Majick





Majick is a complicated system of exact calligraphy and diagramming used to enchant items or create other effects. First thought to be only mediocre parlor tricks, majick was expanded to the fields of medicine, weaponry and entertainment by Loraine, apprentice of Frack. The Fae are the most skilled in majick followed by yugoluthi and then dwarves.

History
It is unknown for how long the fae and yugoluthi used majick but they are known to have used majick to make unbreakable contracts for a long period of time before Year 0.

Repherod the Wise, who became king of Singar in Year 2226, was the first to summon Zeparaberius. He is thought to be the first majician.

By Year 2500, Majick started being used as a form of entertainment.

In Year 3300, Loraine began her documentation of the many pentacles and constructions of majick. She was the first scholar to systematically document the effects of majick and was the first to reliably predict what new inscriptions would do.



In Year 3430, Majick was found to have the power to hybridize creatures and in Year 3436, Majick was found to have the power to hybridize men. Some aimed to overcome age, suffering, and disease while others use their power to create "monstrosities" combining random animals with humans for their own gains, often kidnapping victims for experiments. In Year 3524, Falonia and Vijj outlawed the hybridization of men. The CICS still allowed it. Centaurs, Merpeople, Scorpios, Minotaurs, Gorgons, Dryads and men with multiple heads or limbs are left with no native land and barely any living population to reproduce. The Coalition of Independent City-States saw an increase in immigration as outcasts found new homes there.

In Year 3441, Rarach formed the discipline of Iatromajick with the goals of finding ways of healing through majick and Iatrochemistry with the goal of finding an elixir of immortality.

Laws
No matter may be created or destroyed through majick.

As demonstrated by the Curse of Xenodus, the energy cost of destroying a target soul is equal to destroying the soul of the caster. James the Inquisitor and Philanius the Torturer used this law to interrogate majickians. The majickian was detained and an object with a strong protective charm from the majickian was placed in a strong mechanical vice. As the vice was tightened, the object's protective charm would drain energy from the majickian often enough energy to destroy the soul. During times of war it was very risky to enchant items with strong protection spells for just this reason.

Many methods have been used to estimate the human energy store. One such uses the fact that burning 7,720 calories also burns 1 kg of fat. If the whole body were able to be expended like this then:

Another method uses the Mass–energy equivalence E = mc^2 or E / m = c^2 = (299,792,458 m/s)2 = 89,875,517,873,681,764 J/kg.

This gargantuan disparity is the butt of many jokes by scholars ("How much does a behemoth weigh? The soldier says 100 tons. The king says 10 kg. The scholar says either 1 kg or a couple trillion.")

In Year 4350, Michael Strong began a program to try to scientifically measure the average human energy score by forcing criminals to be executed to use majick until they died. He was stopped before he got an accurate number but his measurements point to around 100,000,000 Joules.

If the material is destroyed, the majick is halted. Because of this, the first spell carved into an object is often a protection spell.

Standard Finalization Lines
Because majick spells are often very intricate to create, they are unsuitable to be written at the time of their use although many spell are activated as soon as they are finished. To create more useful spells, a set of Standard Finalization Lines were decided upon. These lines show up in many spells are are easy for an amateur to write in. The majority of a spell will be written and then at the time when it is needed, the Standard Finalization Lines will be filled in. The most common application of this is a pack of spark spells. A spell is torn from the list, the Standard Finalization Line is filled in and the spell is activated, lighting the paper on fire.

Diffused Energy Sources
Majick spells are mostly limited in power to the energy stored in the body of the caster. For casters of great stature or trust however, the energy needed can be taken from many bodies of students or trusting friends. For example, the Ring of Arzacon is almost always used with a diffused energy source so that the sealing charm is nearly impossible to break. Notably, it was used to seal Zeparaberius under The Academy in Winterden.

Enchantment
One of the oldest and definitely the most used disciplines of majick was enchantment. Spells were carved directly into a sword, shield or other object. The spells would give their effect to the object and draw energy from the holder. Common spells were protection spells for shields and armor and added methods of attacking through weapons. Swords were often given the added power to send fireballs or bolts of lightning, even though these were incredibly draining on the holder. Students of Enchantment were called Enchanters.

Transmutation
An older discipline of majick, transmutation is the mastery of changing one substance into another. One of the main goals was to transmute base metals into gold. Transmutation directly came into confrontation of the "Nothing comes from nothing" law. Any transmutation always started and ended with the same mass. The process was never fully efficient. The spell was always destroyed in the process and had to be rewritten every time. Not all of the source material was transmuted and some was turned into waste material like ash or sand. The process was costly on the caster and was often done in groups. The process was made more efficient if the source material was purified as much as possible and the source material and target material had similar properties. Students of Transmutation were called Alchemists.

The Alchemist's Stone was a complex spell carved onto a spherical stone that, once placed in with a specified source material it would transmute it into the specified target material with near perfect efficiency.

Blood Majick
Blood Majick was an umbrella term for any type of majick that involved using blood. Possible methods were carving spells into the skin of the target and using blood to write the spell on another surface. Blood Majick was taboo but still needed in some notable occasions. The summoning spell for the Man at the Crossroads required blood. The summoning spell for Zeparaberius and other yugoluthi required blood in the spell. Students of Blood Majick were called Sanguists.

Iatromajick
Rarach's life goal was to find a source of eternal life. His two main strategies were through Iatrochemistry and Iatromajick. His produced potions from Iatrochemistry were powerful and cured any maladies but did not extend lifespan. The closest he achieved was through his experiments in Blood Majick through Iatromajick. He never truly achieved eternal life until he contacted Hermanu who added a few adjustments to one of Rarach's spells and carved it into Rarach's forehead. The adjustments extended his life to near infinite but also sentenced him to spend half of each year in the Netherworld. Rarach disappeared from scholastic life and became a hermit in the mountains.

Oberon studied what Rarach left at The Academy. He improved on the Blood Majick spells but as with Rarach, could not make his life infinite. He traveled to the Etherworld and fell in love with Titania. She improved on his spells and was able to extend his life greatly but not infinitely. He contacted Hermanu, but Hermanu sent a reply saying he "could not do anything to extend the life of another mortal." He called upon the Man at the Crossroads to ask for an extension of his life. The Man told him that life extension came at a high price. Either Oberon would die or Titania would have to sacrifice herself to save him. Oberon could not bare to ask Titania to kill herself for him so he let himself die.

Door Carving
Door Carving was a secretive art known only by a select few. The door carvers worked in secret, often for years at a time on a door. A carved door would use spells to cut through the space between two locations. A common problem with doors was their spontaneous disappearance. The unstable nature of bypassing space made them unpredictively transport themselves to different locations. Students of Door Carving were called Doorsmiths.

A rare but feared war tactic was to feign surrender and give the enemy a decorative door as a gift. The door of course would be carved in a pair with another door kept with the gifter's army. At their leisure, the army could storm through the door directly into the heart of enemy territory. It was risky and unreliable, given the nature of doors but a few generals pulled off the trick through the history of The Continent. It didn't take long before gift doors were destroyed outside city gates.

A carved door usually appears to be a stone archway about the size of a standard door with spells carved all around it. The rare larger doors were often huge stone circles with spells crawling along every inch of surface.

Doorsmiths are often drained to death by the energy required to transport things through space so it requires many doorsmiths to carve one door and the art of door carving has few followers.

Natural doors existed since the beginning of written history. One in the bottom of High Lake opens to both Lacus Major in the Etherworld and the ocean around the Great Tower in the Netherworld. The exit in the Netherworld is guarded by a leviathan. Other natural doors would appear and disappear seemingly by their own will.

Hybridization
Hybridization was the art of combining the genetics of two species of organisms. It was a combination of the disciplines of Transmutation and Blood Majick. Students of Hybridization were called Hybreeders. In Year 3430 Stephoria discovered the techniques to hybridize creatures. Six years later she began experiments on human hybridization. She aimed to overcome age, suffering, and disease while some others used their power to create "monstrosities" combining random animals with humans for their own gains, often kidnapping victims for experiments. There were four main generations of manufactured human hybrids, each created 10 years apart. The first generation was all mammals. The second generation was chordates like Forest Cobras and Brown Falcons. The third generation was arthropods like Emperor Scorpions. The fourth generation was plants like Field Maples.

By the time the fourth generation was maturing, the issue of the morality of human hybridization entered the political sphere. In Year 3524, Falonia and Vijj outlawed the hybridization of men. The CICS allowed it. Vijj went through the First Purification] to expel hybrids. [[Centaurs, Merpeople, Scorpios, Minotaurs, Gorgons, Dryads and men with multiple heads or limbs were expelled to the islands and coastal cities. Many hybrids were killed in First Purification. The Coalition of Independent City-States saw a large increase in immigration as outcasts find new homes. The hybrids founded small communities in the islands off the coasts of Vijj and CICS.

Hybridization of non-humans became less popular after the First Purification. Hybridized creatures were a rare sight after the 36th century. The techniques are recorded and archived in universities with schools of majick but it is looked upon as an old strange art.