Magic System Outline

Magic was erased in the 10th century after nearly destroying the world. The Architect now reintroduces it with strict systemic limiters to prevent existential threats, while leaving morality and motivation to humanity’s discretion.

Core Principles

• Intent Defines Form:
  Magic’s expression depends on the caster’s understanding, imagination, and belief. A spell’s structure is shaped by the caster’s mental framework.
• Cost Scales with Impact:
  Energy requirements grow exponentially with scale or complexity. Small acts are manageable; large ones risk catastrophic backlash.
• Natural Laws Bend, Rarely Break:
  Magic can bypass physics temporarily (e.g., fire without fuel) but cannot permanently alter universal constants (gravity, entropy).

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Activation & Limitations

Fuel and Focus

• Personal Energy:
  Casters draw from their own physical/mental reserves (e.g., fatigue, memory loss, accelerated aging).
• Environmental Energy:
  Can redirect existing forces (heat, kinetic energy) but must account for conservation (e.g., freezing water requires dissipating heat elsewhere).
• Artifacts:
  Objects infused with energy (e.g., salts, pre-erasure relics) can store power or focus intent.

Schools of Thought

• Orthodox Traditions:
  Established schools teach rigid methodologies. Adherents are powerful within their paradigm but limited by dogma.
• Freeform Casters:
  Mavericks who bypass tradition, combining principles or inventing new techniques. Riskier but potentially revolutionary (e.g., a musician using soundwaves to manipulate emotions).

Creativity Multiplier

• A caster’s ability to conceptualize a spell’s mechanics and consequences determines efficiency.
• For example, a physicist might teleport by warping spacetime, while a poet might “rewrite their location” metaphorically-both work, but the poet’s method is more energy intensive.

Existential Safeguards

The Architect’s Boundaries

• Automatic Nullification:
  Spells posing direct existential threats (e.g., destabilizing Earth’s core, erasing oxygen) trigger an automatic shutdown, draining the caster’s energy and rendering them magically inert, possibly forever. A permanent mark appears on the face of the transgressor, making it impossible for them to deny what they tried to do.
• Salting Effect :
• The crystalline salts from nuclear disarmament disrupt magic within their radius.
• Rare and non-renewable, they’re hoarded by governments and powerful organizations and used to create “dead zones” around critical infrastructure.

Cascading Consequences

• Unintended Side Effects:
  Even non-existential magic can spiral (e.g., a rainmaking spell causing droughts elsewhere).
• Moral Accountability:
  The Architect does not punish misuse, but societies enforce harsh penalties for reckless casting (e.g., life imprisonment for triggering famines).

“I return this tool, bound but unbound. Its use is yours to define, its cost yours to bear. Create, but never unravel."

-The Architects Avatar