The Nature of Essence

The many oaks within

Consider an oak tree, standing in a forest, perhaps not distant from a prosperous town.
The tree is wholly composed of many essences – of oak, of tree, of wood, and of forest. We know this from experience – that an oak-infused druid can speak to it, but not the ash or Gingko it stands alongside; that a tree-mage can dictate its shape; likewise a woodshaper can work their magic upon it; and it will heed the call of a forest elemental. And essence analysis will show that it is completely composed of each of these essences, but that these essences are not equivalent. Suppose a bough falls from the tree, in a period of hot and dry weather. It ceases to be tree – the tree-mage will have no hold upon it – yet it continues to be composed of forest, and of wood, and even of oak, until rot sets in.
Suppose a noble, walking through the forest one day, takes a fancy to the particular gnarl of this tree’s bark, and has it excavated and placed in the grounds of his estate. Now the forest elemental has no hold over the tree, and it is composed of forest essence no more. But it is still all Wood, all Oak, all Tree.
Suppose the tree is felled, many years after the noble has died, for there is a pressing need for a stout beam for their great-granddaughter’s extension to the wing, and the tree hold no sentimental value for those living. Now it is not Tree at all, but notice that it does not become Beam, or house; such gross forms are not reflected in Essence. You may ask why, then, are Tree and Oak qualities that suffuse and compose our world, and may seek into other objects or be the focus of magic -essences, as we term them – when they so clearly reflect gross structures? In response, one might say that some basic quality is needed to reflect these structures down generations. therefore all living things carry an Essence – in fact, many essences, reflecting categories broad and narrow. For instance, our tree was both Tree and Oak, while our noble daughter is human as well as a mammal.
Suppose the mansion burns down. Now, the essence that was the tree changes again, losing all previous traits and becoming smoke, and fire, and ash.
Suppose the stump of the tree is made to paper. Once again the essence is changed. That it was worked by hand makes no difference; there are places in the world where the ground curls up into rolls of paper, where willows hang with ribbons of fabric, where mountains of porcelain rise into the sky.
One of the greatest – perhaps the single greatest – intellectual challenge that stands before thinking beings of all sort is in understanding how essence comes to be, how it works. Orthodox Gyrists hold that essence is never created, destroyed, or changed in the world, but that it endlessly flows; Omgeth the wise, one of the first great thinkers of recorded history, argued compellingly that all essences are laid out in a vast hierarchical tree, with a single ur-essence at the base of reality; there are a hundred other theories, all with strengths and issues. It is not our purpose here to assay the truth; instead, we merely consider the many oaks within.

excerpt from "principles of essence", collection of essays, translation by Skuola of the Greenchapters, original authors unknown.

On the basin and the sea

It is a fact accepted by scholars that the principles that govern the everyday interactions of matter and force as experienced by sentient beings and the rules that govern the disposition of matter at larger scales are quite different. One might naively suppose, for instance, that the way water settles in a basin in ones home, sitting in a depression under its own weight and not overflowing the sides due to the geometry of the bowl, occurs in the same manner as an ocean occupying the vast cavity of the fathomless depths.
But evidence makes it clear this is not the case. An ocean is a place of water, infused and occupied fully by the fundamental essence of water, of which the wet clear liquid with which we are familiar is merely a symptom or reflection. The depression in which the ocean sits is there because it is necessary and characteristic of a place of water; a consequence rather than a precondition. Were the water-essence to flow away, the land may rise to be a plains, or even mountains, as dictated by the essence that replaces the water.
That is not to say, however, that the rules of our familiar scale are not affected by the grander infusions of a region. It will be observed, for instance, that the rate at which water disappears from a filled basin – the mechanism behind which is not clearly understood – can vary from place to place, depending on the infusion. A covered bowl in the heart of the sremic desert may empty with prodigious speed, even in a sealed room in the cool night. Meanwhile, in the marshy and humid Potionlands it may spontaneously fill itself.

excerpt from "principles of essence", collection of essays, translation by Skuola of the Greenchapters, original authors unknown.

Essence Study

the highest goals of Essence study can be enumerated thus:

1. A consistent and reliable way to bind arbitrary essences to arbitrary objects
2. A systematic understanding of the relationships and properties of all essences
3. Creation and destruction of essence, and altering of essence at a region-wide scale

Ways that infusions often happen:

• From the mother in utero
• From the immediate family or broader community, either before or after birth.
• From the infusions of the land or its creatures
• From diet, drink, or other consumption - e.g. Maneaters.
• From personal trauma or significance over a shorter exposure time
• Via deliberate magic

Knacks, Arts, and Gifts

• Knack: a particular skill with a given essence, usually not formally taught. e.g. Caziyel's fire-sight. what percentage of the population develop these?
• Art: a formalised system more akin to traditional magic, e.g. Lerinim Calcomancy, Turf-Troll brewing. many arts started as knacks that could be taught. in general, Arts are rarer than either knacks or gifts, though there are large populations trained in certain Arts.
• Gifts: inherent and unconscious abilities, e.g. Tasmis' breath. What percentage of the population develop these?

On "Magic"

What can and cannot be considered "Magic" is a much-debated subject, and ultimately a question of semantics. There is no energy or phenomenon that can simply be labelled .agic - just essence, and its flow, that forms all things. If essence is magic, than everything in existence is magic, which does not provide much clarity. For instance, Essence and the manipulation of it is not in-and-of-itself magic - a Calcomancer drawing a chalk circle is doing nothing fundamentally different than a blacksmith working iron into shape, merely re-arranging the distribution of a certain essence with knowledge and skill to achieve a desired end.
Moreover, there is no fundamental commonality between the various arts thought of as magical that can be used to . In this sense, magic can be compared to a category such as "craft", "science", or "art" - able to be used in conversation without confusion much of the time, though with some difficulties with regards to definitions or edge-cases.
Often, these divisions are deeply influenced by society: what is a religious practice, a magical art, or merely a specialised skill? mystic Augurs count as the former, common working Nidari Lifters are seen as the latter, while the formally-trained Bondcasters are considered magicians.
Although magic isn't a discrete concept as such, there is still the idea of "spells" as deliberate and non-natural essence effects. a spellbreaker is able to disrupt such effects not because they share some fundamental commonality, but because they are, as works of sentient will, often fundamentally inferior to (and certainly less stable than) their natural equivalents.

On trade and stability

many miraculous items are available in various parts of the worlds, with some even being commonplace in their particular locations. however, some essences and infusions are more stable than others, and as such some items travel better or worse than others. items that travel well include Teytonol fabrics, Obothic pebbles, Kerridan oil-shell, and amethyst charms from Errezo, and Paired Pages. items that don't travel well include most Lodestone Mountain machines (which rely on high Flux to work), Giterikin birds, Elritundi light-vials, and Turf-Trolls ales. The effect of this is to prevent magics in one area from having huge knock-on effects on the other side of the world.
for more details, please look at the Lists of Trade Goods
Miscellaneous notes:

• Metaphor: in this world, we would be thought of as "human elementals".
• It's possible to change essences - create and destroy them, effectively. A fire turns wood essence into ash essence. According to some theories, the wood-essences is merely liberated by this process, and ash flows in from the rest of the universe to fill the gap - this is a matter of much debate within the field of Comparative Essences You can have tree without wood - in Molomet, there are trees of stone and metal and sulfur - but the two are very often found together. Why some elements are frequently found together - water and salt, wood and tree- is unknown
• Example of essence properties: it's in the nature of jellyfish to float, to drift, to be gossamer and immaterial - and this is how the Bells are able to fly.
• Infusion is tied to proximity to high density of an element, but also based on personal/emotional affinities, self identity, interest and the like - someone who identifies strongly with their infusion will be more likely to hold onto it
• Infusions are passed along environmentally rather than genetically, but as the mother makes up a lot of the environment of a growing fetus, children typically follow their mothers infusions - though two Sokani parents could have a Nidari kid In Rithnidloi, under the influence of the rest of the townsfolk and also the huge jellyfish they live on.
• Essence responds in some basic way to intentionality and will - this is the basis of magic and part of how infusions happen. Being close to death, or at risk of it, also increases the likelihood of essence being accepted - this is part of the Urchin and Whisper infusion rituals. Think this through a bit more - it needs to be harder/more complex than just "wanting it enough".

Type

Natural