Below is a page out of my personal notes about Magic, how it works, and how it affects materials and technology in the world. It's a bit dense, but I'm posting it in (almost) full, because... why not? I'll likely also post my personal page of the Astral Plane to go with it.

Magic

Magic, as it is understood by humanity, is a phenomenon that only came to exist after The Rending. While Old World technology was failing to work, the religious and occult rituals of surviving cultures seemed to have very real, tangible effects on reality. Within the first few decades, reliable magic systems and theory developed. By the end of the second century, magic in some regions was practically a science. A vague, unpredictable social science, but a science.

While the essence of Magic, the Soul, exists in everyone, access to it's deeper power is unevenly distributed throughout humanity. Magic is a powerful tool, but it's inherent inequality serves as a powerful source of tyranny in this world.

What is Magic?

While magic is framed differently but different cultures, in scientific terms, magic is the use of ones Soul to influence the Aether Field, the invisible field of neutral soul stuff(Aether) that envelops the earth. One's will can propagates through and influence this field, creating a variety of magical effects.

The soul represents a person (or thing's) will to be, and aether is the medium that carries their will outside their bodies.

Aether

Like sound, magic cannot exist without a medium to travel through. The rare places on earth where the aether field is missing are practically devoid of magic. Extremely magically active areas can be thought of as highly conductive, allowing much more powerful magic effects.

The aether field flows and changes like weather, but like weather, most places have a magical climate the tends to define the range of extremes they experience.

Aether itself is soul like, and the thoughts, will, and superstitions of those who live in the world influence it. The simple wide spread belief of magical traditions cause aether to be receptive to those rituals.

How does Magic work?

Magic works in many ways, as many disciplines have been created to try and reliably and precisely control magic. Some study magic as a discipline while others seem to possess a more natural, empathic link to the aether.

The general thread that connects all of these methods is The Soul influencing Aether

The Soul

The soul is ones existence within the Astral Plane. It represents ones idealized sense of self. Even in the vast majority of non-magic using people, the soul acts almost as a backup for their body, helping them heal, and helping them achieve feats that would be impossible in the Old World. New World humans live longer, recover from more grievous wounds, and are in general healthier just from having a soul.*

While most people's souls exist within the bounds of their body, the aether around them will slowly attune itself with them. Bits of aether more "aware"(if that's the right word to use for aether) of the person's belief systems, magical studies, or even just their vibe, will congregate around them. When a spell is cast through whatever method, this aether moves with the caster's desires, influencing other aether around it, and creating magical effects.

More powerful mages tend to have more of this passively aligned aether around them, be it through having a larger soul that extends outside their body, or simply by having a stronger natural empathy.

While the aether field is what propagates magic, the raw energy itself is drawn up from the Astral Plane, the extra dimensional deep sea of aether that exists deeper outside physical space.

^{* Old World humanity had souls too, but the lack of the Aether Field basically made them comparatively weak. Most mages and modern scientist assume the soul didn't exist before The Rending.}

Magical Systems

While some control magic completely empathically, most need to rely on some kind of system. In the early day of magic, the systems were adapted from Old world magic rituals. Those with a strong enough soul to influence a large area around them can simply, with enough authentic belief, create their own.

Eventually though, mages realized that by creating collaborative systems, studied by many many practitioners, a magic system could be more robust, reliable, and more importantly, shareable. A lone mage, with their own magic system, can work fast, but they have to invent every concept from scratch. Meanwhile more academic souls of magic can build up libraries of spells pieces that can be readily customized and fit together.

This also matters of issues of enchanting. An enchantment without a well known system behind it can only be recharged by the person who made it. Meanwhile, an enchantment using an established system can be recharged by almost anyone magically active.

As a general rule, more individualistic methods of magic tend to be more rawly powerful but lack sophistication, while collaborative systems can create more complex and precise effects, but at the cost of bigger overheads and less flexibility. Problems must be solved within the standards set out by others, and while many magic society revise their standards periodically, one can be left waiting years for a feature or concept to be added. Even when a new standard is accepted, it will taken even more years of people study and reinforcing the concept before it becomes reliable.

(If this in any way reminds you of programming, dependencies, deprecations and library updates, well... Yeah.)

Witchcraft and Natural Magic

The most common types of magic don't fit into a clean system. They come from a grab bag of Old World witchcraft, folk belief, and ritual, mixed with the personal beliefs of the caster. Casters creating spells and potions will naturally, through experimentation, find methods that work for them and while they may be able to teach their methods to others, without a large base of fellow believers, they are limited in their scope and flexibility. Often a student and teacher pair will eventually grow so apart in practice that they can no longer share spells or techniques reliably.

While any individual system of natural magic is weaker than a well developed one, people who find success with natural magic tend to have a naturally higher baseline or talent, who can often overcome disadvantages by brute force.

Witch can both refer to the use of Old World spells and grimoires, or as a catchall for for ritualistic magic that is independent of any larger system.

Aistorian Academic Hermeticism

Aistorian Academic Magic is an old and well established system of magic, prevalent through, Aistoria, Simeria, and parts of Akanis, used for general spell casting. It focuses is on inscribed magic spells, cast from spell books, enchanted trinkets, or even arrays of light. Aistorian Hermeticism is a written system that does not contain any somatic or verbal components (though spells can be designed to respond to gestures and verbal commands), but it's complicated, closed-circuit flow-chart like spell inscriptions can produce incredibly sophisticated effects.

At it's basic level, Aistorian Hermeticism allows users to perfectly reproduce spells out of spellbooks within their abilities. Even an unskilled mage can collect an impressive library of useful spells.

More advanced levels Aistorian Hermeticism focuses on spell components, bits of spells that do not do much on their own, but whose functionality can be strung together to produce new spells quickly on the spot. At it's highest levels, practitioners open use a single 'base' spell to create magical inscriptions in the air, made out of magical light. From there they can physically touch and manipulate the light array to quickly create and adapt new spells without the need of an open spellbook.

Due to its age, Aistorian Academic Hermeticism a large system, which requires many years of study to get started in. Atop that, Magic spells are engraved, often on thin metal pages, which are then inlaid with expensive "mageleaf", or magically active gold or copper alloys. These inlays and engravings are skill intensive and expensive, making this form of magic mostly an upper class pursuit. Hermetic runes take inspiration from shorthand scripts, designed to both be easy to engrave and cheap to inlay.

In Aistoria, many poorer people use Aistorian Theurgic magic, a much less sophisticated, inscriptionless system created by the church, which is ideal for fighters and healers. It doesn't have much spread outside of Aistoria, as it's a very crude system, often derogatorily called "pauper magic"... at least while it's not being used to Church members.

Aistorian Academic Hermeticism trades cost, ease of use, and immediate flexibility for sophistication, consistency and raw power.

Unnamed Speculative Akanis Magic System

The Aistorian implies the need of a verbal, sematic system and it makes sense for that to come from Akanis. A contrasting system, that is low cost, unincumbered by spell books, and more adaptable on the fly. This Akanis system of magic would trade the raw mechanical complexities of Aistorian Hermeticism for something that is genuinely more useful to lower level practitioners and travelers.

While this would overlap with the Aistorian Theurgy system, it would be FAR more developed. In fact, due to proximity and cultural exchange, the Aistorian system is probably just a stripped down version of the Akanis system.

Acro-388

On the most extreme end of things, is Acro-388, a magic system created in the most unlikely place: Shiv. While Shiv is devoid of magic, many of its frontier territories are magically active, as are its nearby mountains. As such, mages are still trained and employed. While a proper wage mage will learn a serious magic system like Aistorian Hermeticism, for many their magical talents amount to being little more than a battery to magic based industrial processes.

Acro-388 and its predecessors is a magic system designed for industrial use, by unskilled magic laborers, while being simple and plain language enough to be written by non-magic users. Acro-388 focuses on describing steps of a linear process, with focus being on things like material and chemical separation, or more magically controlling temperatures and mixing during ore smelting and alloying. It is dead simple to learn, and very limited, designed to do exactly what it's meant to do.

Adoption of earlier versions of Acro was slow. The early experiments to create an industrial magic system largely failed, as the practitioners couldn't muster genuine believe in such a mechanical and unproven system. Ultimately the belief in it didn't come from the mages using it, but the profit driven spell writers trying to create spells and further commodify workers. A magic system that exists purely through capitalistic greed.

Despite this, Acro-388 and its predecessors has found uses in parts of Aistoria, especially in remote mining towns.

Magic's Effect on Technology

Little is known about how The Rending came to happen, but it is often theorized that it was technological in origin, likely a nuclear apocalypse. This is suspected, because of the reaction of aether to technology. Aether, which carries some of humanities general sentiment inside it, seems naturally hostile to "technological" devices. Because of the impressionable, semi-conscious nature of aether, what counts as 'technology' is fairly arbitrary and even varies by region.

As a general trend, these hostilities are weakest within towns, cities, and well traveled roads. The more the aether is in regular contact with normal human souls, the more likely it is for some devices to function.

While what counts as "technology" varies by region, but it is consistently hostile toward firearms and other advanced weaponry. Firearms will often violently discharge, explode, or sometimes even just fall to pieces in use within a high magic energy. As such, firearms are only truly common around Shiv and other parts of Simeria, where there exists large magic deadzones. Firearms can be used to some extent outside those zones, but general investment in the technology isn't worthwhile anywhere else.

Technology also seems functional out at sea, in the air, and especially out in space, where magic doesn't seem to currently exist.

Electronics on the other hand don't seem specifically targeted, but due to their nature, seem exceptionally easy to attack. Devices using electricity in high magic areas must be built tough, simple, and resistant to a large range of conditions. Often things like light bulbs, space heaters, and some power tools can work well, assuming the region can support the infrastructure to generate electricity to begin with. Many Aistorian cities can support electric lights, heating, and even things like radios, though those devices fail out in the country side.

Vehicles must also be built simply, and must not rely on electronics for basic functions. Engines are prone to misfiring and stalling in high magic areas, though well used roads seem to take to cars quite readily. Trains, seem robust enough work well once a route is established. Diesel engines seem to run best under magic conditions, at least once they get started.

The general trend is that technology is slowly returning to the world. It is theorized that the bitter dead souls from the end of the world are finally finding peace. Shiv also keeps pushing its boundaries, while also launching things like satellites, which have allowed for cellphones to work int he regions that can support them.

F-Clips and Other Adaptions

F-Clips basically act as a magazine of redundant fuses. As aether most often attacks points of weaknesses, fuse clips in a sense act as replaceable 'bait'. Disposable F-Clips are the most reliable, as a device will simply turn off if all the fuses are broke. Many batteries have F-Clips built in so they can be replaced at the same time. These allow some simple devices to operate in otherwise hostile environments.

Repeater-Clips, featuring resettable fuses can be used in some parts of the world where the magic presence is weak. With a repeater clip, a device to occasionally 'click' as fuses cycle to maintain operation. The downside to this is bulk and lessened protection. Devices like this, by measuring the click-rate, can be used like a geiger counter to measure the rough magical. Some devices automatically shut down if the fuse is excessively triggered.

While trucks can work on major roads, zeppelins, boats, and trains are the most viable transportation methods in the New World... besides horses, obviously.

Magical Objects and Elements

Magical objects are objects that, like humans, contain "souls". Or less of a soul as we think of it, but still a similar type of astral imprint. Magical items like this cannot simply just be made (at least not easily), they come to exist. Cherished items, items with history, or items carried by someone powerful. A trusty sword, a wedding ring, even a beloved teacup can become a magical relic.

As time goes on, the item might slowly warp and change subtly, taking on the characteristics that have been ascribed to it. A sharp knife gets sharper, a giant sword gets bigger, and a diamond ring becomes more beautiful. Such imprinting can even permanently lock in flaws. An old, unused heirloom sword may lock itself forever in a state of disrepair.

The most immediate change though, is durability. Objects with a soul become near indestructible, a state which is called adamant. While indestructibility isn't particularly useful for most items, many are useful for spell engraving. A spell engraved onto an adamant object will be both small, reliable, and very magically conductive.

The act of changing an adamant item is called coaxing. A skilled engraver can brute force a small, thin engraving, forcing little scratches onto an object. More extreme acts, like reforging a broken sword (Adamant weapons are NEAR indestructible), require a rare type of magic empathy, to hold the item, appreciate it, and have a clear vision of what it was and what it could be. By "convincing" the object of its future, one, through likely through personalized rituals and processes, can change or rebuild an otherwise unchanging object.

The other side of things is magical elements. An adamant nodule of ore wouldn't be worth much to a blacksmith who would be incapable of working it. But there exists imbued ores, which are naturally magically conductive. Not all elements are easily findable (and even fewer, creatable), as they tend to exist in magically very active areas. Since mountains tend to be magically active, magical gold, copper, and silver are the most common, sometimes informally called orichalcum (at least around Aistoria).

These materials can be used for many purposes, but one of the most common uses is hammering it paper thin into mageleaf which is used for inlaying spell engravings.

Another use is that magical materials, when charged with magical or electric currents, shift parts of their existence to the astral plane. In wildly magic areas, imbued materials might even float. The most common use for this effect is airships, where charged nitrogen can be used to create a self sustaining 'astral vacuum', producing much greater lift by volume than even hydrogen and is fortunately one of the magical materials easiest to artificially make. Imbued ores are also used by Shiv for land ships, heavy levitating warships that patrol the deserts of the Weiss.

At a deeper level, magical elements are created with praetons and aetherons. Praetons are magical protons, while aetherons take the place of of neutrons. Magical materials tend to collect aetherons, leading to magical isotopes, also known as anotopes.

Adamant objects are objects where many of the object's protons have been replaced with praetons, where imbued elements are ones that contain aetherons, which attract aether.