Development Sneak Peek: The Nine Disciplines of Magic, Part II (Patreon)

Hey all! Last month I posted the first part of a closer look on the disciplines of magic in Arsur and what each looks like in practice, so here's part 2!

Inner-Type Discipline

Healing

Healing magic, aside from using alchemy, relies heavily on a specific type of aura magic. Essentially, to become a healer, a user must train their aura to become a healing type: this is often done by long periods of meditation in locations that have high concentrations of magic from nature.

These are often considered sacred locations, commonly called Sacred Sites, and they are also where a lot of spirits tend to gather. For example, think of an ancient tree, or a mountaintop, or an oasis in the desert. The abundance of natural magic in these locations makes it so that they're rejuvenating to anyone who visits them, and temples are often built within or near such sites.

Once someone has spent a long enough time in one of these locations, soaking up the natural magic, their aura will gradually take on these same qualities. To be able to soak up the magic itself requires training and a high level of discipline; if an untrained person attempts this, they risk "overloading" their magic pathways by absorbing too much magic all at once, and thereby risk organ failure or even death.

Assuming the person soaking up the natural magic is trained, however, they can then use their aura to rejuvenate and heal other people, accelerating the healing process of their body to close up an injury or bolster their immune system. 

The obvious drawback is that the healing aura will eventually return to normal the longer you spend away from a Sacred Site. This necessitates regular visits and meditations in order to keep healing people. Also, healing magic cannot cure severe diseases on its own. While it boosts your immune system, people rely on alchemical tonics and potions to cure them from illnesses. 

However, as people in this world don't have a proper conception of what causes disease (they don't know about bacteria or viruses, etc), alchemical cures can only help so much. In the case of a natural disease caused by a virus, the most people in this world can do is bolster someone's immune system and treat the symptoms with alchemy, and hope that helps enough to have someone survive. As such, plagues are still a big problem in this world. 

There are magic-related issues that healing magic and alchemy can help with very well, though, such as when someone's magic core or their magic paths in the body don't function properly.

For example, if someone's body is weak after suffering from illness or injury for a long time, this can affect or damage the magic paths in their body as well. It can cause unwanted side effects, such as someone's own magic damaging their own body, or randomly casting magic when unintended and causing damage to their environment/others around them. In such a situation, healing can work very well to help restore these paths.

Outer-Type Disciplines

These disciplines are most suited to outer magic types, but they can also be performed by inner magic types when given additional practice. 

Elemental

Elemental magic basically is exactly like what it sounds like: magic cast by using the elements in one's environment.

Mechanically, the difference between how elemental magic is used compared to aura magic is quite interesting as well, and illustrates also why inner magic types would struggle so much trying to use outer magic and vice versa.

With aura magic, someone uses and manipulates the magic already within them, whereas with elemental magic, someone uses their own magic essentially as an anchor-point from which they "hook" onto the magic of the environment, and manipulate it. You can visualize it kind of like a sort of magnetism: you can attach your magic to whichever element in the environment you want, at which point it will follow your will (and, quite literally, the movements of your body; think of R twisting the water that was flooding the Crown's quarters up into the sink, for example).

In other words, for elemental magic, it is vital that the magic within you remains completely unchanged and stable. If it were to fluctuate, it could cause an unintended ripple effect with the elemental magic you're trying to manipulate. However, for inner magic types, to manipulate and shape the magic within them comes most naturally to them. To ask them to keep their inner magic stable would basically be asking them to learn how to ignore their reflexes. 

It's the same for when an outer magic type tries to learn inner magic. The magic within an outer user is typically so stable and still that it's very hard for them to learn how to move it or manipulate it at will; often for outer magic types it feels like trying to shape a rock with their bare hands at first.

Also, using your own aura should not be confused with outer elemental magic. R summoning a lightning spear with their own magic qualifies as aura magic; if they were to summon lightning from the sky, however, that would be elemental magic. It's a subtle distinction, and non-magi often confuse the two.

Another thing to take note of with elemental magic is that sometimes, spirits will be attached to the element you're trying to manipulate--this then requires a form of summoning magic, albeit on a much smaller scale. 

Going back to R flushing out the water in the Crown's chambers as an example, R used a "command" that addressed the spirits within the water, as they had claimed it as their territory. By doing that, R essentially bent the spirits to their will, and overpowered their claim to take control of the water instead. This is more difficult to do, and considered a more advanced form of elemental magic; if you're unprepared to take on the spirits, you risk angering them and inviting a backlash that could hurt you.

Like aura magic, elemental magic functions as the foundation for the other types of outer-type disciplines, namely summoning (as mentioned) and ritual magic, which are discussed below.

Summoning

When we talk of summoning, it can involve either summoning spirits or summoning a type of natural magic, usually one with great force that the user themselves cannot manipulate.

For summoning spirits, the user would typically require some sort of conduit; either their own magic if it's strong enough or an object with great magical power. Think of the gemstones used in the coronation ceremony in CH7; they functioned as conduits to connect to the greater spirits of Arsur. For most common spirits, a summoner can typically use their own magic core as a beacon to summon nearby spirits to aid them. Summoning magic is, next to elemental magic, aura magic and warding magic, one of the most common forms of combat on the battlefield and often taught to soldiers. 

For daily use though, say if you want to travel for a long distance, it's advised that you learn how to summon a spirit in case you run into trouble, such as protection from weather or animals or even bandits on the road. Because summoning is so simple, anyone gifted with magic, especially outer magic, can learn it instinctively without formal training. If you are untrained, though, you run into the risk of summoning a more powerful spirit than you intended, which can put a great strain on your body or cause unintended consequences such as the spirit being a little too, uh, enthusiastic in helping lol.

The other type of summoning involves summoning a natural force--this is the type of magic where a conduit or multiple magi are almost always required, because a force of nature is obviously very powerful. 

Farmers who are able to will often hire magi for this purpose, for example to help water their crops during a drought. The summoner magus will then want draw from a large body of water nearby, let's say a river, but to move that much running water likely requires much more magic and control than the summoner has. In which case, they need to use a conduit (such as gemstones) or multiple summoners present in order to "command" the river and its greater spirit to their will, and to summon the water to the crops. 

Ritual

Ritual magic is closely related to religious ceremonies and is kind of a mixed pot: it uses elements of summoning and elemental magic, and sometimes warding as well depending on the type of ritual being performed. The ritual can either involve asking aid from a spirit for an extended period, or making some sort of connection to the spirit. The coronation ceremony is the biggest example of ritual magic, that also incorporates summoning magic and elemental magic within it.

Ritual magic functions almost like a formula, or a contract that the user makes with spirits. It's why summoning is often a prerequisite of ritual magic if you wish to use a spirit during your ritual and there isn't one nearby.

The fundamentals of ritual magic are this: the user commits to a sacrifice, in exchange for a boon. The greater the asked for boon, the greater the sacrifice required. For the coronation ceremony, for example, the amount of magic required to power the gemstones used in the ritual was that of 10,000 magi from all over Arsur, namely priests who helped to power them. In exchange, the Crown was able to connect to the spirits of the land. It's why such a ritual could not be easily replicated by just anyone.

The difference between summoning and ritual magic is that for summoning, you don't require to form a concord with a spirit to use it, especially if your use is one time or a very short term thing as explained above. For ritual magic, the use tends to be long term or more involved.

As mentioned before, smaller rituals can involve simpler things such as forming a concord with a spirit, the most common example of ritual magic. In exchange for the spirit's aid, the user gives a spirit something they ask for in return, or a "sacrifice". 

With fire spirits, as noted in the story, the "sacrifice" required is often to reveal a secret that the user has kept; the greater the secret, the greater the aid they will give. For air spirits, they require the user to share some sort of knowledge with them; something that took the user a while to learn, such as a skill, or often for scholars it will be a subject they've studied. 

For water spirits, they also require knowledge, but that of self-reflection: the user must either acknowledge something about themselves that they have denied, confront memories they've tried to forget, or acknowledge flaws that they've tried to ignore or that are painful/difficult/embarrassing for them to admit to. 

For earth spirits, their required "sacrifice" is (mistakenly) considered the easiest as it is material: giving physical offerings. Earth Temples will often be filled with offerings of flowers, fruit & vegetables, meats or sacrificed animals, furs, wines, coin, jewels or even weapons or trophies. The mistake that most people make is, when they wish for a large boon (such as their crops not to fail) that their offerings tend to be impersonal, or low in cost; that often doesn't earn a boon from an earth spirit. What an earth spirit truly wants most is an offering that holds personal value or has a high cost. The higher the personal value/cost, the greater the boon.

In the distant past, some would go so far as to sacrifice human lives for a boon, but this would often work out very poorly. For one, killing someone doesn't eliminate their spirit, which means it will only have their spirit very pissed off at you once they're dead and will do everything it can to ruin the ritual such as turning the earth spirits against you. The only way sacrificing another would work is if the sacrificed person does so willingly. So, consent is key lol.

That was it for this month!! Hope you enjoyed the closer look at the disciplines and have a better idea of what each of them looks like now 💖