Chromine - A "magic system" for a pet project of mine

[Inky]

It's really less "magic" and more "stupid fake science", which is usually not my wheelhouse, but I've had fun with it so far! Anyways, here it is, tell me what you guys think!

The "Magic System" is basically a weird form of science in this setting, that all the technology is based on. Around 200 years ago, these magic crystals were discovered to have the ability to filter the energy inside of them to produce stuff depending on the color (Red = Fire, Yellow = Light), etc. These crystals are called "Chromine" and this energy is called "Chromatic Energy" By distilling raw Chromatic Energy, you can filter it between crystals to combine their effects (Red + Yellow = Lightning/Electricity), and laying out crystals in certain ways within a "circuit" can produce new, more complex effects (laying out multiple Red Chromine crystals in the right circuit pattern can produce ambient heat instead of actual fire).

The vague domains associated with each crystal are:
Red - Fire
Orange - Earth
Yellow - Light
Green - Life
Blue - Water

I want to have Purple Chromine that somehow lets you have like, radio and internet but I'm not sure what domain to give it. Additionally, Green Chromine also mostly creates or controls like, tissues. Stuff like disease prevention and immunization is mostly outside of its wheelhouse and normal medicine like vaccines still have to exist.

Additionally, raw Chromatic Energy has some interesting properties. Notably, sometimes it leaks out of impure crystals and, if not contained properly, can seep into the environment. If this happens enough times, the environment can warp, creating weird fantasy biomes, like a rainbow forest filled with giant crystals, or a city where it's always night and all the animals are bioluminescent.

 

[Quantus he/him]

Sounds like you are aiming squarely for the Hard Magic end of the spectrum.  Have you read Sanderson's Laws of Magic? I have ideas but the Why of them would mostly be using those Laws' as they guiding philosophy.

 

https://faq.brandonsanderson.com/knowledge-base/what-are-sandersons-laws-of-magic/

 

[Karger he/him]

1 hour ago, Inky said:

I want to have Purple Chromine that somehow lets you have like, radio and internet but I'm not sure what domain to give it.

Ether.  It would move your magic system away from science but it is the outdated theory that described how information propagated through space. 

1 hour ago, Inky said:

Additionally, Green Chromine also mostly creates or controls like, tissues

So it basically speeds up cell replication?  Also I noticed you don't have anything for air.  Still a fun magic system.

[Inky]

51 minutes ago, Karger said:

So it basically speeds up cell replication?  Also I noticed you don't have anything for air.  Still a fun magic system.

Yeah, kinda. When things get REALLY bad it led to spawning horrible cancer monsters once. Also, in my head "air" was a specific combination of Red and Blue crystals, but I might make that Purple. 

[Inky]

2 hours ago, Quantus said:

Sounds like you are aiming squarely for the Hard Magic end of the spectrum.  Have you read Sanderson's Laws of Magic?

Yeah, but I don't use them super often, I find that when I actually writing my philosophy doesn't exactly mesh well with a lot of Brandon's 

[Channelknight Fadran]

Have you considered giving the colors a slightly more vague usage? You could start with red, yellow, and blue; give each a thing, then have the other colors be combinations of each. That'd be a bit standard-issue, but it's an option.

[Ixthos Luke/Luke]

@Inky very cool  you may find it interesting to have radio and internet be a combination, so yellow for light - tuned to a lower energy band - with purple as a type of control or encoding and decoding system. So purple could handle logic and aether.

Edited January 26, 2022 by Ixthos
corrected higher energy bands to lower energy band - radio is lower energy than visible light

[Cocoa he/him]

If you're not dead-set on having another type of chromine, I think you could slot radio and internet very cleanly into yellow. After all, radio waves are just a form light with a longer wavelength than the visible spectrum. So with the proper complex layout of, for example, yellow and red chromine, you could create an electrical radio.