On Inannak, magic is a change to the natural order, while at the same time remaining part of the natural order. Using magic means accessing the parts of reality which control reality. Its like changing the rules of a game while it is being played. Yet, these same rules that are being changed also allow for magic to happen.
Another way to picture magic is to imagine the world is like an enchanted mansion. The resident of the mansion can eat a meal at the table, write on parchment by the bedside table, move the chair around so that it faces a sunrise, or whatever they want to do while they stay.
Meanwhile, there are servants who prepare the meals, replenish the parchment and the ink, and move the chair back later in the day when sun has set. The servants are not meant to draw attention. They appear and dissapear through secret passages behind the walls, and get food and supplies from hidden kitchens and closets.
The residents are not supposed to prepare meals, replenish supplies, enter the secret passageways, or take things out of the kitchen and closets. The enchantment ensures that they can not do that, unless they have the passwords that the servants know. The enchantment does not care whether you are a resident or a servant, if you know the passwords, then you can go where the servants are.
The residents are the people of the world, whether they be mortal or daimon. The servants are the natural order of the universe, the rules of the game. The passwords are magic.
For immortals, magic is innate. This does not mean they are omnipotent, it merely means they have some of the “passwords” in their heads, and do not need to voice them. Even more so, they have access to the deepest magic, the magic of which all other magic is made. They can create new magic by piecing this deep magic together into something more complex.
However, such deep magic is not easy to piece together, and takes careful concentration to cast. It takes a careful study of the deep magic to create new magic. Thus, most immortals know only a handful of magics that can be of use. However, the more deep magics an immortal knows, the more powerful they can become.
Occasionally, a powerful immortal can weave together the deep magic to create spells. These are fundamental changes to the natural order which allows a sapient creature to complete common magical tasks without access to deep magics. Returning to the alegory of the mansion, a spell is like a special password which opens up a hidden cabinet in the mansion and reads off a list of other passwords hidden in that cabinet, activating numerous parts of the enchanted mansion at once.
Such spells are usually more than just recited chants. Often, they require additional actions to be taken: obscure gestures, alchemical mixtures and arrangements of occult symbols. These actions that coincide with the spell are intended to make it less likely that the spell will trigger without intention. Spell creators know that a spell with a simple word is dangerous for the entire world. In fact, the rules of deep magic proscribe such things.
Immortals who create spells often intend them only for their conveniences, as it allows them to perform deep magic in a more convenient matter. Occasionally, however, they provide them to their servants to use as well. The majority of spells known on Inannak were created thus by the gods of the Hebdomad.
All of the Hebdomad created such spells for their servants. However, Eilwain was a goddess of magic, and well versed in the understandings of deep magic. She created thousands, of spells, and taught hundreds of the weaker spells to her servants. Eilwain wrote her spells, and many of her siblings’, in tomes which were warded by deadly magic, and written in an enchanted cipher which requires magic to read it. Only those who were trusted by the hebdomad were given the knowledge to read these books.
A few had feared that the death of the gods of the Hebdomad would lead to the death of magic, and were surprised to find they were wrong.
During the Mortal Wars, many of the spells created by the hebdomad were lost. Many of those with the knowledge of magic who had turned to the apostasy found they could not recall their spells soon after their masters knew of their betrayal, perhaps through magic cast by their god. Others feared that the death of the hebdomad would also result in the loss of all magic, as it was taught that magic was a gift of the gods. Before her death, Eilwain did everything she could do to destroy the tomes she had written.
But many of the spells were not lost. Some servants wrote down what they could remember before their memories were lost, and could piece their notes together with others. Some of Eilwain’s tomes still survived, and mortal wizards risk their lives to break the wards and read them.
There are gaps in the collective knowledge of magic, numerous spells documented in historical records that are no longer available. Many of the more powerful spells that were lost had only been available to a select few in the ages before anyway. Overall, however, mortal access to magic is not much different from what it was before the Mortal Wars.
As the use of magic is part of the natural order, there are limitations to its practice. There are things that even the most powerful immortals can not do.
Using magic is a challenge. Remembering all the details of a spell, and getting them precisely right, is difficult. Manipulating deep magic to do what you want is even harder. Using magic requires training and practice, and the more powerful the magic is, the more difficult it is to cast. If a wizard fails in this way, it is called a miscast.
Many stories talk about wizards miscasting and finding unusual results, such as attempting to lift a book off of a table only to find the book turning into a frog. When using spell magic, this does not happen. It is possible for a wizard to get the parameters of a spell wrong: it is not the book that lifts but the glass next to it. But if the wizard miscasts a spell, they have failed to mimic the precise actions required to cast it. The spell does not work, and no magic occurs.
By far, the greatest limit to magic is the danger of using it. Anyone who use magic, even the most powerful immortal, runs the risk of what is called a declination. On occasion, when a wizard attempts magic, it is declined. A declination can result in anything from magic failing to happen to a backlash of magical force which can injure the wizard and even cause catastrophic damage to the area surrounding them.
Wizards do not know the cause of declination, it appears to be a natural reaction that occurs under unknown circumstances. The more powerful the magic, the stronger the declination will be if it fails. More experienced wizards have learned tricks to sustain their injuries when it occurs, but they can not avoid environmental damage. Some immortals have ways of redirecting the reaction and even negating it, at great expense.
Reconciling with Your Game System
When I use the term wizards above, I am referring to all classes of spellcasters, even if your game system has a more specific definition of wizard. In Innanak, there is no difference between a scholar who casts spells learned from a book, and a priest who casts spells taught them by their deity, or rather by a line of mentors who once learned them from a deity.
Someday, I may release home-brew rules which translate the above limitations into some of the more popular game systems. If you wish to create your own rules while you are waiting, here are a few suggestions:
To represent the difficulties of miscasting, all spells should require a die roll to cast. The difficulty of this roll should be based on the spell level or power, and the spellcaster should get bonuses with experience which make casting higher level spells easier. Spells which already require die rolls, such as a saving throw or an attack roll, generally do not require an additional die roll.
If a spellcasting roll is made with a D20, a roll of 1 should result in a declination and automatic miscast. If this occurs, the caster should then roll on a table which determines the results. These results range from no ill effects, to damage to the caster, to damage to the caster and anyone within a certain distance. High-level casters may be granted abilities to make saving throws against the damage to themselves only. Creatures with powerful innate spellcasting may have tricks which allow them to avoid this damage, but with some penalty which can come into play later.
Children’s stories talk about wizards using magic to accomplish great tasks: transport cities across the world, create tons of gold, or grant a supplicants grandest desire. While magic could accomplish these things, the power it would take to do so is far greater than what even most gods could accomplish. In general, the greater the change to the natural order, the more power the magic will require.
The stories are wrong, at least as it applies to Inannak.
On Inannak, magical travel is difficult. To do so, a wizard must open a portal connecting their location with a more distant place. The results of such magic are unpredictable. The further the distance travelled, and the more unfamiliar the wizard is with the destination, the more likely the portal is going to open onto the wrong place.
Travel between different worlds within the universe, such as into the World of Spirit, is more limited than travel within the World of Mortals. For more information on these limits, see “Chapter 1: Cosmology”.
In Inannak, the world is not an open book, and the future is unknown until it happens. Magic can not replace research. However, any being may seek spirits who might have the information they need, and convince them to help. Even spirits can not know the future any more than a mortal, but if they are wise they may have a better educated gess.
On Innanak, within minutes after a soul has left their body, the body is uninhabitable. There are no spells in the historical record which can fix this. The deep magic required is convoluted, and costly. Powerful major gods may be able to do this, if convinced, and the soul can also be found and convinced.
Wizards should not listen to daimons or spirits who claim to have found lost knowledge making this capable. What comes back with their spells are not the creature that originally died.
Magic which manipulates a creature’s behavior or mind are seen with disgust by most mortal societies on Inannak. Such magic was infamously used by the the Hebdomad to manipulate mortals. Those who believe the Mortal Wars were necessary will see such magic as evil. Those loyal to the Hebdomad believe such magic should not be practiced by mortals. Both groups will punish accordingly.
That is not to say that there aren’t creatures on Inannak who have no moral qualms against using such magic.
Magic that can overcome impossibility or grant arbitrary benefits by asking for it, or at least bargaining for it, is not possible on Inannak. This is not to say that a powerful entity won’t offer their magical services in return for great favors. But these services will be limited to the entities’ own abilities.
Magic is part of the natural order of the World of Mortals. It works differently in other parts of the universe.
In the world of spirits, magic works as usual, but not as some might expect. When magic is used in the World of Spirits, it behaves as if it were cast in the same place in the World of Mortals. Thus, unless it were designed to effect spirit in the first place, it will not do anything to other spirits in the area. It will, however, have its full effect in the World of Mortals.
Some wizards use this weird property to their advantage, by entering the world of spirit, and allowing them to use magic unseen. Naturally, this is reserved for very important magic, due to the difficulties of traveling into the World of Spirits in the first place.
Note that when a spell requires physical ingredients and manipulation of objects, those materials can not exist in the World of Spirit, and must remain in the World of Mortals. As it is difficult, but not impossible, to manipulate physical matter while in spirit form, this can cause problems for wizards inexperienced in spirit travel.
In the World of Dreams, magic works by different laws than in the World of Mortals. The spells that a mortal wizard might be familiar with will not work here at all. The creatures of the World of Dreams have completely different sets of spells that work in that world, and wizards travelling through dreams must learn them.
However, in the World of Dreams, mortals also have as much access to deep magic as immortals. This is not immediate, they must still learn and practice it, but many mortals learn some basic dream magics when they travel into the World of Dreams in their sleep.
Among the deep magics that mortals often learn from dreams are those involving travel. The limits of teleportation that apply to the World of Mortals are expanded in the World of Dreams. It is easier for mortals to travel long distances using this magic, and to places they are barely familiar with.
Magic works much differently on all of the other worlds behind the windows on the crystal spheres. The differences are to numerous to describe here. Wizards who travel to these places should not expect to know how to use magic in these places.