Mana Attunement
In its raw form, Mana is completely unusable by any creature for magical purposes, and can only really be used by
Leylines and for creating liquified mana. For a creature to be able to wield mana, they must first attune it to their
Magical Aura through the mana attunement process. This process allows someone to intake any form of mana available to them and through the medium of their magical aura convert it into attuned mana, which fills the creature's
Mana Pool and allows them to use magical abilities and spells.
All creatures do this, irrespective of if they can actually
wield mana magically, and this process is only important for Arcane Mana. Divine Mana is sourced directly from the patron divine source and negates the need for this process entirely by itself, but due to the fact that it only accounts for up to 80% of the needed Mana for an ability or spell, that still means divine magic users need to attune to regular mana as well.
The only Mana type free of this is Fae mana, which is pulled by a fae magic user directly from
Nyssara and wielded that way. This makes fae magic users unique in that they
don't need any arcane mana, but that's only so long as such a caster doesn't want to diverge into other forms of magic that
do require this process.
The Types of Mana
There are four types of Mana in total, each of which is extremely distinct and shows unique properties. The colours of each one have been revealed above, so for this we will discuss the actual properties of each one.
Arcane Mana
Arcane Mana is what people tend to assume is being discussed when Mana is referenced, and is, as such, generally just called Mana; this is the kind of Mana that powers the vast majority of different kinds of magic and is uniquely capable of aspecting into distinct elemental variants, a fact used extensively by Elemental Magic and magical technology. This aspecting nature is a critical component of arcane mana and it can aspect freely and change its aspected identity just as freely.
The aspecting nature is a boon, but it also makes mana extremely difficult to interact with, as mishaps can result in the mana taking new elemental forms and ruining the magic or device it was being used in - this is a very big issue with
Pearalos' early magical steam engines for example, before liquified mana was discovered (more on that below).
Arcane Mana is, in many ways, one of the most important core aspects of magic just because of the fact that almost all forms of magic use it; the only magic types that completely ignore arcane mana are fae magic and chi magic, both of which have their own distinct sources of power instead, and even then, chi users in particular often dabble in magic that
does use arcane mana, and thus it gets used all the time.
Divine Mana
Divine Mana is notably distinct from arcane mana and fae mana in that it does not, in any way naturally occur - even the holy and unholy planar realms are full of regular arcane mana, not divine mana. Instead, it is derived from the power of divine concepts. This is most commonly in the form of gods, but it can also be ideals, philosophies, and so on.
Divine Mana comes in three distinct types; Holy Mana, Shadow Mana, and Unaspected Mana. Each mana type comes from an appropriate divine source - holy from holy sources, shadow from unholy sources, and unaspected from sources which are neither holy or unholy. These distinct mana types are important because a core function of divine mana is its ability to supplant up to 80% of a magical ability's mana cost, but only if the mana type is appropriate for that ability in the eyes of the divine's domain; if that ability opposes the divine source's domain, they won't pay any of its mana cost, and will inflict a tithe of mana to cast it - a god of war won't aid in casting a peace-bringing spell - and would instead require a tithe of mana from their follower to cast that spell, functionally increasing its MP cost - but would heavily offset the cost of warfare spells. Unaspected mana covers 60% of any ability's mana cost and will never increase the cost of any spells, by contrast.
This nature is extremely important, because it pushes divine mana users into conforming to the ideals of their gods - and while the gods can revoke the mana entirely, this incentive is typically perfectly sufficient - so that they can benefit from cheaper magic, as the divine mana is supplied by the divine source on demand.
Fae Mana
Fae Mana is an
extremely curious type of mana, as it exists as the only type of mana capable of completely replacing traditional arcane mana for magical purposes, though this comes with both upsides and downsides. Fae mana is intrinsically drawn from the realm of the faeries,
Nyssara, and it is uniquely shackled to the very nature of the fae realm, its plenitude and power being directly coupled to the seasons and the whims of the fae courts, resulting in many users of fae mana seeking to retain at
least amicable relations with the fae courts.
As stated, the biggest upside to fae mana is that it can completely replace and substitute arcane mana for anything revolving around faerie magic, which tends to encompass natural magics and glamours, but also some much more useful magic such as incandescence, oneiromancy and cleansing magic. Indeed, almost entirely reliable access to
some mana on demand is a very powerful thing and allows for fae magic spells to be profoundly inexpensive to cast, but as with all things fae-related, that access comes with downsides, namely the tricksy and unpredictable nature of Nyssara that reflects upon the mana itself, and the ability for the courts to seal off access to fae mana in their predominant season if they view themselves as wronged... which, as they're fae, can happen more easily than some expect.
Pure Mana
Pure Mana is notable for its rarity; it is only
naturally found when travelling the
Leyline Network, and accessing it otherwise requires an artificial leyline and a lot of very specialised techniques. For all of the difficulty acquiring it, however - and make
no mistake, acquiring it is profoundly difficult, the description makes it seem much easier than it is, and it's already coming across as difficult - pure mana is
profoundly powerful.
It was the dragons that first developed a use for pure mana, and the practice is only alive today through the efforts of very powerful magic users - most famously Lady Hu Tao - in the
Milky Way, while it is all but dead outside of dragon societies on
Pearalos; dracomancy, or the draconic magic of mana manipulation, is uniquely capable of turning arcane mana
into pure mana, and through that method starting to manipulate it. The process is dangerous and requires a fine balance, as any mistakes can result in the mana violently returning to its arcane nature and aspecting again, but powerful dracomancers - such as Hu Tao - can turn arcane mana into
effectively any mana they like, through turning it into pure mana and exploiting the fact that pure mana can turn
into any other type of mana, granting access to truly mindboggling versatility and access to myriad forms of magic.
Notably, pinnacle Cultivation is said to be able to do the very same thing, at least in the tales.
Mana Corruption
Dark magic is infamous for its corruptive nature and the ability to warp the environment and the minds of those who do not give it the serious care it deserves. This property extends to mana, and is the far more rampant side-effect of dark magic; any dark magic corrupts the mana it uses, causing all sorts of dreadful problems that are intrinsic with the sacrificial theme of dark magic at large.
The most pressing of the problems caused by dark magic is the actual Mana Corruption phenomenon itself; this phenomenon causes mana to cease replenishing in the cycle and instead 'binds' the mana to the location of the spell. For small amounts of mana, this solves itself over time, as the sheer quantity of mana moving through a region from the Leylines overcomes small scale corruption outbreaks, but if
enough corrupt mana gathers in an area, you get what is colloquially referred to as a corruption outbreak.
Corruption outbreaks occur when the quantity of corrupt mana in a region grows so high that non-corrupt mana can no longer offset it, and overtime itself becomes corrupt, making these outbreaks very dangerous and self-fulfilling phenomenon; entire worlds have been lost in the
Milky Way to corruption outbreaks, while entire areas of
Pearalos deal with the effects of corruption outbreaks from time to time. It
is possible to combat and defeat a corruption outbreak, but it requires a lot of concerted magical effort and physical might, owing to the corruption affecting all natural life in the outbreak; forays into an outbreak have to be precise and fast paced in nature, and once someone has been in for the limit of time - typically a week - they have to wait for upwards of a month for the outbreak to subside enough within
them to be able to go back in.
As a result, outbreak containment tends to be the job of large organisations of adventurers and skilled combatants on
Pearalos, but in the
Milky Way, only a few societies practice such techniques, with most opting for the orbital bombardment approach of executing a Delta Zero - planetary bombardment with the aim of complete sterilization of life - on corrupted worlds, after evacuating what people they can to containment areas off-world for decorruption.
Mana-powered Technologies
Across the
Milky Way galaxy and
especially on
Pearalos itself, civilizations have ever sought to harness mana for technological purposes; magical technology isn't a new concept in either region; artifice has existed on Pearalos for decades and the Milky Way has always been very adept at using mana as part of technology, but neither of these are mana-
powered technologies, they're mana-assisted.
Mana Liquefaction is a very recent concept in Pearalos and while it isn't broadly practised in the Milky Way at large, the techniques are known and several nations rely upon it just as Pearalos does, only more advanced owing to the higher technologies, but also more primitive due to the lacking magical understanding. The concept is that mana can be harvested from leylines by powerful machines - which generally vary in size and scope; Pearalos machines are small and very efficient, while Milky Way ones are large and extremely inefficient - and turned into a liquid form
Liquified Mana. Through this mana fuel source, magical technology can be literally powered and permitted to do some incredible things, owing to the fact that magic
itself is acting as its fuel and these technologies are designed to account for that. These technologies are generally referred to as
Magitek, compared to
Artifice being the accepted term the galaxy over for mana-assisted technology.
On Pearalos, these technologies have spread extremely quickly, but none are better at it than the peoples of Northern Nalsabard, who founded a powerful, hegemonic empire on the back of their magitek innovations, and have begun large scale conquests of their neighbours; indeed, their empire is among the greatest ever encountered on Pearalos.
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