Schools Lore

Centralized Schools Lore & Theory

This document contains the deep lore, sensory details, and theoretical principles for every magic school.

[!IMPORTANT] Canon Casting Layer

Live table casting uses the Technique Glyph declaration:

Intent -> School -> Glyph -> Scale -> Tags.

This note provides lore and fictional context; live mechanical adjudication belongs to the active school and system rules notes.

Abjuration (Syllabus of Defense)

Abjuration magic is the art of active defense: actively rejecting harm, whether physical or magical. If another mage is trying to incinerate you, or a monster is trying to smash you, Abjuration is what keeps you alive.

Unlike the persistent boundaries of its Ward Specialization, core Abjuration is usually reactive or temporary. A shield spell is cast in the heat of battle to intercept an incoming fireball. A counterspell is woven in a split second to disrupt an enemy's chant.

What it feels like to cast: Abjuration feels like bracing for impact. It is rigid, structured, and forceful. Counterspelling requires intense analytical speed: the mage must instantly perceive the enemy's spell structure and forcefully project the exact inversion of that structure to cause it to collapse. Shielding feels like hardening the air itself into glass or steel.

The core pillars of Abjuration: Every Abjuration spell revolves around mitigating or undoing. It does not create raw elemental force (like Projection) or change physical states (like Alteration). Its sole purpose is to say "No" to the universe and enforce that denial with mana.

Negation

Negation is the ultimate safety net of the magical world. It is considered a must-have discipline for every practicing mage. In fact, the authorities of most civilized nations force mages to attain a certain level of skill in Negation before they can be legally certified. Mages with absolutely no negation skills cannot terminate their own spells if something goes wrong, cannot ensure proper safety if they try to teach magic to others, and generally represent a massive public hazard.

The Economic Reality: With the explosion of the mage population in modern times, the demand for professionals capable of dealing with hostile magic, wild spell accidents, and magical hazards has increased dramatically. This makes Negation a highly respected, relatively popular, and very profitable field of specialization.

Sealing (Locks/Binding)

The Art of Containment: While standard Abjuration focuses on deflecting attacks and Ward magic focuses on broad area denial, Sealing is entirely about containment. It is the magic of prisons, vaults, and shackles. A master Sealer does not need to kill a rampaging monster; they simply lock it in a space where it can never, ever leave.

Spatial and Magical Lockdown: Sealing is not limited to physical doors. Advanced Sealing targets the metaphysical properties of the universe. A Dimensional Anchor seals the very fabric of space, rendering Dimensionalism impossible. A Mana Bind seals a mage's internal mana channels, temporarily cutting them off from their own power.

The Overlap with Artifice: Because the most powerful Seals are designed to be permanent (such as locking away an ancient evil or securing a royal vault), Sealing relies heavily on the principles of Spell Formula. A Seal is only as strong as its anchor. If the physical anchor (the runic carving, the crystal matrix, the enchanted chains) is destroyed, the Seal collapses.

Ward (Prepared Boundaries)

Ward magic is the art of pre-casting: encoding an Abjuration spell into a physical space so it activates automatically. Because wards tend to have very long casting times, they are of limited use in active combat unless they have been applied to the target or area beforehand.

The Cost of Waiting (Reserved Mana Track): Pre-casting Wart (Trigger/Wait) spells before combat does not give a player "infinite mana." A triggered ward or un-discharged magical effect actively anchors itself in the caster's soul. It temporarily ties up your available Mana Track boxes for as long as it exists in the world. You cannot recover those boxes until the ward goes off or you dismiss it.

The Art of Stacking: The true measure of a professional warder's skill is not just casting a single ward, but stacking them. Different wards naturally interfere with one another, making it incredibly tricky to layer multiple effects over the same domain. Professional warders measure their worth by how many different wards they can stack together and how smoothly they interact, a task that gets drastically more difficult with each added layer.

Temporary vs. Permanent Wards: Warding is both easy and hard. Casting temporary wards requires a fair amount of experimentation and experience to manage interference, but it is manageable. Many mages make a respectable living erecting temporary zones for clients.

However, the real money lies in the construction of permanent wards. Making a ward permanent requires considerable expertise in Spell Formula, which is notoriously difficult. Very few warders have what it takes to pull this off. As a result, permanent warders are extremely well-paid, highly sought after, and fiercely protective of their trade secrets, often reluctant to teach others for fear of lowering their market prices.

Alteration (Syllabus of Restructuring)

Alteration is the art of restructuring what already exists. Where Projection creates energy from mana, Alteration uses mana as a catalyst to rearrange the molecular or atomic bonds of existing matter. The mage does not add or remove material; they change its properties: making stone as flexible as rubber, iron as brittle as glass, causing the earth to rapidly shift into spikes, or forcing flesh to fuse and bind.

At the Academy, Alteration is considered the most intellectually demanding of the "safe" schools. A Projection mage can brute-force their way through problems, but an Alteration mage must understand what they are changing and how. You cannot restructure a material you don't understand. This is why Alteration students are required to train both Physical and Mental attributes in parallel: practical fieldwork and mundane sciences provide the theoretical framework that mana then executes.

What it feels like to cast: The caster typically needs physical contact with the target, though environmental alteration (like earth shaping) can be done at a short distance. They feel mana from their track feeding into the target material like water into a sponge, then they mentally "grip" the molecular structure and twist. Observers see the material's surface ripple, shimmer, or warp as its properties change. Higher-complexity effects produce audible groaning or crackling sounds as major structural changes take hold.

The fundamental limitation: Alteration cannot create matter from nothing, nor can it destroy matter entirely. It can only change what is already there. Turning lead into gold is technically possible at high complexities, but the lead must exist first.

Blood Magic

[!CAUTION] Forbidden

Blood magic is extremely illegal — easily on par with Soul Magic, if not worse. Most nations deliberately suppress all information about it, other than warning people that it's evil. Despite this, the field refuses to die out.

Life force is a very potent form of mana, useful for a lot of things. Unlike spending standard mana, however, spending one's life force is a pretty big deal. Life force recovers extremely slowly, and the human body will not easily relinquish it to the caster; it must be coaxed or forced into allowing it.

The Price of Power: No matter the method used, drawing on life force will result in lasting weakening and sickness that will persist for days or even weeks. Vertigo, exhaustion, lethargy, and phantom pains are all typical consequences of life force depletion. Losing a little life force now and then does no permanent harm, but dipping in too deeply or too often has permanent physical consequences.

The Dark Path: Because of these steep personal costs, true blood mages intensely dislike using their own life force. Instead, they focus on stealing it from others. This stolen life force is frequently used to power massive, highly illegal workings, most notably demon summoning. This is the primary reason the discipline is hunted so ruthlessly by governments and the Church alike.

Medical Magic

[!IMPORTANT] Difficulty

Medical magic is considered hands-down the hardest field of magic to pursue. It requires a massive amount of theoretical knowledge and impeccable shaping skills. Its relative youth makes it hard to find qualified teachers, and training in it requires living targets. It is almost unheard of for medical mages to practice any form of magic except ones that support their chosen specialization.

History and The Weeping: Medical magic is a very young magical discipline. It was founded only after the gods fell silent and stopped granting their priests healing spells. Even then, it took many years for the field to gather sufficient reputation to be taken seriously and attract world-class experts. It recently received a massive boost when a plague known as "The Weeping" swept across Altazia, causing many wealthy organizations and individuals to invest heavily into magical medical research.

Relationship with Alchemy: Even today, medical magic is primarily used to supplement traditional alchemical treatments rather than serving as a cure for absolutely everything on its own.

The Economic Reality: Because the field demands everything from the practitioner, from massive study to living practice targets to extreme precision, entry is incredibly difficult. However, medical mages are extremely well paid, meaning there is never any shortage of candidates clamoring to become one.

Transformation (Matter)

[!WARNING] Dangerous Specialty

Transformation is not taught to beginning students in most academies. A mage who transforms into a non-humanoid form will find it extremely difficult to cast spells from that form, as their mana channels, physical gestures, and vocal cords are completely altered. Most specialists combine this expertise with Alchemy, creating transformation potions instead of casting directly.

Transformation is the ultimate application of Alteration on biological matter, but it differs fundamentally from standard flesh-shaping or Medical Magic. Instead of manually knitting bone and tissue, the mage constructs a metaphysical TransformationShell around the target's soul, which forces the physical body to adapt to the new spiritual blueprint.

Because it relies on this soul-body interface, the target must possess a soul. You cannot transform a stone into a dog, nor can you transform an undead zombie into a bird.

The Spellcasting Problem: One of the greatest hurdles of Transformation is that spellcasting requires highly specific gestures, vocalizations, and mana channel alignments. When a human transforms into an eagle, they lose the vocal cords to chant and the hands to form somatic seals. Their mana channels warp to fit the new body. Therefore, casting magic while fully transformed is nearly impossible without decades of specialized practice or completely custom spell formulas designed for that specific animal form.

Animation (Syllabus of Autonomy)

Animation is the art of imparting a fragment of the caster's own mind into an inanimate object or magical construct, granting it a degree of autonomous action. The animated target does not gain true intelligence; it receives a copy of the caster's knowledge, filtered through a simplified decision-making matrix.

This creates a fundamental ceiling: an animated construct cannot do anything the caster could not do themselves. A golem animated by a mage who cannot swim will drown. A homing bolt animated by a mage who cannot aim will miss. Because Animation relies so heavily on the caster’s base skills to be effective, most animators also possess one or more mundane skills (like blacksmithing, carving, or martial arts) that they work on side-by-side with their magic to make their creations more capable.

The Economic Reality: Animation is a highly popular field with many specialists because it allows people to effectively conjure helpers and massively improve their productivity. A skilled animator can do the work of a dozen mundane laborers.

Living Targets: While typically used on inanimate objects that have no will of their own, Animation can be used on living beings if the caster is powerful enough to override their will, or if the target simply doesn't resist. However, animating unwilling people is strictly forbidden by Academy law, as it is functionally equivalent to mind control.

What it feels like to cast: The caster feels a portion of their consciousness "stretch" outward into the target. It's often described as a headache-inducing split-attention effect. Maintaining multiple animated constructs simultaneously is mentally exhausting and rapidly drains Mana Track boxes, risking Mana Burn.

Golemancy

The Illusion of Life: Golemancy is a highly advanced application of the Animation discipline. Spells in this field work by infusing a portion of the caster's mind into an inanimate target, granting it a measure of autonomy and independence. However, because the spell relies entirely on the caster’s own mind and knowledge, a golem cannot perform complex actions that the caster themselves does not understand.

The Mundane Requirement: Animation spells rely heavily on the physical properties of the object being animated. A golem made of poorly stacked rocks will crumble when it tries to run. Therefore, successful golemancers almost always possess one or more mundane crafting skills (such as blacksmithing, masonry, or sculpting) that they practice side-by-side with their magic. A beautifully forged steel automaton will always outperform a crudely animated pile of scrap.

Mindless Constructs: Like undead, basic golems are mindless constructs. They follow their programmed instructions literally and lack the ability to adapt to entirely new situations unless directly puppeteered by the caster. They are immune to Mind Magic and feel no pain.

Necromancy (Forbidden)

The Truth of the Undead: True, naturally occurring undead are exceptionally rare and almost exclusively take the form of incorporeal ghosts. The shambling corpses, skeletons, and zombies that most people associate with necromancy are entirely artificial creations. Mechanically speaking, a zombie is simply a biological golem, a construct of flesh and bone animated by a bound soul.

The Process: Creating corporeal undead is not a quick combat spell. It requires significant alchemical preparation to treat the corpse so it doesn't immediately rot away and can handle the strain of magical animation. Once the vessel is prepared, the necromancer must use Soul Magic to rip a soul out of the afterlife (or a living victim) and forcibly bind it into the corpse to power the animation matrix.

Mindless Servants: Because the soul is enslaved purely as a battery and engine for the corpse, these undead retain none of their original personality or true intellect. They are completely mindless. As a result, they feel no pain, do not bleed, ignore severed limbs, and are entirely immune to Mind Magic.

Conjuration

[!NOTE] Ectoplasm

No one is quite sure what ectoplasm actually is, and its exact properties are being studied to this very day. It behaves like a malleable solid, stops spells as a brick wall would, and affects targets like a real physical object. Its durability and realism scale entirely with the skill of the caster.

The Nature of Constructs: Conjured items and creatures aren’t real. Upon destruction, they evaporate into nothing, dissolving into a smoke-like form before gradually fading away. Severed parts (like the arm of a conjured beast) will likewise evaporate once separated from the core of the conjuration.

Combat Utility: Conjuration is heavily used in combat magic, mostly due to its incredible defensive utility. As a general rule, an ectoplasmic barrier will stop every spell that would be stopped by a physical brick wall, which is most of them. Offensively, force projectiles strike targets just like a real projectile would. This is exceptionally useful when battling targets that are immune to exotic forms of energy damage (like fire or lightning) but can still be put down by a heavy brick to the face. Real or ectoplasmic, blunt force trauma works.

Peaceful Utility: Conjuration also has massive peaceful and economic applications. Historically, it has been often used during trickier constructions, allowing people to transport and handle massive stone blocks and other unwieldy things. Even today, this is often the case: fancy mechanical cranes are expensive to build and maintain; a conjured hand only costs mana.

Dimensionalism (Syllabus of Displacement)

Dimensionalism is a notoriously difficult field of magic to practice. It requires a deep Mana Track, excellent shaping skills, and a massive amount of complex theoretical knowledge to pull off successfully.

Because of the high difficulty of the field, as well as the incredible potential for abuse many of its spells have, Dimensionalism is not taught to beginning mages. Only by practicing other forms of magic may a student eventually grow to a point where they can begin to tackle this field. Even then, access to Dimensionalism is often restricted along political lines.

The Specialist Rarity: All of these barriers make Dimensionalism a fairly rare type of magic. It is vanishingly rare for someone to actually specialize in it. By the time a mage gains access to Dimensionalism, they typically already have a primary specialty and are reluctant to change it. Most Dimensionalists are mere dabblers who learn a few utility spells.

What it feels like to cast: The caster experiences a brief disorientation: a sensation of the world "flattening" as they perceive space as a mathematical grid rather than a physical experience. Pushing past limits results in severe Mana Burn. Observers see the targeted area shimmer, ripple, or fold inward like cloth being gathered. Portals produce a visible tear, a seam of distorted light and compressed air, while teleportation effects cause a soft pop of displaced atmosphere.

Summoning (External)

[!IMPORTANT] Lore Restriction

No summoning of spirits (angels or demons) is possible. The current reality is cut off from the spiritual realms. Familiars and creature summoning remain functional.

The Dimensional Requirement: Summoning falls under the umbrella of Dimensionalism, which means it requires a great quantity of mana, excellent shaping skills, and complex theoretical knowledge of spatial manipulation. Most mages who learn summoning are mere dabblers who only learn enough to recall their staff or summon a minor familiar.

The Dark Truth of Demon Summoning: While summoning physical beasts or familiars is legal, summoning entities from the spiritual realms (demons) is strictly forbidden. The energy required to breach the planar veil and bind a demon is astronomical. Because of this, demon summoners almost exclusively rely on Blood Magic. They steal the life force of living victims and sacrifice it to power the summoning matrix. This intrinsic link between demon summoning and ritual sacrifice is why Blood Magic is hunted down so ruthlessly by authorities.

Teleportation (Self)

The Pinnacle of Difficulty: Teleportation is considered one of the most notoriously difficult fields of magic to practice. Bending space requires a massive quantity of mana, flawless shaping skills, and complex theoretical mathematics. A single error in calculation can result in the caster materializing inside a solid wall or arriving without their limbs.

Political Restriction: Due to the extreme difficulty of the field, and its incredible potential for abuse (bypassing city walls, assassinations, smuggling), Teleportation is strictly not taught to beginning mages at the Academy. Access to advanced spatial magic is heavily restricted along political lines. Only trusted, high-ranking mages are permitted to learn long-distance teleportation.

The Reality of Combat Warping: While short-range "blinks" are highly effective in combat, they are incredibly disorienting. A mage must instantly recalibrate their balance, momentum, and spatial awareness the millisecond they materialize. Only the most elite combat mages can reliably weave teleportation into an active firefight without making themselves vulnerable.

Chronomancy

The Illusion of Time Travel: True, grand-scale time travel (jumping back years to change history) is universally considered impossible by modern magical theory. What Chronomancy actually does is manipulate localized temporal flow: speeding up the caster's perception, slowing down an enemy, or freezing a specific object in stasis.

Predicting the Future & Reconstructing the Past: When Chronomancers attempt to look backward or forward in time, they are technically using highly advanced Divination. These spells are not literal windows into time; they are incredibly complex analytical matrices that gather clues from the present environment and guess what happened or what will happen. Because of this, past reconstruction is often flawed, and future prediction is notoriously unreliable. The further out a Chronomancer tries to look, the more wildly inaccurate the "guess" becomes.

Divination (Syllabus of Perception)

Links and Limitations: Divinations require some kind of link to the target, either a physical object or some of the caster’s memories. They are strictly range-limited; a caster cannot cast a divination on a target miles away without a powerful scrying focus. Spells seeking a non-specific target will only scan a certain area around the caster before giving up. Divinations that aim to predict the future or reconstruct the past are only guesses based on the clues the spell was presented with. They tend to be unreliable, with future prediction being far more unreliable than past reconstruction.

Efficiency and Skill: Divination is not a very mana-intensive field. It puts a far greater emphasis on good shaping skills than the size of one's Mana Track. This makes the school a popular choice among mages with average or shallow tracks.

The 'Garbage In, Garbage Out' Syndrome: Being able to cast a divination spell is no guarantee that it will be useful to you. Interpreting the information received can be fiendishly difficult, often resulting in a string of gibberish and a raging headache. If you feed improper information into your divination spell, or start with an ill-considered reference point, you will get a result that is incorrect or misleading.

The Cost of Dedication: Because of the sheer mental discipline required to interpret results correctly, Divination requires an uncommon amount of dedication. Most diviners are narrowly specialized, neglecting other fields of magic to focus entirely on their chosen discipline. Only the most talented diviners, or very old ones who have hit the point of diminishing returns in their studies, can afford to invest their energies into other fields.

Scrying

The Necessity of a Link: Scrying is not omnipotent. A caster cannot simply declare they want to view a stranger halfway across the continent. Divinations require a sympathetic link to the target: a physical object belonging to them, a lock of hair, or a very strong personal memory of the target from the caster. Without this reference point, the spell has nothing to lock onto.

Range Limits and Scanning: Scrying spells are range-limited. If a spell seeks a non-specific target (e.g., "show me the nearest goblin"), it will only scan a certain radius around the caster before giving up. It will not search the entire world.

The "Garbage In, Garbage Out" Syndrome: If a scryer feeds improper information into their spell, or starts with an ill-considered reference point, they will get a result that is incorrect, misleading, or visually garbled. Interpreting a flawed scrying sensor can result in a string of gibberish and a raging headache.

Glamour (Environment)

The Decline of Illusion: In ancient times, when mages were rare and the general public had a fuzzy conception of magic, a simple visual glamour could easily cow a superstitious peasant or allow an assassin to walk right past a king's guard. Today, with the explosion of magical literacy, this is no longer true. People are suspicious. A guard who sees a slightly shimmering, entirely silent nobleman will immediately recognize an obvious illusion.

The Complexity of True Deception: Because modern society is so magically aware, modern Glamour is incredibly difficult to practice successfully. A true disguise cannot just be an intangible ghost made of light and sound. Skilled illusionists must weave in thermal energies, olfactory components (smell), and even employ Conjuration to make the illusion physically tangible to the touch.

Mind Magic vs. Optics: Some illusionists cheat by employing mental compulsions (Mind Magic) to force the target to ignore flaws in the disguise. However, the very presence of mind magic can trigger a ward or alert a sensitive mage that something is wrong, meaning mental glamours are not strictly better than purely optical ones.

Illusionism (Syllabus of Deception)

The Nature of Illusions: Contrary to popular belief, disbelieving an illusion does absolutely nothing. The image is real, physically constructed out of light and sound; it is just not what it appears to be. However, most illusions are very delicate and are easy to dispel with magic, or sometimes even simple physical force (like throwing a rock through them to prove they are hollow).

While basic illusions are just intangible ghosts, skilled illusionists can weave additional energies into the image to fool exotic senses. They can even employ Conjuration to make their illusions physically tangible. Some illusions employ mental compulsions to better fool the target, but the very presence of Mind Magic can alert certain mages that something is wrong, so mental illusions aren't strictly better than physical ones.

The Economic Reality: Illusionism was once a massively popular field of magic. In the past, when mages were rarer and non-mages had a fuzzy conception of magic's limits, illusions were terrifying. Even an obvious, intangible phantom could potentially turn the tide of a battle or cow a superstitious peasant into submission.

Today, this is no longer true. Modern magical literacy means obvious illusions are quickly recognized as such, and even fairly realistic ones will often cause suspicion. This, plus how difficult Illusionism is to practice flawlessly, has greatly thinned the ranks of illusionists. Many mages lament the current state of the discipline, though some have found great success applying their skills to the entertainment industry.

Mind Magic (Restricted)

[!IMPORTANT] Prerequisite

You must possess the Psychic Potential trait to learn this school. Unlicensed use is a criminal offense.

Mind Magic is fundamentally divided into two distinct disciplines: Surface Manipulations and Deep Manipulations, alongside the brutal reality of telepathic combat.

Mind Sense and The Mindless: A practitioner's first tool is "Mind Sense," the ability to detect thinking beings. Crucially, entities without a true mind (such as oozes, golems, and minor undead like zombies or skeletons) are completely invisible to Mind Sense and entirely immune to Mind Magic. They register as dead space.

Mental Combat and Pure Offense: Contrary to popular belief, it is incredibly difficult to kill someone with pure telepathic force. When a target's mental shell is broken, an unshielded mind assaulted with raw psychic power will mostly suffer incapacitation: agonizing pain, unconsciousness, severe headaches, confusion, and temporary amnesia. Unrefined psychic attacks are instruments of torture and suppression, not lethal weapons.

Sensory Tapping: A highly advanced but disorienting skill is tapping into a target's senses. While possible on humans, attempting to tap into the sensory feed of an alien species (like the Aranea, who process vibrations and taste the ground with their legs) can cause near-immediate collapse from sensory overload.

The Four Pillars of Surface Manipulation

Surface manipulations are temporary and often subtle. They are taught theoretically at the Academy using the "Mind Control Rectangle", divided by method (Forceful vs. Subtle) and resistance type (Will/Situation vs. Magic Resistance).

• Domination (Forceful / Will-Based): Outright ordering a target to do something against their will (Zwin). The target is aware of the compulsion. They can resist based on their personality and circumstances (e.g., refusing an order to kill a loved one).
• Suggestion (Subtle / Will-Based): Presenting an order as something the target wants to do on their own. The target remains unaware of the manipulation, though it can still fail if the suggestion wildly contradicts their current situation.
• Puppeteering (Forceful / Bypass Personality): Usurping direct control of the target's motor functions. It bypasses the target's personality entirely but must overcome their raw magic resistance. The target is a trapped passenger in their own body.
• Illusion (Subtle / Bypass Personality): Manipulating the target's sensory input (sight, sound, pain). It cannot be "resisted" through force of will, only detected and dispelled.

Deep Manipulations (The Dark Arts)

Deep manipulations are permanent alterations. They include modifying memories (Ernn), blanking out entire sections of a life, instilling lasting compulsions, or creating sleeper agents.

Because they require the attacker to dive deep into a victim's mind and spend hours meticulously tweaking delicate cognitive structures, Deep Manipulations cannot be used in combat. They are exclusively performed on defeated, defenseless, or willing targets. Even among monstrous psychic species, deep manipulation is considered a dark art.

Mana Track Efficiency and Reputation: Mind magic is not terribly difficult to cast and, like divinations, it puts far greater emphasis on shaping skills than raw Mana Track depth. Mind magic is very Mana Track-efficient. However, except for the spells that target the minds of animals, mind magic is heavily restricted and has a very poor reputation among mages and civilians alike. Thus, mind magic specialists are very rare.

Combat Magic

[!NOTE] Multi-School

Combat Magic draws primarily from Projection, Negation, Animation, and Conjuration, followed by Alteration and Dimensionalism. It is not something you learn as a separate skill — it is a way of learning and casting that emphasises speed and power over elegance and safety.

[!WARNING] Cost & Risk

Combat spells place extreme demands on the mage's Mana Track. Getting the spell wrong is more likely to cause severe Mana Burn than normal magic. Combat magic prioritises power over Mana Track efficiency and safety features.

Combat magic is probably the most well-known and popular field of study that draws upon multiple magical disciplines. It is deceptively simple.

On one hand, most combat spells have rather modest shaping requirements and can be learned quite quickly by a dedicated mage. On the other hand, the very traits that make these spells so potent in combat inevitably come at the cost of Mana Track efficiency and safety features. Getting a combat spell wrong is highly likely to hurt the caster. This, along with the inherently lethal nature of fighting for a living, means that combat magic is considered quite hard to truly master. Many mages know how to cast a combat spell or two for emergencies, but they would not dare call themselves combat mages.

The Economic and Political Reality: Despite its dangers, combat magic is very common everywhere, and is incredibly popular as a specialty. Even people who are not naturally suited for it often direct their energies into the field. Most states enthusiastically encourage their citizens to focus on this discipline, as there is always a high demand for more battlemages everywhere.

Evocation (Area Control)

The Core of Combat Magic: While virtually all magic has some sort of combat application, Evocation is designed specifically for war and area control. It focuses on incredibly fast casting times, overcoming opponent defenses, and requiring zero preparation.

The Trade-Off (Speed vs. Safety): Evocation is deceptively simple. The shaping requirements for throwing a fireball are relatively modest, meaning a dedicated mage can learn it quickly. However, the traits that make Evocation so potent in battle come at a severe cost: it strips away Mana Track efficiency and all structural safety features. Evocation places extreme demands on the mage's Mana Track, and getting the shaping wrong is highly likely to result in the spell detonating in the caster's own face.

Elemental vs. Kinetic: Evocation does not create "real" fire or "real" lightning. It projects pure magical energy that mimics those effects (heat, electricity, physical force). Because of this, an Evocation fire will extinguish the moment the caster stops feeding it mana, unless it catches mundane fuel on fire in the process.

Projection (Syllabus of Generation)

Projection is the oldest and most instinctive branch of magic. When a panicked, untrained mage accidentally releases energy, it is almost always a Projection effect: a flash of light, a burst of heat, a shockwave of force. The school works by taking raw mana from the caster's Mana Track and converting it directly into physical energy. The caster does not manipulate existing energy; they generate it.

The Foundation of Magic: Mastery of Projection is necessary for advancement in many other magical disciplines. The production and manipulation of energies is the foundation upon which many other spells are based.

What it feels like to cast: The caster feels their Mana Track draining rapidly through their hands (or a focal point), accompanied by a building pressure behind the sternum. Pushing past one's limit results in severe Mana Burn. Observers see a brief shimmer or glow at the point of emission before the energy manifests. Higher-tier effects produce visible mana distortion; the air warps like heat haze.

Soul Carving (Modification)

The Indestructible Core: Souls are fundamentally indestructible. They cannot be truly destroyed or unmade by any known magic. However, they can be damaged, twisted, and scarred. Soul Carving is the art of inflicting those scars. Because the soul is the seat of a living being's mana generation and fundamental existence, damaging it causes repercussions that the physical body cannot heal.

Curses and Geas: Most standard magical debuffs or compulsions are temporary and can be cleansed by Abjuration or Mind Magic. A true Curse or Geas, however, is carved directly into the victim's soul. It becomes a fundamental part of their metaphysical existence. Removing a soul-carved curse requires another master Soul Mage to painstakingly perform "spiritual surgery" to cut the matrix out without crippling the host.

The Ultimate Taboo: Practicing Soul Carving requires first obtaining "soul sight," an agonizing and highly illegal process. Because Soul Carving is used almost exclusively for torture, enslavement, and permanent mutilation, it is considered even more heinous than Blood Magic. Mages caught practicing it are not just executed; their research is burned, and their apprentices are often purged to ensure the knowledge does not spread.

Soul Magic (Syllabus of Violation)

Soul Magic is the study of the metaphysical architecture of the self: the soul, its connection to the body, and the fundamental questions of life, death, and consciousness. It is the most dangerous and most illegal branch of magic, and for good reason: its practitioners can directly damage, manipulate, or sever the bond between a person's soul and their physical form.

In the age before the Silence of the Gods, soul magic was allegedly practiced openly by divine servants. When the gods departed, the knowledge was sealed away by the predominant ruling church, who declared it heretical. The most infamous practitioners in living memory are the undead masters who fought in historical magical wars.

The Truth of Necromancy and Undead

Contrary to popular myth, creating corporeal undead (zombies, skeletons, undead beasts) is not as simple as snapping one's fingers and casting a single combat spell.

Minor undead are effectively flesh golems. They must be meticulously crafted through a significant expenditure of alchemical ingredients and time, after which a bound granted soul is anchored into the corpse as the animation core. A corpse without a soul anchor cannot move itself and must be puppeteered directly by the caster. Because these constructs run on a constrained soul-matrix rather than a full living mind, they are effectively mindless. They feel no pain, do not bleed, ignore severe physical trauma (like missing limbs), and, crucially, are entirely invisible to Mind Sense and immune to Mind Magic.

The only "naturally" arising undead in the world are ghosts and other incorporeal soul entities. A walking corpse is always the result of deliberate, painstaking, and highly illegal magical labor.

What it feels like to cast: There is no pleasant way to describe it. Soul magic users report a sensation of "reaching through" the physical world into a cold, dark layer beneath it. Observers see faint black or violet energy crackling around the caster's hands, accompanied by a deep, bone-level chill.

The mandatory cost: Every single use of Soul Magic inherently challenges the sanity of the caster. If the GM rules the action extreme, they may require you to roll Resist Erosion immediately upon casting. The human mind was not designed to interact with souls directly.

Spirit Calling (Ghosts)

The Prerequisite of Soul Sight: Spirit Calling is completely impossible to practice without first obtaining "soul sight." This is an extremely difficult, excruciatingly painful, and highly dangerous process. A mage cannot manipulate what they cannot see. Because obtaining soul sight is strictly illegal in almost all civilized nations, the only people who specialize in Spirit Calling are underground criminals, ancient liches, and the hypocritical high inquisitors of the Triumvirate Church.

Binding and Containing: While Summoning deals with pulling physical creatures from other places, Spirit Calling deals strictly with the incorporeal. The primary use of this discipline is binding unruly spirits (ghosts) so they cannot cause harm, or enslaving them to power magical artifacts.

The Overlap with Necromancy: Technically, Necromancy (the animation of corpses) is just a specific application of Spirit Calling. A corpse cannot animate itself; it requires a bound granted soul to act as the mana engine. Spirit Callers are the ones who secure and bind these souls to the physical vessel.