Magic

Magic is generally believed to be able to accomplish anything, and Velgarth's history reflects major achievements by determined individuals and groups. However, wise practioners generally use caution and avoid using magic when a task can be accomplished without it.

The Eastern Empire relies heavily on magic:for transportation including Gates, infrastructure such as bridges and aqueducts, and everyday conveniences such as light, heating, etc.

Long ago, Urtho participated in one of the first successful group efforts on a Great Work. Mages in his era pursued unusual applications, such as Uplifting or creating entirely new species such as gryphons and makaar.

Although Combat Magic is one of the first things rulers request, magic can be used a wide variety of things: defense, construction, spying, faking miracles, creating items or talismans for use by non-mages, control or imprisonment of others (such as Dolls), weather working or minor amenities like a light or heat (such as the Jesto-vath.)

High magic

High magic, or as Valdemarans call it, true magic, requires the Mage-Gift and with training uses spells, and possibly ingredients or objects, to perform all kinds of tasks. They may be as simple as creating a mage light, more complex such as performing activities that usually require a specific type of Mind-magic Gift, such as FarSight or Illusion, or powerful actions such as combat. The strength of the Mage-Gift defines the sources of power a Mage can access, imposing a limit on what a less-talented individual can do.

An index of mages is available.

Other types of Magic

Earth magic

Earth magic is the oldest, most primitive form of magic, which has "entirely to do with the land, the health of the land, and restoring that health." It relies on the Gift of Earthsense, which allows a person to sense the state of the land. Earth-binding and seisin rituals are a form of earth magic, which both physically and spiritually bind a person to the land, sharing its ills.

In extreme cases this can be reversed, and those tied to the land can voluntarily sacrifice themselves to heal the land.

Healing magic

Healing magic is based on possessing the Healing Gift. Healers can sense what is wrong in a living body, and correct it. Some Healers can actually "see" the patient's internal workings, describing it in visual terms, while others describe using their Gift in purely sensory terms.

Tayledras Healing-Mages are not Healers in the conventional sense. They are Adept mages who possess Earthsense in addition to the Mage-Gift. What Healers do with the body, Healing-Mages are trained to do with the land. They "have the ability to sense the poisoned places ... and fix them again."

An index of Healers is available.

Mind magic

Mind magic encompasses every other Gift not previously mentioned. It includes Mindspeech, Empathy, Fetching, Foresight, Farsight, and others. Heralds almost always display at least one of these Gifts. Possessing all of them is what made Herald Pol so unique. Vanyel possessed all of them as well in some measure, including everything previously mentioned and even a touch of the Bardic Gift, as well as the Mage-Gift in full measure.

After Vanyel died, Magic in Valdemar effectively ceased. Gifts were the only magic evident, aside from the Truth Spell, until the spirit of Vanyel lifted the Web-Spell centuries later.

Sources of power

All types of magic require energy to power them. There are several sources of power: the caster, other living things, naturally available power, and the assistance of Extra-Planar creatures.

The caster

Any person who has a Gift of any kind can use his or her own personal energy to power it. This is how nearly every Gifted person operates. This imposes a natural limit on the caster, as a single human being only has so much energy to use. A reaction headache, exhaustion or loss of consciousness may set in. Without follow-up care, an unconscious mage may die. Going beyond that limit will kill the mage, but is sometimes done in times of extreme need. A Final Strike is a way to voluntarily contribute all of one's own life energy to an attack that will defeat an opponent but cost the caster their own life.

Other living things

Another Gifted person or Companion may voluntarily contribute their own personal energy to fuel a major work. Sometimes Companions will contribute as well, but only when they decide to.

On rare occasions, mages can use raw emotional energy coming from other people without harming them. However, a large number of people feeling such a powerful emotion at the same time does not happen often enough to be useful normally, and it is difficult to control. It requires an Adept-level mage to access and control this power successfully.

All living things contain some personal energy. A taboo source of energy can be obtained by deliberately killing others to release that power in a concentrated burst of Blood-magic. It requires very little Mage-Gift to use blood magic. It became particularly appealing to mages after the Cataclysm, because magic energy was so scattered and disorganized. However, it is a slippery slope that quickly leads to evil.

Natural sources

The land passively accumulates magical power that both plants and animals have as a side effect of being alive. This power flows across the land, collecting in ley-lines that flow like streams of power, and pooling in nodes. The Tayledras direct this power into their vale Heartstones when cleansing the land.

It takes a strong Gift to be able to sense and use this power. Master-level mages can tap ley-lines, but only Adepts can use nodes. Using power from outside themselves is also what makes high level Mages powerful and dangerous. These nearly-"bottomless" sources of energy mean that very few limitations are imposed on them.

Pools and Artifacts/"Trinkets"

Schools of magic create "pools" of magical energy for the resident mages to draw upon as needed. Every mage at the school donates part of his/her energy daily to the pool to maintain the supply. Only those "keyed" to the pool can use the school's stored energy.

The Tayledras vale Heartstones accumulate a vast amount of magic that can be tapped. The Healing-Adepts channel it in from local ley-lines and nodes being deliberately drained to cleanse the land.

Artifacts and other specially prepared items (usually jewelry of some sort, but this can include other objects such as weapons, books, chests, crystals, etc. as well) can be used as "mini-pools" for individual mages to tap into at need. Creating these items requires the skills and powers of an Adept-level mage, often more than one (several Masters can be substituted for other Adepts to provide assistance to the primary spellworker-crafter). Some of these objects require charging on a daily basis (as with the pool of a mage school), but the better - and rarer - items are self-charging, drawing their energy from the ambient magical power of their surroundings.

Extra-planar creatures

Creatures from other Planes, who are not part of Velgarth but whose native planes touch it, may be drawn into Velgarth by Mages who want their assistance. Their help may be obtained cooperatively or by coercion. Coercion can make them angry and eager for revenge.

Training

Mages can be trained in a variety of ways.

In Valdemar, Gifted people are trained at the Mages' Collegium.

In the nations south of Valdemar, mages are most commonly taught in Mage schools. These institutions follow differing magic philosophies and have their own secret methods, and train accordingly.

The Shin'a'in confine magic to their shamans. They are trained through individual instruction in a master and apprentice format.

The Tayledras also teach in a master and apprentice format, though these can take the form of informal classes as multiple masters may train multiple apprentices.

The Sleepgiver Nation trains its mages in a mix of group settings and individual instruction as well, much like the Tayledras.

Among blood mages, the master and apprentice format is also most common. The average person would just kill a blood mage, given a chance. A master and apprentice blood mage may also come to this point, eventually.

Magic in Valdemar

Valdemar had a peculiar relationship with magic after the last Herald-Mage Vanyel died. Leareth had killed all mages and anyone with the potential to develop the Mage-Gift. Although other Gifts still existed, his pogrom succeeded so well that nobody was being born with the Mage-Gift.

Two important things happened. Vanyel and the Web-Guardians enhanced the Web-Spell, and after his death Vanyel took action to suppress awareness and discussion of magic outside of historical contexts.

Magic "doesn't work" in Valdemar

Any foreign mage attempting to do magic would experience a strong and growing feeling of being watched, and would either go mad or leave the country. This was caused by the Web-Spell, which enlisted the vrondi to alert the dwindling number of herald-mages if they saw a potential enemy mage in Valdemar. The web-spell remained intact for centuries, and the vrondi continued to watch any mage activity with increasingly intense scrutiny. It was common knowledge, inside and outside of Valdemar, that magic wouldn't work there, although the reasons were not known. Vanyel dissolved this spell in Queen Selenay's time, when Princess Elspeth discovered she had the Mage-Gift.

Discussion of magic

After Vanyel's death, he charged Bard Stefen to convince the populace that Heralds with suitable Gifts could serve them as well as Herald-Mages. The project did not succeed, so Stefen suggested that Vanyel suppress Valdemar's ability to think of magic except in the past. And Vanyel did it, casting a Coercion spell over everyone. People knew in general that the last magic in Valdemar died long ago with Vanyel, and believed it was "impossible" now. Aside from Healing, Bardic Gift, and the Truth Spell, the nation only recognized Mind magic: Gifts such as Empathy, FarSight, Fetching, ForeSight, Mindspeech, etc. People had a difficult time even considering magic in the present tense; Kerowyn observed their minds wandering when she tried to discuss magic. They didn't even know that they didn't know. The Mage-Gift itself was not recognized again until Elspeth found out she had it.

Magic in Karse

Karse developed a hostile relationship with magic in the last year of Vanyel's life. It was ten years after Vanyel redirected demons to Karse in the "Demonsbane" incident. The Prophet used it as an excuse to declare magic and Mind-Gifts as heresy, saying that the land was cursed for using magic. They hunted down and killed all mages and Gifted. That didn't mean that Karse gave up using magic entirely. For centuries afterward, some mage-gifted people were recruited into the priesthood. Priest-mages were responsible for demon-summoning, and magic was sometimes used to fake "miracles" from Vkandis. Far more people were burned than recruited, especially those who would be unwilling to harm and defraud the public.

See also

• For an index of Mages: Category:Mages
• For more on Magic: Category:Magic