World Spirits and Anima
Jan. 7th, 2019 01:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fibonacci_reminderHere is a belated worldbuilding post, regarding another mostly incomplete setting idea, which doesn't have a proper name yet.
This world, like most of mine, is mostly defined by its magic system right now. I imagine that the world is, mostly how it was like during the iron age, albeit knocked somewhat off-course by the magic system.
The magic itself has two sort of halves, one of which is further subdivided on account of not being symmetrical. The first half is Willing magic. In this case a human or group of humans (or other sophonts with sufficient linguistic abilities, but for now I'm not including any others in the setting) can perform a special ritual called the Contact to reach out to a spirit. The Contact can specify a spirit by name, or by qualifiers on the contacted spirit's Desire (what it would do to the world if left to decide on its own) and its spells (the specific kinds of complex, arcane domino-chain it's capable of starting with whatever energy it's given), and beyond those parameters the Contact will simply appear to the nearest satisfactory spirit (which is mostly random, since spirits flowing through the spirit world at relatively high speeds and aren't immense in size). Once Contact is made, the minds of the humans are bridged to the spirit's Desire, and present their tasks, and what from the spirit's Desire they are willing to fund in exchange, and how much Anima (or, metabolic energy) they are willing to provide overall. Finally, once the Contact is complete, the human side choose to name the spirit they contacted (which they can do even if it already has a name, and from then on it will simply be contactable by both names). Then, the spirit will tap the Anima of the contractors as needed up to the prescribed limits to use its spells to perform the tasks they provided and to pursue what portions of its Desire it was agreed it would be allowed to.
The other half is unwilling magic, or maybe 'desperate' magic? This includes the devoured, people who do put limits on spirits they contract and thus are consumed by them, and sorcerers, or use their will and anima to sort of batter spirits and subvert their Desire to the sorcerer's will.
This world, like most of mine, is mostly defined by its magic system right now. I imagine that the world is, mostly how it was like during the iron age, albeit knocked somewhat off-course by the magic system.
The magic itself has two sort of halves, one of which is further subdivided on account of not being symmetrical. The first half is Willing magic. In this case a human or group of humans (or other sophonts with sufficient linguistic abilities, but for now I'm not including any others in the setting) can perform a special ritual called the Contact to reach out to a spirit. The Contact can specify a spirit by name, or by qualifiers on the contacted spirit's Desire (what it would do to the world if left to decide on its own) and its spells (the specific kinds of complex, arcane domino-chain it's capable of starting with whatever energy it's given), and beyond those parameters the Contact will simply appear to the nearest satisfactory spirit (which is mostly random, since spirits flowing through the spirit world at relatively high speeds and aren't immense in size). Once Contact is made, the minds of the humans are bridged to the spirit's Desire, and present their tasks, and what from the spirit's Desire they are willing to fund in exchange, and how much Anima (or, metabolic energy) they are willing to provide overall. Finally, once the Contact is complete, the human side choose to name the spirit they contacted (which they can do even if it already has a name, and from then on it will simply be contactable by both names). Then, the spirit will tap the Anima of the contractors as needed up to the prescribed limits to use its spells to perform the tasks they provided and to pursue what portions of its Desire it was agreed it would be allowed to.
The other half is unwilling magic, or maybe 'desperate' magic? This includes the devoured, people who do put limits on spirits they contract and thus are consumed by them, and sorcerers, or use their will and anima to sort of batter spirits and subvert their Desire to the sorcerer's will.
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Date: 2019-01-07 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-07 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-07 01:02 pm (UTC)(Also, Conjury post incoming)