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Message: <blockquote data-quote="System Ufera" data-source="post: 6080087" data-attributes="member: 6671268">Well, in my setting, energy in its purest form is "ether." On its own, ether is practically useless; however, ether is shaped into other forms of energy by interacting with its environment. Ether turns into arcane energy when it comes into contact with an interaction between "qi," or life energy, and brain matter - basically, ether becomes arcane energy in your brain when you think (the thoughts need not be in the arcane language; any thoughts will do). In most cases, the subject of the thought does not influence how much arcane energy is generated, but rather the intensity of the thought. Therefore, an effective wizard will not only want to be knowledgeable and wise, but also strong of will. Some wizards, however, can train their minds to produce a similar effect with complexity of the thought process, rather than intensity, to compensate for a lack of will.The rate of production of arcane energy also depends on how much ambient ether is available. In most areas, ether is abundant enough to make many energy-intensive spells viable; given a few weeks of gathering or constantly replenishing ether in these areas, even forming small amounts of matter would be possible. In some areas, there is less ambient ether, either due to over-usage of ether or a general lack of ether in the first place. Primary magic-users tend to avoid these areas.The magical language is rather simple once mastered; the problem is mastering it, as in order to actually master a particular spell effect, one must think the thoughts necessary to produce it. This can be worked around through the use of arcane-suppressing or draining magics, which would prevent the spell from being cast while still allowing prospective wizards to think about the spell.There would be relatively few "commands" which would be commonly applied in the arcane language; the versatility of magic would come from how the command is used. On the other hand, there would be "ritual" magic which would utilize many more commands, but would be far more complex - in the setting, there are actually trees which were specially created by an ancient empire to have parts which mimic the structure and function of the brain, and in many rituals, these artificial brains can be dedicated solely to performing calculations and storing data and variables.Well, in my setting, life is still rather complex, but I've sort of enhanced the potential of life's abilities to compensate. In other words, the sapient life forms in my setting naturally have a somewhat higher mental capacity than in real life, and with adequate education and effort can plausibly exceed some of the greatest minds in our reality.That said, there are some "shortcuts" built into life in my game's setting which would take some of that complexity away from the task of the spell; by learning to take advantage of these shortcuts, one could, for example, cause a change in a creature's phenotype, then force the genotype to adapt to the changes on its own. That would be extremely risky, of course, but it can be done. It would be less risky to perform a ritual to modify the DNA and allow it to temporarily "assume" another configuration; an analogy to describe this would be having the DNA "wear a mask." This would allow polymorphing, or having multiple forms, and so even if a new form were dangerously ill-designed, one could always switch back and start over.Healing would also take advantage of shortcuts, basically by speeding the metabolic processes in one's body to help ensure a quick recovery. Unfortunately, if there's something causing continuous harm, such as poison or disease, doing that would also make the poison or disease more effective. Extremely complicated processes in restorative magic would actually involve mending individual tissues, but of course that would take time.</blockquote>

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