Magic

Magic is a powerful supernatural force that exists in the world of Bahlmorea. It can alter reality at simple levels and can completely change one's physical form.

Once, it was used regularly by shamans, warriors, hunters, and scholars alike thousands of years ago. It was used to imbue people with strength, courage, and powers the likes of which has never been seen. It allowed people to use their blood to empower them, to summon fire or move things without even touching them. It allowed shamans to transcend consciousness and enter planes of heightened spiritual awareness.

Spells can range from something as simple as creating a source of light from one's finger tips to shifting oneself into a creature, but it's unsure as to where those spells even exist anymore.

Magic here is unlike the magic you've seen in Harry Potter. What separates magic in Bahlmorea from these worlds is that magic is considered dangerous and obtaining it is often considered a rebirth of oneself. The spells are absorbed into your being via reading magical text and whether you can control these spells or not depends entirely on your inner strength. It would take weeks to months for a magic user to comfortably use simple spells and even longer for the more complex spells i.e. shapeshifting, mind control. The Old World when humans knew how to wisely use magic has been lost-its original use has been lost in the flames of war, greed, and conquest.

One of the major reason is that magic, when used, consumes the energy of the body. Overuse of magic can very easily kill someone horribly who does not use it carefully. It's even more dangerous now to use than ever because there are no teachers or mentors that exist anymore that can safely teach one how to use magic–it would all be self taught.

Another reason is religious. According to the Will of Amos, magic is heresy due to the fact that the person no longer relies on Amos or the gods because magic replaces their faith.

It's very difficult to find magic now; considered impossible by many. Once, it could be easily accessed and read and learned. Magical books are unlike regular books in that you can only learn a spell once and after it is learned, which is often a very traumatic and sometimes painful process that invades the very corners of one's mind, the spell vanishes from the page. For this reason, there are many copies of the same spells scattered throughout the continent, but their existence has been declared extinct by the king himself. This is because nearly 300 years ago, there was a great fire started by a king maddened by his fear of magic. Thousands upon thousands of magical books and scrolls had been burned to ash and shamans, witches and wizards across the land were disposed of.

The only places one could even begin to find magical books are in the lost and forgotten temples scattered about the continent. While most of anything magic had been destroyed, there are surely books and scrolls that scholars had risked their lives hiding from the king's hand.

## Types of Magic

There are several types of magic but few spells, the most "common" two being physical and elemental magic.

**Elemental** **magic** includes the summoning of flames, creating a light source, lightning magic and ice magic. These, except for light magic, tend to use high amounts of energy from a person and can easily be dangerous to an inexperienced user.

**Physical magic** includes telekinetic powers and teleportation. There are many more physical spells that existed out there, but those two are the only known spells.

The most horrendous type of magic, but least known, is **blood magic**. It allows the user, after spilling their own blood, to imbue themselves with powers that can drive them into violent frenzies and/or grant them superhuman strength for a small period of time. It's the only type of magic that allows one to heal themself by trading blood for energy. It also can allow the caster to control another person by corrupting their blood and in some cases, making them go insane for a period of time. Blood magic is/was considered a vile sinister magic that could not be used for good and it's by far the most dangerous of the magic types because it consumes both your mental and physical energy and requires high energy costs to be effective. It is said some scholars had used blood magic to summon an eldritch beast and each of the scholars died a terrible death at the hands of this monster they summoned.

There are lesser spells of magic written in books that do not burn up or disappear when learned. Many regard these as just "regular" books since the magic isn't considered very strong. These spells can include sleep spells, poisons that cannot be tracked by a mortian, fixing items that have been split in two, deciphering words, and so fourth. These books usually have spell instructions in them.