Sorcery

Control over the world, coursing through your veins

Unlock the potential inside you! Perform feats the likes of which others can only dream! Enroll at the Academy Today!

— A poster advertising the Sorcerer's Academy on Sayles.

Sorcery refers to innate abilities that many of the population have. Those abilities usually give people small amounts of control over certain aspects of the world, though what exactly each form of magic controls is often unclear. The name of these different magics are often misleading, as they were named long before they were understood. For example, Skyblood, when it was first discovered, was categorized as three distinct abilities: Skyblood, Dustblood, and Cloudblood. It was eventually discovered that these were just different forms of the same base ability, which ended up being called Skyblood, as it was the first ability discovered.
Most of the population of the Wilde Blue is thought to have at least some sorcerous ability, though many have little or no control over it. The most common by far are Skyblood, which is useful in maintaining boyancy for smaller vessels; Earthblood, which is used far and wide to mine and in some cases, refine the metals of the Blue; and Shiftblood, which is the only sorcery that presents itself in the form of the sorcerer. It is thought that the reason these are so widespread is not because that the others are more rare but because they are the easiest to observe.

Base Sorcerous Bloods

Skyblood

One of the most common Sorceries, Skyblood magic is theorized to control density. This is often used by untrained Skybloods to increase or decrease the density of the Blue's thick atmosphere, but this control is not limited to just air. Incredibly talented Skyblood sorcerers can condense pure magic, creating the Gems that have revolutionized the Blue.

Shiftblood

The only magic that presents itself physically, Shiftbloods have the ability to change their physical form. It is apparently rather difficult to return to how the Shiftblood initially looked, and many either have slight disfigurements or oddities; or are unrealistically perfect. Shiftbloods are ostracized for their differences, and are the only group to form a seperate culture.

Songblood

Another very poorly named sorcery, Songbloods do not control music or sound. Instead, they can manipulate emotion. The first Songblood was a talented musician who unknowingly influenced his listeners opinions of his music with his magic. A skilled Songblood can shift the mood of entire crowds, and has been a popular tool of Emperors since it was discovered.

Stormblood

A sensibly-named sorcery, Stormblood magic often manifests in untrained sorcerers as small static shocks. More talented sorcerers can create larger bolts of electricity, or spur storms into existence. They are theorized to control imbalance or chaos, giving one thing a negative charge while raising the charge of another until energy leaps between them.

Waterblood

Waterbloods do not really control water at all. Instead, they can affect the growth of plants and animals. Waterbloods can ease the metabolism of many creatures, allowing them to grow further on less food and water, as well as hydrate the soil to help the moisture reach plants further. They play a vital part in the sustainability of the Blue, and are responsible for a large portion of food each season.

Earthblood

Another of the most common sorceries, Earthblood magic is also rather complicated. It can be used to create and destroy, most commonly by turning stone to dust and dust to stone. There are some limits, notably living beings are resistent to just being destroyed, but the exact details are not known. Talented Earthbloods can use this to effortlessly extract metal ores from mines.

Flameblood

Although fire is a large part of what Flamebloods can do, it is more about heat and energy. They can boil water, heat rooms, and, when well-trained enough, ignite the air itself, forming an incredibly high-energy plasma that is the backbone of the modern world. A team of talented Flamebloods can be found on most every island and airship, making sure the engines do not fail.

Lightblood

Lightblood magic is still, even in the modern day, somewhat of an enigma. On one hand, it appears to be entirely focused on healing and repairing, curing ailments of body and mind and fixing broken items. On the other hand, Lightbloods can also cause themselves to emit light, which can range from a dim, gentle glow to a searing, blinding intensity. The connection there is still unknown.

Mindblood

Another very sensibly named sorcery, this magic is focused thoughts. While controlling someone else's thoughts is almost impossible, skilled Mindbloods are able to slightly manipulate the senses of the people around them, and can sometimes force an individual to re-live a recent memory. The latter is reported to be very physically uncomfortable, if not painful, for both parties, but it is highly useful.

Shadowblood

One of the less common bloods, Shadowblood is about the altering of perception. While it appears that they dissappear into shadows, that is simply the easiest way to manipulate sight. Very skilled Shadowbloods can remove—or more accurately, hide—entire ideas and memories from the minds of affected people.

Hybrid Bloods

Rarely, an individual can be born with two sorcerous abilities. It is not yet known what causes this to happen, but the "hybrids", once trained, are often immensely powerful. Usually, these hybrid bloods lose the general utility of a base sorcery for a specialized ability, though they can be trained to use all of the powers that each of the parts of their hybrid grant them.
It is unknown why these abilities appear in a sort of cyclical pattern, as if some base sorceries are 'closer' in some way to two others than the rest. Hybrid bloods can appear between any two base bloods, but are much less common than the hybrid bloods named below.

Wraithblood

Components: Songblood + Stormblood
With the ability to both manipulate emotions and agitate most anything, wraithbloods are a powerful force for unrest. Though there are no direct laws against possesing this sorcery, there have been no reported cases in the Empire since the Trade Union Revolutionary War.

Chargeblood

Components: Stormblood + Waterblood
Combining growth and agitation is not an easy feat, and it often results in the eventual destruction of whatever is affected. The first recorded Chargeblood was able to imbue, for a small time, their own stormblood powers into those they touched. Later, this was attempted by the Imperial Navy, as part of an elite fighting force led by a chargeblood, but no one was able to survive more than a few weeks with a constant charge, and so the idea was dropped.

Greenblood

Components: Waterblood + Earthblood
It is a great stroke of luck that the two sorceries vital to the industrialization of crops in the Blue happen to have a common hybrid blood between the two of them. Together, they are usually not as useful as two seperate sorcerors, but they can control the crops directly, rooting out pests and illnesses.

Anvilblood

Components: Earthblood + Flameblood
At the core of the Industrial Age was a circle of talented Earthbloods, and at their head was an Anvilblood. The ability to purify and shape metal with a touch made that this individual, who sadly was never identified, could form complex tools and machines that previously would have taken weeks or months of work. Anvilbloods are less valued now, as the machines they built largely replaced them, but one or two have made names for themselves as incredibly talented blacksmiths.

Valorblood

Components: Flameblood + Lightblood
The most notable member of Valorblood was the Steel Sentinel, a hero of the Trade Union from the Revolutionary War. They, despite not having any training in their sorcery, were able to inspire the people of Trympe to make a stand against the invading Empire, which prevented the 2nd Fleet from reaching Sayles and crushing the rebellion. Reports from the battle say that she was like a beacon to her followers, a pure symbol of victory.

Brandblood

Components: Lightblood + Mindblood
The most valuable hybrid blood in the Empire, Brandbloods are capable of linking minds to most anything they please. Early attempts to connect two minds together resulted in the death of both participants, but attaching someone's will to an object, or later, a tattoo, prooved much more viable. This allowed the Empire to replace the chains and physical brands of slaves that caused unrest and small uprisings through the colonies with a more humane option, branding its slaves with a tattoo that the owner can cause to glow if the slave is misbehaving.

Purgeblood

Components: Mindblood + Shadowblood
One of the quirks of this particular hybrid blood is that if the sorceror wishes, you cannot remember them. This effect can extend to those that the Purgeblood has never met, and even persist after their death. There is one recorded case, Miphones Lentulus, and details about them are hard to find. Or, quite possibly, they are easy to find, and simply hard to remember. It is impossible for us to know.

Shroudblood

Components: Shadowblood + Skyblood
This hybrid blood is one of the more straight-forward ones. The combination of shadowblood altering perception and skyblood's control over the winds leads to the ability to mask large spaces in a shroud of blinding wind. These masked areas are not like the apparent invisibility of base shadowblood, rather, they appear as large pools of inky blackness. It is only once you enter that you are stripped of sight.

Featherblood

Components: Skyblood + Shiftblood
One of the first hybrid bloods discovered, Featherblood was initially a perplexing mystery. A shiftblood by the name of Evf grew to popularity by forming their arms into wings and performing acrobatic feats of flight. However, imitators found that their wings couldn't hold them aloft. Eventually, it was revealed that Evf was a hybrid with skyblood ability that allowed them to fly much more easily.

Lustblood

Components: Shiftblood + Songblood
The combination of an ability to change shape and manipulate emotions is a powerful ability, especially if the sorcerer is trained in both. Even untrained, they have the knack of shaping themselves to forms much more pleasing to the common person. Many lustbloods are not included in shiftblood communities because of this, despite their similarities. Having a lustblood slave is also seen as a status symbol of Ilysium's most powerful, and some of these slaves see themselves as artists, with their body as the canvas.

Origin

While Sorcery is theorized to have existed since the very beginning, there is no record of supernatural abilities until Sibylle Lichti, whose discovery kicked off the start of the Sorcerous Age. Academics have proposed that this is because the population of the Blue was simply too small for obvious sorcerous abilities to be common, and no pattern was drawn between very infrequent sorcerous events.

The Fullblooded

The ten deities of the religion the Empire tried to wipe out do seem to match fairly neatly with the ten base sorceries. The Fullblooded were worshipped throughout the Blue long before the first sorcerers were discovered, but there was roughly a 250-year period when sorcery was first being discovered and worship of the Fullblooded was not illegal. This is easily enough time to shift the deities to match a new understanding of the world, and the fact that most documents about the deities were destroyed after the Glesseal-Imperial War only helps to further hide the truth.

Many people, even in the Empire, though they do so in secret, think of the god or goddess associated with their sorcery as closer to them. I have no problem with this, even among my students. While we follow Vola's teachings first and foremost, the Fullblooded were one unit, and everyone can have their own personal favorite.

— Gerus Procul, Prophet's Children Elder

Societal Impact

The greatest societal shift with the emergence and prevalence of sorcery was in the creation of Shiftblood communities. Initally, anyone with sorcerous ability was separate from the wider population. Some were worshipped, others were feared, two were even killed by their communities. As it spread, the importance shifted to the 'rarer' sorceries, i.e. not Skyblood, Earthblood, or Shiftblood. In the modern era, these connotations still remain, but lesser. Instead, it is the talented or powerful sorcerers who draw admiration of the masses.

Industrialization

Sorcery has been the impetus for every modern advancement since it was discovered. Various different magics have allowed for more and more efficient techniques in airship travel, mining, farming, and more. Two generations ago, the next steps were made with the advent of Gems, which have allowed magic to be even more mechanized. The coming years are sure to have this new technology spread into a huge variety of industries, though their current form is a little too volatile for most work.

The first Gems were little more than bombs. The Academics who developed them were so focused on the feat of distilling and condensing pure magic that they didn't even think about what would happen when it was all released at once.

— Utycs Cenori, Gem technition for Jadeforged

Blood

The suffix of each type of magic is, like most of the names of the individual sorceries, an early misconception that stuck. Testing has shown that magic is not connected to any physical piece of the body. The only exception to this rule is the illicit drug Godsblood, which can temporarily imbue the user with incredible sorcerous power. If the blood of someone who has taken this drug is removed, stored, and then infused into someone else, they will experience the drug's effects, both the power and the crash when it fades.

Heritability

While there is some evidence that sorcerous type can be inherited, this is certainly not always the case. Having two parents of the same Blood will not guarantee their children have the same ability, though it does seem to possibly increase the chance that they do.

Early treatment of sorcerers was often... inhumane. A lucky few happened to emerge in the more religious communties, who heralded them as demigods or prophets. Most were ostracized over fear of the other. More than a few were taken advantage of by early scientists, who cared more about finding the truth than treating their subjects well.

— Tedusia Pollio, Imperial Historian

Hyacinem

These rare, sometimes illegal, crystals have some relation to sorcery, though the specifics are not known. The crystals can be used as a sort of focus, allowing one sorcerer to achieve more with their magic or multiple sorcerers to work together on a single task. If too much sorcery flows through the crystal, they will shatter incredibly violently. The crystals can also be used to make a drug that magnifies a sorcerer's power an incredibly amount, though the cost of such a high is usually incredibly drastic.

Hybrid Rarity

Hybrid bloods are rare, but not incredibly so. They make up roughly ¹/₁₀ of the population, with the most common hybrid bloods making up ⁹/₁₀ of all hybrids.

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