Mana, the Mad Mage

Ascended Goddess of Sorcery, Devastation, and Balance

The Accidental God. The Mother of Sorcerers. These, and many other titles have become synonymous with Mana. The first mortal being to ascend to Godhood in over 2,000 years, Mana's ascension was not seen as a moment of triumph or glory, but a moment of shame and despair for many. While she was well-meaning, the saying goes that "the road to the Hells is paved with good intentions", and nothing could summarise Mana's life more.
Today, Mana is a Goddess that is equal parts venerated and hated. Many mages regard her efforts and ambition to be something that every mage should aspire to, even if the end result did not lead to what she wanted. However, those who would be considered Sorcerers regard her with hatred, as they consider her to be a curse on their bloodline that gave them powers they could not hope to handle. And then there are the High Elves, the race who she was trying to save, and the race who she has potentially doomed to a slow, painful death.

Divine Domains

Arcana, Knowledge, Order

Holy Books & Codes

Mana's Last Testament - A lost text, said to be Mana’s spellbook. It is also said to contain her reasoning and research that lead to her ascension, and is therefore a highly-sought piece of text.

Divine Symbols & Sigils

Mana's most well-known symbol is a depiction of her face, split down the middle; one half resembles her normal elven face, the other is a bright purple silhouette of her face that seems to be made of a raging fire.

Tenets of Faith

Owing to Mana's sudden ascension, relatively young age as a Goddess, fairly small following, and complete madness, she does not have anything in the way of organised tenets.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Physically, Mana's divine form resembles how she looked in her mortal life: a young adult high elf with dark, wavy, shoulder-length hair, dressed in white and grey arcanist's robes. However, her ascension has marked her body; split down the middle, one side resembles a monochrome colouration of her mortal life, while the other half holds the basic shape of her body, but is composed of roaring arcane energy.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Age of the Arcane

The Age of the Arcane was a time of discovery, where progress and understanding of magic was at its absolute peak. Arcanists across the world made great strides in both revolutionising magic, and rediscovering ancient magical secrets from ages past to enhance their future.
One of these arcanists was Mana; a high elf born in the city of Nicassar within the Arcadeus Empire. Even by the standards of the already magically-inclined High Elves, Mana would quickly excel in the fields of both arcane and divine magic, and became a famous name among the many mages of Itaxia.

A Race Left to Die

In her studies, Mana had come to notice something concerning: the High Elves' innate grasp on magic seemed to be shaky. She had vivid memories of both her parents and grandparents being able to use strong magic easily without the additional study necessary for arcane magic, but despite her great skill with magic she was only capable of casting weaker magic innately, without the use of an arcane focus or her training as an arcanist.
Mana began to look into this further, and noticed a pattern: many of her peers said the same, that their parents and grandparents were able to command strong magic innately without the need for a focus, whereas the younger, more recent generation were more reliant on their study of arcane magic. But something else became apparent, something far more grave: where before the High Elves were able to live for over a thousand years with little issue, Mana found that her race would be lucky to make it past 700.
Mana came to a realisation: her race was dying, and their connection to the Forming Light was fading. She looked through every possible variation and permutation of the tests she ran and the information compiled, but it all lead back to the same conclusion. Mana would spend the next centuries of her life digging deep into the past history of Itaxia, scrubbing every possible record to find out not only why this was happening, but how it was happening. One record of history stuck out to her, however: a record of the Age of Light, and the Starlight Ascendancy.

Lofty Goals

Mana knew of the Age of Light and the Starlight Ascendancy in the broad sense - of them being a magically-superior, world-spanning empire of the Eldar of old, that fell before the Age of Myth - but despite digging deeper into the records she was unable to find much more in the way of information regarding them and how or why they fell. It was almost as if the history from that time had been doctored, as if it was hiding something. This same story would repeat several times; documents or records of the Starlight Ascendancy were brief compared to the records of other ages, despite the existence of records dating as far back as the Age of Giants that were somehow far more in-depth.
Mana, not always one for religion, proceeded to commune with the Goddess Neresa, asking her why such records were so brief. Neresa, befitting her nature, conveyed much by saying little, enlightening Mana as to why the Ascendancy fell, and what was befalling her race. Mana, enraged, turned her back on Neresa, and begun to research further. Past the Age of Light, however, Mana looked to the Age of Myth, and the stories of the Ascended Six; six mortals who, through their great deeds and actions, were able to speak with the Gods themselves and ascend to Godhood.
There, finally, her goal became clear: if Mana was to restore her race to its true power, then she would follow in the footsteps of the Ascended and become a God as well. It was easier said than done, however; according to the limited records that existed, the Ascended did so through the use of a Divine Seed, a concentration of the power of a God that developed within them and elevated them to their divine status. Mana, naturally, did not have a Divine Seed, but with her knowledge of both arcane and divine magic, she was able to create a close approximate: an artifact of immense, concentrated power, perhaps able to match even the Gods themselves.
But despite its immense power, the seed would not work without more magical flowing through it. Mana gathered her resources and travelled to the centre of Arcadeus, to a patch of otherwise-empty land where several notable magic leylines converged into a single point, and where she had set up one of her towers . It was here that she would plant her seed, to ascend to Godhood and restore the High Elves to their former glory.

The Accidental God

When Mana empowered the makeshift Divine Seed with her arcane magic, she felt something indescribable. In an instant, she could see everything that magic could or would do in all of history. Glimpsing through this immense web, she looked through the history of her people, and for an answer to the question: why were the High Elves losing their power?
Whatever Mana found, she never spoke it out loud. According to the sole survivor of Mana's ascension, Mana started screaming.
Mana's scream was felt for miles around, and the sole survivor of this event would describe half of Mana's body peeling away, as a raging purple flame took root underneath her skin. The converging leylines where she planted her makeshift Seed pulsed a deep red before suddenly erupting into a violent explosion that sundered the land around them. In the immediate area, all but a single person was vaporised by the immense force behind the blast; although they were badly injured, they were able to give their record of the incident.
The survivor stated that when they came to, the area where Mana had been standing was utterly annihilated, with chunks of the remaining land suspended in the air. The converging leylines had been torn open, sending a torrent of raw, uncontained magic up into the sky, in a pillar of chromatic fire. But the most shocking sight was Mana herself.
Floating above the ground was the makeshift Divine Seed, surrounded by a halo of pure magic. Forming around the Seed was the remains of Mana, reconstituting from seemingly nothing until her body reformed anew, but with one noticeable difference; while one side of her body was otherwise normal, the other was composed of a roaring, purple flame. As Mana's body reformed, all that could be heard for miles around was her screaming, that echoed through the ears and minds of any who could hear it.

The Aftermath

The Ascension of Mana did not just herald the birth of a new Ascended God - the first in over 2,000 years. The nature of Mana's ascension had far-reaching effects, both immediately and in the long term. After the moment of the initial explosion, mages in the surrounding cities in Arcadeus found their spells suddenly failing or backfiring, resulting in several being injured from magic going wild. The floating city of Ashar fell from the sky, which ended up killing thousands of its inhabitants and took years before it was able to be flown again.
Perhaps the most severe effects were the ones that took the longest to take hold. Prior to Mana's Ascension, Elves were the only race (with the exception of planetouched races such as Tieflings, or those who had unusual circumstances behind their birth) that were born with an innate grasp of Arcane magic. However, in the years after Mana's Ascension, people reported their children being born and then presenting magical abilities without any of the prior training normally required to harness arcane magic; what made this notable is that it presented itself in races that largely did not have arcane magic as part of their culture, such as Orcs and Dwarves.
Due to many of these races lacking the in-built control of magic that Elves had, this was less of a blessing and far more of a curse; many of these magic-blooded children - or Sorcerers, as they would come to be known - were closer to time-bombs, always at the risk of their magic going wild.
In the modern day, Mana is a goddess that is poorly-regarded; many faithful of the more traditional Gods believe her to be a perversion of what it means to be a God. Even many arcanists hold her in low regard, as she is said to represent the destructive capability for magic, and how it can utterly devastate lives. None hold her in worse regard than the High Elves, who consider her to be a misguided fool who tried to tamper with a force that she could never hope to truly understand in hopes of saving the High Elves, and that her mistakes have marked the dwindling race for death.

Education

Mana was born into a family of Magisters, and was therefore raised into and taught within the Magistery. This gave her access to a wealth of arcane knowledge from a young age, accelerating her learning of the arcane very quickly.

Mental Trauma

Mana's ascension was an accident, the result of an incalculable amount of magic being funnelled into a single point, with her and a Divine Seed at its epicentre. While this gave Mana immense power and allowed her to become a Godlike being, her mind was not prepared for the sudden, overwhelming change or awareness. As a result, the process of ascension has driven her completely insane; having become almost omniscient, she is now able to perceive all magic at once but with no way to filter or control it. She has also become obsessed with creating a "balance" in everything, regardless of how it would affect the world.

Intellectual Characteristics

In life, Mana was considered by her peers to be a prodigy in the fields of Arcane Magic, even moreso than many of her contemporaries. As a child, she showed a grasp for Arcane Magic that far outshone many of her peers, and was also gifted with intense curiosity and a desire to push the boundaries of what could be done with magic. She was also known to not care for the established rules of magic, given that she was able to make a makeshift Divine Seed with little issue.
As a Goddess, Mana still retains her unparalleled intellect, but because her mind was entirely unprepared for her slapdash ascension, Mana has become completely mad. Those who have tried to commune with her report that she flips between torrents of anguished screaming and occasional moments of lucidity; during these brief stints of awareness, she becomes horrifyingly aware of her current state and falls into a state of abject terror, before her maddened howls begin again. Some believe that this madness may be infectious, as a concerning amount of people who attempt to commune with her have been driven temporarily mad.

Morality & Philosophy

Towards the end of her mortal life, Mana fell into the trap of many powerful mages of her age and other ages: that immense arcane power and knowledge detached her from the conventions of good and evil. Mana seemed to not care about the morality of her actions, believing that the means she took would be justified if the end was to restore the High Elves to their former glory.
As a Goddess, Mana's only concern is with maintaining a concept of balance; the idea of ensuring that Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are in as close to a perfect equilibrium as is possible.

Social

Contacts & Relations

Followers of Mana

Despite being a Goddess, Mana doesn’t have churches or even cults in the same way that other Gods do. This is largely due to her not actually having much in the way of defined tenets.
However, many current mages do venerate her in some regard; many argue that she represents what every mage to aspire to, making great and world-changing discoveries. While her end result was objectively terrible, few can deny the gravity of her research and discoveries.

Divine Classification

Ascended Deity

Religions

• The Ascended

Alignment

Switches between Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral

Honorary & Occupational Titles

The Accidental God
The Foolish Mage
The God-Who-Was-Not
The Mother of Sorcerers

Related Myths

• The Ascension of Mana

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