Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fifinjir" data-source="post: 9057676" data-attributes="member: 7031683">I was thinking about this, though in the context of how primal, divine, arcane, and so on came about that individual spells. The history of magic in Tales of the Final Age is one of the “non-objective” parts of the setting; spellcasters, historians, and spellcasting historians have multiple theories. The simplest is the “Universalist” theory, which posits that all magic is ultimately diriged from a single source (a very controversial position in universe).In the age of Civilization 0, it was said that everyone was a sorcerer (but this might be an exaggeration based on nostalgia shortly after the end of Civilization 0). The world had not yet completed its long transition from dream to reality, and its laws were fluid and suggestible. When the world became too real to support Civilization 0 and the unreality was partitioned into the Dreamworld (which contains the Feywild and Shadowfell), most lost their inherent power and the first traditions of magic started to form.The era after Civilization 0 was named the Fiendish Age for good reason. It was a harsh time when humanity (a term that encompasses all sapient people) were under attack by living concepts and shards of primordial forces; not to mention the many wars that arose from a now confused, frightened, and angry populace. Development of magical traditions became a means of survival, and later a mark of group identity. From a Universalist perspective, those who turned to faith in the powers of the Heavens developed divine and pact magic, those who found refuge in the world itself primal magic, and those who relied on personal power found the secrets of ki or psionics (closely related and possibly synonymous concepts). Almost all of these groups would disagree with that theory, but few deny these were the earliest forms of magic.Alchemy spun off from primal, the use of the substances of the world lead to their study and discovery of how to manipulate them in new ways. As it developed, alchemy became increasingly controversial to the druids, and eventually there was a formal split between the traditions. Arcane magic, one of the last forms to come about, was developed in different ways in different locations. In some places, it was a further development from alchemy, in others clerics discovered it by experimenting with the syllables in divine invocations. Unlike most traditions which claim to be what people used from the start, wizards tend to embrace the relative newness of their magic, seeing it as the capstone of humanity’s progress.(I start to stray from the original topic here.)[SPOILER]Despite this claim, it was alchemy that would have its time in the sun following the Frindish Age. Continued discoveries lead to an incredible invention: sapient constructs. Awed at the potential, the greatest minds in the field joined with the wisest of the world’s philosophers to plan the greatest creation ever made by mortal hands. The Engraved Emperor was created to be the perfect ruler, a stone and metal king endowed with all the wisdom of the peoples of the world, but lacking their internal weaknesses that often caused them to stray from what they knew to be the right path. The Engraved Emperor did indeed become a reality, and from their flying city of Resphar they ushered in the Engraved Age.But this is the history of magic, not of the world of Elucinor as a whole. Suffice to say, not even the Emperor could build and maintain the utopia they longed for, and Resphar fell to a variety of earthly and supernatural problems. Much knowledge was lost in the Void Age, and magic nearly became a lost art, its secrets guarded by only a handful of enclaves. In many ways it was a more fearful time than the Fiendish Age, as though there were fewer and less powerful fiends and sorrowsworn in the world, humanity also had fewer means to protect itself.Two states managed to keep the knowledge of magic alive, though in rather frightening forms to most of the people outside them. Vanalesse were the undisputed masters of ki/psionics, and preserve much of wizardry and alchemy, but persecuted clerics, druids, and warlocks. While disparate villages and clans turned to Vanalesse for protection, it held to no concept that power should be used altruistically, and demanded a heavy toll for its aid. Rahimo was another civilization built around Yulath, a tree planted by the Emperor in a desperate last attempt to contain the dark forces at rise in Elucinor. They gave their help to the people more freely, but their skills had developed to be able to use the forces of darkness to their own ends, a deeply uncomfortable practice for the people that sought their help.The war between Vanalesse and Rahimo left both nations crippled and the roots of Yulath burned, allowing the dark forces to reemerge at full force; starting what many believed to be the Final Age of Elucinor. But humanity’s ability at magic is also waxing once more. Investigation into this phenomenon reveals that the Dreamworld is starting to reunite with the material world. No one knows what the implications of this will be.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

Verification