Notable Fantasy Magic Systems?

[Shryke]

Bakker's magic system is NOT language based. The language used is, ultimately, irrelevant. It's about MEANING.

The point of saying one thing aloud and one in your head is to fix the meaning of what you are saying so it's more precise. Like saying the same thing 2 different ways to make it more clear exactly what you meant.

They use a dead language in order to avoid complicating the meaning of what they are saying. A language you use every day has shades of meaning and personal baggage and such behind it. Certain words mean roughly the same same thing to everyone, but they are slightly different to you then to others and stuff like that.

The Few (those that have the potential to practice sorcery) are different from normal people in that they remember an aspect of God better then others. They see the world a tiny bit like a God but mostly like a human, whereas normal people see it only like a human. And because of this, they can also recollect God's meaning. His .. ideas I guess you'd say. And that's why they can actually change the world.

Now, the thing is sorcerors aren't God. When they rewrite the face of creation, it's like a child with a crayon trying to alter the Mona Lisa. Mostly, you can just scribble shit out (ie - destroy) and it's really easy to tell where you "edited" it. Sorcery leaves a Mark that's visible to any of the Few, because they can perceive creation more accurately and thus can see where it's been altered.

Also, altering creation damns you to an eternity in hell. God doesn't like it when you fuck up his painting.

There's 3, so far, overriding different ways of doing sorcery.

The Anagogic school uses analogy to fix a precise meaning.

"This guy is burning like a dragon was breathing fire on him".

"Things flying at me will bounce off me just like there was a wall in front of me".

This manifests itself as a ghostly image of the analogy being used. An Anagogic Sorceror doesn't create a fireball out of nothing, he creates a ghostly Dragon's Head that breathes fire. (The fire, fyi, is real) Or when he conjures a ward, it appears as a ghostly wall. Because it has to use analogy, it's much less potent then the Gnosis.

Gnostic Sorcery uses abstractions. Which is why it's always described in geometric and mathematical terms. A Gnostic Sorceror would describe the idea of fire itself and fire just appears. Or just describe a force of X amount, at Y position, pushing in Z direction and that force would exist, on it's own. Because of the greater precision inherent in the Gnosis, it's MUCH MUCH MUCH more powerful.

The 3rd school is the Fanim school. Usually described in terms of water and flows. The Fanim take a completely different track. Instead of trying to recollect a precise meaning with words, they use feelings. So, to use an anlogy, instead of trying to precisely describe an emotion, they just sort of feel it. "I'm not sure how to describe it exactly, but it feels like this." Because it's based on emotion, it's quite powerful (we're not sure how it ranks compared to the other 2. It seems to be in between in strength though). It's also, though, like emotion, less precise. And because it's based on feeling, it doesn't leave the Mark.

There's sort of a 4th school. It's not really practiced and in some sense can't be. It's more a counter to all other magic. It's called the Aporos and mainly what it did was make Chorae. Chorae are little balls of metal covered in script that negate all sorcery around them and make the wearer immune to it. They also kill sorcerors (turn them to salt) just by touching them. The Aporos is built on essentially pointing out the underlying contradictions inherent in language and logic and feeling and such. Essentially undoing the sorcerors argument. The sorceror says "This guy should totally be on fire and here's why ...." and the Aporos goes "Nope, sorry, your logic doesn't work so that doesn't happen. Also I win this debate so come over here and lose by turning into salt would ya?"

[Marcelo Rebelo Firqoralas]

In Dave Duncan's A Man of His Word series, knowing certain words will give you magical powers. The more words you know the more power you have, but if several people know the same word the power is split up and weakened. This mean that low powered magicians who only know a word or two have to stay hidden so that more powerful people don't capture, torture and kill them to get their word and powers. The whole setup had a pretty interesting dynamic I though.

[Nerdanel]

Donaldson's Mordant's Need has a world in which all magic is based on mirrors and all mirrors are magic. In the world mirrors don't reflect what's in front of them, but rather act as windows to other places on the same world (for flat mirrors) or another worlds (for curved mirrors). Research into mirrors is still at an early stage, so that you can't know where a mirror will point before you make one with given variables. "Imagers" are able to transport stuff to and from mirrors they themselves made, which has all sorts of interesting applications. Some people have abilities that break the normal rules, such as the ability to travel through a flat mirror without going insane.

The magic system in Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books is a lot more vague and varied (let's just say a non-standard element system is involved), but it has interesting details such as the concept of breaking natural laws. If you somehow manage to channel enough power to do an action that shatters a natural law, that natural law will stay shattered for everyone to exploit with all sorts of unintended consequences. And with natural laws I'm talking about things like the Law of Death and the Law of Time.

[Galactus]

Hmm festive alchemy with slaves, then. That sounds pretty bad, now, but since we're on that topic, what about magic in stuff like "Touched by venom" (dragon venom apparently miraculous, also needing female circumcision) or Sword of Truthiness (being tortured while a kid and fucking monsters give you the power to punch melon-sized holes in people) or, hey, the Dark Jewels... jewel magic, with which you can reshape not only the world but helle and heaven (and make magical cockrings of obedience)

The entire slavery-thing allegedly is a result of the hybris of the original mages (who basically pissed off God enough that he decided to humble them)

It's... Not very festive at all, really, it's more hard-agricultural labor and spending a lot of your time stomping on grapes. It's actually a pretty interesting system with some obvious limitations and restrictions inherent. (Like, if you want a particular spell you need a particular wine grown at a particular place)

[MattL86]

Aberchrombie's is much simpler and not really a system at all, but his take is one of my favorites. Basically all magic comes from the 'other side', or is demonic. There is a price for using it and it almost always has a negative connotation in his books. The First law forbids touching the other side, but all magic comes from the other side meaning the magi are basically hypocritical anyway and at best walk a fine line. The whole eating human flesh angle is pretty intriguing as well.

[Happy Ent]

So, after I destroyed both my posts describing Bakker’s system, Shryke at least writes one that is better. Two comments:

Gnostic Sorcery uses abstractions. Which is why it's always described in geometric and mathematical terms. A Gnostic Sorceror would describe the idea of fire itself and fire just appears. Or just describe a force of X amount, at Y position, pushing in Z direction and that force would exist, on it's own. Because of the greater precision inherent in the Gnosis, it's MUCH MUCH MUCH more powerful.

I used the same example, and then edited it (destroying it) to add: actually, the Gnostic sorcerer would probably describe either “burning” or “heat” or “light” or “yellowness” instead of “fire”. He describes an essential quality. This essential quality has been described by some ancient scholar, much like Real-World Greek philosophers would have thought about these things (with the added bonus of manifesting that essential quality into something real). Hence “Grumpfoodle’s third Axiom of Causing Panic in a Theatre” instead of “Fire!”.

The sorceror says "This guy should totally be on fire and here's why ...." and the Aporos goes "Nope, sorry, your logic doesn't work so that doesn't happen. Also I win this debate so come over here and lose by turning into salt would ya?"

I think it’s more like: “Oh yeah, you’re using language? Well, riddle me this, Batman: Who shaves the barber in Momemn who shaves everybody who doesn’t shave himself? Eh? Got it? Nah-nah-nah. Language is either incomplete or contradictory, so your fireball doesn’t exist. Oh, there’s a Mark on you that betokens that you’ve used magic before? Well, that’s a contradiction, isn’t it? Except if you don’t exist. So here’s a reductio ad absurdum right up your Gnostic rectum.” Poof! The Chorae just contain statement and proof of the construction that we (in our Real-World) know as Gödel‘s incompleteness theorems.

[aimlessgun]

Man of His Word sounds fun, like an improved Highlander :P

The magic system in Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books is a lot more vague and varied (let's just say a non-standard element system is involved), but it has interesting details such as the concept of breaking natural laws. If you somehow manage to channel enough power to do an action that shatters a natural law, that natural law will stay shattered for everyone to exploit with all sorts of unintended consequences. And with natural laws I'm talking about things like the Law of Death and the Law of Time.

Laws of thermodynamics too?

Sounds interesting, and also like it could get out of hand pretty quick in that universe.

So, after I destroyed both my posts describing Bakker’s system, Shryke at least writes one that is better. Two comments:

I used the same example, and then edited it (destroying it) to add: actually, the Gnostic sorcerer would probably describe either “burning” or “heat” or “light” or “yellowness” instead of “fire”. He describes an essential quality. This essential quality has been described by some ancient scholar, much like Real-World Greek philosophers would have thought about these things (with the added bonus of manifesting that essential quality into something real). Hence “Grumpfoodle’s third Axiom of Causing Panic in a Theatre” instead of “Fire!”.

I laughed pretty hard when, after I complimented your post without quoting it, you immediately deleted it by accident.

As for the fire stuff in Bakker, wouldn't you need all those meanings since fire has a lot of stuff going into it? Heat and light and burning and a material that is capable of burning. If mean if you're getting down to really basic stuff like heat and light, stuff at similarly basic levels would be mass, charge, and such (though I'm suppose 'light' just means the visible EM frequencies) and almost everything turns into an elaborate combination. Feels like if you got too essential you're just making things harder on yourself.

[Happy Ent]

As for the fire stuff in Bakker, wouldn't you need all those meanings since fire has a lot of stuff going into it?

But the Gnostic sorcerer isn’t making fire. Instead, he’s making “heat” (if that’s what he is after). Or light. Or burning. Or yellowness. Or spreading panic in a theatre. Or coziness. Fire does all these things, but the Gnostic spell will make exactly one.

(At least that’s my understanding of it.)

[Galactus]

But the Gnostic sorcerer isn’t making fire. Instead, he’s making “heat” (if that’s what he is after). Or light. Or burning. Or yellowness. Or spreading panic in a theatre. Or coziness. Fire does all these things, but the Gnostic spell will make exactly one.

(At least that’s my understanding of it.)

From what I recall they do indeed like to summon the essence of burning.

[Lorgakor]

David B. Coe's Winds of the Forelands/Blood of the Southlands had a pretty neat magic system. The Qirsi all have magic, mindsight, raising and controlling mists and winds, creating fire, and bending solid matter.

[RobMRobM]

Don't forget about Feist's Riftwar, which has two magic systems (upper and lower paths). Don't ask me to explain them, please.

[aimlessgun]

Don't forget about Feist's Riftwar, which has two magic systems (upper and lower paths). Don't ask me to explain them, please.

Amazingly 20 minutes of googling failed to turn up a detailed explanation, which is bizarre considering how popular the series is.

[Stubby]

David Eddings may have written entry-level fantasy, but his magic system was pretty clear. The concept is based on "The Will and the Word". The sorceror focuses 'will' for something to happen and then speaks a 'word' to make it happen. The 'word' is not necessarily a magic word or even a specific word - its really just a trigger for the release of the will. Late in the series Garion rebuilds a shattered door by willing it to be repaired and saying 'door'. The other sorcerors with him at the time ridicule him for saying something so uncool, but it works nonetheless.

Not everyone can do it - only those with the innate talent for it.

There are some backlash type limitations on the system. Using the will and the word makes a 'noise' that only other sorcerors can hear - thus advertising one's position. Also, the intent of the will can never be 'be not'. Doing so has fatal consequences for the sorceror trying it out. 'Be dead' is acceptable, as is 'explode' but willing something into non-existence is a big no-no. There is a kind of physical limitation to it as well. When Garion is trying stuff out for the first time, he tries to lift a boulder. He doesn't brace his feet (with his will) and he succesfully lifts the boulder only to discover he has sunk to his armpits in the earth.

Eddings also brought in a bit of fairly generic demon magic but the 'will and the word' was where he spent the most time.

[SpaceCoyote]

Robin Hobb's Soldier Son Trilogy had magic that involved giant spinning tops and forest wizards gorging themselves to morbidity. That's about the extent of what I remember.

[Samalander]

Robin Hobb does very well in Elderling world with the magics of Wit and Skill and the interplay between them. Her Hedge magic, though, comes out of the blue and is a bit fuzzy.

[Spring Bass]

. They also kill sorcerors (turn them to salt) just by touching them.

There seems to be a difference in how touching a chorae kills "conventional" sorcerers as opposed to Psukhe users. The conventional sorcerers turn into salt figures, while the Psukhe users are described as vanishing in a flash of light.

The weirdest thing about the Gnosis is that it's apparently so counter-intuitive to the normal human-thinking process that humanity never independently discovered it in the thousands of years that they've been practicing sorcery.

[Horatz]

I've three magic systems to contribute, two for A Way of Kings, and one from The Wheel of time.

Soulcasting is a talent which allows the user (by telling a truth to certain spirits the talents lets you see) to enter another 'layer' of reality called Shadesmar in which the matter surrounding the person is represented as a sea of tiny glass spheres.

If you have the necessary stormlight, the object you are touching in the "real" world will transform itself into one of the ten essences (so far we have seen Earth, Blood, Fire, Smoke, Wood, and edible material that is said to be incredibly bland).

People without the talent have to use a so-called

Fabriel, which an umbrella term for a whole number of stormlight-powered technologies.

A fabriel consists of three components; A gem, the framework, and a Spren (small luminescent being that pops into existence everywhere where there is a change in energy like in the vicinity of people experiencing passion or when near fires) trapped inside of the gem.

So far we've seen Fabriels that

-Transmit information instantaniously.

-Diminish pain.

and

-Cause heat.

Treesinging:

An abillity that allows Ogier to manipulate trees by singing.

The user can improve a tree's health, growing rate or s/he can 'persuade' it to split off a part of itself and form it into a wooden object without the need of a knife, and without the tree suffering any harm.

[drawkcabi]

Another fan of Bakker's magic system here.

I'm halfway through reading The Black Prism by Brent Weeks and enjoying it quite a bit.

There's a very detailed magic system in this book, it's all based on colors. Magic is called luxin and certain people are able to 'draft' it, making it manifest in physical form directing it with their will.

There's sub red (infra-red), red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and superviolet (ultra-violet). Each color has its own attributes and also causes distinct emotions/frames of mind when tapping into them, sub red is very flammable and brings forth anger and rage, blue is cool and chrystaline and brings calmness and logical thinking, etc.

There are drafters that can only draft one color (monochromes), two colors, (bichromes), more than 2 (polychromes), but only one person per generation can draft all the colors of the spectrum and that person is made 'Prism', one of the most powerful people in the land.

[Procrastimancer]

There are drafters that can only draft one color (monochromes), two colors, (bichromes), more than 2 (polychromes), but only one person per generation can draft all the colors of the spectrum and that person is made 'Prism', one of the most powerful people in the land.

I wonder if Brent Weeks is a fan of Avatar...

[Shryke]

There seems to be a difference in how touching a chorae kills "conventional" sorcerers as opposed to Psukhe users. The conventional sorcerers turn into salt figures, while the Psukhe users are described as vanishing in a flash of light.

The weirdest thing about the Gnosis is that it's apparently so counter-intuitive to the normal human-thinking process that humanity never independently discovered it in the thousands of years that they've been practicing sorcery.

It's not counter-intuitive, it's just complex. It's like the hard Science of magic vs previous guesswork.

Before that, humans were just messing around trying to turn lead into gold and shit. And then the Non-Men, who'd been studying this shit WAY WAY longer, came along and taught some people advanced chemistry.