Subject: Secular Spell Schools Fri Feb 03, 2012 3:31 pm
Quote :
Fortimancy: The direct manifestation of physical force, affecting basic physics. The most widespread, common school of magic, it also has the most immediate applications in combat. Spells from the school of Fortimancy are often the first taught to aspiring mages, given it's relative simplicity. When a commoner thinks of magic, Fortimancy is what comes to mind.
Evocation:
The physical manipulation of the elements, including the movement of stone, wind, and water and the manifestation of ice, electricity, and fire. This field relies on the simple understanding of kinetic force and the ability to mimic natural phenomena, e.g. reducing the temperature of water, igniting a section of air. Evocation can sometimes occur naturally, in the so-called 'Planetouched'.
Abjuration:
The more esoteric manipulation of physics. Abjurers can use magic to levitate objects and people, lessen or increase the effects of gravity upon an object, create a shield of concentrated magic, even reduce or increase the friction of a given surface. Example spells include 'Mage Hand', 'Feather Fall', and 'Slow'.
Cognimancy: The art of manipulating the mind. Cognimancy involves affecting the senses of a living creature, either sharpening, dulling, or tricking them. Involving far more complicated magical processes than Fortimancy, the Cognimancer must be able to understand the magical workings of perception and the mind. There are rumors of Cognimancers who go beyond the normal bounds of the art, being able to affect the very nature of the mind.
Illusion:
The art of mystically dulling or tricking the senses of another being, generating illusions that can be visual, sensory, or auditory in nature. The more common-place the illusion - e.g., an extra chicken in a hen-house - the more likely it is for an individual to accept the illusion as truth. It is often easier to simply bend the truth than to generate complex falsities. Sight is the most easily affected sense, followed by hearing and then feeling. An illusionist can dull the senses of a target, making it harder to detect something, or cover it up with a complete fabrication. The effect of an illusion depends on the intelligence and will-power of the target as well as the skill of the caster. Expert illusionists can generate wild fantasies that threaten to enthrall their target. Novice ones must use more clever tactics to bend their foe's perception.
Divination:
The act and art of scrying, the art of mystically enhancing the senses. A mage skilled in the school of Divination can increase his awareness, view upon distant locations magically, and even cast their senses and consciousness far from their body, to distant lands or even alternate realms. Divination can sometimes manifest naturally in magically potent individuals, appearing as dreams or 'out of body experiences'. Some tales of ancient prophets receiving divine communion could be traced to natural occurrences of this art. Though common word assigns mages the ability to scry into the future or the past, this is a falsity. This includes the art of magical surveillance, astral projection, and other various 'out of body' arts. Divination can and is often used to thwart the spells of it's sister field, illusion. A diviner can often see through illusions cast by other mages.
Animancy: The art of manipulating and mimicking the natural processes of life. Animancy involves using the laws which govern life - 'animation' - to either effect the living body or simulate it's effects.
Conjuration: The art of creating beasts - dubbed familiars - out of magic. Conjuration involves temporarily marshaling a collection of mystical energy under a set of complex rules and functions. The conjurer forms creatures of servitude - appearing as vibrant, colorful manifestations of energy - in order to perform certain tasks, such as defense of a home or to attack a target. These conjurations can take the form of nearly anything - even people, if the conjurer so wished - but have no sentience and obey the caster's every whim.
Vitamancy:
The proper name for what is commonly known as 'healing magic', the spells of this school include the regeneration of flesh, bone, and blood, for various medical purposes. The Vitamancer uses the body's own natural processes, modified by the power of magic, to accelerate the process of healing beyond what is naturally possible. The accomplished Vitamancer should also have an extensive knowledge of Anatomy, least they risk fatally injuring their patient. This school is commonly used in conjunction with more mundane medical techniques. There are also rumors of Vitamancers who go beyond the normal concept of Vitamancy and into the ethically murky area of biological enhancement, such as the defunct Vitamantia sect.
Necromancy: The art of manipulating the dead. The antithesis of Vitamancy, Necromancy is the act of both animating the fallen bodies of the dead and marshaling the souls of the deceased. Necromancy is almost universally reviled as unnatural, and banned almost everywhere; and often for good reason, though it wasn't always so. Long ago, the fields Vitamancy and Necromancy were born from the same school of thought, and the same ideological desire - to allow mortal man to transcend death. This changed, however, with the coming of one of the greatest and yet most terrible disciples of this field of magic - the Lich-King of Vale. Using his abilities in a mockery of the ideals of the school, the Lich-King became the first recorded Lich roughly one thousand seven hundred years ago. Since then, Necromancy has become mired in the black arts, with few unable to separate what it once was with what it is today. For those few that study Necromancy in the old way, the desired pinnacle of the art remains elusive - the perfect resurrection, in both body and mind. Common Necromancy today involves the domination of spirits for combat purposes, the creation of mindless undead thralls, and the despicable goal to transcend death at the cost of others - to become a Lich. Necromancy is also commonly affiliated with Shadow Magic, the spells of which allow easy access to the darkest forms of Necromancy.
Planumancy: An exceedingly difficult school of magic, Planumancy is the art of mystically transferring mass across space without crossing the intervening distance. Involving complicated spatial and mass transference calculations, Planumancy involves extreme danger for the naive mage, and is thus rare in all but the most esoteric magic circles.
Translocation: Magical teleportation from within Aeria. Translocation involves shifting a target's mass into a higher energy state of existence, allowing the target to slip into the confines of the weave itself. The target is then able to shift along at near-instantaneous speed, before dropping out of this higher frequency state and back into the normal world. Translocation is both dangerous and difficult, requiring the exact knowledge of a target's mass and the exact knowledge of your coordinates. Erring on either issue even by a fraction opens the possibility of tearing the target (often times yourself) in two or appearing inside another object, leading to unspeakably terrible results.
Regalication: Magical teleportation between realms. Regalication involves the warping of local space to link with that of a more distant space, forming a portal between the two. While not involving the dangers of Translocation, Regalication has it's own dangers. Regalication involves the very warping of space. Miscalculation can involve in explosive catastrophe. Even linking to other realms itself is both difficult and dangerous - many deities refuse interlopers to enter their realms except under certain circumstances. Even linking to the void - the uncontrolled, empty space between realms - is dangerous, given that, without precautions, pressure change can form an uncontrollable vortex; and once in the void, a mage is completely cut off from their source of power, as the weave does not exist in the void. As such a dangerous art warrants, the secrets of Regalication are kept under lock and key, only performed by the greatest mages.
Teleportation as a Weapon:
An Excerpt from a High-Librarian in the Archivists of Light on the risks of Teleportation:
"The question I see many of the pupils I lecture on my brief returns to the University include the practical application of the teleportation schools as a possible weapons. Despite vehement insult felt on my person as being asked this question, as a respected voice on the stuff of upper-echelon kinematics and contributor to the possible existence of mathematics as described in Al-Maiq Ibn' Calcalus, I feel required to speak with only the truth."
"The common practices of both the Planumancy schools are rather well developed and hard to enterprise on further. the basis of Translocation makes it very difficult to disrupt a person's physical being on a level that could be considered harmful; introducing Sigillum to induce an energy level raise without harmful return is the basis of the school, anything other than that would be an Abjuric use of heat, which requires great energy to maintain."
"Translocation is an intricate work as is any teleportation effort. The typical means of use is to have a very particular area in mind that you wish to bridge to. You must know the area well, and be able to anticipate what its forces are at the time of casting; this makes preparation an invaluable asset. Most mages require themselves to link the other end of the transit to the place in which they are standing, as they can better feel the energies and produce constants for their equations more easily; only the most skilled or daring mages attempt to bridge two places with which they are not currently standing."
"The act of Regalication is most often done with a particular process. Once an area is selected, a distance known, a memory of the place in the mind to help serve as a stencil; a mage begins to pull upon space, attracting all existing particles away from a particular area, typically forming a sphere or thin three-dimensional tube. This is to be performed in both desired locations. Once the vacuum is occupied with very little, the mage begins to weave his own magic through both vacuums, occupying it with the same force. The mage then attempts to join both forces together once the vacuum has been spread so thin that no matter truly exists there, and it becomes essentially a small pocket of void; the sigillum force must be weaved into the vortex before it reaches void-like emptiness, or a small scale eruption of sonic force will ensue, knocking down, disorienting, and possibly causing harm to parties within the vicinity!"
"Providing that the user has enough magical endurance to perform this act to its fullness, correctly might I add, the void-like spaces will be drawn to each other, the physical places brought near to each other and allowed access. This is how Regalication is done in common fashion; even if one could anchor it to a person, the spreading of their being would be rather harmless, though it may make them move awkwardly, or cloud their minds. It also goes without saying that any living soul will instinctively protect against this, fighting your magic."
"This is generally what I would tell students asking such inane questions, but... due to my need for true honesty and enlightenment, I must press the topic further."
"The act of using a human body as an anchor, instead of a placid space, is harder by many exponents. The magical process of a body and its great amount of forces, let alone the variance of the sentient soul, creates a water-like substance to act as a point. To try and spread the distance of a slim cylinder that passes through a human body is vastly difficult, and requires even more experience than simple regalication."
"My studies in Divination and Regalication have revealed to me a possible secondary means of regalication, though far more tedious and dangerous, that could pose mortal repercussions to a living being through greater means than upsetting gods or disrupting a matrix-strain-limit that results in a super-sonic resupposition. Having studied for Divination for over a century, and regalication nearly as long, such an act seems highly-improbable for even someone such as myself... but not impossible."
"One must have two clear points in mind, the easier the better, and begin working on swirling magical energies into the shape you desire your vortex to be, a slim tube is usually best. Do this without first attempting to form a fraction-void, building power in the area. You must use the spaces chosen as anchors, and the power you build as something of a magnet. You must feel your power, and attempt to follow the passing of energies through the mortal world between the two places. You must sustain your power long enough to thread the power from one place to another. Once this is done, you have a pathway of power that must continue to flow, as the Postulates of Holy Endowment and Humble Energy dictate."
"This is where the process becomes even more tenuous and difficult, you must forcibly pry between the given spaces you have taken, and feed your power through into the void-like emptiness between existing mass; spreading the particles as much as possible would be helpful, but it would remove all potential of enacting intentional harm, and is an energy consumption that would exacerbate an already incredibly arduous casting."
"Passing both currents in massless space, you can join the streams to create a circuit of magical power, allowing forces to be bent, with space and mass being obscure in the eye of this sorcery. Only now does the true effort begin; you must calculate the particular kinematics required to bridge the two physical places through the control of magic and physical forces controlled therein. It seems necessary that a mage will need to beckon all withstanding physical forces be still, such as wind and rain, and then substantiate a vortex through a complicated energy theorum."
"The amount of power to complete this act is great, and so is the risk; you yourself place so much power into this act, that your life-force and all your magical energies become part of the circuit. If one is careless in either mathematical function, magical control, or weaving, then death, or worse, is quite possible. The weaving will be incredibly difficult, at some point, seeming to be like having your hands weigh great many pounds, as you command a circuit of power that is much more so than your own."
"Providing this act is completed, without too great of failure in any portion, a vortex will be torn open that seems to bridge the two places across space and time. It requires no magical concentration to maintain, but it requires all the magical power you have spent to remain with it to keep active, until it is dispelled. Anything within the space of the vortex will be torn in two by the act, and quite possibly destroyed by the Vacuum-Instant of the process."
"This incredibly dangerous, arduous, and all together experimental take on Regalication is the only way I seem to be able to figure that a person could be subject to intentional harm from its casting. It is very difficult, but it also has its uses; long term portals could be kept so long as the mage is alive and doesn't recant the spell. It is also incredibly hard to perform, as even with the benefit of a century's Regalication study to aid in my work, and even greater Divination ability to aid to it, it is an act I do not believe myself capable of performing."
-A Lecture as delivered by Al-Jabar Kasam, High-Librarian and Diplomat with Surna.
Inscription: Not truly a field of magic, Inscription is the art of transcribing the Sigillum, or 'Seals', the written language of magic, onto objects for various uses. All of the items within this art utilize spells from other schools of magic, only in written form.
Scrolls: Scrolls are spells that have been written onto a simple piece of paper, made to be cast instantly, without the need to weave the spell. Scrolls can only be created using specialized ink mixed with flakes of a magically attuned material, such as gold, silver, or even cordonium. Normal ink will not react to a caster and is largely useless. Contrary to popular belief, Scrolls require energy for a mage to cast, as the scroll must receive magical energy before activating. Upon use, the scroll will quickly burn away, crumbling to ashes in only a few seconds, normal paper unable to withstand being a channel for magical energy.
Wards: Wards are sigillum that have been written or cast upon a surface to protect an area or object. There are two types of wards - temporary and permanent. Temporary wards can be cast using conventional spells, to operate within a given area. Permanent wards must be written in a magical metal, such as gold, and built directly into the object. Once activated, temporary wards leave a large scorch mark on the object which they were cast - permanent wards leave no such mark and can be triggered again and again.
Enchantments: Enchantments are spells that have been built into an object such as sword, shield, or other piece of equipment. Expensive and powerful, enchantments place spells under the power of even those that cannot use magic. Enchanted items must be forged out of the finest magical metals; otherwise, the enchantment will have no effect or even violently explode. Of special note are golems and their more sophisticated brethren, constructs. Using spells and theory from the school of animancy, golems and constructs are automata, forged from inanimate materials, and given life through enchantments. One who enchants objects is called an artifacer. The greatest artifacers in the world are the Dvergar, masters of both engineering, metalworking, and enchanting.
