#flesh magic

[thanergetic-hyperlinks]

Yes they are, and someone seems to have been paying attention:

But also? Ianthe, what the hell did you mean by “what the lyctors of old were trying to tell us?” Did Cyrus leave any cryptique mysteries for the Third like Cassiopeia did for the Sixth and Anastasia might have done for the NInth?

[boiledkwamaegg]

I'm kind of in love with this thing, and I'm sure Faenil is too :)

This is Mayhem, the Flesh Atronach that Faenil built all by themself. I'd imagine making it took a long time since they collected the body parts through their evil organ harvesting methods, and its body parts are probably mostly comprised of mer races. When it was done and animated, Faenil threw it into some pocket dimension in oblivion so that they can summon it whenever they need to. They're very proud of their creation - not only is it a piece of artwork to them but they definitely consider it their own child as well. Faenil takes good care of it too, I'd imagine such an organic construct needs a lot of patching up and tending to every now and then, plus they have to make sure the flesh doesn't start to rot. Mayhem probably smells better than Faenil does, which says a lot about how much this thing means to them haha - Oh, and don't assume that this thing isn't conscious, it definitely has a personality too, but only Faenil seems to notice that.

Since Faenil is so insanely tall, you get J'zargo for scale.

[probably-ace-ok]

A magic system concept:

Flesh magic is a form of magic that lets the user manipulate biological matter but in order to properly use it, certain symbols and patterns have to be carved into the bones of the user. This made it one of the most dangerous types of magic to learn until the invention of modern sanitation practices, as it almost always required the assistance of a skilled flesh mage to successfully complete the carving. Despite this, flesh mages have contributed greatly to the accumulation of anatomical and medical knowledge over the centuries, due to their need to understand what they can manipulate.

[sigmaelxgr]

"It is a weird hobby.

It is forbidden... dirty. But it makes Cyriël lie about the fact that I can't give life."

- Sangre/Xangr, about both flesh magic and his desastrous personnal life

[ehlnofeh]

the illusion to alteration to flesh magic trans girl pipeline

[boiledkwamaegg]

Hey there fellow flesh magic enjoyer,

Your work has me kind of mesmerised and I have some questions I would love answers from you on the topic of flesh magic. I am curious about Faenil, more specifically the mechanisms behind their mastery of flesh magic (an impressive and elusive skill!):

Are they functionally immortal?

Do you think of the flesh magic as interacting with the ‘original’ physical matrix of their body, or that it adds/alters new material to make an artificial matrix (or a hybrid or smth else)?

Is the process whereby Faenil ‘reassembles’ themselves a conscious decision or an impulse they don’t have control over?

Do they have Ayleid ancestors?/Did they learn all their skills at flesh magic, or did it start from an innate talent?

Thank you for your time!! my apologies if you have addressed these matters elsewhere, or find them tedious; and also sorry for being on anon, I am shy

Oh this is the good stuff, thank you! Long ramble incoming...

To preface, I've taken Flesh Magic as sort of a personal "re-worldbuilding" project of mine, as I really like it at its fundamentals but dislike how it's portrayed in most games (I could go on all day, but if the beauty of the Flesh is its regenerative abilities, then you should not make Flesh Atronachs look like rotting zombies as they would be most powerful when the flesh is healthy, no?) Still, it's not explored much in lore anyway, so I think I can do whatever I want with it, who cares.

In order to properly answer your questions I'm going to explain its functions below (essentially an answer to the second one)

Flesh Magic differs from most other magic types in the sense that it's a ritual instead of a casting ability. More specifically, the thing I'm doing with Flesh Magic is that it's more like a language - not something you can speak, but something similar to computer coding.

And of course, there's the four elements to it: Meat (Fire), Blood (Water), Bone (Earth) and Breath (Air), and while I know these things can be "grown into their mystical forms" to create life, I feel like Flesh Magic is much more complicated and should be more versatile than just revolve around that. Mortals are made of flesh, therefore you can use this type of magic in healing too, and create "flesh gardens" by harvesting body parts from prisoners (What Faenil was doing in Alinor) It's much more powerful than typical restoration if you know what you're doing. If Restoration Magic uses the resources you already have within your body, Flesh Magic rearranges the very structure within your body, if the right materials and data is provided, and comes with little consequence as long as the data is right. Restoration magic speeds up the natural healing process, but might exhaust the resources in the body, which is dangerous. So Flesh Magic also doesn't add or create anything out of nowhere, much like building a house you will need to collect the right materials and know proper architecture to make it functional.

In my redesign, blood works as the ink for the coding which binds things together, so you write your ancient flesh symbols on the skin of the subject with blood. The type of blood matters of course, like you would need to draw the symbols with your own blood on yourself if you want to avoid unwanted consequences. The meat and bone elements work as the building blocks of the subject which you are instructing the symbols to work with. So bone and cartilage are the foundation, while meat encompasses all softer tissues, including the nervous system (something the original lore never touches upon) The last part of the ritual, when you want to wrap up and execute your code, is rhythmic breathing. The rhythm and method depends on the situation, if you are healing yourself, someone else, or bringing something to life.

In creating an atronach, you also need a soul or a vestige (which is actually the fifth element: Light) which also means you will need to find and capture one (or make a daedric deal), which requires extensive knowledge in conjuration. I also think, if you're not using a magical well with the concentrated essences of the elements like Relmyna, you can create an atronach in a sterile medical setting, it will just take some time to animate after the ritual, and this period is much like caring for a comatose person. This is all my fun way to make it a highly complex type of magic that on top of everything requires extensive knowledge in biology.

Now that that's explained, I can show you my brainstorm notes that look no different from the scribbles of a madman:

I haven't designed any "official" symbols yet but I have a gist of what they're like, and along Faenil's story you will see some, as they are constantly looking for new ones to add to their understanding. This type of magic is ancient and largely forgotten, the information available is limited, so Faenil's scars are therefore not fully healed as their knowledge is crude, missing in important parts. I'd love to write a scene where Faenil is forced to reattach a limb or something with the ritual. I don't know a lick of computer coding, but imagine Faenil's body as a coding noob's unnecessarily convoluted and messy Python code. That's why it's never properly healing, it's a mess but somehow works just enough to function. Faenil's goal, of course, is to fix this, but now they have to deal with dragons, which provides a new type of problem.

Skyrim never really explores the conflict that comes with having the immortal soul of a dragon inside a mortal body, but to me it's crucial to the whole plot. My idea is that with Faenil's poorly assembled mortal sack of meat, absorbing a dragon soul while not having any use for it (not knowing enough words of power), will corrupt the scars in their body, making them painful and more inflamed, as the incomplete data can't hold such power together. The more unused souls they hold, the more dangerous it gets - so Faenil is always in this stressful race with collecting enough words between slaying dragons.

Well, now for your first, third and fourth questions:

Faenil isn't immortal, just incredibly hard to kill as whenever they get severely injured, the adrenaline and survival instincts kick in and they always manage to perform the ritual successfully before passing out. Like, as long as they aren't immediately fatally wounded, and have at least one hand in use, they always find a way to live.

Faenil sometimes considers the above thing a bit of a curse, because it is definitely both conscious but also an impulse in a life-or-death situation, so they don't have much time to think. I will also have to mention Faenil is very particular about only using their own body parts in this. For example it is technically possible to attach someone else's arm to yours with Flesh Magic (impossible with restoration in my headcanon) but Faenil has survived this long with their own, and wants to keep it that way.

Yes, Faenil actually has distant Ayleid ancestry, and this was my thought process in making their eyes partially blue. The eyes hold some symbolism because I'm annoying, as Faenil is distantly Ayleid (blue outer edges), an Altmer at their core (yellow center), and a dragon in their soul (small intense pupil). I don't believe it brings them much innate talent with Flesh Magic though, I don't think most common Ayleids were into it anyway, but you can argue it definitely fascinates them more than a typical Altmer. I mostly just added it in as a reference to Flesh Magic.

Thanks for this ask, it was fun to passionately ramble like Septimus Signus for once.

[theprinceofembers]

What IS An Ayleidic Flesh Sculpture?

Flesh sculpture is a style of magic based around the manipulation of flesh of living beings, be it for healing or for cosmetic purposes such as changing one's face.[1][2]

While seemingly obscure, flesh sculpting isn't something reserved to the underworld of Tamriel. The "art" of flesh-sculpture can be traced back to the Daedraphiles, Ayleid city-states who adopted widespread Daedra worship in the Late Merethic Era. The Ayleids subjected their slaves to the practice to honor the Daedric Princes they worshipped.[3] Legend speaks of the Wailing Wheels of Vindasel, where the Ayleids derived strange pleasure by subjecting Nedic slaves to the "art-torture" of using their skin for flesh sculptures.[4][5] The exiled Barsaebic Ayleids brought this horrific art form with them to Black Marsh, where they enslaved local Argonians for the color and texture of their skin.[4][6] Cloudrest contains a Faculty of Chirurgeons where masters of flesh sculpture teach their art. Nohotogrha, an oasis found in Hammerfell, is also home to flesh sculptors known as the Hollow-Faced Men. One known practitioner of this art, Galathil, claims to have learned her art in both of these places circa 4E 201.[1] According to Galathil, flesh sculpting cannot be used on the dead, which includes those afflicted with vampirism.[1] Despite its magical nature, changing one's appearance requires conventional surgical tools such as knives.[1]

Circa 2E 582, some necromancers used flesh sculpting as a means of healing themselves and others.[2]

Flesh Magic is an obscure and ancient form of magic, believed by some to be older than the world itself.[1] It is characterized by what practitioners call the "sixth element", otherwise known as Flesh.[2] According to legend, the element of Flesh was birthed in ancient times by the original five elements of Earth, Water, Air, Fire and Light when darkness turned into day and the Void took form. Said to have been hidden by virtue of its own self-awareness, it remains largely unknown and esoteric among modern societies.[3]

Practice[edit]

While Necromancy deals with raising the dead, Flesh Magic differs in that it involves creating life by binding an immortal Soul to an amalgamation of Meat, Blood, Bone and Breath—the essential components of true Flesh. Each ingredient serves a vital role in the creation of life. Meat is said to possess the desire to consume. Blood is the liquid nutrient that contains the essence of life. Bone gives shape and structure and Breath bestows movement and stirs the spirit.[3] Through many years of intensive labor, these four essential components of true Flesh can be isolated and grown into their mystical forms: Osseous Marrow, Dermis Membrane, Essence of Breath, and Blood Liqueur.[3]

These components, together known as the Essence of Flesh, serve as the vessel for the twisted creation, which is then bound to an Atronach's Daedric spirit (or vestige)[4] summoned from the waters of Oblivion, typically through a ritual. The Daedric spirit acts as the Soul, the final component known as the Quintessence of Flesh, which represents perception, thought, memory, and imagination. Joining the Essence of Flesh with the Quintessence of Flesh through a successful binding produces a living Golem, sometimes referred to as a Flesh Atronach, believed by practitioners to represent the element of true Flesh in its pure form in a similar manner to the Elemental Daedra of Oblivion.[3]

While the fundamentals of Flesh Magic are distinct from Necromancy, some mages consider them to be the same discipline.[5] Other times it has been classified under the school of Conjuration.[6]

History

Flesh Magic was first recorded in translated ancient Aldmer texts of unknown provenance and authority.[7] At some point after the Ra Gada invasions began in 1E 808,[8] the Nedic mage Mahvia used the "flesh, minds, and souls" of four willing sacrifices to create an experimental flesh atronach, which would guard the city of Shada's Tear from Tarish-Zi's Anka-Ra.[9] Around 2E 230, Mannimarco experimented with Flesh Magic prior to his expulsion from the Psijic Order. On the island of Artaeum he created the first Flesh Colossus in a secluded laboratory before he was discovered and subsequently exiled.[10]

Flesh Magic was arguably most prominent during the Planemeld in the mid-Second Era, when many of Molag Bal's minions and cultists under the tutelage of Mannimarco created and summoned Flesh Atronachs of varying descriptions to aid in their schemes.[11] In later eras, the practice became almost non-existent. While some institutions, such as the College of Winterhold, allowed the study of some necromantic dark arts, Flesh Magic was largely reviled across Tamriel. Such is the rarity of the art that there have been only two known practitioners in modern times, both of which were said to be insane.[12]

The first was Relmyna Verenim, a member of the Mages Guild in the late Third Era who began researching the sixth element and conducting extreme experiments. She was expelled from the guild and was granted residency in Sheogorath's realm to continue her work.[2] Using Flesh Magic rituals, she created her crowning achievement—the feared Gatekeeper of the Fringe, a colossal Flesh Atronach who was charged with guarding the Gates of Madness in the Shivering Isles.[13]

The second was Calixto Corrium, a museum curator in Windhelm during the Fourth Era. After the death of his sister, he began researching methods to bring her back to life and uncovered the art of Flesh Magic. In his insanity, he murdered several young women in the city in order to collect their body parts for the binding ritual, but was eventually discovered and executed.[14]