Last time, we had some gods. Today, we have some magic.
I’ve finally settled on a few things. I’m okay with magic being a bit “flash and bang” — these will be clearly magical effects. There’s still a strong whiff of Gnosticism in the setting, but it’s not a primary theme. I want to focus the game more on the politics of theology than on theology itself, so I’m going to go with a fairly “scientific” magic that will do its thing and get out of my way. Players who want to play scholar-mages will get some cool tricks that hopefully won’t overshadow anyone else.
If it seems that I’m backing away from some of the major magical elements, well, that’s true. The more elaborate things get, the greater the risk that it’ll become too heavyweight and detailed to get across to players — they have a finite number of things they’re capable of remembering and caring about, and I’d rather have them focus on the plot elements and political factors than tie up conceptual space in playing Mage: The Ascension Redux.
So what do we have in terms of possible effects? Domonic magi, as mentioned, are focused primarily on effects of the physical world: manipulation of the elements. In PM IV, I mentioned they might have effects that impact the body or mind directly, but I’ve decided to ditch that for a number of reasons. So, for example, Domonists with the right knowledge can strengthen or weaken metal or stone, hurl flame, shape the wind into blades, or cleanse or foul water. They can’t heal wounds, control thoughts, bind or unbind souls, or blow up your kidney.
I’m treating this is a vitalist paradigm — a living body is a “whole thing”, not a collection of base elements. The soul makes it so. So you can explode un-souled flesh with magic, but to explode a person, you have to throw something explosive at them. Except for Kai necromancers, who know how souls actually work and can punch your life force or turn off your empathy. From the Domonist perspective, Kai are scary because they can do things Domonists can’t. Of course, the Kai can’t set an entire battlefield on fire, so exactly the same is true from the other perspective.
Obviously, the question is asked — could they learn each others’ magic? The answer is possibly, but probably not. Each magic is founded in more than just factual knowledge. It’s based in cultural experience, shared assumptions, idiom, habit, ritual, and tradition. To embrace fully both cultures would be… rare.
And here we get into something interesting — each magic is also self-reinforcing, in some sense. Domon “discovered” true magic by writing down truths not only about the world, but about himself and his people. Those who understood those truths and built on them shaped the civilization around them as well, making these things “more” true, more foundational. The same is true of the Kai tradition — hence, both sides grow just a bit more powerful with each passing generation.
Not sure what next time will be. Probably going to concentrate on the political side for the next few posts.
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