Category:Magic

In the world of Avaria, magic is both more commonplace and potentially more powerful than many think, but most people believe only in certain aspects and types of magic. Avarians as a whole take it for granted that at least some types of magic exist in day-to-day life, and may be used or encountered even by ordinary people such as themselves, their neighbors, or religious figures, but they tend to have certain expectations of what "regular" magic is and can do. This varies from place to place, but there are some basic beliefs about magic that are fairly widespread.

Basics of Magic

Magic in Avaria is essentially much like magic as it has been historically believed in and practiced on Earth. Large-scale magic and flashy spells are the fodder of stories and legends, generally taken with a grain of salt -- though there is actually more truth in these tales than many are inclined to think. Yet the magic that most consider real is both commonplace and amazingly diverse: weather magic, harvest rituals, charms and talismans, alchemy, divination, spells to cure maladies of the mind and body, voodoo magic, the evil eye, and a host of other things both helpful and malign. For many in Avaria, magic is also synonymous with religion -- priests are socially-approved magi, prayers are both invocation and evocation, miracles are at once magical and divine.

There are three fundamental types of magic, spiritual, arcane, and mental. Of these three, spiritual magics are the most prevalent and widely accepted, and include such things as prayers and blessings, hexes and curses, shamanic rituals, and all manner of fortunetelling and divination. The other types of magic tend to be viewed with more skepticism by the population at large. It is not so much that nobody believes these kinds of magic exist -- they certainly feature strongly in myth and legend, and to most people myth and legend contain some significant measure of truth. But at the same time, most people expect never to see or experience any such greatly wondrous things themselves, let alone to actually wield such powers. It is this set of fundamental expectations about the world immediately around them that keeps people grounded in reality as they know it.

Magic in Gameplay

Starting out, no PC will have access to magical abilities in character generation. Knowledge and ability in magic is instead something that a character may gain over time, by pursuing certain storylines or developing their character in certain ways. Magic is not meant to be an all-powerful force and there may be trade-offs to pursuing the most potent forms of magic above all else, but characters that wish to will have the opportunity to develop unique abilities and become masters of their art with sufficient dedication. Elemental, spiritual, and mental styles of magic all exist, sometimes overlapping with one another and other times coming into conflict.