![Universal_Magic_Circle_by_Xyee[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/wXsvABq.jpg "Universal_Magic_Circle_by_Xyee[1].jpg")
What's the source of mages' power in your setting, /tg/?
Natural energy fields or pacts with primal spirits. Like radiation, it can be quite dangerous.
The gods.
Everything comes from them.
The difference between divine magic and arcane is that clerics make 'pacts' with the gods to use their power directly. Wizards take the surplus power the gods emit and shape them by sheer force of will.
Magic.
Witches get it from tricking other witches into teaching them or sharing it
Occultists get theirs from their demons
People blessed by the fey get magic but they almost always become willing slaves of the fey so...
Some insane cultists seem to get it by drinking black wine and falling into the holes in the sky, but they might be lying
>>44473579
>Some insane cultists seem to get it by drinking black wine and falling into the holes in the sky
Wait a second, are you talking about the Ballad of the Laser Whales?
>>44473444
Ancient technology. The mages are more like engineers/technicians. They don't now how it works, but it's designed to be easyish to work with.
>>44473444
Pic related actually.
"magic" comes from the divine geometry.
Also pretty much all of what this guy >>44473579 said.
Well, a lot of people acquire supernatural traits just by being badasses.
Magic as in the sort with spells, though? The most common simply beg favors, whether from gods or form lesser spirits. Some know how to evoke their will directly, but few mortals are powerful enough to effect great changes this way, or to effect smaller changes more easily than through force of arms. And even the ability to do this requires a deeper understanding of existence and self than most folks obtain. And then there's the sorcerers of the north, who use the power of communism.
>>44473678
Never heard of it. It's more Lovecraftian but I'm trying not to play it up as the setting was originally designed as Crowley in Slavland
I've got several different types, each with their own source. Most of it's fairly generic -- borrowing/channeling the power of gods/demons/spirits, manipulating esoteric properties of reality by what's essentially a form of weird science, simply being born with the innate ability to directly manipulate the fabric of reality in certain ways.
Then there's spellsingers, who literally make such awesome music that reality itself is moved by it. At least, the stronger ones do. Weaker spellsingers can mostly only affect creatures, just taking the usual psychological effects of music up to extreme levels to create illusions and altered states of mind. But more skilled spellsingers perform so magnificently that the very elements dance to their tune. You can tell you're looking at a top-tier spellsinger because they sound like a full band just by themselves, because the various invisible spirits that are all over the place wherever you go strike up their own accompaniment to the spellsinger's lead.
>>44473444
Large power sources contained in ancient vessels which mages tap into as a conduit. Each vessel is attuned to a different aspect of power that they devote themselves to when they wish to walk the path of the arcane. Once they start, they can't learn a new field of magic lest the mixture negatively react and burn them from the inside out.
Literally.
>>44473844
>And then there's the sorcerers of the north, who use the power of communism.
>>44473444
Nigga, if you have to discuss it then you're in too deep.
>>44473996
I think he meant communalism.
>>44473444
The weaving of alternate universes/dimensions with our own by creating the exact conditions necessary to cross our dimension with a desired one.
ORGONE ENERGY
>>44473444
If they knew, then it wouldn't be "magic," now would it?
>>44474283
I don't think that makes it any clearer. We're still talking about sociopolitical models as a source of magic here.
>>44474435
As in shared psychic power. It's not that uncommon a term for a type of magic through shared strength.
>>44473444
Space magic fucking the world up.
Plane of souls power.
Some monsters use magic, but it's genetic.
>>44473444
Magic.
Ok. Good thread. What's next?
>>44473444
Cheese
>>44473996
Rather than getting magic from powerful spirits, they take all the magic of the people, mostly the individually useless and tiny bits of power that the proletariat have, and redistribute it for the good of the people, usually for agricultural gain. It's about as communist as the USSR.
>>44475328
Seven more quest threads then some misogyny/SJW trolling.
>>44475521
Man, I can't wait for the /pol/ vs tumblr thread, i shore do love good auld tee gee
The world's fabric was silently disrupted and demons (not horned red guys, they're intangible) gained the ability to manifest their will into the physical plane. After this disruption, the accumulated jokes, fears, and urban legends of humanity are channeled into demons that represent these ideas. Masters of the occult are able to tap into this reserved energy through dark rituals, manipulating it to make the ideas it was based on come true. The most powerful magical stunts require the creation of a physical demon, also called a meme, (it could be an image or a phrase) that is spread by humans so that it can infiltrate as many minds as possible. By this manner, magic is an infectious disease and average people give their energy to demons daily without knowing.
Ultimately a meme will either fade into obscurity or it will be hoisted to a height where it can only grow larger, never to be forgotten. When the meme has enough energy, it slowly works its creators' ideas into reality, warping the fabric of existence.
To put it into context, let's use a hypothetical real life example:
>Bigfoot becomes real because of all of the discussion and content created about him
The Ether, aka the Higgs Field.
>>44473444
Sheer force of will; the creation of a sentience (birth) disturbs the aether, and the sentience is able to shape and direct the aether around it, and even shape and direct itself.
Unfortunately, the more powerful the sentience, and the more it alters the aether, the more turbulent it becomes and the quicker it loses cohesion and fades away (brain death)
So, extremely gifted mages in the younger races often life for, at most, two or so decades after discovering their talents, usually going out in a literal blaze of glory while performing an extremely powerful spell; some cultures even make this the death rite of their mages, where they would channel the last remaining bits of their sentience to perform some great miracle for their city or nation.
Naturally powerful sentiences, like dragons and other old races, know of this and thus refuse to use magic at all, and instead actively seek to live in harmony with nature (and thus not disturb the aether), thereby prolonging their lives; a dragon using their breath is a very, very dire sign indeed.
The only exception are "necromancers", which are like the classical interpretation, except that they almost act as ethereal vampires; trapping other sentient's ethereal vortices within their own, and eventually assimilating them. The most powerful of these dread beings can project their vortex over immense distances, literally bringing the surrounding area under their sway through presence alone.
Lesser animals become thralls and are eventually consumed, while all but the most willful and trained of true sapients suffer increasing mental stress until they finally snap, and suffer the same fate of the deer and other lesser animals.
Anyone remember what the link to the spell circles magic thing we used to do here on tg was?
~nobody knows~
But more seriously, people learned it by meditation next to ancient sleeping giants. Their dreams had a fraction of universal truth to them and this is how Wizards learned some of the first arcane spells. Later on they started making their own and the various bloodlines of men became magically charged. The rest of humanity cannot natural cast spells, you have to be born into it. But sometimes the gene lays dormant and there are some ways to gift it to someone otherwise incapable.
Love
>>44476435
Sounds like Persona 2
>>44473444
In the beginning two lovers drafted the laws of reality upon the barrier that kept them apart.
Then the barrier broke, destroying Her and Her universe and scattering it throughout His, along with all of the laws they had made together.
This was billions of years ago.
Magic as is known is drawn from many source's.
A Mage uses her bond with a specific piece of the universe to do great things.
A Wizard uses his knowledge of the smaller laws of reality to warp it as he needs.
A Witch garners favors from dark corners of the world and uses them as she desires.
A Priest relies on the mercy of his god and his unending faith to perform miracles.
A Sorcerer is born with a pool of near limitless power and she must learn to use it or be consumed.
However, if you trace every form of magic back to their roots, you will find one of three things:
1. The Laws of Reality.
2. Her eternal Love.
3. His endless Sorrow.
It is these three things that regulate, create, and destroy reality. All power is drawn from them.
Fragments of the Words of Creation. The gods literally spoke reality into existence. These Words hold overwhelming power, like speaking entire languages at once. For instance the Word for creature/being/entities literally encompasses every creature in existence within it, and every aspect of the existence of creatures. Like speaking every word from every language for the concept of animals at the same time.
But mortal minds and mortal voices and mortal souls cannot express or hold the power contained within them, and so when they tried to use these Words, they came out flawed, often killing the user. Spells are the individual components that make up a Word arranged into an order of pronunciation that is safe to use.
Each class gains and uses the fragments in different ways.
It's not entirely certain.The earliest discovered texts on magic were written in Draconic, which was ultimately the language of dragons codified into symbols by early dragon worshippers. There is some connection to dragons beyond just the text, as dragons are inherently magical beings, and all serpents contain knowledge should one know how to read them.
Virginity.
Psionics and Ki just work off of a special energy humans naturally produce on their own, and are capable of producing more of if they train at it.
Arcane Magic are more like "life hacks" that the creators of the world left behind in bits and scraps because they thought it would be funny. They don't really work off of anything and actually violate the in setting laws of physics.
magical aptitude is determined by the calorie count of a being's self seeing as they're all made of candy
>>44473444
What the Mages of the world call the Source, which they believe is a plane within their universe. In truth, they draw power from the infinite sea of possibility that spans the distance between universes.
Magic causes ripples, which attracts predators.
Last time these predators arrived they decimated the universe, which is barely holding itself together.
>>44473444
There is power in mortals. Magic leaks some of this power to cause various effects, at a price.
It's basically a set of traditions that developed methods to sacrifice part of yourself to perform magic.
>>44473444
Mana.
An ever-present particle that can take on the form of another particle or affect another.
All living beings with souls that are powerful enough can affect and refine them into magic power are called mages or magic beasts/plants respectively.
The core-source of their mana divides them into pure internal - (monks and sorcerers who refine their own power in their own body forming a magic core) , mixed source (mages and bards who form only a partial core but rely on complex rituals and skills to use external magic as well as their own) and external sources (paladins, clerics and warlocks who receive their magic from their respective patron in return for their services or a contract).
>>44473444
virginity
>>44473444
Two ways: Manipulating the excess energy of souls. This puts them at odds with the gods, who kinda harvest that excess energy to live.
It's not harmful in either case, as one has to go pretty far to go past the "excess" stage.
The second way is harvesting the natural energy of the world. This is worse in many ways, since it causes a "thinning" of realities. Allowing creatures from parallel dimensions to creep in. Such as angels, demons, elves, ghosts, and other extraplanar critters. But at least the energy is kinda limitless, and you won't directly anger the gods. Oh, and the area will heal in a matter of hours, as long as there is plenty of life around.
This gets real bad if overused in areas with lots of extradimensional entities (like faerie glades, cursed places, old battlefields).
>>44473579
Pass the black wine brah
>>44473567
Iaintgottaexplainshit.jpg
>>44474426
>If they knew, then it wouldn't be "magic," now would it?
he is asking you the creator not someone inside the setting
>>44473444
An extra-dimensional forest sidled right up to Earth (dimensionally) and is causing weird alternate dimension bullshit.
A magical furnace in the center of the planet which may or may not be powered by a forsaken child (I think I retconned that out).
Speaking of magic systems. Does anybody have that really cool runic magic system that some anon posted before.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/27302114/
Sadly the imgur is deleted.
>>44473444
The Devil gifts people with a special power once that person falls deeply enough into a bad, sinful, or destructive habit.
Each person gets only one special power that is tailored to them. It always primarily serves to enable their bad habit, and any use outside of that is completely incidental. This can happen to literally anyone in the setting. The Devil's reach is endless, but human virtue, if used, is actually enough to thwart him.God didn't create you to be helpless. You are more worthy than you give yourself credit for.
>>44473567
>Magic.
Pretty much.
>>44473444
The fact that the world turns out to be ruled by the forces of absurd if you look closely enough.
On the outside magic just seems to happen whenever certain weird conditions are met, like filling a dog skull with mercury and swearing loudly while holding it on the top of a hill during a storm. Which looks pretty stupid because the setting is approaching nukes.
Mages don't have actual "power", as in the ability to make things happen with the force of will, they just have the skill and knowledge on how to make magic do (something loosely resembling) what they want. This is why powerful wizards rarely ever cast spells themselves - magic is batshit insane and wizards are squishy. It is much safer to leave the actual casting to a large group of averagely bright sorcerers while the great wizard tells them where to stand and how pointy their hats should lest they get glassed.
The only alternative to going full OCD with rituals is giving magic something in return. A valued item is good, an arm is better, a fellow mage would be the best.
Pic rel, miscast effects.
>Fate: the Gathering
Mana of the five colors, straight from Magic: the Gathering.
>Dream setting
Magic is using the unseen connections between different ideas/objects/people with symbolic rituals to achieve a desired effect. Everything has these connections to everything else, but most connections aren't strong enough to really work with unless you're a major spirit or deity. Kinda like voodoo dolls, the Order of Hermes, or thaumaturgy from Dresden Files. For example, lets say you want to make someone angry. You can get something that has a strong connection to them/their emotions (like a photograph, hair, blood, or a diary) and then get another thing that symbolizes anger (broken glass, a knife, or Mein Kampf). Once you have what you need, do a quick ritual where you clearly state what you want to happen, invoke the unseen connections verbally (by whatever name you call them), and bang! There ya go, the target of the spell is gonna feel angry.
>>44473444
Le science and understanding.
>>44486133
But M:tG has six colors.
>>44486290
Fuck you, nobody likes this meme
>>44473444
the spirit world is overlapped with the physical world, and the ability of mages relies on being able to bend that connection to their favour - living beings are able to exploit it because they have a soul, and thus exist in both worlds at the same time
also, mana is a kind of crystallized mineral that is able to store that same spiritual energy because despite being inert, it exists in the spirit and physical worlds at the same time and is able to strengthen the connection of the mage with it, thus being able to cast more frequently without tiring the mage
>>44483832
I have been looking but cannot find anything. I was wanting to do the magic ironchef games if I could find the thing again.
>>44473444
Their willpower.
Semen. I'm only kind of kidding.
>>44482136
Tell me more.
>>44473444
Spiritual essence which take one of three states: souls (anima), matter, and free floating mana, or energy.
Each state has two forms of magic associated with it, converting it into one other state. These six forms can be combined in various ways to achieve more elaborate effects.
Anima -> Energy = Thaumaturgy, throwing fireballs et al, fuelled by the burning of souls, either your own (Martyric Thaumaturgy) or others (Unhallowed Thaumaturgy). Because spiritual essence in the form of souls is bound up inside an individual's 'spiritual field', utilising souls outside of yourself is inefficient, so proper use of Blood Thaumaturgy requires a great deal of skill and sacrificial victims.
Anima -> Matter = Black Alchemy, transmutation of souls into physical matter. Same clauses as Blood Thaumaturgy, but Black Alchemy can't be used on your own soul. This is largely a dead style of magic because of how horrifically inefficient and dangerous it is to leap from the highest energy (anima) state to the lowest (matter), though there are still a few practitioners.
Matter -> Anima = White Alchemy, generally used for healing and strengthening others, though it can also be utilised as a sort of druidic or nature magic. Tends to be fairly subtle in action due to aforementioned state hopping.
Matter -> Energy = Evocation, fireballs and lightning for those who don't want to burn souls.
Energy -> Matter = Artifice, for the creation of fortifications, constructs and the like.
Energy -> Anima = Necromancy, for the infusion of corpses and constructs with false life.
Artifice and Necromancy are the two most common forms of magic due to energy being present in abundance in the atmosphere, but Evocation and Thaumaturgy are also fairly common. The two forms of Alchemy are less often seen.
>>44473444
Usually the rich have such a technology at their disposal that it almost looks like magic to the lower classes.
Then there's special people people that use suggestion, smoke, mirrors an instinctual manipulation of a yet unexplained working of quantum mechanics.
>>44473444
I've always been a fan of the idea that magic is fueled by the emotions of people, but there are many other forms of magic that are plausible theories on how it forms. One that I've heard is that magic is the direct manifestation of your own soul brought to the material plane. Another is that magic is a part of the fabric of the world. I've even heard that magic is some energy bleeding through another section of the multiverse. As for what magic really comes from, I honestly do not know.
>>44473444
In varying degrees, an understanding of the god-given inner flame and the help of a handful of locations and mega-artifacts.
The stone immortals learn to bring their flame into resonance with external fire, thus manipulating it through the traces of their god's domain within them.
The stone mortals were given knowledge of the colossal crystaline spear embedded in the earth, and learned to replicate the crystal that composes it to use it's space-warping properties for their gain.
The phoenixes have souls best described as parasitic, which they eventually were told that they could use to animate and manipulate stone, and potentially inhabit it to make golems.
all the magics are technically able to be learned by each race and outsiders, but requires an external source of fire to resonate in the case of the first, or contact with the primal forests that birthed the phoenixes and caused the state of their souls for the latter magic.
>>44474426
Yes it would.
In my setting the universe doesn't want to die, so it created magic and sentience as an anti-entropy force. Basically entropy means that you can drop a good egg and wind up with a broken egg but you can't drop a broken egg and wind up with a new egg. Magic allows you to reverse entropy and mend the broken egg.
>>44473444
Magic is the act if connecting your self to the self of the universe, and by that union, altering one or both.
Arcane magic seeks to forge that connection by study and analysis. Clerical magic by immersion of the self in the divine. Monastic orders seek to transcend the self through meditation. Some are simply born with the ability.
There are two dangers. The first is that the universe is quite elastic, and when pushed, can snap back hard. The second is that when you drop the barrier of self, you can draw attention from certain things, though to call them things is to grossly overestimate their material reality, that want nothing more than to be.
Most mages are host to one or more of these beings over their lives. Typically they manifest themselves as cravings for sensation, amplifiers of desires. Some prove beneficial to motivate or to protect their food source, though too many will lead to madness and delirium.
Occasionally, will more complex and powerful than the mage's own will manifest. Such manifestations very rare, and very very dangerous.
>>44473444
The universe is a giant soup of quantum-wave-state-like unreality, sort of like the prehistory of Exalted as described in the Fair Folk book. However, rather than one creation, it's punctuated by theoretically infinite points of definition and reality, that collapse that possibility to a more concrete and mortal-friendly reality that have a tendency to form civiliations, and said civilization tends to increase the narrative "gravity" that it exerts on the unreality soup.
Magical effects are created by ripping a hole in reality, and allowing the undefinition flow into reality, causing it to be briefly less defined. As reality tried to retain its equilibrium, it's possible to manipulate that unreality into temporarily making the defined rules of the reality in your immediate area different. If you're clever enough, you can do this and create a mostly-repeatable and desirable effect.
Mages/Int-Casters do this by understanding the rules of reality, and documented research on certain repeatable effects that have been created.
Cha-casters WILL the unreality directly into what they want it to be when they let it leak into reality
Wis-casters do something quite similar to what the mages/int-casters do, but rather than understanding the rules of reality and documented repeatable effects, they understand the NARRATIVE rules of unreality and the stories/fairy-tales/myths that inform/shape those rules.
We haven't had a con-caster yet in this setting, but I'd imagine they channel unreality directly through their own body/reality-matrix. The stronger their body/reality, the more unreality they can channel and shape through themselves.
>>44473444
The god of arcane magic decided it might be a good idea for people that weren't clerics to be able to cast, because the That Girl of the pantheon nearly trashed the whole material realm because she could.
>>44490415
I mashed together most of Kamen Rider Gaim's concept with Joker Quest's murder robots (as well as a tiny bit of other things), then sprinkled a bit of deliberately shoddily interpreted Gnoticism and an equally shaky knowledge of the Kabbalah into the resulting mash. And I'm running the abomination in Double Cross.
>>44490937
Neat. I always like systems that have some kind of unifying design to them
>>44473444
I don't know.
>>44473444
>What's the source of mages' power in your setting, /tg/?
Let's see.
Setting one:
The mother/father deity, respectively. Magic is split along lines of biological gender and invoked either through ritual or sheer force of will.
Setting two: Basically, it's Spirit Science (the show): The setting. You get magic by becoming unhinged enough that you intuitively cease seeing a difference between your thoughts and reality.
Setting three: Spirits and pacts made with them. Life spirits are usually going to be paid a "rent" in Essence motes acquired somewhere else, Death Spirits (USUALLY ghosts, though if you're insane enough you can pact with something that never lived in the first place) are similar but will oftentimes also desire some sort of task to be carried out.
>>44497452
>Magic is split along lines of biological gender
What if the two don't match?
>>44497533
>What if the two don't match?
Doesn't happen. A soul chooses the gender of the body it'll live in.
>>44497671
What if the soul changes its mind or chooses to be trans?
>>44497757
>What if the soul changes its mind
Unknown-
> or chooses to be trans?
Non-binary souls tend to incarnate as something other than human. Fae are fairly crazy with gender .
>>44473444
If their soul is up to it, from there. Generally speaking this isn't the case; you have to be of certain lineage or you have to 'open' your soul to outside forces for it to create its own. Dangerous, though.
Then you have pacts - this is the most common. Schools of magic; the secretive bunch, hand these out. Occult groups as well, but you get to make the pact with a deity...
Then you have inverse souls; they don't generate any magic, but only utilize that of others, be it pact or the world itself - perhaps even the soul of the world...
8+1 elements, player chooses whether they specialize in one or wield two. World is an enneract, so I let geometry have its place.
>>44473444
Depending on type of caster;
>Warlock/Cleric/Paladin/etc: Power granted by higher being/force
>Sorceror: Inner Power
>Wizard, etc: Background arcane energy, gathered during spell prep
