Weaving

When the world was new, the Gods of Memdia stood upon the ruins of their own home moon and yearned. Left without purpose and without companionship, they created mortal life, fickle and fleeting and a spark in which they could hold in the palms of their hands. There was shame in this joy, a guilt to stand upon the wreckage of a mortal world once was and doom more to the same fate of temporality.

As an apology, they gave their beloved creatures a gift. The ability to work the world into their own hands, and slowly create the world in their own image. A fraction of divinity, it goes by many names. We’d best understand it as magic, a taking of reality and shaping it in one’s image through herb and incantation.

Memdians pull potential out of their bodies through blood and body, leaving their mark on the tapestry of the world behind them, and call it Weaving.

“Magic” and Mystery About You

Before a Memdian ever takes their first breath, their Essence is being woven into the world. Every movement the child-bearing parent takes, the whims and energies of the world build in the womb to imprint on the newborn. One born by the seaside dances with the tides, finding a natural ability in moving currents and walking on water- one born in dense thickets digs their nails into the dirt and finds roots growing between their fingertips. Enviorment is not the only factor - a mother who spends her pregnancy on her feet may find herself with a child that runs along the wind like open fields, while a parent burdened by grief through their babe's development may raise a child who feels the dead before they even know they are to die.

These natural inclinations - vaguely divided along the Eight Elemental Threads ,  are called Affinities, and while they are not the limiting factor of someone's magic, it is where they start. Within their affinities, most people in the day to day perform Tugs - small acts of magic that doesn't change the Tapestry of Memdia, merely, well, tugs at the Threads for a desired result. Boiling water with the snap of a finger for friction, bringing a seed to sprout through kneading the soil, charging a crystal with enough light to burn the midnight oil.

To Memdians, this is not magic, and this is not the subject of this article. The affinities one is born with, the tugs along reality for daily life, these are simple skills of life such as writing or cooking.

So what do Memdians consider Magic?

 A Practical Application of Ego

In Memdia, magic requires a certain degree of self-importance. Everyone has been given the gift by the Gods to utilize potential energy in accordance with their will - it requires a certain degree of confidence to assert oneself as worthy of using that gift to truly impact the world in which they live. Weaving, beyond the simple act of asking the world for favors, is an act of bargaining with the world itself.

As part of the Gods’ Apology, every Memdian is able to store a small amount of essence within them, enough to manage their Tugs and self regulate with little more to it. To perform feats greater than keeping the lights on or blanching greens requires a larger, more stable pool of Essence, as well as the ability over its flow, how it can manifest, and when.

The Warp - A Weaver is a Bodybuilder

To stabilize the control over everything from the thresholds of essence to its flow through the body, a student of Weaving must also have control over all other functions the body has. To master Essence is to master the pumping of one’s own blood, to hear one’s heart pulsing in the drums of their ears and using the beats as a metronome for their own movements. Much of early mage apprenticeship in many cultures (Especially Greyj-El and Laebaime) involves rigorous physical training - not for any muscle gain, but to become intimate with every inch of one’s own anatomy in order to learn how to break it.

When lacking in ingredients, incantations, or time, the Weaver’s most powerful component is their blood. Through injury and exertion, the Weaver’s intention becomes manifest - in pain, desire clarifies until the world turns the window of the mind into a mirror. Knowing when to shed ephemera for blood is a sign of proper education.

The body is not an instrument, it is a material.

The Weft - A Weaver is a Natural Scientist

Weavers are paintbrushes with their intentions and desires as pigment- the Tapestry of Memdia is their canvas. It is in this space where spells are cast - threads are shoved through the web and brought back through a manifested idea. Oftentimes ideas need help leaving the fingertips - guiding words, locations where the Essence flowing from Mother Memdia aligns with ones intentions , bounties of the earth, sea, and sky act as maps into the metaphysical. One cannot always work along the grain of the world’s patterns, but it is always best to try.

Knowledge of this comes through intimacy with the moon phases, of where the mouths of rivers are, what blood of what animals or the saps of what trees align with what goals. While Memdians can do many things with just their own Essence and willpower, many greater ideas needs some nudges from the earth.

Threading the Needle - The Weaver is a Masochist

Of the three laws of magic , one is paramount above all to those trying to achieve magical greatness - What cannot be created, can be transformed. Plainly, it’s equivalent exchange- no reaction, no action. Practically, it means that the ways of Essence are fickle, and the drawbacks of desired results echo far after the spell is over. Paired with the third law - What has been transformed cannot be returned to how it was before - means that often, Weavers only get one chance. While most risky spells - especially those involving blood - can be assured to have a vague loss of lifespan waiting on the other end, the Tapestry prefers to be more poetic in the consequences it chooses to levy against those who play its games.

In truth, it is perhaps why so many choose to walk down its paths anyways. It’s a dance with reality itself - certain doom in exchange for a place in history.

With those words, magic in Memdia is a dangerous lover. Tempting, wicked, and beautiful in glory as it is in despair.