Magic

Many different types of magic exist in the Metamor Keep universe. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

Types of Magic:
There are truly only a few actual ‘types’ of magic in the world – those that are internal, and those that are external. Everything else falls under the method by which these types are practiced. The types are as follows:

Sorcerous – Sorcery is the ability to manipulate magic as an innate ability or talent. Dragons, prime planar beings such as Moon Dogs, Dryads and similar nature spirits, and magical creatures such as the Rhea are all sorcerous to a degree. Many if not most spellcasters are at their core sorcerous in nature.

Ritual – Wizards, witches, shamen, and many other spellcasters do not have the innate spark within them to grasp magic without some sort of external channel through which their intent is projected. Many use rituals, circles, runes, bones or any manner of physical objects or constructs to through which to perceive, grasp, manipulate, and project their intended magic. Typically those who practice ritual magic keep their knowledge within small circles, passing it on through word of mouth and exhaustive training, or they transcribe their knowledge into spellbooks. Access to the accumulated knowledge of past ritual methods - be it at their knee or through a book - often makes wizards far more varied than sorcerers though often trapped in the rigid methodology of their individual practices.

Many using wizardry are also sorcerous, however, utilizing ritual to amplify or focus their innate sorcery or directly without any interaction with their sorcery.

Divine Magic – Only the Divine practice this type of magic, though many who follow divinity seem to utilize it as well. Mortals aspecting divine magic are generally only a focus for the Divinity itself working through them, or have been briefly granted divine magic to affect a miracle. Usually, however, mortals who purport to use divine magic are merely using rituals, innate sorcery, or granted sorcerous talents.
Divine magic is used by those beings present within or reaching out from various divine planes. Aedra, Daedra, Infernals, and Celestials all use divine magic. Imps, lesser Seraphim, and other similar beings are utilizing divine sorcery which is, in the end, merely a limited sorcerous ability and not truly Divine magic.

Psionic – The rarest and most difficult of magical types to quantify, Psionic magic is often lumped into sorcery but it is distinct unto itself because Psionic abilities do not require manna to function. A Psi can function as easily in Metamor as Yesulam (though would attract Divine attention there, not likely positive). Psionic magic is that entirely of the Mind manipulating the world without touching upon magic, spell casting, or manna at all. As such it is unique in that regard.

Dream Walking is often called sorcerous but it is, in fact, one of the Psionic disciplines.

As with sorcery, many with psionic talents also practice wizardry though they always lack sorcerous ability (sic: Sorcery and Psi are most often mutually exclusive).

The Sondeck - There are also very limited types of innate magic which do not fit within any of the overarching magical type structures. One such is the Sondeck which does function where there is no manna, drawing entirely from within the Sondeckis, but many with the ability can also possess sorcerous talents.

There are the aforementioned types of magic, and then there are circles and schools of magical practice as enumerated below (among countless other approaches).

Alchemy

Ancient Mystical Order of the Enlightened Beings

Automaton Magic

The Curse

Regular (Arcane) Magic

Runic Magic

Shadow Magic

Shamanistic Magic

Others are in use; it's just that no information has yet come to light. If you want to add a system please ask the universe controller first.

Magical implements and weapons exist. The more power they possess, the more restrictive the conditions of their use. Simple magic items such as the morphic armor is allowed. The watchword should be balance.

A powerful item may be hard to use or can only be used a certain number of times per hour/day/week/month. Misha's axe is a powerful magic item, but being 5' long is an unwieldy thing to use and it takes years to master. But Misha's light stone can be a very common item since it's uses are limited. In fact they could be all over the keep.

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Rules of Magic in the Metamor Universe

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Magic is a complex system of manna and utilization to which certain rules or bounds apply. They are relatively simple.

Using manna to manipulate things already existing in an environment is efficient and not difficult. Concentrating a disperse element existing locally is less efficient and more manna costly, but not much more difficult than manipulating that which is already there.
Creating raw materials directly with manna is extremely inefficient, manna expensive, and very difficult.

Let us use water as an example. It is readily available in most environments. Picking up ten gallons of water from a nearby stream is quite simple. Concentrating water present in the air with the same amount of manna would produce anywhere from three to seven gallons, depending on ambient humidity, with only a slight bit more work involved on the part of the caster. Creating water out of nothing, however, with the same amount of manna and a considerable more degree of skill and effort by the caster would only produce about a gallon of water.
Changing the state of the water (to steam, humidity, ice or what have you) once isolated would not be a problem regardless of the method used to procure it. Changing one element into another, however, is extremely complex and something few below Master level could do successfully.

Fire could be similarly manipulated, but its various states would require more effort. Amplifying a candle’s fire would require more effort than, say, manipulating the heat of a campfire or forge. Fire is present in all places, similar to water but more plentiful as all things produce heat – even in the frigid arctic (though more effort would be required to draw in sufficient fire essence). Putting a fire out could be achieved either by replacing its essence with another element (throwing water or earth on it) or transferring it elsewhere (moving the fire essence into a large rock, for example, as a ‘sink’ to distribute the heat energy). Creating fire is quite simple acolyte level magic - it is merely drawing the local ambient heat into a source until it ignites. This, and creating light, are among the first focusing exercises that neophyte spell users practice.

Summoning

Summoning is extremely difficult due to the canonical complexities and cost of teleportation in the world setting. It is often far easier to summon an extra-planar entity than something mundane unless said mundane entity was inherently local and could move to the summoning area under its own power. Summoning a wolf, for example, from an area where wolves are native would be complex but not terribly manna intensive so long as the summoner was willing to wait for the animal to arrive under its own power. Dealing with it once it arrived, however, is another issue entirely as it will likely not be pleased. Summoning a wolf into the center of a major city, however, would be much more difficult – and could result in the arrival of a werewolf, in a similar state of irritation. Attempting to summon a wolf into an area where wolves do not naturally exist would be all but impossible as that would require transposing it from one location to another – a task already stated to be all but impossible, or a lengthy waiting period for a distant wolf to move from, a journey which it could very well not survive. Likewise, attempting to simply create a wolf out of raw manna would be more difficult even than teleportation which at least has an original target to move.

Summoning an extra-planar entity, however, would be far less difficult as it is merely creating a gateway to the creature’s location and having it step through to the caster’s location. The difficulty is compounded by the necessity to create a bridge from one plane to another. Again, said entity would likely be very upset at the capture which is why in most cases such summoning is done with considerable warding in place.

Teleportation

Teleportation, as previously stated, is all but impossible in the Metamor setting in most cases save one – Gateways.

Gateways

Gateways do not transpose a creature from one location to another (disassembling them via magic and reassembling them elsewhere). Rather, they allow the creature to step through an artificially created doorway from one place to another. Suffice to say, gateways are not something that can easily be created, often requiring considerable time, effort, and an anchored portal in which the gateway is created. Having two portals designated to the specific task, linked to one another, is easier in a manna cost sense but doubles the difficulty of establishing a gateway. Such linked gateways draw considerable manna, however, and should not be taken lightly as the expense could be highly detrimental to the local manna sources.
Certain sorcerous talents can make such gateways far easier to manage over a short distance, but are almost unique in their nature. The Sorceress Adept Kozaithy is one who has such a talent, utilizing mirrors as the framework for her gateways. For all of her talent and power, however, she has a very limited range; no more than a kilometer from one place to another and cannot sustain them indefinitely. To project her ability further, or with a longer duration, would require all of the complexities and material costs of creating portal structures though the manna cost for her is considerably less to utilize them once in place. Suffice to say, as of the current time setting she has not undertaken such a monumental task nor is any such effort foreseen.

Permanent fixed gateways would denude an area of manna if not create chaos with it (where there is sufficient manna, such as a nexus) so long as the gateway remains active.

Other types of innate gateway talents:
Shadow jumping or striding (Krenek Zagrosek, others). As with Kozaithy, this talent has extremely limited range. Others, like Agathe, who were given the ability are actually forced to enter a sub-plane of shadow – in and of itself an extremely risky endeavor – where they could move to the intended destination very swiftly and emerge through a second shadow portal. This talent is believed to have been lost with the closing of the entropic Rift in Marzac.

Mage 'Sight'
Perception of magic, spells, and manna flow

This has been an extremely contentious and difficult ‘rule’ to enumerate since Metamor’s inception. To that end and to keep things simple the following rules apply: There are no rules when it comes to perceiving magic or manna.

For most it is typically a visual thing, though different attuned people can ‘see’ it in countless varied ways. Each, or even all, of the five senses can be utilized for the sensing of magic in use or inherent to an item or place. Sensing manna is a slightly deeper utilization of the ability which some may lack though they can sense magic itself. Deeper still is the tenebrous veil between life essence as it links to and becomes raw manna (a difficult task to learn known, currently, only to Lutin shamen of the Moon Dog clan, and Murikeer who has not successfully taught it to others).

One does not even need to have any innate magical potential; it could be an inborn talent, conferred by enchantment or enchanted item, or taught via a school of wizardry though requires a minor spell and concentration to use.

Spellcasting

As with perceiving magic, there are no hard and fast rules as to the execution of spellcasting. There are methods of execution - Innate sorcerous ability, trained wizardry, gifted talent(s), or what ever else the creator of the spell user chooses within the overall bounds of Metamor canon.

Manipulating manna into effect – spells – does not require perception of the raw state of potential magic, even for one of sorcerous (inborn) ability. A trained wizard does not need to perceive the manna around them when creating spells, rites, or rituals. Nor does a sorcerer; they merely require focus to manipulate manna if it is present or draw from themselves.
To enchant items, however, does require the enchanter to have the ability to perceive manna to affix the spell or effect to the desired target. Since many schools that train magical ability often require enchanting an item (typically a light stone or pyrock, chill stone, ect) this means that very very few accomplished spellcasters are unable to somehow sense the manna around them.

All require the presence of manna to create magic so in areas where there is little or no manna neither wizard nor sorcerer can create magic without bringing with them a source of manna. Wizards or ritual spellcasters can use stored manna in batteries, foci, or enchanted items. Sorcerers can bring such items as well, but can also draw upon their inner manna which runs the risk of weakening or even harming them.
In places that cancel magic however, such as Yesulam, internal manna and stored manna cannot be manipulated at all. Indeed, in such areas sorcerers will feel out of sorts or even quite ill. Stored manna may merely be inaccessible or could be drained away entirely. Innately magical beings could actually perish (dragons, automata, extra-planar beings and the like) if they stay too long.

Of course, certain exceptions do apply in all cases. One can have a talent that dampens, cancels, or disrupts magic and manna around them. Magical items, effects, or spells that do this cannot do so from within the area affected; it must be projected remotely. One can be granted a divine boon that allows them to bring magic into lands that cancel it as Elvmere and Drift/Karkarak did on their pilgrimages to the Holy City. Such cases should be carefully examined by both the writer and setting controllers before taking place.

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