How does magic work in your setting? How do people gain access

>>52652113
Magic is bound to gods, gods are bound to humanity. Human spirit is what creates gods, they are ideas given flesh. There are great gods and small ones, there is Furion, the god of flames raging, and there is Plevanna, goddes of a big rosebush where young couples meet.
The gods often cross paths with humans, and these paths often lead to bed, or the nearest shrubbery. Children born of such mésalliances are extraordinary, posessing some traits of their godly parents.
Great Houses arised from children of the greater gods, for with great power comes great influence. Ususally the golden blood is spread too thin, but sometimes the stars align and a child is born with a bit of the greater god's power.
After some three cataclysms, the Order came to be, to teach young gifted restraint, and to cull ones that didn't want to learn.
To be magical, one must be in some way related to a god. This is not uncommon, frankly almost everyone is related to a god, just because being a god is boring, and, being born of human thought, they are quite restless. Blood of the powerful gods runs thicker, and magical children can be born generations after the original half-god.
If you are (un)fortunate eneugh to be gifted, a lot of paths open to you:
you can just live as usual, using your talents in everyday life, this works only if you have a benign power that doesn't come from a greater god
if you are gifted a power from one of the greater gods, you must register with the Order or be marked a renegade
if you are gifted a power from one of the gods of the Elements, you must study as a mage in the Order, else you will be marked a renegade
if you finish your studies as a mage, you will be assigned a Guardian form the Order that will protect you, guide you, and end you should you stray from the Order's path. you will be given a tasks from the Order that are to be carried out unconditionally. Besides that, you are free to roam the world.

>>52653496
should I continue?

>>52653535
If you want to, just you and me in here right now but I'll read if you dump.

There are two kinds of magic.
One is pretty much reality programming, which involves working with the language of the gods and manipulating the fabric of reality through it. Shit takes for-fucking ever and includes long and arduous rituals that might take hourse, days or even years. You also need to figure in star positions, natural phenomena and of course the typical shebang of magical loci and leylines.
You can potential do anything with it, but since things can go south very fast and very horribly, it's a very slow process and most wizards like to stick to the tried and true formulas. Even modifying them is dangerous.
Magical items are created the same way, only with added elements of craftsmanship. Years and years of work might still only produce small results, unless you want to try and blow yourself up. But hey, a boomerang that always returns to you is still neat.
All of that is the reason why mages are secretive, a bit kooky and often life in the middle of shit-fucking nowhere. A good wizard spends most of his time preparing things in advance so he doesn't actually have to cast anything on the fly.

The other kind is fire magic, where you bind a living flame to your life force. You learn to call forth and control the fire and in the typical mystical control-your-chi-and-the-force kind of way, only that you can shoot fire from the arm the flame is bound to and that it straight up drains your stamina.

>>52652113
Everpresent radiation of existence.

Training in meditation, learning allready established spells and at higher levels learning through ones own insights gained through enlightenments.

Don't target the secular world (those who wantonly kill and massacre normal humans en masse are hunted down).
There's a split between demonic, righteous and neutral phylosophies.


I pretty much listed every xianxia story ever now.

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>>52652113
Magic is innate from the world due to the nature of its creation. In order to ensure it doesn't run rampant and cause really screwy magic-shenanigans on the mortals, the arcane dragon, Ley, created a series of inter-crossing lines (yes, they are literally called Ley Lines because I'm a massive bitch for that phrase) to better control the magic and reduce the likelihood of damaging 'surges of energy'.
The likelihood of having some sort of connection to the magic of the world is low, but equal across race/gender/status/etc.
Sorcerers and Bards come about normally just from a slightly closer tie to the innate magic of the world. Druids, and Rangers to an extent, learn how to tap into the Ley Lines through their ties with nature. Wizards study the way that the magic that seeps out of Ley Lines and interact with the world and learn how to manipulate it without needing the direct connection to it.
Ethically speaking, magic users are universally respected/feared, and systems have been put up accordingly. There is a school that is exclusive to the magically gifted that is free including room and board (funded by the state in return for 'dibs' on magical finds and benefits). It is a voluntary attendance, but what's not voluntary is registering with the kingdom regarding your ability and your proficiency in it, as well as alerting local authorities when you arrive or depart from an inhabited location. This is used to track the truly powerful and useful for investigating crimes with signs of magic.

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>>52652113
Well, there are actually two ways to explain it, even though there's only one casting system (no divine/arcane split).

Basicallly, there's the way the early 1500's pseudo-scientific way the people in-universe think magic works, and the way it actually works which is dependent on a solid understanding of quantum physics and chaos theory that modern man has yet to fully get solidified yet.

The basic theory behind it is that it violates the letter of conservation of energy, but not the spirit - casting a fireball draws heat from your hand, but not the same amount of energy that the fireball can be used to create.

It actually reverses entropy, but there's a limit to it. The primitives know that fire magic creates an area of cold, but don't know enough about entropy to wonder about the way the whole energy give-take system handles it. And they tend to make up rules which change daily since they're in the throes of a renaissance and !!SCIENCE!! is more popular than Science. Along with brown-nosing the local king.

>>52652113
It comes from the radiating energy of the creator god.

>>52652113
Gods make you their fuckboy and grant you a bit of magic in exchange for having them use your body as phylactery and sometimes puppet.

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Magic comes from the soul because things with souls have will and can impose their will upon things. The ability to impose your Will upon things is based on your knowledge and understanding of it so the more you learn and have intimiate knowledge of a thing the better your ability to impose your will upon it even making it do things it would not normally do by itself.

This applies to many things from warriors who learn how to train and hone their bodies with meditation, diets, exercises, and practice. For Scholars this involves the study and invstigation into things such as dissecting things and examining and comparing them.

The most fantastic magic comes in the form of Necromancy and certain forms of Alchemy where warriors can achieve seemingly superhuman levels of strength wielding great weapons and intense heavy armor after years of practice and use.