Magic Guide

The following are extracts from ‘Magic Theory’ by Thanatos Landrenos written in the year 453. This book although nearly 1000 years old is still the cornerstone of modern magic and its principles today.

## **History**

At the very dawn of time, the formation of the Aether, the dye was cast. For reality was created in two forms: one of substance form and logic and one of thoughts dreams and emotions. The material world, what we perceive as reality was later to be called the plane of Aether. The well of souls, the astral, the spiritual plane was later to be called the plane of Vessix and Sillia.

Some say that the planes were always contiguous but separate, some say that they were once one and that all reality was much simpler then. The plane of Aether and the plane of Vessix and Sillia were mostly unpopulated. They were blank canvases to be drawn on by the beings that were always meant to arise.

But as I have said there was hidden darkness that lurked amidst the dazzling splendour of that new dawn, beings that should not have existed. But we shall get to them later and so as is always the way for nature abhors a vacuum. A great race rose amongst brilliant and innocent days of those early ages of the Aether. This race was the Titans.

All that is known is that the Titans were forces of order, from their earliest days they were careful and cautious. Swearing oaths that by their action or repercussion from their actions they would not harm. They were not hasty, working slowly and methodically, accruing great wisdom, developing patience, compassion, and a love for all that lives and grows.

They learnt the keys to the planes, the realms of thought and feelings, spirituality, and balance. They became masters of the plane of Vessix and Sillia and would wield it like a mighty tool without compare. None have ever approached their magnificence, their might, their splendour, of all the races and ages that have come thereafter. For they always acted with a measured hand and forethought. They conquered the demons within, jealousy, anger, and spite. Making these daemons things of the past within their collective.

Once this had been done, they then decided how best to traverse this world. They created the Ways, corridors within the realms of Sillia and Vessix, sub-realms that they could walk from one side of Aether to the other in the blink of an eye. They could move to any point in the world without repercussion nor delay, for they cared for the plane of Aether and the plane of Vessix and Sillia.

Despite them being masters of the one, they know the import and gave honour to both. When they set out into the world and spread their word, their wisdom, their bounty, for their studies had brought them a state of being that was so aligned to the world, so naturally, so profound and sublime, that death and disease touched them not.

They were beings of order and akin to gardeners for where they went, they encouraged and cultivated life, bringing many a race to early sentients. Their knowledge of themselves gave them the skills to alter beings, to raise them, to enhance them, and when grown into the full bloom of consciousness, they would teach them, and they would guard them.

And thus, the Titans bestowed the Aether, and their presence was felt across it, their beauty made a thing for all. All but one, but if there is order, there is always chaos in equal measure. So, a race arose, to create the balance, the Giants.

The Giants were cursed from their first breaths, for they were not like the other races. Given their size, their strength, their intelligence they were better than all others, but this was also their shortcoming. Such hubris and grandeur ostracised them entirely from all other collectives on Aether. This isolation bread not only contempt for the shorter races but also great pain for the Giants.

The Giants required more food, more water, more space. This was something this world with all its races could not offer them. This caused early Giant life to be one of constant never-ending pain, short life spans, and misery. This went on to create a twisting in the souls of the Giants, for their lives were short and so racked with agony that all was a constant struggle, constant rage.

They fought against each other, against anything else that arose around them. They fought against their short life spans by developing an insane urge to be remembered to be lorded to not be forgotten. For if one has so shorter time to exist, one can only gain immortality via the actions one performs in the brief span allotted. Warlords came and went driving their race onwards until they come to master the plane of Aether, the material.

Their technology being the dominion of the plane of Aether, they tried to escape the creeping death of starvation that had leered down at them. But it was not to be, for when they sallied forth creating giant warbands, moving slowly across aether to conquer and colonize, even when they culled all that was previously resident, they still their people did not have enough. They could never escape this taint foisted on them as it was now written into their very being, their very existence.

This discovery that they would never be free of the pain of their existence drove their people and their culture insane. The bitterness it created turned to rage and as they spread throughout Aether, they did it the hard way, long were their warbands in transit and slow was their expansion.

As they reached new lands, the Giants no longer culled all life out of expedience or over territory or resources. They killed all out of jealousy and spite. They became a slowly expanding dark cloud across Aether, one that ate all it met.

Inevitably, inexorably the Titans and the Giants were to meet, and both recalled in utter shock. For the Giants, it was the answer to their prayers, all their goals in one. They met a race with the knowledge and power to alter them. To remove their pain and to then go on a grant them immortality. Their one most cherished desire to live. They hungered for these ways, possibly more than any race has hungered for anything since.

For the Titans, they were repulsed utterly. They saw the darkness in the Giants and knew it was no longer just that of form. For they had never looked within, they had never come to the answers that the Titans had because the Giants were no wise, they were not patient, they were not compassionate. They were not beings of order they were beings of chaos.

It is said that the Titans saw that the twisting of their forms had led to the twisting of their souls. But the Titans were cultivators the Giants were destroyers. Where the Titans brought up races and beings the Giants destroyed them or forced them into subjugation. The canker in their souls was now too deep and it made them things of evil.

And so, the Titans looked at the Giants and weighed the balance of their actions as they always did. If they gave the Giants their secrets it may well cure them, may well improve them. But what if it did not? What damage had been done to their psyches? What if their meagre souls were not able to be healed in this instance? If they would not change then the Titans would have made these nightmares of hate, spite, and murder into immortals. Their scourge would never be stopped. They could rule the Aether in a reign of terror from that day forward until the days when the very sunburned cold.

It was a risk the Titans, in their wisdom, simply could not take. It would not be they who paid the price, it would be every lesser race they had cultivated, raised, and taught. It would be the children that paid the toll if this were an error and this out of the love of life. Out of the pity they had for the younger races, out of mercy towards the Aether, they threw the Giants pleas back in their faces and denied them.

And so, the Giants declared war on the Titans. In the first stages of the war, the Giants were defeated again and again. Their warbands forged into huge armies still moved slowly and the Titan could their arts their Ways to appear in strength and crush the Giants. The Titans powers of the plane of Vessix and Sillia were something the Giants could not defeat. No matter how strong their armour or how sharp their blades were.

This the Giants were forced back to the fringes of the Aether, corralled, and cut off, jailed within their corner of this world, and then left to rot. Or so the Giants would have you believe, so the standard accepted wisdom states. But I believe that the old ones did this to prove that the knowledge of the plane of Aether, that the Giants so touted was always secondary to the knowledge of the plane of Vessix and Sillia, the wisdom of the souls. I believe that the Titans gave them mercy.

When they could have eradicated them to the least and the last, they did this. In the hopes that the Giants would delve inwards as they had no other option, they would look to heal themselves from within instead of trying to dominate that which was without. But in this hope, the Titans were utterly misguided. For they were beings of Order and could never understand or compromise the nature of hate and fear and evil.

So, the Giants looked at their home with their ever-increasing knowledge of the plane of Aether what we would call science they began to understand. Another force a dark malevolent one existed in this world. A creature I mentioned at the very beginning, a creature of dark power that hailed from the very dawn of time. For this being was made of energy and all though sentient was not of what we call form.

The Giants tried to contact them and eventually they did. They contacted the Trickster, using all their scientific knowledge bending every sinew of their minds and culture to forging a receptacle for them. And in that instant when they failed, the receptacle shattered, and all hope was lost, the Trickster shared some knowledge.

By this time the Titans had created a higher race known collectively in modern times as Gods, they did not share the same wisdom or power as the Titans, but they were no mere mortals either. The Trickster advised the Giants that these Gods would better vessels. The gods:

* Bephine
* Hrana
* Kheldir
* Lunar
* Phosphephos
* Tubiae

These gods were collected by the Giants and subjected to the same transference. Now with stronger Vessels, the Tricksters chaos manifested creating the Blighted gods. When the Tricksters energy was now clothed in skin and cloth, its sentience again aware of the lesser beings that inhabited its realm, the plane of Aether’s pandora’s box was opened.

The Blighted gods were demons of the plane of Aether and their power now directed, now awoken, now shown to them by the reckless Giants. It was only matched by their hunger and that was unquenchable. The Blighted gods then taught the Giants about the Aether, about energy, about time. In doing so they were never viewed as benevolent by the Giants, but they were seen as powerful. Powerful enough to take on the Titans and this the Blighted promised all that the Giants had been denied by the Titans. They promised freedom from pain, from death.

The Blighted gods in their twisted trickery promised the Giants immortality and this was accepted with zeal. All the Giants had to do was bend the knee and proclaim the Blighted gods as their masters. If they did this, they would not only gain immortality and freedom from pain but they would be given the power to exact vengeance on the Titans to bring them low and thus the Giants accepted.

With their Blighted gods of the plane of Aether to lead them, the second stage of the war began. It is here that we see the most important events of the galaxy for in those dark days the future course of the world was set. For the Titans could not stand before the power of the Blighted gods and Giants combined.

Long was the war fought for countless centuries. But eventually, the Titans were beaten again and again, and they saw the cost of their defeat. For when a Blighted god was not hurled back, carnage unprecedented levels was wrought entire populations were either culled by the Giants or consumed by their masters the Blighted gods. The Titans were losing and with so much at stake they took dire and drastic action. Seeing the forces of chaos crush and kill and destroy all that they had made all that they had done the Titans then weaponized the plane of Vessix and Sillia.

They used their arcane abilities unfettered and met the Blighted gods head-on unleashing forces that should never have been unleashed. They went so far as to betray their morals, some might say, by lowering themselves to changing more and more of the young races of Aether. To tinker with them, to alter them, to forge them into weapons. Many races began to develop arcane capabilities, the power to alter and use the plane of Vessix and Sillia as did the Titans.

Thus, with the remaining gods, humans, elves, dwarves, and others these beings were created by the Titans as entire warrior races designed to hold back and then destroy the Giants and their masters. As the Giants had opened the pandora’s box in the plane of Aether by clothing the Trickster the Titans opened the door in the plane of Sillia and Vessix and the Aether has never been the same since.

The plane of Vessix and Sillia, the realm of souls and spirits, did not wish to be used this it fought back against its desecration. Dark beings began to form in that realm, beings that would attack those talented in the arcane and the Titans wherever they were. These dark beings were called Arod and their advent was the death toll of the Titans. For the Arod hit the Titans and their armies of lesser races hard.

Between this new threat attacking them where they fought they were safe in the realm of souls and the onward rush of the Blighted gods. The Titans could not stand so they went down and were destroyed utterly by their foes, only four of them was said to survive the slaughter, only four out of their entire race.

But this was not the end of their races, their children, their weapons. Many survived the war, now that the Titans were destroyed the Giants turned on their masters the Blighted gods. But with centuries of planning and preparing the Blighted gods struck them down.

Just like the Titans all but one of the Giants survived the insurrection against their masters. The toll was so high, the carnage so astonishing, the Blighted gods did not have the power to then defeat those races that were the children of the Titans and this the Blighted Gods with the power and knowledge of the Trickster escaped into Vessix.

The remaining gods still loyal to the Titans, created a vessel of Order, to match the Blighted gods’ power. Creating their vessel and guiding the children races to create a tower and protect the egg, they too retreated to Sillia to continue the war with the Blighted gods.

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## **Magic-Users**

But why this entire history lesson when the book is titled ‘Magical Theory’? We are here to discuss Magic and from my perspective, it is impossible to understand the present set of circumstances, the reason why a magic user’s life is so twisted, without this context. For in the war at the beginning of time, the plane of Vessix and Sillia was befouled it was twisted from being the clear waters and wonderful potential into the hell that it is today. Poetic, no?

Again, be careful what you wish for, for the Titan wished to defeat the Blighted and in so doing destroyed everything they strove to protect. For, to stop the Blighted gods, the demons of the plane of Aether, the Titans inadvertently sowed the seeds of the empowerment of the Blighted gods even further.

The souls are how those talented in the arcane are aware of the plane of Vessix and Sillia, that which has been twisted by the history of the Aether into the hell that it is today. It is the soul that powers the variabilities that those capable of magic, funnel and channel and form into the powers they display. When a soul is attached to a physical body is unknown. Be it on conception, its first thoughts or its first dealings, its first emotions. But they do exist, and it is this that makes them portals, makes them stand between our plane and the others.

A soul is a key to existence in both realms, as it is the spiritual shadow in the plane of Vessix and Sillia of the material being in the plane of Aether. Most sentients have one as we have seen, but here on Aether we are certainly not all created equal. Many are weak things, they are such a small light they are not and never will be the first choice if noticed at all by the Arod of the plane of Vessix and Sillia.

Some races have far more power in their souls than others. For many, despite having a soul theirs is not enough, not connected enough to the plane of Vessix and Sillia for them to exhibit arcane talents. That ability to not only see the plane of Vessix and Sillia but also to feel it, to command it and draw it on the plane of Aether.

Those who are talented in the arcane can manipulate the plane of Vessix and Sillia, they can draw it into the plane of Aether and by its application, they can perform wonders. They can bend the rules of this world. No two talented in the arcane are identical in their power and propensities towards certain known effects and pathways of knowledge of the plane of Vessix and Sillia. Each sentient who is talented in the arcane will also have things that they excel at, things that are simply impossible to them.

Many will say that the power of a sentient talented in the arcane is more a gift with specific realisations. The ability to call and control the very airs, to unleash violent storms at a whim, to read the thoughts of others and then potentially manipulate them, to bend others to their will like a martinet. The list of potential and documented abilities display by sentients talented in the arcane is almost limitless as it is defined and only truly constrained by the imagination of the psyche and the blocks and controls, they put on themselves consciously or subconsciously.

The reality is that nothing is beyond those talented in the arcane, they can use the power of the plane of Vessix and Sillia to alter the plane of Aether and it is only their lack of interest, willpower or patience that prevents them from being omnipotent. Of course, there is the strength of their soul match, to the variable of the strength of their ability to control and manipulate the plane of Vessix and Sillia. So, to the sentient talented in the arcane, there is a whole world of power to be explored but the plane of Vessix and Sillia is not a realm one would want to be in contact with at all.

For when someone develops arcane talents, their soul becomes brighter, their light shines into the plane of Vessix and Sillia as a beacon, but this can attract Arod, beings that are best left alone.

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**Blighted and Divine**

Just like with every rule there is always an exception. Everything you have read up until now is hard facts, things that are well witnessed, researched and documented. But this next part although I believe it to be true, is far more complicated allusive and rare.

Magic is when the realm of thoughts and feelings is pulled into the material plane of existence, when this happens this energy transfers into something this world can understand be it fire, ice or air. However there exists another, I have never witnessed these types of magics, and so limited are the sources, only one record can be found in reference to this.

You see, when a person is strong enough to call forth the powers of the arcane, normally they are limited to two elemental conversions and this appears to be the case for most. But dear reader, if these records are correct there existed an individual capable of manipulating more than two elements.

He was a Dark Elf Witch-King of Old, Setut of Kahnet. It is said his will was aligned with that of the Divine gods and as such he was granted immense arcane power, he could throw lightning, grab trebuchet shots mid-air, conjure vast walls of fire and, shields of ice.

This ability to manifest multiple elements is beyond my research and to think someone’s soul is strong enough to pull up on the plane of Vessix and Sillia this much is unheard of in my current age. It stands to reason that someone with such power, cannot be doing this alone.

It is said his will was aligned with the Divine gods, what if that was the case. The Divine favoured him and offered their strength to allow him the ability to shape the energies of the plane as he saw fit.

If that is the case, then the opposite must also be true if the Divine can favour an individual so to can the Blighted, yet I have no evidence to corroborate that theory. The plane of Vessix and Sillia is timeless, therefore it stands to reason that everyone who ever has been or will exist there. One soul in a sea of billions, how do they choose?

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## **The Plane of Vessix and Sillia**

The plane of Vessix and Sillia is a mere concept something we have read about but never witnessed. However, a certain analogy I always use is that the plane of Vessix and Sillia are that of a river of souls, a borderless expanse where only thought and feelings exist. The plane of Vessix and Sillia are not like the plane of Aether as it has no defined rules. It is so far beyond categorisation or explanation that is almost ridiculous to try.

Often have I seen my contemporaries attempt to play logical cause and effect, but this is a pointless venture for by its very nature it is without form and thus without understanding. It is how it is meant to be.

Let us take time, there is no linear time in the plane of Vessix and Sillia, no trail of actions that then lead to the next. This means you could have a conversation with someone that is gone or could witness things that have not yet occurred in the plane of Aether. This one can foresee the future for all times appear at the same time in the plane of Vessix and Sillia, but it is also timeless.

Below is how I believe the planes coexist, Aether is the centre plane with the plane of Vessix and Sillia wrapping around it, connected but also separate. Sillia is above whereas Vessix is below.

## **Magic System**

Magic on Aether is when an individual manifests the energies from the plane of Vessix and Sillia to the material plane of Aether. This is accomplished through the power of one’s soul. Every sentient being has a soul and this soul exists in the body of the individual on the material plane of Aether and as a loose soul on the plane of Vessix and Sillia. For 99.9% of the population, there is only ever one soul counterpart in the other plane.

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## Defined Magical Practices

#### Necromancy

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**Created by MrBiscuits**

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