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Magic in the Ravenstone multiverse
Aug. 25th, 2026 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fayanoraOver on BlueSky, someone posted the following question:
"Good morning, #AugustWorldbuilders! Today we're getting a little weird and vague again. Tell me something about your magic system which is strange and/or unique. What makes your magic system different from others? What gives it a special flair?"
My answer:
"I think the only thing really unique about it is that while there's different kinds of magic with different rules, especially out in the multiverse, what it boils down to is creativity & a magnified Observer Effect. Various magic types have different rules cuz they're the logic people thought up.
So magic type A might work by being a reusable spell getting fed by your body's magic, activated with a word, phrase, or poem. Then type B works cuz your mind creates a spell in your hand that exits through a wand. Each has its own rules thanks to the beliefs of the user.
There are some hard limits, but there's a lot of flexibility within those limits. One hard rule: magic is generated by living things. Another: Magic can bend the laws of thermodynamics, but never really break them. If you use magic to levitate something, that energy comes from somewhere.
It can come from you, from other people, or from the living environment around you, but it comes from one or more of those. In regions with not as much life, like deserts, any magic you use is mostly coming from your own body. It's precious, like water.
Faery realms have more magic than Earth cuz their ecosystems evolved to use it much earlier. On Earth, magic didn't really start until humans started using it. Worlds like Tirffiniol, evolutionary pressures had life thinking & dreaming, using its Will on the universe millions of years ago.
Another rule: Magic begets more magic. So it's a feedback loop: the more different lifeforms that evolved to use magic, the more other life forms had to use it too in order to adapt, which creates more magic available for use. And now you have worlds where even plants and insects use magic.
It's why so many sapient Faery species are so much more powerful than humans at magic: it's deeply in their blood, cuz thousands of generations of their ancestors evolved using it. Which gives them another advantage: their bodies create far more magic than human bodies do.
Whereas we've been using it for only about 10 K years. Their long history with magic is also why so many sapient fairies are extremely long lived, from hundreds of years to thousands of years old. Even human witches age more slowly & get a lot older than mundane humans."
And I will add here that if you're somewhere that has lower environmental magic than you're used to, you're at a greater risk of magical exhaustion from doing the same kinds of magic because you're using more of your body's own magic in those places. And magical exhaustion is potentially fatal. (I added this as one last comment over there, in case you're looking at both.)
I am glad this question was asked. It let me put into words ideas I've had about the magic system for a long time, and notice that I was accidentally being very internally consistent with it. There are even scenes in some of the books where someone who's lived a long time in a very low-magic place and managed to build up their body's ability to generate magic enough that when they had access to environmental magic ("ambient magic"), they basically had the magic equivalent of when you're picking up what you think is a gallon of water only to find it's empty.
Also, the above "magic type A" is called "faery style magic" in the books, even though there's variation of magic systems among faeries as well, just because it's the most common type of magic used by faeries in Tirffiniol. Whereas "magic type B" is "human style" wand magic. And yes, that does imply there are other ways of using wands. Hell, even some human witches have wands that just take some input from the human and make the spell themselves based on that. Happens a lot more often in magical staffs / staves, though. Magical staves tend to be so much more powerful than wands because they have to be made from living witch wood (the wood of a tree that is a magic user itself), freely given by the tree, and being so much bigger, they generate more of their own magic. Wands of living witch wood tend to need most of their generated magic just to stay alive and connected to their tree of origin, whereas staves have much more magic available to them.
Anyway, I gotta make breakfast.
"Good morning, #AugustWorldbuilders! Today we're getting a little weird and vague again. Tell me something about your magic system which is strange and/or unique. What makes your magic system different from others? What gives it a special flair?"
My answer:
"I think the only thing really unique about it is that while there's different kinds of magic with different rules, especially out in the multiverse, what it boils down to is creativity & a magnified Observer Effect. Various magic types have different rules cuz they're the logic people thought up.
So magic type A might work by being a reusable spell getting fed by your body's magic, activated with a word, phrase, or poem. Then type B works cuz your mind creates a spell in your hand that exits through a wand. Each has its own rules thanks to the beliefs of the user.
There are some hard limits, but there's a lot of flexibility within those limits. One hard rule: magic is generated by living things. Another: Magic can bend the laws of thermodynamics, but never really break them. If you use magic to levitate something, that energy comes from somewhere.
It can come from you, from other people, or from the living environment around you, but it comes from one or more of those. In regions with not as much life, like deserts, any magic you use is mostly coming from your own body. It's precious, like water.
Faery realms have more magic than Earth cuz their ecosystems evolved to use it much earlier. On Earth, magic didn't really start until humans started using it. Worlds like Tirffiniol, evolutionary pressures had life thinking & dreaming, using its Will on the universe millions of years ago.
Another rule: Magic begets more magic. So it's a feedback loop: the more different lifeforms that evolved to use magic, the more other life forms had to use it too in order to adapt, which creates more magic available for use. And now you have worlds where even plants and insects use magic.
It's why so many sapient Faery species are so much more powerful than humans at magic: it's deeply in their blood, cuz thousands of generations of their ancestors evolved using it. Which gives them another advantage: their bodies create far more magic than human bodies do.
Whereas we've been using it for only about 10 K years. Their long history with magic is also why so many sapient fairies are extremely long lived, from hundreds of years to thousands of years old. Even human witches age more slowly & get a lot older than mundane humans."
And I will add here that if you're somewhere that has lower environmental magic than you're used to, you're at a greater risk of magical exhaustion from doing the same kinds of magic because you're using more of your body's own magic in those places. And magical exhaustion is potentially fatal. (I added this as one last comment over there, in case you're looking at both.)
I am glad this question was asked. It let me put into words ideas I've had about the magic system for a long time, and notice that I was accidentally being very internally consistent with it. There are even scenes in some of the books where someone who's lived a long time in a very low-magic place and managed to build up their body's ability to generate magic enough that when they had access to environmental magic ("ambient magic"), they basically had the magic equivalent of when you're picking up what you think is a gallon of water only to find it's empty.
Also, the above "magic type A" is called "faery style magic" in the books, even though there's variation of magic systems among faeries as well, just because it's the most common type of magic used by faeries in Tirffiniol. Whereas "magic type B" is "human style" wand magic. And yes, that does imply there are other ways of using wands. Hell, even some human witches have wands that just take some input from the human and make the spell themselves based on that. Happens a lot more often in magical staffs / staves, though. Magical staves tend to be so much more powerful than wands because they have to be made from living witch wood (the wood of a tree that is a magic user itself), freely given by the tree, and being so much bigger, they generate more of their own magic. Wands of living witch wood tend to need most of their generated magic just to stay alive and connected to their tree of origin, whereas staves have much more magic available to them.
Anyway, I gotta make breakfast.
