The Mages of Rela Hub

• • _
  IntroductionThis canon is...

  
  

  ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀The Mages of Rela canon takes place on a living conservation planet brimming with magic. Individuals go to the college to learn magic, which is physical runes drawn or implanted under the skin, then go off-world to work miracles or stay on-world to care for the planet whose inhabitants they have been assigned to tend. Their planet is full of green reeds and blooming wildflowers in alpine meadows, untouched swamps and marshes thrumming with the buzz of flies and the snap of toad legs leaping and frog tongues thwacking, fish fins slapping. The forests are choked to bursting with fox-steps and elk-bays and badger-scrapings and owl-blinkings. The world is alive. And on the ridge of a cliff on the southernmost point of the largest island of this world, a college bustles with activity. People in all manner of clothing walk and fly and fall sideways in the air, create illusions with the scarcest gesture, learn magic that will make them capable or rich or efficient or knowledgeable in every other place. Fabrics of a million colours ripple in the hot sea wind. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Now imagine this all ending. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀What happens when the world ends? Think, for a moment, of a solar storm. This is not what happens, but think of it anyway. A storm that knocks out all power everywhere, bursts copper sheathing and rubber insulating far more than we thought to be possible. The world splits at the seams, goes dark. Hospitals throng with activity, servers fitz and spark and shut down without even a power-down of fans or coolant or warning lights. Everything is just gone. Stops without a warning or glance goodbye. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Imagine that the world does not recover. That for whatever reason, we can never reach such heights ever again. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Now imagine this event — not the same, but equivalent — on a world full to bursting and completely reliant on magic. A world that thought their power source was infinite, when it was not. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀When your role in society is gone; when the apocalypse and power-surge has come and left the world in tatters, what do you do? You are left to fend for yourself with nobody telling you what to do and no obligations save for that tomorrow you still breathe — with whatever weird tendrils of hyperspecialization you grew to have in society wriggling in the clean sea air like feelers on a beached octopus. You live, the sun never comes, the stars never wink in invitation. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀In truth, the Mages of Rela canon can be written about anything. But if you are wanting some inspiration: under a starless sky, think about what happens before and after fundamental change in the world; in other words, how people continue on after the end of days, and how the world was in the years coming up to it. Not the apocalypse itself, but what happens around it. The canon, in life, is about moving on from what you once knew and accepting the past in all its joys and faults. It is about looking towards the future and building a better tomorrow instead of endlessly trying to reconstruct the past, since we have the opportunity. It is about strife, it is about hope, it is about grief for that which is not dead, it is about becoming your own person rather than the cog you were designed to be for so very long. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Or, to put it simply: the Mages of Rela canon is about what it means to be alive.

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Timeline SU: Sun-Up. The Sun is alive.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀|⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀SD: Sun-Down. The Sun is dead. SU 1923: A graduation cycle occurs. Something Like a Storm Petrel — Stygian Blue ⠀⠀⠀⠀Or, where Rook and Co., M. Red, Jasper, and Jasmine attend graduation. The Devil in Purple Silk — Stygian Blue ⠀⠀⠀⠀Or, where a performance occurs and love is shared among the French. SU 1924-1929: Time passes quietly. No works yet. SU 1930-1933: A team at the college's star dome completes the Open Way. No works yet. SU 1934: The stars are going out. Of Oranges Like Sunset — Din-Bidor; Stygian Blue ⠀⠀⠀⠀Or, where a fisher finds a portal in the sea. SD 1936: The Sun dies. Door to Stranger Stars — Stygian Blue ⠀⠀⠀⠀Or, where M. Red has forgotten his name. He enters the Wanderers' Library through a Door. Living is Easy With Eyes Closed — Lzhoudidion ⠀⠀⠀⠀Or, where in another world, Michael peeks through a Door. SD 1937-1986: After the death of stars. Bloodfishing — Stygian Blue ⠀⠀⠀⠀Or, where Jasper speaks to the soul of the sea. SD 1987-∞: New beginnings? No works yet.

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Teams

Here is the beginning of knowledge.

Teams are composed of 2-4 second-year Mages. Teams should be balanced to have at least two different roles played across its members. A well-balanced team will have one of each role type. The role an individual plays is often, but not always, directly linked to what rune they are most proficient in. Teams are sometimes referred to by their sash patterns (e.g., "A team of three yellows and one red flew overhead," which means "A scouting team packing firepower and gravity magic flew overhead." Mages are beholden to wear a sash or other prominent piece of daily clothing which is dyed to the role they play in their team.

Teams exist to help mages 1) further their studies better than they would alone (think of it like a study group) and 2) to help especially second-cycle mages form groups which they will work with as a unit after they leave the college. A team of mages is far more effective and organized than a single mage alone (though there can be some exceptions).

Red

• Usually Eha (heat)
• Shock fighter. Provides direct damage.
• Responsible for equipment maintenance, asset acquisition, supply management.
• Engineers, cooks, survivalists
• Stereotype: Independent, impulsive, neurotic

Yellow

• Usually Gravis (gravity)
• Secondary fighter. Provides advantageous positions and environments.
• Responsible for team movement, team cohesion, mission planning. Keeps everyone together.
• Team leaders, spreadsheet managers, therapists
• Stereotype: Interdependent, logical, empathetic

Blue

• Usually Isc (location)
• Scouting, information gathering, cross-team team communications.
• Responsible for knowledge acquisition, world and culture navigation, charting, communication with other teams.
• Academics, artists, teachers
• Stereotype: Interdependent, impulsive, neurotic

Purple

• Usually Opa (tangibility)
• Medical services and team safety.
• Responsible for personnel recovery, team physical health, rune implantation, tattooing, team safety
• Doctors, security officers, psychiatrists
• Stereotype: Independent, logical, empathetic

People

Put your characters here, when they are ready! A template is provided below, should you want it.

• • _
  FAQ: "What should I keep in mind while writing Relan mage characters?"No rules here, only suggestions. If your character works already without this, then write away!

  "What should I keep in mind while writing Relan mage characters?"

  For their magic, keep it minimal.

  • Most one-cycle (see the diagram in the last tab) mages know how to do one broad thing with their sequences (e.g., an Eha mage might be able to transfer or transmute heat to something; an Opa mage might be able to generally change anything from a waveform and back; a Gravis mage might be able to change the amount of gravity affecting anything they write their sequences on; an Isc mage might be able to either fix or translate something to another place in space).
  • Most two-or-more-cycle mages know how to do one to two broad things and one specific thing. An Eha-major mage might be able to do region analysis alongside basic Isc to do dialysis on themselves to filter their blood and boost their endurance; an Opa-major mage might be able to selectively phase out a hostage while having enough Eha training to turn the building's basement to slag; a Gravis-major mage might be able to switch their direction of gravity on the fly while maintaining a shield of solid sunlight with Opa; an Isc-major might maintain rapid teleportation to anywhere they can see while also having enough ability with Gravis to collapse the last location they had teleported under enough gravity to turn the air to liquid.
  • Consider whether they are a single-cycle or two-cycle graduate (whether they are beholden to the college or not when they graduate, and how long they spend at the college).
  • Think of what their goal was for when they joined the college. If they were born on Rela, the college is one of the best ways to get off-world; if they came to Rela, the character likely did it through a student exchange program. Otherwise, they joined on their own volition (the most interesting kind, in a way).
  • I've been going along the same reasons people join the military — get out of their living situation; looking for comradery or discipline; looking for a feeling of power. Realize that your characters have undergone a lot on their own and together, and a large part of college culture is keeping vulnerability secret from others — this is how you survive, by putting on a brave face while dying inside. Some may be more healthy than others or have pre-innoculation against this conditioning (esp. outsiders, the third category I mentioned who join the college on their own volition).
  • Overall, pick one complicated thing that they can do and one broad thing that they can do. Less is more, and the applicability of the complicated thing to the situations they put themselves into shows their expertise. Their use of magic to solve problems shouldn't be viewed by the readers as an unexpected ass-pull; it should be, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense that they can do that."

• • _
  Suggested character templateThis template, of course, is open to as much modification as you need.

  Character Name

  • AKA: Any other names this character goes by, and in which works this occurs
  • Pronouns: Pronouns
  • Appears in: Works this character is present in, whether they are named or not.
  • Basic personality: List whatever you can. Tropes and trope subversions are extremely welcome here.
  • Goals and Motivators:
    • SU: How this character would be viewed overall by others in the pre-star-death era. First impressions — motivations that would be seen from this character when placed in a scene. "this character is self-sabotaging; they do not think they are worthy of love. they want someone to give them love without having to work for it themselves" would be excellent here. Anything that will help another writer portray your character.
    • SD: If they have changed significantly after the death of the sun, describe new characterization here.
  • Life status: Alive/Dead/Resurrected/Other — last location: Location
  • Team: (Red/Yellow/Blue/Purple — pick which team role this character aligns with.)
  • Assignment: (team leader name)'s team
  • Rune specializations (in order of knowledge):
    • Rune they know deeply
      • How they use it
    • Rune they know lightly
      • How they use it
  • Physical appearance: Bio-augments, clothing, notable physiology, anything you find worth noting.
  • Relationships: Good and bad attachments existing between them and others.
  • Extra: Additional info developed in works with this character which is important to know for others who may wish to write them.

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Spoiler Warning! History is critical for writing characters who have existed before, and thus this section has full spoilers for Mages of Rela works the characters exist in. It is suggested that you check which works a character appears in before reading about them.

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Jasper

• AKA: "M. Red" (Bloodfishing), Jasper (Something Like a Storm Petrel)
• Pronouns: She/her
• Appears in: Something Like a Storm Petrel, Bloodfishing
• Basic personality: Betrayer — does what she believes is necessary. Needs to feel superior (in knowledge, position, or emotion) in every conversation. Enjoys being taken care of, but hates being incompetent or vulnerable in front of others.
• Goals and Motivators
  • SU: Jasper almost murdered Corcus in an effort to leave Rela through a scholarship program off-world. She seeks support and validation for her decisions.
  • SD: Jasper thinks they love Corcus and are trying to find him. They have M. Red’s coat.
• Life status: Alive — last location: the shores of Styx
• Team: Red
• Assignment: Solo
• Rune specializations (in order of knowledge):
  • Eha
    • Only the barest amount — enough to pass thermal recognition exam
    • Heating material
  • Opa
    • Intangibility / particles-to-waves-and-back
    • Transferred to this rune after aversion to heat developed. Knows enough to hide a person and dissolve walls without the component parts getting messy.
• Physical appearance: Sash is deep crimson aerial-quality silk. Forearms are all sorts of messed up with burn tissue, gridlike white star injection patterns, and missing hunks of flesh.
• Relationships: Attempted murderer of Corcus during off-world performance rehearsal.
• Extra: Failed winged — still has the sockets. Would have been part of Yellow team, but crashed into a solid air wall with Gravis during second year, leading to a phobia of shifting gravity. Due to the unprecedented length of her hospital stay, Jasper was replaced by Jasmine in M. Red's team despite Jasmine being a first-year mage. Jasper's crushed collarbone is what led to a failure of the wing socket implants. Jasper's name is an unfortunate accident — M. Red's memory storage runes are in his coat, and though the physical grid of the brain does not match Jasper’s, the name was able to penetrate Jasper’s mind in Bloodfishing. Jasper is assimilating M. Red’s memories, though they are wildly imperfect due to a lack of matchup between their brains.

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M. Red

• AKA: M. Red (Door to Stranger Stars)
• Pronouns: He/him
• Appears in: Something Like a Storm Petrel, Door to Stranger Stars
• Basic personality: Brilliant — genius, even. An inventor of groundbreaking rune theorems, but fears not being enough due to never meeting the expectations of his parents. Parental. Blunt to the point of being insulting, but uses affectionate physical gestures. Language goes unchanged towards everyone, but his physical actions show how he really feels.
• Goals and Motivators:
  • SU: M. Red is doing risk management for Corcus. Attention devoted to keeping team secure and his beloved psychologically stable until graduation and then they can sort things out. Stressed, depressed, and unfulfilled from his relationship with Corcus, though there are enough sweet spots to keep him going, but hopes that it will get better after they graduate.
  • SD: M. Red is still alive, but has lost some of his memories from being separated from his coat. Deciding who he is going to be — specifically, whether he will fall into the old shoes he filled before for people who knew him or become his own person.
• Life status: Alive — last location: WL
• Team: Yellow
• Assignment: M. Red's team
• Rune specializations (in order of knowledge):
  • Gravis
    • Personal weight change
    • Personal gravity orientation / falling direction change
    • Used in combo with wing-powered flight to spectacular effect
  • Isc
    • For personal memory storage. Stitches memories he wants to keep more permanent into his blue Gravis coat. Acquired bird as part of Isc training in first year, stopped using it in favour of his coat. Also keeps personal physical actions stored in coat memory — can autopilot self through this. Favours autopilot over memory skipping.
• Physical appearance: Winged: albatross-like. Brown with darker brown primaries, creamy spotted undersides, striped secondaries. Enjoys fancy clothing — wears a swallowtail victorian suit on occasion. Blue Gravis coat. Well-muscled — uses Gravis and wings in combination for otherworldly acrobatic flight.
• Relationships: Lover of Corcus.
• Extra: Second-cycle mage. First rune Isc, second rune Gravis. Taught rune theory early by researcher parents, which led to him inventing memory alteration via Isc during his first cycle in the college. Circumstantial leader of team. In his last year at the college, he lost access to his memories of the program. Was disqualified and sent to do mail work after examination proved memories of the college were inaccessible. Coat with his memories was placed in long-term storage at the college, and later stolen by Jasper in unknowing familiarity.

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Corcus

• AKA: Rook and Co.¹
• Pronouns: He/him
• Appears in: Something Like a Storm Petrel
• Basic personality: Always on the verge of a breakdown. Caught in the past. Highly distractible, weaving in and out of the present. Doesn’t value his own life — gets into risky situations with no consideration for his safety. Doesn’t explicitly seek to die, but doesn’t make moves to avoid it either. Wants the death to come to him — he is the type who would lie back and take it if a murderer appeared over him in the night with a knife. Thinks he’s willing to do anything for his team, but not really — running like this all the time drives him to exhaustion. Support team consists of Rook and M. Red.
• Goals and Motivations:
  • SU: Corcus loves M. Red but fears rejection from being not enough; simultaneously wishes for interdependence and independence
  • SD: Not yet written.
• Life status: Alive — last location: Rela
• Team: Blue
• Assignment: M. Red's team
• Rune specializations (in order of knowledge):
  • Isc (transfer of matter between two locations);
    • Specialization: Sodium-potassium ion gates in the CNS, particularly the PFC and hippocampus
    • Used personally for keeping awake, storage of episodic memories in a separate false neural network, and extension of senses — up to entire perception of self and body — into another’s mind, provided the correct neural structures on the subject’s side are in place.
    • Used to “body swap” with Rook. Delicate: misalignment or too much time spent out of sync will result in imperfect copy.
    • Used to assist team in functioning (wakefulness, time perception).
    • Used with Rook to swap senses and extend Rook's PFC activity, allowing the bird to be capable of language, reasoning, and logic. Mirrored off Corcus’s PFC.
    • Isc energy source is personal body heat, due to low energy requirements. Paradoxical heat excess occurs when swapping with Rook, due to differing energy requirements in their neural architecture. Large transfers can result in frost forming on Corcus's primaries.
  • Gravis
    • Used personally for reducing body weight and weight of carried objects. Later learned further in memory and mourning of M. Red.
    • Eha energy source is pulled from starpower and later pulled from the nearest high-density object (donating excess mass to that)
    • Most dangerous rune to disrupt, as it is constantly active and necessary for normal physiological function.
  • Physical appearance: Winged (black and green iridescent, crow-shaped). Either shirtless or with a special long shirt with ties in the back under the wings.
• Relationships: Rook’s handler. Lover of M. Red. Almost murdered by Jasper. Doesn’t like Jasmine to be near him anymore after a breakup from an argument after she tried to assess his self-worth problems. M. Red doesn’t do that, which Corcus appreciates greatly, but this puts strain on their relationship.
• Extra: Second-year mage. First rune Gravis, second rune Isc. Was taught Isc in secret during his first cycle at the college by M. Red, resulting in incredible proficiency in Isc during his second cycle. Offered placement at the French Academy of Library-Orphaned Youth in the practicum show.

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Jasmine

• AKA: Jasmine
• Pronouns: She/her
• Appears in: Something Like a Storm Petrel
• Basic personality: Protective and quiet type — hesitant, cautious. Likes someone else to have authority and will follow them anywhere, but if given the opportunity to lead will go on the safest path, even if it would not lead to great rewards. Likes planning things out in advance, often repeats past actions or words when she thinks they will work again. Wildly anxious. Hates spontaneity. Strong sense of justice — if she finds that she has wronged someone, will go far to make it right again, even if it would be against societal norms to do so (e.g., helping the enemy).
• Goals and Motivations
  • SU: Anxious, seeking support. Jasper is gone, so she seeks support from Corcus, though Corcus is uncomfortable with this due to his prior relationship with Jasmine.
  • SD: Not yet written.
• Life status: Alive
• Team: Purple
• Assignment: M. Red's team
• Rune specializations (in order of knowledge):
  • Opa
    • Specialization: Filtering for specific molecules, breaking molecular bonds
    • Cannot break strong bonds without burning self alive from the amount of energy being transferred.
    • Temporarily making parts of a human body intangible (particles to waves) so she can do medical procedures without needing an incision
    • Blocks of solid air. These grow rapidly weaker the farther they are from the source and drain tremendous amounts of energy. Usually for shields. Can be used for stairs or platforms, but not for very long. Can also be made sharp as spikes or blades, but are immobile when so — needs to have the enemy walk into them.
    • Physical appearance: Braided lilac sash around her waist.
    • Relationships: Enemies-to-friends with Corcus. Occasional caretaker of Rook. Former lover of Corcus.
• Extra: Transferred to fill the gap in M. Red's team after Jasper broke her collarbone and was deemed unfit for wing implants. Despite being a first-year with only the barest intentions of staying for another academic cycle, she has been pushed to second-year schedule and is suffering. Was solidified as the choice for M. Red's team after she went out of her way to undo the damage to Rook and Co. during a poison rain hazing.²

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Michael

• AKA: Michael
• Pronouns: He/him
• Appears in: Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed
• Basic personality: Internally isolated mentally to a degree that even he finds highly unnatural, which deeply frightens him. Beyond the bare minimum required for a working relationship, (small talk, etc) he doesn’t engage without being pressed to. Dragged himself through high school, college and into a niche programming job for a firm in Santa Rosa, California.
• Goals and Motivators:
  • • SU: Not yet written.
    • SD: He finds himself sick. The Door and visions of the Pacific beyond the hills—stirred and bent lengthwise by a fever—warps, beckons him to follow.
• Life status: Alive— last location: On the coast of Northern California. Plunging headfirst into the Pacific in search of the Door while the skies roil overhead.
• Team: N/A
• Assignment: N/A
• Rune specializations (in order of knowledge): N/A
• Physical appearance: Scruffy hair a bit past his ears around a slightly acne-callused face. Bundled up in an old vinyl poncho over a sweater and frayed thrift-store necktie.
• Relationships: Not yet written.
• Extra: Michael is from Earth, and is essentially an outsider who–while being physically and culturally detached from Rela—would be haunted by the many aftershocks produced in the wake of SD, symptoms which he could not fully articulate or suppress. After one particularly disorienting vision, he calls in sick to work and makes a dash for the Pacific in his pickup truck.

FAQ; Or, Writing for the Canon

If you develop something in your story that is important to share with others, you are encouraged to put it here (if it does not fit elsewhere).

• • _
  The CollegeThe College

  
  

  "Why do people join the college?"

  • If they were born on Rela, the college is one of the best ways to get off-world. If you do not want to be tending to a planet for the rest of your life or doing research or teaching at the college — i.e., if you want to engineer, fly planes, photograph, or just simply get away from your home — then the college gives you the means to do so.
  • I think about "why would anyone sign on for the full commitment" (meaning two-cycle mages who are then essentially property of the college when they are done) in the same theme as "why would anyone join the US military." Some people do it for financial purposes (you get education, food, housing, friends, and structure all in one go!), some people do it to rebel, some people do it to get away from their families or living situation…
    • "Life feels so predictable. I wake, I eat, I work, I eat, I sleep. Repeat forever. I felt like I was dying; every day I watched my gravestone grow closer. I don't make good decisions with my life, and I wanted something exciting. I wanted something new each day. Not to mention the benefits — if I get injured beyond recovery, I get to come back home and enjoy a life of leisure. Maybe teaching at the college, even. I wouldn't have to worry about food, housing, exercise routines even. The college would take care of me. It would do me so much good."
  • Mages who explicitly seek the two-cycle path may also be drawn to the idea of service or honour. There is a decent amount of prestige in becoming a Mage of Rela, and you get to become "something" rather than "someone," an idea which appeals especially to those who feel they lack their own identity (e.g., teenagers). There are also those who enter the two-cycle program because it is what their families did, or because their friends are doing it and they want to join them.

  "What is the name of the college?"

  • TBD. It can be called the college, the academy… Loosely translated from the local language, it is called "The Theatre of Trees Like Mountains and Lilac Sea."

  "What is the college like, campus-wise?"

  • The following are the buildings named so far in works:
    • An astronomy tower, AKA the south tower. Taller than the trees — the sequoia giants of the forest the school is located in.
    • A cathedral, old-style, huge, stained glass windows blacked out with paint and construction paper. Has two sections. Inside has been renovated with wood and iron fittings, clearing the space with ropes and giant logs to make an aerial obstacle course for Gravis mages and second-cycle mages fitted with wings.
    • The hospital. A beautiful old lodge with pretty furnishings and advanced medical technology side-by-side. Has lovely visual and olfactory gardens (hyacinths, lavender, lilacs). The whole place is built on the philosophy that patient care is best done in a place where both the patients and staff are experiencing a soothing environment — built on the philosophy that patients will get better faster if they are less stressed.
    • The greenhouse & aquarium: The fish swim in the lower levels through the aquacultured plants, and their waste serves to fertilize the upper-story plants which, when the water trickles through them and back down, enrich and oxygenate the plants and fish (there are at least three large koi which nibble any dangling fingers) of the ponds below. All of this beneath a massive quartz and rapid-fossilized wood dome of many colours like cathedral windows. One of the only "high-tech"-looking buildings on the campus.
    • The "village": A series of student-run shops just down the cliffside from the Academy buildings and away from the sea. There is an open square of mud bricks and paving stones worn smooth by generations of bare feet and scratched with festival sequences renewed every four years for graduation parties. There is a wet market, though it has mostly seacatch and poultry in the trading off-season. The night market occurs in summer, when it is too hot to stay outdoors long for any students required to wear robes rather than doffing to the base layer and going shirtless (i.e., gravis students and those of religious affiliation). Contains:
      • Bakeries
      • General grocery stores (mostly imports)
      • Spice shop
      • Tailor
      • Barber shops
      • Art spaces (not shops, strictly, but places you can exist in to do your thing — think like a community center)
    • The bookshop resides next to the pond, and these are both just outside the village and still downhill of the Academy proper but up one level of terrain. Mind you, connecting the academy and pond and village is a winding staircase, so perhaps the placement of a resting spot is best. The pond is faintly brackish from the ocean spray and has lilies, cattails, and other imported plants which shouldn't strictly be in the biome this is in. It is kept largely wild, though, and the pond is big and deep enough to retain its own ecosystem and be free of massive algae blooms that it is safe for swimming.
    • The embassyhouse is nestled in the buildings of the academy proper. It is short, squat, and blistered with innocuous spikes on the top and sides so it is harder for students to listen in on what goes on inside. A faint smell of petrichor lingers around the door, and inside the smell is overwhelming.
    • Other, less-described buildings:
      • Administrative building, with a small set of student holding cells in the upper floors
        • • Study/practice halls, AKA gymnasiums. Most of them are in the middle of the woods with many warding sequences to prevent a fire or massive destruction should something go wrong, which it often does.
      • Teaching buildings, which are tall and grand and gothic and made of stone, and which contain large lecture halls interspersed with wall-to-wall bookshelved hallways thrown with reading nooks and study spaces — these double as the libraries, with how much bookshelf-space there is, and these labyrinths exist everywhere in the teaching buildings save for the main hallways (which go both up and sideways, thanks to Gravis). Study spaces, if tall, are often doubled on the ceiling to conserve space, and have mazes of their own on top. You will be spending most of your life here, so you will learn these mazes fairly quickly. Watch out for sudden drops in temperature, because it means someone is probably practicing (or is an exchange student who prefers the cold over muggy heat).
      • The orchard, where students can bring fruit-bearing or edible plants from home and attempt to grow them in a controlled setting on Rela (temperature control with Eha is practically required, as is moisture control with Isc and lighting settings with Opa)
      • Residence halls, which look like the teaching buildings but with a honeycomb structure of windows so everyone gets a balcony yet also gets a bit of privacy. Not much, though, as residence rooms are doubled on the ceilings to save space.
      • Theatre, also in the main academy building complex
      • Academy square, where there are shade-bearing trees and crosshatched brick ground with grasses growing up between those bricks. A largely open space where events and travelling food vendors from the village — often students on their off day, and other times researchers from outside the academy there on a visitor's visa here for reasons of their own — set up temporary shops and sell wares. Sometimes trinkets are sold here too, and in the new student seasons the shops predominantly sell comforts of home from the larger interplanetary student demographics and coloured scarves for students who want a way to preemptively call themselves by their rune specialization.
  • The college is located on the side of an ocean-side cliff and within a forest of sequoia giants. The college borders the Arwally Sea, a deep cold ocean.
  • The buildings are painted in oilpaints that come off over years of rain.
  • The campus is BIG.

  "How does the college system work?"

  

  "Why do some mages have bird wings?"

  ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ "I still prefer our 'scalpel' organic flight to the 'hammer' of violent deafening machines."
  ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ - Gravis-Opa Mage of Rela, second cycle

  • Some second-cycle mages undergo bio-augmentation to supplement where runes cannot. Gravis is a popular rune among those who do not wish to take on the pain, body dysphoria, and lifelong medication regimen associated with augmentation. Among those with augmentation, Isc is a popular rune, as it allows them to transfer medications directly into the bloodstream continuously from concentrated materials, essentially rendering that hindrance moot.
  • Mages take on augmentations to better fit their off-world placement requirements. Wings are the most common — this is because a common first placement for just-graduated second cycle mages is a large planet-shell growing from the inside inhabited by intelligent birds. Bioaugmentation is the college's way to make their students more compatible for student exchange and placement in cases where the student cannot supplement with runes.
    • Some mages take on augmentations other than wings (e.g., gills, fins), but must travel off-world to receive these surgeries as the college is ill-equipped to handle these.
    • All augmentations are biological. The reason for this is twofold: there is a high culture focused on the body among mages of the college, with physical prowess being somewhat revered in the college due to the way rune implantation slowly abstracts the being and so an old, powerful mage with a majestic body is rare and frightening indeed (where are their runes? also, this means that they are still limber and flexible, unlike many second-cycle mages); and because runes do not work when drawn on or implanted in anything not attached to the body which is currently or formerly supplied by blood, meaning that the less body tissue a mage has the less power they physically are capable of keeping. The more skin the better — this is yet another reason why wings are smiled upon, as the sheer musculature required in the back and chest for the wings to work results in an inevitable stretching of the skin and general addition to blood-supplied body mass, which means that there is more real estate for runes to be implanted.
      • Machines in general are faintly disliked. Rela is a conservation planet, and this means that factories and large machining shops are foreign to most mages. Rela is quiet-loud, full of the sound of animals and wind and thunder and the waves crashing on the shore of the cliff that the west-side college overlooks, and mages are unfamiliar with the buzzing and snapping and shearing sounds that come with anything large and metal. Small metal things (scissors, swords…) are of course known, but these are known from being imported from other worlds so as not to have need of fracking or large-scale mining. Anything larger, mages fear, would require specialized maintenance (think of what planes need after every flight, for instance!) and the college is ill-equipped to handle that maintenance. Biological things, therefore, are far more able to be serviced by the user. If the user cannot maintain it themselves or would have to go to a special place to fix themselves, they would not want this. Thus, biological augmentations; or, in short, Relan Mages would hate iPhones.
  • Some mages, like M. Red, apply for bio-augmentation before assigning themselves to their second rune. In rare cases, this results in a second rune Gravis mage with wings. In the case of M. Red, he took this in stride and is now one of the most talented fliers in the SU era from using both gravity and airpower towards acrobatic, unpredictable flight.
  • In short, bio-augmentation is a way for mages to gain extra abilities without learning a third rune for years on end, and it's a way for mages to expand their potential placements for after they graduate. It's also a small part of the culture now, for wings in particular — there used to be (and still is) a strong student exchange between the planet-shell of birds and Rela; in early years of student exchange, mages started augmentation with wings to give respect and familiarity to the birds they worked alongside.

  "What's the anatomy of the bird wings?"

  • Large, attached to the shoulderblades (approximately), and fully feathered. Essentially sized-up wings in complete form. You could not hide these under a shirt — they are massive, with 18 foot wingspans being common and in the low range.

• • _
  The WorldThe World

  
  

  "What is a conservation planet?"

  • A conservation planet is a planet found in a thought-to-be-nominal universe and orbit which can sustain life. The planet is then given the starts of plants, animals, and bacteria — essentially, rapidly terraformed with all the flora and fauna of its inhabitants' origin planet. It is a sanctuary and safekeeping device — a living time capsule, or a way for a planet threatened with imminent destruction to have a second shot at flourishing.
  • Conservation planets are funded projects. Rela is one of them. As they are funded projects, they are staffed by caretakers who simultaneously tend to the growing ecosystems (at first with high presence, then with diminishing presence in the world until, in some cases, they leave entirely) and research the species interactions they see. Conservation planets are here to keep the animals and the plants and the insects and the superfunguses of other worlds from going fully extinct. In the case of Rela, the planet is stocked with some Earth creatures from across history interspersed with similar planets' flora. It gains funding through the research it outputs, but when magic was discovered to exist in the universe Rela is in, trained mages and their theorems became the primary export of Rela.
  • From the FAQ tab: "Factories and large machining shops are foreign to most mages. Rela is quiet-loud, full of the sound of animals and wind and thunder and the waves crashing on the shore of the cliff that the west-side college overlooks, and mages are unfamiliar with the buzzing and snapping and shearing sounds that come with anything large and metal. Small metal things (scissors, swords…) are of course known, but these are known from being imported from other worlds so as not to have need of fracking or large-scale mining. "

  "What biomes exist on Rela, and what near the college?"

  • All that you would see on Earth, really! But more cliffs and forests, and so many swamps and low-lying floodplains it's unbelievable. This is a wilderness — a young one, by Earth standards, but done with the best motives to leave it pristine after it is made. The origins of Rela as a young planet, life-wise, are visible though: its mountains are jagged with little soil, its rivers cut oh so shallowly into the ground, its trees need to work to break the sharp ground-basalt earth.
  • For the setting of the college, think between wet and tropical (specifically for foliage. Think Vietnam — fields, low-lying water, fish, fruit, muggy heat in summer) and wet and Pacific Northwest (specifically for the landscape. Think jagged peaks, mountains, valleys, rainy weather and constant clouds, rocky beaches and crabs and salmon-passive glutted sharks.)

  "What is the Open Way?"

  • Previously, anyone wishing to go off-world, including for a student exchange, had to track down a known Way and make their way to their destination with high effort and high losses. With the Open Way, they do not. The Open Way theorem forces all the Ways in Rela's universe to only generate in a specific spot and switch destinations at the user's will. As a consequence, because Ways are forced to generate so often and in one place for so long, in this time it is extremely rare for a functioning Way to occur (and even rarer for people to know how to use it — Knocks are demoted to being knowledge obsolete). Starpower — the heat of distant stars — is used to run the Open Way.
  • The mechanisms behind the Open Way are what made the planet of Rela alive. The planet is the Current. To run the Open Way, the planet was given an Isc neural framework — the heatlines in the ocean are its Eha heatsinks and the air-cables spanning islands are its braided Isc sequences, hidden in plain sight. The planet did not "wake" and should never have woken, but here we are. Random squiggles of activity, an input-output of sensation, a library effort to dump mythology into the core (because at its heart, Rela started as a conservation planet — here to keep the animals and the plants and the insects and the superfunguses of other worlds going extinct from ever truly being gone) and after its power draw was no longer supported from starpower, the broken mythology and fragmented recall of nothing at all gave way to Rela's ability to think. With the stars out, the Open Way is finished and dead, but its products and side-inventions are not. Here we have a quietly living planet, able to manipulate the ocean currents (even the Current, to send some wayward mage into a Way at the bottom of the sea in an effort to save them, even as they knew it was wrong). The future is full of possibility. Isc graduates of the mind specialty may recognize what has been done.

  "How does off-world travel work on Rela?"

  • This depends on the time period you are looking at! In the Sun-Up era (SU), it was via sporadic waygates / Ways which were relatively plentiful, albeit requiring Knocks and not always existing when you wanted them to. In the last five years of SU, off-world travel was through something called an "Open Way," a programmable and fixed-position waygate. In the Sun-Down (SD) era, it was through Doors (broken ways requiring no Knock which could go anywhere and anywhen).

  "Does conventional space travel exist in the setting?"

  • Not on Rela or in the area of space around it. However, mages planned for placement in places with spacecraft and space travel (largely second-years with at least some Isc and Gravis background) are given much training and preparation for the setting — this is done in a "nearby" universe with plentiful Ways to Rela. If mages are not specially trained, they will not know what a spacecraft is and the idea of using rockets to blast into the stars will be a novel concept to them. Some mages know very little of technology at all, if their placements do not demand it — an example of this is Corcus, who only knows what security cameras are from textbooks stored in Rook.

  "Why are there few to no electronics on Rela?"

  • Rela's Sun experiences frequent solar flares. Additionally, the planet of Rela has very weak magnetic shielding from solar radiation. Chip-based electronics near-uniformly break on Rela.

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The Runes

If this is your first time, it is recommended to read the logistics first.

• • _
  The LogisticsThe Logistics

  
  

  Quick 'n' Dirty: How to Think About Relan Magic

  • Think about implants. Sliding pieces of metal and plastic under the skin and closing it up. Skin unlaced like a corset and slipping down inside. The Powder Mage series by Brian McClellan has a great example with five-pointed gold alloy stars being put inside magic users' bodies to block mages' power, as they cannot function with gold in their blood. Relan mages work the opposite way with more added in — instead of an implant diluting magic.
  • Implants and tattoos and on-skin drawings make the magic. The physical form and structure of the lines, dots, circles, symbols and so on make the magic happen. And consider implants, and consider tattoos. And realize how much damage this would do to a mage with ten or twenty years of experience in dirty battlefield magic — the number of scars, patchwork tattoos, single scraps of clean skin left in case they need to Sharpie on a sequence in order to blow up a tank twenty miles away. Wrapping silver threads around the collarbones, splitting the skin there and flesh dividing because it is not meant to be cut that way, knotted scars and running fingers over the tissue-thin skin and feeling the grooves rasp against your insides when you run. Magic is painful. Magic is scary. Eha, the base rune upon which all other heat sequences function, needs a heat sink to function, often placed on the belt of the mage who uses it. Take away the heat sink, and the mage will be cooked alive from the physical coils and plates of the rune, straight from the inside. Gravis, the base rune for gravity, lurches the mage from the origin of the sequence, meaning that a mage must fasten their gravity runes to a full-body armour — an exoskeleton, a coat, or a hybrid of the two termed a Gravis coat — to not be pulled apart like chicken between two starving mutts in an alley. In short: Relan magic is body horror. Use it for any length of time and you will become not yourself.

  Background on Relan Magic

  Definitions

  • Runes: The building blocks of magic. Physical shapes — identifiable unique forms.
  • Modifiers: Lines, arcs, circles, weaves, zig-zags. Secondary runes whose only purpose is to modify the expression of another rune.
  • Sequences: A group of runes and modifiers with an unfixed power source and destination. Physically placed on something. Versatile, but requires a trained Mage to use. Think of it like a flamethrower: it has the parts, but needs fuel and someone to pull the trigger.
  • Theorems: Several sequences fixed to a set power source and location with one specific application in mind. Usually does not require Mage intervention to function — i.e., can be given to non-Mages and it will still function.
  • "Fixed" magic: A sequence set to an energy source and/or destination. Synonymous with "keyed" or "keying".
  • "Keying" magic: Setting a sequence to an energy source and/or destination.
  • "Sparking": Setting a sequence or theorem to a power source and activating it.

  How does Relan magic work?

  • Relan magic works by putting physical shapes down with intent and shunting willpower and knowledge of how runes work to change physics. Relan magic has no verbal components and works like computer code. If someone wanted to make an apple on a table very hot, they would have to use, at the very least, a temporal rune with modifiers to describe when it was, a spacial rune with modifiers to describe where it is in reference to a fixed point in space, a heat rune with modifiers to describe the original heat of the apple and how hot it was to become relative to that original heat, a sapping rune to describe from where the heat would come, and safeguarding modifiers to ensure that the heat sap was not endless and to stop functioning if the apple got too hot. Treat the magic as close as you can to physical code that works on physics instead of on digital stuff and you'll be set.
  • Relan magic requires touching the physical sequence with a part of the mage's body for the mage to be able to access and spark it. Feather and hair touch count, but are difficult (take longer to fix in the mind for use). This is the large reason why mages rely so heavily on biological augmentation — the more flesh you take away, the less surface area there is to use magic with.

  "Who can do magic?"

  • Anyone born on Rela can do Relan magic. This is not limited to people with Relan-born parents. If one is not born on Rela, they can still learn the magic, but their first sequences will take longer to learn — specifically, as long as it takes for their brain to adapt to working like it was born around magic. After they spark their first sequence, though, they have the same earning rate as a Relan child of their age. Learning it when you are past 30 takes even longer, like learning language.
  • All people on Rela are magic users — however, like language, if they are not taught magic they will not be able to use it, and the level of proficiency varies wildly even within those skilled or born into in its use. Think high prose versus texting, but even more. Magic proficiency and ability depending on what type(s) of magic they were schooled in, how skilled they are in adapting their runes to the current world they are in (this turns into: how much firepower they are capable of packing), and how proficient they are with their magic in the first place.

  Conventions of Magic

  • Most mages have at least one fixed light-producing sequence tattooed or implanted somewhere on their body that runs on body heat. This is one of the first things a Relan child will be taught how to create — think of it as the "Hello, World!" of magic. Seen as a mark of pride for apprentice Mages to get implanted, and almost always differs in exact technique of sequence between users (some will have it written elegantly and simply, others will have a messy, convoluted scrawl all the way up their arm, etc).
  • Implanted vs tattooed magic. This reasoning is simple: Tattoos fade, but are modifiable after they are made (i.e., drawing on top of it). The main three ways for a Mage to make magic stable and portable on their body are by drawing it on their skin (with a marker), tattooing it on, or implanting it. Tattoos can take less fine detail before they get too small and start smudging (like real tattoos — look up 'fine line tattoo aging'!) but are less invasive to get than implants and can take modification after they are done. Implants are by far the most stable and can take damage to the skin + can hold far more detail (think: can be smaller and therefore an individual can hold more sequences ready on their body) but require surgery to get and are liable to all the problems that real-life implants have, including infections, rejection, movement, and discomfort, plus cannot be modified after they are implanted.
    • You will often see mages with unfixed tattoo or implant sequences use pen ink to fix their sequences to the nearest power source on the fly.
  • The purpose of unfixed sequence tattoos: Relan magic doesn't work off-world because it can't "see" stars in other universes, so mages who go off-world a lot keep unfixed tattoos, implants, etc of their most-used sequences on their bodies. When not on Rela, this magic runs on whatever the mage has keyed it to, the most common being the mage's own body heat or chemical batteries carried in the pocket. For this reason of limited power supply, unless their magic requires less power in the first place (e.g., some Isc sequences), Mages are far less effective off-world unless they key their magic to that specific universe (i.e., they start sapping from stars), which is difficult to do if that universe's occupants do not know where the stars are relative to the rest of everything.

  Energy Requirements

  • Relan magic takes a consistent supply of energy to run. Distance does not affect energy draw, but specificity vs generalizeability of the sequence does — a sequence specifically built to heat apples will take less power to run than a sequence that can heat anything.
  • The biggest magic runs on starpower — the literal heat and energy of the stars. When the universal zero point was located through some disgustingly fancy and glorious mathematics mixed with magic, it was possible to adjust for the speed at which any star was fleeing that zero point and draw consistent power from it. There exists an underlying assumption in college mages that so long as their own closest star (the sun) is not sapped from, there are no consequences for snuffing out stars for power. Plus, stars are so huge that it would take them billions upon billions upon billions of years to sap them all. With some rare exceptions, usually of first-year mages being placed in second-year teams, only second-year mages are linked to starpower, and usually only of those planned to return to Rela later.
  • Incomplete sliding scale from highest to lowest average power draw, including some specializations:
    • Eha (heat-based region analysis), Eha (firepower), Opa (phase shift), Gravis (gravity direction change), Opa (individual bond breakage), Isc (teleport) Gravis (gravity amount change), Eha (heat transfer), Eha-Opa (light production)

• • _
  The RunesThe Runes

  
  

  Eha: Heat

  • Use 1: Changing matter excitement in a material — making stuff hot or cold by transferring heat
    • Make stuff hotter or colder by moving heat from one place to another. Requires exact example, such as a precise mental image of a specific time and place, of the amount of heat that will be changed in a given object. Current method for doing this reliably on-the-go is giving Eha mages memophenidates — drugs that make it impossible to forget, cementing every single aspect of a specific event into recall — and inserting burning needles of exact temperatures into the mage’s body alongside readouts of their temperature. This is called the thermal signatures recognition exam. While cruel, it is exceedingly effective, only needing to be done once for each temperature series, and has an additional effect of teaching Eha mages the particular effects that heat has on the body.
  • Use 2: Transmuting energy type (mirrored in Opa)
    • Thermal, radiant, kinetic, sound, electrical…
    • This is ULTRA STUPID HARD and has not been worked out yet — the theory exists, though.
    • Current work by mages is just in heat to luminosity and back again. Often classified as Opa.
  • Use 3: Venting excess energy
    • Making heat or light from excess energy is one of the easiest sequences to do — this is so often taught as a first sequence that mages will rarely count it as an Eha competency, instead thinking of it as a basic and necessary skill for how often energy venting is required for other rune usage (it’s not, but it makes sequences less complicated)
    • Main use besides energy venting is to make light from body heat. This is often the very first sequence a mage will learn to make.
  • Use 4: Region analysis
    • Briefly and excellently storing tons and tons of tabulated thermal and pressure data in their fingertips, memorizing it in table form, in order to analyze their environment
    • Requires heavy-dose memophenidates or a mind-paired memory-typed Isc graduate on standby, plus at least half a year’s worth of training, but well worth it. Goes below ground level, too, and can make a 3D mental map of the land. Does take time to happen, but the more experienced the graduate the faster it can happen. Happens as quickly as they can turn to the next heat point + analyze the heat and pressure level of what they are sharing.

  Isc: Matter transfer

  • Use 1: Body supplementation
    • Most common use of this rune — easy to learn and hard to mess up. Around half of all mages know how to do this, even if they don’t specialize in Isc.
    • Adding or subtracting matter to an individual, such as adrenaline or memophenidates. If adding, requires an external raw supply of these chemicals, but a little goes a long way in the body. Requires a near-flawless knowledge of the target in question, including anchor points, lest the matter be placed or taken from somewhere it shouldn’t go — team members of those specializing in supplementation often have anchor point implants in their bodies for easy access. If adding to oneself, it’s easy to target visible veins and arteries.
      • Anchor point = a physical object easily translated to a unique concept, such as “the five-pointed gold alloy star rimed in squares like salt crystals embroidered in copper thread,” which acts as a reference point for a sequence. If not in the room, two anchor points minimum for triangulation of placement, such as for teleports
  • Use 2: Teleportation
    • Transfer something from one place to another. If going far (not making it relative to the user), this requires distinct anchor points, a flawless map of the world, adjustment for the speed of the planet through space, and full knowledge of the object in question including boundaries of what should or should not be transferred — think like an ingredients list of whatever is being moved. Simply put, the less matter being moved the easier this is.
      • Not discussed: you also gotta name all the ingredients in a person's poo or it won't transfer with them and when they are gone there will be poo on the floor and some disturbingly empty colons
        • Not to mention gut bacteria
  • Use 2.5: Remote viewing
    • Seeing Using teleporting in a specific space to teleport only lightwaves from another place, allowing for an approximate view of that place. More advanced users of this technique can concentrate the light into their eyeball, then take the reflected light from their cells after it bounces off and return it to the original location with minimal change in lux.
  • Use 3: Neuron signalling
    • Sodium-ion gate manipulation. Super theoretical, cutting-edge and not supposed to be known that it could exist — hasn't been published yet. But M. Red has loose lips around those he adores. Essentially creating a tiny “living” neuron-like webbing mirroring one’s own neural tissue through runes and having always-on sequences which send some signals at certain axons routed through the extra brain matter to interact with other signals there, with other axons in the false brain continuing back to the living brain.
    • Used by M. Red for mechanical action storage in his coat — being able to “store” the physical action of a punch, rowing a boat, etc. so his body can be commanded to do something long after he normally would have stopped from exhaustion
    • Used by Corcus for memory continuation mechanisms in Rook. Corcus designed his bird with a miniature map of his brain threaded throughout Rook, and has it working as a 4d brain to his own — it is a full mirror of his brain with every signal his experiences, but with the signals/memories he does not want to recall. Memories cannot be accessed by him unless he swaps the memory signals to his living brain. Memories can be shuffled between his rune brain and biological brain as he pleases by changing sodium-ion gate activation to match or not match between brains. This also has the effect that any memory contained in Rook’s sequences cannot decay unless brought back to the biological mind. This also has the effect that if he is out of connection with Rook for an extended time, his brain copy will take time to re-sync with his biological brain before it can be used properly again. This goes for all of his Isc sequences, as he doesn’t want Rook to accidentally use them while in his body.
      • As Corcus and Rook grow, Corcus will be able to transfer other people’s memories into Rook for safekeeping / skip them ahead in time as he does. Memories are personalized, though — signals for one person have no meaning for another. This means that memories cannot be transferred between people (unless those people have been bonded for a long time with Isc. See Eha usage of massive area info gathering.)

  Gravis: Gravity manipulation

  • Use 1: Changing the strength gravity pulls
    • Make stuff lighter or heavier. The gravitational addition or subtraction is given or taken from a pre-located mass.
    • No, you cannot make or draw from the gravity of a black hole, because information about the density of a black hole cannot escape a black hole. Adding combo density stops short right before making one with a “rebound” shockwave effect from the extra energy release.
  • Use 2: Changing the direction gravity pulls
    • Can move things about like telekinesis through careful “falling”
    • Can move self about through falling
      • • This is what gravis coats are for (keeping all the limbs together / from wrenching apart under high g forces). Exoskeletons are worn beneath these coats, and over time most Gravis graduates get their parts slowly replaced with synthetic alternatives to keep up with the stresses their gravity manipulation puts their body under. The parts not covered by the coat remain largely the same, though.
        • Gravis coats are long and in the style of riding coats — they split at the back and are ankle-length, and have buckles that can be fastened about the legs on the flaps. They come with additional bindings underneath/inside like those of a climber’s safety harness to 1) keep blood pressure during high tension and 2) keep the coat on when flipping in odd directions. Coats are dyed striking colours to show pride in Gravis accomplishment — every Gravis mage makes their own coat by hand, including the runework, and does so after taking Gravis as one’s major rune, which requires a decent amount of skill in the rune in the first place. To have a Gravis coat means that you have mastery enough not to kill yourself in unassisted flight.
        • Don't look under their coats — Gravis graduates are all sorts of messed up to keep alive in high-G environments and with the whiplash when falling from one direction to another in the air. They have mostly-metal exoskeletons and support sequences just to keep them upright

  Opa: Wave-particle boundary alteration

  • Use 1 & 2: Making waves particles & particles waves
    • Main uses: erecting solid-air barriers
      • Making light solid
      • Yes, this works with runelight.
  • Making particles waves
    • Makes solid stuff not solid anymore.
    • Main uses: making light, holding something solid in weightless stasis, opening something without needing to break inside, separating/filtering a substance from a mix
      • Yes, this includes people. Yes, the mage has to know the whole composition of something to make it happen. Yes, things end up as a soup unless the mage is really good at what they do. Yes, Opa is rarely taught as a secondary rune due to how destructive it can be. Yes, it is often taught first on the battlefield. Yes, there are rune traps like real world landmines scattered and lying in wait for someone to walk through a doorway or over a stone. Yes, this works like an explosion. Yes, these bodies are fused with everything. Yes, that includes the air. Yes, cleanup is horrific. Yes, you can theoretically survive. No, you don’t want to.
      • Opa mages cannot affect too much of themselves. To do so would break their link to their rune sequence. Opa mages can sync parts of themselves out, but as mages gather more sequences on and in their body this becomes less feasible lest they break something. Opa graduates, often chock full of sequences at this point, make up for this by using the characteristic "shimmer" of Opa use to disguise their exact location and movement — think a breaking glass effect, or looking at something partially submerged in water, where something may appear split or off-center from where it actually is. Hard to look at.
  • Use 3: Making substances from other substances via breaking chemical bonds
    • Theoretical idea. Changing a chemical structure by wave-making a specific part of the chemical into a wave, letting it move away, and releasing it.
  • Use 4: Transmuting energy type (mirrored in Eha)
    • Thermal, radiant, kinetic, sound, electrical…
    • This is ULTRA STUPID HARD and has not been worked out yet — the theory exists, though.
    • Current work by mages is just in heat to luminosity and back again. Often classified as Eha.

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+Translations

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Footnotes

1. A double-name like this is given for those with an Isc mind-link between them and another. It is used when the duo are referred to as a unit.

2. Event in Something Like a Storm Petrel