Magical Abilities

Though known by many names depending on time and culture, the magical arts universally trace their origins to the primordial force of creation passed down from Godly Entities to mankind. It is this relationship which outlines the stark difference between the magical arts and ritual practices found within major religions. Whereas faithful servants of a deity are able to draw power directly from said deities in the form of Faeth or Naether (depending on deity in question), sorcerers draw power directly from the original source. Despite being severely diluted over countless generations, every human possesses the theoretical ability to tap into a magical school of thought. However, even among modern masters of the craft, the gradual dilution has imposed a number of limitations on the practice of magic.

Beyond the more obvious decrease in the raw power compared to their godly predecessors, modern practicioners are restricted to one of three schools of sorcery. The categories are Space, Divination, and Aether. Space refers to the manipulation of a location or the user’s position within that location. Divination focuses upon the user’s ability to make contact with various forms of supernatural entities or alter the perceptions of others. Common abilities are fortune telling, mind reading, and contacting spirits for information. Finally, there is Aether which encompasses more arcane studies falling outside the other two schools. While it lacks the initial raw power of the other school, masters of Aether carry massive potential through the sheer utility of their art form. More notable fields of study within the Aether school are necromancy and blood magic.

Though a trained master is normally required in order to properly instruct an average person in how to access their connection to the primordial force of nature, it is not unheard of for individuals with extreme natural talent towards one school to be born and stumble upon particular abilities without outside help. It was through the efforts of individuals like this that an unofficial fourth school of magic was created by combining latent magical properties residing within all people with modern science. Referred to as Alchemy by the modern world, it exists apart from pure sorcery as a category all its own, focusing solely on the transformation of objects in nature rather than manipulating them. Whereas a sorcerer of the three primary schools can completely break the laws of physics with their art, a comparable alchemist can only bend them to a certain extent. The most common alchemic technique is shifting an object's state of matter between a solid, liquid and gas. The pinnacle of alchemic study is essentially unlimited transmutation of matter, freely turning one metal into another and so on and so forth. To date, no living alchemist has perfected this technique.

While it is rare for a sorcerer to reach the pinnacle of power within one of the schools, for the particularly gifted there are other means of gaining magical power. Specifically, it is possible for experienced sorcerers to enter into magical contracts with mystical beings such as elementals in order to increase or expand their powers. While these contracts offer a great deal of power, they do not come without a sizeable cost. Repeated abuse of the abilities gained through mystical beings will inevitably eat away at the mental or spiritual health of the user, often leading to madness or full scale corruption of the soul.

The magically inclined, due to philosophical differences between the various schools, have rarely been able to come together in a cohesive culture without quickly becoming corrupted by power and summarily overthrown by the masses. The most famous examples of this are the Salem Witch Trials and the lost colony of Croatoan in North America though lesser known instances include the Grigori Rasputin’s failed attempt to establish a magical empire in the early 1900s and a brief feud between covens led by Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla in the late 1880s.