Magical Sickness

[Alfa]

I had an idea some time ago. I was thinking about the idea of Ashyn (The silence divine), where sickness grants magic. Than I thought about one alteration of that thought:
What if magic itself will get sick?

Almost everything about humans can get sick in a lot of different ways, it can get an allergy, cancer, it can break, be amputated, the nerves leading there can have strange signals and much more. What if the same would apply to magic? Let's say a basic "standard fantasy" hero like Rand from WoT would get an "allergy" in the magical "organ" that is responsible for casting fire. What would happen? In my limited medical knowledge it would mean the poor guy would spreading fire subconciously and against his will, making him dangerous to all people around.

The Idea is not very well thought trough, so I give it to the 17th shard for brainstorming, adapting and using at will.

[Assassin in Burgundy]

In fantasy, magic has definitely gotten less affective and is "dying," and it's the heroes job to cure it. Is this what you're talking about?

[Eagle of the Forest Path]

Wait, so you want to talk about magic making people ill (and maybe do stuff they don't want to), you bring up the example of Rand from WoT, and you felt the need to add an allergy?
You've already got that exact same concept in the taint on Saidin, don't you? Unless I'm misreading your question?

Also, you list a number of things that can go wrong, but you leave out one of the most basic things: an infection.
From my layman's perspective, cancer and allergy are pretty complicated and would require a lot of effort to make an analogy in your magic system;
infections have some basic principles as to progression, effect, and getting rid of them (anti-bodies, fever, violent expulsion of fluids),which most people know or at least can recognise. Maybe take some time to research that, lay out the rules you're going to use in your story, and then apply them to your magic system.

For example. If in your magic system, your characters must build up a well of power that they use to cast spells and a bug got in there, a possible consequence would be that you have to empty your well to get rid of the illness. Meaning the magical equivalent of vomiting would happen: a violent, uncontrollable, involuntary outburst of spells.

Edited July 31, 2016 by Eagle of the Forest Path

[Alfa]

I mean not an external sickness like the taint, but an internal problem: let's say (to stay in wot) we have some kind of an immunity reaction to the taint, but which does not work as intended (which is more or less the definition of allergic reactions). The effect is that magic, to protect you from the taint for example builfs some kind of a shield, which on one hand slightly helps you to fight the taint, on the other hand completely prevents you from using... I don't know, water magic, for example, and also gives you a permanent headache. It's usually not deadly, but very very annoying.

Another example, magical cancer: in some forms of fantasy mages grow more powerful over time. Maybe this process can grow out of control: the theoretical power grows, even faster than usual, while the actually usable power declines, since more and more power is swallowed by the "cancer". To use magic starts to hurt, parts of the magic die away, which leads to even more problems and in the end it ends lethal if no countermeasures were taken.

As I said, the concept is not very developed, this are two brainstormed examples

And, an Infection is also one of countless possibilities, of which I did not think at the moment.

Edited July 31, 2016 by Alfa

[Stormgate]

With an allergy, when the individual is exposed to the allergen (the thing that they are allergic to), it causes a noticeable reaction. With environmental allergies, it is often an itchy rash or watery eyes, sometimes stuffy nose. With food allergies, it can be irritation in the mouth (this gets complicated, this reaction means it's not a true allergy, and consistently eating the food can eliminate the reaction), or it could be a rash on the body, often on the face around the eyes, giving the appearance of "raccoon eyes", possibly vomiting to get rid of the allergen, and with either food allergies or environmental (i.e. plants, animal fur, pollen, etc.), an extreme reaction results in swelling of the airway, basically suffocating someone in something called anaphylactic shock. Also, someone must be exposed to the allergen once before they can react, but this gets tricky, because one bite of food can be exposure, and you react to the second. First cat hair is exposure, second causes a reaction. Also, repeated exposure to the allergen can make the reaction worse until it reaches anaphylactic shock. Treatment for allergies is first to expose the individual to the smallest amount of the allergen as possible, then, over a period of weeks and months, sometimes years, slowly increase the amount of the allergen, decreasing the amount when a reaction occurs and giving the body enough time to adjust.

So, if someone was allergic to magic, it would cause physical reactions, but likely not spewing fire all over the place. Treatment could be holding a barely magical stone, then two, increasing until they can be 100 feet from the casting of a spell like making some light or lighting a fire, slowly getting closer, then farther away for a more powerful spell like teleportation.

So, to change gears after that crash course on allergies, perhaps a magical infection can result in spells acting like dark magic. Say a spell is to light a fire? Everyone around becomes uneasy as the spell is cast, and the magician becomes weaker or something.

[DrakeMarshall]

This is an interesting idea.

There are quite a lot of potentials for things going wrong in magic, in the same way that a lot can go wrong in a human body. But if you were to make up a normal illness, you would need to know how the human body works so that you can decide what is going to stop working right. Point is, I think for a very well thought out magical sickness, you will need to clearly define a "hard magic system", so that you will be free to consider various things that can go wrong.

Now... When you have a clearly defined "hard magic system" I think some such ailments actually crop up naturally as part of the system's limitations. For example, the fallen Elantrians, surgebinders breaking their oaths, allomancers burning the wrong metals... When the mechanism for magic is clearly defined, we can think of a lot of ways that things might not work quite right.

That all being said, lets think of a new kind of problem in these magic systems, something that just happens to you (as opposed to being a consequence of a bad metal or wrongly drawn aon, et cetera). For example, allomancy is genetic. Probably related to spiritual DNA. An allomancer gets power from connection to preservation, channeling energy from preservation to use powers. So, lets try a genetic disability for allomancy. Perhaps someone could have a sort of "magical asthma". If someone who is afflicted by this used allomancy to quickly, their spirit would contract like an asthmatic's airway, and choke off the flow of magic. Basically, if they over-exerted themselves, they would temporarily become a much less powerful allomancer, their connection to preservation temporarily throttled.