Nevkontakte's avatar
Nevkontakte
@me@m.nevkontakte.com

Lately I've been reading a lot of fiction, with different magic systems, and it inspired me to come up with my own that has a few interesting social and storytelling implications. The idea came to me when I was contemplating that most systems don't really justify the trope of "the wizards of old had power unmatched by anyone today".

There are only a few principles behind it:

  1. Magic is based on the interaction between two substances:
  • Ether is a dispersed, unstructured substance (or field?) that is spread all over the universe. Its density may vary, but it is more or less everywhere.
  • Mana is a structured, potent counterpart of ether that naturally doesn't occur, but can be created from ether and, if left uncontained, decays back to ether.
  1. The combined quantity of ether and mana in the universe is fundamentally constant: there will never be less or more of it no matter what. In an isolated system this quantity is preserved, and even though no system is truly isolated a given planet or a star system tends to approximate one.
  2. Ether and mana are the fundamental of the universe, more so than matter, energy, light or laws of physics that govern them. All of those are a byproduct of ether-mana interaction, the creation of the universe itself is supposed to be a gigantic mana-to-ether decay event.
  3. Converting ether to mana requires energy input. When mana naturally decays into ether it releases energy too, but if structured appropriately it may influence the material world in all sorts of ways: create, destroy or restructure matter and light, create forces, alter space, and so on. The magnitude of the effect is proportional to the quantity of mana spent.
  4. Life is the only known mechanism for converting ether into mana, and the required energy input must be provided by the creature. Nearly all organisms are capable of such conversion, although the amount of energy input per unit of mana varies a lot between species and even individuals, the exact reason for that is unknown. In fact, the amount of energy spent on accumulating mana may be more or less than the energy that can be produced by spending it.
  5. Thus, energy can be created and destroyed through this process. While life is the only known "natural" mechanism for converting mana to ether in a structured way (that is, with any useful effects other than heat), devices can be created that shape the effects of the natural mana decay into something useful.

(1/2)

Nevkontakte's avatar
Nevkontakte
@me@m.nevkontakte.com

in reply to this object

Obviously, there could be a lot more details, in particular on the exact mechanisms of how magic and matter influence each other, but the basic rules have interesting implications. Coming back to the great mages of old, they lived in a society less developed and proficient in magic use, as such ambient ether was abundant and easily accessible for powerful spellcasting. However, over the generations much of ether ended up being bound up - absorbed by the ever-increasing number of magic users, accumulated in magical items and so on. While there isn't less ether and mana in the world in total, much less ether is readily available for use.

There are more implications, in no particular order:

  • Everyone is technically a mage, or a magic creature. However, only the ones that get more energy out of spending mana then they invest into accumulating it can afford to use magic for routine tasks that could be accomplished otherwise. Such individuals would represent the "real" mage class.
  • For the rest, magic is more of an emergency option, and once used it may take a long time to recover magic reserves.
  • Food is king, even the most efficient mages need energy to replenish mana, so controlling the food does not only control life and death, but also magic. In such a society, the hierarchy will be built around creation and distribution of food.
  • Mages would be spending an inordinate amount of effort on researching magical ways of creating food from non-edible matter, in order to assure self-sufficiency. However, even once such methods have been discovered, they would likely be complex and accessible only to the most efficient mages. Over time, however, the method would be refined and made feasible for more and more mages. This group will become the elite of the magical class.
  • Because the amount of ether-mana is constant, the ability to accumulate and hold a lot of mana will become increasingly important over time, representing one's in-the-moment access to power. That would provide the basis for an alternative magical hierarchy, which will eventually come in tension with the food-based hierarchy.
  • For the same reason, powerful mages will tend to establish their residences in remote places, where they would have less competition over access to the ambient ether. Capturing ether after casting a spell, and immediately recycling it back into mana will also become a hot research topic, since it would sidestep dependence on ambient ether.
  • Obviously, understanding and reproducing the mechanism by which life converts ether into mana would be a holy grail, and if ever achieved will probably dramatically reshape the society. It would, however, make ambient ether even scarcer and increase social inequality by allowing the already powerful to accumulate even more power.
  • Dipping a toe into the sci-fi land, access to untapped ether would be a massive motivator for interplanetary and interstellar travel. Moving mana will be the backbone of interstellar trade, since it is the ultimate raw material for anything else. Whether such travel would rely on technology (starships) or pure magic (portals) or a hybrid of the two, is an open question.

(2/2)