Laws of Magic

Magic within the Mortal Realm follows some rules. Note that these rules are often broken by the magic of the Fae Folk, who seem to be only partially bound by the rules of the Mortal Realm.

## What is Magic

(If you've come from the main Magic page then this bit has already been covered. More magic details are below)

The simplest way to explain how magic works in this world is by comparing it to the phases of water:

* When liquid water is spread out (by warmer temperatures or less pressure), it becomes a gas, in the form of water vapor.
* When liquid water is condensed (by colder temperatures or greater pressure), it becomes a solid, in the form of ice.

The forms of magic are based upon these phases.

**Water Vapor = Ambient Magic in Nature**

* A vague force of potential energy, slowly shaping the world around it without any specific intent.
* Unconstrained and uncontrollable, able to fill and influence whatever space it finds itself in.

**Liquid Water = Soul Magic**

* It has a distinct, tangible form, and moves to fill a very specific container (i.e. a physical body).
* However, if the container is left open (i.e. the magic is unlocked), its contents are likely to spill out uncontrollably.

**Ice = Focused Magic**

* Placed under a distinct amount of pressure (magical focus).
* Can be shaped at will for specific purposes and hold that shape for some time, depending on the circumstances.
* In normal environments (avg. earth conditions/the mortal realm) it will always return to its previous form (liquid water/soul magic).
* Unlike ice, however, focused magic will travel in order to return to its soul of origin, much like a tape measure that retracts back into its container.

In short, magical energy is harnessed and shaped into spells by mental and physical boundaries, just as water molecules can be harnessed and shaped into ice sculptures by low temperatures and high pressure.

## How it Works

   Souls are made of condensed magical energy. Mages can harness that energy with an ideological focus or a Magical Focus, to influence the world around them. The magic they use is still connected to the soul, and will eventually return.

Since the soul is the source of a person’s sentience and identity, the magic within each person is completely unique. Like oil and water, different magics will not mix, and often react violently when colliding with each other.

As a result of all this, any attempts to magically tamper with someone else’s soul- either to change their personality, control their actions, or read their mind- are destined to fail, potentially backfiring to the point of psychologically harming those who try.

### Magical Collisions

Magic is instantly repelled from any other magical source, like similar ends of a magnet. When opposing mages use their magic upon each other and that magic collides head-on, it’s like a head-on car collision. The magic is immediately sent back towards the caster, with catastrophic effects. For this reason, combat magic is extremely dangerous.

The effect is similar when a mage hits stationary magic, such as a ward, defense, illusion, or ambient magic in the area, but the repelled magic is much more scattered and less dangerous. However, the magic that it hits also attempts to retreat from the oncoming magic. This will cause some minor concussive damage to whatever person or object the magic protects or surrounds and will case some of the magic to shear off in its attempt to avoid the other magic.

Mages with a focus on destroying wards or negating the magic of others will have less scatter effect when interacting with other magic than the magic of other mages. Leila Abdi and her focus on “revealing what is hidden” is a good example of this sort of focus.

This is the same reason why magical wards do not explode on impact; the focus of the mage who created the ward was (presumably) to protect the person, and this gives the ward a magical property that mitigates the effects of magic-on-magic-aversion. Yes, you are using magic to do something magical… with magic. Keep up kiddos. Magic is weird, and allows for a whole bunch of rules paradoxes if you aren’t careful. If we can’t avoid the paradoxes, we might as well try to document and mitigate them.

### Target Recognition

Thankfully, despite the constant ricochet of ambient magic, most of it is pretty harmless. You only need to be worried about your magic coming back to hurt you if you cast a spell with intent to do harm, and if the target of your magic could possibly be applied to you. Remember, your intent is super important in spellcasting.

For example, if you cast a spell to cook potatoes, it hits you, your spell notes that you are not potatoes, and the spell does nothing. When you cast a cooking spell at a potato, you know that your target is a potato. You recognize it as a potato and name it as such internally. Since you are definitely not a potato, the spell won’t have any effect on you.

On the other hand, if you cast a spell to hurt someone, it hits you, your spell notes that you are a “someone,” and spell hurts you. When you cast a spell in combat, you know that your target is a person. Not their name, not their personality, not their beliefs, nothing. You literally know nothing about this person except for the fact that they are a person. Therefore, when the spell hits you, it will recognize you as also a person, and hurt you too.

This means that the ONLY time that combat magic is remotely safe to use is when you have a very specific focus that allows you enough precision to choose specific targets. In that case, the spell would hit you, note that you weren’t the intended target, and do nothing.

This means that combat magic against non-human entities (wild animals, monsters, etc.) is CONSIDERABLY less dangerous. This distinction was only a footnote in magical theory until The Enemy began using monsters in his army, first seen in The Overnight Defense. This, ironically, allows those who fought against The Enemy to attack his forces with greater strength.

This is one of the reasons why having a magical focus is super important, especially for combat magic. A focus will help you specify the target of your magic and mitigate this collateral damage. If your focus is vague enough that you aren’t able to discern between targets AT ALL, it doesn’t matter who you are aiming for; if your spell hits you, you’re taking the brunt of it. In a way, noting the "target" of your magic is a tiny, instantaneous secondary focus.

All that to say that magic bounces around all the time in this world, with no ill effects unless the focus of the caster is super vague; hence why most experienced mages highly, HIGHLY encourage novice mages to find a focus BEFORE unlocking their abilities.

## Magical Signatures

A mage’s magic somehow takes into account every part of your entire brain and what makes them who they are in a way no one fully understands. This means that your magic will always be unique to YOU. Just like a fingerprint, you can be identified by the residual energies left behind by your magic soon after casting it, though these will fade in time unless magically preserved. However, unlike a fingerprint, your magic will constantly change and evolve as time goes on and you develop and change as a person. It will still have that telltale echo that identifies it as your magic, just like you will never stop being YOU no matter how much you change as a person, but it will definitely look, sound, and act differently over the course of your lifetime.

However, the ability to detect and identify magical signatures is a STUDY, and not something that just anyone can do. At the same time, however, you don’t have to be a mage to learn to detect and identify magical signatures.

To return to an art analogy: The Enemy’s magical signature is sorta like Picasso’s art style. It’s unique and culturally relevant enough for it to be universally recognized by almost everyone in Duilintinn, although sometimes, an untrained eye might see something that looks similar and assume it belongs to The Enemy as well.

However, just like how the average person can’t tell the difference between artists with similar artistic styles, most people won’t be able to tell specific magical signatures apart. Before then, you have to:

* Know enough about about magic to pick up on the variations in that signature that make it unique and identifiable
* Already

 know enough about how these details present themselves in a specific person’s magic in order to identify it correctly as theirs.
The second point is pretty straightforward. It’s like fingerprints; even if they’re found at the scene of a crime, if your prints aren’t in a database somewhere already, the information is practically useless.

The first point, however, is a bit more complex. There’s a whole study under the field of Soul Magic around the elements, variations, effects, persistence, and identification of magical signatures, sorta like magical forensics.

It’s far easier for a mage to pick up this field of study, since they already have the context for this information thanks to their daily experience with their own magic, though, they’d still need to study extensively in order to gain a deeper understanding and correctly interpret what they notice.

However, these academic resources also allow someone who has never unlocked their magic to make up for their lack of personal experience and succeed in this field of study.

Going back to the art analogies: You don’t have to be an artist to intelligently distinguish between the styles of different artists. Being an artist helps, because you already have personal experience with art that you can relate back to the terminology and details you’re studying, but it’s not required.

Another analogy: Medical Translation. You don’t have to have any prior medical knowledge or training to become a medical translator. However, it’s a lot harder because you also have to learn what most of these words mean in your native language before you even begin to have enough context to translate them effectively. Speaking from personal experience, it’s possible, but holy cow it’s intimidating and exhausting.

## The Three Major Impossibles

### No mage has the power to control the mind of another person.

This is due to the magic within all souls acting like two positive ends of a magnet pushing against each other.

### No two mages can mix their powers to create greater power.

Similar concept to rule one. Magic has a tendency to not like touching magic that’s different from it. Even mages with similar focuses will be unable to do this since everyone’s magic is uniquely related to them. Rather than combining powers, mages who attempt this will likely find their magic flying back at them at top speed. Unsurprisingly, this makes magical combat VERY DANGEROUS and therefore incredibly rare.

### It is impossible to have more than one focus.

Again, based on the same concept as the above. Some mages have attempted to have multiple specific focuses, thinking that they’d be able to control them with the same amount of precision a single vague focus would offer, but in reality, it just doesn’t work. Magic does not like mixing with magic of a different focus; either have one vague goal or one specific one.

## The Enemy and other Exceptions

This is why The Enemy is so terrifying. Whatever he and Robin found in the Western Forest… it breaks these rules of magic. The Enemy has proven that he can control minds by making puppets of his enemies, combined his power with that of Robin on multiple occasions, and seems to have multiple focuses involving bending reality AND revenge AND validation. He shouldn’t be able to do any of this, and yet… here we are.

The only other magic we know of that isn’t bound by these laws of Magical Physics is Fae Magic, which operates on an entirely separate, unknown set of rules. For this reason, many suspect that The Enemy’s powers are connected to the Fae in some way.