Magic as ecosystem
Jul. 25th, 2010 05:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have been reading GURPS rule books to give my imagination a scaffolding again. Usually I read the Magic books and ponder what different tweaks to the rules do to the 'verse. Today I read the Space rule book, which has a lot of helpful worldbuilding stuff for alien worlds in it. I have started reading the bit about alien ecosystems. Everything needs an energy source and a solvent and some building blocks. Life on Earth almost always starts the food chain with the energy source sunlight. The solvent is water and the building blocks are mostly carbon and DNA and stuff. It gave a big list of alternate chemistries and a slightly shorter list of alternate energies. Weird chemistry and heat were mentioned, but also in weird physics worlds the possibility of life that uses cold fusion or zero point energy.
So I'm poking the idea of starting with mana, the basic energy form underlying magic. Treat mana based life like an ecosystem. If you have uniform mana levels all over the world you have uniform mana based life. But if mana has climate bands and or weather then you get different zones of mana life. And if mana exists in isolated upwellings, like ocean floor vents, then you get a different and unique ecosystem around every single one. Magical life forms would be different wherever you met them. Vast diversity.
Autotrophs turn some sort of energy into biology. Like sunlight into plants. If you start with mana, what sorts of things would it turn itself into? The obvious is magic mushrooms. But then there's a whole food chain spreading out from that first link. You get slightly magical 'herbivores' and slightly magical 'carnivores'. And then the whole system would interact with ordinary biology. What happens when humans consume manalife? All sorts of weirdness, magic powers, but also changes in their appearance, making Angel style Demons. (I don't like the name demons, but if you don't tweak Earth history too heavily, demons is surely what they'd be called.) So there would be power, but permanent changes, and dangerous changes in social status. Still, people would do it. And all the mythic age happens.
But then what happens if things get industrial? Well, overfishing, and harvests that make desserts, and chopping all the trees down. Ecological devastation, basically. And if it wiped out the ecosystem at a particular mana upwelling, that's that, no more manalife to consume, and no more magic powers. A few starving 'demons' would either have to quest for another mana ecosystem or just dwindle and lose their powers. Any remaining mana oases would learn to keep very quiet, keep them secret and safe. The magic would go away.
But the mana upwellings would continue. Maybe in some they'd trickle away, making paths like streams, leaving everything along their route slightly but unnoticeably weirder. But in other areas the mana level would just keep building up, not being converted into matter or used up or stored by the life that used to be there. Instead of the usual Earth normal mana level where spells are very difficult indeed, you'd creep up the levels, ever so slowly, as the mana seeped in and pooled. Eventually you'd have High levels, where anyone that knows a spell could cast it. And a while after that you'd get Very High or Wild levels, where you don't have to use spells, the energy is just going to do something and you're handy to do it through. And suddenly you've got Hellmouths. A plot-convenient length of time after magic apparently died out.
I think I like this. Ecosystem devastation having unexpected consequences, pollution leading to weirdness, all good stuff. And the different magics that remain would have both a very local flavour, from the magics that grew up there, and a diaspora mixture, from the 'demons' that fled devastated oases. And some of those 'demons' would have grown up in harmony with the mana sources, and others would have been the idiots that overfished them in the first place.
What forms the manalife could take... well there'd be advantages to making nuts or berries to be scattered, but if the system was mana dependent they'd not survive away from a mana source. If nuts could be carried between oases they'd be a useful adaptation, or if an oasis could be really quite large. Otherwise, maybe manalife would be dual systemed? Photosynthetic if it can get the sunlight, mana dependent only for some exotic ability? Well if humans turn 'demon' from eating manalife then maybe plants have an equivalent! Plants would want to cast plant growth spells and not much else though. But that would be a distinct advantage.
... treating magic like it's biology and writing it up like an alien planet looks kind of fun. You'd still get a whole bunch of traditional creatures - top level predators are big and bitey whatever the basic energy source was - but they'd have to fit together somehow. And the weird overabundance of basically human looking 'demon' types would be from them starting out actually human. The mixing blood bit from the vampire origin story where a human drank a demon's blood could be just a human trying to get clever and get themselves some magic.
If manalife uses DNA then you could biotech engineer magic abilities to order.
If it doesn't use DNA then where does it store its information?
I also wandered around an idea for Spirits. See magic is mana dependent, but uses fatigue. Spirits may or may not be mana dependent, and mostly use fatigue. They can get their fatigue back over time ie harvest energy without eating anything, be autotrophs. But they don't turn it into biology, just floaty spirit stuff. Still, if the usual ecosystems apply, there would be spirits peaceably floating around replenishing their energy at their usual rates, and then there would be spirits who could leach or even eat those spirits. And since humans have fatigue too, they would be part of a spirit ecosystem. Spirits could leach or eat fatigue from humans. Or there might be milkable spirits, or humans who can donate. The spirit with the most fatigue can cast the biggest spells. An ordinary self replenishing ghost might not be able to do much, but one with an outside fatigue source? Could build up some mighty stuff.
And if there are mana upwellings they have to come from somewhere. Also end up somewhere, geographically. Do they make it to the surface? Are they sacred springs, or sacred caves, or something a bit less grabbable? Well any surface ones would be easy to access, like strip mining, the first to go. So remaining springs would likely be somewhere weird and inaccessible, like down deep or up high. Only with as deep as humans are digging in cities the Underground could be reaching the old mana wells.
If Spirits mostly soak up mana to make their fatigue then wherever they live has to have a lot of mana. So, say the Spirit realm is where the mana comes from. And the upwellings are the crossover points, from this physical world to the spirit world and back again. As well as the 'demons' around the upwellings you'd get spirits, hanging around for whatever reasons of their own. Summoning spirits is also traditional, but if they're far from a mana well they'd need a new fatigue source fast. Say the summoner. Or they'd fade out and be starved until they can get back to their side. Easier to travel around if they latch on to a human, who can replenish with ordinary biology. So anyone visiting one of the mana well places, the spirit world upwellings, would run the risk, or dare the rewards, of meeting spirits in a place they have power.
The geography of this 'verse would have magic in a sustained continuous tradition in weird and inaccessible places, and in a returning unexpectedly way in places that have been mined out or harvested or overfished, that is in the very places most likely to have lots of people in to do that damage. You'd get demon populations in cities because the old mana wells got ate when the city moved in.
Humans relate to the mana cycle somehow. Human fatigue feeds spirits. Humans also are spirits-in-biology. With sufficient mana humans can cast spells. But the mana usually comes over from the spirit world in a geographically bound way.
If humans were a substitute mana generator then you'd get demons feeding on humans because humans have overrun their ecosystem, kind of like with urban foxes. But if humans are mana generators then why would they need to eat the stuff that made some demons in the first place?
What have spirits got to do with mana? Do they just live in the mana rich environment?
... I don't mean in terms of GURPS rules. I mean how to make a system that can elaborate into a rich setting and be a story generator.
If spirits can boost the mana level of an area, bring the spirit world closer to the world of flesh, then you've got a big reason to risk summoning and letting a spirit leach on to you. Get enough of them together and you could establish a permanent new well. Dangerous, yes, but you could cast a lot more spells.
The only remaining thing is, why do you need spells, in this modern world? What is there you'd want to do with magic that you can't already do with technology? Because technology is getting pretty spectacular shiny these days. Still though, reckon humans will always want things that are just a bit better than the things in their grasp.
So I've been writing that down until all the handwriting has made my wrist hurt (again). Now I'm going back to the Space book to read more about ecosystems and invent how manalife fits into them and interacts with sunlife.
So I'm poking the idea of starting with mana, the basic energy form underlying magic. Treat mana based life like an ecosystem. If you have uniform mana levels all over the world you have uniform mana based life. But if mana has climate bands and or weather then you get different zones of mana life. And if mana exists in isolated upwellings, like ocean floor vents, then you get a different and unique ecosystem around every single one. Magical life forms would be different wherever you met them. Vast diversity.
Autotrophs turn some sort of energy into biology. Like sunlight into plants. If you start with mana, what sorts of things would it turn itself into? The obvious is magic mushrooms. But then there's a whole food chain spreading out from that first link. You get slightly magical 'herbivores' and slightly magical 'carnivores'. And then the whole system would interact with ordinary biology. What happens when humans consume manalife? All sorts of weirdness, magic powers, but also changes in their appearance, making Angel style Demons. (I don't like the name demons, but if you don't tweak Earth history too heavily, demons is surely what they'd be called.) So there would be power, but permanent changes, and dangerous changes in social status. Still, people would do it. And all the mythic age happens.
But then what happens if things get industrial? Well, overfishing, and harvests that make desserts, and chopping all the trees down. Ecological devastation, basically. And if it wiped out the ecosystem at a particular mana upwelling, that's that, no more manalife to consume, and no more magic powers. A few starving 'demons' would either have to quest for another mana ecosystem or just dwindle and lose their powers. Any remaining mana oases would learn to keep very quiet, keep them secret and safe. The magic would go away.
But the mana upwellings would continue. Maybe in some they'd trickle away, making paths like streams, leaving everything along their route slightly but unnoticeably weirder. But in other areas the mana level would just keep building up, not being converted into matter or used up or stored by the life that used to be there. Instead of the usual Earth normal mana level where spells are very difficult indeed, you'd creep up the levels, ever so slowly, as the mana seeped in and pooled. Eventually you'd have High levels, where anyone that knows a spell could cast it. And a while after that you'd get Very High or Wild levels, where you don't have to use spells, the energy is just going to do something and you're handy to do it through. And suddenly you've got Hellmouths. A plot-convenient length of time after magic apparently died out.
I think I like this. Ecosystem devastation having unexpected consequences, pollution leading to weirdness, all good stuff. And the different magics that remain would have both a very local flavour, from the magics that grew up there, and a diaspora mixture, from the 'demons' that fled devastated oases. And some of those 'demons' would have grown up in harmony with the mana sources, and others would have been the idiots that overfished them in the first place.
What forms the manalife could take... well there'd be advantages to making nuts or berries to be scattered, but if the system was mana dependent they'd not survive away from a mana source. If nuts could be carried between oases they'd be a useful adaptation, or if an oasis could be really quite large. Otherwise, maybe manalife would be dual systemed? Photosynthetic if it can get the sunlight, mana dependent only for some exotic ability? Well if humans turn 'demon' from eating manalife then maybe plants have an equivalent! Plants would want to cast plant growth spells and not much else though. But that would be a distinct advantage.
... treating magic like it's biology and writing it up like an alien planet looks kind of fun. You'd still get a whole bunch of traditional creatures - top level predators are big and bitey whatever the basic energy source was - but they'd have to fit together somehow. And the weird overabundance of basically human looking 'demon' types would be from them starting out actually human. The mixing blood bit from the vampire origin story where a human drank a demon's blood could be just a human trying to get clever and get themselves some magic.
If manalife uses DNA then you could biotech engineer magic abilities to order.
If it doesn't use DNA then where does it store its information?
I also wandered around an idea for Spirits. See magic is mana dependent, but uses fatigue. Spirits may or may not be mana dependent, and mostly use fatigue. They can get their fatigue back over time ie harvest energy without eating anything, be autotrophs. But they don't turn it into biology, just floaty spirit stuff. Still, if the usual ecosystems apply, there would be spirits peaceably floating around replenishing their energy at their usual rates, and then there would be spirits who could leach or even eat those spirits. And since humans have fatigue too, they would be part of a spirit ecosystem. Spirits could leach or eat fatigue from humans. Or there might be milkable spirits, or humans who can donate. The spirit with the most fatigue can cast the biggest spells. An ordinary self replenishing ghost might not be able to do much, but one with an outside fatigue source? Could build up some mighty stuff.
And if there are mana upwellings they have to come from somewhere. Also end up somewhere, geographically. Do they make it to the surface? Are they sacred springs, or sacred caves, or something a bit less grabbable? Well any surface ones would be easy to access, like strip mining, the first to go. So remaining springs would likely be somewhere weird and inaccessible, like down deep or up high. Only with as deep as humans are digging in cities the Underground could be reaching the old mana wells.
If Spirits mostly soak up mana to make their fatigue then wherever they live has to have a lot of mana. So, say the Spirit realm is where the mana comes from. And the upwellings are the crossover points, from this physical world to the spirit world and back again. As well as the 'demons' around the upwellings you'd get spirits, hanging around for whatever reasons of their own. Summoning spirits is also traditional, but if they're far from a mana well they'd need a new fatigue source fast. Say the summoner. Or they'd fade out and be starved until they can get back to their side. Easier to travel around if they latch on to a human, who can replenish with ordinary biology. So anyone visiting one of the mana well places, the spirit world upwellings, would run the risk, or dare the rewards, of meeting spirits in a place they have power.
The geography of this 'verse would have magic in a sustained continuous tradition in weird and inaccessible places, and in a returning unexpectedly way in places that have been mined out or harvested or overfished, that is in the very places most likely to have lots of people in to do that damage. You'd get demon populations in cities because the old mana wells got ate when the city moved in.
Humans relate to the mana cycle somehow. Human fatigue feeds spirits. Humans also are spirits-in-biology. With sufficient mana humans can cast spells. But the mana usually comes over from the spirit world in a geographically bound way.
If humans were a substitute mana generator then you'd get demons feeding on humans because humans have overrun their ecosystem, kind of like with urban foxes. But if humans are mana generators then why would they need to eat the stuff that made some demons in the first place?
What have spirits got to do with mana? Do they just live in the mana rich environment?
... I don't mean in terms of GURPS rules. I mean how to make a system that can elaborate into a rich setting and be a story generator.
If spirits can boost the mana level of an area, bring the spirit world closer to the world of flesh, then you've got a big reason to risk summoning and letting a spirit leach on to you. Get enough of them together and you could establish a permanent new well. Dangerous, yes, but you could cast a lot more spells.
The only remaining thing is, why do you need spells, in this modern world? What is there you'd want to do with magic that you can't already do with technology? Because technology is getting pretty spectacular shiny these days. Still though, reckon humans will always want things that are just a bit better than the things in their grasp.
So I've been writing that down until all the handwriting has made my wrist hurt (again). Now I'm going back to the Space book to read more about ecosystems and invent how manalife fits into them and interacts with sunlife.
Thoughts
Date: 2010-07-25 05:17 am (UTC)>>The only remaining thing is, why do you need spells, in this modern world? What is there you'd want to do with magic that you can't already do with technology?<<
Why have spells rather than merely instinctual mana use? Same reason you use tools instead of your bare hands: more power and precision.
Why have spells rather that technology? Same reason we have chemistry AND physics AND geology -- different methodologies are good for studying and manipulating different things.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2010-07-27 12:12 am (UTC)precision is a good one, we have a mass manufactured one size fits nobody world on the whole.