The Campaign Builder's Guild

My magic system is based on the soul and blood. The heart is the headquarters of the soul and the soul has a regenerative cycle that can be exploited to push the soul out of the body, killing them. Blood can be used to boost one's magical power, since it contains the soul of another. I was thinking of music being related at least by the superficial similarity of a beat of a drum to the heart.

I do love the Athemancers, very cool and I'm jealous.

The soul and magic are seen as the same substance, a substance which gives life to everything living and the essence of magic. The blood is a vessel for the soul and is used by magic users to add the soul's energy to their power. The heart is the seat of the soul, and the regeneration cycle of the soul is connected to the beating of the heart and flow of the blood. Life is connected intimately with the soul energy/magic energy and the heart (as the headquarters of the soul). By extention, all body cycles are connected with magic and the soul via the blood.

 The dwarves are a little cut off from the rest of the world, geographically and ideologically (in their view of magic and their religion of following the dragon)  and I was toying with the idea that when one's soul left the body, there was room inside the heart for another soul to enter. While the soul is regenerating, the flow of energy goes out unless there is magic sufficient to reverse the flow and take the heart over, and cast the soul out while severing its connection to the heart and blood. The push of the soul out of the body in death is at the same rate in which it would regenerate, except it does not regenerate, and in the last moments another soul could force its way inside by overpowering the fraction of soul within the heart still. I think only evil spirits could do this, and they cannot exist when the sun is shining due to the sun being a force of the sun god's soul energy that is opposite to the energy of the evil spirits. So an evil spirit would have to evade the heat and light of the sun during the day. A spirit could invade a body at the time of its death if the evil spirit is around at the time of their death, or before their soul fully leaves their body (after the heart is closed, it does not open again and the body is dead). In the polar regions where it is dark for long periods of time, the sun would not shine as often as in the equatorial regions and so spirits could exist there easier.

The soul of a person that dies travels along the flow of power of the sun during the day, so if someone dies at night they have the night to survive against the spirits before the sun appears and takes them to the afterlife. Some that die at night purposefully evade the sun during the day so that they can take over other bodies, becoming a spirit themselves. But while the soul departs the body during the day and night arrives, the part of the soul leaving the body after the sun has left is alone without the rest of its soul that left with the sun earlier that day. The portion of the soul could be a particular aspect of the dead person, or insane, or unable to function.

So while it is possible for someone along the equator to become possessed after their death, it is unlikely because a soul or spirit would have to be present to possess them in such a short window of opportunity and have survived the sun (likely by possessing an animal or something).

After the dwarves made themselves known to the surrounding races, entrepreneurs could bring wooden items (a novelty to the arctic dwarves) to trade for metals mined in the mountain for massive profits.

I had an idea for the original creating god to make all the universe, but without sentient life. After a while he was ambushed by godlike beings that he did not know he had created. The gods had no knowledge, but killed him when they saw him and the one that struck the killing blow got the knowledge of the god's life and knew he had done wrong. So the killing god threw the creator into a holding pit and forgot about him, ruling over the others and educating them with what he learned when he touched the creator god. The killing god became senile and the other gods grew in power. The other gods made life of their own. One god, the trickster figure, found the pit where the creator god was stored (his power taken away) and imprisoned him amongst the races.

I really like the archetype examples. The Dura seem interesting and a refreshing move away from the usual World of Warcraft variety.

I like the Beauty and the Beast look for the Vorr. Actually, I rather love the idea.

Eh, I like my magic system but I think your idea for one based on nothingness sounds interesting. Dreams seem necessary for a school of magic, I think you'll have an interesting way to make that your own. (Perhaps penalty such as aging, madness, or mutation would depend on the school of the practitioner?)

I am very interested in seeing more of the automatons and a bit more on the religions.

I like where this is going.

From my understanding, a longbow with a bodkin arrow could pierce plate at close range. Though this is only from Bernard Cornwell books and what my grandfather used to say. (He read up on the stuff, but not a viable authority.)



Also, according to the British Long Bow Society the maximum draw strength for a period bow was 110 lbs. Which did surprise me, as I believed 150 was accepted as the max (and I guess that nullifies my opinions and beliefs on the subject.)

I also remember reading that crossbows' bolts would just stick in plate, but longbows' arrows would go through.

Blunt weapons will still smash someone up regardless of armour, I'm pretty certain.

But the Arms and Armour Journal has done some tests that disagree. According to Sword Forum International forums, their tests were done with harder arrowheads than used when longbows were used, and a sheet of steel instead of a breastplate (whose curvature and ribbedness would perhaps deflect an arrow).

Is the old way of apprenticing from an early age necessary/the only way it can be done? I rather like the strong/weak system as I've not seen something similar (though it may exist) and the culture shaped by it would not be a rip-off of any of our real cultures - hopefully leading to something unique. Do you think it could work?

Ah! I hope I can read it - I've read little that has in depth dynamics between magic and its influence on society/politics.

It pushes their souls out entirely and since their soul is not in the body they are dead.

I like this idea if each genre had its own kingdom or realm or what-have-you. Like if you keep the Misty Mountain and the Sunset-strip as separated places. Perhaps a death metal underworld or cult? Perhaps NPCs could be roadies or the Vic Firth Club Craftsmen or something. I would definately like to see a setting out of this.

Had you seen the Heavy Metal Bard build somewhere? (I think there are many, but it might give you ideas for some song-based spells or ideas in general.)

Quote from: LlumOk, so its not really religious reasons then, its that Ruler 2 is an idiot :P. That kinda solves the problem right there. But the anti-mage using religion having assassins applies to other things as well, like the  Dwarves who don't use magic. They're going to have as many ways to counter magic as possible (especially after their defeat at the hands of the Elves).

You had said that there was a anti-magic religion, and if this trope shows up again, logically in this area magic users would never become celebrities or something similar. Just saying.[/quote]
Well, it could be super-heated water that doesn't turn into steam, or it could be steam. I'm talking extremely high temperature stuff here, so that all the heat that leached into the ground would melt the perma-frost. Like volcanic springs and stuff in Greenland/Iceland (I forget wich offhand). The water won't turn into steam if their's enough pressure on it.[/quote]
This is why they would join the priesthood at birth. Being raised to be fanatically loyal would be even safer then keeping them drugged on mind-controlling fungus.[/quote]
I guess, but if social worth is gained strictly or mainly through "strength", this place would probably have tons of fighting and contests to prove strength and stuff. I doubt very little would happen in the means of technology, or even scholarly advancement. It would get stimied in a barbaric age, possibly anyway.[/quote]
Now in the Mistborn, there are people called Allomancers who use a special kind of magic. It's similar in that these people are worth a LOT of normal people in fighting and stuff. It would give a good example of how politics could work. Now there are differences but I think it would give you some ideas at least. Oh and its a really good book series too :P
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Ah, I just read a review. It sounds good, but I'm not going for the same magic system even though the outcome is similar.

QuoteOk, I just want to say that a 100:1 ratio seems like a lot, and it is when your dealing with small numbers like armies in the hundreds. But once you get into the thousands, 1:100 isn't that big of a deal. I'll touche on this some more as I go through your points

That example was just to show something like what i have in mind, and in working out the issues here I will work out the problems with the real thing.

QuoteSeems artificial to keep them even to military strength (unless theres a God of magic who is also God of War/Armies too?) or something.

It is artificial to keep them even to military strength in general. In actuality it would be difficult to determine how much a magic user is 'worth', and those numbers were used to illustrate the example. I was planning on (with armies of fifty or one hundred thousand) one magic user would be worth one hundred men or more, depending on individual ability and battle circumstance.

 

QuoteOk this rings wrong to me, and here's why. If he has religious reasons not to use magic users, he isn't going to just sit back and act like a retard and let magic users roll him like a hobo. He's going to have rigorously trained, religously fanatical assassins trained specially to combat magic-users. Everything has a weakness and these guys would exploit it. If it was a recharge time, they would use tactings, making them wipe out a party of suicide units, then move in for the kill etc.

I was not as clear as I should have been. Your logic is perfectly reasonable, but I had in mind (for the example) the rulers would be more primitive and have little experience to magic (when he had religious reasons not to use magic users, he thought the extent of magic was fortune telling charlatans and hocus pocus) and I should have explained.

 

QuoteThis make sense, EXCEPT that Ruler 2 has a religion that hates magic. Magic users aren't going to be celebrities, they're going to be hunted down at birth and killed.

Ruler #2 died a lot. This is speaking of Ruler #3. And Ruler #2 saw magic as not a useful force, so if pressed may have used them as a last resort had he lived.

 

QuoteThis seems fair enough, some rulers are going to act like idiots. However, war isn't a simple numbers game. He has more wizards, they aren't as strong but maybe they can cover a bigger area, or do more things at once so the enemy wizards don't have enough to counter everything etc.

I did oversimplify that very much.

 

QuoteYou make magic users sound like nukes. It seems to me that a LOT more warriors would die, like numbers would be decimated in every battle they take part it.

I did kinda botch my example. Magic users gain subtlety and diversity is ability in time (and with contact with the halflings, who have knowledge of elven magic which has had time to become state of the art).

 

QuoteI like this idea however two things. This makes the dragon spend a lot of time in the infancy/old age per century, its essentially a human lifespan. I would make it happen eveyr millenium or something. The other thing is that magma solidifies into stone quickly and then generates no heat, making the tunnels one time use.
A possible solution is the dragon heating a huge underground river that is diverted in aqueducts under the land.

A millenium makes far more sense (my numbers and everything need tweaking everywhere). I am unsure how effective heated water would be, unless it is heated to steam perhaps. I have no idea really if heated water would make below freezing temperatures high enough for irrigation and farming, let alone living. Magma as an idea is completely unviable, though. Magic could be used as a last resort to make it work.

 

QuoteFair enough, though I don't really understand why the dragon would hide himself away for so much time to let the High Priest take all its power.

The dragon would be more concerned with the process of actually becoming a god than pretending to be one. He has a strong sense of shame. He thinks that my meditating or something similar he may become a god (vaguely like enlightenment in some eastern religions).

 

QuoteWell aside from potentially pissing off a lot of people that's aboutn it. I mean if I was the High Priest I would say magic babies are blessed and need to be put into the priesthood from birth, giving me a large pool of magic users that are loyal to me.

That does make sense, but only if the High Priest could use the magic users. If there are so many he cannot get them work (likely repairing the aqueducts or something) they could turn against him if not brainwashed. Perhaps the drugs would blunt their magical abilities and he must deal with poor magic users he can control fully or talented magic users who may question him.

 

QuoteWhy would they expel them and not just kill them out-right?

Because they possess elven blood, decreed as holy. (Magic, religion, and race are connected tightly in elven culture.)

 

QuoteI understand what your saying but farming and menial tasks (like laborer, miner, quarry-man) take a lot of physical strength. This is one reason that men were so prised on Earth, not just their supposed superior fighting ability (i.e muscle mass etc). Especially in these conditions, strength and endurance are going to be needed more for making a living then fighting.

My idea would be a highest class of the strongest, and a 'property' class of the weakest, with a middle class or so as needed depending on what would be needed.

I'll look into Mistborn, which aspects are similar?

Thank you for your help in sorting this out and your interest. Any questions in specific? If needed, I can post my (very rambling) chronology, but I think it is too long or not in proper format.

Biohazard:
1F was where I was going to focus once the state had stabilized and peace made magical interference in such areas possible and very likely. I had not seen many that look into magic in such a realistic way. (I attempt to go about my world building like I used to make my alternate histories.)

They turn out as rather xenophobic and racist, the purity of magic and elven blood being tied makes that nearly a necessity.

I think you've got the meaning behind this nearly spot-on what I was going for! Magic would raise the population (if so applied to help with sanitation and medicine, which seems logical according to our ancients' history with such issues being some of the first addressed by polymaths and scientists) and make more food (rain dances and fertility ceremonies were a focus of 'magic' and myth in our early history) so expanding population leads to an earlier warring stage. By warring stage I mean the period in our history where larger populations took advantage of the lesser populations.



All: I had this idea for the humans. I was curious how the course of history would have differed from our own had the sexes had equal physical might. (This may sound like sexism but I mean this only as a scientific difference, not in any difference in worth!) I suppose men and women would be seen as equals (whereas women had been unjustly viewed as property during portions of our real human history) and the exploited sex would not be man nor woman but the weak. This environment would be harsh and require strength that the weak could be used for farming and menial tasks while the strong fought. (Note that this is not supposed to be demeaning to any sex in any way and I hope no one takes this the wrong way.)

Just a small section is arctic. I intend to replace elves and dwarves with subraces of human or something but have not gotten around to it, and it seems overwhelming to have a whole cast of races out of nowhere.

Its somthing like that but gets more sophisticated later on.

(I'm new here, so if something that I believe is my idea turns out to belong to someone else please be kind in informing me of unoriginality.)

1. In my setting I've been working with, magic users are rare but powerful. I was thinking in a battlefield a magic user would be worth one hundred regulars. A magic user would have a spell or spells that could kill one hundred of the enemy, roughly; but after using so much magic would be exhausted and cannot cast anything for a period of time (day? lunar month?) but could conserve magic and kill in smaller numbers and have magic power exhausted with a shorter "recharge time". Perhaps using magic itself would physically harm the magic user, and the body must heal?
   
         A) Magic users are born not made. Either one can use magic or one cannot there is no training of a magic user from the layperson. Supposing that magical knowledge increases with study at a similar rate to which the populations of armies would increase, this would insure the import of magic users.
   
         B) Example: Ruler #1 has only five hundred warriors, but one magic user. In preparation for war with Ruler #2 (Also with five hundred warriors), Ruler #1 grants magic users within his own land (this is Ruler #1) titles and such in order to persuade them to fight on his side as opposed to abstaining from battle. The warriors are superstitious and would not likely fight against one of their own nation's magic users in order to Shanghai the magic user, so this is the only logical action I can think of. Ruler #2 has no magic users on his side and for religious reasons will not use them on his side. Ruler #1 offers the foreign magic users the same deal he gave to his own magic users in order to get them to fight. Ruler #1 now has five hundred warriors, four magic users and another hundred men who followed the "converted" magic users.

        C) (Still in Example above) Perhaps after Ruler #2 loses in battle to Ruler #1 (being completely destroyed and taken over) Ruler #3 would attempt to curry the favour of magic users also, as to gain an edge against Ruler #1. Magic users could exploit their ruler into giving them more wealth because if they are not appeased they may leave to the other side, or just not cast any spells (which would demoralize the men, seeing as the other magic users are using magic) and men would follow the magic users out of pride for the common local origin (magic users are maybe the pride of their village and a celebrity who may command the thoughts of their countrymen with their influence).

       D) Ruler #3 gets a smaller number of magic users on his side, say three. (Maybe Ruler #1 lost a magic user in the first conflict with Ruler #2 but has since then gotten another magic user on his side - keeping his number at four.) Ruler #3 encourages the magic users to work together and so they combine forces and gain power, each now worth one hundred and fifty men, while Ruler #1 has by his manner encouraged his magic users to be hostile to one another and keep their personal power greater so they will get the most prestige and wealth. So for purposes of simplification 150 X 3 = 450. Ruler #3 has 450 in equivalency of magic users to warriors. 4 X 100 = 400. Ruler #1 has 400 in equivalency of magic users to warriors.

      E) Ruler #3 shows his magic users' power to the magicians of Ruler #1 in an advertisement to join him and two do. Ruler #3 only has five hundred warriors, but Ruler #1 has seven hundred (taken from Ruler #2 and the survivors of the war). Ruler #3 has magical superiority even though he has less fighting men. The magic users grow to two hundred magicians to warrior numbers apiece and the remaining two magicians of Ruler #1 are captured, killed, or abstain from the war. Ruler #3 takes over the lands of Ruler #1.

      F) So during the reign of Ruler #3 over his empire (perhaps on an isolated island) the magic users improve the lives of the wealthy as there is no enemy anymore. Maybe some of them even improve health conditions for the poor so the infant mortality rate is nearer more modern levels. Average lands are made fertile and food and growth make the population rise out of hand.

That is an example of how I think politics could work out in my campaign. Maybe not that vague, but that is the mechanics of the world and I want to see what everyone has to say about the feasibility and logistics and so forth of the proposal.


2) Could a volcano be used to "heat irrigate" land rendered uninhabitable by ice and cold? I had this idea of a dragon heat irrigating a frozen mountain next to a dormant volcano by enslaving a race (dwarves) to build tunnels where the magma would flow through and heat the permafrost into farmland. The dragon would be the only one in this world (kept alive by having a fertilized egg inside of it that grows so large it kills the dragon, and the egg hatches into a new dragon that eats the old Mother-Father-Self that birthed it, and this happens every century or whatever). I am nearly sure that idea has been done in some science fiction channel movie with a bizarre alien thing, though.
     
      A) The dragon would maintain that it is a god and demand worship. The dwarves would have to stay outside the mountain in which the dragon has made his lair, except for the high priest who could speak to the dragon but never look upon his form. Sacrifices would be made regularly to keep the dragon alive, maybe hibernating or something in an enlightenment journey the dragon is undergoing in order to actually become a god.

     B) The actual gods permit the dragon to claim to be a god because he is the creation of the god of fire, and each god is allotted a creation. The fire god is pissed off but the gods have a pact to not interfere in the world, having their creations to do with what they wish after they die.

     C) The aforementioned high priest would control the dwarves in the absence of the dragon god, abusively and for his own benefit. Incense used in religious services would be a semi-mind controlling drug if used in tandem with a fungus that grows in the dragon's lair. Pregnancies would be blessed or cursed by the priestly class who uses their limited magic to sense magic in a fetus, if magical potential was present the high priest would perform a ceremony that would induce labour early or make the child stillborn.

    D) Magic is seen among dwarves as stealing the soul, as the dragon teaches. The dragon saw what happened with Rulers #'s 1,2,&3 and saw that an individual could have too much power-enough to question his (the dragon's) own authority. The priests use magic, but are under the impression that it is actually the dragon giving them power and completely different from the soul draining magic.

3) Elves enslaved dwarves before being defeated by the dragon, as he is immune to magic. Elves view magical ability as related to strength of purity of elven blood - the king is the strongest magician because he is descended from the first king, who was the greatest magician. Elves still retain some dwarven slaves, but have expelled products from elf-dwarf unions as unnatural (the halflings of this world).

Thats a lot of it, but I have a chronology that I might post if these concepts are approved as logical and actually interesting to someone besides me. Thanks for reading (assuming someone does) and your criticism.