Ahh yes everyone, now we come to perhaps this spirit's favorite realm of study. Mortal magic, and it’s evolution. Put at it’s simplest form, magic is the ability to assert one’s soul and will over reality, exchanging mana for the changes you impose. At it’s most complex, it allows one to not just rewrite the normal laws of reality, but to permanently alter them given enough raw power.
Mana is the energy generated by one’s soul. The more Mana one has, the more or stronger magic one can do. Magic itself is the realm of the Astral world, a plane of reality one step above the material, but below the realm of the divine. A dreamlike reflection of the world around it, it is where everyone’s souls truly reside. It is the mind that links one’s soul to the physical world, and one’s body that allows you to convert mana into spells.
The earliest and simultaneously most powerful and most simple form of magic, is simply called Wild Magic. No gestures, no focuses, no magic circles or chants. You simply convert raw willpower into the effects you want to impart, and it takes years or decades of study to be able to do so fast enough for use in battle. For most of history, it was the only form of magic that wasn't granted by divinity, which in of itself was just exchanging faith of a pre-determined effect granted by one’s god.
As people settled, and cities began to form, magic went from the realm of shamans to the realm of scholars. Vast universities formed to study magic, and in turn, created the field of science called ‘Magical Theory’. Yes, in a world where magic exists, it is a form of science, at least by the reasoning of this world.
As Magical Theory began to understand the how and why magic worked, it broke down and understood the steps mana takes to go from inert in one’s soul, to a spell. This process is broken down into three steps, called the Spell Cycle. First one starts at the step of ‘Formation’, visualizing the intent of the spell and the form it will take. Once that idea is centered in the mind of the mage, you move on to ‘Shaping’, opening a channel between mind and soul, pulling in mana, and shaping it for use by the spell. Finally, there is ‘Casting’, where one takes the shaped spell, channels it through their body, and forces it into reality. For sustained magic the process is the same, but Shaping and Casting both must remain active until the caster is done with the spell, rather than simply fire and forget.
With this understood, new ways of expediting the Spell Cycle were discovered and invented, later becoming combined. Chants, gestures, materials, and foci vastly sped up the process, allowing years and decades to become months and years before magic was effective on a battlefield. Chants trained the mind, allowing one to ‘Form’ the spell by simply speaking a phrase, like training muscle memory. Gestures did much the same thing, and combining the two was even more efficient. Materials refers to consuming innately magical items, like powdered Orb Weaver Chitin, with the right elemental properties to ‘Cast’ the spell, acting almost like a lightning rod for the mana so it did not have to travel through one’s body. Foci did the same thing, but rather than being consumed, they were made from stronger material, and typically took the form of rods, staves, and wands.
Combining these ideas came the field of ‘Tamed Magic’. No longer would a stray thought or distraction cause a miscast, or a spell to fail entirely. This led to mages beginning to specialize in fields of study, or specific elements, as different Foci and Materials favored different branches of magic. Thus, mages started to identify as Druids, Evocators, Wizards, Warlocks, Witches, and more.
From here, scholars of magic began to explore more than just Elemental Magic, mana converted to a specific kind of energy to manipulate or summon effects of that kind. Esoteric Magic was born, combining different elements and crafting new spells based on a field of intent or study, with early fields being Healing Magic, Nature Magic, and Conjuration Magic. As research into these broader spectrums continued, eventually forms of magic that combined multiple elements began to be discovered, creating complicated fields that could not be recreated with simple elements.
Most of these did not shake the foundations of magic, but a few would have impacts on the fate of civilizations. Alchemy, Enchantment, Mental Magic, and Contract Magic come to most people’s mind, but Portal, Leyline, and Resurrection magic had their own massive impacts. Most of these are self explanatory. Cheating death, creating new magical materials, reliable creation of magical arms and armor, being able to use the massive stores of energy in the earth itself, and stable long range gateways that allowed one to jump continents are useful no matter who you are.
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What most people aren’t aware of, is that Mental Magic and Contract Magic make the foundations of modern magic, and the Adventurer's Association. All magic that has been seen so far is referred to as ‘Tome Magic’ or ‘Caged Magic’, depending on one’s opinions of it. Mental magic was discovered first, and while it had severe limitations, practitioners of it became master spies, and teachers. Able to copy information from their mind, and impart it to another, including wiping or burying their own memories of information so no amount of torture could make them speak.
It could not take information the user did not know was there, making it impractical as a form of information gathering, but it could force someone to speak only the truth, or to only lie. Some lazy masters would use this to impart their raw knowledge of magic and theory into their students, jumping straight to practical applications, though having the knowledge of something is different than having the wisdom to wield it, or true understanding of what it means.
Still, as with other leaps in magical theory, this led to yet another shortening of the amount of time needed to be able to apply magic to practical situations. This alone was no longer a revolutionary leap, but once contract magic came into being, these two fields combining would once more cause a shift in the paradigm of magic.
Contract Magic was simple at first, simply using magic to enforce the bounds of the contract and it’s penalties, and was only binding if both or all parties signed it of their own accord. Puppeting or mind controlling someone would not activate it, though extortion could trigger it. At first it was often used to enforce peace treaties, or trade treaties, ensuring all parties stuck to their obligations or suffer whatever penalties were listed, which could include death, or instantly alerting other signatories of a breach of contract.
Because an exchange was needed for the magic to take form, there were many different ways this could be triggered. If the ink and/or paper was magical in nation, a simple exchange of signatures and promises would trigger it. If made with mundane materials, some mana and a drop of blood would complete the contract. It was when this was combined with the ability to copy and instantly learn information that magic became the mundane thing it is in the modern day.
By constructing the contract with magical materials, and exchange those materials, some mana, and and a drop of blood, one could instantly learn whatever information was bound in the contract, destroying the physical item in the process. While it has it’s limitations, such as only teaching a spell in one specific form with one specific chant, gestures, and set of effects, it allowed even a lowly soldier to learn basic spells. While those that study theory can take these spells and modify them, even copying ones they know into new contracts to be sold or traded, most don’t realize this and instead believe magic to simply be a set of spells.
These days repositories of contracts with the information are stored by guilds, the Association, and countries across the world. No longer does one have to copy information from their mind, instead they can paste together disparate information, using the contracts to construct new spells never before seen. Bizarre spells, combining elements that can’t usually be used together, have come into being. Like spells of water that burn like fire, healing magic used to destroy, and other things, some amazing others foul, have come into being. With them a slate of new monsters, and new heroes to face them as the world grows ever brighter, and darker in equal measure.
Thus magic came full circle, from a field of rare, barely understood study, to a science, to completely mundane and studied only by scholars most don’t even know exist. Anyone can do magic, but not everyone can understand or shape it. Everyone has seen it, most can use some of it, but almost none understand what it is or where it comes from. It’s study and evolution has stagnated for centuries, but research does still continue. Another breakthrough could once more massively reshape the future of Region 001, and through it, the future of our friends in the tale below.
Next time, alchemy, enchantment, and the workings of anti-magic, the most recent evolution of magic, and one of it’s most poorly understood properties.