Magic

"Aah, the terrors of Will when granted Power. How far can these pillars of the individual reach? Can they uproot the tree that holds the cosmos in place? Can they breach the halls of God, cursed be Her gaze? All breaths are failed anticipation of this summit, as so Will we too breathe."

Magic is a vast array of phenomena, broadly described as the ability to impose one's will beyond or besides use of the body. While not the sole powerhouse of civilization within Galvyria, it is the pinnacle of most peoples' personal power. Magic can take many forms within an individual, coloring them in an echo of the Primordials as their own inextricable beings and giving them the power to deform, defile, and reshape the universe in their own terrific measure.

While it is both untrue and unfair to call magic an even remotely unified force, the usage of power in general is extremely similar in all its various forms. One look out at the horizon reveals it as a weapon of war and a creator of parlor tricks and a builder of civilization all at once. It is the light filtering through the stained-glass interpretation of the mind, colored by the individual from that great and terrible force of Will embedded into the beating hearts of all people.

Magic has played pivotal roles in every single conflict in history and shapes the politics and perceptions between different groups of people just as much as physical appearance and capabilities do, or potentially even more.

Aestrati

Aestrati is by far the rarest form of magic to exist. Whereas common magic uses Essence, the ether responsible for metabolism and broadly the ability to make decisions, Aestrati demands absolute devotion to the ether against the rest of the Universe. Astral energy, the energy that condenses raw ether into the tangible matter-energy of the stars, both Aestrai and Aerilyae, is the source drawn on from Aestrati.

The Astrins were, at least up until the end of the Bane Era, born in tune with all things Astral and deigned its greatest wielders. As Astral energy is diametrically opposed to all ethers and all forms of energy and matter that are unbalanced between the Duality, it is a powerful piercing force and equally matched against all other forces that be.

The nature of Aestrati is one of balancing and alignment, collecting the trickle of energy on either side of the Duality's divide and forcing it to cancel itself out to create core of Astral light. This core acts as a miniature star within oneself, aligned through the body's meridians to release immense power that can be further nurtured through long practice and the self-poison of de-aspecting one's own body.

Aestrati acts in defiance of most other magics, strengthening itself in people with fewer Echoes and lessened proficiency of other power. Its practice is ideal for those with no other magical prowess and an extreme dedication to their own body.

Eumani

Eumani, a name derived from an old phrase meaning "to build from nothing", is the widest accessible form of magic, able to be harnessed by anyone with enough dedication and time. Essence control is inherent in everyone with an Echo, but even those without one can learn to grasp the basics of power within a few months. From there, learning how to sift through the ethers at one's disposal to manipulate them specifically is the only general skill needed.

Eumani magic works through a sort of affinity system. The more magic one learns and practices of a certain category or ether, the easier that magic will become to the user. The opposing force, if any, will also become more difficult to manipulate. Some workarounds to this exist. If one wished to learn both fire magic and ice magic, for example, they could step back from both and focus on temperature magic instead. This affinity-kindling and specialization is what makes powerful Eumani mages so inept with Aestrati. The two are ideologically antithetical to one another, and while Eumani only needs a refined mind and memory, the majority of its practitioners suffer from neglect of their body.

Eumani's development into advanced techniques or specific spells takes a very long time, often decades to centuries. It is only through collective effort and record-keeping that advancement can take place, and even then the ceiling for the length of a practitioner's life is an upper limit on the complexity of a spell one can learn through Eumani. Thus, most of the research by associated Eumani magi goes into optimizing and streamlining spells.

The most skilled and revered mages of every age have been those that commit to a single type of magic and nothing else, who walk a single path within the endless tempting variety of magics. By solely dedicating their efforts to one path of magic, these mages can reach the pinnacle of their craft and invent the most advanced techniques known to Glawiad's people. Their dedication can reach heights heretofore unseen without the blessing of strength from an Echo.

Curses

Eumani is lightly bound to the mostly-inert ideals of morality and intent, and while this doesn't normally impact any uses of magic, it does have a well-known limit. Spells crafted with the sole intent of causing harm, pain, or grief are a dangerous task, as they may at any time in their processing be deemed a Curse, a forbidden magic that gains powerful intuitive casting in accordance with the ever-present power of Darkness. The cost of learning a curse is absolute, given to all who know the method of its casting and are able to do so themselves. Wounds on the mind or body, permanent and irreversible by any means mundane or magical, known as Stains.

Curses often have very little use outside of harming others, though curseweavers tend to find that an appealing feature. One willing to gamble on a Stain for harm is in all likelihood no longer concerned with anything besides the violence they wish to inflict. In fact, the further one delves into the psychology that a curse was born from, the same violence and malevolence, the easier it lends its power to the user.

All existing curses are recorded in the Library of Magaletch in either the High Risk Reading section, which is almost exclusively books containing curses, or throughout the infinite unexplored tomes within the greater Library. This easy access is kept secure by the near-certain death that a curse-hungry individual faces from the density of Stains they would collect.

The rule of Stains may seem absolute, bound as it is to the ideals of morality and universal in its application. But there is one individual, a man crafted by the Haemagora as a machine of war, who does not accrue Stains when learning curses. As a master of the twisted and the cruel, his presence shakes the foundations of what is known about the systems, namely their absolution. Recent times have seen an increase in deliberately made curses and wielders gone mad trying to attain the same freedoms.

Echoes

Magic is capable of producing almost any phenomenon, but the research and practice required for most possibilities is unfathomable. Centuries to millennia of work would have to be done to produce even a handful of the more complicated phenomena that are seen used as abilities throughout history. How then, are so many people of Glawiad able to pull off such specific and intensive magics?

Inscribed in a person's very being at birth, nigh-inseparable from their mind or body, Echoes are an instinctual spell or ability that most people of Glawiad have access to. Echoes are sometimes colloquially referred to as abilities or echo abilities. The name comes from the fact that Echoes resonate within a person's psyche in order to bring attention to themselves. The case of one having an Echo without a respective itch to seek it out and activate it via processing Essence is only known to have happened a handful of times.

Echoes can produce nearly any phenomenon, manifesting in ways that would take hundreds of thousands of years of magic research to produce otherwise. The consistency that Echoes have between generations and groups of people is moderate at best, with some element of randomness present in every group's potential range of Echoes. Some races of Glawiad have themes that their Echoes follow, such as the Astrins having raw Essence-related (And formerly Astral energy-related) echo abilities or the Brymasti having mostly fire-related Echoes. Some races are less conducive to having Echoes, while some may even have Echoes that pass on pseudo-genetically.

Some Echoes are transferred through non-conventional means. All of the Echoes of the Catastrophes of Brimstata have been passed through the Vessels of Dissent via murder and soul absorption for most of Brimstata's history, but since the annihilation of the ether Feltheous and with it the concept of souls, they have been transferred via blood pacts with death contingencies. Two unique Echoes, the Ruby Lightning of Eiyva and the Emerald Fire of Eiyva, pass on through bloodlines, with the wielder losing the Echo and its restrictions entirely as soon as their first child is born, at which point said child gains the Echo.

Psychism

Whereas most magic arises from or in some way utilizes Essence, its semi-opposed ether Psyche also plays a crucial role in living beings. Psyche in particular is a resonating force, one which pulls the body and makes it act in accordance with the Will embedded into each individual nexus of it—each mind. Psychism, also known as psychics or psionics, is the ability to utilize Psyche as an active force beyond the body or to manipulate it in others. Most psychics, as they are called, bolster their own minds regularly to make them strong enough to have potential as a power source. Diligent mental training is required for this, but even just a few years of experience can give a psychic enough strength to rival experiences mages of other varieties.

The great strength of Psyche is the focus disruption that occurs when anyone is pummeled with psychic force—as minds clash, the weaker one will invariably waver slightly. When it comes to most forms of magic, mental strength is a must. The one exception to this is Echoes, which are instinctual. But psychics also physically damage the wielder to use or bolster at all, as the mind's operations too damage the body. To combat this, a strong psychic must sleep for longer and augment themselves in diet and training to heal as quickly as possible.

Unlike most other learnable magics, psychism is incredibly difficult to pick up without an innate potential for it. A self-reflective ability to feel one's own mind is necessary for the psychic strength training that psychics endure. Defense against psychism is easier to learn for those without an affinity for it, but even this takes dedicated tutoring from a psychic.

Psychism is well known in the modern era for its most devastating technique: the Psychic Shock. Developed during the Bane Era by one Peytho Lakshasa as a final resort against the Haemagora's soldiers, its teachings have been circulated enough that most high-level psychics are capable of at least some small use of it. A Psychic Shock is an incredibly intensive burst of psychic energy, released in an absolutely confined area, usually a sphere for simplicity and control. This overflow of the ether causes it to dissolve all matter contained within into more psychic energy, leading to a resonance the longer it is maintained. Peytho herself took an hour to prepare her Psychic Shocks, but they were much more powerful, sizeable, and instantaneous than the modern variants of the technique. The almost almighty nature of the technique suffers from lack of discipline, as those trying to use it quickly will inevitably have a minuscule radius of their Shock or take seconds to minutes to start the psychic dissolution.