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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3294952" data-attributes="member: 4937">Knowledge (Arcane): DC 14Positive Energy is extremely unstable on the prime.  It has a very very short 'half-life', and it almost immediately breaks down much like unstable high energy 'strange matter' in our own universe.  Most often, positive energy experiences a process called cascade where seemingly at random quantum of positive energy immediately transform themselves into four atoms of positive quasi-elementals - electricity, radiance, mineral, and mist atoms - through a process called meta-crystallization.  What encourages a particular qauntum of positive energy to transform into a particular combination of atoms is not well understood.  These atoms proceed to shed energy in the form of motion and secondary energization of the surrounding matter, eventually transforming into air, fire, earth, and water atoms and transforming and recombinging briefly into various paraelementals (and in the presence of negative energy deteriorating further still).  This process is very rapid and defies detailed study because the strata which can be used to record the motion of the cascade also appears to influence the meta-crystallization process through a process called 'templating'.  In other words, lab experiments which can record the passage of positive energy (typically in glass, ice, or with gemstones) generally have no bearing on what will happen in a different situation.  What is known is that in the presence of living tissue the meta-crystallization process appears to be guided by the orderly pathways of the tissue to repair breaks or tears in the tissue, restore missing tissue, and to infuse the tissue with the orderly motion we refer to as 'life'.  The template onto which this crystallization occurs is referred to as the 'tree of life' and is the process of much study - and no small amount of reverence by those of a more naturalistic bent. In addition to speed, one of the big problems with studying positive energy in real world situations is the extremely small scale over which individual atom cascades operate.  Examining these cycles requires extremely powerful divination technique to enhance microscopic vision and transformative magic to slow the passage of time.  Both of these abilities are far outside the powers of all but the most advanced archmages.  This further slows the study in that these figures are often justifiably paranoid about gaurding thier secrets from thier rivals, and often leave only the most obscure and difficult to obtain records of thier experiments.The ability to control positive energy is the 'holy grail' of arcane magic; it is speculated that improved control of positive and negative energy would allow arcane spellcasters to duplicate the effects of any divine spellcaster.  So far research into this area has prove quite difficult, though thus far - through Necromancy - arcane spell casters have had much more success controlling negative energy than positive energy.  Some arcane spellcasters, and in fact probably the majority of all Necromancers, believe the good aligned gods are deliberately thwarting research into positive energy control in order to selfishly maintain a monopoly on the power themselves, forcing mortals to worship them.  Still, despite this research into positive energy control continues apace in the hopes that somehow some caster will coax the secrets of life from the universe.</blockquote>

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