Magic school

hey Veeky Forums, I represent a splinter faction of your erstwhile colony in Veeky Forums, the /sffg/ sticky. We want to write something set in a magic school where there's a lot of different types of magic, tons of student factions, lots of politics, after an user asked for that and we came up short.

We know you people are all creative and intelligent and physically attractive, so we're coming to you for advice and guidance. So far three of us have held on in the discord, the admin graciously gave us the #genre_trash channel to brainstorm in, and we've got a gdoc with our ongoing fruits.

Discord
discord.gg/SdxX8ck

Google Doc
docs.google.com/document/d/1lxiNIcxdmBMYGF3hKFrbG0Esvwsy88fYN5aQM08hEfg/edit

Other urls found in this thread:

pactwebserial.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Example of the kind of magic circles we were oohing over, things that are distinct but not too distinct and give an opportunity for tons of factions to spring up.

The story so far:
Hit me up with Fantasy books which feature Wizard/Magic families having rivalries and shit.

>Different defined schools of magic would be the dream.
>I love the Arcanum spell colleges, how they're distinct and closely related but there's a lot of them. Don't know a magic-school book with something like that, but I haven't been up with YA in a long time.
>Yeah! It's something along these lines that I'm looking for! Magic in LoTR etc is cool but it's not exactly what I'm looking for. HP style is ok but the spells have no consistency, there aren't levels of transfiguration spells that I'm aware of or different "tiers" of fireball spells etc.
>And magic schools are great, too, lets you have all these factions at each others' throats but it's not as heavy, lots more room for humor.
>Yes! There must be some books with this, right?
>This is a book project that Veeky Forums (more specifically /sffg/) could actually pull off. None of that pomo incoherent rambling bullshit. Just a google doc full of lore and another one full of short stories set in the context of magic schools. We have the autism to iron out continuity errors and actually make it work, and don't need to worry about prose. After all, there are people itt admitting they like Sanderson. Surely this is workable?

>It's raw and primordial but nobody knows where it comes from, though it does change over time. "Magic" refers to the set of actions that cause this force, whatever it is, to change things. The various schools have their own theories on what this force is - the mind of the being that dreams us, the chaos from which is drawn order, the imaginative force of beings who can change creation with their thoughts, the will of God. They all seem to access it fine, in their own ways.
>Magical spells, items, and beings are compatible - a fairy can recognize elixirs, even if the methods used to summon fairies and brew elixirs are very different. That's the most common thread.
>Alright, so what do they all have in common? >How about
>a power source
>an activated mental state
>a ritual, and
>an offering?
>Those four sound good. Different schools may emphasize different aspects.
>Some spells require an inactivated mind, but that's a common aspect even still. Some schools' offerings consist of one highly magical object they guard closely that operates as a power source, or even one spell that's still reverberating that they can shape, pull out of the air like a radio transmission.
>For a crusader mental state and source may be the same repository of faith. For an Alchemist offering and power source are both found in the gathering of herbs and minerals with the preparations serving as ritual. A warlock observes ritual in the drawing of power from a patron but not during the casting itself, requiring only the mental state. And so on and so forth.
>I remember one idea I had a long time ago was a sort of spectrum from incantations (which would be on the spot, raw spikes of power, mostly mental) to enchantments to potions (which are carefully planned, subtle, mostly physical). We might want to do that

time mages. They all wear purple. They can slow things down. They live in the clocktower. White mages. They heal things and like animals. They live in a tent city in the quad.

Healing - white - DEUS VULT - tents
Time - purple - airheads - clocktower
Luck - blue/black - nerds - observatory
Necromancy - black - conspiratory - dungeons
going as stereotypical as possible for a start point
Explosion - red - hotheads - shacks on the test range
Illusion - gray - fey - library/who knows

so tons of factions, crusaders aren't the only Lawful Goods around, there's a Gryffindor that lives in a tower and are jocks
they do a lot of blast magic and some sneaky thief stuff too
there's a tinkering faction that makes gremlin watches and a greasehead faction that makes golems, they don't get along, but they both get along with the time mages

Another user from /sffg/ here, this OP is a little autistic but please be patient. Check out the Google doc and join us, this project is right up Veeky Forums's alley.

Can you explain further the difference between black and white necromancy?

White necromancy is healing magic, black necromancy is magic that directly harms, and magic dealing with the dead that isn't Resurrect.

Yeah, not terribly consistent, but aesthetically pleasing IMO.

This is also early phase stuff, and can be changed if it makes sense to do so.

I love it, I was working on a pet project similar to this in my spare time; glad other people also see potential in this genre.

Try to contact the guys from the /mageguild/ threads.
There's a link on1d4 chan to their sources and discord

Alright, let's give this a shot.
>Conveyance
Planeswalkers and Pilgrims
>Divination
Seers and Mystics
>Air
Windrunners and Stormwarders
>Earth
Architects and Geomancers
>Fire
Pyromancers and Ashbringers
>Water
Cryomancers and Hydromancers
>Force
Telekinetics and Catalysts
>Mental
Telepathics and Enchanters
>Meta
Abjurers and Invokers
>Morph
Shapeshifters and Alchemists
>Nature
Druids and Shaman
>Black Necromantic
Necromancers and Shepards
>White Necromantic
Priests and Bloodmages
>Phantasm
Illusionists and Shadowmages
>Summoning
Binders and Thamaturgists
>Temporal
Chronomancers and Fateweavers

>Shepards

You got a better name for Abhorsen-esque well-intentioned necromancers who guide the restless spirits of the dead and undead to their final rest?

Also, if you're going to have rival wizard families you should pick out some good family names and some traditions that go with them.
Have your Hatfields and your Montagues so to speak.

Pact, a webserial by Wildbow (of Worm fame) has some good examples of this but it's a little long:
pactwebserial.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/
Summary is a bunch of wizarding families are warring in secret to claim lordship over a small canadian town called Jacob's Bell. Factions include the Diabolist Thornburns, the Enchantress DuChamps, the Chronomancer Behaims, the Dark Wizard of the North Johannes Lillegard, Goblin Queen Maggie Holt, Aboriginal Hag Crone Mara, a Spiritual Medium called the Briar Girl, and a bunch of lesser unaffiliated powers including several Fey.

Here is what you do, OP:

Magic is not a thing. Not really. Magic is an end goal. How you get there is different for everyone.

Different schools and families follow different doctrines and paths to power, as well as different kinds of power they are seeking. But, more important, individual people have a huge amount of inconsistency (even within the same family) about what they can and cannot do. This is why the study of magic is so arcane, reproduceable results are a myth.

In short, magic is not actually something that can be TAUGHT. It can only be EXPLORED.

This is why there are so many different terms and subsets and 'tiers' associated with magical disciplines: its an incomplete but largely still useful system for identifying what kind of magic you can do, and grouping you with others who are kinda like you in the hopes that you have something in common.

Lets break it down into a specific example. Fireball. Not everyone can cast it, and not everyone who casts it does it in the same way.

Student 1 summons a tiny fire spirit and flings it at the enemy, sacrificing in the process.

Student 2 draws magma out of the earth and shots it at the target.

Student 3 sucks heat out of the very air and condenses it into fire.

Student 4 burns a portion of their own life energy.

Student 5 just... creates fire from nothing. No other detail or explanation.

The end result is still, essentially, a fireball spell. To a casual observer they all even look the same. You can't teach these students 'how' to cast fireball because there is no set 'how'. All you can do is give them access to the tools to figure out their own magic in as safe a way as possible, and to expose them to as many magical disciplines and theories as possible to broaden their horizons and occasionally have them apprentice with more experienced magicians who have done this themselves and seem like they do it in a similar way.

>guide
>spirits of the dead
Psychopomp

For example you could spell it "shepherd"

Alright, well, you got me there.

This gives you a HUGE amount of magical variability without having to get bogged down in specific autistic details, while also making it impossible to just be the best at everything without being pure plot bullshit.

It also makes places like magic schools and libraries INCREDIBLY important. Without a vast trove of magical lore to study, you will likely never figure out what you can do beyond the basics.

It also makes 'leveling up' narratively easy and interesting. Characters can and should sort of accidently discover new spells and abilites they can use. This also means that you never know for sure wheter you can cast a specific kind of magic until you do. The dark lord Ravenscar can only be killed by a weapon made of sunlight? Odds are good you cant cast that at all, no now you need to find someone who can.

And different versions of the same spell can have different strengths, weaknesses and counters. A shield based on energy absorbtion and a shield that works by energy nullification are two VERY different things in a fight.

Sounds a lot like the idea of Paradigms used in M:tA. Everyone has their own personal path to magical enlightenment based on their world view and magic for them works the way that fits their personal ego.

>we want you to help us in some creative endeavour
Okay, cool
>so you must join our gay chat
Lol

Ignore the chat invite. OP user is a sperg. All discussion is here anyways.

This is all kind of illogical. You can't classify magic by element AND by function. The former is your medium, the latter is your intended goal.

You would prefer categories like this?

Or this?

Just dropping in to say departments of different areas of magical study in your magic school should bicker and fight over funding and prestige like any other group of academics

This is still imperfect

This is better

>Wizards spend all their times trying to get grants and keep publishing to earn their tenure.
>Acolytes start adventuring or interning with local businesses because they are crippled by student debt.

I never knew how much I wanted this.

Dude, look at Dungeons and Dragons.

Your magical schools there make no sense. Sometimes healing is Necromancy, sometimes Conjuring. Divination is sometimes (in other, strange lands) not considered a "True" school even though it functions like one. Some schools are designed around the philosophy of how it effects something, others are designed around the philosphy of how the effect is created.

Its totally a real university.

Also there should be a huge rambling campus with a mish-mash of competing buildings and quite possibly architectural styles

>The wizard joins the party to gather information for his postgraduate dissertation - the requirement for "original academic research worthy of publication" means wizards are always going out and finding new shit via adventuring
>Loot to pay off student debt
>Senior wizards just do loooong research papers where they can't be bothered by anyone, occasionally adventurers get sent to kill them by wizards after their office or tenure (of which their is only a limited amount of positions/funding)

Are knights a major in this Academy as OP's pic impies or just types of wizard?

Not sure what you are looking for as far as wizard fashion choices but here's a bunch from D&D.

Knights could be a separate department, or maybe would work more like trade school/apprenticeship. Either way the wizards would probably look down on them for being unintellectual.

>magic schools
>magic has a one-size-fits-all methodology

That would actually make it a science reeee

For a moment I thought you were asking about , where being a knight is basically about applying your skills from the academic side, and learning a more focused set of them + a load of practical fighting skills, at the cost of some pretty tough duties, and if you're not in the best of the best then you've cut yourself off from a lot of the higher-end academic stuff

Though I must point out that most of the academic stuff is more purely academic than most magic is.

idk, I just have a boner for byzantine bureaucracies in things like magic and priesthoods, both of which also benefit a lot from having a small body of protection/fightan' guys

>Priest of Bane
Someone do something entertaining with this

...

I like Dying Earth-style wizards a lot, who are basically fighters with a few spells and some magical knowledge.

So how technologically advanced is the rest of the world outside of the school? Is this an urban fantasy setting? Turn of the century? Age of sail? Medieval? Space age?

Probably something schizo enough we can have the gadget mages live next door to the bronze age cargo cultists and nobody thinks it's weird.

Gadget mages are a terrible idea that ruin any setting they are a part of. If you can blend magic and technology that seamlessly, the central gimmick of your entire world instantly becomes "we Star Trek now, but our tricorders can cast Fly and Lightning Bolt."

What about gremlin watches?

Gotta draw the line somewhere on magic items/artifice/alchemy.

So what kinds of stories are you guys looking to write in this setting anyways? Because an idea of tone could help a lot with bringing dome more unified themes together.

Fun YA shenanigans.

What currency would they use? A regulated currency would be hard as fuck to control because of the Transmutation students duplicating it or the Illusionists using glammered rocks. A Credit system would be crazy hell to keep track of without a complex system of beaucrats keeping up on the accounts. The only thing I can think of is spell components or using favors.

Probably best not to mention it at all, honestly. Or have it be a broken, buggy system that authors can play with.

Probably gonna be a lot of but other genres could work as well. Horror would tie into this well, or even more philosophical stuff. But yeah, YA is easy to do one-offs in, and keeps it lighthearted and easy to get into. My personal goal in this project is just to practice writing and eventually hit 100k words written. Not trying to make a masterpiece here.
I've actually started writing a short piece that will hopefully encourage more to follow suit. It's not great but it's a starting point.

Either use:
-something that's value is that it can be used as a power source for any discipline like mana gems or orichalcum or something
-or a coin minted in a material that is completely magically inert and cannot be affected by any discipline. Maybe lead?

What differentiates force from fire? Do you mean kinetic magic?

I think so. I assume it's force in the d&d sense where it's just kinetic energy.

Shame. I like kinetic, heat, electrical, magnetic, and gravitational energies being different expressions of the same school.

They might be mechanically similar, but it makes sense that people would specialize in one area or another.

This triggers me. It's like some autistic pattern recognition without trying to make it actually look like a framework.
Does a spell that summons tornadoes fall under conveyance or air?
Does a spell that changes water to ice fall under water or morph, and if I change it to a gas instead, does it then fall under water, air, morph or even fire?
Is a spell that ages a person black necromancy or temporal? (Also why the fuck is healing called "White death magic"?)

Don't just look at magic and think about what labels you can apply to similar things. Decide how you want to categorize them first. For example, the user in this thread that categorized them by how they are produced, and not what they produce. Or look at Ars Magica (really, just look at Ars Magica, it's the most comprehensive magic-centric roleplaying system, 4E is free). It has a Noun-Verb format, modeled after common understanding of the world in its time period. For example, Corpus relates to the human body. Corpus Creo (create) governs healing the flesh, while Corpus Perdo (destroy) withers it away. It has a very "academic" portrayal of Magic. It also has various factions, which are mostly historical in nature I believe.
Mage: the Ascension/Awakening is also worth a look, and there's probably a well-produced GURPS book on the subject, but I'm less familiar with those.

also, random questions, not really because I care, but because they might be helpful.
How prominent is magic in the setting?
How well understood is magic in the setting?
How is magic perceived in society?
What are the limitations of magic?
How does one research magic?

Did OP abandon his thread?

Nice.

For such an important location, there's very little in the way of images for UU, or much of discworld really (the bit without walls is where it would back up onto the Ankh)

I would never abandon you.

It's an example of color-coded magic disciplines that can be used to build factions around. Of course we're going to build something better, especially with you in the thread.

As far as the setting goes, I really don't know. Any time period is fine as long as it's magicky.

Peach pits from a certain magic tree that can be verified with a cantrip. Wine aged under the stars. Saintly relics. Let's say there's a vigorous barter system.

Not sure if OP's still around but it's not totally abandoned, I'm lurking here from Veeky Forums.
Trying to put together a story in this setting, hopefully it'll get some meat on the bones

Here, I'll dump of my notes on the magic in my own setting: If you like any of it- use it, if you don't that's fine.

Please observe the picture I've drawn (bit old, might have to update it- I've gotten better at art since then) and understand that there are "Three" Schools of Magic and ultimately a "School" of Magic is dictated not be methodology but by the source of where your magical power is drawn from:

>Arcane
Arcane is magic straight from yourself: it is a methodical, personal, and intelligent practice that has much to do more with a trade than mysticism as it can only be practice when one understands how magic and the world around them truly functions. The purest elements of this source of magic are light, sound, and chemical energy.
Arcane magic is the root and source of all this enchanted, alchemical, or otherwise serves as some means of "practical wizardry".
>Arcane Influence
All Magic has personal or environmental effects that are produced when it occurs and Arcane magic is no exception. While arcane magic has little to no detrimental environmental effects it has the very real risk of pro-longed users "souls forgetting what they look like", I.E; much in the way a person will manually begin to breath if they're reminded, due to Arcane Magics 'intellectual' awareness of a users own soul they run risk of horrible and sometimes irreversible damage or misinterpretation of physical form.

>Arcane, Culturally speaking.
Within the Magic-Using world Arcane magic often receives the title of "officially wizard" and is the subject of respectable, academic study in schools, colleges, or universities where their findings can be applied to the public in the form of 'modern' conveniences such as: enchanted house hold items, homunculi servants, cosmetic surgery, or industrial uses.
Conversely though, Arcane magic can at times be a criminal offense in some countries/cultures and just the same- lacking the proper resources or knowledge: be unheard of.

>Nature
Nature is the most extensive and wildly practiced schools of magic as it requires nothing more than a spiritual connection or association with 'SOME' source of nature; whether that be a forest, desert, volcanic, the ocean, or even the 'true' nature of primordial man inside us all.
Nature magic gets it's source from a symbiotic relationship with the natural magic produced by all living things and as such has the largest and vaguest spectrum of uses and practices: geo/hydro/pyro/aidromancy, druidism, shamanism, and even necromancy must cooperate with nature in order to properly exist and function.
Nature Magic, though, is often very emotionally motivated and environmentally biased: a druid can only attain power from a "biome" they've imprinted on, a mancer can only manipulate an element they emotionally relate to, this is a school of magic that falls apart if it's understood but flourishes if it's EMBRACED- it must come 'naturally', as it were.
>Nature's Influence
Natural magic is understandably the most environmentally influential: Druids spread their environment whether that's dense jungle, fertile grassland, or barren deserts, and Necromancers spread miasma, rot, and fungal growths.
In terms of personal changes though, nature magic can have deeply personal, subtle, effects(affect?) on it's practitioners: if arcane changes you as you've understood, and divine magic changes you into an ideal- Nature mage will change you into what you actually are.

>Nature, Culturally speaking.
This school of magic gets the short end of the stick in contemporary society due it's ease of access, chaotic nature, and incompatibility towards "modern society". It's a school of magic practiced by "savages", "backward" cultures, cultists, and worse yet- monsters and animal people.
These attitudes usually cause resentment though -especially in quickly developed nations- as Nature magic is and was often the only source of magic for such cultures.

Finally divine and then I'll shut up.

>Divine
Divine is the 2nd most readily available but perhaps has the steepest learning curve: easy to learn, but difficult to master as it's the magical art of attaining and using spells specifically given to 'you' by a higher power, a "god'.
Divine magic or 'Miracles' are the cornerstone of all spells that, "do exactly what they say they do and nothing more" as Gods are often methodical bean counters.
>Divinities Influence.
To have a Divine source of magic be manipulated and used is to become personally familiar with the God themselves and to enter into an accord with their beliefs, values, and ideals: priests, paladins, and clerics become extensions of their divine sponsors... Literally: holy people 'will' slowly develop into a God's physical ideal; whether that's blonde hair and blue eyes, or goat horns and hooves.

>Divinity, Culturally speaking
A Druid and a Priest are asked to heal 2 individuals stricken with the same disease.
The Priest lights candles, gets out his scripture, his bell, and begins a ritual that miraculously heals the ailment completely from his patient in moments. The Priest then accepts no payment, but requests they consider his god and attendance to his sermon.
The Druid's ritual is far more graphic and his patient becomes VIOLENTLY ill before they eventually not only get better, but "improved", they're changed in a way neither entirely understands. The Druid requests 5 chickens as payment.
Cultures often adapted to Divine sources for their reliability and tenderness.... Though, mileage varies obviously.

>Without a vast trove of magical lore to study, you will likely never figure out what you can do beyond the basics.
As you've stated that the results of magic are impossible to reproduce it's exactly the opposite. You're only going to figure out what you can/not do through years of trial and error.

Specific autistic details are part of the fun though.

Thanks for these posts, user, good explanation of where magic comes from. This is also really easy to build on top of with new ideas.