A Treatise on Arcana

Arcana

By Mistress Skay Ravendi
of Nexus Prime Rainbow Towers

Magic
The Empire has many skilled people who can create things that an ordinary man cannot, who are able to change the world completely, to give birth to wonderful or disastrous creations, to create what is called magic. There are quite a few skills which are considered to be magical by the average citizen. Golemcrafting, Alchemy, Shamanism, Gadgeteering and a few others are all able to fashion magic from the first to the last glimpse into the craft. However, there are even morbid and horrible ones which create nothing but monsters; these are usually banned by the Empire or the local government, most of these crafts and craftsmen are hard to find and usually tend to guard their skills with secrecy. Complementing all those is another magic craft, which has been used much more widely and openly in the Empire through the ages. This magical craft is called Arcana.


Arcana
[Rarity, Gemblood, Academies, Teaching]
Arcana is the best known and explored magical skill, though it still has not reached its limits. Unlike other magical skills, Arcana is not kept in secrecy by its wielders and is usually taught to most who can learn it and have enough money and time to pay for it. However, mages are not a common sight and usually can be seen only in larger cities, while remaining a truly rare sight in the outskirts of the Empire. The reason for that is a rather simple one, most people cannot learn Arcana regardless of whether they want to or not. All people are born Bound and until they are successfully Unbound by other mages, they cannot become mages. Unfortunately, approximately only one in a thousand can be Unbound, because most people have mental constraints which are too complex and too hard to break even for really skilled mages.

Usually though, being able to become a mage is hereditary. Families which raise mages in each generation are called gemblooded. However, very rarely someone from a family which has never had mages can also successfully become a mage. Such people are usually, though not always, more talented in their arcane abilities than gemblooded mages. It is not to say that they can cast stronger spells, usually arcane talent reflects just in the speed they learn Arcana. Certain races have more mages and greater chances to be successfully Unbound, while other races bring no mages for eras upon eras. Talent in Arcana, though, does not seem to depend on the race.

Arcana is by its very nature a communal endeavour, as such most teaching goes on in Academies and other larger organizations. That is partly due to the number of Masters needed for higher level Promotions. Still, some lone masters have been known to teach individually. While there is no standard for what is suitable as a teaching locale, some druids have been known to prefer groves and thaumaturgists sometimes make use of hospitals. Necromancers are still hunted down and their craft remains illegal, therefore they train in secrecy. The price for the studies ranges from place to place, from several hundreds for the first lessons, to several thousands in the higher proficiencies, or even free in some rare places.

Teaching is done in various forms. A Master can choose to train many people at once or have individual classes, especially if he considers the student to be talented. Lately, especially in larger Academies where more students are present, Masters have taken to Imparting the spells to the new students and leaving all the teaching and explaining to reliable and proficient Adept level mages. Students usually stay with the same Master or Academy throughout all the ranks, but some are known to have each training done under a different Master due to various reasons.


Elements
[Essences, General Vis, Mage’s Vis, Ara, Mana]
Every object, every being and everything else is made up of Essences. The skin, the mind, a rock, the air and everything else is made of Essences. There is a countless amount of Essences upon Telath. A different amount of different Essences makes up a different item. For example a tree might have a lot of Nature Essence, some Earth and Water Essences, some Life Essence and many more less dominant ones. A larger tree would have different amounts of these Essences which would be woven in together in different patterns, whereas a fallen, burnt or dead tree might have even completely different Essences. Water found in our world is not made up of pure Water Essence, either. It is never completely pure, but instead always interwoven with all kinds of other Essences to a smaller or a larger scale.

A certain amount and patterns of certain Essences make up an object. That group of Essences is called an object’s Vis. So the Vis of a rock would be all the Essences that make it up, the Vis of a person would be all of the Essences that make up that person. There is also a totally different element which shares the same name. It is called the Mage’s Vis or Personal Vis and it is used by mages to interact with Arcana. This Vis is the mage’s power, which he must spend to create spells. The mage’s Vis grows with each Promotion, therefore more advanced mages can create more spells. Fortunately it recovers with rest and sleep, however trying to exceed it and spend it to the very last drop can cause a severe headache and even fainting for the mage.

Another component is Ara – energy which flows in our world all around, inside and through objects, beings and everything else. Ara is also made up of all kinds of Essences. However, Ara is made up of unorganised and unstable Essences, which have no definite patterns or structures. For this reason Ara can flow freely and usually leave no impact upon the environments. In rare places, where Arcana has been used a lot, Ara can begin to have an impact. That is due to the reason that Mana dissipates into Ara when a spell fizzles or ends. When Ara becomes strong enough to make an impact onto the environment’s Vis, the occurrence is called Arcane Contamination.

When mages manage to reach a state of mind called Clara through successful Meditation, they can sense (see, smell, feel, hear or taste) all of these components. However, even if mages can sense Ara and Vis around them, they cannot interact with them directly and to do that need to bring a third component called Mana, shaped in the form of spells or arcane items. Mana is acquired through an elaborate process of Spell Casting, where a mage has to go through various steps to bring it into the Material Plane and shape it into a spell that he desires. Mana is also made up of Essence, however unlike Ara and Vis, it is made up of a single and pure Essence, which is not tinged by any other. Such pure Essences can only be found in the Essence Planes.