When talking about the magic, it’s impossible to not talk about essence. Many ask, essence of what? The most common answer is the essence of the world, but nobody knows for sure. The most eluding thing is essence’ source. Essence is being used for spells, but there isn’t any decline in the essence’s concentration over the years. Many experiments have been made, countless observation and measurements taken, but still, it’s a mystery.

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Essence is a fuel for runes and therefor – magic. Without essence runes won’t work. While there are many spells that can be run only on essence, most of them also use elemental mana. Mana can be produced from essence, but also occur naturally, albeit only in somehow extreme places. Mana is very unstable – in a minute most of produced mana will disperse, changing in an element. For example, water mana will change into water, fire mana into heat and life mana will change into life. (Life forms created that way are so small that it’s impossible to see them with eyes. Special magical methods are used to observe such entities.)

Each mana type has a base effect, but also can be used to create spells with more sophisticated effect. Many spells use basic effect, as only an exposure to some mana is needed for an effect. It must be noted, that such effects (more in Table 1) are only temporary, due to presence of mana. When mana disperses, the effect stops as well.

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Transferring mana through a body is harmful. Fortunately, there are affinities. Mana channeled through a body gives this body an affinity for that mana. Essentially, it could be said that a person with an affinity becomes partially a mana being.

A human can have at most around 90% of total affinities, while one affinity cannot be stronger than around 40%.

Some mana types can coexist with others, while some another one will create a conflict. All mages and warriors need to know relations between mana types, as it’s necessary for fighting magic users.

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Table 1. Death mana and space mana aren’t included, as the respective schools of magic are not researched very well.

Mana

Basic affect

Affinity effect on body

Conflicts

Life

Life mana forces live to grow and regenerate. Excessive exposition can kill due to lack of nutrients for growing.

High affinity speeds up natural regeneration of clarity, stamina and wounds.

Fire

Fire mana can be viewed as condensed fire of very high temperature. Mana is slowly dispersing, heating everything in the near vicinity.

Resistance to extreme temperatures.

Water

Light

Shadow

Air

Air mana lowers mass, with applies to both objects and living beings.

Lowered mass. A being can survive with less air.

Water

Earth

Electricity

Water

Affected material is projecting a strong gravitational force pulling in their direction.

Increases resistance to pressure (both gravitational and water pressure). High affinity lets breaths underwater.

Fire

Air

Earth

Hardens affected material.

Hardens body and makes it more sturdy.

Air

Electricity

Shadow

Conceals affected material or life being. It should be noted, that concealment is not only visual, and things under such concealment can evade even physical effects.

Makes body less susceptible to shadow mana. It’s more important, than other mana types, because this mana type is used mostly on the caster’s body. Also makes a mage naturally inconspicuous, while light mana makes a mage more charismatic in the eyes of others.

Light

(Severe)

Fire

Light

Light have the opposite effect than shadow mana, and brings things to attention. It is used in illusion and mind magic.

Shadow (Severe)

Fire

Electricity

Lightning mana charges material electrically. Such charging works as a marker for lightning attacks.

Resistance to electricity.

Air

Earth

Conflicts between mana types are important in magical battles, especially for barriers. It is also important to choose well your own mana types. A mage using magic from two conflicting elements will never get its affinities above 5%, as using, for example fire mana, lowers the water affinity.

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There are three types of barriers.

Physical Elemental Magical

Physical barriers are protecting user from physical effects, like getting hit with a stick. They aren’t protecting against mana attacks. Kinetic barrier would protect someone against hot air from the fire arrow spell, but wouldn’t against fire mana in the spell. Most of such spells creates a barrier resembling a physical material, which can be broken with enough force.

Magical barriers are opposite to physical ones. They protect against mana, but not against physical effects. They are fairly simple, as they are basically spell vectors - spells meant to move (in this case – repel) elemental mana. The spells are widely used by 3rd tier and higher individuals. This type of spell can only protect against one elemental mana type, so if you want protection against two mana types, you need to keep two spells. A caster with more intelligence, and capable of creating more spell vectors can overpower defenses of weaker mage.

Elemental barriers can protect against both physical and magical attacks, but they have a weak point in the form of non-conflicting mana types. For example, earth barrier will protect against water mana attack, but won’t do anything against fire mana as the two mana types can intermingle.

It should be noted, that there aren’t any barriers capable of stopping some magic generated physical effects, for example, nothing can ward water based gravity pull. Someone can try to weaken the pull be reducing mass via air mana, but the effect will still remain, only weaker.

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Spell vectors are simple spell used to move elemental mana. The same spell vectors can be used for every elemental mana type, and with some small modifications, even when moving pure essence. Spell vectors usage can be chaotic, the same kind as any battle. This is opposite to normal spells, which are stationary, or at least predictable and repeatable, if containing moving elements. Ability to effectively use spell vectors is measured by the spell slinging skill.

Any channeled spell needs a direct mana route between its effect and a caster. For example, a spell used to levitate water, needs a small water mana link between the water and the caster.

The strength of the kinetic spells depends on used essence and distance. Ability to influence mana gets weaker with the distance between caster and said mana. Generally, it is assumed a caster needs two times more spell vectors to move mana with the same force in a meter distance from their body, compared to mana within someone’s body.

Difficulty raises sharply with the distance. At 10 meters distance there is need for 100 more spell vectors than in one meter distance. In 100 meters distance, there is a need for 10000 more spell vectors.

The kinetic spell are also weaker at the distance, the same as the ability to manipulate mana. Long distance casting also suffers from the lack of precision.

It’s hard to provide more essence for a spell. Spells are taking essence from the air, so the power of spells is dependent on fairly stable air concentration of essence. The sacrifice spell can be used to pull essence from a caster’s body to provide more essence, and create powerful spell.

Normally, spell’s strength is increased with amount of spell vectors. Each spell vector is a small spell, which is using essence. The more spell vectors, the more essence a spell is using, increasing its strength. In the average concentration of essence in the air, each intelligence point of spell vectors can be used to levitate 5 kilograms of mass.

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Most people believe lines creating a spell must be perfect. It’s the wrong assumption. Experiment of archmage Vladimir (he lived around 600 hundred years ago) shows that’s not true. Archmage Vladimir used small balls of soil (about 5-10 centimeters in diameter, they were not uniformed) to create a spell. He placed balls in a distance of 2 centimeters from each other (from one surface to another) in a spell’s shape. The spell worked, even though there weren’t any direct connection or lines.

Archmage named this phenomenon as “the shape from the view of a flaying bird”. As long, as you can see the shape of a rune from the distance, it’s means the spell is working. General rule is simple. The lines must be of a certain quality, that is proportional to the spell’s size.

It’s an anthropomorphic rule. A shapeshifting being would note, that no matter how big, or small it is, the required precision is always the same (As he would resize the spell to his own size). Humans have it easier to create big spells. Obviously, for the spells in the mind, the size does not matter.

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Essence magic is often described as the most mystical. It’s not true. The most simple form of essence magic is the spell used for drawing essence from the air. A more complicated spells allows for moving large amounts of essence. Such spells allows for a fast levels up, by pushing essence into someone’s body. Unfortunately, such action depletes essence from the air. Moreover, to push someone to duke level, spell needs to draw essence from a large area, kilometers in size. Gigantic spells are banned by the imperial court, and it’s only possible to create them with the imperial court permission.

Some researchers claim that it should be possible to forcefully take someone’s essence via essence magic, similar to using someone’s own essence for the sacrifice. Most such attempts were ineffective at best. Generally, essence magic didn’t find its uses in combat, excluding essence drawing spell. Most essence mages are researches.