A System For Magic
24/05/2019 23:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bateliteSomeone I love dearly has been thinking about worldbuilding something involving dragons and magic. I wrote out this explanation of a justification for magic that I had form years ago, and over the years. It is meant to be for a webcomic, but I once started drawing the first page and soon ceased. I would like to try it again at some point though.
---
"
So the idea I had with the webcomic:
I'll address potential ideas if you want to adapt this in part below this lengthy explanation.
---
You know E=mc²? The fundamental idea is that people (and animals, and plants maybe, both to an extent) can directly tap into that relation.
(If you don't, it's about the relation between energy (E) and mass (m).
c is the speed of light which is a lot, which becomes a fuckton when squared, and thus mass is equal to a fuckton of energy.)
Life has early on developed a way to turn energy into mass and back.
(that's more or less just mind powers, no explanation because it'd break down _somewhere_. The idea is that by keeping explanations to E=mc² you have a more or less consistent set of rules following from that.)
People can harness solid matter (no fluids for my canon) into energy that is stored in a sort of aura or objects maybe.
I was thinking metals conduct magicised energy well so that if you have a metal spike at the end of something, you can use that to focus energy into a beam more easily -> wands and staves and what else you can think of, but a lot can be done by hand. They're tools, but not necessities.
Energy can be channelled into other things or turned back into manifesting matter. The conversion depends on the atomic/elemental mass of what you make. A volume of charcoal (so carbon) converted turns into a smaller volume of lead (which is denser). But if anyone expects me to accurately calculate these things in practise is going to be disappointed.
Drawing energy directly from the environment isn't possible, so any heat losses are irretrievable.
Contrary to some settings, everyone has at least some aptitude for magic and it is commonly thought to an extent. (Thinking teaching usually starts before age 10, or species equivalent.)
Dumping a lot of energy into something is one of the easiest things you can do, so fire is an unfortunate starting point. If you have a bit of carrier/flammable material floating in front of you or in your hand, you simply toss it forwards with an overload of energy (heat) and thus a fireball is born.
I don't know if there'd be disabled people in a magical sense, because this concept is from before that sort of thinking came to the front of my mind.
Everyone also has, by way of evolution and possibly augmented by themselves, a natural magical defense. This is practically so that people will have to use attacks and projectiles for combat. I don't want any snarky "Just turn the foe's heart to gold and you win" type shite. I think my idea was that the energy aura was also a defensive buffer to nullify incoming raw magic (like fireballs and directed winds).
I'm thinking people know well how dangerous magic can be (what with all the 8 year olds who can made fireballs at will, they are *well instructed* to be careful), so they wouldn't necessarily use it trivially.
---
So, both future things to ponder and thing in which you may or may not want to deviate from the above:
-I realise that you could just absorb clumps of rock or earth for effectively free energy. This may be a problem.
-You could allow harnessing energy liquids. I wouldn't think gases are a good idea, I created the "energy isn't directly collectable" as a means to stop people getting energy out of thin air.
-If you want to keep the stereotypical dragons hoarding precious materials, maybe . Maybe they have collected the stuff because a huge pile of gold will interact with energy (heat) in the air and dragons like the feel of that, or (historically, or now still?) for political reasons (pacifism).
-Absorbing is probably easy, but doing so selectively might not be? TBH the specifics of what is harder qua skill is something I'm not that far in yet. I'm thinking manifesting
-I'm thinking there'd have to be some limiting factor for why people don't use magic to replace certain trades outright, but maybe still using magic to aid in them. I'm thinking that manifesting fully-manufactured materials is hard and above all, too slow for stuff you need large quantities of. But a weaver might use magic pulls and pushes (well, levitating and moving stuff) to controll a loom at high speed and less effort.
None of this is actually meant as expecting you to go with my idea, mind.
"
---
"
So the idea I had with the webcomic:
I'll address potential ideas if you want to adapt this in part below this lengthy explanation.
---
You know E=mc²? The fundamental idea is that people (and animals, and plants maybe, both to an extent) can directly tap into that relation.
(If you don't, it's about the relation between energy (E) and mass (m).
c is the speed of light which is a lot, which becomes a fuckton when squared, and thus mass is equal to a fuckton of energy.)
Life has early on developed a way to turn energy into mass and back.
(that's more or less just mind powers, no explanation because it'd break down _somewhere_. The idea is that by keeping explanations to E=mc² you have a more or less consistent set of rules following from that.)
People can harness solid matter (no fluids for my canon) into energy that is stored in a sort of aura or objects maybe.
I was thinking metals conduct magicised energy well so that if you have a metal spike at the end of something, you can use that to focus energy into a beam more easily -> wands and staves and what else you can think of, but a lot can be done by hand. They're tools, but not necessities.
Energy can be channelled into other things or turned back into manifesting matter. The conversion depends on the atomic/elemental mass of what you make. A volume of charcoal (so carbon) converted turns into a smaller volume of lead (which is denser). But if anyone expects me to accurately calculate these things in practise is going to be disappointed.
Drawing energy directly from the environment isn't possible, so any heat losses are irretrievable.
Contrary to some settings, everyone has at least some aptitude for magic and it is commonly thought to an extent. (Thinking teaching usually starts before age 10, or species equivalent.)
Dumping a lot of energy into something is one of the easiest things you can do, so fire is an unfortunate starting point. If you have a bit of carrier/flammable material floating in front of you or in your hand, you simply toss it forwards with an overload of energy (heat) and thus a fireball is born.
I don't know if there'd be disabled people in a magical sense, because this concept is from before that sort of thinking came to the front of my mind.
Everyone also has, by way of evolution and possibly augmented by themselves, a natural magical defense. This is practically so that people will have to use attacks and projectiles for combat. I don't want any snarky "Just turn the foe's heart to gold and you win" type shite. I think my idea was that the energy aura was also a defensive buffer to nullify incoming raw magic (like fireballs and directed winds).
I'm thinking people know well how dangerous magic can be (what with all the 8 year olds who can made fireballs at will, they are *well instructed* to be careful), so they wouldn't necessarily use it trivially.
---
So, both future things to ponder and thing in which you may or may not want to deviate from the above:
-I realise that you could just absorb clumps of rock or earth for effectively free energy. This may be a problem.
-You could allow harnessing energy liquids. I wouldn't think gases are a good idea, I created the "energy isn't directly collectable" as a means to stop people getting energy out of thin air.
-If you want to keep the stereotypical dragons hoarding precious materials, maybe . Maybe they have collected the stuff because a huge pile of gold will interact with energy (heat) in the air and dragons like the feel of that, or (historically, or now still?) for political reasons (pacifism).
-Absorbing is probably easy, but doing so selectively might not be? TBH the specifics of what is harder qua skill is something I'm not that far in yet. I'm thinking manifesting
-I'm thinking there'd have to be some limiting factor for why people don't use magic to replace certain trades outright, but maybe still using magic to aid in them. I'm thinking that manifesting fully-manufactured materials is hard and above all, too slow for stuff you need large quantities of. But a weaver might use magic pulls and pushes (well, levitating and moving stuff) to controll a loom at high speed and less effort.
None of this is actually meant as expecting you to go with my idea, mind.
"
