How does magic work?

How does magic work?

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However the author says it does.

However you want it to

Cut your dick off, join the tower of High Sorcery, and find out you scrub

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This really depends on the setting.

It works very well.

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If we would knew it, it wouldn't be magic.

Very well, thank you.

Channeling energy from a source shoehorned into physical reality. By researching it, by natural talent, by praying to those who know how to do it better, or using rock-n-roll.

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I had to double check to be sure I wasn't on s4s.

Harnessing the inner energy of the soul to enact a change on the world.At least, that's how I usually like it.

I generally prefer magic systems where magic is a force that can be manipulated, since that allows for magitech and thus Science Fantasy, the greatest genre ever ade.

Well you see, then the Lord of the Clouds created the world, it was beautiful, and filled with life. Lush forests, sparkling seas, all sorts of flora and fauna around. But there was no one but the Lord of the Clouds to marvel at this beauty, to wonder, to dream, to enjoy the existence that was created. The Lord of the Clouds found this sad and thus created the First Men. But the first men lacked souls, and thus could not truly enjoy the beauty of existence. So the Lord of the Clouds split himself into thousands of tiny fragments and sent them down towards the earth, into the hearts of the First Men. This gave them true life.

Now, every human has a fragment of the Lord of the Cloud's power. We are born with it. When we die, our fragment remains in the form of a crystal. It is said that the number of fragments only increases, and that one day the Lord of the Clouds may make a glorious return from all the fragments of those long gone. Now, when someone uses "magic" they are manifesting their will on reality via mastery of their inner fragment, located inside their heart. Only a long period of meditation, contemplation, and soul-searching allows someone to utilize their fragment like this.

Of course, they will only be able to cast a single spell. The spell contained in that particular fragment.Each fragment of the Lord of the Clouds contains only one singular spell. However, those that have unlocked their own fragment may use the fragments of others nearby,as well as the fragments of those that have passed from this world. For example, say an accomplished mage traveled with three companions, they themselves not mages at all. That mage would be able to use the spell contained in his fragment, the spells contained in the fragments of his companions, and the spells contained in any fragments of the dead he had on his person.

(Cont...)

Thus, accomplished mages are usually split into two types. Those that travel with extensive retinues, relying on the magic of the living, and those that carry many fragments on their person, relying on the magic of dead. The lines between the two are blurry at best, and one can easily use the methods of the other. There are also rumors of a third type of mage, one that uses neither method, but instead, through some ancient and forgotten art, empowers the spell contained in their own fragment far beyond what any one fragment should be capable of.

Via the IJD Priciple

Magicon particles

Nanomachines.

Well magic is generally a force that transcends the "natural" order. So you can figure whatever makes it work is something that is not completely understood.

To have this work in rational world magic would be whatever is on the fringe of normal. For most games and stories it will also be significantly effective on the normal world.

So magic could work in lot of different ways BUT to really make it magic a certain amount of it should be beyond the control of normal people and even the user themselves.


The magician is the same as the mad scientist: they deal in things that mankind is not yet ready to deal in. They have better understanding or at least better control over these things than the layman but ultimately they are delving into the unknown.
Likely they have their own words for what they do: Thamaturgy, alchemy, meta-psychochemistry, hypercalculo-geometrics. They use these terms because they know what they mean, to everyone else it's just magic or mad-science. In time their practices may become common place, their terms will be more than gibberish and the fringe will be moved further out. Until then they will be practitioners of sorcery.

So basically midichlorians then?

/thread

Magically.

Midichlorians would be the opposit of what I'm talking about, same deal with "magic-particles."
They are taking something that should be obscure and uncertain and wrap it up in quick usable explanation.

The force originally had a vague but workable description. It was generated by living beings, it could be used with certain meditations and that's pretty much it. There is the implantation that there is more too it, it certainly has structure but a lot is left unexplained. It's scope is potentially enormous and there room for many potential interactions.
Most of all it's too inexact to be easily measurable. They only people who seem to be able to get a read on it are veterans of the art and even then their reads leave a lot to interpretation.

Midichlorians imply the force has specific root and that it is well contained enough to be measured by a handheld device that can give interpritable numerical reading. At this point it is no long magic.

This isn't necessarily a problem but I think the centralisation is. By restricting it to a singular substance it is restricted in how it can interact. Even our mundane, real world sciences have more elements than that. Physics has more to consider than velocity, biology is more nuanced is more than blood. The force being "many or few" midichlorians unarchors it from a greater cosmology. Reducing a thing to macguffinium takes away from the sense of weight in it's use and potential of it's scope.

>tl;dr
Explain the force if you want to but do it with lots of jargon.
Having a jedi say "this guy has lots of midichlorians" is like your doctor saying " you have lots of cells"
It doesn't sound like magic or science, it sounds like bullshit

If you mean IRL, 90% of magick is just mundane stuff that's written about obtusely from a psychological/phenomenological perspective. Most of it pertains to the will. Quitting smoking cold turkey from a pack a day would be a mundane example of magick, as would things like talking someone into buying a thing, or getting better at something.

If you sharpen the will enough, it (allegedly) gets to the point where you can start to achieve supernatural power, which is just a way of saying you can bring about your will by methods that can't be scientifically understood currently. The particulars are as varied as the particulars of doing anything. It is sometimes said that all magick reflects the will of a pantheistic principle, that God has en elect to whom he gives power, and thus supernatural effects work by the principle of the omnipresence and omnipotence of God.

I like this.

Well, you start with a cat. Then you cook yourself some toast. While toasting, get yourself a roll of grey tape. Butter the toast when sufficiently toasty. Place the toast on the cat's back, butter up. Then tape the toast to the cat. Pick up the cat, then drop the cat with the toast facing the floor.

Magic.

You pay to win.

>How does magic work?
Well, in the setting I'm working on flimsy excuse to write about my fetish that it is magic works like this:

Aether is the chaotic, primordial energy of creation. In the beginning there was only Aether, and from the pure Aether sprung forth the seed of matter that would eventually grow into the universe as its known today. From the Aether also sprang the Primordials, who would rule the world in its infancy and later become worshipped as deities by the mortal races.

Mages use Aether to do magic. All sapient beings have a soul, which connects them to the background Aether permeating the universe, and allows them to channel some of it for their own use. Most people will only be able to channel a tiny bit of Aether even with extensive training, and so most people are unfit to become mages. A lucky few are natural conduits of Aether, and will usually display their talent at a young age.

Raw Aether creates wild and random magical effects and must be controlled to be of any use. So, to cast most spells, mages memorize complex formulas, patterned hexes, arcane gestures, and mystifying magical words in order to reliably and safely channel Aether to achieve the desired effect. In general, the more powerful the spell the more preparation is required to cast it. However, experienced mages can accomplish basic magic like elemental/kinetic manipulation or simple illusions "on the fly" with only their thoughts and no memorization - effectively creating a new spell with each casting.

That's the wrong type of question.

In some D&D settings, magic seems to be quite closely tied to its multiverse - a fireball spell is explicitly said to channel "elemental" fire from the appropriate plane, and so on.

If we take this seriously, we can probably reduce all magic to (sufficiently complicated) planar effects. Spells that don't seem to call anything from another place could still be made from interfaces between planes (from which they could derive their energy) that only pass through the plane the caster is on without having any "endings" there. Such interfaces could have unusual topologies, twisting round themselves, which may be why some wizards refer to magic as a "weave".

tl;dr planar solitons

Maybe it doesnt work.

You can read Ra by Sam Hughes for a completely mundane, hard sci-fi depiction of magic. I won't spoil anything, but there is a relatively logical explanation for all of it.

qntm.org/ra

It doesn't, magic is the NEET of metaphysics.