Magic

Magic is the bond between humans and Spiritbeings. It is the art of turning part of your own spirit into energy and controlling that energy. Some people have larger spirits than others and are therefore better at magic which requires more of it. These people are often better at magic in general. Magic that requires larger amounts of human spirit can’t be used as much though, as it’ll tire out the person using it. The more magic you use, the worse your health and defense become. You'll get tired faster, bleed more, and wounds will go deeper. This is why advanced magicians won't use weapons at all, while beginner ones combine the two. Overusing magic might also lead to you contracting what is known as arcane fever, a sickness where you constantly feel drained, tired, and sad. This can be combated by meditation and certain potions. According to legend, magic was first granted to humans when a king of the Old folks made a deal with a Spiritbeing. To this day, a lot of people learn and improve their magic this way, while others study and train for it. Magic also allows a person to control a Deumvor or a force of chaos. This is part of a god's presence in our world. Lighting, for example, is Rarombull´s presence. There are seven types of magic one can learn, but most people are only able to learn one or two in their lifetime. Different forms of magic are often used together in order to create stronger spells, or even new sub-categories of magic, apart from the six basic ones.

The basic forms of magic are:

ALCHEMY

The art of using magic to combine certain materials and ingredients in order to make different potions, new materials and metals, and other substances. Can also be used to turn your spirit into physical matter or “spiritstone”

SEEING

Being blessed (or cursed) with seeing, means that you can see things that others can't, like; people’s dreams and thoughts, the future and past, and the world from the eyes of an animal, and in some cases even control it. Some seers even claim to be able to receive messages from the gods.

CARRYING

Having control of one or more Deumvors, also called forces of chaos. Most people use carrying as a weapon, but it’s not limited to fighting. In order to use a Deumvor, it has to be present. You can’t, for example, summon fire out of thin air, but instead, you can control the fire in your surroundings. If there for example is a lit fire in the presence of someone who can carry flames, they can take the flame magic, effectively putting out the fire, and then dish out your own fire attacks. The more skilled you are, the more range you have with the attacks and you also have more control over the Deumvor itself. Someone who is new to magic and doesn't have any weapons other than their first could only throw short magic attacks like punches, and they would need something like a blade or spear to use more advanced spells, while someone who has mastered carrying can do much more than a beginner could ever do with a blade, with just their hands. They could use all kinds of spells, like controlling fireballs in the air or using them to cause flaming explosions. Most people never master carrying however and only a select few can harness its true power. The three currently known Deumvors are fire, air, and lighting. Each one of these is actually just a collective name for three aspects or parts of the Deumvor. The better you are, the more control you have over it. A master carrier could control the Deumvor’s shape to use different spells. You only control one of them at a time, but they vary in difficulty:

FIRE: Sparks-Sparks are created when metal strikes a metal or something burns and if someone can control enough spark at once it can do some damage. When you attack with sparks you attack as you would with a whip; with quick and feisty strikes.
Embers-Embers are what's left of a fire when it's done burning. There's smoke, ashes, and hot glowing embers. One can use this to fight sort of like swimming a chain around. Less of a whip and more of a strike.
Flame-The most commonly used subcategory of fire, since it's the most powerful. Controlling a flame can be hard at first, but once you learn you have a powerful weapon at your disposal. The most versatile form of fire.

AIR: Wind-When there's a storm and enough wind, people can wield the storm as a weapon by using air to push their opponents and hurt them badly with small, local tornados. However, using wind as a weapon is usually looked down upon. Freeze-This isn’t always very useful since big parts of Inonaa are very warm, but controlling cold can still come in handy. This is simply controlling blizzards and snowstorms which you can use to freeze and damage others. Steam-Using hot steam to push back and burn your opponents is more dangerous than one might think.

LIGHTNING: Blue lightning/striking lighting-This is the lightning that occurs naturally and it's hard to control. This type of lighting is difficult to use in any advanced attacks since the deumvor is hard to control, so most of the time you can only shoot the lightning from your body to damage others. Has good range
White lightning/raw lightning-This type of lightning is less of a bolt and more of a raw power or energy which you can either break apart and use carefully. Breaking it down means crafting and executing advanced spells while using it raw only allows you to bombard the target with pure, hot, energy, essentially summoning a white explosion with short range that only does damage in one direction. It's very hard to break apart and control this power, so most people can only summon small explosions and blasts. This type of Deumvor is acquired by burning and crushing magic crystals filled with a soul. When its destroyed the soul is transformed into pure energy which can be captured and to be used once again
Green lighting/flowing lighting-This type of lighting seems to have been created by The Old folk, and its only source are the few machines in the Wetlands which are still working and still giving off energy. This type of lighting is impossible for beginners to even control and some people are seeing it as proof of a new god. Green lightning is more flowing and less striking than the others, but no less aggressive. Green lightning seems to burn its victim like acid but the wounds never heal. Using Green lightning is a bit like throwing waves of magic at someone. Green lighting can never be controlled as much as the other Deumvors, you can For example only use beginner spells, like throwing a punch of green lightning, but it's no less devastating. Small doses of this Deumvor seem to change the properties of living things since people, animals and plants who live near the machines that produce it seem to mutate and change.

EMPOWERING

Empowering is the most basic, but also the broadest school of magic. Empowering is the practice of using your spirit to affect an inanimate object. This could mean infusing a weapon with magic power to make it stronger or changing the properties of an object, but you could also just charge a weapon with magic power to lash out magic attacks. Empowering is also often the key to using old-folks stuff, since they usually only work when powered with magic.

MENDING

This type of magic lets the user heal and repair objects, both biological and inorganic. You heal biological things by using your spirit and other, non-living things by using “nature forces”. The process is made up of fusing your spirit with a tool like a needle, and then wounds fixed by that tool will heal better.

EVOKING

the art of giving an inanimate object, like a doll, a larger part of your spirit, in order to grant it temporary life. While part of your spirit is inside the creature, your own spirit is weaker. The bigger the object, the more spirit is required.

SPIRIT GUIDING

Spirit Guiding is a type of magic that lets you control the actual spirit without transforming it into magic first. For beginners, this magic is a means of strengthening your own spirit by letting it flow freer throughout your body, but people more skilled can do something much more sinister, namely controlling someone else's spirit. While most people usually never reach this level of magic, it is possible for some. What this means is that you're able to drain parts of someone else's spirit to gain more for yourself. You can also drain the spirit of living things like plants. You usually can't kill someone this way however, since it's nearly impossible to drain more than half of a human's spirit. But taking half still leaves them broken for a long time. There's also the practice of draining the spirit of something that once has a lot of it, but now nearly has nothing. A good example of this is using spirit guiding to make wood, living or not, rot and wither. Even if the wood has been cut down and made into a chair, it still has some spirit left for taking. This is usually referred to as Decaying. Spirit Guiding can only be done via touch, so it's not the most optimal form of battle. Instead, it's often used in different healing practices and meditation. Another use is giving a part of your own spirit to something else that can be used to heal, and in some cases even help biological matter grow. One could use this to help his plants grow or fruit mature, for example.

RANDOM NOTES ON MAGIC

Cultural practices like music, dancing and art can help control the spirit so a lot of people fuse for example playing an instrument or dancing with carrying or evoking. Necromancy through Evoking is very, very looked down upon and so is murder through spirit guiding, but the Vulturefolk have found a way to combine the two into real Necromancy.
By combining Evoking and Spiritguiding, you can transfer all of your spirit into a new body, effectively killing yourself, but giving a golem its own life. This is called spiritplacing and is largely unknown and looked down upon. A golem made by spiritplacing will usually take orders from the nearest person or just wanders around in search of something to do.
People who are just learning carrying don't have a lot of range with their magic, so a common trick is to bind your Deumvor to something like a dagger or rock and throw it. Empowering can then help you control that object's path when it's airbound.
Empowering is often used to guide arrows and other ranged weapons.
There is a technique known as "Ghost Daggers", in which you use empowering to make a dagger extremely light, then the same spell you would to control an arrow, but with much more skill, and suddenly you have a flying knife you can control. Few people have mastered this technique.
Cloudsoldiers is a technique made up by Peter Daggerrock of the Odd Bunch's Journey caravan. This technique lets you combine Evoking and carrying Air to make figures out of smoke or steam to distract enemies, or just as a magic trick.
While an alchemist can make spiritstone, it's hard to shape into any kind of weapon. Instead, a technique known as bloodbending is used where you combine your own blood and spirit to forge it into a temporary weapon that can only be used by you.
Spiritguiding can be used to make plants grow, but what a lot of people don't know is that a real good spiritguide can even control plants,