

This is Glimmer.

Formed when the subject is feeling heightened positive emotions, they spring into the air like a little friend. A simple ball of light within the visible spectrum, there exists no core, and the 'glow' from a single glimmer - called a mote - diffuses over two handspan. While one or two motes of glimmer will often spawn when a being experiences basic joy, more motes of glimmer spawn the longer and fiercer the emotions of the subject are, with the greatest ever outpourings called a Glimmerstorm.

With no sentience, and no clear goal, motes of Glimmer will generally float up and away from their spawning point, dispersing after a few minutes. Motes have no mass, although they can be interacted with by affecting the surrounding air. Animals can produce Glimmer, as can non-natives to Levis, though both seem to produce motes of lesser intensity.

Experimentation and Variation

The light produced by Glimmer can be manipulated within a mote, although the light it generates does not refract, nor does it magnify - as if it is limited to the medium it is formed in. That does not mean experiments have not been conducted to try. Experiments with the motes have been done to see if they split (they do not), whether they can be imbued into objects without emotions (also unsuccessful) and whether they can be used as an alternate source of power to sunlight (records of this are expunged).

Consuming glimmer will flood the body with magic, and often a euphoric high. It requires a strong magical potential to even handle the mote of glimmer directly with any skill, and a moment of pure will to 'consume' it.

A negative glimmer can sometimes form, entirely formed by magic users or those of the fey, they are usually sharp and are attracted to sentient beings. Touching a negative glimmer will transfer the emotion and can cause a massive chain reaction of negativity if left unchecked.

Cultural influence

Glimmer themselves have inspired many things, including the paper lanterns that sport all around Levis, often sold by a vendor named Mr Kaito. The travelling tailor has brung these beacons of light to many a city and town through Levis, though ones with wax candle lights have been made by others to bring the idea and the sensation to those not in his path.

Glimmer often appear in positive art and literature, depicted with a much more stylised glow in order to infer the joyous nature of what is being depicted. Painters and inkers from the early Quiet Years often depicted them with a equatorial ring, while those from the middle years inscribed their depictions with phantom faces. Modern depictions surround them with nonsense circuit diagrams, often variants of a light magic, in ways known to evoke the idea of the spell but make it unworking.

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Paper lanterns are devices made from growing a paper thin gourd, hollowing out the seeds, then creating two weavings of magic, one of light, one of levitation.

When sold, all they need to do is be activated by a touch to their source component, turning on both circuits and getting to watch the device float off and up, carried by thermal eddies, away from the owner.

Type

Metaphysical, Arcane