Donnemeno (Dooney-may-noh)
Dōnnēmēno were arcane arts of the Sinista, dating back before the Age of Mythos. They are considered long lost since then, and no known texts provide concrete description of the principles or techniques. Codex of Cean Siare includes a single fragment of what appears to be a treatise on the basics of dōnnēmēno, though its authenticity is being disputed by many classically trained mages. The fragment itself does not provide enough information to either validate or disprove its claims, and it has been the topic of many debates and hypotheses for several generations.
Background
Unlike current day magic training, which teaches that there are only specific spell formulas and who's practitioners drill a unified execution of these rotes, the practice of dōnnēmēno acknowledged that there is an infinite number of possibilities, neither of which is wrong or right. Dōnnēmēno focused on mastering control over twelve Principles: Prime, Force, Fate, Time, Mind, Space, Spirit, Life, Death, Matter, Void, and Vision.
Ten of these were thought to have their primal source in a Plane adjacent to the Material Plane, and their intersection and interactions made it possible for Material Plane to exist in the shape and form that is known. The last two Principles' origin was the Material Plane itself.
Practitioners of this art learned to manipulate these Principles or Arcanas, which allowed them nearly unlimited possibilities. Experienced practitioners were able to combine multiple effects or multiple arcanas for more complex effects. The highest form of practice was however ritual spellcasting, which allowed a practitioner to achieve results far exceeding instant casting, and even made it possible for multiple practitioners to participate in a group casting.
Corruption, Worldbreach, and Paradox
The obvious raw power and control that this arcane art provided also brought it to attention of The Nightmare. Being an entity of primordial power, it gained control over primal source of the Void and began corrupting the arcane practitioners' efforts. This culminated with the cataclysm of Worldbreach, not only erasing the borders between Planes in a vast area, but also enabling the Nightmare to corrupt primal source of the Vision.
Arcane practitioners had no choice but to dismiss the corrupted Arcanas from their practice, thus bringing the number down to ten: Prime, Force, Fate, Time, Mind, Space, Spirit, Life, Death, and Matter. Removing the corrupted Arcanas was however only a partial solution; the raw power of Donneyal (practitioners of the arts) was a beacon in darkness for the Nightmare and its spawns. The more powerful spell, the greater chance it had on attracting unwanted attention.
This often manifested as undesired results, from warping the spell's effect, causing damage to the caster's body or mind, rifts in the wall dividing the Planes, to creating an instant portal for the Nightmare's spawns to travel through. The Donneyal were mostly able to counter these mishaps, though often at high cost. Eventually it became clear that it was the act of tapping directly into the Principles that posed the greatest risk. Rote spells, which were meticulously perfected over many years of use, caused no mishaps at all.
This discovery was a turning point for the practitioners, and a beginning of a new era for arcane arts. Instead of tapping directly into the Principles and improvising their spells, Donneyal spent years creating and perfecting rote spells; spells that were as efficient, subtle, and succint in their effect as they could be. The downside of this new direction was that spellcasters became limited to only a few hundred spells with predictable and predetermined effects, and developing and perfecting a new rote spell became a long-term effort.
This eventually became the arcane arts as they were known in Age of Anguish and Age of Resurgence, with arcane education focusing on perfect control of rote spells which were shared through lectures, spellbooks, and scrolls, and on following predetermined practices and achieving the greatest effect with minimum effort expended.
Origin & Semiotics
The term Dōnnēmēno appears to be a composite phrase, consisting of two words in ancient Sinis: "dōnnē" is a condensed transcript of original word dhoubnom (pron: "doo-num"), meaning "world". Second half of the phrase, "mēno" is sometimes recorded as "mejno" and means "change", as in being different than before.
When one would apply this term to refer to the practicioners, the phrase would become "dōnnēmēno galnt", often again condensed into "dōnnēmgal". The word "galnt" is a derivate of "galnōs" (power), and describes a person with a power over something. Therefore "dōnnēmēno galnt" is translated as a person with the power to change the world. Through common use this has become an established term, and eventually changed (condensed) into the term "Dōnnēal" or "Dōnneyal" which old texts, including the Codex of Cean Siare, use to describe ancient magic practitioners.
OOC: Origin & Semiotics
Because I've used Proto Indo-European language as foundation for Ancient Sinis, the words and phrases described by in-character Origins above also apply to OOC origins of the term. I took liberty with condensing the actual proto indo-european phrase into a single word, justified by artistic license and by the fact that the whole phrase is really a mouthful.
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