Draconic Magic

The very flows of magic in the material worlds was created as a means for the dragons to reign their control over the world. To manipulate the flows of magic one must have understood the language of the dragons, and spoke its words with the intent of controlling reality. With the Betrayal of the Dragons, the mortal species were given some of the secrets of the draconic tongue. Suddenly anyone with a good memory and a grasp of linguistics could control the world in extremely basic ways, using single words or basic phrases to perform entry level magical feats. Wizards committed themselves to the discovery of more intricate ways of using the draconic tongue, and developed enormous tomes that when spoke, would harness magic in extremely specific ways to shape the world to their will.    However, the alchemists and wizards of the early developing societies quickly discovered that excessive use of magic drained their life force, prematurely killing them. Uttering the draconic tongue to cast spells quite literally drew life force from an individual. Luckily, they quickly discovered that they could use other living things as sources of the life force necessary to cast advanced spells. The concept was refined into the modern Arcane Focus, which is usually a crystal of some large arcane volume that can hold the souls and life forces of many creatures to be used later to cast spells.   Eventually, it was also discovered that there was a draconic script. It was extremely rare until its widespread use for magical writing as dragons themselves rarely wrote anything down. The only original records of the draconic script were written by early wizards who had direct communication with the first dragons. The draconic script when written with intent of magic can sustain the spell that it describes to be activated upon a condition set in the writing itself. Hence, it can be used to create traps, automatons, magical contraptions, and all sorts of exotic things. However the draconic script is also extremely complex, not written with a standard direction, and with glyphs of extremely high detail. Scripted draconic magic is also called Runic Magic, as it derives its direction from Runes. Runic magic also requires some form of life source to work, usually coming from some crystal within the device.