The Magic of Magicbuilding: Elementary Magic, Part Four

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 going to look at the dangers of the fae.

What We Have So Far

We established how we're approaching the three energies associated with interdimensional creatures last week.  In short, we're going to talk through how the creatures natively use their magic, and we'll use that as our inspiration for how our "people" species use the same magic.  After all, who would know how to use fae magic better than the fae, right?

Speaking of, let's talk about the fae a little bit.

Emotion-ivorous

We looked.  There is no good, vaguely Greek/Latin word for a creature that feeds off of thoughts and/or emotions.  Probably the two closest would be affectivores (which uses Latin roots incorrectly) and pathovores (which sounds more right but is actually a combination of Greek and Latin and therefore even more wrong).

Whatever the word is or should be, that's what the fae are.  Their magic is complementary to that of the undead.  Where the undead use their magic to create and control bodies, the fae use theirs to sustain their bodies, provoking the thoughts and emotions they wish to feed on.  Just as the undead are, they are also shapeshifters, and this too serves their purposes.  Fae take on forms meant to evoke the emotional state that they favor... and savor. 

Since each variety of fae feeds off a different emotion, they have differing approaches and wildly different forms that they prefer.  Fae that feed on fear, for example, are nightmarish, while fae that feed on hope will appear as far more benevolent creatures, and fae that feed on lust will give classical depictions of succubi a run for their money.  Regardless of the preferred emotion, they do have one tendency in common: fae forms have six limbs.  When they take on humanoid forms, this usually results in a creature that has regular arms and legs, plus a pair of wings that may or may not be functional.

Like undead, fae are not inherently evil or murderous.  In point of fact, most fae would prefer to keep people alive, since (so far as we know in this setting) dead people don't have emotions to feed on.  We haven't established what feeding on emotions looks like, but we can surmise that the process isn't too traumatic, or else the fae that enjoy more benevolent emotions would accidentally starve themselves while eating.  We can also kill two birds with one stone by saying that the energy they get from emotions is similar to the energy they use to manipulate those emotions, thus explaining how (at a basic level) fae magic works.

With that in mind, consider this.  At least initially, fae encountering the intelligent species of our world will not present themselves as a unified front.  Each variety will take on their preferred form and, as intelligent creatures are wont to do, will work together.  They'll work to form a narrative that encourages the emotions they wish to feed on.  In extremis, they'll use their magic to create or manipulate emotions, but they would prefer not to, since there is a smaller return on their investment; they have to use energy to get energy in that case.  For fae, our intelligent species are like a farm, and they would much rather sow seeds and let nature take its course.

Our intelligent species likely won't figure out that all fae are the same type of creature until they realize that, aside from the "six limbs" commonality, all these allegedly unrelated creatures use the same magic.  Until then, they'd assume they're dealing with vastly different monsters.  Demons, angels, sylvan beauties, adorable fairies, maybe even an analogue that resembles "normal" sapient creatures, which feed off of mild emotions, like neighborliness.  Literal friend-shaped fae.

It's a thought to guide us in our worldbuilding later, but for now, this is enough to give us material to work with for magic spells.

Mind-Altering Magic

Fae magic is considered almost exclusively with mental energy.  The fae can, of course, consume that energy, and they don't need much to live, but they do need a steady supply.  The most basic magic, for them, would be to draw out that mental energy in small amounts.  Let's say the effect is kind of like reversing the normal magical feedback casters feel; rather than increasing emotional synergy with the magical energy involved, it decreases.  A fae that feeds on happiness must power the magic with a little happiness of their own, and if they aren't careful, could wind up depressed.  Similarly, a regular caster of fae magic is going to become less and less emotional themselves, since they don't recover those emotions by eating them.  Fae act to create the emotions they wish to feed on, hoping for a net positive; casters of fae magic become increasingly robotic over time—an interesting dichotomy.

Mental energy is, of course, not exclusively about emotion.  Thought is also involved.  Maybe there are fae that feed on thoughts as well, but they are less prevalent.  After all, emotional responses are easy to provoke.  Specific thoughtful responses are rather less so.  Still, being able to draw upon and manipulate thoughts is useful for both fae and normal casters.  Surface-level thought reading, investigation and manipulation of memories, and even partial mental control could be possible, although for a sapient creature, the insertion of new thoughts would be an experience similar to intrusive thoughts.  Many, if not most, people manage to avoid acting on their intrusive thoughts, so mind control would definitely not be absolute, but certain emotional and thoughtful states would be pretty easy to create, like confusion.

Basic Fae Spells

• Read.  As we've established, mental energy (once provoked) is relatively easy to draw upon.  A basic fae magic skill would be the ability to examine that mental energy and draw conclusions thereby.  We imagine it would, again, be similar to experiencing intrusive thoughts, except that you know exactly where they come from- the person you just cast this spell on.
• Create Emotion.  Create a ball of mental energy.  Color it with the emotion you desire, and then mix it with the mental energy of your target.  That target now experiences the emotion you just gave them.  In theory, pretty simple, if crude.  A caster who knew what they were doing would use other bits of fae magic to create mental justifications for that emotion, so that the target doesn't question why they are suddenly, say, murderously angry at their fellow brigand.
• Create Thought.  This works the same way as the spell above, but instead of a burst of emotion, you seek to implant a thought in your target's head that you want them to believe is their own.  Some skill would definitely be involved in successfully mimicking another person's thoughts.
  
• Drain.  Low levels of this magical effect are how the fae feed, but there would be some use in doing it on a large scale as well.  If you can draw on a little to read someone's mind, you can draw on all of it to leave that person's mind a sudden blank.  It wouldn't render them braindead- you aren't doing anything physically to their brain- but you could make them, for example, lose their short term memory, forget what they were about to say, or lose whatever emotion they were just feeling.
  
• Confuse.  While you can attempt to convince your target that the thoughts and emotions you're implanting are theirs, you don't have to.  As an alternative, you can simply try to overwhelm them with mental noise- the magical equivalent of yelling "EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE!" into their ear.  They know that everything is not, in fact, on fire, but they will still almost certainly jump and look around, trying to figure out why they just heard that.  If enough similar nonsense is pumped into their head, the target will have a terrible time figuring out what in the world is happening.  And while they are suitably distracted, you have time to act.
• Search Memory.  One last spell, a combination of several of the above spells.  Memories can't normally be read, since memory storage is holographic.  This is a fancy way of saying that, when you recall something, you don't just pull it out of a mental file; you rebuild the memory using a series of reference points.  Until those points are activated, there is no memory to read.  A skilled caster of fae magic, therefore, would need to engage in an iterative process of provoking a thought or emotion tied to the memory they desired to read, searching the target's mind to see what was recalled, and then repeating as necessary, using any new information gleaned to assist.  Writing the sigil that could perform this task would be similar to writing a file sorting program.  This, in turn, implies that skilled mages capable of this level of magic would argue endlessly about the best sorting algorithm for interrogating a person's memory.

Conclusion

We'll wrap up elementary magic next week with the tentacle-monsters that use biological magic.  Although this leaves spatial magic untouched, we don't think that any spatial magic should be considered elementary.  After all, the edge cases for even something as straightforward as "looking at something far away" are still "everyone dies."  That's probably something you don't get taught until they think you're smart enough to avoid such edges.