Vreleksá

kyonides · Joined: 28 Aug 2008 Posts: 301

This is some info I've posted on another board and is subject to (major) changes if deemed necessary...

Spellcasting / Magic Cancellation System

Lately I've been thinking on a spellcasting / magic cancellation system that would act more like a pair of magical black and white holes.

The black hole would be a guy, a priest, a wizard or a magician, that could absorb magic but cannot or doesn't want to use it for his own purposes. So they would be automatically canceling magic all the time. He wouldn't be able to redirect it or transform it or use it for anything else. This part seems to be boring, I know, but let's wait till you read about the white one.

The white hole would be someone who is exactly the opposite to the black one, he's able to use as much magic as he wants. Well, that's not accurate enough, because he also depends on how much magic the black hole drained lately. If the black hole didn't absorb anything last night, the white one won't have a steady supply of magic power to cast spells at will without quickly draining his own energy levels up to the bare minimum.

A normal spellcaster wouldn't get tired by using magic as soon as a white hole would, because they have a specific energy level that can be used on a hourly, daily basis before depleting it and forcing him to rest or eat something out of this world to recover from this energy loss. A white hole has a lower maximum of available magical energy to use, sometimes it's so low that the guy doesn't even look like a real wizard or priest but just like a commoner with no magical powers. Why would any army or organization look for white holes if they can be trusted due to their volatile magical nature? Because they might become stronger than a magician if the black hole drained the world of too much magic in the last couple of hours or days.

There's something you should know about both kind of holes. Their proportion is sometimes something between 1::2 and 1::5, being the one on the left the black hole and the "magic source" of those white holes. Usually this would mean a serious problem for the white holes because there's no way to assure they'll get enough magic to cast their spells in times of need, but that may depend on who are you asking this question, because there may be one or two that may obtain more magic one day or during a specific week than the other white holes. This may depend on what kind of magic they're able to cast and what kind of magic the black hole has suck in the last few days. So today may be the white hole 1 the one favored by the black hole (unwillingly) but tomorrow it may be either WH2 or WH3 the one who gets more power to use at will.

What I don't know yet is if all those black and white holes are part of some council or they're on their own, just like some mercenaries are. It's not clear whether they, the white holes, are always linked to a specific black hole for their entire lifetime or not or how they get linked to one of them on the first place. At birth? At their magical birth (the moment they discover they're capable of casting spells)? At the moment they meet a black hole?

Actually it's unknown what kind of effects a region would have if a black and a white hole meet some day. Would the region be devastated? Would it cancel their innate abilities? Or would it kill them both (and the people close to them)? Would the other white holes die as well or unconsciously find another black hole?

A black hole is able to drain magic by using his eyes and / or ears to fetch it. I guess you'd imagine that he might use his mouth, too, but there's a problem with that method of absorption... It's linked to the body (more specifically to the stomach and the intestine) not to the mind, so it's harder for black holes to get magic that way. Magic absorbed by the eyes won't work the same way one drained by the ears would. Even which eye or ear absorbed it might lead us to different magical hosts and results.

The black hole unique ability may be learned by a magician, wizard or priest, but this might not be as easy as being born with it from the very beginning. The amount of magic he'd be able to drain per second or minute may also depend on how strong / big is his own magic black hole.

Scholars have discussed these matters and some of them agreed that the user's black hole may be unstable and so unconsciously it may be able link to one or more white hole casters but just one at a time. Even so there's no actual proof that this is just like they said.

By the way, who said I ever wanted to reconcile the black and white hole system? In nature there's always space for chaos (or what we think it's chaos) because there's always something we don't know yet that would make us think it shouldn't work (at all or after a while) but at the end it worked well or just as expected.

Well, probably they'd try to kill them... if they ever find one... Let's say a wizard is a black hole that learned the secret of magic absorption, he could unconsciously make some mistake to block his newly learned ability temporary. If someone was trying to find out who was the black hole that made the assassin's boss lose a battle, he wouldn't find him even if he were assisted by some magician that could let him drain his energy on purpose. It'd be the case that the wizard or a commoner weren't able to drain magic in a long period of time and thus the black hole is "closed". That could be something that would make the assassination attempt fail miserably.

Of course, you may say that someone is clever enough to work with assassins from the very beginning to avoid a direct confrontation with some black hole. He might kill one or two black holes, but if the boss hired some wizards or priests and one of them is suspected of being a white hole, then he might end up killing the golden chicken while trying to solve his problem... That's why is mostly unheard that someone killed a black hole. Anyway, there are stories recorded that someone sent assassins to kill white holes. There's a consensus about assassinations that killing a white hole won't endanger a black hole's life.

About magic absorption

Normally you shouldn't expect a black hole to cancel an entire spell at once, the black hole would actually drain the spellcaster's energy making it more difficult to cast the spell or to keep it running for a long time. There are some extreme cases, that aren't confirmed yet, where some black hole unleashed his inner black hole in such a way that almost killed an old wizard by sucking in his ancient soul. People said that the black hole didn't feel well and left the place immediately. It'd be the first time someone made such as statement because normally they'd say they just felt that they were almost overwhelmed by all the energy coming in but they just didn't care. At the end they just feel some "emptiness". As I said earlier, these cases are some serious rarities and have no magic or scientific backup to support those claims.

About Healing Magic

In my conworld there's no healing magic, they are just able to create some sort of bandages / dressings and that's pretty much all they can do to help you... There's no way they can assure you that you'll survive.

Several attempts to heal wounds demonstrated the spell casters that they'd rather turn an individual into a semi-monster or they'd just make them die faster because they created a cancer on the affected / wounded area. That's why some people even think that healing magic is just some sort of black magic.

By the way, sometimes black holes are able to extract poison from poisoned people, but it has nothing to do with their innate ability to absorb magic. It seems plausible that they (instinctively) learn how to extract things from other places, not just poison...

Ways to make or produce "magic"

In my conworld people create magic from some sort of gas you can extract from the planet, then you can make magical artifacts during intensive work on rituals that allow you to give that magic an adequate shape and purpose.

There's another way to create magic, you force your soul to duplicate its essence up to a certain point in order to get some ethereal stuff that can later be turned into some fireball, iceball, lava-ball (even with a strong electric field wrapping it) or anything else. This is what they call the soul essence copy method. That copy of your essence allow you to manipulate magic at will, so people don't fear that another magician might be able to use your spell / attack against you... unless he is some sort of High Wizard, High Priest, a black hole or anything else.

Whenever you make magic by duplicating your soul essence your stamina gets depleted after a while, but depending on your skills you can almost duplicate your essence in a more simple way, but then any other skilled wizard might be able to make that spell his/hers and counterattack at once. The assimilated spell might be stronger than the original one, more difficult to avoid or dispel, though.

The most simple way to cast a spell is to get some element, wrap it with some sort of pseudo essence, one that is NOT a copy of your soul essence but some sort of essence replacement that's considered to be cheaper to produce, and transform it so it complies with the shape and the purpose you had in mind. Its essence, its magic source of energy is called the pseudo essence. What's that "pseudo essence" made of? Well, that can be photons, radioactivity, pretty much anything they find in their environment. You might keep in mind that it's not as stable as the soul essence copy method, but skilled magicians don't care about this at all, even if some "innocents" die during the process whenever they cast a powerful spell.

Actually, wizards can reuse this pseudo essence by calling it back to gather as much of this essence as possible, but this method won't work at all or it wouldn't make any sense to use it if you sent a spell like a huge fireball or soul-ball km or miles away from your current location to attack someone, maybe an army.

The way a High Wizard, Priest or a black hole can disrupt, destroy magic, cut magic into pieces is considered to be a secret that only black mages, wizards and priests learn. Is it some cliché? Probably.

Some Other Aspects of this Magic System / Conworld

I know, you want to tell me that it sounds like there's also blue, red, white magic in my conworld, but the truth is that there's no such magic there. As I said earlier there's no real healing magic (so there can't be any white magic there). We'd need to define what blue and red magic is but if it has something to do with taming beasts, eh, you'll be losing your time. Beasts can only be domesticated by humans or humanoids if possible.

Beings like my tree folk that doesn't utter words but use color changes of their leaves and branch movements to communicate with each other and some other beings might be considered magical creatures but that's all my conworld has to offer, there shouldn't be any blue and red magic. Regarding "my" golems, well, I must say they're crap.

I'd like to make it possible for my soul entities (Kloeshon, see the post below) I mentioned on another post to get a body by modifying the sand essence so it can move according to the ghost's wishes and perform tasks that might have nothing to do with war but with building temples, libraries, gardens (well, open spaces with a lot of sculptures would be a better description of what they could do in the dessert to make it look a lot better). Those places may offer my ghosts a place where they can recover what seems to be lost, consciousness or knowledge or sanity, etc.
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kyonides · Joined: 28 Aug 2008 Posts: 301

A "New" Ghostly Being: Kloeshe

This being should find so called victims in the mortal world to get his "food" and stay there as much time as possible. (This isn't supposed to be the only way they get their essential nutrients, but it's their most well-known / well-documented way to survive...) They don't kill the prey or leave it unconscious, they just need to take a look at their neural connections and signal transmissions so they can make their food (some sort of spiritual liquid with some specific energy level requirements) according to the prey's specifications.

Of course, this is not enough for them to get nourished, they also need to steal a bit of their prey's consciousness and vital energy so they can replicate them as DNA does in our bodies. The happier or angrier or the more scared or fearless the subject is, the more the spirit would feel satisfied. It'd also mean that the ghost wouldn't act the same way if he feeds on a happy person than on a fearless or obsessive one... Some abilities may be enhanced or suddenly show up (again) while others would decline or even disappear.

Not exactly their consciousness but the whole ghostly system (if we compare it with a operating system on a computer with a damaged hard disk drive). Let's say that they know how to think but they have to rearrange everything every so often due to their innate issue (a propensity for mutation or decay) on their ghostly minds.

Even if they don't eat, it doesn't kill them, it just stops them from disturbing or helping people or achieving an unknown goal. Their influence wouldn't be as strong as it'd be while being full.

I guess I might call them Kloeshon (m. pl.) which stands for "(the) mind that sees / watches".

killerken · Joined: 30 Sep 2008 Posts: 134 Location: Florida

For some reason this topic was marked as read for me. Maybe other people are having the same problem?. Your magic isn't boring, the topic's just broken. I can't read it now, but I will.
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Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 11:34 pm Post subject:

Sorry, I haven't had time to read through it. At first glance it looks good, I'll have to read the whole thing when I have time sometime later.