My magic is a mess, but at least it's colorful!



I decided that I really need to sit down and work on my magic system because it ties so much into the characters, the different species, the main culture’s history, and what the heck am I even doing with all these different worlds?? This dang thing started out as a simple short story with all humans and now it’s this series with lizard people and shadows roaming the place and I don’t even know anymore! Take a deep breath, Meri, you can figure this out. It’s a good thing your mages see magic as color because it makes sorting this out a lot easier!

Okay, so I have 12 different types of magic (well, 13, but the healing magic is separate and doesn’t work the same way as these ones, so I didn’t include it) and I have them separated by who uses them. The 9 in the purple box are used in Concordia (the main country) by the Artisans. Basically there’s a bunch of magic all tied into the arts. Magic isn’t overly powerful here; each person with magic can really only use it for one thing that’s tied into their artistic field. (Like my main character is a cartographer- his magic falls under Drawing/Painting and it makes what he draws move around on the page, which is useful for interactive maps! He gets creative, though, and learns how to draw on the air to create illusions.) Anyway, where it gets complicated is that mythology has some basis in truth: the muses are the ones who taught the people of Concordia how to do these magics centuries ago. The muses weren’t human, although 3 came from the same world as the humans (those are the green 3).

What I am realizing is that my three unrelated magics are still tied to the Artisan magic in a way. This is cool because I didn’t know this before today! Imps come from the same world as the Creators (3 red magics) and are a kind of magic/energy draining pest, which I did know. Light and shadow were originally part of one world and are now split- but the glass magic was taught by one of the creatures of light and a creature technically of shadow taught painting magic. This sounds so convoluted when summarized, but it does make sense!

I never really know what to call my non-humans collectively- I usually use “elementals” but that makes it seem like earth/fire/water/air which they aren’t, “creatures” sounds demeaning since they’re almost all intelligent, and “aliens” (what I suppose they actually are) sounds sci-fi when I’m writing fantasy and it’s magic that allows them to world-hop, not technology.

Ugh, this is getting super long. Okay, basically magic in the purple box is the main magic in this culture and revolves around the arts. The 3 magics on the right are what some of my other characters have and are sorta connected to the purple box. And that’s it, I’m done trying to sort out this mess for today. I got a pretty color-coded chart out of today’s work and that’s success, right? ;)

~Meri


CONVERSATION

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