The Magic of Magicbuilding: Collateral Damage

Welcome to the Magic of Magicbuilding, our little spinoff feature that focuses specifically on building a magical system for a fantasy setting.  This week, we're trying to decide if, in our hubris, we've gone too far.

What We Have So Far

Last week, we introduced what we referred to as a "hard-but-fuzzy" limit to how magic worked.  Basically, it boiled down to the idea that magic revolved around drawing and manipulating energy from other dimensions.  While we were awfully lenient with what we referred to as "energy," we made it clear that creation of energy (or mass, for that matter) was off-limits.  We also have the idea that the definition of "energy" is based on which dimension we're drawing from, not our own dimension's rules.  Last but not least, we stated that the number of known dimensions that can be drawn upon is limited; the implication is that the number isn't terribly large, and that each "type" of magic is associated with one specific dimension.

This week, we're going to game that idea out.  As we do, we'll be bearing in mind the kind of spells we wish to cast, such as powering a car.

Elemental Basics

One of the hallmarks of the most energetic magic systems is elemental magic.  Wizards and their ilk summon and control the "basic building blocks of reality," such as Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.  A popular method of tweaking a magic system, in fact, is to take a pre-existing system and swap out which elements are used.  After all, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water are popular in Western media, but East Asia prefers the five elements, as do the planeswalkers of Magic: The Gathering.  Dungeons and Dragons has (depending on how you count) six elements, while the Final Fantasy franchise can have eight or more, and the system developed by Brandon Sanderson in the Mistborn series has at least 16.

With the setup we currently have, our system is ripe for a set of elements.  After all, we have already talked a few times about the Dimensions of Fire, Water, and Earth.  A good question to ask is, what are the basic elements in our system, and why?

Unfortunately, we're not going to ask that one yet.  Instead, we're going to need to answer a more fundamental question:  how does drawing on an element work?

The problem lies in the Dimensions of Fire and Water (and, to a lesser extent, Earth).  You see, if we are to use a magic system with a set of basic elements, those elements would all need to work similarly.  If drawing upon the elemental power of water summons a torrent of water, for example, you would imagine that drawing on Fire summons fire, and drawing on Earth summons earth.  It would be profoundly weird if Water summoned water, while Fire allowed you to control thermo-kinetic energy within a set area, and Earth allowed you to shape, but not summon or create, dirt and rock.  Those are three different approaches to elemental magic; why would those three be considered part of a basic set?

This isn't to say that you couldn't have each element work differently, but then you wouldn't have "elemental" magic; you would have different kinds of magic, and coincidentally, some of those types are just a single element.  This is both intriguing and entertaining to consider... but it cranks up the complexity of our magic system considerably.  Which works best for us?  A system that has a set of related magics, joined by the theme of elements, or a system that allows us the freedom, while shackling us with the responsibility, to dictate how each magic works independently?

Looking at our magical car, the answer right now would be to go with the latter.  Water magic summons water, and the spells you craft with Water magic alter the amount, the form, the intensity, and the duration.  Fire magic summons thermal energy, which, yes, can in turn create fire, but can also be used to, say, heat a chamber to a specific temperature that will flash-boil water that comes in contact with it.  These two approaches are different enough that they wouldn't both belong to the same magical system, but as we have written so far, making these two elements any more similar would force us to reimagine how the car works.

That said, part of our job this week is to decide if the collateral damage created by our limit from last week is worth it.  After all, rather than tweak how these two magic types work, we could always go back and change the rule about our magic's limits, instead.  Which to choose...?

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Perhaps what we need to do is nail down exactly how the summoning and manipulation process works.  Right now, what we've got is:

1. A sigil is created.  This sigil is a set of instructions that are "read" by extra-dimensional energy.
2. The caster empowers the sigil.  This takes a small but notable amount of conscious mental effort from the caster.
3. The activated sigil (usually) opens a microscopic portal to another dimension.  Which dimension is determined by what was written in the sigil.
4. Energy from the other dimension is drawn into this dimension, through a process we haven't really elaborated on yet.  The energy is semi-conscious and responds to written instructions in a fashion similar to how computers respond to programming.
5. A side effect of the energy draw is that the caster is also affected by the energy drawn through the portal, both physically and mentally.
6. The energy is manipulated and shaped, per the sigil, until the "program" is completed.  Once the instructions in the sigil have been followed, the energy dissipates, though any effect created by the energy over the course of the spell remains.  If you use magic to light a torch, the torch remains lit even after the spell is done.

To this, we would add a further step:  The possible effects of the energy and the forms the energy can take are both limited by the dimension being accessed with the sigil.  Thus, the reason that Fire magic draws thermo-kinetic energy from the Dimension of Fire is that this is simply the only kind of energy that can be drawn from the Dimension of Fire.  By adding this limit, we also change how we describe each dimension's energy.  Dimensions become defined by the type of energy that can be drawn, but also by the limits of what can be done with that energy.

As we said earlier, the possibilities that arise from this are quite intriguing.  If we haven't said it before, we'll say it now:  one of the great things about limits is that they inspire more possibilities, rather than less.  They also answer questions as they arise.  With this new limit in place, we can immediately answer a question like, "Can you use Fire magic to heal someone, such as with a magical healing fire?" with "Nope.  Best you could manage is cauterizing a wound."

Conclusion

Well, wasn't this an interesting turn of events!  Walking through how our new limitation could affect our goal to run a car off magic led to us deciding that we needed another limitation- not because we needed to narrow the possibilities, but because we needed to change how those possibilities worked for us.  We will have a multitude of magical types instead of an elemental system after all, and with our new limitation, we can more precisely define what each dimension's energy (and the magic derived from it) can do.

Next week, we're going to play with this.  We'll examine a set of possible dimensions and their associated energy, and with that, figure out what exactly our increasingly defined magic system is capable of.