Magic and Wielding
A Treatise on Mana
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”~ Unknown Ancient Earth Prophet
What follows was recorded in “Wielders: A treatise on mana” by Archwielder Ewyn Dun'wael, a mere five centuries after the Era of Desolation.
“Wielding has become a force that is both revered and feared by sentient creatures. Every civilization has their own legends and horror stories of the ‘Era of Desolation’, but for most, those tales are so old as to be disbelieved; stories told by parents to frighten naughty children. Still, there is a fear, an almost instinctual mistrust, of magic among many who believe the old stories, viewing it as a source of unimaginable destruction and chaos. Others have found that wielding is equally a force for good, allowing them to heal and protect those things most precious to them.
Those who have spent a lifetime in the pursuit of wielding, however, realize the truth. Wielding, and its power source, mana, are neither good nor evil; neither lawful nor chaotic. It has no natural element, but can be expressed as any of them. It the conscious control of mana, which has almost no form or mass, but can be focused into unalterable reality. It utilizes a force fundamental to the existence of all creation, a tool with no innate moral compass.
What lies hidden from our sight beyond mana is still a mystery, but of this there can be no doubt: No mana ever wielded itself. Never has mana spontaneously risen up to strike down the innocent or to heal those brought low. No, not even once. It is the mind that compels mana to act; the thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and instincts, focused by intent. It is there, in the heart of the Wielder, that one encounters good and evil, and it is by the Wielder's hand that they are made manifest in the world.
On Duende, almost all living creatures have the potential to Wield, even if it is unrealized. Mana can be expressed in a multitude of ways, and there is no one right way. Each have their merits and weaknesses, and it is this which binds us together as Wielders. Despite the myriad of differences in how we come to wield our power, wield it we do. Whether it is expressed in spells and incantations, prayer, sheer will, or even channeled from ancient power sources through the body of the Wielder, there is an underlying structure that can be understood and, once understood, manipulated.
Be warned. The path of the Wielder is not lightly undertaken, nor is it without its perils. Death awaits the foolish, the lazy, the arrogant, and those filled with a lust for power. Wielding demands its price be paid, and no one, be they man or god, can escape it when it comes due.”
Flagstone: Wielding Overview
This treatise is designed to give a general overview of how Wielding functions, because in truth, the possibilities for it are beyond imagining. It is useful to first begin with what Wielding is not, thereby narrowing the scope of where we must look to find that which Wielding is. Wielding is not a random catch all for anything non-physical, rather it is a nuanced set of systems for using and interacting with fundamental parts of reality, some of which are very much physical. Wielding is also not supernatural. In order to be supernatural, a thing must be outside the natural order of things. This is not true of Wielding. Like all reality, it has rules and properties that govern its behavior.
Early humans discovered, after their enlightenment, that the deeper down into the elemental underpinnings of reality you go the stranger things become. When you get to the quantum level, things can exist in a state between states and transmit information instantly across any distance and a thing's properties of mass, energy, and information are bound together by something more fundamental. Most importantly however, is that the results observed depend on the fact of being observed and the will of the observer.
It is within this exceedingly strange quantum realm that the fundamental ingredient in all Wielding is found: mana. It is impossible to explain any more about Wielding without first discussing mana because mana is the force that underlies all Wielding.
Wielding Mana
During mankind's Scientific Era there were commonly believed to be two fundamental states for matter: energy and mass. These two states were the most obvious being the most readily observed. However, the fact that they could be converted, one to the other, using the infamous e=mc^2 was world changing. Atoms could be split or fused with devastatingly beautiful and terrifying effect. Few things have ever simultaneously stirred so much hope and terror in the hearts of man.
Later philosophers noted that energy and mass each had properties, and these quantifiable properties with governing rules constituted information as a fundamental part of reality. Yet, this too led to more questions. If something is binding information to mass and energy, then what is that something, and what supplies the information? While the answer of where the initial information for the universe came from is, and likely always will be, a mystery, the answer to what that something was came, at least for humanity, from a very unlikely source.
Like most great discoveries, its origins are as much myth as history, and most of the relevant details are unknown. Suffice to say that in the mid-21st century, a young woman of undistinguished origins postulated that there was an unaccounted for something, in e=mc^2, the =. The question she posed was; what is something when it isn't something? The startling realization she had made was there was an instant in the conversion process when the thing was neither energy nor mass. It was a state of superposition; a period of being undifferentiated, undefined. It wasn't just that its nature had not been decided, but that it was something unbound from information, energy and mass. She dubbed this substance, for lack of a better word, mana.
As you might imagine, mana has some very peculiar properties, and none of them are very easy to explain being but a humble scholar, but I shall make an attempt. Mana is the undifferentiated, psycho-reactive, essence of reality that has yet to be coupled with additional information, energy, or mass. It could be considered as the firmament of our energy and matter filled reality. It is not that mana is completely devoid of information, but rather that the information contained within it is the minimum required for something to exist in this, or any other, 'reality'.
When the universe was formed, something had to be super condensed and then expanded rapidly. The speculation is that this mass was initially composed of mana, which is extraordinarily low density, high potential, low information. Mana behaves much like water; it flows, pools, tends to clump, follows the paths of least resistance, and permeates all matter. Perhaps most importantly, however, is that mana is the source of gravity. Having its own attractive force, much of the energy needed to condense it into the singularity that would become the universe was inherent in mana itself. The cause of the rapid expansion is suspected to be a consequence of the initial coupling of undifferentiated mana with information.
In the beginning, mana was uniformly distributed in space, but as the universe expanded and cooled, mana began to clump together. This clumping could only occur by pulling mana out of its original trajectory. These pools continued collecting ambient mana, and thus gravitational mass, from the universe until they became massive black holes. Where it pooled it formed the whirling vortexes in space that were the protogalaxies. As the mana clumped together, it began binding energy and matter together in the creative process that formed galaxies and stars. It is known that these black holes eject mass back into the universe, and it has been postulated that they are in fact the universes way of taming the excess of mana that exists within it in order to allow reality to exist.
Stars form in a process similar to black holes but one that occurs in a lower energy environment. Over and over the process repeats, generating lower and lower energy clumps, planets, moons, asteroids, etc, and relatively small pools of mana on their surfaces called nodes. It is not incorrect to think of them all as nodes, though they are obviously more than that.
Even more interesting is that these mana nodes seem to establish links of mana between them, like water flowing down a mountain and collecting in pools until, by the time it reaches the bottom, what started as a raging river is reduced to a gentle flow leading out to the sea. These flows of power between nodes are called ley lines. Interestingly enough, ley lines have a sense of 'flow' that skilled Wielders can detect, and their power always flows from a more powerful node to a smaller one, though some suspect that there is more to it, much the way some rivers flow to the sea. Some unknown process also seems to 'evaporate' mana from these ley lines, radiating out some portion of their mana as they pass through their environments.
Wielding On Duende
Duende is unique in that it was not formed as most planets are formed. The pocket of space surrounding it, which exists in this strange place in-between the order of reality and the chaos of the Dream, is filled to excess with the residual mana from the death of many stars. While the mana has followed the same pattern as it did in the larger universe, here it skipped the formation of a new star and formed a single Jupiter sized planet; Duende, a planet that exists between reality and the dream, saturated in psycho-reactive mana on a scale normally reserved for entire galaxies.
True Wielders were extremely rare in the universe, and those who came to Duende were true masters in their craft. Unfortunately, their mastery most often lead to their untimely death. A incantation to start a fire caused many explosions, and many young spontaneous wielders died through a lack of control of their powers. Not only did this lead to a loss of much knowledge of Wielding, but it also caused a lot of trepidation among some members of the population.
On Duende the concentration of mana is so high that virtually every living creature can Wield, although only intelligent creatures who have trained at least a little in the Wielding arts do so knowingly. The Wielding Arts had to be redesigned from the ground up to account for the difference in magical potential. Unfortunately, not everyone dedicates themselves to learning to maximize their Wielding potential, leaving their minds undisciplined and free to influence existence around them with their fears, fantasies, and dreams.
Personal Sources of Mana
Everyone who learns the Wielding Arts draws initially upon their own mana reserves. With each use of mana their reserves become more and more depleted until they have no energy left. This state is a very precarious position for any Wielder. Being completely drained of mana can lead to death, or worse.
Normally, mana is regained over time by resting. Time spent resting restores mana gradually as ambient mana is naturally absorbed. It is rumored that some are able to naturally absorb mana at faster rates than others, but that has never been confirmed. It is also speculated that there is some correlation between lucid dreaming and the ability to manipulate, absorb, and store mana, but that has also not been confirmed. It is known, however, that by meditation a Wielder can shorten the time needed to regain their personal stores of mana. These restful methods are less stressful, and less risky for the Wielder, but they are far to slow to be of use in a combat situation where access to mana can mean the difference between life or death.
External Sources of Mana
It is often the case that the Wielder will need to fuel their abilities with more mana than they can readily afford to spend, such as during conflict or in a crisis. In these cases, advanced Wielders may tap into ley lines, nodes and other mana sources. As a Wielder gains mastery, they may learn to tap into these powerful sources of mana as well as others, but be warned, trying to tap into more mana than you are capable of handling is extremely dangerous. Power calls to power. Mastering these sources is as crucial to the development of a Wielder's ability as they are dangerous as accessing them is the required step for reaching higher power levels and failure can mean death.
Mana in its natural state flows through the paths of least resistance. On Duende, it is wild, often reacting to the thoughts and feelings of the myriads of life forms in the surrounding environs. To further the analogy of water, tapping into powerful external sources of mana is much like swimming. Sometimes a river or lakes surface is as still as glass, peaceful and serene, but there may be powerful currents that you can't detect. Others are more akin to raging rivers or stormy seas, all noise on the surface but eerily serene beneath. These resources provide a fast, if dangerous, source of power for the Wielder.
When a Wielder 'reaches' for that power, there is a chance that they will not be able to master it. If that happens, it is possible for a ley line, node, or other powerful untamed mana source to ensnare the Wielder utterly, as if being swept away in a raging river or tossed about a stormy sea. Until they manage to sever the connection, they are emptied of their own mana until there is nothing left. If the connection is not able to be severed, and the wielder is fortunate, they will die, consumed entirely by their lust for more power than they had earned the right to. If they are unfortunate, they could join the ranks of the Phain.
And that's just half the battle...
Assuming that the Wielder is not swept away and lost in the currents of power, they must then either siphon or channel the energy. When a Wielder siphons mana from an external power source, they must personalize that mana so that they can store it and reuse it. Mana siphoned this way recharges their personal reserves. Alternatively, they can channel the energy from one place to another. Siphoning and Channeling and Linking are all complex topics and will be covered later, but in any case, it takes a physical toll on the Wielder.
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