Seasons

[Eva]

I like writing magic systems. Recently, I was toying with the 'elements' idea that's so common in... Well... Everything. Aristotle's still doing his thing with the Fire/Water/Earth/Air. Maybe occasionally someone throws in 'Aether', 'Void', 'Wood', or 'Metal.'

I wanted to write a new set of elements, that didn't overlap with those classical four: furthermore, I wanted to encourage the expression of those elements in unexpected ways. However, I wanted the elements to have obvious oppositions, just like the classical set - and to plausibly make up the whole of the world.

I came up with Seasons.

In the Seasons world, dedicate themselves to Spring, Summer, Fall, or Winter. Each mage has only one of these seasons to draw upon, chosen at the time of their dedication.

The Seasons are defined by their 'potentialities.' These are the things that separate them from other seasons. No season is so hot as Summer: no season is so vibrant as Fall. Here's the full list:

Summer:
Heat (Opposes Winter's Cold)
Storm (Opposes Spring's Aspiration)
Virulence (Opposes Fall's Harvest)

Fall:
Endings (Opposes Spring's Beginnings)
Vibrance (Opposes Winter's Absence)
The Harvest (Opposes Summer's Virulence)

Winter:
Cold (Opposes Summer's Heat)
Death (Opposes Spring's Life)
Absence (Opposes Fall's Vibrance)

Spring
Beginnings (Opposes Fall's Endings)
Life (Opposes Winter's Death)
Aspiration (Opposes Summer's Storm)

All the Seasons want to express their potentialities. Summer naturally wants to create heat, chaos, and overflowing life: Winter magic wants to create cold, death, and absence. The Season pushes at the circumstances of its wielders, attracting the things of that season to them and vice versa.

However! While the seasons are broadly defined by their 'potentialities', the mages of a given season draw on the 'foci' of that season. These are the things that, despite belonging to one of the season's opposing potentialities, remain that season's nonetheless. A summer mage, rather than drawing on the great, unfocussed heat of summer, calls upon the cold in summer - the Focus of 'Hail.'

Here's a list of all the Foci:

Summer
Cold-in-Summer (Hail)
Aspiration-in-Summer (Conquest)
Harvest-in-Summer (Wildfire)

Fall
Beginnings-in-Fall (Sunset)
Absence-in-Fall (Departures)
Virulence-in-Fall (Fungus)

Winter
Heat-in-winter (The Hearth)
Life-in-winter (Revolution)
Vibrance-in-Winter (The Aurora)

Spring
Endings-in-Spring (The Thaw)
Death-in-Spring (Stillbirth)
Storm-in-Spring (The Flood)

Thus, every Mantled mage has either chosen a set of tools that are horribly unaesthetic and awkward, or they've chosen a season with goals that they hate. (Or are ambivalent to both.) Most Winter mages will tell you they're in it for the tools: Most Summer ones will tell you they're in it for the shared goal. Neither of them should be taken at face value.

Handy Table

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[Moriwen]

Ooooh this is Very Aesthetic.

my characters

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Faith is so Spring. Faith is the Springiest Spring ever to Spring. Your thing on Pastebin about how Spring mages go bad? Yeah. That. That is absolutely the thing that Faiths are.

Em is gleefully Summer. Big, bright, showy, rockstar, doesn't know when to stop, check check check check check. Heat! Storm! Virulence! She is so excited about Virulence! HAIL. WILDFIRE. CONQUEST. She has NO IDEA why other people feel like they have to choose between goals and tools; she clearly got the best set of both.

Reuben has to be Fall. He is all about moving slowly, magic that's almost indistinguishable from things just going smoothly, everything turns out all right sooner or later. Fixing things that are broken, giving old things a second chance, recognizing which things are ready to be done now. (He doesn't go in for the wandering thing, though.)

Jay is quietly Winter. He's unusually comfortable with the potentials, I think, not because he's evil or anything; it's more that he's good at coming to terms with that sort of thing, and seeing ways in which it can be used for good. He really likes Revolution, that's a power he has a strong attractor to. Hearth is good too; and he has a mild attractor for beauty, so Aurora is a nice bonus. Also: he totally gets himself killed with this. Unsurprisingly.


Jean is clearly a winter-mage. Having the "beauty" tool (Aurora) would be enough to decide it right there. Getting Revolution, and having the most depressing potentialities, are just cherries on top. Also I feel like he uses Hearth in really messed-up ways.

Zari is of course Fall, though she's not entirely comfortable with it; of all my characters, I think she has to do the most coming to terms with her season. (Which is in any case a very Zari thing.) But ending things, yes, Zaris approach the world going "this is a problem; I'm going to fix the problem." Secrecy, hiding information, yes, definitely. Mild precognition, huge yes. She gets frustrated with how slow it is, and with the rootlessness, but those are correct for her, she just doesn't like them.

You have delightful ideas here, and your explanations of them on Pastebin are fantastic, and you choose really really great words for things, and basically I am so hoping for more of this. :DDD

[DanielH]

Pastebin? Was that from the IRC or something? Could you link or copy it here, it sounds like it has things that didn't make it to this thread.

[Moriwen]

Eva, let me know if you wanted to have this in more finished condition before putting it in the forums or anything? But it is fantastic and should clearly be shared.

http://pastebin.com/PJqn1kMF

[Eva]

Pastebin? Was that from the IRC or something? Could you link or copy it here, it sounds like it has things that didn't make it to this thread.

Yeah, this is just the essentials: I'm going to have a second post on how this works out socially up soon.

[Ezra]

In that paste, you mention this:

Oct 25 23:26:23 <Evenstar> Finally, we come to Fall mages. Fall mages are an interesting lot.
Oct 25 23:26:34 <Teceler> they did sound such
Oct 25 23:26:39 <Evenstar> Firstly, they have two names for their season. (Fall and Autumn.)
Oct 25 23:27:17 <Evenstar> That means that they tend to have a better understanding of it, since they can talk about aspects of Fall as separate from Autumn and vice versa and generally debate their own magic more effectively.

I imagine only autumn have the culture of this, but I'd imagine that if they wanted to, Summer mages could distinguish estival aspects from serotinal ones, and Winter mages could distinguish brumal from hibernal.

(The analogous construction for Spring is vernal from prevernal, but that sounds less poetic to me.)

[DanielH]

Wait, they speak English?

[Eva]

Yes, the original half-conceived setting here is an Earthlike, relatively modern one. Only Seasons mages have existed for a long time and so history went all squiggly.

Unfortunately, I'm not very good at squiggling history.

[Eva]

Okay, so. How Does Seasons Magic Actually Work?

Foci are a system of themed magic, where each season mage has access to the three Foci of their particular season. So a Summer mage can do magic themed with Wildfire, Hail, or Conquest.

However, it's important to recognize the opposing potentiality to understand the deeper theme of the Focus, otherwise you'll be really surprised by what your Focus wants to do. For example: Wildfire is the focus of "the Harvest in Summer". As such, it is about death giving way to new life - old ways being cleared away to produce something new. If you try to wield Wildfire to straight-up destroy something, you're only going to make the problem worse. The theming of the Focus is such that it will inevitably produce something new in the place of the thing that was destroyed - and applying Summer's chaotic nature to something that was already pretty bad isn't really going to help your situation.

Sometimes the Focus dominates the theming, sometimes the Potential dominates, but Seasons mages with deep understanding of all the Potentialities are inevitably more skilled and dangerous as a result.