The Magic of Magicbuilding: Magical Countermeasures

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 considering how a world with semi-conscious energy bleeding into it might respond.  Long story short, by building a better mousetrap.

What We Have So Far

For purposes of this week's discussion, we're going to recall that magical energy- any magical energy- responds to conscious thought, and is considered semi-conscious itself.  While we've changed how people interact with magic, these facts are still established in our system.

Another way to put this is that magic is partially aware of, and responds to, external stimuli.  In our system, that stimulus normally takes the form of sigils, but those sigils must be activated through conscious effort and the employment of the caster's own personal magical energy.  We've established that this is used almost entirely to tap into extra-dimensional energy, which is readily available and functionally infinite.  Those extra-dimensional energies follow different laws of physics than apply to our world, and the result of this temporary clash in two physical systems is magic.

This framework has a variety of consequences for our magical system, but the most important to consider right now is that, if creatures in our world have their own magical energy, then that means our world in general has its own magical energy.  Since we have no reason to assume otherwise, we can conclude that our world's magical energy has a semi-conscious will of its own, just like the others.

So how will this energy respond when energy from other dimensions begins to "invade its territory," so to speak?

When The Master's Gone

We don't know how much magical energy, exactly, is present in our world, but we do know that energy from other dimensions is more easily accessible, and that magical energy is present in (at the very least) conscious creatures.  We also know that the magical energy is generated by the creatures themselves, since using it involves exertion.  Perhaps magical energy from our dimension always comes from singular sources; while you can tap an entire dimension when you draw from the Dimension of Fire, you can only draw upon the energy immediately present in, say, a single tree when you tap into the local energy of the forest.  Drawing too much does the same thing to it as would happen to you... meaning that you can kill something by pulling too much energy from it.

Obviously, if magic is semi-conscious and derived from, among other things, creatures that will die if too much is used, creatures will have defense mechanisms that make it difficult to extract that magic, simply to keep the creature alive.  This would explain why the magic of our world is not readily available.  It's present, possibly present in the same amounts as extra-dimensional energy, but it is guarded to keep the things it inhabits alive.

If magic is capable of protecting itself from being overdrawn or pulled from its hosts, it is capable of acting of its own accord.  These acts don't rise to the level of conscious behavior, but at large scales, they would resemble coordination.  At a global scale, the response would be somewhere between the autonomic responses of the immune system and territorial aggression in larger animals.  Complicating magic's behavior is the fact that, while it may be possible for it to respond as though alive, it doesn't possess any of the other hallmarks of life, such as instinct or a body of its own.  As energy, however, it is both capable of manipulating things on a physical scale and manipulating other magical energy.

At this point, we're in an area of open speculation.  There aren't exactly a lot of real-world examples of partially aware energy acting of its own volition in response to extradimensional leaks. 

The best analogy we could come up with when considering what would happen is to imagine a living house.  It doesn't have a mind of its own, but it has enough awareness that, for example, it will take notice of mice moving into its walls, gnawing holes, and making nests of its insulation.  It will take offense to such activities and do what it can to exterminate, or at least mitigate, these invaders.  It isn't truly alive, and we've thus far not given it any method of creating life, so making a cat to hunt the mice isn't an option.  However, manipulation of objects and energy is doable.  It could lay out some traps and try to catch the mice.  It could even put together its own traps out of whatever material is at hand.

What would these traps look like?

They Check In, But They Don't Check Out

When we said "mousetraps," you likely thought of these.

Funny story:  the artificial cheese is meant to draw in people, not mice.

Modern mousetraps more closely resemble one of these.

Described in the video we watched as "the height of German overengineering."

From the outside, this kind of trap resembles a tunnel or cave small enough for a mouse to hide in.  The tunnel itself seems simplistic, but the area around the tunnel, as you can see, has kill bars, microprocessors, and batteries all built in.  From the perspective of the mouse, it enters an enticing tunnel, steps on an innocuous spot on the floor, and a trap instantly swings into action, killing it instantly.

We thought about this perspective for some time, and we eventually realized that if we saw such a thing sized for people, we would have a word for it already.  A word derived from countless role-playing games.

It's a dungeon.

Dungeons:  For Dragons, Not People

Let's bring this all together.  Our setting is a world of comparatively minor magic.  This magic is guarded and difficult to draw upon, but it does exist, and it is, like other magics, semi-conscious.

Also in this world are areas that experience magical bleeding- regions where the walls between dimensions are thin enough that some of the magical energy from a different dimension naturally leaks through.  Several of those regions are connected to dimensions that have living creatures, and those creatures are of varying levels of danger to creatures of our world.

The world as a whole, in a semi-conscious act, will move to mitigate or terminate the bleeds, both the magical energies and the creatures that sometimes accompany them.  It does this by creating traps that naturally draw in those creatures and energies.  From prior conversations, we know that one of the side effects of manipulating magical energy is that the caster is partially affected by the energy as well.  It stands to reason that these traps will take on aspects of the energy and creatures they draw in.

While these traps might resemble enticing homes for the energies and creatures that they lure in, they're designed for a singular purpose: termination and removal.  A combination of small amounts of energy (because the traps can only draw upon their own magic and the magic of the other dimensions that they pull in) and basic but deadly mechanical devices is used for this purpose.  The traps are meant to pull in extra-dimensional creatures and make sure they never leave.

One other thing about the dungeons themselves:  in a very real sense, people and monsters would be drawn to them as well.  Recall that the conscious creatures of our world can, on some level, sense magic.  We never really explained how that worked before, but if the magic of our world responds to the energy of other worlds, it becomes relatively straightforward.  The magic in our people is telling their host about that energy.

Humorous side note:  the magic in our conscious creatures is informing those creatures because the magic wants to get rid of the extra-dimensional energy.  That creatures capable of using magic so often learn to intentionally draw upon and use the very energy the magic is warning them about is akin to real-life humans' predilection for taking the self-defense mechanisms of a variety of life forms and making them into delicious treats, such as peppers and coffee.  It's probably a good thing that magic is only semi-conscious, or else it would probably be quite frustrated.

Anyway, because we have tied into the very way that magic works in the first place, this sense about the otherness of extra-dimensional energy, we can reasonably conclude that magic can tell us other things too, on that same semi-conscious level.  We can also reasonably conclude that magic itself, being something other than alive or dead, will see no difference between using stone to craft a dungeon that will kill extra-dimensional creatures and using living beings.  Creatures that don't possess consciousness cannot use magic, but that doesn't mean they don't have it.  Creatures of our world will thus have an instinctive desire to kill or drive off creatures from other dimensions.  Monsters, partially transformed by extra-dimensional energy, will get this urge twice- once from our world's magic, and once from the other dimension that now pumps through their veins.  People will get the killing urge as well, which lines up nicely with how we know people work in our world.  With this behavior, we've effectively recreated the Uncanny Valley effect.  All the creatures of our world will be drawn to the dungeons, not because our magic wants us dead, but because our magic wants us to help it kill the magic and creatures it has trapped inside.

Last but not least, the placement of the traps.  With no instinct for optimization, magic will place these traps in not-quite-random locations.  Unsuccessful traps will wither, since there is no extra energy to draw upon.  Successful traps will increasingly take on the aspects of the energy they have trapped, but they'll also grow larger and more elaborate to trap more creatures, as well as more powerful creatures.  Most likely, these successful traps will be either close to the energies upon which they effectively feed, or they will be close to where the creatures naturally congregate, much like placing mousetraps in the pantry because you know the mice will come looking for food.  In other words, dungeons are most likely found near (or even surrounding) regions of magical bleeding, or near areas of significant conscious populations.

Like cities.

Conclusion

If the world had a mind of its own, that mind would be magic.  Magic, in turn, would move to counteract or destroy the magic of other dimensions.  This natural defense mechanism has been intentionally subverted by the people of our setting, and while it isn't the same thing as making coffee, by a funny coincidence, they can use magic to power a coffee maker.

Over time, the magic of our world makes dungeons that absorb and trap the otherworldly.  Our people, part of the world, will naturally be drawn into dungeons to kill the otherworldly creatures contained within.  So will other creatures from our world, of whom the most dangerous are monsters- not because they can use magic, but because they're inclined to both kill the otherworldly creatures and this-worldly creatures.

At this point, we have one more question to consider on this topic: if we can take an urge to get rid of extradimensional energy and use it to power the lights in our house, what will we do with the urge to get rid of extradimensional creatures?