| Individual tenga may be powerful or weak, accomodating or reticent,
patient or flighty, sophisticated or single-minded, world-weary or naive. Legend says
that each tenga was granted a unique truename, or mnu, at the beginning of time.
Legend also says Sartor gained absolute control over 164 formidable tenga by uncovering
their mnu. Most contemporary sorcerers strive long years only to find a handful of such
names.
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the five elements
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Darkness (giza)
cold, ice, the sea,
the unseen
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Burning (kuwaka)
heat, fire, light,
animal vitality
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Soil (ardhi)
mud, plants, rivers, fertility
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Storm (upepo)
wind, rain,
lightning, struggle
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Iron (chuma)
metal and reaping
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- The tenga correspond to the
seasons.
- Each tenga has dominance over that which preceeds it.
- Those born during a particular season are said 'to have an home with' that element: nyumba
tenga.
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majini (sing. jini)
The smallest and most harmless magic, within the reach of anyone with enough money to afford them, gems are said to have tiny spirits in them.
Whether true or not, the effects of gems are passive and relatively minor compared to the might of tenga. The rich buy them more for their ornamental properties.
There are those who insist they can work a deeper magic with the gems, magicians calling themselves jin'mariza. Yet they consistently have nothing impressive to show.
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Gems in Majai are rare, polished stones worn for ornament.
They are not formed in the same way as diamonds and garnets, nor do they have such alien names.
Gems also each manifest some mystical effect which seems linked to the properties of the individual gem.
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More to come, in the form of old lectures by Ianthe Felling-Dead-Tree
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Shifters
Some scholars have likened Antaka the First to Sartor; citing that both have
established revolutionary ways of manipulating the world.
Ersus Denihil disagrees, challenging that: whereas Sartor reached out to the world, Antaka
folded into his own mind. Where Sartor nurtured civilization carefully, creating the Inner
Sea through an unmatched force of will; Antaka marched to the edge of the world, forcing
an even older culture than mankind's into slavery.
What is a single Shifter capable of?
- Shapechanging into anything she can imagine.
- Invading another's dreams and altering them.
- Dreaming the future.
- Entering the Void and living.
Shifters require only sleep and charse to work their magic.
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Lohaar
Blacksmiths
In a world where most weapons are of bronze, the Blacksmiths are legendary. They are called "Lohaar" in the Old Tongue. It seems they have always been among us, mostly watching, sometimes recruiting. Only they can work the furious metal: iron.
Others, with the aid of flaming tenga, may heat iron to the temperature needed, but then the quiescent tenga within awakens, turning on the forgers. Dark-hearted are they who would work the metal this way, sacrifing dozens of men to the bloody hunger hunger of the chuma tenga. To make only one weapon, and that ill-marked by fortune and crudely shaped.
No, most of the hundred or so iron weapons extant were shaped by those mysterious figures who know the Way to manipulate the fierce iron tenga. They teach their skills in secret; they are a brotherhood hard to contact in the extreme, and rare is the person who knows she has met one.
The art of the Lohaar shares some similarities with that of the teng'mariza, but specialized in a way that none outside their circle can match. Not even the Living Gods can forge iron weapons; thankfully for all the Free Cities.
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Sorcery 
