The Prestige

Bending the rules...

Magic? Don't call it that. Magic doesn't exist. There was a time when it did, but that golden age collapsed. Now all that's left is The Prestige. It's a mockery of what once was. We do parlor tricks compared to the mages of old...

— Morrigan, from Blood and Ashes

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In the world of The Web, The Prestige is an anomalous phenomenon that few find worth studying. It is a testament to how little is known about reality, and for anyone masochistic enough to try and study it, its a migraine waiting to happen.

Those who practice The Prestige refuse to call it magic. It looks like it, sure, but what they do is nothing compared to true magic, a fundamental force of nature that was somehow scratched out of the universe's code. The Prestige is all that's left.

The principles of The Prestige are similar to magic. All magic is a reaction. When metaphysical energy is manifested in a physical form, it reacts to reality. Once upon a time, this reaction. was in complete control of the caster. Now, all one can do is take advantage of whatever reaction they get.

Oxford

The Oxford Cabal stands as the only organization dedicated to the study and practice of the arcane. They focus entirely on understanding the history, science, and progression of The Prestige and the true form of magic that came before it.

Not all of its members can use the prestige, but all of them have survived the rite. All of its members have some unique ability or power that they use to benefit the organization. The most prominent member of this organization is Morrigan, a quasi-immortal who stands as the most powerful practitioner of The Prestige.

The organization spends most of its time studying the antediluvian age, time well before recorded history when true magic existed in abundance. They are particularly obsessed with the nature of the cataclysm that ended this age, an event they refer to as the Yggdrasil Shudder.

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Fun Fact: A Whole World of Bad

The vast majority of those who practice The Prestige are often those hunted by the organizations of the web. In fact, the only practitioners who are regarded as "good guys" are the members of The Oxford Canal. 90% of the time, when you encounter someone who is capable of using The Prestige, they won't be friendly. There are maybe less than a few thousand people in the world who are capable of using The Prestige. The Oxford Cabal boasts less than a hundred members.

In spite of this, these members are among the most well-trained and powerful practitioners. Most individuals who can use The Prestige come into this power by accident and are forced to learn on their own, making them untrained and prone to mistakes.

While the practitioners of the cabal will have no trouble dealing with the majority of practitioners who become a problem, the average member of the web will find that this lack of training makes no difference. The Prestige is an exceptionally powerful ability and those who do not have it will often find themselves at a disadvantage when they encounter it.

What is The Prestige?

The Prestige is an ability that allows one to draw and manipulate metaphysical energy. Metaphysical energy is an anthropomorphic material. It's an abstract concept given concrete form. There are countless forms of this material, and each can be used to enhance one's ability.

The downside is lack of control. A practitioner can't always choose how the energy will react when it manifests. Most don't even try to manifest it. Manifested energy is unstable and has a tendency to backfire. The physical and the metaphysical are not meant to mix, and the results can be lethal.

The most common use of The Prestige comes in the form of light manipulations of the physical reality. Practitioners do not want to break the rules, they wish to bend them. They can't manifest fire from thin air, at least not with any measure of safety. Instead they may use a lighter to produce the fire, and The Prestige to pull it, manipulate it, and make it grow.

Bending Physics

The rule is simple: you cannot create, you can only control. Anytime one tries to manifest energy it will result in catastrophic failure. Reality won't allow it. Instead, to practice The Prestige, one has to find loopholes around the rules.

You can't create water from nothing, but there is usually more than enough moisture in the air. Condensing it is easy enough, you're following the rules. You can shape and move the water, using trace amounts of the metaphysical energy that moves through your body to lift it into the air and shape it into a ball.

This may seem like a minor inconvenience. Control is better than nothing, but the amount of focus and out of the box thinking required to make such talents useful is not something many are capable of. This is especially true when facing the dangerous world of The Web.

Of Sound Mind and Body

When you gain The Prestige, the first thing you should focus on is how level-headed you can be in stressful situations. The Prestige can be taxing on the mind and the body, but even more so if you struggle to maintain concentration while using it. On top of this unique brand of hyper-focus, you must also work on your creativity. In order to use The Prestige without killing yourself the first time you attempt it, a tragic situation that happens more times than not, you have to do everything in your power to limit how much energy is required.

To cast even the most simple arcane effects, one has to go through a huge list of problems that need to be solved before it can be done safely. In order to live out the fantasy of throwing a fireball at an enemy, one must first figure out where the fire is coming from due to the fact that you cannot simply create it out of thin air. This can be as simple as carrying a matchbook with you or lighter. Next, you must figure out how to shape the fire into the form of a ball. This is also pretty simple, as the practitioner will be able to use the energy within their own body to be able to reach out and control it as if using telekinesis. Then the complications will start to appear.

Have you determined how to prevent the ball of flame from burning you when you hold it in the palm of your hand to throw it? Have you considered what you're going to do when you have thrown it and find you threw all the fire you had at your disposal? Have you considered controlling the fire so that it does not spread to the surrounding environment or hurt someone you did not intend to hurt? Will the ball of flame explode or will it coat your enemy like a liquid? Most importantly, have you considered other options for potential attacks if fire proves ineffective, and if so, have you gone through the exact same process of solving the problems that these questions address for that attack as well?

Tools Of The trade

Those who practice The Prestige have a series of tools at their disposal. Some of these tools assist to focus and increase their power, such as a focus, while others are centered around the theory of their gifts, like Arcane Genres.

Catalysts:A catalyst is used to fuel an ability. They are resources used to trigger a reaction, which is then harnessed and used. Practitioners need these resources to practice safely. Each catalyst will have a profound effect on the ability cast. Examples include arcane elements like fire and water, but also include standard metaphysical charges often found in enchanted items.

Focus: A focus is an item that takes a bulk of the stress The Prestige produces, so the faster won't have to. There is no standard as to what a catalyst can be, but the faster must understand it perfectly. They must know the measurements, weight, composition, and nature of the item as well as how they intend their abilities to flow from them. Examples include spellbooks, jewelry, or weapons. Morrigan, who is blind, uses a cane while her mentor used a wedding ring. The spell cast will flow from the focus like a wand or staff of traditional fantasy.

Genres: Arcane genres focus on the theory of different styles used by those who practice The Prestige. There are ancient texts from The Antediluvian Age that note miraculous power. These texts are still relevant, even if magic doesn't exist anymore. Practitioners take these texts and modernize them.

Ritual: Rituals are prepared casts that usually require little effort on the part of the practitioner. A ritual takes advantage of loopholes found in the rules of reality. By gathering components at certain times or in certain conditions, they can achieve arcane effects. There is little reason for why these specific variables cause the effect. There are many who dedicate their time studying rituals and why they work, as well as discovering new rituals that can be performed.

The Rite

You know the trope: "All magic comes at a price" so they say. That price is not as cut-and-dry in The Web. The amount of attention to detail as well as the mental fortitude required is one thing but few come to expect the realities that the prestige brings to the table.

First and foremost, we have to discuss The Prestigious Rite. There is a way to manifest metaphysical energy in a physical form. It can take months to accomplish properly and even doing it properly can result in a failed batch of material. When you have this material, you have the only component needed to give somebody The Prestige. Metaphysical energy always comes in a strange state of matter. In many ways it's a liquid, but in many other ways it's a vapor, and yet there are qualities of it that are characteristic of a solid.

By anointing someone with this material, allowing it to wasg over them, you expose the potential practitioner to the fundamental building blocks of existence. The metaphysical material will bond with the physical material of the body. Such a mix is not meant to be. Out of a hundred individuals who undergo the right, maybe seven live to tell about it. Out of these seven survivors, maybe three will actually be able to use The Prestige. The others will gain something from the near death experience, but usually it is a single power with harsh limits.

A Brutal Art

Another harsh reality and cost to The Prestige comes from the mind. The effects of one's abilities can be traumatic. It's difficult to calculate all the variables when using the prestige, and on occasion mishaps do occur, no matter how safe you are about it. These mishaps rarely happen to the practitioner, but the practitioner is the one who's going to have to bear the burden. The Prestige is messy, far from the romanticized magic of common fantasy.

While the intended effect of whatever it is you are trying to do will certainly happen exactly as you wanted, it won't be pretty. The fireball you throw at your opponent will indeed hurt them and will probably kill them, but their screams will haunt you for the rest of your days. These are the screams of an individual who is not only feeling pain, but someone who should be dead and has yet to die. You may conjure up a burst of force that will hurl your opponents back and find that you didn't know your own strength, leaving nothing but a grisly sight behind as their bodies collide at high speed with a brick wall.

The point is, the prestige is real and the effects of The Prestige are equally so. When you commit to an action, the effects of that action can be the result of you not considering important variables. It's one thing to kill someone in self-defense, it's another thing to do so in a violent, cruel, and inhumane way. Even among the members of the Oxford cabal, the life of a practitioner is filled with death, blood, and unintended consequences.

Going Loud

The term "Going Loud" is often used by practitioners to describe the peculiar effect that immediately occurs after someone successfully gains The Prestige from the rite. Within these moments, the practitioner becomes more powerful than they will ever be again. The cabal has specialized methods of containing these new members, and usually isolate them from the rest of the world to prevent harm.

Those going loud will be able to perform their abilities with remarkable precision, taking every variable into consideration and executing their intentions with Immaculate beauty. They reach a trance-like state, something many practitioners try to emulate through the form of catered meditation. In this state they are no longer themselves. They may have no memory of what occurs while they are in this state, nor do they have much control over themselves while they are in this state. The state can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days.

When a new practitioner enters the states they are powerful enough to fracture reality. They create things from nothing without consequence to themselves, they are capable of performing many complex arcane effects in a single instant, and all this pressure can cause instability in the physical reality.