Magic in Elaienna

Magic appears to predate modern history. It may even predate written history itself, but I fear we will never know for sure. Indeed, there are many myths in the Empire about what exactly happened to introduce magic into the world, but we'll likely never know the truth. Either way, it's brought us fantastic progress, working hand in hand with modern technology to help our realms develop... but to every good thing, there exists a foul downside.
— Chief Librarian Palladius

According to the historical records, magic has been with the world of Elaienna for a very long time, the Raqise and Hysilens being famous for using it to excellent effect - but only became more generally available within the past few thousand years, the refinement of knowledge on Crysium Shards allowing the world's community to realise the potential of magic. Prior to that, only those with a magical bloodline - which was predisposed to manifest in certain races such as the Elves - could wield magic, and only whatever schools of magic their bloodline concerned themselves with.

An Evolving Art

Ancient History

The understanding as to what occurred regarding magic in the ancient era is... complicated. Ancient texts from antiquity make few mentions of anything magically-related, which has led many to believe that prior to the ascension of the Hysilens, access to magic was an extremely regional affair; Aether does little on its own and is harmless if not wielded magically, so it can be inferred that magic was at large only available to the magically-inclined races initially. Indeed, this is backed up by a few sources; the ancient Hysilens who were said to have ascended to divinity, according to recovered texts, made extensive mentions of aether and magical studies, which would imply that magical prowess ran ripe in their racial bloodlines. The Elves, too, enjoy a less solidly documented but equally famed prowess for the arcane, with magical bloodlines being in elven society more often than any other race. As such, it's believed that magic at large was a gift from the Hysilens to those of Elaienna following their departure - alongside Crysium Shards. Nobody can verify the veracity of this tale for certain, but even to this day it remains the most popular theory for the origins of magic... The reality, is more complicated, as is often the case.

Dimensional Magic Effect by Alayna Danner

Wizard by bluerainCZ

The Raqise Confederacy

One of the most important events on the topic of magic is the rise, reign, and fall of the Raqise Confederacy, something that is full of myriad half-truths and embellishments, but is also the closest look into ancient history as we have. The Raqise were a humanoid feline race, originally uplifted from house cats by the Hysilens and were the race left to pick up the pieces following the departure of the Hysilens, alongside several other races guided by the guardian foxes prior to their ascension. The Confederacy came about as a result of this, the grand realm of the Raqise beginning to expand far and wide, and their attention was undoubtedly turned upon the Arcane before long. In many ways, the Raqise Confederacy exceeded anything that came before or after it, its level of magical mastery exceeding even what is known of Hysilens society - though it can be surmised that the Hysilens were still more advanced magically, as their recovered records are even less complete than Raqise ones, but the greatest known feats of the Hysilens exceed anything recovered of the Confederacy. Eventually, however, the Confederacy's interest in magic started to turn dark; the capital of the Confederacy, a metropolis known as Aelantyr, became a nexus for deplorable arcane experiments; undeath, reanimation, puppetry and all sorts else began to consume the interests of the Raqise who saw themselves as untouchable. Their downfall would change things forever, as Aelantyr was all but instantly consumed by a Shardstorm so violent that it persisted for over 200 years before beginning to slowly dissipate. This Shardstorm all but crushed the Confederacy's central government, and other Shardstorm and corruption regions were quick to follow and subsume what remained of the Confederacy's land, and began to run rampant across the world itself for dozens of years, depositing Crysium Shards as they went. This period became known as the Shard Age, as the Shardtouched beings intrinsic to corrupted regions and the Shardstorms roamed freely as the Shardstorms raged, infecting ever more hosts.

Casters in Chaos

The Shard Age had a lot of negative impacts upon the world, with the corruption proving so rampant that it would take thousands of years to recover, and realms being destroyed by the Shardtouched. Even after the Shardstorms began to recede, realms were left much smaller and compact than ever before, the ongoing threat of the Shardtouched preventing overextension. This was a time where the powers of Chaos truly reigned supreme, which began to lead to the appearance of magical abilities in far more people; namely, several Elven bloodlines that became blessed with a variety of magic schools. Why the elves in particular became so magically imbued is one of the great mysteries, and one that remains a quandary for the world to answer in the modern age; some think that the elves' were the most susceptible to the Shardstorms' magical effects, suffusing them the most, but the presence of a few other forms of magic bloodlines in other species make this theory something of a nonstarter in the modern view.

Major Magical Advances

Crysium Shards

Casters were not the only thing to be far more proliferated in the wake of the Shard Age. Crysium Shards had been known about by the Raqise before now, but they were stupendously rare - with a couple of sources discovered in the entirety of Aelnar during the Raqise's initial charting. By the time of the return to nation-states for most of the world, however, Shards had gotten a lot more common - they still weren't frequent sights, but reconnaissance determined a handful of major sites where they can be harvested now. The location of the Shards was - and still is - in many ways an important clue into ongoing research on the nature of the Shard Age and the Raqise's realm, as the flow of Aether around the locations of the Crysium Shard fields was known to be far higher than normal, and regions where it began to occur naturally had aether levels notably higher than the world's normal levels. At some point after their discovery, it was found out that the various colours of Shard could enhance magical powers of appropriate schools, and in so doing serve as magical foci for spellcasters - staves, swords, and so on - across the world, while also allowing for more advanced schools of magic as their properties became more and more well understood.

Crysium Casters

The uses of crysium shards appeared to stagnate for a time, as those with the shards sought primarily to solidify their positions in society and were less concerned with expanding the knowledge of the crystals, but eventually advances were made, one of which would give way to a brand new era of spellcasting. The Shard Ritual had been discovered, - or developed, nobody actually knows for sure - through which magical talent could be given to those without it naturally, and the existing magical specialities of those from magical bloodlines could be expanded to encompass new schools of magic, dependant on the nature of the Shard being infused. This marked the beginning of the current age of spellcasting, enabling a new way for accessing spellcasting for those species that are not so magically inclined. Becoming a well-rounded caster in this manner still required a large number of crysium shards to be infused, and several schools of magic were bloodline-specific and unavailable this way, but for those who could afford the shards - no mean feat, to be sure - it was well worth it. Most new casters as a result, are from wealthier families, but even getting a hold of a single crysium shard can be a great boon, as it allows one to become a specialised magic user, such as a Pyromancer.

Crysium Field by MaxiimusT

Multidisciplined Casters

Even a spellcaster with a magical affinity from birth can benefit from Crysium Shards; most magical bloodlines - with only a few exceptions - only pass along a single school of magic to their bloodline. As such, in order to expand one's horizons and go from something like a Pyromancer to a full-fledged Sorcerer, the Shard Ritual is required to allow them to infuse different kinds of Shard. This, indeed, has allowed the richer individuals across the world to become true masters of magic, and this is a famous status symbol across the world.

Crysium Shards

Material | May 17, 2025

Crysium Shards are magically-infused crystals known to exist across Elaienna, with a general rarity that can be further compounded upon. Many tales are spun with regards to the origin of the shards.

The Limitations of Magic

While magic is an exceptionally powerful force, and can do things that truly are wondrous, it is not without drawbacks; the cosmos itself seems to have placed unbreakable limitations upon the powers of magic, which are as follows.

Magical abilities are a conscious choice between three factors: range, power and cost. The abilities of a spellcaster can be tailored to increase one of these factors greatly at the cost of the other two, or it can balance all three evenly, or it can more generally focus on two of the factors at the heavy detriment of the third factor. This generally means that contact abilities with a high Aether cost will generally have the most raw power behind them, while weaker abilities with high Aether costs will have exceptional range. Spells like the ever-famous Fireball focus on power and range for example, with a heavy increase in Aether cost to cast.
Spells cannot be formed within the body of another being, living or otherwise. A Pyromancer can fling a fireball from their palm, but a Hydromancer cannot generate a magical bubble of water within the lungs of another person, even in close contact. Notably, this gets easier if someone's Aetheric Warding is heavily compromised, but it still remains difficult enough that it is not a valid combat strategy.

Lifting objects with magic is relatively trivial, but items imbued with magic in any way become exponentially more difficult to lift; Aether has an arcane 'weight' to its presence that enables Aetheric Warding to work, but it also makes lifting arcane items harder.
Matter can be created through magic, but it's never as stable as regular magic; it's easily broken, decays faster, and when it is broken or decays it just dissolves back into Aether. Additionally, it's very easy to identify magically-conjured items, and most communities regard them as fakes or phonies.
The manipulation of time with Time Magic is by far the single most complex form of magic; it's possible to do, such as by sending memories of your future self back to your past self as a form of precognition, but physical time travel is an established arcane near-impossibility. Precognition is possible, but never fully accurate.

The Mechanics of Magic

Magic in Elaienna is a system that requires some base form of talent in spellcraft, be that from a natural source such as a bloodline, or from a Crysium Shard that provides the caster with a form of magic talent, but beyond that latent restriction, by its very design magic in the world is fairly broad. Magic schools shown further below contain pertinent uses, but these don't really tell the full story of spellcasting in Elaienna; the reality is that the pertinent uses are just the most famous things a given school of magic can do. The truth of the situation is that the magic of the world works in a way that forces spell knowledge to succeed. Spells are formulaic codifications of magic that all casters can learn; even those said to be restricted to a single school of magic are not truly restricted; instead, they're incredibly naturally predisposed to spells of that school and have great difficulty learning magic of other schools - indeed, for the most exclusive bloodlines such as Chaos Magic, it can be near-impossible (but not fully impossible) to learn magical spells of other schools - while the truly generalist spellcasters have little difficulty learning spells from all of the magical schools that they have a talent in. Crysium Shards come into this by defining the magic schools that people can actually learn; spells from a magical school without a corresponding shard cannot actually be learned by those not born with a natural capability for that school of magic, and in this way there's quite a few specialist casters, such as Chaos Mages, s and Bards, which focus primarily on their bespoke school of magic, but - with incredible difficulty - can learn other schools of magic. Magical spells are an ever-growing form of innovation across the world, just like technology is; magi across the world work to scribe new magical spells to test, and this is generally how magical innovation takes its form; two mages that know the same spells will perform the same in battle - not accounting for variance in their actual skill in spellcasting and stylistic distinctions in combat - but a mage who has the latest in magical spells will - naturally - perform better if those spells excel in combat. In this way, the yardstick for a mage's power is not just their raw talent and magical skill, though that does play a big part, but it's also how well their roster of readied spells suit their intended combat style.

Types of Spellcaster

Casters across the world generally fall into two distinct classifications; those that are descendants of a magical bloodline with a natural capability for magical talent, and those that can only wield magic after absorbing a Crysium Shard with the Shard Ritual. Despite how it may seem, spellcasters are an exclusive class of society, and the vast majority are in the former category - it should not be understated how prohibitively expensive crysium shards truly are, especially for the larger ones needed for true mastery of a magic school.

Bloodline Spellcasters

Individuals who are descendants of a magical bloodline possess a natural affinity for magic and can wield it inherently as a result. Many of these bloodlines can be found amongst the elven races, but the dragonkin are known for them too - albeit at a much rarer frequency - along with a few other races. Most born with bloodline magical capabilities become specialised casters such as Pyromancers due to the nature of bloodlines only granting access to a single school of magic in almost all cases, but those who undertake the Shard Ritual to gain extra magical school can become Sorcerers with a more diverse portfolio of spells. Besides elemental magic, bloodlines are also famous for Druids and Summoners. While these casters will generally focus greatly upon their main bloodline's school, it's not at all uncommon for them to branch out to pick up spells that complement their intended form of magic, and while they will never be as powerful with these spells as a learned spellcaster, their skill can certainly be plenty sufficient for most purposes. The biggest drawback of a bloodline spellcaster is their reliance on an Arcane Focus to commit their intended spells for the day; this is much unlike the spellbooks of a Wizard which have a far greater storage capacity for magical spells. This generally means that a caster reliant upon an Arcane Focus has to be a lot more picky and choosy with their magical spells than a learned caster would be; they can certainly reach the same dizzying levels of breadth, but require truly expensive Arcane Foci to reach that point, as their spells are committed to the focus itself mystically. To many bloodline casters, however, that restriction is worth it, as their power in their bloodline tradition is second to none.

Learned Spellcasters

Those who lack the gift of magic from a bloodline are paradoxically generally set-up to be the grander spellcasters, and have to go through the Shard Ritual in order to gain magic. In the ritual, all of the desired Shards are placed around the recipient, and over a short period of time - often under an hour - the energies from the Shards are absorbed by the new caster. Empty shards are left behind, and the initial power of the caster in a given magic school is generally coupled to the purity of the Shard of that school. There exists limits however, that define how powerful a learned spellcaster can start off - which is generally no better than a journeyman spellcaster - which forces further development to be undertaken via training, irrespective of how pure a Shard may be. Most that go through the ritual are relatively wealthy or have sponsors, and tend to take up many schools of magic from Shards. As a result, they're often the studious sort and become Wizards, though in many ecclesiarchal societies, Divine Shards can frequently be absorbed to become a Cleric instead. Generally speaking, a learned spellcaster will have a large collection of spells with a high degree of skill in all of them, making them exceptionally broad spellcasters, capable of bringing the right spell for any given task, especially when utilising the ubiquitously-available Utility Magic to bring a truly dizzying array of niche options to field. Indeed, many Wizards in particular benefit from their spellbooks, which far exceed an Arcane Focus of a bloodline spellcaster in the ever-important area of spell recollection and storage, generally meaning wizards have a nigh-infinite number of potential options for spells, should they reach that level of development.

The Fractured Curse

While there exists the Shard Ritual to grant magic to people, many societies also developed one to seal it permanently. Not occurring naturally in any populations, the Fractured Curse is a magical procedure that completely severs the afflicted from magic, and does so permanently.

Fractured Curse

Condition | Apr 1, 2025

Those with the fractured curse have had their ability to process Aether into magical energy forcibly sealed. They're completely immune to the effects of Aether or any direct application of magic, but also cannot use it.