Sophistic's Journal of Magic
Harnessing the Essence of the Gods, or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tarnishing.
In my thousands of years alive, I watched the perception of magic transform from a sacred and dangerous practice to become a simple tool used in the daily life of people. It used to be scary, but generations of study and research has made it known to us that like all other natural laws in the world, we have to know how to handle it with care.
So with all that's been discovered, this book contains all of the important information you would need in order to safely practice magic. Always remember, safety first.
Effect
Magic is a natural law of the universe, and thus it is a science, an art, and something that is very clearly comprehensible. The fundamental rules are to know what it's made of, and what can be done with it. Additionally, one must have a clear mind- or be level-headed to cast spells efficiently. The more jumbled your thoughts, the messier and sloppier your channeling becomes.
A word of warning to those who seek celestial elements of magic: You absolutely must practice your fundamentals before you go off and attempt to play ascendant.
Mana
In the world exists a natural energy called mana, and it appears everywhere within one of five available colors: Black, Blue, Green, Red, and White. What we do know about it, is that it can be channeled to cause a multitude of unique effects. Some say it's the equivalent of being able to shape reality as we desire, and while that statement isn't entirely wrong, the more accurate description is that mana allows us to harness and direct the elements of the universe.Stoicheiomancy
The elements themselves can be categorized into three categories: Standard, Advanced, and Celestial. The standard elements are the simplest, and so they require least effort to harness, while also being capable of producing the largest variety of effects. The advanced elements are a step towards more specific effects, and due to their nature, are more costly when harnessing them. Suffice to say, the celestial elements are the hardest to harness and require the most energy to accomplish tasks with them.A word of warning to those who seek celestial elements of magic: You absolutely must practice your fundamentals before you go off and attempt to play ascendant.
The Standard Elements
Air
The element of air encompasses all things that relate to wind, air, and gas.Earth
The earth element is composed of rocks, stones, and mineral bones.Fire
Fire makes up for flames, heat, and all things that burn. It's one of the most prevalent forces in nature.Water
Water exists for harnessing liquid, wetness, and damp things abound.The Advanced Elements
Acid
The element of acid focuses on corrosion and dissolving of things. Or in some cases, deconstruction.Electric
The element of electric... shock, lightning, electricity, energy... A word of warning about this element, it does not listen to the will of the caster.Force
The element of physical opposition. For every movement there is an equal opposing force. This one is popular for barriers.Frost
Frost is about chills, freezing, cold, and ice. It almost acts as a reversal of the fire element, but it's often harder to take away than it is to give.Mental
The element of the psyche, the mind, and cognition. Many mages consider this element to be quite nasty, as people have quickly learned that the easiest way to disrupt a spell is to jumble a person's thoughts.Poison
Poison, venom, toxin. All often associated with danger, but medicine is also poison. Those who are careful enough have found this element to be associated with healing.Sonic
Sound, reverberations, and resonance. The sonic spell is highly underrated by most modern mages. Though that's because they're too lazy to use it creatively.The Celestial Elements
Astral
The element of the Ethercosm, null, and teleportation. This element is the absolute most complex element to handle, not only from it's sheer cost of mana, but also because one slight miscalculation can result in you being torn asunder by space itself.Lunar
The element of night, and sight. The moon is a tricky thing, it both is and isn't there. Similarly, the element itself is about seeing and unseeing. Use carefully.Prismatic
The only exception to the rules of magic, Prismatic is the element of harnessing the raw colors of magic- rather than shaping the elements of the universe. It is one of the most complex, costly, and difficult elements to make use of properly.Solar
Solar is odd in the way that it focuses on light and vision. However, it seems to steep itself in the styles of elements such as fire, force, and prismatic. As a celestial element, it is not as intense to handle, but it's moreso a rare element to come across in general.Animic
The element of being, of life and death, of the soul itself. This element has it's use cases in a lot of daily magic. But be warned when using to try and extend your lifespan. Ascendant Ahresi is known to disapprove of such actions.Side/Secondary Effects
I remember that day in college, when I witnessed a callous and arrogant Icarian mage try and overstep their boundaries. They carelessly did not prepare any form of protection, despite the many warnings that they did not have enough foils for an experiment they were testing...
Their fingertips lost color first, then the discoloration traveled up their arms, and in the blink of an eye, I witnessed that horrific swirl of mana around them. Colors all familiar, but wrong. The Icarian never fully recovered from that accident, and they were different too. Something about their mana had lost a key color, and it had affected their entire personality and being.
Mana Waste & Tarnishing
Like all things, we cannot actually create or destroy matter. Only convert it into another form. In the case of magic, we truly are taking mana and turning it into a by-product that has been aptly dubbed as mana-waste. There are theories as to what it is, but the only things that most study and research has shown: is that the ascendants are unaffected by the waste, and that waste has a preference to attack things of higher magical conductivity. Namely slimes and their cores.Terrible stuff happens to things or people that accumulate too much waste. In fact, it's so important to know about that the term for it is "Tarnishing".
The good news though, is that slime cores have some of the highest magical conductivity in the entire world. And due to this, they can even suck the waste out of a person or the environment and into themselves. And due to this, these slime cores have been made the mutually agreed upon currency of the world.
Source
It's still uncertain where mana is sourced from, but what is known is that it permeates throughout the entire world without exception. Some theories claim that mana stems from the leylines of the world, and that it's densest nearer to the ascendant's trees.
Other claims state that it is a material thing that we simply do not have the technology to see yet with our own eyes. One book written by (Wiggle. M. 5RE) boldly claims that the mana is actually sourced from a dragon that sleeps in the center of the world.
Other claims state that it is a material thing that we simply do not have the technology to see yet with our own eyes. One book written by (Wiggle. M. 5RE) boldly claims that the mana is actually sourced from a dragon that sleeps in the center of the world.
This is a stub!
This article is still under construction!
HopsideRPG Integration
For users of the HopsideRPG system. The Flux here is called mana.Additionally, the way that magic and flux usage works here is, for every spell or effect you do that costs flux, The conversion ratio between mana to waste is 1:1.
The threshold for tarnishing on Hopside is equal to 'X' (Ply, insert value for tarnishing threshold.)
Each element presented in this document is also available on HopsideRPG.
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