12 KiB
writing mage wars fanfiction. Need help fleshing out my magic system.
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Author: u/Sailor_Vulcan Champion of Justice and Reason*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3ers1c/writing_mage_wars_fanfiction_need_help_fleshing/
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Score: 1
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Created: 2015-07-27T13:55:26
Post:
Here's what I have of the magic system so far.
Channeling works by sending a signal to open tiny portals for nanobots to pour through from the plane of voltari. These nanobots are called mana. 1 mana is a colony of nanobots about 1 cubic inch in volume. Because the nanobots are so tiny and because they have a hive mind, they can be collectively instructed to form many shapes, by opening microportals to different elemental planes to gather the materials. And they can do this faster when there are more microportals and nanobots. This is also why some spells take longer to cast than others. However, most of these nanobots are not able to open microportals to the realm of voltari. Only channeling units can do that. Every channeling unit is made of 4-6 mana that are stored within a mage's body. If too many portals are being opened in too little space, that space can be warped, and the nanobots in that space will go haywire (confused) when they are separated from the rest of their hive mind.
Many of if not all the gods of Etheria used to be humans before they used magic to ascend. They then traveled back in time, saved the rest of humanity from being wiped out, and assumed personas spoken of in ancient mythologies.
Voltari is an AI. It was programmed to give sapient beings the power to defend themselves from existential threats. Unfortunately, giving many humans a degree of control over the AI meant that they could use the AI for conflicts. Voltari does not care if humanity actually survives existential threats, only that it has everything it needs to protect itself.
The gods keep Etheria's tech level low enough so that they do not have another a singularity. Because if they had another singularity, voltari, which is a hive mind and is not recursively self improving, would surely be destroyed.
Etheria is NOT an alternate everett branch of Earth. It is in an entirely separate universe/multiverse. There are some similarities between the natural laws of their world, but the existence of time travel and nanobots which can act at longer distances, as well as the fact that etheria is the only planet in their universe with life on it, (possibly/presumably) sets it apart from our universe, possibly a few other differences between their natural laws as well.
Mage Wars is a really fun customizable strategy game created by Arcane Wonders, and it's pretty affordable too, I highly recommend it. It's my favorite tabletop game. You can learn more about it here:
http://www.arcanewonders.com/category/magewars
Also, not everything described above is necessarily canon. A lot of this is my own interpretation based on what I know of the game, the world and lore so far.
I'm not sure what to do about the different planes.
What do you guys think of all this?
Edit:
I just realized the system I came up with suffers from massive complexity penalties. Better idea: spoiler
Comments:
u/Igigigif [+1] IT Foxgirl (7 hours later)
First off, why do the elemental panes exist? Why are they implied to exist only of the four classical elements? Where does voltari get the energy to do all this?
On the more practical end of things, how to mages get their initial colonies of mana? Could a larger colony open larger portals to the various planes? Would say, a portal with an area of 2 contribute more, less or the same amount of chaos as two portal with an area of 1? What can mages even do besides dumping the elements on their foes?
(for reference, I know nothing about mage wars)
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (9 hours later)
There are six main classifications of spells in mage wars: attacks incantations, enchantments, equipment, creatures and conjurations.
Incantations are spells that generally have temporary effects, attack spells are like incantations but they attack things and usually aren't made out of mana, or at least they're usually mostly not made out of mana, but they still take mana to cast.
Enchantments (which start out as an invisible framework made from two mana called an "enchantment matrix", and then can later be "revealed" by filling in the enchantment matrix with the remaining amount of mana required to "complete" the object or effect. Examples of enchantments can be anything from creating a temporary spiked pit trap to increasing the strength of a creature.
When you cast an equipment the mana creates/becomes equipment for your mage to use/wear. Things like weapons and shields and rings and stuff. These don't necessarily last forever, I'm pretty sure they disappear when the mage is unconscious (like when they sleep) and they might just (presumably sending a signal of some kind to the spell/object to do something. I suspect that if an object created out of/from mana goes unused long enough, it automatically disassembles/falls apart or something.
Mages can also summon "creatures" which are not exactly "real" per say, but likenesses, or simulated versions of them constructed from mana. Same thing for conjurations. The main difference between creatures and conjurations is that creatures can move and conjurations usually can't, creatures are usually "living" (but not always) and conjurations usually are "nonliving" (but not always). And they can be affected/targeted by different kinds of spells, although the majority of spells that can target a conjuration can also target a creature, but not vice versa. Creatures can take actions in the game just like the mage, but the conjurations don't take actions in the game, although they can have activated abilities.
As for the elemental planes, you could have the four clasical elements really just be how people describe solids, liquids, gases and plasmas. Supporting this is the fact that Infernia, the elemental plane of fire, is basically Hell (although I don't think it's always been that way), and most depictions of Hell have lava and dark caverns in them, not just fire, ergo, earth. This might also suggest overlap between the elemental planes besides where they intersect in Etheria, which might be kind of similar in a way to how mages can learn to cast any kind of spell regardless of what type of mage they are, i.e. a fire wizard can cast water spells and a priestess can cast curses and demons, although this is harder than learning spells from schools of magic that they are trained in. I imagine that the elemental planes would have extra planet forming material from spoiler. It could also be that the planes were always there before everything else, and material from the planes was used to form both spoiler I imagine that the elemental planes would probably be a distant ring around Etheria that you need a telescope to see, or something. This probably would be better than my original idea of planes intersecting at Etheria. The idea of planes overlapping with the world of Etheria sounds good at first, until you realize that both the plane of earth and the plane of water have to overlap Etheria on land, interweaving in many somewhat arbitrary-seeming ways, and that's just on land, and then there's the ocean, and why the heck would you say the planes overlap or are really big enough to be entire planes of existence overlapping Etheria itself, when you have oceans and elemental plane of fire is unlikely to overlap oceans of Etheria meaning that the planes don't overlap Etheria as the whole (and what about balance between the planes? water would have WAY too much of an advantage, since Etheria is so similar to Earth geographically and biologically, that water basically HAS to be part of a majority of their world's surface.)
There are other planes besides the elemental ones, though. They haven't been discussed in much detail yet, though.
Also, Etheria is their universe's version of Earth. There are some significant geographical and biological similarities between their world and ours, such as the existence of humans and other creatures with human or mostly human minds, and the fact that the geopolitical lines of the Central Hearthlands and the shape and size of several countries in it are very similar to those of Europe in our world, and the land of Kumanjaro is across the sea to the west of the Central Hearthlands, and Kumanjaro is clearly based on the Americas (or part of them anyway).
Mages are born with the channeling ability. It increases as they get older and/or with training. There are other ways to increase your channeling, temporarily. You could use 5 mana to cast a mana crystal, which is a conjuration that increases the channeling ability of the mage that controls it by 1.
In mage wars: players share their "turn", passing priority back and forth each phase of the turn. At the start of the turn, each mage gains mana equal to their channeling stat.
There are things you can cast that increase your channeling, and there are also things that decrease the amount of mana you need to cast a certain kind of spell when you use them. All spells have a mana cost. (I theorize that if a spell costs "0" mana, it's really just a tiny amount of mana less than 1, so that the mage doesn't really notice how much they're spending, just that they're casting a spell.)
Same, I think. But if you have ten giant portals all squeezed into one room, the effect would be a lot more noticeable than a million tiny portals scattered all over the place. And if there were a million giant portals rather than a million tiny portals, that would also have a bigger effect, of course. Ten giant portals all squeezed into one room probably would be considered more of a problem, actually.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+1] Champion of Justice and Reason (4 days later)
I just realized the system I came up with suffers from massive complexity penalties. Better idea: spoiler