Alicornutopia

Magic is empowered by life force, some people are naturally gifted with extra life force and gifts, others might tap into other sources (environment or other living beings) and use magic spells (which come in different “schools of magic”).

Life force in humans has five major components: Breath, Stamina, Wakefulness, Health and Youth.
[spoiler-box= ]Breath: it is possible to power magic with breath, but only the weakest effects.
Health: The general physical well-being, diminished health causes varied problems with sickness and weakness.
Stamina: spending stamina causes physical tiredness and can lead to inability to move but it replenishes much faster.
Wakefulness: The general mental well-being and the need to sleep, it works much like stamina, but is better at mental magics.
Youth: A powerful source, but it doesn’t naturally renews. It is only used to empower permanent effects.

Components sorted by reserves size: Youth> Health> Wakefulness> Stamina> Breath.
Components sorted by recovery speed: Breath> Stamina> Wakefulness> Health. Youth doesn’t recovers naturally.[/spoiler-box]

Sorceren: Term used for people with extra life force, and often some other gifts. The common sorceren can life up to 200+ years, needs to sleep less and can manipulate their own life force around to do things like trading stamina to not run out of breath or recover from injuries faster by sleeping more. Sorcery It is hereditary but can acquired with some high-cost rituals. Individual sorceren will have different levels of the life force components.

Schools of magic: are different methods, disciplines, tools, etc. for spellcasting. To found a school of magic, one must sacrifice human-youth to permanently empower a set of magic rules of their choice, with some synergy between already existing schools helping or disturbing the effort. Creating new sub-sets of rules also costs youth but not necessarily human-youth.

Life Spirits: Life force flows naturally between living things and sometimes condenses into life spirits, which have varied levels of power. The most powerful ones can manifest themselves into powerful monsters that tend to go berserk. Killing a Life Spirit causes a backlash with negative effects in the area, so what magicp people do is trying to bind them and using them as power source.

Elsewhere: Is another dimension where most magic people have migrated too, it’s natural state is a lush forest but someone messed up a spell that caused a magically growing city to start to propagate, the city is “life force dry” making using living and magic difficult and they have to contain with chasms and wards.

The Energy Dimensions: A dimension composed of zones of strong life force and energy (The Searing Bright), negative energy and darkness (Silent Night), and the equilibrium zones in between the other two (Ever Twilight). Only the Ever Twilights are really safe and the other two can easily kill anyone without the strongest magical protections. It is possible to harnass the local energy, but it is high level and highly dangerous magic.

Input? Feedback?

What sorts of things can the magic do? How powerful are the extra gifts?

DanielH wrote:What sorts of things can the magic do? How powerful are the extra gifts?

Sorry for taking so long.
I actually have some complicated ideas for how spellcasting works that I might post later when I manage to put them into paper in a coherent form
Anyway, actual answer
Magic is good at dealing with living things: healing, making plants grow, controlling animals, control fertility, induce emotions, making someone stronger. It can also move things and detect specific properties. Other possible uses include mind-reading (which is dangerous to the reader), moving between dimensions and warding an area so people will walk away from it.
Sorcery gifts: Powers like moving water with your mind, enhanced senses, turning one-self into a bird, etc. The distribution is roughly similar to spellcasting, with powers over life being more common than not. Sorcery gifts tend towards a “balance” where stronger gifts will have side-effects, or more versatile gifts will have weaker results. Some sorcery gifts provide an affinity with specific kinds of spellcasting.

Spellcasting schools could be compared to computer languages, each spellcasting component representing a command or function to activate through lifeforce and then forming the desired effect.

Spellcasting Component Creation
Individual spell components need to be provided by the creator: an example of intended effect or meaning; a strong mental visualization of what you want to imbue in the component with; the symbol or trigger that the creator chooses; some youth to empower the component permanently.

the example or your visualization of the example might cause you the component to behave differently from the intended result. Creating a component for Fear, might fail to produce more generalized fear and instead give you fear of torture or kidnapping. Similarly, a component for Water, could affect only freshwater in specific quantities or affect all water, including the water in blood.

It is possible to use sorceren gifts to provide partial or complete examples for components.

Bright-Eleutherius Sorcery Runes - Example of Spellcasting School
Traits: Requires a high energy investment making it only practical for sorceren use, many of the runes need to be painted over the skin in specific locations. On the other hand it doesn’t require specific materials, it doesn’t interact with other spellcasting schools and the high energy requirement means it is easier to test new spells safely and they can be scaled. It uses it’s own runic system.

Modern Paracelsus Doctrines - Example of Spellcasting School
Traits: Requires lower energy outputs, but more preparation, depending on astrological circumstances and the use of specific materials for runes. It is easier to use in Elsewhere, because the constant astronomical circumstances. It uses the Magi Alphabet.

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Sorry for the super-delay, but there was work and then a trip.