Random Magic Systems

[Gears]

 I am now a very Hoid-like entity. Weep at my ingenuity and idolize my brilliance. 

[Truthless of Shinovar]

You guys are forgetting, we aren’t at the rank of God Beyond yet. But if we were...

[Channelknight Fadran]

[AonEne]

Whoops, sorry, forgot to do this: 

Looking adorable 

[Channelknight Fadran]

31 minutes ago, AonEne said:

Whoops, sorry, forgot to do this: 

Looking adorable 

Hi.

It's me.

Fadran.

I'm not going to bother with the introductions again. Who's really ever reading these anyways?

In any case, I was recently traveling to some obscure universes throughout the Multiverse and found an interesting society known as the Kobolds. They do not resemble any Kobolds from popular roleplaying media as far as I can tell, so I assume their nameage is purely coincedential. They're a group of a particularly ugly half-bird, half-goat, half-human creatures (yes, that was three halves. FIGHT ME) who spend most of their time in their wardrobes attempting to look "cute." This fashion trend includes the smoothing of feathers, marking of skin (tattoos), and braiding of horns (how they pull that off, I'm unsure).

The fashion trend "cute" grants those who abide by it certain magical capabilities. For awhile I couldn't quite figure out why (if it were in the Omniverse I would've attributed it to the Particular makeup of "cuteness," but that's not the case), but it actually depends on the fashion-setter celebrities. In fact, I'm unsure if the magic of the Kobolds is related to cuteness or popularity. Regardless of its origins, the celebrities, being celebrities, hold an innate amount of magic. This magic is directly tied to how they make themselves look "cute," and anybody else who can properly mimic the aforementioned cuteness receives a tiny portion of the celebrity's magic. I am yet to see what this magic can do, but I believe it allows the possessor to become aware of changes in fashion at a quicker rate than those without, which increases their magic, which sparks an exponential growth in popularity until they themselves become celebrities.

Regardless of anything they do, though, they all still look pretty ugly to me.

[Enter a username]

People keep forgetting to put the next magic system starting point. Notting of the liking of the forgetting. (I don't mean I'm mad that people keep forgetting, I just wish that it wouldn't happen.)

[Channelknight Fadran]

Nips wasing the using of teachings me to wasing the complaining!

Having the have:

High Imperial

[Shard of Reading]

Basically, you curse/bless/grant powers by speaking in high imperial.
The more confused the target is the more effective it is. (Basically, the more you know about high imperial, the less it affects you)

Edit: I forgot: Sticks

Edited June 18, 2020 by Shard of Reading

[Edgedancer_of_spirits]

Sticks from trees have powerful magic capabilities. Maple sticks can store sap from trees, allowing them to crystallize opponents.

 

The burning of bookcases.

[Channelknight Fadran]

4 hours ago, Edgedancer_of_spirits said:

The burning of bookcases.

Hi.

It's me... you know what? I'm not using that page clogger anymore. I don't like it much, anyways!

Where was I? Ah, yes, bookcase magic. One of my favorites.

Whilst traveling throughout the Cosmere, I stumbled upon a strange doorway to another universe. Now, this in on itself isn't that big of a deal, as most universes have tunnels between them, but this one was strange because it led straight into a single-planet universe. Evidently, there was so little matter during its "big bang" that only one star and one planet was formed.

Regardless of the lack of an "outside," so to speak, the planet (called Ytri) is a thriving world more advanced than most societally. I was particularly fond of their architectural choices, street food, and fauna organization (keeping kangaroos for pets? A dangerous but worthy ordeal), but as I always say, "You don't know anything about someone until you've looked at their bookshelves."

Okay, I've never said that. I say that now, though.

Aaaanyway, I went to the local library and found some novels in the Fantasy section, then asked to check them out. The cashier nodded and scanned them the same way any cashier would, but then TORE AWAY the COVER and LIT IT ON FIRE.

She did the same for all the books I had checked out, but did so with such bored nonchalantia (is that a word? I don't think that's a word) that I could only pass it off as normal. When she was done, she thanked me for coming and asked me to come again.

So I did some research.

Evidently, here and Ytri, burning books and actually grants the owner of said books a perfect memory of what was written in them. An interesting discovery in on itself, but that wasn't the half of it. You see, the human mind isn't the most retainable of things (memory loss, in other words, tends to happen), and eventaully everyone wants to reread their books eventually. However, as memory decays, so does the knowledge of the writings in the book.

The locals of Ytri have another, slightly less sacriligious process to prevent this: burning bookshelves. By burning a bookshelf, one can retain all the knowledge of a number of books that would have fit on that bookshelf. Some people have burned hundreds of bookshelves and thousands of books, and they find this perfectly normal!

I wasn't done yet, though. I needed more evidence; more data. So I hopped about the multiverse and grabbed some books from other realms and brought them to Ytri for some trial-and-error testing. It turns out that burning books from other dimensions does, in fact, yield the same result. Where I thought I was a Harry Potter fan before, now I know every word in all seven books of the series (I proceeded to win a July 31 contest accordingly). Burning an E-Book, fortunately, yielded no results except for a headache and an exploding double-a battery (TAKE THAT, MEDIA!). I also burned The Way of Kings, but doing so did not grant me the powers of a bondsmith as I had hoped.

I don't recommend placing Farenheit 451 on a bookshelf and burning it, though. Doing it creates a Black Hole of Irony and short-circuits your cranium.

 

Particle Accelerators

Edited June 18, 2020 by Channelknight Fadran

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine]

On 6/16/2020 at 5:44 PM, Channelknight Fadran said:

Some people can actually tap into this reproduction of cleanliness and use it to clean things just by looking at them. These people are referred to as "Scrublords"; yet another hilarious term, in my opinion. A single group of Scrublords known as the Order of the Scrub (could this civilization grow any more ignorant?) serve as the oligarchial government for all of Faria. In addition to their powers of cleanliness, the Order of the Scrub's members are trained in physical combat, wielding various cleaning instruments such as broomsticks, dustpans, and squirt guns primed with bleach to enforce their laws.

This was so good Channelknight and for a couple of days this image has been kicking around in my brain, a propaganda poster for the ScrubLords:

Spoiler

Also you and @SirWolfe should collect your magic systems essays into "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Omniverse", they are so good!

As a plot detail you could conduct your travels on a stolen Scrublord spacecraft, that's like Dr. Who's tartus:

Spoiler

 

[Channelknight Fadran]

1 minute ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

This was so good Channelknight and for a couple of days this image has been kicking around in my brain, a propaganda poster for the ScrubLords:

  Hide contents

Also you and @SirWolfe should collect your magic systems essays into "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Omniverse", they are so good!

As a plot detail you could conduct your travels on a stolen Scrublord spacecraft, that's like Dr. Who's tartus:

 

Good man, I have saved that image and I will never delete it.

Also the Omniverse is just one of many universes in the multiverse. You also got the cosmere, the alleyverse, and whatnot. In any case, we totally should. Give me a few weeks and some more essays and I'll have a full-on google doc in no time!

[AonEne]

Hitchhiker’s Guide to Realities, maybe? 

[SirWolfe]

Hm... Perhaps. I sort of want to keep the writings of Kriwetikhe/Pokilor/OtherNamesForThePlanetThatScholarWolfeIsExploring more localized, without direct interaction off-world though, so I'd prefer avoiding face-to-face meetings between the writers. I do have no issue with a combined multiverse, however.

[Channelknight Fadran]

1 hour ago, SirWolfe said:

Hm... Perhaps. I sort of want to keep the writings of Kriwetikhe/Pokilor/OtherNamesForThePlanetThatScholarWolfeIsExploring more localized, without direct interaction off-world though, so I'd prefer avoiding face-to-face meetings between the writers. I do have no issue with a combined multiverse, however.

No worries. I'm putting rules on the docs for adding/taking away things.

[Channelknight Fadran]

Behold! The ultimate Traveler's Guide to the Multiverse. Please let me know if I have any rule holes, issues, etc.

Edited June 19, 2020 by Channelknight Fadran

[Enter a username]

On 6/18/2020 at 9:15 AM, Channelknight Fadran said:

Particle Accelerators

Well, it's my birthday, and I'm back in the Cosmere. And you know one massive discovery that will change EVERYTHING? I've found Shard 16.5, a splinter of Adonalsium. Despite not having as much power as actual Shards like Honor or Ruin, the Splinter (whose name I could not find out) is powerful enough to Invest itself in a world and create a system of magic, a godmetal, etc. And it's the system of magic that I'm most interested in. When two elementary particles collide, they give off a burst of investiture. Electrons fill batteries- both electronic and, strangely, Feruchemical as well. (As a steelrunner, I always carry around a few metalminds. After a random electron collision, they were all filled to the brim, and they appear to be unkeyed as well.) Neutron collisions make things happen. As far as I can tell, there's no pattern or limits to what can happen. And protons simply enhance the next collision that happens in that general area (the effect diminishing the farther it is from the proton collision.) And the antimatter variants simply do the opposite of the normal particles. (So, a positron, (anti-electron) would drain all types of batteries.) 

These effects seem to get more potent the faster the particles are traveling, so the local people have built machines to speed particles up and smash them together as fast as possible. They call these inventions "particle accelerators," a fitting (albeit unimaginative) name. And they're starting to think of more complicated collisions, like two collisions at once, or colliding two different particles. 

As it's my birthday today, BIRTHDAYS

[Gears]

3 minutes ago, Enter a username said:

BIRTHDAYS

When a person is born, that location in orbit is "marked" with residual creation energy. When the planet/moon/celestial body returns to that location in orbit, the birthday person can make a wish, and it will come true, with limitations. As the planet is only in that location for a small time, the wish cannot involve more wishes, as the only way to get wishes is to be in that specific point. Only one wish can be granted by the creation energy due to the small quantity, and the wish will deteriorate in strength as time passes. The wisher cannot pass on the wish as the creation energy is keyed to the individual. 

People who do not live on their native orbiting celestial body cannot take advantage of this effect. As such, astronauts and immigrants to other planets lose their birthday wishes.

Explosives

[Channelknight Fadran]

21 hours ago, Gears said:

Explosives

Quote

I'm not going to do this one but for an extra challenge, someone should give Explosives healing powers.

 

[SirWolfe]

On 6/20/2020 at 2:09 PM, Gears said:

Explosives

Not exactly "explosives" but "explosions".

On the way to the Aroieoaeori region, I met Aotish merchant of Riswean fabric (see Section 5.7 for more about the main export of the village of Riswe) going in the same direction as I was. I learned that he was a great fan of my work, and had taken to writing his own notes about places he visited. We spoke for some time on the things we had seen and experienced, I mentioned my unpleasant expulsion from Riswe, and after laughing for a bit, he talked about an equally unpleasant expulsion from an island far off the coast of Skitrae that called themselves the Jeona. Because the people don't have a name for the island itself, the merchant chose to call the island"Aot aiaa-aaia" (literally "land of death-life" in the Aotish language, but "aiaa-aaia" is also an Aotish idiom that conveys the idea of something with a cohesive identity or character composed of seemingly incompatible attributes. For example, a coin can be considered aiaa-aaia, because everyone knows that there are two distinct sides that are opposite, but they come together to form a single object), and made it very clear that it was a literal expulsion from the island. One moment he was arguing with one of the local tradespeople, the next moment he was hurtling over the ocean in the direction of Skitrae. 

Aot aiaa-aaia is, according to the merchant, a small island with a population of around one thousand. Despite their small size, the Jeona are apparently a very powerful people, and the merchant believed that they could probably even defeat the Skitraeans, which even the Urule could not do. He described their people as having unusually powerful magic, and spoke of how he saw a small child split a house-sized boulder with nothing but a light slap. The merchant says that their ability can "make one big thing into many smaller things, often with the sound of thunder", and believes that physical contact is necessary for the people in order to access their power. He said that things being acted upon with magic become very hot and almost glow, leading me to believe that their ability is one of adding large amounts of energy to objects. He also spoke of how the people tend to use magic in non-destructive ways. When cooking, a person would tap their cookware to heat it up, but not so much as to cause it to explode. He also said that they could heal minor injuries by tapping the wound, which didn’t cause it to heat up, but appeared to speed up the healing process. 

Their culture is very gender oriented, in that tradition mandates the role of each gender. However, the Jeona say that while their laws say that certain practices are restricted to gender, the laws never say that a person can't be multiple genders at once or change depending on what is convenient. Unlike some societies that say that a person's current role is decided by gender, the Jeona believe that one's current gender is decided by what they are doing at the moment. For example, while the role of cooking is delegated to the male gender, that does not restrict the culinary arts to those that the mainlanders would call male. Instead, anyone who enters the kitchen with the intent to cook is said to technically be male for as long as they are focusing on cooking. In that respect, the Jeona language has two gender systems, one for what the person sees themselves as (Ae, Ai, Ei, Aa, Aeiea), and one for the gender that matches the action they are doing at the moment (Ae, Ai, Aa). When a person is married, they are believed to have a little bit of their souls combined and are by default considered the personal gender of both themselves and their spouse, which is said as “[gender of self][gender of spouse]”. For example, a female identifying person (Ae) that is married to a non gender identifying person (Aa) would have the cultural gender of “AeAa” and their spouse would be “AaAe”. Despite the fluidity of gender identity, the Jeona still take the rules very seriously, and become very agitated when a person uses the wrong cultural gender in speech (generally this is rare among native inhabitants but common amongst outsiders, as cultural gender is generally implied in conversation according to context, and is thus generally left unspoken, a practice that is not quickly understood by foreigners), seeing it as a sign of disrespect to their culture.

It was this that had caused the merchant to be expelled, as he had explicitly and repeatedly referred to himself using the male cultural gender, despite multiple warnings, while haggling for a bag of dried fish, which was both unnecessary and incorrect (as purchasing goods goes under the dual gender of Ei). The fishmonger had reached over and given him a hard poke to the forehead, which had sent the merchant flying right back to Skitrae. 
 

Making situations awkward.

Edited June 27, 2020 by SirWolfe

[Channelknight Fadran]

5 hours ago, SirWolfe said:

Making situations awkward.

Hello! It is I, Fadran!

I kind of like that introduction better. Whoever my author is, he'd better write that down.

While traveling about the Omniverse, I stumbled upon a doorway to a Wayward Planet in the Macrosmos. I, of course, was quite excited, as Wayward Planets tend to be rather rare. I immediately began to spark up conversations with the locals, and everything was going well, until one of them told me that I had "very beautiful eyes." I was very confused (I can assure you that my eyes are muddy brown and altogether quite nasty-looking), but thanked them for the compliment. They seemed disappointed by this thanking, for some reason, though, leaving me and sighing quite audibly.

I encountered a series of other people who provided a lot fewer nonsensical conversations, but at one point I bumped into a large, muscled fellow, who immediately told me that I was the most gorgeous person he had ever seen.

Now, dear reader, I am a heavy advocate and approver of LGBTQ+ citizens of the Macrosmos and elsewhere, but remain a straight man nonetheless. I began to stutter out a mixture between an apology and a thank-you, at which point his muscles visibly began to grow. He continued complementing my "beautiful hairdo" (I had neglected to comb it that morning), "beautiful eyes" (I have already described that one would sooner stare down a slimestained tadpole), and "gorgeous posture" (I was probably slouching). By the time I left him, his muscles were twice as large. And, whenever I encounter an anomaly such as that, I tend to do some researching, so I popped over to the nearest university as a guest student and bombed some lectures.

I learned rather quickly that the magic of this world (which the locals insufferably named "Awkwardia") is based around the increased awkwardness of a situation. Supposedly, every living creature has a daily allotment of "Self-Esteem Points." Whenever a person they're talking to makes them feel awkward, part of their Self-Esteem Points leave them and enter into the other conversation member. People can do just about anything with these Self-Esteem Points, a few of which I have listed below:

• Increase muscular strength
• Improve mental capacity
• Increase speed (either physical or mental)
• Decrease levels of exhaustion

I tried this out for myself, and, being a master at making situations awkward, I had quickly racked up a few hundred of these Self-Esteem Points, with which I increased my own writing speed to record my stay here. As I left Awkwardia, I felt what few Self-Esteem Points I had left vanish. Apparently, those points are Universally-Locked. What a bother--imagine what I, the awkard-situation-making master could've done with so much knowledge of that magic!

Regardless, it's nice to know that in another world, one of my many flaws is actually a strength.

Maybe that'll help improve my self esteem.

[Enter a username]

I'm going to call the things at the bottom of each page that start the next magic system "system-starters." If that's already a name for a thing, I had no idea. That sort of thing tends to happen to me. If it's not, I'm glad.

[Channelknight Fadran]

15 hours ago, Enter a username said:

I'm going to call the things at the bottom of each page that start the next magic system "system-starters." If that's already a name for a thing, I had no idea. That sort of thing tends to happen to me. If it's not, I'm glad.

*Sigh* I'm an idiot.

Amnesia

[Gears]

1 hour ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

Amnesia

Recently I came across a people called the Comesacha [literally "possibility"] that had severe autobiographical amnesia. This appears to be intentional, as their amnesia gives them power. From discussions with a subset of the Comesacha called the Cinnteachdios [literally "certainty"] that remember the history and culture of the Comesacha at the price of the magic gained by amnesia, when an entity's past is unknown on this continent [potentially the planet, though no other groups I have come across have amnesia], all possible pasts are considered true, though tempered by probability, and thus an individual with amnesia would have the skills gained from an infinite quantity of lifetimes. As such, the Comesacha are Jacks of All Trades, masters of most of them. The Cinnteachdios offered to give me an amnestic so I could experience the power for myself, but I declined as they do not have an antidote. 

[SirWolfe]

3 hours ago, Gears said:

Recently I came across a people called the Comesacha [literally "possibility"] that had severe autobiographical amnesia. This appears to be intentional, as their amnesia gives them power. From discussions with a subset of the Comesacha called the Cinnteachdios [literally "certainty"] that remember the history and culture of the Comesacha at the price of the magic gained by amnesia, when an entity's past is unknown on this continent [potentially the planet, though no other groups I have come across have amnesia], all possible pasts are considered true, though tempered by probability, and thus an individual with amnesia would have the skills gained from an infinite quantity of lifetimes. As such, the Comesacha are Jacks of All Trades, masters of most of them. The Cinnteachdios offered to give me an amnestic so I could experience the power for myself, but I declined as they do not have an antidote. 

What is the next system-starter?