Magic in Glastieven mythology

A June 2016 version of the article "Magic" from the original Maisraln Wiki is available at (2017) Magic

Magic in Glastieven mythology was founded on the concept of a magical field, and the principle that all magic was ultimately an interaction or series of interactions between that field and the will of a mage, a magical spirit, or an enchanted inanimate object. Each interaction with the magical field released a pulse of magic that had equally "light" (creative) and "dark" (destructive) effects. Mages could direct magic to perform specific tasks, and the light and dark elements of a pulse could be directed separately, though the two remained equally powerful and the overall effect of each pulse was never light nor dark. Magical fields only existed around matter that had a magical charge.

The Suijing Cycle and Maisraln were close to high fantasy and were dominated by magic, and the Mission Cycle was urban fantasy, with magic an important driving force behind the plot but only sporadically used or encountered. All three of those cycles were set on the Kelara, a planet with its own magical field, so magic was always physically possible. In contrast, magic only rarely appeared in the retrofuturistic or celestial-frontier-based Starlight Cycle, and even less so in the futuristic Maiestas Cycle and the science fiction BHH. Many Crossover Cycle stories explored the consequences of powerful BHH characters using time travel to learn Maisraln-era magic.

Magic was always a natural phenomenon with consistent rules—in other words, the mythology was 'hard' fantasy. However, sources varied in how scientific or mystical a view they took of magic. At one extreme, some treated the magic system as merely an extension of the laws of physics (rather like the time travel system), describing magic as a "physical phenomenon mediated by magical fields." Others described the field as a quasi-sentient "source of magic" and implied that magic's true laws—and intentions—were unknowable. The consensus position was somewhere in between, viewing magic itself as predictable and inanimate, but also arcane and filled with sentient magical spirits.

Principles

Magical field

The magical field was the medium or source of magic. Matter with a magical charge was naturally surrounded by a field that extended outwards through space, becoming weaker with distance. The core of the Kelara was magically charged, so mages on that planet spoke about "the magical field" in the singular, knowing that it was global and assuming it was infinite. Magic was not possible away from a magical field and it was not possible for magical information to cross between non-adjacent fields.

A pulse in the field was created by a mage (or a magical spirit, or an enchanted item, etc.) interacting with the field, like throwing a stone into a pond. The pulse comprised two simultaneous waves of light magic and dark magic—like the peaks and troughs of the ripples in the pond—spreading outwards at the speed of light. Both the light and the dark then interacted with matter or energy in the vicinity of the starting point. Pulses could also interfere with one another.

The magical field was also a plane of existence for beings called magical spirits.

Raw magic

If it was not directed or interfered with, a simple pulse (like the one described above) would manifest as raw magic. Raw magic was a burst of random creative force and a burst of destructive force appearing in around the same place. Often the random light magic would be connected with Nature: relatively common effects of raw magic included gnarled trees curling up at haphazard angles, sudden growths of flowers or mushrooms and crystals rising from the ground. There also tended to be a good deal of light and heat. The dark magic most commonly wounded living things in the vicinity and caused chunks to disappear from the earth, creating a crater.

As the defining characteristic of raw magic was its randomness, it had few practical uses. Elvar Murchaidh carried arrows that were tipped with a glass bulb containing a dumb magical spirit, so that the glass would shatter on impact and the spirit would release a burst of raw magic (this was most prominent in 2017 descriptions of Elvar but remained canon into 2020).

Unbounded magic

Unbounded magic was magic outside the preceptive field. It was dangerous to use.

Interestingly, the most successful long-term users of unbounded magic were often preceptive mages. While unbounded magic and preceptive magic are inherently hostile to one another, it is possible to find a balance where both can be used, though the preceptive magic must be in the position of greater strength. Strong preceptive mages can use preceptive magic to trammel and hedge some small amount of unbounded magic so that it can be more safely used. This is similar to the old "framework" idea used before the preceptive field — unbounded magic, which is so resistant to being controlled, is safest when it is sluiced and directed by discipline and order around it.

Timeline of magic

Raw magic

Raw magic existed in nature on the Kelara. In the magical field, entities called 'magical spirits' evolved, which were conscious beings made of magic. They were the first to use magic purposefully, and much of the early unbounded magic in the Kingdom was defined by or even made up of magical spirits.

Early development of spells

Mages learned how to direct and control the consequences of a magical pulse, creating unbounded magic. It was difficult and dangerous to use. The stuff of magic was resistant to being controlled and used, it had a corrosive effect on the user, and particularly in this early era, it was choc-full of dangerous magical spirits. Another danger was that using light magic to create something (e.g. lighting a dim room) meant that the destructive dark magic had to be directed somewhere—and the magic's instinctive target would be the mage themselves.

The problem of where to direct the waste dark magic from a light magic spell was solved by the mage carrying a wand or a staff that could absorb the destructive energy, though needing to direct both aspects of the pulse made magic even more tiring. On the other hand, doing something destructive (e.g. killing someone) gave the mage free energy to restore themselves or their possessions, and so dark magic was inherently easier and more tempting. A sword infused with dark magic, for instance, could repair itself or give the mage strength every time it was used to kill someone.

As such, only the most powerful good mages could stand up to even mediocre amoral mages, and magical warlords dominated what would become the kingdom. It took Queen Maya to unify the warlords and create a state that could impose some control on magic.

Later scholars in the kingdom started, for the first time, to formalise spells. Notation was developed and new mages were taught set spells for simple tasks. This was blended with the predominant ethical and political philosophy at the time, Veremei, and magic became part of proper ritual learning. Kingdom mages were taught discipline and close adherence to the strict precepts of their teaching. Kensaki Zihau wrote the Framework, a Veremei-inspired text that encouraged courtiers and scholars to learn magic but trap it within a tight "framework" of logic, discipline and self-control, within which its corrosive and dangerous power could be controlled and safely used.

Meanwhile, dragons learnt how to use magic, and developed their own traditions. On the margins of the kingdom, exploration of unbounded magic outside the "framework" that Kensaki prioritised laid the foundations for later warrior-magic and thought-magic.

Great Magical Charter

In 571 KY, King Jonathan I issued the Great Magical Charter, creating the Four Great Mages and instructing them to create an artificial framework within which civilians could do magic, sustained by hidden artefacts, that would absorb the opposite bursts of energy from magical interactions and would limit what could be achieved with magic, for example banning necromancy. This framework was the preceptive field and created preceptive magic. Technically, the preceptive field was simply a complicated unbounded magic spell infused into the artefacts, and therefore all spells ever cast using preceptive magic were simply sub-spells that further complicated the initial spell's interactions with the magical field.

Subsequently, unbounded magic became unlawful. Most of the unbounded magic structures in the kingdom were unravelled and refashioned within the preceptive field or used to help create it. However, not all unbounded magic was constrained or used in the making of the preceptive field; much of what remained fell outside the bounds established by the Great Magical Charter for how magic could be legally used, having dark or arcane connotations, and some quasi-sapient magical entities were able to keep themselves separate, or only partially surrendered to the Four Great Mages and were able to leave some relic of themselves.

In the immediate aftermath of the creation of preceptive magic, there were tens of thousands of remnant powers, entities and artefacts of unbounded magic within the Kingdom. Over the next one hundred years, the majority of these were destroyed, subsumed into the field or banished by the Hermadiúir, or were bound by the Bynmidelle. By 700 KY the few remaining unbounded magic structures tended to be powerful sapient magical spirits that were biding their time and waiting to strike at the Kingdom when it became weaker.

One such unbounded magic entity attacked and killed all of the Four Great Mages in 1620 KY, just before Maisraln.

Magic driven underground

Preceptive magic was later replaced with crystals. The Four Great Mages in the former kingdom established the Council of Magic, and declined to train successors, choosing instead to spend the rest of their lives promoting the council and trying to establish its universal jurisdiction.

After 1675, an organisation called the Solas appeared. The Solas was either created by or controlled the world’s governments and acted as a covert operations agency with legal impunity. In some stories, it was explicitly from Palaratos, and rooted in its rationalist tradition. In others, it came from outside the Kelara’s structures of power, and was supported by the Ravensgate, a rogue god-like force which played a greater role in later cycles. The Solas was devoted to suppressing magic. They persuaded the governments of the world to set the year zero to 1487 KY, which would be 0 Terrestrial Era (TE), weakening the legacy of the Kingdom of Maisraln.

The Council of Mages and the Council of Dragons became the focus of resistance against the Solas. The Solas recreated the Order of Dragonslayers, an ancient Maisralnian order that had been dissolved in 535 KY with the end of the War of Dragons and Humans, and the second creation of the Order had successfully committed genocide against dragonkind by 200 TE.

The Solas was able to push the Council of Mages underground by 250 TE and was initially happy to leave them extant as an arcane tradition. Instead, the Solas focused on destroying all historical records of magic (and dragons), reducing its status to myth. Two generations later, by around 330, few people believed that magic actually existed. Certainly, another two generations later, people in Maisraln in 400 TE believed in magic about as much as people did in England in AD 2017.

Magical Resistance vs the Solas

Meanwhile, through the 400s, the peaceful Council of Mages declined in power and influence among the underground magical community as increasing hostility from the Solas radicalised it. A new organisation called the Magical Resistance was created, nominally loyal to the council but exercising a significant degree of autonomy. The Resistance soon fractured; by 480 it was at least three organisations and by 520 each cell was almost totally independent of any central command. Meanwhile, as the Solas attacked and killed unarmed mages, by the mid-500s the various factions of the Resistance and the protected areas under their control represented the entire extent of the remaining magical community.

Kerry proposed that there might have been a native tradition of magical dissent in Palaratos, predating the jurisdiction of the originally-Maisralnian Council of Mages there, that merged into the Resistance. Whereas most of the Resistance was culturally Maisralncentric and conservative, romanticising the old kingdom as an ancient motherland and looking to Maisraln for inspiration, the inborn Palaratan resistance was socialist and viewed magic as a science that was compatible with rationalism rather than as a mystical tradition being destroyed by it. In 583, humanity first landed on the Moon of the Kelara and the year was set to 0 Celestial Era in recognition of this achievement.

The Resistance launched a major terrorist attack in 49 CE and the Solas declared open war on it. They now intended to completely wipe out all mages. Meanwhile, the Resistance were no longer interested in protecting an underground current of magic; they wanted to overthrow the Solas and re-establish an openly magical society. The intense irregular war between the two factions triggered an increased awareness of magic, perceived as something like an occult revival or the 1960s wave of ufology.

The Solas won the war. In 115 CE, the Council of Mages was dissolved and the last remaining mages were instructed to flee and seek shelter in obscure places. The Solas successfully managed to track down and kill the last remaining mages over the next decades, and it was dissolved in 230. Magic had now been totally eradicated on the Kelara and would not be known by ordinary humans again for millennia.

Magic in space

Magic ceased to play an important role in human history as they left the Kelara and explored the stars. This was partly due to the Solas's successful repression of the original tradition. It was also because, as humanity left its home planet, they learnt that what they had assumed was a universal magical field was actually being projected by a special mineral in the planet's core. Magic was not even possible in space as there was no magical field away from the mineral that projected it.

There were isolated pockets of magic. Amethyst Johnson was a mage in the first century AHE who was initially imprisoned for madness but managed to escape and get her hands on the mineral needed to create a magical field around herself.

The Ravensgate also continued to have access to magic, using crystals that were made of the mineral that projected the field and were enchanted with predetermined spells. Raven Olympia was the only character who could use these.

Special cases

Bloodlines

Magical bloodlines were a concept that was played with in 2017 as a means to reconcile two contradictory parts of the lore. It was long-established in BHH that only Raven Olympa — or Raven and a very small handful of others — could use Ravensgate crystals. In contrast, in the magic system established for Maisraln, anyone could use magic. When BHH and Maisraln were construed as taking place in the same universe, creating the timeline and the concept of one mythology, a core pillar of the timeline was that the Maisraln magic system could explain the fantastical elements in BHH that fell outside its science fiction worldbuilding, including Ravensgate crystals.

Robert insisted that only Raven could use crystals and that this was an important cornerstone of BHH lore that could not be shifted. Tom, however, insisted that the magic system applied consistently, so therefore anyone could use magic, and hence crystals. Bloodlines were supposed to be a compromise between these positions. The idea was that Raven Olympia was a distant descendent of Robert's key character in Maisraln, the Ashen Darkside, and the ability to use crystals was anchored in that bloodline. More broadly, as a logical consequence of this idea, various specific magical abilities or powers were assumed to be carried on certain bloodlines.

In the event, the compromise made neither party happy, as Robert felt it was a "midichlorians" innovation that ruined the mysticism around Raven's abilities in BHH and Tom felt that it undermined the magic system too much to be acceptable.

The name Scartongue originates from the period when the idea of magical ability being anchored in the blood was a thing. Mala (who became Scartongue) was supposed to have stabbed Elvar Murchaidh and then licked along the blade of the knife to mix their blood and inherit his magical abilities, hence having a scar along her tongue, hence Scartongue.

History

Oburron and Jenner paracosm

Magic was briefly present in the Oburron and Jenner paracosm after Kerry's brother created a fleeting key, Mr Dylon, whose species had magical powers. Kerry, desperate not to throw out anything established in the 'canon', then tried to devise an explanation for how the existence of one magical species in an otherwise non-magical universe might have worked. This explanation was a region of the universe called Magitown, where magic was possible, whilst magic remained impossible anywhere else.

The Dylon and the Unlon colonised Magitown and so had magic; the Evon colonised a planet just beyond the region where magic was possible and so developed advanced technology to compensate; and the Telephonion were on the edge of the zone, where magic was weaker, and so they developed a blend of magic and technology called magitech.

Kerry later became more confident to overwrite old lore and decided to abandon the idea of Magitown.

Draconian paracosm

The Draconian paracosm had magic since its inception, with magic being the ability to manipulate the four classical elements. Magic was created by four dragons and could only be safely used by dragons or humans with dragon blood. A regular human would eventually be taken over by their magic and become a force controlled by it rather than a person. A loosely-defined fifth element–darkness–was created by the human Maethum, who was undergoing this transformation by the time of his death.

A particularly unusual aspect of this were dragonsbane stones, which were ostensibly constructs of dark magic. These were crystals that drained the energy of nearby dragons and would cause dragons extreme pain and eventually death on physical contact.

The other form of magic in the paracosm was the Spirit Temple. This was essentially a dream dimension that skilled practitioners could enter or draw the minds of others into. Within the Spirit Temple people had complete control over their surroundings and could view across the world by creating moon pools; it was also possible to leave the Spirit Temple in a different place in the real world to where one entered it.

Neko Dynasty

The Neko Dynasty was a fantasy RP and magic featured prominently. It was presented as an ancient, dying art that had been mostly forgotten, lingering only in backwater places, and was also very physically taxing to carry out. Characters were depicted using magic to conjure up fire, send blue flames running down a sword, teleport an opponent underground in combat, and teleport themselves in combat. These were all considered relatively simple tasks; more advanced magic could apparently be learnt from ancient scrolls.

In addition, other abilities also appeared magical but were not referred to as "magic". Cat's character was a neko (anime cat girl) who could turn into a cat on command. She also had visions of the future, which were painful to experience; she considered it plausible that she might learn to control them. Her character, Ro, and Rob's character, Raven, could merge into a "fusion" called "the Raveline" or "the Rovalane" which had its own special powers.

The written story based on the Neko Dynasty also mentions a character "connecting with the same forces that had guided [the ancient warriors] to victory" before going into combat, though this may have just been figurative language.

The Order of the Tachi

The Order of the Tachi has been remembered as a fantasy RP, and it established settings and characters that would later be used in Maisraln, so it is probable that magic was involved. However, no written record of the RP survives, and no-one can remember anything about magic in it.

Maisraln

When Maisraln was created in June 2017, a new magic system was created along with it, and this subsequently became canon for the rest of the mythology.

Outside the magic system

Visions

Some characters in the mythology — notably Aurora, Isan Segba, the Sjándé, and the version of Ro Elluna who appeared in the Neko Dynasty — had visions of the future, present, or past. These were never considered "magic" in the proper sense and they were not explained via the magic system, though there was also never a science fiction or cosmological (religious) explanation for them either. A related concept from the Oburron and Jenner paracosm, specifically the distinctive Tearing Paper arc, was prophetic dreams. These were explained in science fantasy terms, and even gave off pseudoscientific 'dream waves' that could be detected from across the universe.

Moon pools

Moon pools were a concept in the Draconian paracosm, and in one Frontier story from 2019.

In the Draconian paracosm, they were pools of water within which people could see events happening in distant places, so long as they weren't obscured by powerful magic. Moon pools could also transport people to these locations. If one moon pool was used to observe another, this connection would be two-way, allowing for communication. Several pools existed, including one on Lonaoiisil, and they could be created in the Spirit Temple.

The Draconian concept inspired something similar in a Frontier RP from 2019. In the RP, the moon pool could only transfer information between itself and its partner pool, and it transferred emotions and ideas rather than images or literal information. Ideas transmitted from a moon pool could influence machines as well as people, and a group planned to use the moon pool to remotely detonate a bomb with this method. It was possible to use the moon pool to control people, or at least influence them, by transmitting ideas directly into their heads.