Magic

Magic within the world Thistleland is a part of is a catch-all term used by The Adventure Guild for a variety of exclusive abilities used by specific people that have difficult, often impossible to understand mechanics by those not familiar in them. Different types of Magic have different roots and different effects. Sometimes magic is called other things by those that practice it, though terms can usually be considered complimentary.

Below is a list of the various magic-using factions in and around Thistleland, with an overview of the magic they use.

Thistleland Mages
The Mages in Thistleland were the original ones to label Magic as it is, spreading their classification of magic to the continent as a whole on their forming of The Adventure Guild. Their own magic is complex and requires a lot of work, relying on the use of information to control many types of energies in order to use them externally in complicated fashions. Mages take great pride in the artful and detailed complex nature of their magic.

Many lower mages create their spells in their sanctuaries for use later, using spell scrolls, or objects with the spell etched into them. Such items will often be the subject of the spells ability, making the item enchanted. More advanced mages can transcribe their spells into translated forms, such as using a complex formation as the information medium, or placing certain spells together to create a more complex one. The most adept of Mages, however, are able to produce their spells on the fly, using projections of the information which are either hidden to all but themselves, or visible to all that observe them working. Such information projections are moved, rearranged, edited and created with gestures of the Mage, seemly moving the information with their hands to create the spell they require.

When not visible it can often appear that Mages are using their hands, fingers and arms to gesture a spell into being, and it can be difficult to know if this is an interpreted motion of a mid-range Mages prior spell or the new work of a true master.

As well as spell scrolls, items themselves can have spells etched onto them giving the item abilities. Such items are considered 'enchanted' by the Mages. Depending on how the enchantment works, the effects can either be permanent or require recharging by a Mage. Such rechargeable enchantments are far more common outside the Mages, and as the item is used, it will typically shorten the spell etched on the enchanted item. Recharging is achieved by the mage replacing the information in the spell consumed by the enchantments effects.

Avala
The people of Avala (including the Adventure Scouts and East Avala Company do not call their abilities by the name of Magic, though due to constant insistence by The Adventure Guild over decades their own terms for what they can do are long discarded.

While many Avala techniques have been lost to the ether, two of the abilities they have been widely known for is the manipulation of momentum, and the ability to teleport matter. Both abilities are restricted by The Adventure Guild and the Mages, with Teleportation abilities under heavier restriction. At this time the Mages have yet to fully understand how either device operates.

Both Teleportation and Momentum Manipulation techniques require extremely complex machines to work. A Momentum Manipulator device is called a Momentum Engine, while a device that teleports is simply a Teleporter. Avala descended people consider Momentum Manipulation to be the earlier, more basic version of their ability, with Teleportation being a more modern (At least when they evacuated to Thistleland) discovery. As such for every twenty or so Momentum Manipulation devices known, there may be one Teleportation device.

While Teleporters are used for a fairly easy to understand function, the known uses Avala descended people have for Momentum Engines include their unique firearms, impact craft, contact based weapons, doors, cranes, heavy machinery, and more beside.

Momentum Engines require an amount of mass as their fuel source, and produce a great amount of heat during use which needs disposing of. This requires a degree of design thought with many Avala applications. Being a newer device, the Teleporters do not have this constraint, however they do require a energy source and often suffer from lengthy recharge times if this energy source is low capacity.

The Gamanic
While most of the abilities of The Gamanic are still lost in The Dark Continent, those who fled to Thistleland did bring some of what they have to Thistleland. The main abilities they possess appear to be based beamed light and advanced combustion, as well as extremely advanced craft known as Shuttles.

The most famous application for beamed light is with the Gamanic's legendary Gamanic Light Rifle, a firearm that shoots a beam of bright white light that is able to burn through targets more effectively then a laser in a moment. such beam shots typically last less then a second, and are known to cut through anything they encounter for a considerable distance. It is known that most Gamanic Light Rifles take a considerable time to recharge.

The shuttles that the Gamanic use are extremely advanced, being made of metal with glass fronts, having power controls with energy based fuels, and advanced propulsion engines that appear similar to jet engines. The Shuttles are highly utilitarian in looks, and designed for medium-length journeys as opposed to continuous use. Many materials used in their construction appear similar to the materials used in the Gamanic Light Rifle as well as a great amount of normal Gamanic tools and constructions.

Due to The Gamanic currently living in camps in the north of Thistleland, they do not have the resources to replace or create new Light Rifles or shuttles if needs be, though they are fully capable of repairing what they have. This is a large reason why they take many trips to The Dark Continent to secure more equipment, using heavily equipped Ghost Lights to do so.

One other notable, but only presumed, type of magic that The Gamanic once possessed is that of creating the Darkness, from a device referred by them as the Darkness Engine. Due to their familiarity with it, it is presumed that they were able to build this device and had a full understanding of it, though this is called into question by the fact it was used to sterilise their entire continent. It could be assumed that it is based on a similar magic as the Gamanic Light Rifle, possibly the counterpart of it.

The Gamanic reject terms such as Magic regarding their abilities, and have a scorn for the Mages insistence of such.

The Southern Continent Tribes
Little is known of the people that reside in the forest and jungles of The Southern Continent, though what contact has been made suggests that they are a deeply spiritual people. They have been known to alter plants and other life around them by the use of runes that seem to alter the energies within, possibly hinting at a similarity to how the Mages operate their own magic, a belief reinforced by the abilities of Witches and Warlocks.

Other uses of the tribal-like magic used that have been reported reliably is the use of Golems and other moving inanimate objects, almost always inscribed by the runes that enable the statues and the like to move and interact with the world around them. While such golems are typically employed as mindless guards and traps around important locations, there are some reports of armies of stone men that stand ready for use in tombs, and highly advanced forms that are treated akin to a living being.

Witches/Warlocks
Often found in the south of Thistleland, or the north of The Southern Continent, Witches and Warlocks are outcast Mages that seek to further their magical abilities through methods disapproved of by the Mages and The adventure Guild as a whole. As such they are almost always living with bounties on their heads.

Almost all Witches and Warlocks found so far have been using a combination of Mage magic and what appears to be the rune based magic that is used in The Southern Continent. While such possibilities of these two magics are varied, the most common use that Witches and Warlocks use these mixed magics for include demon summoning, familiar summoning, and necromancy. The first two primarily use Mage magic to create a demon while possibly using the runes to 'fix' the creation in flesh over time, while in the case of Necromancy, the projection abilities of the Mages magic is combined with a form of golem creation within a corpse. Usually such reanimated corpses act like aggressive golems, there are some cases where it appears the magic is more restorative, leading to an undead remembering what it once was.

The Mages will often pay a great sum of money to gain the summoning scrolls used by Witches and Warlocks, and occasionally after much studying, individual scrolls may be released by the Mages to the public if deemed safe. As such some unique and rare creatures that are summoned by scrolls are known to exist, most often living within Guildtown.

The Changed Lands
Due to the assumed disaster that swept over The Changed Lands and it's nature, little is known of what magic may have once existed aside the Changing Fluid itself. So far all that has been discovered is a great quantity of Changing Fluid, the unless changed creatures it has created, and the Ability Spheres rarely discovered.

It is assumed that the Ability Spheres are based on the same magic that the Changing Fluid is formed from. While the Changing Fluid alters a person who ingested or is in contact with it in varying ways, the Ability Spheres seem to give a single person that accepts a Sphere into themselves a specific ability, though it is rarely known what ability the sphere has before usage. Caches of these artefacts are incredibly rare, and as such it has been hard to known what each individual sphere contains, though due to the actions of a Decoction Raptor known as Gruel it is known that the Ability Spheres gifts can be stacked.

The Eastern Continent
The continent that Iwao arrived from, to the east and somewhat north of The Dark Continent, is a land little known of to most Thistleland people, though Iwao is open to talk of it. It is a settles continent that has mastered abilities in artificial intelligence and machines, populated by living being and intelligent machines that reside in chassis of their own design.

Each AI chassis is considered a unique life form in it's own right, and treated the same as organic beings. AI rampancy is wide spread and seemly encouraged. Advances in medicine have also occurred as a result of the AI taking interest in such, shown by Iwaos friend, an AI in a cobra-like chassis, having taken full time work as a nurse and frontier medic.

Another known advancement in the abilities of these people can be found in Iwaos main sidearm, a curved blade that can be charged with a type of green plasma edge in order to slice through otherwise inseparable objects. The blade is also able to fire off a limited number of green fire-like blasts. A small number of these discharges, or a single plasma swipe, depletes one of the small fuel cells that are required for the swords 'enchanted' abilities.