World building Thread, because we haven't had one in a while.

>>52013993

The loss of a magic user's thoughts and emotions can be easily replenished with enough rest and meditation, but damage to their personality, memories, and consciousness is either permanent, or requires a herculean effort to repair.

Wizards are those who learned some of the words of the language of creation and how to channel them in spells themselves. Sorcerers are those who made a pact with a supernatural entity, allowing it to graft a part of its soul onto the Sorceror's, giving them highly specific magical powers with no need of knowledge or technique to apply, in exchange for the Sorceror's soul upon death, lifelong mortal servitude, or the completion of a favor of some kind.

good shit op, I like the magic system so far, it makes the magic more meaningful giving the wizard/sorcerer the power to alter reality a bunch with certain sacrifices.

is this setting fleshed out more or do you expect us to chip in aswell?

File: download (4).jpg (5KB, 254x198px) Image search: [Google]

5KB, 254x198px

>>52014147

I pulled the magic system out of my ass, so far I don't have anything else. Feel free to post and add something to the setting, let's see what /tg/ can come up with.

> Hedonistic, anarchic, and primitive Satyr tribes scourge civilization and haunt the wildest places. Satyrs are essentially the brutality of nature given form in the shape of a man-goat abomination, they are obsessed with pleasure and destruction, and they often combine the two in sickening and vile ways. To them, might makes right isn't just a motto, it's a way of life.

>>52014257
Satyr tribes are often led by mysterious sorcerers who serve shadowy figures they worship as gods. Scholars claim these dark gods are in fact demons who use the malevolent nature of the satyr for their evil schemes.

File: Mosaic-runechartupgraded.jpg (530KB, 1000x1000px) Image search: [Google]

530KB, 1000x1000px

>>52013993
>>52014021
Love the feel of your idea. You may want to look at an idea that /tg/ worked on in the past for some inspiration if you need it:

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Setting:Mosaic/Mechanics#Runes

File: images (1).jpg (4KB, 275x183px) Image search: [Google]

4KB, 275x183px

> The world has two small suns orbiting it, one pale white, and the other, dark blue. Their dim light illuminates the world past its clouded skies. In ancient myths, the suns were once one large sun, before it was shattered by a wrathful God, the two largest pieces became the suns, and the countless fragments were scattered in the heavens to become the stars.

>>52014021
it is widely believed by common folk that there is a dark form of magic: "The black art" or "blood magic" as it is refered to. In dark rituals the users of these vile art sacrifice living creatures to amplify their magic, to raise the dead or curse entire villages.

The setting is actually an artificial ring world and the "magic" is the process of an inhabitant's mind interfacing with the world's control systems, hence the neurological damage. There is scifi level civilization in 3/4 of the ring but the wild quarter is still large enough that it would take 250+ years to cross on horseback, so the inhabitants remain clueless.

>>52014548

The most powerful dark magic rituals destroy the eternal soul of the sacrificed to empower the black magician, it is for this reason practitioners of dark magic are feared.

>>52014548
The Black Art was devised by a group of scholars who sought a way to circumvent the personal soul price of standard magic. Their intentions were good - to bring the power of magic to the common folk, to equalize the field between them and their wizard superiors. To do this, they had to figure out how to write out the Divine Language onto their sacrifices, the conduits of the Black Art.

>>52014602
What the scholars didn't know was that their Black Art is directly hacking into the world's control systems using the very programming language that it runs on. Once the more advanced peoples in the world realized what was going on, they came in to take out the scholars with extreme prejudice. The Divines made their presence known in the physical realm. Those seeking the Black Art must take every precaution to stay out of the Divines' gaze, lest they would be hunted down as well.

File: download (5).jpg (5KB, 282x179px) Image search: [Google]

5KB, 282x179px

>>52014674

The Divines are artificial conduits of magic, designed to be the ultimate killing machines in every respect, both martial and magical. There are only a handful of Divines and they take great care to avoid interfering with mortal affairs, but they are nigh unstoppable when angered.

File: Techno Horror.jpg (106KB, 1224x776px) Image search: [Google]

106KB, 1224x776px

>>52014763
The Divines are terrible creatures indeed, magic made manifest. However, should you survive an encounter with one (mind you, an infinitesimally rare occurrence), you may catch a glimpse of the written Divine Language upon its form. Perhaps this is how the wizards learned of the Language in the past, a more amicable relationship between the people and the Divines.

A lil' bump.

>>52013993
>>52014021
Sounds pretty neat to me. Defintiely discourages the over use of magic. Although I could see Wizards digging deep, essentially mutilating themselves to do something spiteful, or heroic.

It'd be kind of neat to make wizards who've depleted enough "mana" to be immune to effects like rage, fear, love etc.

>>52015945

I was thinking that a Wizard who went to far would go numb, unable to feel anything but apathy, no ambition, no hatred, no kindness, just, a total lack of feeling, and eventually, they'd lose their individuality, their personality, and everything that makes them a unique person. If they pushed any further, they'd begin to lose their deepest, most treasured memories and finally, their essence, all that they are, would dissolve and trickle away, leaving nothing but a blank, mindless husk of what they once were.

ok let's draw up some tiers for the spell words

common - usually verbs, adjectives and basic nouns
uncommon - more exotic nouns and adjectives, rarely verbs
restricted - races and towns love to keep monopolies over certain spell words, and it'll take effort to get them to tell you

>>52016820

Sounds nice. I could see monsters or cabals having secret knowledge of a word of power too. I figure the shorter and less syllables a word of power has, the easier it is to cast, but the longer and more syllables a word has, the more power its spell has.

>>52014602

Let's go back to this, why hasn't the advanced sci-fi civilization contacted the primitive wildlands?

>>52013993
/tg/ doesn't do world building anymore because the best world builders were all banned or left because of No Fun Allowed /pol/ice actions..

>>52017563

Bullshit, there's a worldbuilding thread on /tg/ almost every week, and they've come up with some nice original content.

I use a similar form of magic where the soul is derived from the infinite, or the oversoul. Clerics and others with a close relationship to the oversoul are constantly drawing its infinite potential into their souls, like a raincloud filling up a bunch of tiny wells with the eventual goal of merging with it. Those that do use magic do so at the cost of delaying this merging process because they are exhausting some of the energy that they have been given as they diffuse it into the world around them. But because they are constantly taking in soul energy from this oversoul, it is not as costly to their soul matrix as an ordinary spellcaster.

However, in order to maintain their relationship with the infinite, they have to maintain a certain perspective, and always use their magic to heal instead of hurt, view others compassionately as as equals, etc. As soon as they begin to use their magic for personal gain, their relationship with the oversoul wilts (whereas healing magic actually strengthens their relationship with the oversoul, but still costs soul energy in the short term) and they begin to exhaust their soul reserves like any other mage, and perhaps at an increased rate because they, being used to their replenishing energy reserves, are not as efficient with their energy as other casters.

Some casters also have a bit of a Dark Sun edge where they use energy stored in the environment and in food that they consume to fuel their magic, although this effect is negligible. Mana efficiency, from the "physics" mage standpoint, is about using preexisting forces to your benefit so that you don't have to put as much energy in.

Everyone has a default "draw" from the oversoul, and in mundane situations it is strengthened by things like altruism. Most people also derive soul energy from other people, and this can be symbiotic and not necessarily zero-sum because positive relations open up temporary nodes to the oversoul, from things like close friendships or communal ties

>>52020181
Reproduction also opens conduits to the oversoul, and if children are conceived as an act of love they will be more soulful and draw most of their energy from the oversoul and not their parents, whereas children conceived from acts of violence or hatred will siphon almost all of their energy from the parents and have a weaker connection with the oversoul (and a greater talent for black magic).

Basically I'm seeing reality as a strange maze that this energy is constantly being poured and diffused into, and it is not often that it returns. But when it does, it is usually in large amounts.

>>52020181
>>52020225

That's pretty neat anon. It's sort of poetic in a way. I like it.

I treat magic like computer code, where in a wizard fills their spell book with algorithms, functions, subroutines, and so on, all of which are stored in their spell book and allow the mage to direct arcane power without having to perform every rite and define every parameter for how they want that power to act.