How does magic work?
*Gravis sits down*
Make yourself comfortable. This could take awhile. ...you set? Okay. First things first. There are twelve elements that make up all things. These form the twelve "orders." There are gods and such that certain folks believe to be at the center of those elements, but I don't follow that. Here are the twelve elements and what they deal with:
Fire_____________Fire, heat, plasma, welding, purifying
Air______________Air, flight, electricity, invisibility
Earth____________Earth, elemental table, defense, crystal, strength
Water___________Water, teleporting, enchantment, ice, poison, acid
Mind____________Mind, telepathy, telekinetics, prophecy, meditation
Body____________Body, enhancing, shape-shifting, healing
Life / Light________Life, light, good, stealth, illusions, healing
Death / Darkness___Death, darkness, evil, stealth, illusions, harming
Time____________Time, speed, time-travel, anomalies
Void____________Void, transportation, space, stealth, transtangency
Chaos___________Chaos, reality, molecular-processing, disorder, dimensions
Spirit____________Spirit, meditation, peace, enhancement, miscellaneous
Chaos and Time, because of their instability and danger to the whole of existance, have been outlawed. Those who practice them are hunted down quickly and killed. So in a way it is fortunate that I am stuck here, for I use a vast amount of Chaos. Why is death not forbidden you might ask? Simple. Even the least powerful Chaos or Time mage can do devistating things to reality or the time stream. A death mage has to gain an extremely high level of adept to be able to kill at will. Death includes darkness, which has practical uses. Granted, actual killing spells are forbidden. Remember: I don't make the rules, Osiris does.
Since everything is made of all twelve elements, we are too. At birth, magical detections are performed to see which of the elements is the most prominent. This is the person's "primary" element. This also determines what sort of career they will most likely have. A majority of people are born with Fire as their primary. Most don't do anything more with it than frying burgers or being firefighters. You must remember, magic has coexisted with technology here for thousands of years. Everyone has some magic, but not everyone uses it to it's highest extent. The opposite of one's primary is their allergy. They have little to no resistance to that element when they are born. Through time they can learn to deplete their allergy and become more resistant. However, no one can learn any magic in their allergy. Their primary has determined that. Here are the opposites of each element:
Fire_____________Water
Air______________Earth
Mind____________Body
Life / Light________Death / Darkness
Time____________Void
Chaos___________Spirit
If a child is detected with Chaos or Time as their primary (which doesn't happen often because of their rarity among the elements) they are trained in their next most prominent. If their secondary too is forbidden, they move to the tertiary. Worst case scenerio is Chaos, Time and Death. It happens very little. These people often become assassins or Special Forces.
Here are some common jobs held by people with each of the legal elements:
Fire_____________Cooks, firefighters, blacksmiths, demolitionists
Air______________Electricians, computer programmers, hackers, power-plant operators
Earth____________Catastrophy managers, builders, military reinforcement creators, research scientists
Water___________Water purifiers, pool cleaners, aquarium keepers, street de-icers
Mind____________Interrogators, police, sooth-sayers, psychiatrists
Body____________Doctors, trainers, rail-runners, athletes
Life / Light________Doctors, spies, priests, goodwill workers
Death / Darkness___Doctors, spies, assassins, mobsters
Time____________Time mages, military tactics managers, store managers
Void____________Transit industrialists, delivery persons, storage locker managers
Chaos___________Chaos mages, anarchists, crowd-control managers, military officers
Spirit____________Doctors, enhancers, support-group leaders, peacemakers
And finally, how does magic actually "work." Well, that's hard to say. No one really knows, hence "magic." The most likely explaination is this: "All elements work for the profit of the whole (profit meaning the good of the individual). When they exsist together in the world, they create life and a means to substain it: a planet. When we learn to tap those elements, they respond to our commands, doing for us what they "feel" to be needful. When we bend our "needs" to mean something that might not be necessarily pertinent, we create disturbance. This focused disturbance is called magic. All our power is drawn from within us and the elements around us. The few among us who can tap the very ether of the universe transpire to be great. They are the few that can claim to be true archmagi." -Skrymir on magic
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