Attunement

Can you feel that? Is that the world turning?

Those who practice the arcane would never admit to it, but in the end, even they don't know what attunement really is. It is such an abstract concept Arcanists find it difficult to believe their lives of concrete facts and logic rely on it. What is attunement? Attunement is the process of "tuning" oneself to an external anchor. This can be an object, a person, a targeted area, or even some external force that exists either inside the physical reality, between it, or beyond it.

Attunement is a skill anyone can learn if they can understand it. The process involves an easily reached meditative state, Arcana Meditari for arcanists and Synchronize for bards, just to name a few.

This state allows the mind to settle, and once achieved, the practitioner can feel for momentary indications of what it is they are attuning to. Practitioners bind themselves to their environment, allowing them to manipulate it by changing the "frequency" or flow of metaphysical energies in their environment. They feel for what can be described as a pulse, or heartbeat in their environment. Every practitioner has his or her own way of perceiving it.

Purpose

Attunement is the only way to perform magic, regardless of how one does so. Bards , Druids, and mages alike use the skill. Even cultists and members of the clergy must attune before they can use the many miracles they have at their disposal. It is a fundamental rule of reality. To shape the universe, you must become one with it.

For our modern minds, imagine the practitioner as a radio receiver, and the source of their power is a frequency they must find to "receive the broadcast" and cast their spells. Druids take it a step further, closing themselves off to the metaphysical and listening only for the frequency of the natural and physical world they find themselves in.

Attunement is the only way Arcane power can be obtained. Even when using artifacts and legendary weapons that contain great power, one must attune to the objects to unlock that power. If not, weapons like our legendary Excalibur would be just another sword.

A matter of distinction

There are only two ways to properly utilize magic, causal and compelled magic. Causal magic is often referred to as Arcanism, and is defined by the fact that the user is actively using metaphysical energy as a medium to affect the world. Compelled magic is referred to as mediumship, and is defined by the caster being the medium through which the energies work through to affect the world. Both forms have their own advantages and disadvantages. Mediums often lack the agency that arcanists have over their power, but arcanists often have to exert excessive amounts of energy to cast a spell. On top of this a medium can find themselves in the prime position for extremely powerful outbursts of magic with little to no fatigue.

Mages may have to expend more energy, but they do not have to wait for the proper moment the cast catastrophic spells that can lay waste to entire battlefields. Furthermore, an arcanist can pick and choose what to attune too at any given point in time, whereas a medium only has access to what arcane energy is present in their current environment. In other words an arcanist can attune to the energies of death and speak with the dead directly, even picking which deceased person to speak to. A medium does not have this luxury and can only speak to the dead if the dead are present in their surrounding environment.

It costs more energy to do so, but being an arcanist can often be considered a more advantageous position. However, there have been many occasions where medium's have exhibited far more power with far less effort.

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Different forms of Attunement.

Projection

When a Shaman attunes, they allow the world to work on them, throwing their minds out of their bodies with ease. The world becomes silent until their return, leaving an uncomfortable void in their absence. Their arcane power comes from what they find in this other realm. They slip between spaces and kidnap spirits, recover strange materials, and partake of metaphysical fruit, all to gain powers it takes a mage years to learn.

The Sound of Nature

Druids attune to their immediate surroundings, often refusing to attune to metaphysical forces. When a druid attunes, the world will work through them. In the woods, their power often comes in the flow of leaves and branches. When near the ocean, their power leaves behind the strange scent of salt on the air, the look of each spell is fluid, like water. They take advantage of excess energy in the world, drawing it out and using whatever power it may grant. A druid can enter a new area, partake of the new energies around them, and have access to an entirely different list of spells.

The heartbeat of reality

Bards love attunement. They are the masters of the art, after all. Each bard is a natural and needs little training to fully master it. For this reason, the world tends to respond to them when they attune. Seemingly random events begin to work together in time, as if following some unseen time signature embedded in reality. What they do is not truly magic, but an exploit in the system. They use a loophole in the way the universe is written. Some bards even count the bars as a method of attunement, knowing they succeed when events around them fall in line with their numeric mantra: "One, two, three, four..."

Clockwork reality

The mages are logical, and refuse to live in a reality that fails to fall in line with their models. When an arcanist attunes, the world seems to alter its own rules. Everything is calculated, with little room for error. This in an internal process. The mage can read their environment, knowing the math before needing to solve the problem. They can calculate all variables quickly and efficiently. This efficiency allows them to know what spells can be cast and how many times they can cast it before tiring. They can make use of an entire Arcane Genre instead of being forced to pick and choose between a petty list of spells. They use their understanding to alter and enhance these spells, creating new effects that have yet to be seen.

Favor

Some do not rely on magic of their own, or take advantage of poorly written rules. Those in the service of metaphysical beings attune to the being or domain itself. They can almost speak to it, often using prayer to do so. Sometimes the entity will answer. Those who possess Mantles , like the mantle of The Red Maiden, can attune and manifest the object of their worship in the world. These are neither spells, nor magic in a traditional sense. Every arcane effect cast by the zealot is a miracle, a case of divine intervention. Its a strange thing to see in a world where gods are often silent and absent.