Ordered Spellcasting

Ordered Spellcasting  is the creation and use of spells, structured rituals that give ambient or stored magic energy the instructions to reproduce some type of tangible effect in the world. The majority of spells can be reproduced and taught with the right conditions. Those who use this are specifically known as Spellcasters.

It's a very straightforward way of using applied magic yet has been an increasingly used in a magical world like Kaf. That's because it is more convenient to reproduce and teach than most other magic. If a spell is prepared properly in a normal environment, then nothing unexpected can happen when activated or "cast". But if a spell isn't cast with it's proper components, one of three things happens: The magic doesn’t work, it backfires horribly, or you invent some new magical effect and get to name the new spell after yourself.
The formulaic and reliable nature of spellcraft makes the ideal magic for academics and intellectuals. Many spells are recorded are learned from special books known as grimoires. Spellcasting is heavily traditional, with most spells being developed through centuries of trial and error. The only people who break the rules are the maverick mages who wind up eventually discovering something new and/or blowing themselves up. Extensive experimentation is usually socially acceptable among mages, but the “Hey, you know what would be cool?” approach to things tends not to go over well with stuffy archmage councils.
The advantages of using spellcasting is it's mostly reliable and, generally, most life forms are capable of using it. Depending on the spell, the ritual can use the magical power inside themselves or the world around them.
The problems with spellcasting is that it can be easily predictable and countered if one knows how a spell is constructed. In addition, spells demand a large amount of the caster's attention and focus in order to properly sync their intentions with their magic source. Also spells have a learning curve to them depending on learner how they are learned. Someone's ideal way of learning changes how long a spell is learned, visual learners learn from tomes and scrolls from example. Higher tier spells take longer to learn and require more practice, a basic spell that takes a week to learn can take several months at the next tier.

Tiers

Spells come in tiers to determine how difficult or powerful they are.
Novice level are the most basic spells, followed by Adept, which are followed by Advanced, then Master. There are also the extremely rare Legendary tier spells, said to be spells created by the gods themselves in their spare time.
Novice spells are the most common spells due to their relative simplicity and practically in daily life. Even laypeople who generally don't use magic a lot will learn to a few novice spells sometime in their lives. Adept and advanced spells are usually the sign of a dedicated spellcaster and Master spells are hardly ever seen in common life due to their drastic effects.

Effect

Spell Types

Spell types describe the very nature of a spells general effects and function.
Conjuration: These spells involves creating a physical, independent, material object out of one's mana, however, there are also spells of this category can also create laws and principles and affix them to a specific area, or even create their own pocket dimension. Though a Conjurer has to undergo a lot of visualization training, once they have mastered the materialization of a certain object, they can conjure it and dispel it in an instant, whenever they want.

Transformation: These spells revolve around turning something into something else or altering its properties. They work by rearranging the atomic and subatomic structure of an affected substance into most anything else, changing the particles of matter & energy to create objects of different atomic characteristics of equal mass. They can not only change and transmute the atomic composition of an object (e.g., transmuting lead into gold of equal mass) but also change its shape. Only higher tier spells can affect living beings without painful, even lethal, feedback. These spells can only create items whose workings are understood and can be imagined by the caster, requiring more concentration than other disciplines.
Emission: Spells that generates and releases something and sends it forth out into the environment or towards an intended target for limited amounts of time. Basic applications include shooting out projectiles or beams of magic at high speed. Mana usually decreases in intensity very quickly when it leaves the source body, but adept emitter casters can separate their personal mana from their body for long periods of time, over long distances, and still be able to maintain the function of their spell.
Enhancement: Spells where mages can physically strengthen themselves or an object by channeling environmental mana into their own bodies or a held object. Therefore, those using these spells they are able to greatly increase their physical attack, defense, and endurance and are best suited for exercise, sport, or close-ranged melee combat. These spells are often compared to advanced Martial Arts as the effects of both can give the person supernormal levels of their abilities or enhance their weaponry.
Manipulation: These spells allow the user to control pre-existing living or non-living things, including magic constructs. The main advantage of this category in combat is the ability to manipulate the enemy themselves and solve problems outside of it.

Spellcasting Disciplines

These disciplines are mystic traditions that represent the how and why mages tend to specialize their magic talents in.
Domestic
These spells are designed to assist in household chores and tasks. They are generally not used for combat situations but are valuable in daily life. Of all spells, these tend to be more commonly used in the world due to their relative ease of learning. These are basic to moderate spells that are well known and used often, even by laypeople who don't normally take the time to learn ritual magic.

Nature
These spells are about communing with the natural world and gaining the ability to manipulate the forces and components behind it. This generally extends to living beings and natural phenomena, such as the weather and geology of the planet, and the matter and energy of which all these things are composed.
There are belief systems that revolve and revere this type of magic, especially the Druid sect of Naturism where practicing nature magic is one of the religion's major tenets.
The greatest nature mages and druids strive to become instantly familiar with their surroundings, and the connection is so deep that the world can respond to one's emotions and desires (blossoming with flowers and calming weather when happy, making skies stormy when angry, shifting the landscape to gain the advantage in a fight, etc.) And considering the fact that they're helping the environment, plants and animals can act favorably towards user or allow them to draw strength from them and acquire their abilities.
Elementalism is a branch of nature magic, that became popular enough that people specialized in this aspect. The extend of the control depends on the spell type but can range from movement of the preexisting element, conjuring the elemental material from mana, or compressing and shaping forming it into constructs. Extensive use of controlling the element can leave the mage with magical energies that surround them for a while after use such as controlling the wind will leave a mage with leaves and papers fluttering around them for a moment.
Mentalism
Spells that revolve around affecting the mind. This includes affecting the target(s) attitudes, making them act more favorable toward the caster's suggestion, temporarily forcing the target(s) to act in a certain way or affect the targets' emotions, or casting illusions by manipulating the mind and senses of the enemy, creating artificial sensations, altering a target's sensory properties, creating insubstantial images which affect the minds of the viewers. Mental spells are generally compared to psychokinesis, an ability that can produce the same effects.

Divination
These spells revolve around gathering information, sensing the possible future, immediately relevant events, or sending the senses beyond their usual range. The majority of spells require the use of an external component to perform such as mirrors, cards, books, crystals, numbers, palms, or celestial bodies to perform these rituals. Fortune telling is a more everyday and personal form of divination, that developed for the casual masses and known in popular culture.
Certain belief systems prohibit or restrict divination spells for various reasons such as tampering with the natural world to learn things against the divine in secret, or invading the personal privacy and trust of others.
Thaumaturgy
Also known as divine magic, faith magic or wonderworking. A practitioner of thaumaturgy is a thaumaturge, thaumaturgist or miracle-worker. The various types of thaumaturges are often conduits for divine power, manifesting it as miraculous effects. Harnessing divine magic doesn’t rely on study or training, a cleric might learn formulaic prayers and ancient rites but the ability to cast thaumaturgy spells is thought to rely on devotion and an intuitive sense of a deity’s wishes. As such typically the majority of thaumaturges are of the clergy, though there are users of this magic that are not bound to a specific religious order. It is thought they achieve this by drawing more so on the practitioner's personal faith tapping into the same collective unconsciousness that supposedly sired the gods themselves. Of course, the spells function the same regardless of the source, so the change hasn't really affected the school as much as expected.
Thaumaturgy includes the commonly known branches of restoration to heal and spellcasting to alter the effects of other spells. Offensive spells typically involve channeling the power of divinities as weaponized divine light, which is especially effective on demons and the undead.

Restoration
These spells allow mages to return things to a previous state which often manifests as rebuilding broken objects. It is also used to heal and boost the injured and the ill. Dedicated clerics, mages who are inclined to healing, bards, and other healers employ a great level of refined magic control to simultaneously activate and maintain certain biological functions in a person's body. Restoration is a commonly used branch of thaumaturgy due to its practicality, even among those mages that aren't clergy.
Most spells of the healing arts temporarily cause a body to draw from an active magical source to exponentially increase its healing capabilities by repairing damaged tissues and bone structures, and conquering diseases and infection. Most of the common spells cannot recreate tissue but if a limb is found and it hasn't been too long it can be reattached. Magical healing requires significant rest afterwards and it is not uncommon for those healed magically to later pass out for hours or days at a time. Miraculous as it is, speeding up the body's healing process will exhaust the person if used to often in a short time.
Spellcraft
Another branch of thaumaturgy is spellcraft, the modification of magical spells themselves. It includes wielding spells that absorb, reflect magic, dispel curses or removing the effects of magical items. They generally work by manipulating the intent behind a spell or its flow of mana. Due to how it works, spellcraft potential truly shines when used in conjunction with other magic as opposed to by itself.

Elder Magic
In the context of the worlds of Arcane Realm, the position and reputation of elder magic is complex and varied. It is generally depicted at face value as an obscure, ancient and intricate discipline, with very few playable units having access to it, and it frequently has ties to evil powers.
Elder magic refers to spells that either designed to break objects, harm or torture creatures, or force an effect against the natural order. For example, curses that work by disrupting the homeostasis of the body, creating illness like symptoms. It draws upon the either the magic energy of other creatures along with some of the negative emotions of the caster, like aggression or anger. The result can lead to taking a physical and mental toll of the user with long term use or those who are not used to it. This gives it a reputation of having a corrupting influence that the weaker-willed often lose themselves to, though it isn't necessarily seen as inherently evil by its practitioners. Certain religious orders however see things differently and will discourage its use if not outright ban it.
Elder magic find it uses by it practitioners for a variety of reasons: its useful in causing damage, residual energy from spell casting empowering the mage's other spells or allowing them to be cast without preparation, and reversing the natural course of "unwanted processes" like cursing the contagion of a disease into a milder form.
Necromagy
Yes, Necromagy, although necromancy was specific to interrogating the dead, necromagy dealts with the full range from summoning spirits to controlling armies of corpses. Historical and ethical attitudes of the practice has waxed and waned, revealing a possible two sides of the art. Necromagy was originally found as magic over life forces referred to as "positive energy" and the state that lacks this known as death. The main reason most necromagy has a bad reputation is because it did lead to the an unnatural parasitic version called "negative energy" animating the undead that leeches of positive energy to sustain itself yet can be countered and negated when its opposite force is willingly directed towards it.
Necromagy spells help or reanimate the dead. Zombies raised by necromancers have no will of their own or any memories of their former lives. They are simply animated corpses who are extensions of the mage who raised them. This spell allows for the mage to control the separate zombie bodies as though they were his own. The zombies are kept active by the mage's spiritual energy.
A few, however, embrace the discovery that true necromagy involves tapping the powers of life as well as those of death and "undeath'' and thus pursue it under the label of light necromages or life mages. These necromages or mediums are also specialists in the restorative arts, to the point where experienced ones can use ambient mana to convert into and regrow certain amounts of tissue. Many also see it as a service or duty to help wayward spirits of any deceased to find peace and protect the living from them and vice-versa. The split between the focus on helping spirits versus healing led to the modern healing spells known today. Safe to say, even with this distinction in necromagy, many organized religious institutions see necromagy connection with death as a whole taboo, but took the healing spells under a new branch to continue using them.
Alchemy
Alchemy is one of the major and oldest branches of metaphysical study and mechanics. While not the most used branch of magic anymore, the discipline was the stepping stone on the development of widespread scientific research and magical knowledge. The basic idea of transmutation was thought to operate by an inherent energy within the reactants to become the product called essence. Using the principle of essence, alchemists predicted that it could be transferred between materials via transmutation. Essence was also tested to see if it could be transferred and stored in objects.

Manifestation

Preparation
When it comes to preparing or casting spells, there are various ways to go about doing it.
We often have to make a distinction between preparation and activation. Both still use the list of components, but some of them may only have a role in creating a spell, while other will serve as a trigger to make it go off.
Spells do not necessarily need to be cast as soon as they are created. Many casters can hold on to certain spells or prepare them in advance to be activated later, which usually shows competency in applied magic.

Sign
Tracing a special symbol or mark in the air with an appendage like a finger. For most spell casting species, visualizing the symbol causes mana to form a intangible light following their movements. A finished sign with proper and clear intent behind it will have the background magic flow through it as a conduit to synchronize with the caster's will and activate.
Motion
Spells that require specific body movements and rhythms, often calling forth emotional drive from the caster and having their body act as a conduit for the magical power needed. Most motion spells simply have the caster use a hand gesture or stance as the trigger, others produce the required trance-like state through drumming, dancing, or any repetitive rhythmic motions. This can even be done in the form of sexual activity with arousal as an altered state mechanism, commonly known as sex magic, though certain social groups consider the method vulgar and crude.

Ward
Geometric shapes and diagrams, often with symbols that represent sounds or words laced within them. These symbols were traditionally physically drawn or scratched on a surface by a practitioner, but casters can also spend a portion of their internal mana to quickly create these symbols as glowing mystic circles in the air with projected light or manaplasm.
The constructed shapes and symbols serve to act conduit for the caster to focus their mana into and a visual focus to concentrate their intent into the spell they are trying to invoke. Symbolic icons typically take the form of magic circles and squares, mandalas, runes, or sigils. There are even iconic scripts specifically made to craft words used for spells.

Component
The ingredients needed to call forth a spell. The mechanism is usually that magic power of the material can be used for the spell, typical symbolic items, body parts of highly magical creatures, or even intangible things like emotions, or sounds.
Incantation
Words or a phrase, which must be completed in their entirety for the magic to activate. The length of the incantation generally corresponds to the power of the spell itself – a spell with a short incantation has a weaker effect, and vice versa. Mantras are primarily used as spiritual conduits, words or phrases that instill concentration in the caster. The mantra can be any kind of phrase or even nonsense, as long it gives the caster the state of mind needed to synch up with the background mana.
Lyrical
A spell that works via music: playing a certain song or a magical instrument that causes a spell-like effect to happen, often calling upon strong emotions to synch with external magic power and use it to effect.
Implement
An implement is a reusable tool for doing magic like a wand or staff. They function by either enhancing the casters spell, or are preloaded with an magical effect already and simply need a wielder's mana to trigger it.
The most common implements for spellcraft are scrolls, spellbooks, wands, rods and staves. Most often they contain a material that resonates with the world's magical power such as a gemstone or the organ of a creature that stored an amazing amount of mana.