With wings of dream I fly,
as time is passing by.
My soul may go to heaven,
yet reality is leaden.
With wings of dream I fly,
as years are moving by.
My wings are made of fantasy,
my home - of reality.
With wings of dream I fly,
as lives are flying by.
Time is an illusion,
my dream a delusion.
With wings of dream I fly,
as time is passing by.
Sep 22, 2010
Sep 19, 2010
Magic part 1
Let's talk about magic a bit. I need the Lightless to have some kind of magic in it. But what, exactly? An idea occurred to me today while reading Celia Friedman's Black Sun Rising.
To put it simply:
1) There exist a spirit world, which co-exists in the same space with reality. The two universes are separate, but they interact with each other.
2) The spirit world is filled with protospirits, which are shapeless figments of...well, energy, for the lack of better word. You might think of them as sort of ectoplasm.
3) Nearby thoughts, ideas and emotions manipulate these protospirits so that they take form.
4) When they take form they can interact with the reality. This interaction can take many shapes, but the effects are mostly so minor as to be undetectable. For example, dislike of something causes repulsion, lust creates the sensation of heat, etc. These are normally unconscious and very, very weak.
5) Someone talented and trained can, however, manipulate these protospirits consciously. This is called magic.
Magic is, in essence, very simple. If you need a sword, for example, you form an image of a sword, fix it in place, and focus in making it real. This creates an illusion of sword. With enough concentration the sword gains substance. This is the essence of much of the magic: with enough concentration, almost anything can be created this way. However, whatever created, ceases to exist once the magic-user stops concentrating and concentrating takes energy, so that even the most gifted can't maintain something substantial for very long periods of time.
Manipulating what already exists is much the same: The magic-user forms an image of what he wants to happen, and the forces it to become real. Sealing a wound, for example, is done by creating a mental image of the skin without the wound, placing the image into the same space where the wound is, and concentrating very hard. Note that actually healing a wound is actually fairly complex procedure, since it involves knowledge of anatomy: it's not enough to merely recreate the outer layer of the skin, if the wound has damaged muscles or other tissue. Merely sealing a wound stops blood loss, but doesn't replace the lost blood.
Creating permanent substance is more difficult. Once the substance has been created, the protospirit or protospirits of which it consists must be formed into a real spirit. That involves reaching into the spirit world where the substance exists, and forcing it to become solid. It requires enormous effort on the part of the maker, and the success is often incomplete the first time, meaning that the magic-user will have to reach into spirit world again to repeat the process or the spirit will fall apart eventually: depending on the degree of success, that could take from minutes to weeks.
To put it simply:
1) There exist a spirit world, which co-exists in the same space with reality. The two universes are separate, but they interact with each other.
2) The spirit world is filled with protospirits, which are shapeless figments of...well, energy, for the lack of better word. You might think of them as sort of ectoplasm.
3) Nearby thoughts, ideas and emotions manipulate these protospirits so that they take form.
4) When they take form they can interact with the reality. This interaction can take many shapes, but the effects are mostly so minor as to be undetectable. For example, dislike of something causes repulsion, lust creates the sensation of heat, etc. These are normally unconscious and very, very weak.
5) Someone talented and trained can, however, manipulate these protospirits consciously. This is called magic.
Magic is, in essence, very simple. If you need a sword, for example, you form an image of a sword, fix it in place, and focus in making it real. This creates an illusion of sword. With enough concentration the sword gains substance. This is the essence of much of the magic: with enough concentration, almost anything can be created this way. However, whatever created, ceases to exist once the magic-user stops concentrating and concentrating takes energy, so that even the most gifted can't maintain something substantial for very long periods of time.
Manipulating what already exists is much the same: The magic-user forms an image of what he wants to happen, and the forces it to become real. Sealing a wound, for example, is done by creating a mental image of the skin without the wound, placing the image into the same space where the wound is, and concentrating very hard. Note that actually healing a wound is actually fairly complex procedure, since it involves knowledge of anatomy: it's not enough to merely recreate the outer layer of the skin, if the wound has damaged muscles or other tissue. Merely sealing a wound stops blood loss, but doesn't replace the lost blood.
Creating permanent substance is more difficult. Once the substance has been created, the protospirit or protospirits of which it consists must be formed into a real spirit. That involves reaching into the spirit world where the substance exists, and forcing it to become solid. It requires enormous effort on the part of the maker, and the success is often incomplete the first time, meaning that the magic-user will have to reach into spirit world again to repeat the process or the spirit will fall apart eventually: depending on the degree of success, that could take from minutes to weeks.
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