Magic (Khrrck)
This article deals with Magic as it relates to NationStates and Khrrck. For more general information, see the Wikipedia article on Magic.
This article is horribly written yet contains some good ideas. I can't stand to edit it myself - but if anyone wanted to volunteer I'd be very, very grateful. Mostly one-sentence-paragraph and punctuation problems, but fix it up as you see fit. Khrrck 00:04, 12 November 2006 (GMT)
Magic: Part I
Magic Is Not A Constant
Magic is not uniform. Different areas have widely differing magic levels. Space has, on average, very low levels. Earth's magic level varies from none at all to some areas which are soaked in it.
A given mage can only handle a specific amount of power. While this "cap" increases slightly with experience, it is still basically limited.
Magic levels don't affect the amount of power available; rather, they increase what you can do with a given amount. Experience also helps when using magic.
For example, let's say it takes X magic for a beginner to light a candle. With the same amount of magic, a master could set fire to an entire tree.
Magery And Wizardry
Magic in Khrrck takes two basic forms. Magery, or "Elementalism", taps the four primary elements and the many secondary ones to accomplish feats.
Wizardry, or "Chaotic Magic", taps the Chaos underlying space itself. In wizardry, cause does not always produce the expected effect, and humongous feats are possible with very little effort. However, wizardry has a random nature; failures and backfires are common.
The Elements And Their Uses
Primary Elements: Earth (Usually used for rock-shaping, mine-scouting, and healing.) Air (Usually used for winds, levitation, and shielding.) Fire (Useful for all sorts of destruction, and heating objects.) Water (Useful for cooling and freezing objects, walking on water, etc.)
Most Wyrms specialize primarily in Earth, and secondarily in Air.
Secondary Elements: Air + Fire = Light (Used for illumination and illusion)
Earth + Fire = Electricity (Used with electronic devices, and for lightning.)
Water + Fire = Smoke (Used in illusion, though not as often as Light, and for stealth-magic, such as blurring.)
Air + Water = Storm (Used for weather-control.)
Air + Earth = Metal (Metal is used for mage-smithing, Sharpening, and Hardening.)
Water + Earth = Acid (Used for attacking, mostly.)
Earth + Air + Fire + Water = Space (Used whenever it becomes necessary to mess with the fabric of the universe.)
So, Let's Say You Want To...
Levitate a pebble? Use Air. Or bend a spoon, perhaps? Use Earth. You want to burn your enemies? Use Fire. Want to make it rain? Use Storm. Need to blast those rocks out of the way? Use Earth and Air. Want to smite someone with lightning? Use Electricity and Air. Want to remove that annoying bush from the rest of the universe? Use Space.
Now, About Wizardry...
There is no specific "set of rules" for wizardry. Basically, you experiment, and see which actions lead to which causes. There's a few theories about the functions of wizardry, but none of them explain everything. So experiment, and try not to kill yourself.
Spells And How They Work
Spells are best thought of as something like an electronic device.
I'll use toast as an example.
You could make toast by sticking some bread on the end of a fork and holding it in front of a fire, but that's difficult and you're liable to get burned.
With a toaster, however, all you have to do is feed it electricity and it'll toast your bread for you, much better than you could have done yourself.
The same is true of spells.
You could, for instance, levitate a rock without a spell. But that requires good concentration, and you'll have to compensate for every gust of wind that comes your way, as well as many other factors.
With a spell, all you have to do is weave its structure, feed it magic, and it'll do the rest for you. You can even keep it in a crystal, so you only have to cast it once.
How To Store Magic
And this brings us to storage. Magic can be stored in the proper container. A simple metal "bottle" will work for storing small amounts of raw magic, but a spell would disintegrate in a bottle if you didn't keep a close eye on it and maintain it.
Crystals, however, with their structured lattice of atoms, allow you to "hang" a spell in the lattice, where it will stay without degrading. They can also hold more magic than a simple bottle, storing it in the spaces between atoms.
Certain elements are faster to degrade than others. Earth spells can hang around for weeks without degrading, and Water spells will stay for a few days before dissolving. Even Air spells will stick around for a few hours.
However, spells made with Fire, the most volatile element, tend to evaporate if left unattended for more than a few minutes.
Spells take time to cast, and so some magic-users prefer using raw magic, rather than taking the time to cast spells.
What Magic Looks Like
Magic when used can look like pretty much anything. However, raw magic has certain colours, like so;
Earth = Green Air = Yellow Water = Blue Fire = Red
Magic and Machines
In Khrrck, magic is often used to enhance or complement technology. A good example is the KASS missile, which combines a magical warhead with a modern radar-guided missile.
A machine of sufficient complexity suffers odd effects when exposed to magic. Fighter planes and ships, for instance, acquire a sort of sentience, ranging from a sort of vague intelligence to, in the case of fighter aircraft, a complete personality, capable of outperforming most pilots.
Common Uses of Magic
Metal is often used to Sharpen blades. A properly Sharpened blade will cut rock with ease.
Metal is also used to Harden a Wyrm's scales, or armor. If done right, Hardened scales will stop bullets. (As long as the bullets aren't fired at close range.)
Smoke and Light is used to blur a mage's outline and fade him into the background, making him hard to see. Blurring ranges from simple blurriness to near-invisibility, including radar stealth.
Part II: Magical Critters
Dragons
The dragon, or at least the form of dragon found on the Wyrms' long-lost homeworld, is very dangerous, even without magical training.
A untrained dragon still has magical ability. Firebreathing is merely summoning pure Fire from the ether. A dragon couldn't fly without magic.
Dragons are also extremely strong, and can take serious injuries that would have killed lesser beings. Add the fact that dragons are armed with some very sharp talons and teeth, and you've got a major problem on your hands.
When trained in magic, however, the dragon becomes deadly.
Let's describe magic as being like electricity for a moment. It isn't true, but it allows a nice analogy.
The average mage puts out about the equivalent of a diesel generator. Compared to that, a adult dragon is a fully-fledged nuclear reactor.
Dragons aren't particularly good at precision magic, and their spells tend to be sloppy. But they make up for that with sheer force of magic.
A magically trained dragon has everything from gale-force winds to lightning* at his disposal. None of these attacks are as useful or effective as flame, but each fills a little niche; for instance, winds are particularly effective against flying objects.
- Arced between the wingtips, not called from the sky.
Part III: Everything Else
Information in this section doesn't always apply. The section on intrinsic magic, for instance, is useless unless I'm employing magical creatures in a RP.
Intrinsic and Normal Magic
Some creatures don't merely use magic; they are magic. Let's take the dragon as an example.
Dragons can fly. Since something the size of a dragon usually has no buisness flying, dragons have built-in Air magic that allows them to fly. Thousands of years of evolution have hammered this "intrinsic" magic into every particle of the dragons' bodies. It's impossible to interfere with it, short of killing the dragon. However, a dragon still can't fly if it's exhausted, injured, or otherwise incapacitated.
Mage-smithing
Mage-smithing is using magic to reshape metal into new forms. Simple.
The substance doesn't necessarily have to be metallic, but metals are much easier to reshape than more complex substances, such as rock.
Mage-smithing can be performed with Earth, and in fact Earth is best for altering nonmetallic substances, but Metal is best for reshaping (you guessed it) metals.
Shapeshifting
Is it possible? Yes. No. Maybe.
It all depends on your value of "yes". If you mean, for example, "Can a mage transform himself into a pig?", no.
If you mean "Can a mage alter the shape of his body?", yes.
Total shapeshifting is theoretically possible, and practically impossible. Nobody's been mad enough to try it.
However, Wyrms have an advantage in altering their own bodies. Since their skeletons are metallic, they can use mage-smithing to mold their skeleton and claws into new shapes.
Actual skeletal reforming is much more difficult than just altering the shape of a claw, since when the skeleton changes to any significant degree, the musculature has to change also.
Since muscles are so much more complex than metal, they are much harder to reshape. A exceptional mage could theoretically do this, but reshaping muscles also requires large amounts of power; more than any mage could provide.
Seeing The Future
You're all familiar with the analogy; time as a straight line, beginning at the Big Bang and heading off to who-knows-where.
Khrrck's mages have discovered that time is more of an infinitely steep slope than a straight, level line.
At the bottom of the slope is the Past, and the Big Bang. The slope extends infinitely, straight up towards the Future. As a result, two things become apparent.
- The energy required to haul anything (even a single photon) up the time-slope from the Past is infinite, or at least so near infinite to make no difference.
- The energy generated by dislodging anything from the Future and dropping it down to the Present is infinite as well. Infinite energy doesn't fit into this universe's laws of physics, and the universe reacts to it by removing it, and a good deal of the surrounding area, from the universe. Permanently.
"Why not use the energy generated by dropping something from the future to lift something from the past?" I hear you cry. One reason. Any movement through time happens instantaneously.
For that to work, you'd need to time it with perfect precision. Even the smallest error in timing would result in either:
- The attempt to haul something from the Past occurs before the thing from the Future arrives. The attempt to haul something from the Past fails, and the infinite energy concentration that arrives moments later removes you from the universe.
- The attempt to drop something from the Future occurs first. Hello, infinite energy; goodbye you.
Due to quantum mechanics, perfect precision is impossible. Ergo, time travel is impossible, right?
Not really.
If you could somehow curcumvent the slope, stepping off it at one point and stepping back on at another, you could travel through time without having to deal with all those messy infinities. However, this is very difficult, and has never been accomplished, to the best of our knowledge.
Suggestions are welcome, but I think it's pretty complete already. Do ask if you want to use this system, OK? I'm rather fond of it.
