The Magic of Terrabeastia: Introductory Chapter

Magic in Music

The Origin

The Abandonment of Technology & Awakening of Magic
Not long after the terraforming & colonization process of Terrabeastia was complete, the Beast Clans quickly found that they needn't rely upon the vast amounts of technology they had created to sustain themselves on their dying worlds and within their Great Machinators. With a new abundance of natural resources at their disposal and places void of eternal geological catastrophe to live in peace, they grew to perceive almost all technology frivolous and unnecessary. Later generations even demonized it, having heard the stories of their ancestors being led astray and unintentionally killing their worlds with it, so even the knowledge of most advanced technology's existence was hidden or destroyed. It was several generations after these naysayers and zealots that they began to hear the Songs, a combined result of the abandonment of technology giving wake to untapped wells of awareness and power within the Beast Clans, the radiation emitted from the Great Machintors interacting with the celestial bodies of TerraBeastia's solar system, and the simultaneous unifying thread of multiple alternate dimensions colliding at once creating what is now called Magic.
The Age of TechnoArcana
After The Impact (the fall of The Great Machinators: Introductory Chapter  from Terrabeastia's orbit) while magic lived on in the surviving Beastfolk (as by this time, all Beastfolk are born with magic) the greater part of the vast magical civilizations were completely destroyed by the waves of destruction that followed the equivalent of sixteen city-sized spaceships colliding with the surface of the world. After the era of animosity, confusion, rebuilding settled into a level of stability, the Ancient Machines (former caretakers of The Great Machinators) both Corrupted and not that survived the Impact and violence that followed, began to integrate themselves into Beastfolk society. Due to the absorption and resonance of Songs with the Great Machinators, their Ancient Machines by extension resounded with them as well. Paired with their comparably infinite lifespans to Beastfolk and their possession of Spirit and a piece of their Great Machinator's Soul. Able to master the in-between realms that fit the Eight Songs together, they became pinnacles of magical mastery, the first Composers of Terrabeastia. These new magical masters, the destruction of ancient societal structures, and the abundance of disembodied Machinator wreckage gave birth to a new era of ideology amongst Beastfolk. This ideology integrating ancient highly-advanced technology with the new Ancient Machine arcane expertise and what remained of old-world magical society (responsibly or irresponsibly depending on the Ancient Machine in charge) created what is now known as the current age of TechnoArcana, magic, and technology woven together in harmony.

The Eight Songs of Haven & Hearth

The Source
In Terrabeastia, there are eight sources of magic, each of them embodying a different aspect of reality. They are split into two halves, Haven & Hearth. The four Songs of Haven deal with elements one would perceive with the mind, space, time, memory and perception. The four Songs of Hearth deal with elements that take physical formant are in equal parts unforgiving and relied upon, nature, beasts, the earth, and the sun. As Beastfolk are creatures of flesh and blood that live on the ground beneath their feet, they are closer to Hearth than Haven and as a result, Haven magic is more common. While significantly fewer find their individual song through Haven as it is embodied in places beyond the atmosphere. Rarer still, are those who can blend two Songs together and create new spells (songs) in doing so, without harmonizing with another caster.
Haven
The Star Sea embodies the vastness of space, particularly encompassing the night skyscape visible from the surface of Terrabeastia. Those who are born under its influence can manipulate things like Gravity, Light, Nebula Manipulation, Magnetism, and Place as well as communing with the songs themselves (though not able to sing them) as all are metaphysically beneath the Star Sea. As the highest and broadest Song of Haven, the other dimensions exist within its breadth, resulting in other Songs often borrow parts of it. Those who can manipulate the forces of physics are extremely diverse in their individual parts of the Song’s manifestations, sometimes the origin of their magic being mistaken for that of other Songs.
The Cumulus of Time embodies the cycle of time, manifesting itself as solid ice when representing the past, things that cannot be changed and only observed unless molded or melted by a conflicting magical force. The present represented by water, with its inability to be stopped or restrained, and with many currents and changes happening at once. The future represented by storm clouds, indistinct, ever-shifting, each of its fractals isolated, only becoming present as enough possibilities align and cumulate into raindrops of fate. Unlike other songs, its laws are strict, you may be able to travel back in time, but you cannot travel forward, nor can you see into the future. By doing so you have undone the reality you came from, and the future changes by your observation of it, and changes too rapidly to get reliable results from visions. The Cumulus of Time embodies knowledge of what may come, be it the flow of energy or the flow of intuition and events.
The Sanctum of Spirit embodies the higher mind, where the folk split from the dual nature of the term Beastfolk. Ever since Beastfolk arrived on Terrabeastia, their spirit folk have been safely contained within this song after the body has died. Those who sing this song can draw from the powers of centuries of ancestral wisdom, as well as comfort and intuition from passed loved ones, communing or allowing them to temporarily engage with the physical world. Some are able to summon, see, and remember their ancestors and their memories. Or if not the spiritual embodiment ancestors, they may find themselves guided to places or items of significance to their lives that may aid in whatever task the caster seeks to accomplish.
The Overshadow embodies the senses, perception, and the subjectivity of reality. Physically manifested by Terrabeastia’s moon, its shadow encompassing the ever-shifting chaos of mystery, the senses, and the subconscious. Those who sing this Song are masters of illusion and sensory manipulation, not able to bend reality, but one’s perception of reality. These powers can delve into telepath, empathy and projection of the mind as well. Examples being summoning blindness or deafness, and distorting the images of friend and foe. Others are able to manipulate a single sense en masse, amplifying or negating sound, light/color, scent, and touch.
Hearth
The Undergrove embodies the interconnectivity of all plant life in Terrabeastia. Those who sing this Song have abilities deeply tied to the plant life around them. Some are able to travel between trees, others sending messages through them, others communicating with the plants themselves for aid and favors. A handful of them is even able to control, accelerate the growth of and summon plants to bend to their will. The duality of nature allows them to heal as well as harm, making the Undergrove one of the most flexible Songs of Terrabeastia.
The Bestiary of The Soul, where the Sanctum embodies the mind and spirit of a member of the Beastfolk, the primal instincts, wisdom and strength of the beast in beastfolk are contained within this Song. Unlike the Sanctum of the Spirit, rather than being preserved and ruled by blood lineage in its magical manifestations, the Soul is reincarnated as other beasts. That being said, this dimension is the only one that truly relies on the casters' clan of birth in its early manifestations for the source of its magic. Those who sing this Song can summon their past souls to aid them in battle, or fully transform into their bestial aspect, as well as tap into the ancient survival instincts that rule beasts into the present. Others are guided by other beasts despite their current incarnations and can access the vast teachings of their past incarnations much, in the same way, those who sing of the Sanctum can.
The Heartbeat of The Earth embodies the very center and transformative elemental power of Terrabeastia’s molten core. The broadest reaching of the Hearth Songs, those whose abilities control, transform or manipulate the elements belong to the vast Song of the Heartbeat. From metal to water, to earth, to transformative fire. Most singers of Heartbeat magic’s solo in the Song manifests as one or two elements, the most common being Earth & Fire and Water & Earth.
The Everlasting Light, While other magics add onto a Beastfolk's abilities with brand new manifestations untethered to the individual, the Song of Everlasting Light amplifies what is already present, in the individual as well as in others. The capacity to recover from injuries, physical strength, mental acuity, charisma, or the ability to expunge toxins from the body. This magic embodies the brilliance and diversity of the physical being rather than the manifestations of the Soul and Spirit it contains.

Wielding Magic

Who & When?
Magic is able to be woven and composed by everyone, it is very rare in the current age for a child of any Beast Clan (save for those infected by Vampirialism) that one would be born without at least some potential magic capabilities. Each Beastfolk child is born with the propensity toward one (or on very rare occasions, two) of the Eight Songs of Haven and Hearth. Most children learn their Song intuitively between ages eight and twelve years old, although there are early and late bloomers as the exception, particularly if their Song is of one of the more complex families like The Cumulus of Time, The Sanctum of The Spirit, or The Bestiary of The Soul. Often, what Song a child learns is based on a few factors, Genetics, Great Machinator Resonance, and Proximity to a Crescendo.
Factors of Being Chosen for A Song
Where genetics are concerned, the longer a family has sung a Song, the surer it is that the following generation will know it as well. If two families with very old ancestral Songs come together to create offspring, this is where a child who blends two songs together are often born, this is even more possible if the two ancestral Soloists are of two different but genetically compatible Beast Clans. This is especially true if their magic resonates with a Great Machinator that their ancestors helped construct that is relatively close by, the same thing goes for being in the proximity of a Crescendo.
After encircling the orbit of the planet for so long, and later plummeting onto its surface absorbed the arcane reverberations of the Eight Songs into their being and they, while only able to do minor magic, became sponges and beacons of that particular set of songs (Haven or Hearth), especially for those Beastfolk whose clans had built that Machinator in the first place. For example, descendants of the Sorian Clan are more likely to be Chosen for a Haven Song if they live in proximity of Estrellorona The Feathered Serpent, as that Great Machinator was partially built by that Clan (alongside the Naga Clan)
More potent than blood or the beacon of a Great Machinator is proximity to a Crescendo. A nexus or gateway of intense power for one Song, a place where all other songs are almost totally drowned out by the sheer intensity of the Song at its nexus, hence the title Crescendo. Crescendos are often natural formations that have become nexuses after the ancestral Beast Clans terraformed the world, especially those of Hearth Songs such as The Volcano of The Great Beyond (a Crescendo of The Heartbeat of The Earth). While Crescendos of Haven are often Beastfolk (or Ancient Machine) made, like the Clock Tower on the Sea of Refuse (a Crescendo of The Cumulus of Time). If a child is born near any of these nexuses, it is almost completely guaranteed they will be Chosen for its Song, as its volume penetrates the womb of any pregnant woman residing nearby.

Magic: The Art of Song

Words, Solos, Verses, & Notes: The Components of A Spell
All magic comes from the Song and as the Beastfolk are the vessels for magic, magic must be sung in order to work properly, an indicator that the music holds magic is that a matching Instrument will resound along with the incantation despite there being none present. The words to a song are often not an actual spoken language and more of a primal form of gibberish whose sound encompasses the emotion and intention of the spell in accordance with Song and the caster's style. (Note: spells often have meaning in real-world languages, usually from the Beastfolk's beast half's region of origin, Scots Gaelic for a Highland Cow Minotaur for example).
The wieldable aspects of Song can be broken down into three fundamental components; Solos, Verses, and Notes. A Solo is the fraction of the greater Song that an individual caster knows intuitively, starting simple and becoming more and more complex the further along in magical ability one becomes. The learning aspect is what leads to Verses (Spells), further specified effects and deeds a caster can accomplish within their Solo, the beginning bars having the simplest arrangements and growing more complex and nuanced as the caster grows in skill and power. Notes are the finer, exact elements of a Solo's bars, encompassing key, length, and arrangement to embody each bar of the Solo.
Notes, in particular, is the most important and alterable pieces of both Bar & Solo as they are the fundamental building blocks of magic. The effects of one's magic can be altered, rearranged, and made more precise and potent with the careful alteration of the key, tempo, note length and arrangement of each Verse. The most talented and successful of casters are experts in Music Theory as they carefully manipulate and compose the Bars of their Solo for exact and extremely powerful effects. While most magic is as intuitive as talent, one must be intellectual to get specific results from their magic.
Chambers, Harmonies, Instruments, & Components: Amplifying Magic
Like conventional music, individuals can weave magic together in two main forms; Chambers (two to ten casters) & Harmonies. Chambers are when two or more casters sing together in their own respective Songs and words to create an effect or enchant an object where the spells fill one another's gaps like a musical jigsaw puzzle that combines the two Solos without blending them. Creating an object or Verse of dual (or more) features rather than integrated or highly intuitive features.
Harmonies are much harder to master and more uncommon than Chamber Verse combos their enchantments, especially if the Harmony is between two different Songs, and near impossible if the casters' Songs are from Haven & Hearth respectively. Unlike Chambers where the magic fits together like a puzzle, Harmonies are more comparable to the mixing of paints. The two Solos create an entirely new Verse by blending the Notes together, and some Songs or Solos don't blend together easily because of theme or individual style, and two many Solos or songs trying to harmonize create a muddled and confused ball of magic that can potentially result in disaster. Much as blending too many colors or the incorrect colors together will make unintended and ugly colors of murky grey or brown.
As previously mentioned, an excellent indicator of the effectiveness of a spell is that an ethereal instrument plays along with the sung Verse. Real instruments as consequence are greatly effective in improving the likelihood of a spell's success as well as its precision. If the same physical instrument that resounds in the caster's mind when a Bar is on track, it hones the precision and success rate of that Verse, as musical accompaniment aids a singer in our world. Another helpful feature of musical instruments is that they are not bound to a Song, Solo or caster, a totally neutral object capable of honing any type of magic so long as it matches the one heard by the caster and is played in time with the Verse. In this way, a duo of casters could wield the other's instrument to play in sync with their counterpart's instrument for a mutual boost in precision.
Components are a somewhat eclectic category of magical and magic improving objects that can range from pieces of Great Machinators to animal sheddings, to types of metal and dirt, to vestiges of the pre-magical age, to generations-old enchanted items. What works with and what is necessary for a Solo's betterment is different from caster to caster. If a caster's Solo works in metals that none of their Verses can summon, then those metals are a component they require in order to cast. While things like magical weapons that share a Song with the caster, items that improve the likelihood of harmony or allow the caster to acquire the aid of a Song they cannot sing are much harder to find. In fact, any caster who relies upon components both mundane and magical to craft the most complex and unique Verse set is called an Alchemist, trading with other Songs and casters to create potent magical items and improve their own spells without the branch and depth of knowledge required to develop complex Verses and Notes. While a much faster route to magical prowess that dodges much of the ill effects of using magic (more on this in the next major section), it is a much harder and dangerous life of adventure than most would enjoy enduring, some elitist spell composers give them the derogatory nickname "Cover Artists".
Dark Developments: Synthetic & Stolen Magic
Beyond the bounds of traditional magic, Alchemy, or even TechnoArcana advancements there are the workings of Corrupted Ancient Machines and Vampirialized Beast Clan factions, those who cannot possess or have totally outlawed and muted true Songs and magic. These dark inventions create artificial mimicries of over-harmonized magic, artificially copied from its original caster, only resulting in destructive and harmful effects (which is good enough for their conquesting purposes). Those that are still capable of wielding it in a Vampirial society where magic is outlawed use synthesized alterations of their own Solos for the purposes of their Corrupted masters or otherwise be punished.
Stealing magic is relatively new and extremely unsettling TechnoArcana development amongst certain Vampirial factions, in which they have developed the technology to physically extract the capability of a caster's ability to sing their Solos by drawing out their Notes one by one and grafting their voices onto special magic absorbing crystals called Arcanite. The extraction process is extremely painful for the caster, and they cannot sing the Notes or sometimes whole Verses of magic once fully removed, finding their voices silent upon trying to replicate it. Although there have been some cases where the note is merely too flat or sharp if it's only partially extracted. Clever casters who survive and escape after the process can reconstruct or create new Verses to compensate for their missing Notes, but it is an invasive process for both Soul and Spirit. The use of stolen magic has disturbing consequences, madness and the invasion and conversion of the body into Arcanite being among them as well as amplified versions of the magic's consequences. In theory, extraction is reversible by breaking the graft pattern or completely shattering the crystal.

Capabilities, Limitations & Consequences

Magic At Its Pinnacle
At its height, a single caster without any aid from others, instruments or components cannot actually do very much, a one-trick pony (no offense to the Centaurs!) as it was, barring the presence of a Great Machinator, Crescendo, being chosen for two Songs, or Vampirial experimentation upon the caster. The most powerful single composer may be able to do is travel to the Song from which their Solo originates from, or inter a piece of their spirit or soul on TerraBeastia or the realm of their Solo's origin. Like all great undertakings and wonders of technology and art, the weaving of powerful magic takes the work of many hands. If one can find those they harmonize with, a Chamber to compound or enchant with, and/or means of amplifying their own Solo or borrowing the power of others' Songs, miracles can happen. From resurrecting the dead, repairing vast destroyed landscapes, venturing into places no living creature has ever reached before, altering or destroying entire continents, anything short of overpowering the other Songs.
The Limits of Magic
As previously stated, a single caster can do little, and the greater the magic the greater the consequences on the caster (barring a handful of extremely rare circumstances). There are limits to the capacity and access to every Song, no caster's Solo can encompass the entirety of one Song, it would take every single caster of the entire Song singing in perfect Harmony to do so, which would already be catastrophically dangerous for the casters and the world itself. It is also impossible for one to have enough equipment or casters in a Chamber to encompass even half of the sheer vastness of the Eight Songs of Haven & Hearth, again if it were to be done, would have insurmountable, world-ending consequences. Fundamentally, no Song can overpower another Song, while Beastfolk can hear the Songs of Hearth better than Haven, that is a matter of proximity, not power, as the Eight Songs represent the fundamental building blocks of reality and the ever-churning cycle of balance between time and space, mind and instinct, light and darkness, nature and the elements. Concepts so vast no one caster, sentient being, can fully comprehend it.
The Consequences on The Caster
While magic is possessed by everyone and has infinite benefits and uses, it in equal parts has consequences on the casters. It is a matter of chance how severe the physical side effects are in proportion to the strength or breadth of the caster's Solo, although it is often in alignment with balancing the intensity of consequential suffering with power level. Someone with the Solo of being able to control a magical metal resting within him, for example, may share its properties, sinking in water and becoming stiff and weaker in cold temperatures. Someone who restores a sick and dying plant may take on the plant's sickness temporarily. Magic, when overused (especially without sharing the burden with a Harmony or Chamber) can kill a caster if they bite off more than they can chew with a Verse that is beyond their skill level or so barely within the confines of their ability that the consequences overwhelm and destroy the individual. This is where items and allies come in handy, limiting the amount of Solo you must sing through the aid of precision Instruments, components, legendary materials, and fellow casters, the Alchemist makes a living of this. Most Alchemists are born from the fact that their magic is already almost too much for their bodies to handle right from birth, so only use a fraction of their power with tools to compensate so that they do not completely destroy themselves after only a few Verses.

Table of Contents

The Origin:
The Abandonment of Technology & Awakening of Magic
The Age of TechnoArcana
The Eight Songs of Haven & Hearth:
The Source
Haven
The Star Sea, The Cumulus of Time, The Sanctum of The Spirit, The Overshadow
Hearth
The Undergrove, The Bestiary of The Soul, The Heartbeat of The Earth, The Everlasting Light
Wielding Magic:
Who and When?
Factors of Being Chosen for A Song
Magic: The Art of Song:
Words, Solos, Verses, & Notes: The Components of A Song
Chambers, Harmonies, Instruments, & Components: Amplifying Magic
Dark Developments: Synthetic & Stolen Magic
Capabilities, Limitations & Consequences:
Magic At Its Pinnacle
The Limits of Magic
The Consequences on The Caster