The Magic of Magicbuilding: Magical Bleeding

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 walk through how a seeming throwaway comment affects the entirety of our magicbuilding project.

What We Have So Far

Last week, we casually mentioned that, and we'll quote directly here so you don't have to jump back to that post, "This last use is fairly tricky for all but the denizens of the Chthonic Realms themselves, who use such magic naturally."

This brings up several points that need to be addressed:

1. Hold on, there are creatures from other dimensions?
2. Since when can certain creatures use magic naturally?
3. Wait... if people can't use magic naturally, where did it come from?

Yeah, that last one is a showstopper.  We have a form of magic based on sigils that are intricate enough to be a magical variety of programming.  You don't exactly stumble upon that while doodling idly in class.

We need to explain how people learned to use magic.  Hopefully, by doing so, we'll also cover the other two issues... or at least build avenues that we can use to explore them.

Bleed Through

We know that people use a minimum amount of their own internal power to activate sigils in the first place; that's part of our magical system.  This, in turn, implies two things: that, at the very least, normal creatures possess the capacity to use that same minimum amount of magic, and that people knew how to use that power before they figured out sigils.  Let's reason this out a bit.

If all creatures have some magic capacity, it stands to reason that certain creatures will have a greater capacity for magic than others; after all, our magical system would be quite weird if a random beagle possessed as much innate talent for magic as the greatest human wizard.  We've already tied the ability to use sigils to consciousness, so let us say that consciousness determines part of a creature's aptitude.  Random musing suggests that the other part can be a creature's innate synergy with a given dimension.  It would make sense that flying creatures more easily use energy from the Dimension of Air, and aquatic creatures more easily use energy from the Dimension of Water.  

But without sigils, how do they access and control that energy?

This ties into the second implication.  The easiest answer is that the energy was already available.  While sigils tap into and control energy from other dimensions, some of that energy can make it into our world without any help.  Innate magic can control this energy as well, without the use of sigils.  So why would people use sigils, beyond the obvious "stronger effects when you have an entire dimension of energy to tap into," and "greater control when you can provide written commands"--

That's it.  Control.

One of the fees paid to use that extra-dimensional energy is that a bit of that energy washes back onto you.  Tapping the Dimension of Fire makes your temperament more fiery, for example.

What if sigils didn't just control the dimensional energy, but also how much that energy affected the caster?

Magical Creatures: A Warning of Excess

Sigils were at one point described as a method by which a caster could safely divert a few droplets of energy from the firehose that was extra-dimensional energy.  It makes sense that this safe diversion wasn't just meant to draw only the necessary magical power, but also to minimize the backlash as much as possible.  It also makes sense that people would figure out magical sigils as a method of minimizing the backlash.  The first casters would have, indeed, stumbled upon magical use, most likely by watching creatures using magic, and would have noted the dangers of excessive magical use.  Minimizing magical use would have been the first step, but there are always those who want to go further and will accept the cost.  More importantly for our magical system, some want to go further, would rather not accept the cost, and would instead search for ways to game the system.  The latter would have discovered sigils and, through trial and error, developed them from basic designs to the intricate programs used in the modern day.

What about the people who used the freely available magic?  Well, if a few droplets of power are enough to alter a person's mood, it stands to reason that more power would alter them still further, pushing them more and more toward the dimension whose magic they drew from.  Eventually, they would end up just like the creatures who used such magic naturally.

Here we can be a bit vague, because our magical system should focus more on the magic and less on the creatures that are a side effect of that magic.  Still, it isn't hard to conclude that magical creatures are at least as much creatures of their favored dimension as they are of our world.  They would still need to be conscious, so they won't do anything as poetic as becoming the magical energy that they drew on for so long, but they would likely draw close to that line over time.  Perhaps they would adapt to the point that they require that magical energy to sustain themselves, thus adding to the cautionary tale.

Incautious casters would suffer much the same fate, although they, being far too clever, might not fall neatly into the camp of one particular dimension or another.  In fact, it would be easy to assume that the first attempts at controlling the side effects of magic would have consisted of trying to balance the effects out, drawing upon Water when you find yourself too fiery, for example.  Such casters would still have the problem of eventually becoming more magic than person, but at least they'll not be mentally dominated by a single dimension.  Whether such people would be well-adjusted or mental cases (or both) is an exercise left to the reader.

With this adaptation, we've addressed all three points.  All conscious creatures can use magic, and people learned to use magic by watching magical creatures draw upon the otherworldly energies that naturally bleed between dimensions.  Eventually, in an effort to avoid inevitably becoming magical creatures themselves, people developed sigil magic.

What about creatures from other dimensions, you ask?  Well,

Extra-Dimensional Bleeding: Not Just for Magic

Two things can quickly be established about creatures from other dimensions.  The first is that, since they already are comprised of the energy from another dimension, they don't have to worry about turning into "magical creatures."  It's kind of already too late.  The topic of whether using another dimension's energy would change them is fascinating, but not worth worrying about right now.  The second is that, if whatever pathway naturally lets energy from their dimension bleed into ours was large enough, we can expect that travel between their dimension and ours was also possible. 

Obviously, since sigils strictly control the magical energies invoked, they wouldn't be useful in creating such an opening.  Could one of those incautious casters pull it off?  Well, remembering that (aside from the magic) the rules of physics prevail in our setting, that means the governing equation for the energy required is E = mc². As it happens, any opening large enough to let actual mass through would involve so much energy that anything larger than a teaspoon would cause the caster to explode like they'd just swallowed a grenade.  No, only naturally occurring magical portals would do.

In fact, following that same logic, only small creatures, or creatures that were mostly energy, would be able to safely travel between dimensions.  Which means, good news!  Our world is not in any danger from horrors beyond the stars invading.  Only the smallest of tentacles could make their way over.

Or, you know, shapeshifters.  Anyone who could at least temporarily make themselves small could also manage the trip.

Now, it takes a lot of energy to generate mass, and that is true regardless of whether one is trying to teleport it or create it whole after slipping between dimensions.  Even if shapeshifters did cross into our world with nefarious intent, it would take quite some time to gather that much energy.  So again, nothing too dangerous to worry about.  Still, this adds an interesting wrinkle to our setting.  Whether that wrinkle turns into a tear remains to be seen.

Conclusion

We now have an origin story for magic.  Without getting into details about them, we've added magical creatures to our world, as well as tiny creatures and shapeshifters from other worlds.  We've expanded on the fee paid in our magic system, and the consequences have shaped our setting in interesting new ways.

Next week, we'll further refine the consequences of magical bleeding.  We know that some creatures have been changed as a result, but what about the rest of the setting?  Are there also magical locations?

Beyond, of course, the Most Magical Place on Earth.