Ad naturae magica

Ad Naturae Magica

A primer to magic use in the realm of Dargarth

By Magistrix Morigan of The College of Free Sorcery

We exist in an enchanted world, full of powerful creatures, deathless heros and magical beasts. Within this realm there are many innate magics, which we, being native to this plane, treat as mundane occurrences, but which on many other planes would be considered miraculous. That our heroic spirits return our bodies to life without much loss save a few moments of recollection is the most obvious, as is the magical teleportation of a held weapon from a wounded arm to its unwounded partner, but the invulnerability of feet on the ground, or hands on weapons; or the abilities of some to scale walls, swing across chasms without any rope or attachment; or to repair weapons and armor without tools or materials are all proof of the innate magic of the realm itself.

Now, people may scoff at this claim: that the skills of a fighter or a rogue, or the consistent shield-breaking power of a greatsword are magic -- for they do not chant incantations or invoke spell names or throw balls of gathered twisted mana, but make no mistake, all magic -- from the prayers of a Cleric, the rites of a Druid or Ranger, and incantations of a Mage, all spring from this primal source, this suspension of power and belief that permeates our world -- the mystical aether of this plane: the mana-sphere.

As we reflect upon our experiences of consciousness, of life, and of our magical world, it becomes clear that we exist at the intersection of several planes -- the crossing threads in the sheets of existence. Just as any point can be defined by height, depth and length, so to can our experience be defined by the intersection of Mind Body and Spirit. It is through the relationship of these three aspects that Magic is born: No being can cast without a body to speak with, no body can cast without a spirit to animate it, and no one can warp mana without a mind to hold intention.

Magic then can be defined as the alignment Mind Body and Spirit to cause a willful manipulation of the mana-sphere to create demonstrable effects. To best understand the art of casting, of channeling, I will now examine each of these aspects in turn.

Mind

...To cast a spell is willful / to hold a twist so strong / for mana flows like water / and won’t be held for long... - Grimoire of Open Sourcery

All action -- all movement, from the smallest twitch, to the pulse of our hearts is born first in the mind. The shocks of lightning that course through our nerves and move our muscles can build upon each other, and in gathering can impact the planes around us. Consider how your body reacts when your mind is agitated or cluttered, and how it reacts when your mind is calm. Your heart and breath are tied to your mind through the cord of your spine, and can be easily moved by the storms of our thoughts.

So too do our thoughts and emotions affect the Spirit. Powerful emotions bleed out like pigments into the ambient mana around us changing the space in ways that we can feel. The tension of anger, the warmth of compassion, the frenetic excitement of new love -- we know and recognize these experiences sympathetically within each other as our spirits are struck by the vibrations in other’s minds.

To cast, we use the powers of our Mind to craft an incantation which evokes within our minds and the minds of those around us the effect that we hope to invoke on the material plane. Crafting an incantation is an essential step in the casting process -- our Mind must be in perfect alignment toward the goal of our spell, and the images we conjure act as waypoints and guidelines for our intent. This is perhaps why many have reported the surprising phenomena of being unable to cast spells from a borrowed spell book; it’s like trying to navigate by a different sky of stars.

As we cast, our mind dances from image to image, and those thoughts, circling around a single point of intention, cause sympathetic movement within the mana sphere -- a twist which like a weight hung from a twisted rope holds building power until it is released. It is this twist that powers all spells.

Body

...My root grows tall and upward / my base is strong and full / a core of power bidden / for magic is my tool...

One interesting phenomenon of Magic in our world is one of its greatest limitations. The twist of mana which powers all spellwork is incredibly unstable. Attempts to work magic while in motion result in wasted expended focus, unstable ripples in the mana sphere or worse. When a spell is channeled, for those moments between it's twist and its invoke, forcible movement or a strike to the body can snap the built up energy upon the caster with potentially devastating consequence.

To cast, one must be grounded. With feet or root firmly planted to allow the swirling energies of the building twist an anchor to hold to. With skill and practice a mage may be able to muster some flexibility in their spine or their arms, some bend in their knees, but no caster has yet been able to hold a casting without the root of their feet in place for the duration of the spellwork.

If the power of a spell stems from the twist created by the incantations of the mind, it is the grounding of the body that gives that power shape and a path to the physical plane.

My advice then to all casters who seek to shape and guide energy to our world is this: neglect not your body. It is your nerves that carry your thoughts; your breath that carries your chants; and your bones that carry the weight of your workings into the world.

Spirit

Mana, force and power / all words for aether's strings / the bonds of life between us / that attraction always brings...

Such guidance is not without toll though. Casters of all traditions report the cost of channeling on their bodies. Though with time and experience a caster may manage more mana within a given day, it is the act of channeling itself, not the complexity of the spell or the power of the work that causes drain.

The spirit that holds our spells and delivers them to their targets is not only our own. When we cast, we call upon a collective understanding of the spirits of all in our world. This is what gives our magic it’s comprehensibility. A spell, by any caster and any tradition is similar in impact and effect to another by the same name, and produces the same result regardless of conditions.

Druids may call upon the green goddess, while a Mage of the Academy may call upon the positive and negative forces of the universe, while we Mages of the College of Free Sorcery call upon the winds, and yet the effect upon the world is the same: a stream of lightning from our fingertips that shatters shields, scorches gates and burns flesh.

The mana-sphere, the binding all-spirit that holds our world is not something we ought to take for granted. It is a gift that we as casters receive from the world -- it is not a guarantee. Many travelers who have left our realm and returned, or who have slipped between planes have reported wide variability between how magic functions in our world, and how (and if) it functions elsewhere. The startling and sobering truth is that it seems that magic is not common or even possible in most other worlds. It is my belief that at some point in these realms past, there was a cataclysmic flattening of their mana-sphere (though I have not traveled to these realms to test this theory, nor would I know how to determine the time or cause of this cataclysm) that resulted in the entire loss of magic within their plane of existence. Knowing this to be possible, and perhaps to be inevitable, we as Casters must treat our gifts with respect and reverence.