Magic Theory

Magic in the Myriad Realms is, in short, a reality warping. A form of telling the Reality itself how it should look like, in a way that makes it obey your vision. It is an extremely dangerous and mighty power, one that exists almost entirely outside of the scope of simple mortals. Or, at least, that's how things used to be. Great Multiversal War have changed a lot of things, including that.

The original form of magic - the one still present and powering up the servitors, and typically called Aura - is both wild and generally uncontrollable. Humans in the past have circumnavigated that issue mostly by using computers to handle the precise calculations - to become this magic direct user as a being of flesh was to become a servant of the Dark Lords... or dying instantly and painfully. However Dominion during its peak have decided to bring the magic to the masses - and succeded.   It was achieved through the creation of the System. System draws in the malignant and chaotic power of the Dark Lord and purifies it of its harmful elements. Then it spreads its mostly equally throughout the multiverse as mana - the remade and stabilized form of the wild magic. Changed from uncontrollable force of pure change into an energy that can be then used to alter Reality in a precise and controlled matter.   Mana permeates the world - it's everywhere at every moment. It's internally divided between numerous affinities, each of them a different 'frequency' of mana. To cast a spell, to use a technique or to execute a crafting's recipe, one needs to weave mana of several frequencies into one structure.   The System assists that. Once you manage to cast and properly train a spell/technique/recipe, you can get the process significantly streamlined, with the System assiting you for a bit faster casting. It's the difference between training and combat usage, in the end. It's still not instanteous.   Mana is something that makes precious little sense from purely scientific point of view. Despite being a form of radiation (going by its ability to permeate the world, but having visible troubles piercing certain materials, such as lead), the usage of the terms 'frequency' isn't completely incorrect.   More than that, it's also capable of acting like a solid material. Concentrate enough of it in right circumstances, and you can turn into a solid crystal, or a liquid.

Aura is the undiluted power of the Dark Lords, still somewhat present in the background, even if almost entirely suppressed by mana. It has several frequencies, each of them connected to a single Dark Lord. It can theoretically be used to cast powerful spells, however it's considered to be a proscribed thing in almost entire multiverse.   Aura will inevitably warp your mind and body, and is heavily addictive. It's users begin to worship the Dark Lords, and while this makes Servitors neutral or even allied to you, it will also make you increasingly hostile to Mankind as a whole.   Eventually, it'll turn you into a conduit for the will of the Dark Lords, your free will extinguished and replaced with instinctual obedience to your eldritch omnicidal overlords.

Affinities are the different frequencies of mana as described above. Each of them can be solidifed or turned into liquid, and each of them is used to cast at least some spells, use at least some martial arts and create certain objects through shaping recipes.   Normally, they are woven together into a background mana field that permeats entirety of the multiverse, with Throne Worlds having a significantly higher level of it than Vassal Worlds, while in turn having much lesser degree of it than the Astral Network. However, there are anomalies.   Sometimes, a place is disturbed, with a single frequency of mana being more common than it should. The result are the so-called affinity overflows.   For example a region with overabundance of fire mana will typically have fires spark out regularly, while also having plants and animals altered into some decidedly magic ones. It'll also become a decent habitat for the spirits of the fire affinity, who might spawn there on their own. Sapients would have been altered too, but System protects them against it.   Those affinity-altered herbs, minerals and body parts are the source of alchemy, while the altered materials (such as metals, crystals, minerals, leather etc.) are a foundation of other forms of crafting, namely the shaping. As a result, many of the resulting Affinity Overflows (or simply Overflows) are actually very valuable. Most of them are very small, and cause merely some slight, small-sized change - but others can envelop entire regions.

Fire Affinity - Fire Affinity is a common elemental affinity centered on the general concept of fire. Its overflows tend to make animals and plants volatile if not constantly on fire (yet somehow not dying). Those overflows are relatively common throughout the multiverse, if only because a lot of magic employs this particular affinity. Its spirits are also a relatively common sight.   Water Affinity - Water Affinity is a common elemental affinity centered on the general concept of water. Its overflows tend to create swamps (when occur on the solid ground), lakes (when the ground is shaped properly) or happen at sea and are hard to trace unless you are a merfolk. Common (if only because a lot of magic employs it). Its spirits are also a relatively common sight.   Air Affinity - Air Affinity is a common elemental affinity centered on the general concept of air. Its overflows tend to make areas windy, sometimes with a semi perpetual tornadoes and similar delights. Most of those, however, form high in the air, out of reach by all but those capable of flying. Common (if only because a lot of magic employs it). Its spirits are also a relatively common sight.   Earth Affinity - Earth Affinity is a common elemental affinity centered on the general concept of air. Its overflows tend to make areas of thick soil (sometimes actually arable), and occasional quakes (and, in rare cases, mountains and hills growing up from nowhere). Most of those, however, form underground, out of reach for most of the people. Common (if only because a lot of magic employs it). Its spirits are also a relatively common sight.   Frost Affinity - Frost Affinity is an uncommon elemental affinity centered on the general concept of frost. Which includes ice, snow, low temperatures etc. Its overflows tend to create regions of perpetual winter (or at least cold climate), despite normal climate patterns making it impossible. They are slightly more common in the naturally cold lands, where their influence also spreads further. Still relatively common.   Heat Affinity - Heat Affinity is an uncommon elemental affinity centered on the general concepts of heat and warmth. Which includes high temperatures (often for no external reason at all). Its overflows tend to create regions of perpetual heat, be it deserts even hotter than they should be, or desolate wastelands without the sand. They are slightly more common in the naturally warm lands (which they make even hotter). Still relatively common.   Light Affinity - Light Affinity is an uncommon elemental affinity centered on the general concept of light. This includes a lot of things, from blinding lights (or simply making things visible in darkness) to what's pretty combat lasers (albeit magical). Those are uncommon, and the overflows seem to happen completely at random (although not in naturally dark places, so do not expect one in a cave). Its spirits are quite common, especially in lands who follow various 'light-based' gods.   Darkness Affinity - Darkness Affinity is an uncommon elemental affinity centered on the general concept of darkness. This including blinding your enemies by stealing all the light, making yourself invisible in the darkness, and various similar powers. Form apparently at random, like the light affinity, but have a tendency to prefer places that are dark by nature (so caves, abandoned mines, shadowed valleys etc.).   Life Affinity - Life Affinity is an rare elemental affinity centered on the general concept of life. Its overflows make everything alive even more alive (granting them more energy and vitality and some degree of a healing factor), and in massive excess can even grant life to something that wasn't alive to begin with. Those are rare, and typically treasured - even a low level overflow is a place where you can expect some 'healing sanctuary' or something similar to be formed.   Death Affinity - Death Affinity is an rare elemental affinity centered on the general concept of death. Its overflows tend to slowly kill everything in the area, or at least weaken them. People will feel sluggish and tired, and their estimated lifespan will begin to decrease if the exposure is prolonged. Sufficiently powerful overflow will simply kill life on the first exposure, however. You can expect overflowed areas of this affinity to be mostly abandoned by all but the most desperate.

Kinetic Affinity - Kinetic Affinity is an uncommon physical affinity centered on the general concept of motion. Its overflows create areas where impacts and motions are dampened or enhanced. It creates a lot of useful alchemical materials (allowing one to weaken incoming physical damage or strengthen their own), but other than it is mostly interesting. Kinetic mana tends to be used alongside life one in many martial arts-style spells.   Probability Affinity - Probability Affinity is an uncommon physical affinity centered on the general concept of probability. If you throw a coin a hundred times and it's always the same result (or there are some other obvious patterns to the supposedly random events), you are probably inside a probability overflow. Its produces many useful things from alchemical and shaping point of view, but it's otherwise mostly unremarkable.   Entropy Affinity - Entropy Affinity is an uncommon physical affinity centered on the general concepts of aging, decay and rot. Its overflows result in areas of the world enveloped in rust and decay, with plants (and sometime animals) rotting away, metal being covered in rust (or other signs of deterioration) and humans aging slightly (or not so slightly) faster than they should.   Thunder Affinity - Thunder Affinity is an uncommon physical affinity centered on the general concepts of thunders and electricity. Its overflows are best recognized by sudden spike in static electricity, often accompanied by lightning strikes out of nowhere. Save for some entrepreneurial mages using such overflows for energy generation, they aren't much useful, but sometimes a sight to behold.   Sound Affinity - Sound Affinity is an uncommon physical affinity centered on the general concepts of sound and vibration. Its overflows are best recognized due to them being loud - you can expect most of the plants and animals being either loud or downright musical. Other common warning signs is everything around you (and you too) vibrating slightly. Not very useful, although sometimes they do end up inspiring some musicians.   Gravity Affinity - Gravity Affinity is a rare physical affinity centered on the general concept of gravity. Its overflows tend to create areas of higher or lower gravity, although rarely to the degree that is lethal (the real problem are the areas of reversed gravity, but those are much rarer). Its magic allows one to manipulate gravity, make themselves lighter etc. It has its own spirits, but those are just as rare as the overflows.   Space Affinity - Space Affinity is a rare physical affinity centered on the general concept of space - not as in 'vacuum' but as a part of the word 'spacetime'. Its overflows create spatially disturbed places, when directions appear to make no sense at all - and neither do sizes, with smaller containers fitting much larger things. They are pretty rare however, although tend to be rather interesting places.   Time Affinity - Time Affinity is a rare physical affinity centered on the general concept of time. Its overflows create areas where time doesn't work as it should, which primarily means that the time there is slower or faster than on the outside. There are no overflows where time is reversed, thankfully. As a whole, though, time overflows are pretty rare, and much less useful than one would think.

Stone Affinity - Stone Affinity is a common material affinity centered on the general concept of stone. Its overflows create - no surprise here - more stone, while also strengthening the one already present (while exacerbating the special qualities of the stone in question). If it didn't carried a risk of overexposure turning nearby humans into stone, they would probably be used to strengthen fortress walls.   Metal Affinity - Metal Affinity is an uncommon material affinity centered on the general concept of metals and metallurgy. Its overflows create abundance of ores (especially when underground), and reinforces metal brought from outside (only until it's taken out though). The problem is that if you stay too long within the overflow (especially strong one), you are going to discover that prolonged exposure changed a lot of things into metal - including your own flesh, which is lethal (although lefts a nice-looking sculpture).   Crystal Affinity - Crystal Affinity is an uncommon material affinity centered on the general concepts of crystals and gems. Its overflows create abundance of crystal and gem-carrying rocks and often spawns a crystallite protrusion on the walls and so on. However it carries the same problem as the Metal Affinity - if you stay too long, you WILL become a crystal sculpture, and that's no good.   Wood Affinity - Wood Affinity is an uncommon material affinity centered on the general concepts of wood and plantlife. Its overflows create unnaturally dense and vibrant forest patches, while breathing life into the surrounding nature. Overexposure will change you into a tree. Or other plant. Material affinities are no joke.   Flesh Affinity - Flesh Affinity is an uncommon material affinity centered on the general concepts of blood and flesh. Its overflows create patches of terrain that bleeds and is soft in touch, which - as most people maybe save for the aberrants agree to - isn't nice. The affinity itself is useful in numerous healing spells, however overflows are something utterly different - something that people aalthough for a being of flesh, being there isn't dangerous - then again, having your clothes or armor warp into a flesh is a bit disturbing).   Poison Affinity - Poison Affinity is an uncommon material affinity centered on the general concepts of poison and venom. Its overflows create areas where everything is either poisonous, venomours or - not a rare case at all - both. They are useful - after all, many poisons are cures when applied in correct doses - but dangerous, because it doesn't matter how cautious you are - you will be building up poison in your body when you are within their overflows.   Acid Affinity - Acid Affinity is an uncommon material affinity centered on the general concept of acids. Its overflows create areas where everything is acidic - and sometimes badly so. Except for gathering some alchemical reagents - and disposing of corpses - they have very little actual uses, and are mostly ignored. Everything that's send inside (and is vulnerable to any acid) will eventually detoriorate into nothingness.

Mind Affinity - Mind Affinity is a common mental affinity centered on the general concepts of thoughts and emotions. Its overflows result in areas when people naturally hear others' thoughts and feel their emotions. Overexposure might cause problems with the concept of self - it sometimes takes victims a while to separate themselves from the 'intercepted' thoughts and emotions.   Illusion Affinity - Illusion Affinity is a common mental affinity centered on the general concepts of perception and illusion. Its overflows create places where things aren't as they seem (and where you see things that do not exist), and visitors can expect their perception to be severely affected. Those aren't as dangerous as other mental affinities, with the worst threat being the environment (for example falling into a deep shaft that you didn't see because illusions covered it).   Lust Affinity - Lust Affinity is an uncommon mental affinity centered on the general concept of lust (typically sexual, but not only). Its overflows result in areas which force the guests into a state of arousal (and that's without mentioning what it does to plants and animals, and sometimes rocks and metals). While a good source of aphrodisiacs, they are generally left alone as you can easily gets overexposed (which brings you into a state when 'no' isn't an answer).   Rage Affinity - Rage Affinity is an uncommon mental affinity centered on the general concepts of anger. Its overflows result in areas which make you more and more angry the longer you stay there. Losing your mind there is even easier than within the lust overflows, and will typically result in some people dying. They have less economic use than lust overflows, actually, and thus they tend to be ignored.   Hunger Affinity - Hunger Affinity is an uncommon mental affinity centered on the general concepts of hunger and consumption. Its overflows result in areas which make you more and more hungry, although they also typically make you perceive more and more things as more and more delicious. Overstaying in the hunger overflow will probably result in the victims devouring each other in a mindless frenzy.   Feral Affinity - Feral Affinity is an uncommon mental affinity centered on the general concepts of primal and feral behaviour. Its overflows result in areas when higher (and abstract) thinking is suppressed, making everything act on animalistic instinct - while also making animals larger and fiercer. The risks of staying in one of the feral overflows is self-evident at this point.   Eldritch Affinity - Eldritch Affinity is an uncommon mental affinity centered on the general concepts of 'weirdness', 'strangeness' and limits of cognition. Its overflows result in areas which are strange, unsettling, and will inevitably cause mental disorders during an overt exposure. The affinity also alters plants and animals to carry various otherworldly traits and sometimes very strange forms.

Terminal Affinity - Terminal Affinity is an abstract affinity associated with the Terminal Sun, and thus it could be easily described as 'undeath affinity'. This affinity - in which Terminus is thoroughly soaked in - will reanimate all that is death while killing all that is alive (although the latter way slower than the former). The same happens in various 'holy places' of the Terminal Sun, who share the 'soaked in' part.   Holy Affinity - Holy Affinity is an abstract affinity associated with the Church of the Highmost. It's, well, holy - you can expect sufficiently 'holy' places of the Church to naturally change into holy overflows, resulting in a place when wounds start to heal, people feel calmer and tend to be kinder to each other, and everything is nice - unless you are seriously evil. Then the holy affinity hurts you. Badly so.   Unholy Affinity - Unholy Affinity is an abstract affinity associated with the Ashen Covenant. It's the opposite of the holy, pretty much - the more crimes and other evil deeds you committed, and the less you care about lives and well-being of others, the better you feel within unholy overflows. Which does include healing. It is also actively harmful (or, at least, it weakens them) to religious magicks.   Sacred Affinity - Sacred Affinity is an abstract affinity associated with the Temple of the Seven. It's relatively comparable to the Holy and Unholy Affinity, in that it heals and puts at ease, but unlike them it cares not for the morality of people within its area of influence. It influences everyone equally, although typically save for adherents of other Powers (who are merely ignored).   Divine Affinity - Divine Affinity is an abstract affinity associated with the Cults of the Ascended. It's one more theurgic affinity, although one that can but doesn't have to heal. Instead it offers controlled (so it doesn't have negative side-effects) buffs within its sphere of influence, with the nature of said buffs depending on the gods/pantheon to which the overflow area is dedicated to.   Oneiric Affinity - Oneiric Affinity is an abstract affinity associated with the Oneiric Choir. It's the last of the truly theurgic affinities, which combines the Holy-like 'burn the evil heal the good' effect with said healing/burning being extremely disturbing, and potentially psychoactive (like eldritch-affinity). It also causes rather strange dreams.   Truth Affinity - Truth Affinity is one of the most abstract of abstract affinities, one that isn't theurgic as much as it is outsider. Truth Affinity is the System's categorization of the power wielded by the True Angels/True Archangels of the Church of the Highmost, power of altering one's very nature, past, present and future. The only significant alteration of the Truth overflows is that areas soaked in it aren't affected by large-scale reality warping (nor, although this isn't know to the locals, timeline alterations).   Form Affinity - Form Affinity is one of the most abstract of abstract affinities, one typically wielded by outsider servants of Powers that aren't the Highmost. "Form" is the natural shape and nature of things and entities, one that can get warped by sheer proximity of such supreme beings. On the surface level the results are mutations, but ones going much deeper - and affecting their victims in the past, until they think that this is how they always looked. Extremely rare, and with almost no known overflows.   Soul Affinity - Soul Affinity is one of the most abstract of abstract affinities, yet one that is wielded and to a small degree incorporated into many spells. While nobody knows how souls actually look like, soul magic allows to bind them to others, even beyond death (although to say this is frowned upon is understatement of a century, to the point when only demons use such magics in larger number). The extremely rare soul overflows make souls malleable, forcing unbreakable bounds on people on a level that's much deeper than simple mental compulsion and might even grant souls to things that shouldn't have one.