Magic is the lifeblood of Thelemar - older than the gods, lost in the Collapse, and rediscovered piece by piece in the ages since. This page is the hub for how magic works in the world: its history, its many forms, the laws that govern it, and its place among the gods.
The History of Magic
In the beginning, the world was almost one with the Astral. Magic was second nature to mortals, and their words alone could shape the reality around them. The world they built - the Empire - was a world of everyday magic. Magical research was rare, for there was little need of it, yet it yielded astonishing results that could never be reproduced in the age after the Eye.
No one knows exactly what the explosion did to the world - whether it drew the world away from the Astral, or whether the connection itself was tainted - but mortals could no longer simply speak to cast. Centuries later a new order arose, called the Watchers, who found a way to wield a new magic unlike anything before it, one that resembled the strange powers of certain monsters more than any familiar sorcery. With the fall of the Watchers their magic was lost, and to this day its secret remains hidden and obscure.
During that same age the gods entered the world and began granting their power to mortals. These mortals - the priests and holy warriors who devoted themselves to the gods’ service - gained a magic reminiscent of the magic before the Collapse, though far weaker, and wholly dependent on the gods to function.
The bards were the first to rediscover the ancient magic, using song and music to reach the source and making up for what was lost with a spark of the new magic that none had known before the explosion. After them came the wizards, who used their minds to crack the secrets of reaching and shaping magic, much as the few researchers of the Imperial age once had. In time, people began to appear with an inborn gift for casting - some claiming an ancient bond with mighty dragons, others a tie to the new magic born of the Collapse, and many for other reasons besides. What they all shared was the ease with which the magic came to them, and so they were called sorcerers.
But the world is never free of mystery, and alongside it many wondrous things arose. One such is the power of the warrior-monks, who hold that the ancient gods of India helped them develop fighting arts that reach an inner energy, forging power out of the monk’s own training and talent. This is an ability latent in every creature, yet exceedingly hard to draw out, and utterly unlike magic - as proof, spells that block or dispel other magic have no effect on it at all.
Another kind of power, a dread variation upon the magic of the gods, is the warlock: those who strike pacts with powerful beings to win power of their own, and in the bargain gamble away their free will and their souls.
Finally, one cannot speak of magic without naming the House. It is not a magic in its own right, but a horrifying fusion of beings from the lower worlds with mortals through dark rituals; the House of Horrors holds within it many magical powers, which its blood-hunters wield.
The Big Ideas of Magic
Body and Soul
Every being has a genetic makeup, sort of a code that defines the natural course it could grow. This genetic makeup isn’t a perfect map of the future, but rather a database filled with possibilities. Different life events can steer a creature in a different direction, but in general the future is within these limits. Now, this genetic makeup sets the limit on body and mind, that is clear. But souls are also affected by it. Essentially, a soul is the drive behind the body and mind. Neither is solely the self - a soul is a spark of mannerism, interests, ideals and inclinations that inhibits a body. When the body grows, so does the soul, and it changes with it. That is why magic involving the transfer of souls is very hard to perform - a real soul is not actually a consciousness by itself. A soul inhibits a body only when the genetic makeup and the soul match - there are different souls, with different inclinations, but also different potentials. The soul of a dragon, for example, needs to fit a body and mind very different from that of a human, or cat. Through life, souls grow and change. When a creature dies, it’s soul travels into Yumi, the land of the dead. In the process, the soul is dissolved, and much of its growth is stripped and becomes part of the energy that holds the prime, ethereal and astral connected and functioning. The soul retains within it the genetic makeup of the body it inhibited for the next 200 years, after which it becomes a free soul and can once again be reborn into a body. The only change is that the amount of growth stripped of it may be smaller or greater than the amount gained, in which case the soul may be reborn into a different type of creature.
Power
Power (or magic, most commonly called) is the ability to do that which is not dictated by the genetic makeup. Little power lets you perform small feats, more power - bigger feats.
The problem with power is that, by definition, it’s beyond the capability of body and soul. Now, clearly there is such a thing as too much power - a mage who is struggling to cast a cantrip that will attempt to cast a wish spell may burn into a crisp.
But the real problem of power is that there is nothing stopping a creature from acquiring it. The genetic makeup is defining what a creature can grow into naturally, but power is from sources foreign to the makeup.
For example, most humans can learn magic, despite arcane magic being completely outside the genetic makeup. When a creature gains power, his soul needs to grow in unforeseen ways to adjust to the power. Small amounts usually come with no ill effect, sometimes even making the descendants of the creature who gained it have a genetic makeup more suitable for power of this type.
But, the more power, the more the soul needs to grow, and this leads to problems. Usually parts of the creatures personality, inclinations, ideals and mannerisms are greatly exaggerated, to the point where it is no longer itself, but a caricature made of broad ideas and drives.
The Legal Status of Magic
While most spells serve the daily life of citizens or the waging of wars, a handful have drawn the scrutiny of every ruler in the world. These are deemed an affront to society, and their use is restricted across Thelemar into four tiers of illegality, each with its own punishment:
- Tier I - Dangerous. Not truly disruptive; using or possessing them unregistered usually brings a fine. (Disguise Self, Alter Self.)
- Tier II - Disruptive. Use may bring capital punishment, though possession is permitted with a proper licence for specific purposes such as research. (Suggestion, Detect Thoughts, Fast Friends, Distort Value.)
- Tier III - Dangerous and extreme. Both possessing and using them may bring capital punishment. (Modify Memory, Dominate Person, Mass Suggestion, Geas.)
- Tier IV - Evil. Use or possession brings death - and the killing of someone who uses or possesses them is no crime at all. (Summon Lesser Demons, Summon Greater Demon, Infernal Calling, Summon Fiend.)
Cantrips are exempt from the list: most common cantrips occur naturally in the Children of the Empire, so banning them would be impossible - though wielding certain ones still carries social consequences. Context matters too: a spell not on the list can still be illegal in its use, such as casting Animate Dead in a public cemetery. Individual realms add their own rules - most famously the Stell Harness of the Holy Theocracy and the crusade of its Inquisition.
Views on Magic
Magic is inseparable from life in Thelemar - every Child of the Empire is born with some - yet it was also, in part, the cause of The Collapse and the making of the horrors, and so it is regarded with deep ambivalence. No school is condemned outright, but Enchantment draws the most universal suspicion, followed closely by Necromancy (reviled for its ties to undeath) and Illusion (distrusted as a mere tool of deception).
Magic and the Divine
Much magic flows from the gods, and a mortal’s standing with their deity is measured in Favour - earned through prayer, sacrifice, and devotion, and rising through the ranks of Devotee, Votary, Disciple, Apostle, and the rare Champion. Its mirror is Malice, the mounting wrath of an offended god, climbing from Disfavour through Displeasure, Ire, and Fury to full Wrath - and atoned only through quests and penance.
Notable Spells and Their Makers
Much of Thelemar’s magic was discovered and codified by named spellwrights - and even by dragons. See Notable Spells of Thelemar for a catalogue of the famous named spells and the mages and wyrms credited with their creation.
Unique Types of Magic
Prophetic Powers
Prophecies are not what they seem. While Fate is a tangible concept in Thelemar, the ability to actually view it is does not exist in a straightforward manner. In fact, aside from the magic of the goddesses of faith themselves, no magic actually looks at faith to tell the future.
Instead, we look for the world of dreams, the Dreamtime.
This elusive plane is not only a nexus of shared dreams, but something more eldritch and inscrutable, a plane that is a bridge between all possible planes. In it, one can see the worlds that could have been but weren’t, or the worlds that might one day be. But to be able so do requires powers unique and rare.
A person with the gift of prophecy has an innate, often instinctual connection to the Dreamtime, which they use to search the vastness of possibility and see glimpses of planes that are close to their own. Close, but shifted - where the flow of time was faster, where the present they will see corresponds to their own future.
Due to the instinctual nature of this ability, the prophet often does not know much about the actual likelihood of the future they see, only that it is the most possible one, the closest to their own. Mild variations are possible and to be expected, but larger ones are unlikely.
That is, unless the prophet intervenes. Due to the nature of their abilities, once they have seen a possibility they can act in ways that defy it, steering their future to a less likely outcome. This of course relies on their ability to affect events - the more power the prophet has, the more they can steer the threads of possibility in a different direction; as such, immensly powerful beings like gods might have a hard time not affecting these strands of likelihood, and their fortellings might actually prove less dependable then those of mere mortals.
However, more powerful prophets often posses the ability to not just receive visions, but seek them out; they can query the possibilities, see how likely they are, feel the actual differences from their own plane. They can look for visions of specific events and their outcomes, learn of widely different worlds and what have led them down their path, see things thought impossible by all others. The only limit on their abilities is the single point of origin that never changes - the fall of the empire.
Due to their ability to modify fate, prophets are often very careful with the information they dispense; There is no value to seeing a future if you accidentally make it not come to pass. And so, many speak in riddles and obtuse statements, parceling information in droplets as to not drown out the future that theu have seen.
Other forms of prophecy exists - spells that tell the future or provide some foresight, manners such as palm or tarot, bone casting and tea reading. When true magic is involved, there is always the same source - the Dreamtime.