Twilight of Empires

At its most fundamental level, there is no Science to the study of magic. Magic is an Art: this is how the gods set things up before the Slumber, and in a few generations, the repercussions will become cataclysmicly clear. Magic schools do not exist in the categorical “earth, air, fire, water, metal, void” sense, but more as philosophies. Simply put, the better defined the rules of Power are in your mind, the better you can use your power, up to the limits of your body and spirit to handle the forces involved.

As a corollary to this, the mystic arts are not the only way to use power. Sufficient mastery of your weapon will allow one to slice through a tree in one vorpal strike, fire five arrows at once at five different targets, engulf your axe in the flame of your rage, or poke someone in the right nerve cluster and have them collapse immobile with pain.

Furthermore, this is not limited to overt, combat applicable abilities. Old Bob, who has been a conscientious caretaker of his family farm for the last forty years, can soothe his animals such that they never stay sick, never has serious issues with insects or blights in his fields, and enjoys bumper crops every year. Bob sustains his land, and it sustains him. Likewise, Greta the tavern keeper doesn't merely have PS: barmaid at 16-, she's developed bard-like talents to help drive business and keep her patrons in line.

Fortunately, most people are lazy, and do not need to be more than merely competent to get through their daily lives. But Lunistria enjoys an agricultural abundance that is nearly mythic thanks to people like Bob, and famines only happen in the aftermath of cataclysmic environmental events, direct supernatural action, or a war that kills off all the Bobs.

There is a dark side to this arrangement: once or twice a generation in any given region, a pubescent child will suffer an unfortunate confluence of Power awakening, fertile imagination, and aggressive external stress, they they spontaneously do something spectacular in a “magic do as you will” sort of sense. Sometimes, they just turn into a wolf-boy, rip out their uncle's throat while his trousers are around his ankles, and a new Goblin sub-race is born. Most of the time, they simply immolate themselves and their tormentor.

Another effect of this system is that large groups of people believing the same thing tend to influence reality, though usually only in a singular noun sort of way. The emperor of the Uruk Mandarinate is immortal and semi-divine because several million peasants believe it to be true. The dragon slaying sword of Gondor the Magnificent became more and more amazing over the five generations before it went missing because people believed it was the greatest magical weapon of all time.

Some might argue that the holy powers of priests and priestesses are similar: they believe in the rules that underlie their prayers and rituals, and their congregations believe in their holy powers and connections. However, the gods are real, and much of the traditions of the priesthood have been passed down since before the Slumbering.

There are an arbitrarily large number of schools that teach the direct application of magic as magic. The whole wave your hands around, chant in obscure languages, burn rare plants and draw on the floor if you need additional focus types of folks. Each of them teaches a specific way of thinking about magic, though not all of them are mutually exclusive. Prince Imrahil of the Storm Elves is the greatest master of his family's techniques in several generations, but he understands enough Fire magic to light his hearth on a chilly midwinter's morning. Conversely, the Taoist magics of the Uruk Mandarinate completely escape him.

So magic use breaks down into several broad categories:

• Mages: nearly all NPC and PC spell casters. They have a set mental image of how things work, and build within that structure.
• Shamans: also druids, spiritualists, and witches. Use their powers to convince natural and elemental spirits to do the heavy lifting in magical activities. Mechanically not too different from mages, tend to have cooler summons.
• Priests: (aka clerics) The gods like you, and one god in particular moreso. Through training, ritual, or direct blessing, you can call upon their Gifts, and produce miracles.
• Sorcerers: Specifically, the Sorcerer's League. A new faction in the world, they work to expand their imagination and broaden the range of what they can conceive, and thus expand their power beyond that of more traditional rivals. The League has begun sending out clairvoyant agents into the world to try to catch those spontaneous magic users before they blow themselves up.
• Wizards: aka the Wizards Octagram Council. Like the League, an new faction in the world's drama. Wizards believe that the more they understand how the world functions, they better they will understand how to manipulate it. Ongoing research includes hiring high-end mages to demonstrate their best spells, not to understand how they do it, but to understand what is happening once the spell is working.
• Warlocks: If you don't have the focus for study or a strong sense of ethics, why not contract to an immortal supernatural being who can simply imbue you with the knowledge of magic and how to use it? The major downside to this is that the more an infernal being overwrites rules into your mind, the less you're in charge of your destiny, and the further you are along to outright possession and merely functioning as a minor psych lim to the demon in question.

Sometimes called Clear Magic by frustrated mages. Everyone from Old Bob to Gondor the Magnificent to Jenny the Minstrel and even Ulrich the Werewolf. They are very good at what they do, well past the rational boundaries of mortal skill. The options are limitless, much to the regret of the less dedicated people around you.

As far as the arcanologists can tell, the Gods set up the world with ten fundamental elements that everything is constructed from and uses to keep running smoothly. These are commonly described as Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Metal Wood, Ice, Lightning, Light, and Shadow. Very few magical or philosophical schools address all of them directly, and given the way magic works in Lunistria, that doesn't seem to cause many issues.

• Asteria: Classic western four-element system, with most other effects being considered hybrids, or positive or negative energy influenced.
• Dwarves: Much like Asteria, plus Metal.
• Elves: Most houses focus on one element, and give lip service to the others. They're probably also responsible for getting Mind and Necromancy added to the spectrum.
• Empire of the Fang: Earth, Air, Water, Wood, and Blood. Fire and Metal are considered part of Earth, Lightning part of Air, and Ice ignored outright.
• Plains Tribes: Earth Air, Fire Water Thunder, Ice. They tend to have a higher percentage of shamanic types, and simply deal with whatever type of elements the spirits happen to drag in with them.
• Mandarinate & Yamato: Classic eastern five element system, sometimes with Void overlapping Darkness. Ch'i has a peculiar (frequently adversarial) relationship with the Elven Body school.

• Arcanos: Magic about magic itself. Any school with enchanting techniques has roots in Arcanos, but no one besides the Elven High Court and the long lost Stellar Elves studies it as an independent curriculum.
• Asterian Imperial Infantry: A codified set of magics used to support the Imperial army at the platoon level. Easy to master, but nigh impossible to improve past that point, leading to the study of additional schools.
• Beastmaster: A variant on Mind magic, that only affects non-sentient beings. Beastmasters tend to dispense with the whole song and dance aspect of magery, and also get some of the coolest pets.
• Body: The primary school of House Metamorphos. The four common sub-schools are Internalist (Body augmentation magics), Transformative (Turning living things into other living things), Blue (duplicating monster powers), and Metamorphic (turning oneself into something else).
• Burning Ice: Asterian school popular with the nobility, though few move past lighting candles and chilling drinks. There is a balance between heat and cold in the world, and a skilled magus can leverage that to great effect.
• Farseer: The Perception and Spatial magics of House Gnosis. Perceiving and acting upon things at a distance.
• Hermionian: A widespread, intellectual mage school. Hermionians are magical generalists, and tend to focus on the more complicated, less purely Elemental sides of the art. They are also considered a bit lazy by the more physically active adventurers.
• Masters of the Shadow Arts: An Asterian school that delves into the substance of Shadow magic.
• Scattered Skies: Another Asterian region school, shares many weather magics with Storm Dragon. Considered the “junk collectors” of the occult world: mages of this school have a compulsion to collect “utility” magics from other traditions as they encounter them.
• Storm Dragon: Troels' school. Weather manipulation and channeling draconic might.
• Sun & Shadow: House Glamourous' school, combining Light, Darkness, and Illusion. Mostly Illusion. Can create true sunlight.