Otonia ◐’s jaw dropped wide opened, her tongue lolling out. The Fell magic uses experience? XP?!

“I see I’ve confused you,” her mother offered. “Let me start from the beginning,” she said, then cleared her throat.

“In the beginning, as the World was cooling down from its creation—”

Wow, that is the beginning.

“—the raw materials of life were just about to come together. The World was flooded with aether, the energy of beginning. Together, these two things enticed the first portals to open to the home realm of souls.”

“What! Like the Eldritch?!”

“I’m coming to that. Don’t interrupt. Ah hem. Attracted by the basic building blocks of life and the aether, the first souls came to this World and in binding themselves to these materials, the first life was created. At first, these were just simple things. Microorganisms, molds, mildew. And the very smallest of souls, just little specks, would bring these to life. But as these first simple lifeforms lived, their souls would process the aether into experience as they lived.”

So weird, Otonia thought.

“Before I continue, I must digress to discuss the nature of souls.”

Wow, Mom really sounds like a lecturer.

“We do not know much about them except what we can observe about them while they are here in the World. But what we do know is this: Souls are not native to this plane of existence. They are energy constructs that seek out organic materials and invigorate life into them so that the souls may gain experience and, upon death, return to their home plane with that experience.”

Well that’s a bummer.

“Nor are they sapient, in the strictest sense. This is because a soul does not hold any memories, and thus it lacks personality.”

What?! But how does [Reincarnator] work then?

“However, it is a very good decisionmaker, though this varies from soul to soul. A soul with great wisdom can make good, virtuous decisions; in contrast, a soul with low charisma cannot avoid the attraction and temptation of making bad decisions.

Wait? That sounds like WIS and CHA. What in the Pantheon?!

“In a sense, a soul is like a hunter gathering berries from the woods. But without intelligence or personality. But instead, the soul seeks to gather experience to return to their home plane. What happens there, we do not know.”

Spooky.

“Now, while a soul’s purpose—for lack of a better word—is to return with experience, that does not mean that the experience is statically accumulated throughout the life lived. Instead, starting from the earliest lifeforms, experience in the soul allowed the lifeforms to exert their will upon reality. At first, this was a simple thing, running faster, biting harder. Perhaps camouflage to hide better. Or perhaps to improve one’s species, so that the next generation would be even better. In any event, as life flourished and evolved into larger and more complex forms, larger souls would come to animate them.”

So bigger life needs bigger souls.

“But soon the first thinking animals—and later, thinking plants—appeared. And with them, the ability of life to exert its will on the World increased exponentially. This was the original magic, sometimes called the true magic or greater magic, though we usually just refer to it as magic, without the qualifiers.”

Huh.

“Modern scholars divide magic into six schools, but these are mere conceptual organizers, and do not reflect any innate division in what magic can be accomplished with experience.”

What?! There’s no actual division between magic types?!

“First is Conjuration. This is the magic of using experience in order to create matter. Water. Iron. Salt. Or at the higher levels, even something complex like sugar.”

So like [Icebolt] or [Fireball]. Actually, I’ve got a ton of these that just… makes stuff.

“Second is Divination, sometimes called Metamagic. This is magic of information processing. This allows you to send messages. Or scry a place. Or locate a person or thing. It’s also the magic that allows your magic to talk to other parts of your magic, including such things are conditions or timers.”

So like [All Seeing Sky], but that’s really rare. Or maybe even something as basic as [Skin Sight] would count? I don’t know any messaging magics though, unless [Speak with Elves] counts. But I do have some locating and detecting magics.

“Third is Enchantment. This is the magic of binding magic to either a non-living object or a living thing. The enchantment includes not only the magic effect, but also a fair bit of divination magic to have it act just the way desired.”

That sounds pretty familiar. Except for binding to a living thing! That’s crazy. How would that even work…

“Fourth is Evocation, though we usually just call it Manipulation these days. Whereas conjuration creates material, manipulation is imparting energy into a material to manipulate it. Whether you’re flinging conjured material at an enemy to attack, or carving a statue, or heating a pot of water.”

Oh, wow, that covers a lot of the magic I know. Plus it illustrates that [Icebolt] and [Fireball] are definitely a mix then between evocation and conjuration.

“Fifth is Illusion. This is the magic of feeding false information to a soul in order to deceive the life that it lives in.”

Oh. So that’s how my illusions worked. Well, assuming that System even worked the same way as this ‘true magic’. Actually, does the System use any of this? Ah! So many questions.

“Sixth is Transformation, though more properly called Animation. But, as the school only has a single application, most people think animation is too broad a term, practically speaking, and so narrow it down to transformation. This is the school concerned with altering either the body or soul.”

Uhh, maybe like Krateros’ [Shapeshifter]? Not many analogies I can think of here.

“With the rise of sapients—thinking people—life continued on the World much as it had. They hunted when they were hungry. They danced when they were happy. They slept when they were tired. They just did it a bit better as they were able to apply their thinking minds to create even better magics.”

“But soon people discovered something that would change the World: That they could harvest experience from other souls by killing the vessel and stripping it off of the loosed soul.”

Oh, crap.

“The bloodshed started. The greatest killers rising to the top on a sea of corpses. For ten thousand years, all that mattered was who was the greatest slayer. When they were done, the victors carved up the planet into ten thousand fiefdoms, where they reigned supreme, absolute dictators. They cared naught for others, even of their own species, instead raising them like cattle for the slaughter, but for experience rather than meat. These warlords were called ‘titans’ for they towered unsurpassable over the other members of their species, who in turn were called ‘mortals,’ for to the titans, they were good for nothing except dying.”

At that, Otonia’s mother fell silent for a long minute. Then two. Then five. Finally, Otonia asked, “And what about us?”

Orthia smiled with pride. “We were better, of course. We never fell to the temptations of murder as the other species did. Instead, we learned and taught one another, and through that we all grew stronger. As the people of the World raged, we were the unflappable buttress. Well, us and the Guardians.”

“The Guardians?”

“Yes, though for a different reason. While we intrinsically were social creatures, who prioritized society above individual glory, we did not fall for such temptations. On the other hand, the Guardians did not fall to such temptations for two different reasons. First, Guardians have immensely powerful souls that gather incredible amounts of experience. Because of that, even if they sought to harvest experience by killing others, almost any other creature would provide hardly any profit, unless it was a Guardian. And this brings us to the second point. Guardians have never been numerically large. For them, each death is keenly felt and though not naturally predisposed to be social, they have enough wisdom to realize that shrinking their already small mating pool would be a fool’s errand.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“That though didn’t keep the titans from trying to kill the Guardians. And while many titans died foolishly in the attempts, enough succeeded that the Guardians came to us for help. For while the Guardians have deep wells of experience from which to empower their magic, their skill was raw and untamed. And so we agreed to teach them the high magics we had learned and refined. In turn, they agreed that they would forever guard our home.”

“Where is our home?”

“It’s a cluster of the highest mountains of the World. Perhaps one day you will visit the edge and can look out. It’s quite the view.”

So we are at The Top of the World!

“But I got off track. Where was I? Oh, yes. These titans had carved up the World into ten thousand fiefdoms. And though they grew fat oppressing their own, in some respect, it was an economically poor era for titans when it came to experience. Part of the problem was they were never particularly efficient in harvesting experience from the souls of the dead. But the bigger part of the problem was that the iron grip they ruled with over their subjects weakened themselves as the generations of mortals passed. In fear of being harvested by their overlords, many mortals did all they could do to avoid gaining experience and, so they hoped, thus avoid being selected for execution and metaphorical or sometimes literal consumption. And thus as a rule, there was a downward spiral in the rate at which titans could gather XP.”

Fancy that.

“Though sometimes that general rule was broken. Occasionally, a true talent would arise from the mortals and would gain enough experience in secret to overthrow the local titan. Sadly, though they had been oppressed by their predecessor, and knew what their fellow mortals suffered, with the progression to immortal titan, these new powers by and large continued to oppression of their forebears.”

Wow, that’s terrible. So much for new hope.

“But, by and large, the aggregate power of the titans was falling.”

“Eventually though, the bastards found a ‘solution.’ First, on the island of Beginning, a particularly savvy titan cast a large-scale enchantment over the entirety of his lands. The enchantment would hook itself in all the souls it found within his fiefdom: plants, animals, and, most importantly, the sapient mortals. Then, when the souls processed aether into experience, the enchantment would harvest the experience without killing the host. With the enchantment in place, the local titan ceased the regular killing of his people.”

Ooh, clever.

“No longer in fear of being killed merely to be consumed, the mortals thereunder had a tremendous boom of experience, and while the enchantment was still inefficient at harvesting experience, the boom still translated into a great empowerment for the titan. Now gathering experience in real time from thousands of sapients, and tens of thousands of lesser souls, the titan prospered and soon declared himself a god above all other titans.”

Wow.

“With his new power, he began conquering nearby strongholds, executing the titan there and the few loyal to him, while expanding the enchantment and subsuming the new population into his power apparatus. Other titans though soon figured out what he had done and some eventually learned how to repeat it themselves, or at least something similar enough. Nonetheless, the great race in power had begun. And after a thousand years of war, the ten thousand titans had been whittled down to a mere hundred or so tyrants who fancied themselves gods. This was the First War of the Gods.”

Wow. The Second War of the Gods was mere legend even back in Amelia’s day. I’m not sure we actually knew anything about the First War.

“Funnily enough, the ‘gods’ of today refer to the ‘gods’ of old as merely ‘demigods’ for they were so much weaker then.”

Why is that funny?

“These powers had reached a new equilibrium however. And for a time the World knew peace.”

“After a few hundred years however, maintaining the separately enchantments on each demigod’s domain grew to be cumbersome, especially as most of them didn’t even understand the enchantments, but just copied it. Soon it grew so bad, that it pushed the demigods to cooperation, forming the Pantheon. Led by the demigoddess Systia, they standardized and reworked their enchantments to link together in a broader system. After a few centuries, it covered nearly the entire World, tapping and tucking itself into every soul it could reach.”

Systia, Systia… Why does that ring a bell?

“With that, another state of equilibrium had been reached.

One day, nearly two centuries later, another clever demigod proposed that they should leave some experience for the mortals, that the enchantment should not strip in realtime all the experience from them. They laughed at first, but he told them a story, an allegory, so convincing that even we later heard the story, though not the name of the one who told it.

Suppose you are an herbivore and your one plant—your sole food source—is a sapling with ten leaves. The leaves on the tree help the tree feed itself and grow even more leaves. And so, for every leaf left on the tree the day before, there would be one more leaf added the next day. As the herbivore, how should you act? You could eat all ten, but then your sapling would not grow any more leaves. You could eat five leaves, and then there would be ten the next day as well, which you could repeat to have five leaves every day. But what if you ate only four leaves? Then on the next day you would have twelve leaves. And then you could eat six leaves every day indefinitely if you so wished, and that one leaf you skipped on the first day would be made up immediately. Or you could continue to eat less than half, and so your source of food would continue to grow.”

This sounds like a really basic economics argument. Were the old gods really mostly dumb brutes?

“And so the demigod argued: ‘We’ve been taking all the leaves from the mortals. And yes while we should take our tithe, if we left some experience for them, they would surely accumulate even more experience, strengthened as they would be. And should they fail, then we would collect it all at their death anyways.’

After much debate, the Pantheon agreed and instructed Systia to make the changes to the World enchantment. And with the change, the Pantheon flourished, so that the demigods began to stylize themselves true ‘gods’ and their forebears mere ‘demigods.’ This was the beginning of the System.”

Systia… System! That’s where it’s from.

“We don’t understand it much, but over time the System evolved, changing how it empowered mortals. But change it did, and soon there were mortals powerful enough that they could have challenged the titans of old.

Then, four and a half centuries after the System was implemented, there was the Second War of the Gods.

We do not know what instigated it. But we can tell you the end result.

The gods had spent centuries growing in strength without serious internal conflict. And so, on the one hand, most of the Pantheon had lost the arts of battle, and were wholly unprepared when a small group of gods began to slaughter their fellows. And on the other hand, so great was the gods’ power now that the World suffered tremendous collateral damage from the battles that ensued.”

“In less than a year, the war ended as the two sides reached a new equilibrium. The instigators were led by the greater gods known as the All Lord and the Sentinel, and included two lesser gods, Alldir and Argast. Though the All Lord is also known as the Brute or the Deicide. The defensive side was led by the greater god known as the Steward, and included the remaining lesser gods: Adonite, Sturge, Horus, Sleight, Myria and Burgum. In the end, these eleven gods—three greater and eight lesser—are all that remain of the Pantheon today.”

I didn’t know that the Pantheon was divided like that. Sure, I knew of the greater gods known by their titles and the lesser gods known by their names and domains, but not who sided with who during the war.

“But the World was ravaged, and even the instigators realized that their presence in the same place as their source of power was ill-advised. And so they left the World to live on the moon Caelum, creating Deusdomum or Godhome. And in turn, the World they named Ager, or Farm, because they’re a bunch of assholes and we will never call the World that!”

Otonia blinked in wide-eyed surprise at the voluminous outburst during the otherwise neutral storytelling. Eventually, her mother composed herself and continued as if she hadn’t interrupted herself.

“Given the damage to the World, the Pantheon aggressively modified the System in various ways to help the surviving sapients to recover. The time period after the war was known as the Dead Age. And even once the sapient populations stabilized and began growing after a few centuries, changes to the System were relatively frequent.”

Wait, I think that was around when Amelia lived.

“That said, we don’t know much of the details of what happened and when. But we do know that the System eventually implemented a magic system for the sapients caught in the web, giving them their first magic users. When we found out that this happened, we actually mounted an expedition out to investigate.”

Wait! She’s definitely talking about the rise of the [Mages] just before I was Amelia!

“I mentioned earlier that souls process aether into experience? Well, this is not a fixed or continuous process. Instead, the process only succeeds if the lifeform—well—experiences something novel. If that does not happen, then the aether is still transformed by the soul, but into a much, much weaker form of energy called mana. And though mana had always existed, no lifeforms had used it and the souls returning to their soul realm had no interest in it.”

Wait, what?

“And yet, when we investigated this new magic, we found that it was mana powered, of all things. We thought it was a joke. This made it far, far weaker, but we were impressed that mana could do any sort of magic at all. We worked out that the mechanisms were derived from true magic, albeit simplified by the System. Ultimately, we decided that while it may have been useful to the mortals subdued by the System, it was ultimately of little use to us.”

I… think I’m offended? Not sure. Wait a minute. “What about the Eldritch? You said you would mention them.”

“Oh, that’s right. Hmm, it was a little over two millennia ago—maybe six centuries after the Second War of the Gods and a few centuries after lesser magic was introduced—that the Eldritch started appearing around the World. They’ve never actually attacked us or the Guardians, but we have investigated them a bit just in case. As far as we can tell, they come from another plane—like souls, but very different—and they come here for experience. But unlike souls, which create life and experience, the Eldritch already have material bodies—but no souls—and cannot create experience. And so, like the titans of old, they seek to kill all life and harvest the experience from the soul after death, though they are much more efficient at it.”

That’s… surprisingly little. But probably for the best. I’m feeling overwhelmed right now. So much of what I thought I knew about the World and its history are untrue or misleading. Ugh, let’s stick to the magic bits.

“So, the history of the World is in part the history of magic, true and lesser?”

“Indeed, little one. Most Fell have at least heard of lesser magic, but it’s considered disreputable. You’ll find few who know anything in detail, let alone how to use it.”

“But the foundations for the two magics are similar?”

“They are.”