Magic

> "*Some of my kin say that magic is the gift of the Gods to our race - but a divine gift comes with divine responsibility, something far too few of us have.*"
> ― Celian Iafesa, Elvish magical historian
>
>

**Magic** is the name given to any seemingly supernatural effect caused by the power of the immaterial energy flow known as the Magestream, with effects ranging from conjuring a bolt of lightning to maintaining otherwise impossible geography. Though some remnants persist, magic has largely ceased to exist in this world; it died out in the 12th-13th centuries AD, before briefly resurging during the Imperial Civil War of 1839-60, after which it has remained extinct.

Most creatures of the world were incapable of sensing or interacting with the Magestream, and so could not use magic. Of the intelligent species, only the Elfkin, Harpies, Meyghurs, Dragons, several types of Dreadfolk and all the Titans were known to be capable of magic. The ability of a magic user to draw power from the Magestream, and how exactly they manifested that power, varied greatly both between individuals and between races. However, magical abilities could also be gained unnaturally by making some kind of deal with a Dread Titan and becoming a Witch, which was the only route to this power for non-magical races such as Humans and Orcs.

## Categories of Magic

Magic is split into three broad categories by magical scholars (or, more accurately, magologists); innate, passive and active.

### Innate

Innate magic refers to magic that simply *is* (or *was*), being self-perpetuating, requiring no external input to sustain magical effects. Innate magic was a property of objects rather than people, and either came into existence because the very nature of the object was magical, or because a Titan bestowed magical properties onto an otherwise inert object.

The most commonly given example of innate magic is the continent of Inecuria itself, a magic which is sustained to the present day even after all other magic has seemingly died out. There simply is no alternative rational explanation how the unnatural geographic formations and climates of Inecuria not only came to be, but have been sustained perfectly untouched for countless millennia, whilst the landscapes of the rest of the world are wildly changing things that erode and grow over time.

Seemingly for *ever*, the mountains of Inecuria have not changed shape, the rivers have not changed course and the environments have not fluctuated - and it is only with the industrialism of the last century that the climate of Inecuria has begun to change even remotely. There is, most scholars believe, some kind of indescribable innate magic across the entire landmass that prevents the natural world from changing whatsoever without the direct intervention of intelligent beings.

### Passive

Passive magic refers to magic that was wielded subconsciously and unknowingly by a creature, performed automatically by instinctual biological systems that the creature rarely has any capacity to consciously control. It is commonly compared to breathing, but academic magologists usually compare it to an even more innate biological system such as the beating of the heart. All magically active races had some kind of passive magic.

The most commonly given example of passive magic is the subtle but continuous healing magic used by virtually all magically active species, but most famously the Dragons and Elfkin. This healing magic did provide some slight measure of help in mending wounds and fighting off infection, but its main purpose was to affect the body at a cellular level to slow the physical process of aging down to a snail's pace. The Titans, and many species of Dreadfolk, had such strong passive healing magic that they were utterly immune to aging, but amongst mortal magic races, this could only slow down aging. Famously, this allowed the Elfkin and Dragons to live a great many years and retain their youthful features until only the final decades of their lifespan. The natural lifespan of Elves, for example, is approximately 100-110 years, but with passive healing magic it was not uncommon for them to live for 150, and cases of them living to over 200 were not unheard of, though still rare.

### Active

Active magic refers to magic that was wielded consciously and deliberately by a creature, and this is what is usually meant by "magic" when the word is used by itself. It was always the most powerful and most dangerous - both to any victims the user targeted it at, and to the user themselves. Whereas innate and passive magic drew from the Magestream slowly and subtly, smoothly moving around tiny slivers of energy, active magic was the process of yanking great chunks of energy fiercely and suddenly - and the greater the energy that was drawn, the more harmful to the user it could be if they lost control. Not all individuals in a magically capable race could wield active magic, and many of those who could chose not to, in order to avoid potential harm to themselves.

Those who both could and would use active magic were typically seized upon by the state or some other relevant institution to be trained and disciplined, as the consequences of letting a rogue active magic user roam free could be catastrophic. In the Kingdom of Saveria, for example, it was (and remains) a crime punishable by execution to use active magic without a qualification from the state, with exceptions only made for cases of escaping an otherwise unavoidable imminent death. Accordingly, Saveria quickly established a highly developed and extensive education system to teach magic users how to practice their craft safely, often described as the world's first public education system.

Active magic users, especially those who were formally trained, were known as mages. It is important to distinguish mages from both witches and magicians. Witches were those who sought magical powers unnaturally by making pacts with Dread Titans, and an accusation of Witchery was a grave thing indeed. A mage would have felt insulted being called a magician, for a magician is a mere performer - he is someone who pulls rabbits out of a hat and plays tricks with cards, not someone who conjures bolts of fiery plasma. Various other terms for magic users that can be found in English, such as sorcerer, wizard, enchanter and warlock, have no equivalent word in any Inecurian language, and are all translated simply as "mage".

## Chaos

Despite being capable of producing immensely powerful effects, the Magestream was a highly delicate and fickle thing, easily prone to being disturbed and growing turbulent. A key source of disturbance, and one which some mages actively exploited, was the phenomenon known as Chaos.

Chaos is a broad term referring to the phenomenon of excessive and intense emotional states disrupting the flow of the Magestream and physically weakening the barrier that existed between the Magestream and the material world. This could be caused by both magical and non-magical creatures, though the effect was only slight amongst non-magical creatures; in Humans, for example, it is often said by magologists that a hundred individuals would be needed to match the same Chaos produced by one single Elf mage, and over two hundred to match a Dark Elf. The heightened emotions and sensations of Elfkin, especially Dark Elves, is undoubtedly related to the generation of Chaos and the ability to access more powerful, if substantially more unstable, magical power.

It did not matter whether the emotional state was positive or negative, so long as it was extreme. Joy, pleasure, grief, rage, hate and agony could all generate Chaos, provided they were strong enough. However, since it was usually considerably easier to induce negative emotions than positive ones, it was most often negative emotions that were used when a mage was intentionally trying to cause the phenomenon. Pain was a particular favourite due to how easy it was to induce, though the Succubi became infamous for their use of ecstatic pleasure to induce Chaos and rip the life-essence from their victims.

## Magical Types

The category of active magic can be further broken down into numerous types of magic - also known as classes, doctrines or styles, though the latter term was rarely used by magic experts due to potential confusion with "casting styles", which refers to how the magic is being cast rather than the nature of the magic being cast.

Ordinary creatures were generally far more restricted by magic type than Titans. Both mortal and Dreadfolk races were only capable of using specific types, and the only way for them to overcome this restriction was to become a Witch and channel magic from a Dread Titan. The Titans, who were intimately connected with the Magestream and who often contained minor circuits of the Magestream within themselves, enjoyed both immense magical power and magical diversity - the most powerful were quite literally only limited by their imagination, manifesting the energy of the Magestream however they wished.

Most academics believe that there are certain magical types which were much easier to use than others for whatever reason, likely because they were the most efficient way for the energy of the Magestream to manifest - in other words, they were the paths of least resistance. The evidence for this is found in the fact that even though the Titans had few limitations on the nature of their magic, they nonetheless almost always used their magic in recognisable ways, manifesting types commonly seen amongst ordinary creatures. The theory goes that these types were the only ones seen in ordinary creatures because they are the paths of least resistance, and the Titans used these the most because they had no desire to waste effort on a less efficient method of casting magic.

Those magic types which were seen in ordinary creatures - and which were the types favoured by Titans - are listed below in alphabetical order.

### Air

Air magic was the movement of air. It could be used to redirect, concentrate, disperse or halt an existing flow of air - that is, wind - but with training, mages could create their own wind. Air magic had many purposes, both civilian and military. It could be used to power mills, dry off wet clothes, cool down hot objects or alternatively spread around warm air, and it was very frequently used to give wind to sails. It would eventually become the foundation of the Windway, an early magic-powered railway system that revolutionised transport in Inecuria and was instrumental in the relatively early creation of steam-powered locomotives later on.

Air magic was also extensively used in combat. It could be used to guide, launch and give speed to projectiles, or to defend against projectiles by slowing them down mid-air. Blasts of wind could stagger opponents or knock them off their feet, and skilled mages could concentrate a strong gust of air into a small space, essentially turning it into a powerful punch.

Creatures with wings, i.e. the Harpies, Dark Elves and presumably also the Gold Elves would use magic to aid in their flight, using powerful gusts of wind to launch themselves into the air or to quickly bring themselves to a halt to perform rapid mid-air manoeuvres. The more powerful air mages were capable of making themselves hover in the air by continuously blasting wind against their wings to match gravity. There is some evidence that Dragons used air magic to aid in their flight, but this is heavily disputed.

### Frost

Also sometimes known as "Blizzard", frost magic had two distinct effects; it produced an intensely endothermic reaction which rapidly cooled whatever the mage targeted it at, and it allowed for the manipulation of ice. Frost mages could seemingly only manipulate water ice; though there is no evidence of any kind of experiment testing what types of frozen matter a frost mage could manipulate, there is also no evidence of a frost mage being able to manipulate anything other than frozen water.

The ice did not have to be pure water in order to be manipulated; though the mage could only actually interact with water, by manipulating the water they would also drag along any other substances dissolved or mixed into the water. Frost mages were therefore able to manipulate frozen saltwater, blood, wine, juice and any other water-based liquid.

It was much harder for a frost mage to freeze a living creature than an inanimate object or liquid. Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly the simple fact that living creatures are warm, but the mainstream theory amongst magical historians is that the life-force (also known as life-essence or life-energy) present within living creatures was somehow capable of resisting the freezing effect from frost magic. Scholars point to the fact that creatures known to have a more potent life-force - such as intelligent creatures, especially large and/or magically powerful ones such as Dragons - were far more resistant to frost magic than common beasts.

That is not to say it was impossible for a frost mage to freeze a living being, rather that it required far greater effort than attempting to freeze an inanimate object of equivalent mass. Frost mages cooling living intelligent beings to lethally low temperatures - or even completely freezing them solid - is not unheard of in the historical record, but it was a rare occurrence that could only be performed by the greatest of frost mages. Even rarer were cases of a frost mage freezing a living intelligent creature and then manipulating their frozen blood.

Although frost magic could be powerful in combat, its most prominent uses were all civilian in nature; by far its greatest use was the freezing of food, either to preserve it or as part of the process of creating food meant to be eaten frozen, e.g. ice cream. Frost magic was rarely used in combat because frost mages could easily become wealthy by charging a fee to freeze food - even those who served with the military were usually part of the logistics arm, freezing rations rather than fighting in battle. The lack of frost magic in combat is therefore the result of economic factors rather than a limitation of the magic itself.

### Healing

Healing magic is a diverse magic type, with highly variable mechanics which all achieve the same result; to aid in the healing process. Healing magic could fuse together broken bones in minutes, heal in hours wounds which would take days to heal naturally or might never heal at all, re-attach severed limbs, or keep alive somebody whose injuries should rightly leave them dead. Healing magic did not actually heal on its own; it functioned by aiding the body's natural healing process, making it significantly faster and more capable. If there was an affliction which the body could never naturally heal, then healing magic could not help.

Healing magic could also be used to combat disease to some extent. Prior to modern medicine, healing magic was the only way to combat sepsis (blood poisoning), though the process was long, agonising and required a highly skilled mage. Healing magic could also only target the source of the infection by aiding the immune system - it was not always capable of defeating the symptoms, and if the symptoms were already too advanced then the patient could die even if their infection was cured.

Healing magic was split between two sub-types, known as fast and slow. As the name would suggest, this relates to the speed at which the healing was done, which was the only actual difference between the two - the mechanics of the healing were no different. Slow healing acted more slowly, but was less likely to leave scar tissue and caused negligible discomfort. Fast healing was significantly faster - useful if healing needed to be done quickly in a battlefield situation, or if a wound was so urgent that the patient would die before slow healing would take effect - but it created significant scarring and often caused extreme pain. Generally, the more quickly healing magic was performed, the more likely it was to leave scars, and the more pain it caused.

The pain caused by healing magic meant that it was possible to use it offensively as a weapon; if an attacker had some kind of wound, a mage could heal it extremely rapidly, which would typically cause incapacitating agony to the attacker. Highly skilled healing mages could also rapidly induce cancerous tumours in a chosen victim through a process of "super-healing". For the less powerful healing mages, this cancer could take hours or days to kill, but the most powerful ones - like the Jesters, who specialised in this magic - could create fatal cancers in minutes.

### Plague

Only found amongst the Dreadfolk, specifically the Putrid Ones, the Festerkin and some Dread Titans, plague magic has similarities with shadow magic, but is distinct in many ways. Plague magic, when cast, had an appearance somewhere in-between water and mist, coloured dark green with hints of yellow. Like shadow magic, it had mass and physical force, but like plasma magic it was summoned rather than drawn from a source, and it was not as manoevurable or flexible as shadow magic. Plague magic had a characteristic stench of rotten flesh and eggs.

The force of plague magic was capable of doing significant damage on its own, particularly as skilled mages were capable of fashioning it into blades, but its true danger was in its ability to rapidly spread illness to anyone it touched - provided they were not a user of plague magic themselves, as plague mages were immune to sickness from plague magic. Wounds suffered from plague magic would become infected in minutes, and would inevitably lead to death if not immediately treated with powerful healing magic. Being touched by plague magic without any puncturing of the skin was unlikely to lead to death, but could still cause crippling illness lasting for days or weeks, and would create pustules, cysts, abscesses, boils and sores on the affected area.

Although plague magic was generally not capable of causing as much immediate damage as shadow magic, those who had to deal with the Dreadfolk regularly - such as Inquisitors - considered plague magic to be the most dangerous magical type in existence, due to its ability to cause potentially fatal harm long after an engagement, and the fact that even one cut from it could lead to death.

### Plasma

Plasma magic was the ability to summon and direct plasma, presumably by imparting the air with strong electrical and thermal energy. The exact colour of this plasma was variable, but was often a slightly reddish shade of light purple, accompanied by white and flashes of blue. A variant of plasma magic endemic to the Vampires was purely red in colour, and the firey breath of Dragons - which is actually plasma magic - is reddish-orange in colour with hints of purple.

Plasma magic had many uses as a tool, being used to start fires, ignite gunpowder or provide highly focussed heat for welding and smithing, but its primary use was as a weapon. Plasma magic could be concentrated into bolts, like lightning-bolts, which were capable of devastating damage upon a direct hit, and could ignite blazing fires almost instantly. Mages required a great deal of training to direct these bolts accurately over any meaningful distance, and even experienced mages were often not capable of casting these bolts for more than a second at a time. There are records of powerful mages casting bolts continuously for ten seconds, but this required extremely dedicated training and peak physical fitness. The vast majority of casted bolts would have lasted for perhaps not even a half-second.

Due to the exceptional insulative properties of shield magic, and the fact that plasma magic has no mass and no physical force, shields were capable of completely neutralising plasma magic with negligible strain to the caster of the shield. Extremely skilled plasma mages were also capable of stopping plasma bolts in their tracks by launching another plasma bolt at it, causing both to explode and fizzle out on impact. This technique could also be used offensively, as the explosion from two plasma bolts colliding would combine the heat of both and create a shockwave.

The Vampires wielded a unique variant of plasma magic known as red plasma, which was red in colour and produced significantly less heat, but was far more manoeuvrable and possessed mass and physical force, whereas standard plasma magic was difficult to cast in anything other than a directly straight line and had no mass and therefore no physical force. Red plasma is explained in more detail on the page for Vampires.

#### Heat

With the magical revival of the Civil War, many tests were done on this type of magic in an attempt to acquire specific data about it, which scientists had been agonising over ever since the disappearance of magic, cursing themselves for not recording it when the opportunity was freely available. The 1840s scientists only had rudimentary temperature measuring equipment which was not capable of recording the temperature of the plasma, as it broke every time, so instead the experimenters directed the magic at various materials to determine what would melt and what would not.

The experiments found that all of the tested individuals were capable of melting gold with their plasma, which has a melting point of 1063/4 degrees celsius, and three-quarters of the tested individuals could melt iron, which has a melting point of 1539 degrees celsius. Approximately a third of them were able to melt molybdenum, which melts at 2623 degrees celsius, and only a tenth were able to melt tungsten, which melts at 3422 degrees celsius.

It should be noted that this experiment was only conducted upon Elves; not Vampires, who wielded a unique variant of plasma with a lower temperature, and not Black Elves, whose plasma magic is significantly more powerful than that of Elves. It is known that the Dark Elves were capable of plasma magic which staggered even Black Elves, and some scholars have pieced together implications in the ancient sources to suggest that the plasma of the Titans may have contained so much energy that it was capable of nuclear fusion.

### Shadow

Only found amongst the Dreadfolk, shadow magic allowed the manipulation of shadows into solid objects, and had few uses outside of combat. The simplest and weakest expression of this magic was the alteration of shadows to change their shape, which could be used to distract or confuse enemies, however any competent shadow mage was capable of coalescing shadows into a physical object. Shadows could take the form of tendrils to grab or trip enemies, spikes to be launched like javelins, or sharp blades. Magical shadows were flexible, highly manoeuvrable and easy to manipulate.

Shadow magic could also be used for protection, but it was not as resistant to force as shield magic - since magical shadows were highly flexible, they would not simply stop incoming physical force, but would bend before it. However, this also meant that the shadows would flex under force rather than breaking; it was essentially impossible to shatter a magical shadow.

Magical shadows could be created wherever there was darkness, which did not just mean shadows; they could be conjured even under direct light if the light was dim, and the most skilled mages were able to create shadows in broad daylight. However, shadows created under light were significantly weaker than those created in darkness, as they had less "substance" to work with, causing them to have less physical mass and therefore less force. Shadows were also weakened by light, and a weak or unskilled mage could have their shadows dissipate entirely under strong lights.

### Shield

Shield magic was the ability to summon a transparent, blue-tinted, exceptionally light - almost massless - sheet of glass-like material. This shield, as long as it remained unbroken, prevented any physical object passing through it, and it was also an exceptionally good thermal insulator. Skilled and powerful mages were capable of bending and flexing the shield as required, but for the most part it was very rigid; only very experienced mages were capable of manipulating the shield into anything other than a flat plane. Highly skilled mages were also capable of manipulating the shield so that it essentially became a one-way barrier, allowing the free passage of objects in one direction but preventing them in another direction. This trick was often used to guard artillery or troops with ranged weapons, to provide safety whilst allowing them to shoot freely.

Larger shields required more effort to maintain, as did shields with more complex shapes. Every blow struck against the shield caused strain to the mage casting it; a large amount of continuous small blows could break a shield given enough time, but the most effective method was to deliver a sudden extremely powerful blow - such as one from artillery - which was capable of instantly shattering a shield, especially if the mage was unprepared and not bracing for impact.

Multiple mages could combine their efforts to cast a single shield, distributing the strain across multiple mages, which meant a shield could sustain more stress before breaking, and less strain would be required per mage to maintain it. On the battlefield, it was rare for a single mage to be entrusted to cast shields for protection, instead normally gathering in groups of three to five.

## Potions

Healing magic could be used to create potions in a process known to the magical circles as "enchanting", but by virtually everyone else as "alchemy". The ingredients and technique to make the potions was a very closely guarded secret kept by the magical schools of Saveria, and this monopoly on information allowed the Saverians to make a fortune out of selling the potions.

However, the generic process is known; ingredients would be turned into liquid form (either by extracting liquid or turning the ingredient into powder and then mixing with water, usually water blessed by a priest), then blasted with healing magic, and then the ingredients would be mixed together and this concoction would be blasted again. This is why it was referred to as "enchanting", because the mages were imbuing ordinary ingredients with healing magic. The term "alchemy" was associated with various pseudoscientific ideas which the mages wanted to distance themselves from, which is why they did not use it.

The most common of these potions was known by the imaginative name of the healing potion, a watery liquid that contained captured pure healing magic which was then released into the body once consumed. It came in three varieties known as "slow", "basic" and "aggressive", dyed pink, red and dark red respectively to ensure that they were not confused with each other.

The slow healing potion, as the name implies, acted slowly over the course of about a full day, intended to heal wounds without leaving scar tissue and with minimal pain, and to help cure diseases without any risk of adverse side effects. The basic potion lasted for about two hours and sped up the healing process for wounds and bolstered the immune system. The aggressive potion was the fastest acting, its effects lasting for about ten minutes, and it healed wounds and attacked disease very quickly, but this process was excruciatingly painful; not only due to the sheer power of the magic, but also because it kicked the immune system into such extreme overdrive that it began attacking healthy cells, leading to internal organ damage - which was then subsequently healed by the magic, inducing further pain.

The other most common potion was known by various names, usually something along the lines of "exertion potion", "stamina potion" or "endurance potion". This potion was fairly viscous and sticky, and dyed light orange. It was historically dyed white, before the colour was changed in approximately 200BC after the magical institutions got tired of the amount of jokes relating to the viscous sticky white liquid. This potion's effects lasted for around an hour and greatly improved the efficiency of the cardio-vascular system, and to some extent it could draw oxygen from the environment straight into the bloodstream, completely eliminating anaerobic respiration and therefore slowing or even totally eliminating lactic acid build-up and slows muscle fatigue. A side effect of the increased blood-oxygen level is increased alertness, reduced tiredness and, to some extent, mitigating depression, which is why the potion was not only drunk for its endurance-improving effects but also by people who were simply tired or depressed.

## Does Magic Still Exist?

There is a fairly large and vocal minority of scholars and the general public who believe that, while the Elfkin lost the ability to wield magic, it is far from dead and there are still several remaining magic users who keep themselves well-hidden in the interest of keeping public order.

Magic surely still works in some form, as the otherwise impossible geography, weather and biomes of the Empire's core region have sustained without trouble to this day. This first point is usually not denied by mainstream academia, but the second claim that magic users still exist is more disputable, as there is no conclusive evidence to prove it - merely a great deal of theorising and not necessarily related circumstantial evidence.

Supporters of the idea that magic users still exist point primarily to Vesha Malos, wife of Stio Malos, a Savuan. Since Savuans are unaffected by age, and she is never recorded to have died, there is no reason to believe she is not still alive, along with other Dreadfolk who defected from the Dreadlands and decided to live in this universe - according to supporters of the theory. Similarly, there are many Succubi - another species of Dreadfolk unaffected by age - who struck a deal with the Imperial Inquisition in order to live in peace, and they are never recorded to have died so logically they must still be alive, again according to supporters of the theory.