The Full and Complete Nature of Magics and Realms
The following document is an abridged version of the much longer document written by Sir John Heldefson, as the culmination of his extensive research into Thresholds. It was recovered from his private vault in the Library of Tarbrind, following his unfortunate disappearance. He was declared missing after failing to deliver the document as promised, and it was printed by the Scholars of Magic and Nature monthly newspaper some months later when the paper was deemed irrelevant to the case. This version was intended to be read in presentation at the monthly conference. It was read by proxy in the next conference and won an award for the excellent explanation of the systems behind magic, and for the new ideas on Thresholds.
While this paper is primarily meant for the exploration of the Realms and Thresholds of the world, those places of the world and cosmos which can by no means be explained by ordinary natural cause, little can be understood of those subjects without an introductory exploration into the nature of magic itself.
Magic has, as well as can be determined, always existed in some capacity. There are plenty of tales and practices, rites, rituals and much more far predating the Great Slaughter (explored in another paper) and the well documented advent of Ember and it's own magics. The first mages, or folk and hedge wizards, as they were called, practiced a form of magic we know as "Natural Magic" or as "Native Magic" this is, of course, the magic bound within a living being directed forth by will and focus to enact a change on the world as a whole, and is severely limited by the poor natural capacity of the body. Such magic was - and still is - used in the common cures and rituals of life, such as sparking flame in tinder, recalling a wayward farm animal, cleaning an object, curing a minor wound, and so forth. Native magic was seldom used for serious work, because it causes a great deal of strain on the body, with little actual output.
As any practitioner of spells would know, all people are capable in varying degrees of performing magic, though fewer are born with the inane understanding of exactly how it may be used. While anyone can be made to understand by the application of magic directed by someone more knowledgeable, few ever have the chance. As such, many of the small rituals in life subconsciously draw from the body, without requiring the same focus and active manipulation of one's self that "spells" demand. The famous "Baker's hymn", as it is, is of a helpful length such that a verse or two may be used to time how long to knead dough, and the whole is suitable for the length of time a dough must be allowed to rise at the hearth, etc. Few are aware that the hymn is actually a charm which "blesses" the bread to resist scorching, over proofing, etc. Furthermore, the will of good health often spoken after a sneeze is a subtle spell of protection from illness. The words don't matter, but the intent behind the words does. The subtle, conscious wish that the other party remains healthy manifests itself with a miniscule output of magic. This nature is considered by the scholarly world, the reason well-wishers, greeters, and other similar members of service find themselves so exhausted after a day of wishing good health, or luck, or what have you. They are using magic without realizing it.
With the modest utility of natural magic, humanity has, by their nature, sought ways in which to gather great power to themselves. It was not until the discovery of an altogether different reservoir of power that magic’s potential was truly realized. With the bones of True Dragons, magic became a much more desirable resource. While seldom found and even more rarely produced, dragon bone acts as a sort of reservoir that passively draws magic from the world around and gathers it within itself to be exploited all at once. With dragon bone, magic was weaponized to a degree, although the extent of such militarization was limited by the incredible rarity of it's needed material. It was eventually found that magic could be squirreled away in carefully hewn gems, which while more abundant, are much more volatile if damaged, and do not naturally gather magic to themselves. This too is prohibitively expensive, since it takes a large gem to hold any meaningful amount of magic.
This inherent "rarity" surrounding magic made it a poor tool for warfare or other means, as mages capable of utilizing such objects were rare and often more interested in their studies than anything else. With this "rare" magic, the tragic truth of "Burnout" was entirely unknown, and the only instances recorded were chalked up to mistakes and freak accidents in a fundamentally unknown force. It was indeed a puzzle, for everyone knew the basic effects of expelling too much magic to be much akin to blood loss, or holding one's breath too long. Exhaustion is quick, dizziness soon follows. Hallucinations and nausea were well known. In extreme circumstances, the body undergoes heart failure, or simply is exhausted so completely that the lungs and heart fail to operate. By fortune or perhaps design, man's body is such that under normal circumstance, one would completely fall unconscious long before the danger of death. Since casting magics with dragon bone or with gemstones requires only a miniscule trigger of native magic, the consequences of overdrawing went undiscovered.
Another, more potent and incredible form of magic also was known to exist by the name of the Tellmar-tongue, or words of power. Such magic is far from my area of understanding, and functions on an entirely different basis from natural and ember magic, and will be explored in another work.
With the growing power found in magic, many began to question exactly where magical energy actually derived from, and the question remained hotly debated for many centuries with little real progress. It was eventually determined that magic, like physical energy found in motive force, was a "thing" rather than a concept, aether, or essence of God, or whatever else it was claimed as. Magic was quantifiable, inasmuch as it can be measured, though no device currently exists to match an "amount" to it. While many have tried, magic remains measured in "a lot" and "a little", since matching a tangible reference to an inherently immaterial thing has proven difficult. Magicians nowadays often measure the impact of magic in an area by the amount of "ether" present, which is simply a close study of how the diffused magic in the area differs from the "normal". A large amount of "ether" does not refer to a substance, but to the observation that ember prisms are passively excited to a varying degree outside of normal measure.
One might next explore the mechanisms of Ember magic, the most commonly known and used form of greater magics, but the understanding of that topic is closely tied with the source of magic itself, and it is an important nature indeed!
The Simple Nature of Realms
Long has it been supposed that other "planes" existed for an abundance of reasons, but primarily in religion. What happens after death is a common consideration, of course. "Where does the soul really go?" has been a question so hotly debated at times, it has nearly lead to war. While alchemic arts have proven that matter itself is not destroyed, in as much as a cloth burned within a closed bell has the same mass prior to and after its immolation, some energies or forces simply must slip from the grasp of this physical world. For example, in pushing an object upon the ground, observe how the energy expended by your body first causes the object to be set in motion, but after a period, the object ceases. By this simple observation that the object does not impart that "physik" energy elsewhere, in as far as it remains of constant mass, does not emit other energies such as sound or light, it can be presumed that this "physik" is lost to some other plane. In forces of great and repetitive speed, such as a shaft upon a bearing, much heat is generated, and this heat distributes itself unevenly across material, and one might suppose some of it simply does not persist.
With these questions, man has long realized that the physical world of sight, touch and smell simply is not sufficient to encapsule everything which must conceivably happen within it, and more right we could not be. I may hazard to say there is far more going on in the world that we cannot perceive than there is that we can perceive.
Such is the nature of the Realms. In our current understanding, there are three, though I say that with reserve. The realms are not to be viewed as layers on a cake, but rather as a sort of gradient. A color which slowly blends into another. At the bottom, we have us. The physical world which we can hear, and see, touch, smell, and taste. At the top, is the "Third Realm" It is perfect immaterium. It is without physical form and focus, and yet it reflects out world, and is reflected in our world. The third realm is, for a lack of better words, a plane composed of entirely magical energy, in a chaotic, unreasoned state. However, it does not exist as a formless soup. all things in our world must "project" themselves in the third realm, since all things in this world are projected on by the third realm. It is shaped by the magic dwelling within living creatures, and ordered by the vast masses of earth. If one were to go to this third realm and not be immediately consumed, I believe they would see a perfect shadow of our world in that realm of magic. It is this energy that is brought to our world when magic is used.
Between the first and outer realms lies the great veil. It is not something easily observed, but make no mistake, the veil is not a metaphor like so much else in our understanding of magic. The great veil is what separates our realm from the ravages of the chaotic and boundless energy found without. Magic slowly seeps through the veil, permeating all things more or less equally. Magic is permitted the reverse direction as well, but at an incredibly slow speed. For example, a crude and dangerous practice in ember magic is that of "overcharging". In this method, excess magic is brought into the body, and by nature of ember it is impure, thus the body quickly makes all attempt to rid itself and to order this magic in order to prevent destruction. The result is a temporarily heightened state, where much more native magic than normal is available to the caster. This energy slowly seeps out of them over a few days, and back into the world. An attuned caster can feel the presence of someone who has done this. In a famous experiment, an overcharged caster placed himself in a massive lead-lined room (for lead is more or less impermeable to magic). The magic seeped from his body, into the space around him, and after a day, the magic found in that room was lesser than the magic he drew into himself, and more abundant that the magic remaining in an identical experiment performed in an unshielded room, showing that magic maintains an equilibrium across the veil, albeit very slowly. Waiting even longer lead to a state of equality both inside and without the room.
One now may wonder how this veil can be observed, for I have claimed that it can be. It was seen directly but one time, with the fall of Belfast. Such was the magnitude of magic pressing in from the outer realm that the appearance of the world shifted and distorted, taking the appearance of a great membrane for a few moments at the crux of the event. It was independently recorded by a number of people, including Karl Kingsay himself in his book Ruminations, 1253.
But if the first realm is earth, and the third is immaterial, what is the second? Alas, reader, this must be discussed later. For now, let us understand the nature of Ember.
As with many things following the Great Slaughter and the cataclysm it wrought, the sudden appearance of Ember was completely unexplained and unexpected. It fell from the sky, and pressed up from the earth in every shape and size imaginable. From boulders to tiny flakes, this strange rock was suddenly everywhere mankind has tread (With some notable exceptions explored later) and was regarded as a useless nuisance for a long time. More pressing issues drew focus away, as roving bands of madmen, starvation, a seemingly endless winter, and incurable plagues swept the known world for a number of years after the Great Slaughter.
With the genius work of Magnus Helderon and the unfortunate and violent death of Horus Tob, ember was discovered to be far more than a simple rock. While native magic is powered by the magic within the body, and dragon bone gathers it's power from the surroundings, Ember functions in a fundamentally different way. It does not store magic like a gem, nor does it gather magic around itself. Instead, by supplying it with a careful amount of native magic, it becomes a powerful and zealous conduit directly to the third realm. Like a breach in a dam, it quickly becomes a great danger if left unchecked.
While I will leave the exact fundamentals of Ember usage to more learned men than I, the basic idea revolves around using the Ember to draw magic from the third realm, and guide it into the use intended. It must be carefully managed, as the raw magic pulled from the third realm is not "filtered" by the natural process of movement through the veil which separates living creatures from the ravages of the outer realms. If improperly done, this raw magic manifests primarily as pure heat, and will waste no time igniting the caster and his surroundings. Another method is to absorb the magic into the body, making it easier to control. This is violently painful and can easily kill the caster if the unstable magic overwhelms the body. I include several excerpts from the well-respected textbook Introduction to Magics by Barian Sarasfort.
Ember acts as a conduit for magic. It allows magicians to draw vast amounts of energy from the Third Realm with minimal personal expenditure, but with significant risks. When in use, Ember generates a significant amount of heat. Ember takes the form of a black, basalt or slag-like material interspersed with brilliant orange luminous crystals. The crystal formations are the actual Ember, with the black material being similar to a dross.
Ember prisms, a name for Ember cut from high purity samples, are coveted for their increased effectiveness and reduced heat buildup. However, overheated Ember prisms can be extremely dangerous to the user, as they can violently detonate. Despite their name, Prisms are not a specific shape. Ember is often found in pentagonal prism form in small samples, but very large masses can host a wide range of crystal forms. Like glass, Ember can be cut or ground to any shape. Unlike glass, Ember is not known to melt, and at extreme temperatures has been observed to violently combust and destroy itself. They are often shaped to maximize skin contact to reduce the effects of Ember-burn. Larger crystals are more efficient, and require less "input" magic to begin pulling magic through from the Third Realm., and generating less heat in the process.
Prolonged use of Ember can cause mundane heat burns, and "Ember-burn"; a mostly harmless condition where the dross-ember seems to seep into the user's skin, producing an effect like black ink rubbed into the skin. This causes dark scars and patterns which are harmless. In extensive use, itching, occasional numbness, and other irritating but harmless effects may manifest. In very extreme cases, Ember will begin to crystalize directly on, in, or under the user's skin, causing frostbite-like damage and intense pain. There has been no treatment found for ember-burn. Most experienced magicians exhibit ember-burn well past the forearm, but the formation of crystalized ember is extremely rare even among the most prolific users of magic.
I would be remiss to abstain from sharing the effects of "Burnout" as well. It may be clarified that Fluxing Shock and Fluxing Decay are the differing conditions from the same cause. It is called “Decay” when the victim is destroyed by its effects, and "Shock" when the victim expires via mundane cause, such as heart failure, or survives the ordeel.
Drawing raw magic from the Third Realm into one's body, rather than expelling it directly into the world can cause "Fluxing Shock" which manifests as nausea, muscle cramps, seizures, coma, spontaneous bleeding, and even death by failure of organs if overexposed. The condition generally lasts up to 24 hours, while your body quickly attempts to prevent breakdown from the influx of chaotic magic. Flux shock can also manifest a wide number of unique effects, ranging from bodily malfunctions, mutilations, chronic pains, and even transformations.
Death can occur from Fluxing Shock if the body cannot withstand the symptoms of the condition. When this occurs, the body is not destroyed as with Fluxing Decay. In such cases, the corpse must often be left to rot for several days, or placed within a lead-lined coffin, for the amount of magic leaking from the corpse can be hazardous to bystanders for weeks.
"Fluxing Decay", or "Burnout" as it is more commonly called, occurs when a magician's body fails to stabilize chaotic magic which has entered the magician's natural reservoir. In such cases, the body is violently destroyed by the excess unstable, raw magic drawn directly from the Third Realm, or may result from completely expending one's internal magic, causing the caster to be reduced directly into energy while casting, leading to violent immolation or explosion.
As one may suppose, the inherently violent nature of raw magic lends itself well to warfare, and conflicts in the future will undoubtably be increasingly deadly.
It can now be readily observed that ember does not function in the same capacity as other magical tools of the past. Where native magic is finite and weak, ember is efficient and powerful. Where dragon bone gathers magic unto itself, ember acts as a simple conduit. It can be observed in its destruction that ember does not hold magic, for the destruction of a dragon bone or a gem is a violent thing, and ember is easily cleaved without harm. With ember's great abundance, magic has shifted from a rarity and a wonder to an often times common occurrence. One needs only see the influx of regulation and law into the field of magic to understand that such power is no longer a rare commodity.
And now, reader, with a surface understanding of the nature of magic and the form of the First and Third Realms, we may begin to explore the ill-defined Second Realm.
Recall now the Third realm in its immaterium, shaped by the vast mass of the earth, and incited to ebb and flow by the great heavenly bodies of our moons Gannia and Ozyxys. Recall how it is without governance, and the source of all magics. It is this endless sea of energy which slowly presses into our world. In its passage it is pacified and ordered by its journey the great Veil which separates the physical world from the tide of chaotic powers. Despite this veil, there remains a gradient between our world and the Third Realm, in which the laws of our existence slowly blend into the void. It is in this strange mixing of natural law and pure magic that the supernatural things of the world reside.
I speak, of course, of the lesser, or oft called "heretic" gods. The deities which flux so greatly against one another in search of some heightening of power that they achieve some semblance of true godhood. While the nature of the imposter gods is far beyond the scope of this article, remember that even the greatest among them dare not call themselves true gods. Their existence is wrought by human belief, and while many seek to control our world, they cannot exist without us.
Unlike the Third Realm in its powerful glory, much of the Second Realm is traversable by the human body, though one must not stray too "far" from the veil, lest they break down under the relentless corrosion of disorder. While it is outside our current understanding to access the second realm on command and can only be accessed with direct aid from a god, the realm of each distinct god is simply a subsection of the second realm bent to shape by their will and power. Here, they manipulate the powerful, yet ordered magic which exists beyond the veil to create a miniature world which suits their archetype and needs.
This was readily seen in the days of old when Arkememnon (now more commonly known as Solis), the patron of justice and of the sun was readily called to settle disputes. Supposedly created directly by the Forgotten God, he upholds a grand realm in which he gathers the souls of the glorious war-dead to himself, where they wage endless battle against each other in the grand coliseum in preparation of Armageddon. While Solis is much more reclusive post-slaughter, some claim he can still be reached by visiting one the places of power found in the ancient cities.
It should be noted that Arkememnon is a special case. According to the Church of The Forgotten God, he was supposedly created by the Forgotten God himself when man once again fell to his own pride in the early days of history. It is this origin that grants divine privilege to gather wiling warrior spirits to his realm for the eventual battle of Armageddon, where all heretic and wicked persons opposed tot he will of God will be cast into damnation. Why a supposedly all-powerful true God needs the souls of dead warriors to do this is beyond me, but I digress. It is important that no other minor god has the ability to actually harbor the dead. Aside from this, Arkememnon operates in the same way as the others.
While there are generally considered to be 16 major gods, one must remember that the second realm is not limited by physical distance. It is entirely possible that thousands of these beings exist in their own little pockets of existence. Irregardless, the important factor remains that the second realm is greatly malleable, with easy access to great reserves of energy, and unbound by the simple and otherwise resolute laws of nature to a degree.
This simple understanding of the interaction of realms and magics will now allow the investigation of a unique interaction of these elements with our own realm, a subject which has remained shrouded in mystery for millennia.
Now reader, we can begin the exploration of the places in the world in which the fundamental understandings of the mechanisms of reality begin to fade. Thresholds are, as the name implies, not unlike a door. It is a place where something fundamentally different intrudes onto the physical world. I say "onto" here with great meaning. Thresholds, with but a single exception of Belfast, do not press into our world and spread about, like dye dripped into water. Instead, they present a doorway unto themselves, by which one may enter in to some other place.
There are areas in the world, places where under the right conditions, when the "vibrations" match, other things leak in. This can conceptually be modeled with surprising ease. Take in hand a tuning fork, and strike it to produce a loud note. Hold this fork then in proximity to another, and they begin to resonate together. With two forks both struck, they meet in the middle. It is my belief that this very same mechanism allows certain dimensions, pockets, of the second realm, or perhaps even some place different entirely, to resonate with our world and become linked for a time.
The Twilight forest is perhaps the most well known example of a long-term steady threshold, though it is perhaps not the best example, for that esoteric forest has many properties that are generally not consistent with other examples of Thresholds. Where other thresholds are better thought of as an altered part of the world, the Twilight Forest is entirely divorced from the known world, having no cycle of moon or sun, unknown types of tree, animal, and even ruins.
Another example of a steady threshold is the Fathomless Tomb. While it too has strange and uncertain origins, the stone of the tomb is, in observation, the same stone that the Dragonspine mountains themselves are composed of. While evidence suggests that the tomb was created by some force, it remains accessible without ritual or portal, things which are the traditional method of accessing the second realm. The Fathomless Tomb is the focus of my own research, and I myself have been able to observe its depths in person.
Shorter term thresholds are much more common, though still rarely encountered and even more rarely reported. In fact, many who encounter them do not even realize the reality of the situation, chalking it to a supernatural experience or something similar, though each of these short-term thresholds can vary wildly between encounters.
One well documented tale describes a nobleman of Tarbrind in 1377, who was found crying in an alleyway after allegedly becoming lost in his own home for days, yet emerging the same day he became lost. A guard entered his home to investigate, and did not return. By the time the Tarbrind ministry in charge of supernatural actions had arrived, the threshold had collapsed. The guard was found trapped behind an ancient false wall in the basement several days later, frightened and emaciated but alive.
While there are relatively few thresholds nowadays compared to some historic accounts in the early days after the slaughter, other, similar happenings exist from both ancient time and modern cause. Where thresholds are described by an internal "theme", and having a discrete entrance and exit, altered places are not. They behave similarly to Thresholds in the fact that they have elevated levels of ambient magic, and twist the fundamental laws of nature about themselves, but they are not so much a doorway to the second realm, as an imprint of magic on the physical world.
When an event of great impact on magic occur, they shape the Third Realm. This is well accepted, since even the magic force of a living beings has a tiny observable effect in the "shape" of the Third Realm, something which can be felt by a careful and well attuned practitioner of magic. But when huge amounts of magic are released in the physical realm, the Third Realm is much more powerfully imprinted, and these imprints can last for years beyond the original event. Much like pressing one's finger into soft mud, the evidence exists long after the act, even if it does slowly push back into it's original shape. Since the Third Realm also projects onto, and causes effect on the physical realm, "memory" of such an event can manifest itself in our world.
No better place can this effect be seen than the Carmine Pass, locus of the Great Slaughter. It is well known that land is cursed. The dead walk, seeking a long-decayed enemy. The sounds of ancient battle ring fresh and new, and the smell of freshly spilt blood wafts on the breeze. These are no mere ghost stories, but documented fact. Merchants do not abandon lucrative and easy trade routes out of superstition.
Another altered place is Belfast. Belfast is often called a threshold, since it is now directly linked to the Second Realm, but it lacks a formal entrance, and does not display the illogical expansion or contraction of inner dimensions as Thresholds often do. Thus, it cannot be called a threshold, since underneath all the magic, it is still our world. The inside of the Twilight Forest, for example, stretch far, far beyond the outer bounds of the actual forest in our realm, and can only be entered by crossing the Twilight River at a certain phase of the moons. The lands within are distinctly not our world.
Once can feel this effect elsewhere, and in safer ways. For example, in some ruins of ancient towns with colosseums, or other places of great upheaval, turmoil, or simply powerful emotion, one might often catch the faint sound of the old life the place once had. Even in Tarbrind, one can very rarely catch the smell of a great fire, and the great alarm bell ringing from when Tarbrind was razed in the War of Succession. Likewise, Ashen Oscillia is often seen to be burning by passing travelers when Ozyxys is alone in the sky.
Thus, reader, now we can understand how it is that magic is both shaped by our world, and how it is that our world is shaped by magic.
