The Mana Gates & Guardians

The Gates Imbue the World

The material realm is a mixing pot of energies that all arrive from one of several elemental planes of existence. Everything from the landscape to even living beings hold magical energies originating from these other worlds. It is even possible for people, places, and animals to be infused with heavy amounts of certain elements that dictate traits, powers, and energies they represent and produce.

The world developed with the Gates pinned permanently to certain spots within the material realm.While it is possible to make smaller, temporary pathways in between each that spirits can travel through to reach this world, the Gates are huge, permanent, and responsible for shaping the world as we know it. The lands over untold millennia shifted and changed from the time of creation, carrying with it dramatic landscapes impossible if not for the Gates. An entire portion of a continent becoming a submerged mossy series of swamps and wetlands. Fields of fire violently churning with magma in the lava region, turning the terrain on the surface a dark grey. A storm that rages with thunder, lightning, and high winds perpetually, having never cleared, never ceased for millennia. Such things would never have existed if the Gates if the never existed. Even living beings themselves are entwined within this energy. People are born with the innate power to draw forth magical effects. Not from the world around them, but from their own soul, their own being. This energy, known as "mana," is found in everything, from the environment to objects to people. Most things have such a subtle amount of mana that it is undetectable, but living and sentient beings hold the most by far. These innate tethers to mana, known as affinities, are a common and universal part of life in the realm, even if they show no magical traits or abilities at all.

Spirits, Beings from Across the Gates

The permanency of the Gates allows the denizens of the elemental planes a reliable but tricky way to enter and exist in the material plane. Whether summoned by mortals using magic rituals or by traversing the perilous channels until they reach the Gates themselves, spirits are creatures made up of pure elemental energy.

The material realm is not the only of it's kind to hold sentient life. Each material plane has its own ecosystem of beings that live within their domain. Unlike the material plane however, these beings are one with their plane, as in that their bodies are completely made of the energies that fill that plane. serpent shaped arcs of light zip around the endless clouds of the lightning realm. subteranean rock beings tunnel endlessly through the firmament in the earth realm. A sea made of even more unique aquatic life than the oceans of the material plane swim the fathoms of an endless abyss. These beings have the ability to enter our world, either through somehow traversing to the Mana Gate linking their world with this one, or through mortal hands employing the use of magic rituals that could create a temporary way of teleportation, ripping the spirit from their plane and into the material. Spirits are typically seen as the other major half of life to contrast mortal life on the material plane. All spirits are made up of only one element and cannot conjure mana outside of that which makes them. All spirits rely on mana and would perish if exposed to materials or areas that decimate mana. All spirits are created from within the elemental plane or via culminations of magic from said plane, that of which is their home plane. Though, there are some beings related to spirits that do not fit this guideline exactly.

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-> The exact mechanisms used to tether the gates to the material realm are lost completely, much like the art of mana manipulation that was once powered by them.

-> Scholars have found no definitive proof of a gate for light or dark magic. These "esoteric" affinities seem to develop regardless of proximity to any known source. Whether this is a unique trait of life or the gates are simply hidden is unknown.