Additional Lore Notes

This here are just notes for my reference to design the world around, it is not permanent and may be subject to change.

World: Agaea.

Magic, Miracles, and Psionics.

Magic in Agaea pertains to elemental invocations. Mages are basically glass cannons and dedicated blasters. All they do is bombard the living shit out of other shit. Every spell has to do with elements or firmaments. I have not decided how many there are yet. What I’m getting at is that magic are physical phenomena. It is science, reproducible with the right application of techniques. It is not metaphysical, so nothing that affects mind like illusion or sleep spells.

Magic is always external. It is the manipulation of other matter and energy. It is a purely mental exercise, so it consumes mental energy. Prolonged use of magic will fatigue the user’s brain, just as any other mentally demanding task like programming or mathematics. Higher level magic naturally requires more effort on the caster’s part. As mental energy is a diminishing resource, once drained, magic users will be prone to errors in their calculations. Casting will fail then. Sleep will typically restore mental energy. Caffeine gives a momentary boost but also an inevitable crash down the road.

There are different classes of magic users. For example, Wizard, sorcerers, mages, etc. I might come up with more. The difference between them is merely talent and application. I see wizards as more of an architect/professor type. Broadly learned and able to see the bigger picture. They can design spells, and can understand a more diverse range of magic. Mages are the engineer/specialist type. They master a narrow band of magic but due to their focus can do amazing, dynamic, and quirky things with their specialized magic.

Sorcerers are prodigies basically. They are born with a brain that are more evolved to do magical calculations and will expend less mental energy for casting. They can thread the wizard or mage’s path, but most sorcerers are comfortable taking a middle path between the two.

Divine Miracles are powers ordained by a deity or higher power. The art of casting miracles is called divine channeling. There isn’t much complexity involved on the part of the user. Basically, the user decides what miracle he/she needs for an occasion and starts praying the ever-loving-fuck to their god to make it happen. It can also be a wildcard thing where the devout user does not have a specific miracle in mind and would just pray to their deity to resolve their current predicament. It would then be up to the higher power to decide what aid to render, if at all.

Divine miracles can be fickle though. Unlike magic, which will work as long as the caster doesn’t fuck up the calculations, divine miracles rely on faith. And a person’s faith may not always be constant. Emotions can easily get in the way. Fear, shock, arousal, even teenage angst can shake a person’s faith. A priest may be able to cast a handful of miracles when he is fresh, but add in the mental toll of adventuring, frayed relationships, and maybe even the sight of blood, his faith may waver, and subsequent divine channeling attempts might fail.

There are various ways a divine channeler can reaffirm their faith. Divine channelers can pray, meditate, or perform rites and rituals.

It should be noted that divine channelers are not just restricted to priests and paladins that worship the established deities. There are various other powers of different alignments that trade miracles for worship. Druids, shamans, and witches for example draw their miracles from primordial spirits and there are various cults that worship evil deities across Agaea.

When it comes to Psionics, I imagine it to be akin to the ‘****’ in star wars. There is the human to human mental-link component, which allows things like mind-reading, mind-altering, and even mind-control, and there is also the human to universe link component which enables the user to manipulate physical forces, energy, matter, and at **** levels even stuff like time, space, and reality.

Psionics are lost abilities that can only be inherited and not learned. Psions were relatively common pre-first-age but by the start of the second age, they’ve become totally extinct.