Classic Elemental Magic - With Particle Physics

[Haradion Drogon]

This is an idea I liked for a Magic System.

 

I would be very grateful for any thoughts anyone has on the system.

 

I have an interest in Alchemy, and the Philosophical beliefs that accompanied it.

My System uses Elements and Essences

 

The System works upon the basic of Alchemy, merging the Five Eastern Elements, with the Four Western Elements.

Western: Fire, Water, Earth and Air.

Eastern: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood

 

In this unnamed Magical system, there are:

Fire, Water, Air, Metal (Mineral Aspects of Earth), and Wood (Organic Aspects of Earth).

 

These Five Elements can be combined in a pair along with one the the Five Essences:

Mind, Body, Spirit, Life and Death(Or other 5th Essence).

 

These essences can be manipulated from their original form to form a new Matrix(Or other Suitable word) to create a new construct.

A Homunculi.

 

A Homunculi is an Artificial creation - a living being held together by colliding the three essences/elements together, and constantly maintaining the creation with "Life" Essences.

A normal living being has an innate amount of life essences which are used up through the course of their lives. They are spiritually tied to a person - essentially a lifetimer. A person is unaware of their own essences as they are already created - not in the process of creation.

 

That is the fundamental weakness - the need to feed them with Life, which is difficult to attain legally, but can of course be sold, shortening a persons life span, in exchange for material wealth.

 

A Construct is creation of a Homunculi, by using Two Elements, and One Essence. For example, colliding the elements of Air and Water along with the a "Mind" Essence, will create a Homunculi of a Human being. An immitation human being - but dependent on its creator for life essences - otherwise it dissipates.

 

The Combination of a Air and Fire Elements along with a "Spirt" Essence will form a Dragon Homunculi.

 

Combination of Fire/Fire/Spirit will create an "Elemental" as will any Duel-Element construct. These are invariably more powerful.

 

Even though I kind of like my idea - modeled on the standard model of an atom. A being proton, composed of two up quarks and one down quark.

 

In this case - the quarks are replaced by Essences and Elements. I have sort of named them Thaumons - but of course all that is in flux.

The Elements providing the material orientation, and the essences the magical qualities. 

 

One final note - Life Essences are not know to form any matrices. They do not Collide, but exist as independent Thaumons.

Thaumancers practice the craft of Thaumancy - alternatively called Thaumology by Thaumigists.

 

Does anyone have any thoughts about the system? I still only have a cool system - no story or characters yet - I just sat down and said: "Right. Lets build a Magic System."

 

[qwertyuiop he/him]

I'm new to this and I don't know how to do quotes yet. Stuff from the OP will be bolded.

 

In this unnamed Magical system, there are:

Fire, Water, Air, Metal (Mineral Aspects of Earth), and Wood (Organic Aspects of Earth).

 

First off, I like the fact that you divided Earth into its mineral and organic components. But were is the cutoff? Is dirt considered organic or inorganic. How about fossils? Seashells?

 

These Five Elements can be combined in a pair along with one the the Five Essences:

Mind, Body, Spirit, Life and Death(Or other 5th Essence).

 

I don't feel like I can make many comments on these without more info. Could you give more details on them?

 

A Homunculi is an Artificial creation - a living being held together by colliding the three essences/elements together, and constantly maintaining the creation with "Life" Essences.

A normal living being has an innate amount of life essences which are used up through the course of their lives. They are spiritually tied to a person - essentially a lifetimer. A person is unaware of their own essences as they are already created - not in the process of creation.

 

That is the fundamental weakness - the need to feed them with Life, which is difficult to attain legally, but can of course be sold, shortening a persons life span, in exchange for material wealth.

 

How are the essences/elements collided? Presumably the elements could be physically mixed, but what medium is used to transfer, say, Life? If it is something easily obtained (like blood) it could be possible for Homunculi to occur naturally.

 

For example, the Chosen One and his party are camping in the woods when they are ambushed by the Forces of Badness. During the scuffle, some blood is spilled on the campfire, mixing life with Fire and Wood. This could presumably also happen with animals. Homunculi created this way could actually survive in outside society by forcibly taking whatever transferred the Life they need to survive (vampires anyone?).

 

This leads to another question: do only humans contain Life? If not then every forest fire would spawn a thousand Homunculi as Wood, Fire and Life mixed. Also, butchers could sell bottles of Life along with sides of beef. Heck, farmers could live for centuries by harvesting Life along with the crops every year. The human lifespan would be expanded enormously.

 

If on the other hand only humans have Life, or Life must be give up freely, then all of the above is moot. But I think that there are a lot of cool possibilities if it is relatively easy to extract essences from non-human sources.

 

Combination of Fire/Fire/Spirit will create an "Elemental" as will any Duel-Element construct. These are invariably more powerful.

 

What distinguishes an elemental from the ordinary run of Homunculi apart from the sheer amount of power? Are they made entirely of their element? Also, by what standard are they more powerful? Do they have more brute strength in element manipulation, or can they accomplish more delicate tasks than any other Homunculus? Or both?

 

On a side note, how to you collide two of the same element? Bang two rocks together?

 

Last thing, have you thought of how these Homunculi are controlled? If their creator is their only source of life then simply withholding Life will work for more intelligent ones. But what about Homunculi with only dog-level intelligence? A doubt a Thaumigist has the time or the means to train an unruly Metal Elemental to obey his commands without some sort of magical coercion.

 

Hope I didn't come off as too negative, it's just that I have to ask questions like this when I find a magic system I like.

[Haradion Drogon]

I have had some time to expand upon this system a little, so bear with me.

However, I have modified the system slightly.

Now, Only using a "Body" Essence produces a Homunculi. A "Spirit, or Mind" Essence will create a difference effect.

I'll discuss these seperatley, as they are sort of a Diferent magic system, as for the most part, Thaumancers only control one of the Five Essences, and all of the 

 

"Colliding, or casting" isn't as simple as mixing together two pieces with a bowl and spoon. For it to occur naturally, they must be subjected to either intense Heat or Intense pressure/force.

Or, under an intense magical focus.

 

The Focus, is like creating a Magical Field - similar to a Magnetic/Electric field. All a field is, is an "Invisible force". Creating a magical field, pulls the surrounding naturally magical universe together, creating a more magically dense area, where these collisions occur, naturally melding the matter together.

That is what happens when two of the elements collide. This alone does nothing, it is with the further application of an "Essence" that the effect is determined.

 

Body, creates a Homunculi, as discussed. These are extremely suggestible, and can be ordered to complete tasks, attack enemies, gather items etc, with little thought, but are easily dispelled, as piercing a Homunculi, with something, an arrow, or dagger for instance, causing the "Life" Essence to leak out rather quickly.

They are usually created with a specific order already in mind, then dispelled once that task is complete.

 

An "Elemental" is a Homunculi, created by Colliding Two of the Same Element, with the "Body" Essence.

These are more intelligent than simple Homunculi, capable of Independent thought, and rebellion against their creator (Though this is fairly rare) and they are composed of only their base material - where as all basic Homunculi, "Wood" construct or not, have organic matter.

 

Further more, all Elements and Essences exist naturally around the universe, but if they are "Bound" together to currently living constructs - then the construct must be killed first. For example, a human will produce "Life" Essences" when murdered, depending on then number of days they would naturally have lived for. These Life Essences can be harvested, and spent on the creation of a Contruct, but can not be used to extend ones own life, because they are "Alien". Similar to a feruchemists metalminds?

 

Because of this, children are a highly prized source of Life Essences - and there are therefore laws in place to protect them.

It is possibly to only partially siphon of life essences out of a person, but these techniques never produce as much as out right killing a person.

It is also worth noting that a Thaumancer is capable of using his own life naturally , but must spend parts of his own life on the creature. If the Homunculi is created for a few seconds then it rarely creates significant health difficulties, but a person permanently using up human life essences maintaining a creation from the day of his birth to the day he dies, will only live for approximately half the time of an average human, and age twice as fast.

 

Because of this, using human life is discouraged, and it is possible to harvest life from other animals.

However, the amount of life essences is intrinsically linked to the sentience of the creature killed. A dog for instance will not produce as much as a human, and a bug even less so.

 

Although life clearly exists in wildlife, it has proven impossible to far to extract it from plant life.

(The only time this happened in the history of this stories history, it devastated an entire continent, as the creation of the army destroyed the ecosystem, eventually killing of all life on that continent. This has not stopped people trying to discover the secret,  but it has proven impossible thus far.)

 

On a side note, I am finding it difficult to think of a creature that emulates both Fire and Water...

Any ideas?

 

Metal/Air = Djinn (Metal in this case is sand - sand and wind = Djinn)

Fire/Air = Dragon

Water/Wood = Hydra

Wood/Air = Griffin

 

Do you have any thoughts?

[qwertyuiop he/him]

Hmm...what about something based off the Leviathan's description in the book of Job? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan

Admittedly it seems like just a water-dwelling dragon, but that's all I can come up with for now. Unless you want to do some sort of steam monster.

 

Or even better, you could do a storm-based creature (water = clouds/rain, fire = lightning).

 

I like what you've changed/added. It adds more depth to the system and it looks like you've done some more worldbuilding. The idea of accidentally wiping out all life on a continent is awesome. In a very bad sort of way.

 

My biggest questions at this point are:

• what do the other essences do if they don't create Homunculi?
• how do you obtain the other essences?
• what happens if you try to collide more than two elements or more than one essence? Does it just not take or does something Bad happen?
• where does a Homunculus get its body? Does the creator provide materials or does it just appear out of nowhere?  If the latter is it left behind after the Homunculus is banished. If so it could make it very easy to "mine" the dead bodies of Homunculi for resources (say, if Metal Homunculi contained bits of iron or gold ore...)

There are some really cool ideas here! Are you planning on writing something based on this or is it just a worldbuilding exercise?