An Apprentice Wizard's Introduction to Magic - Price of Loyalty Worldbuilding VI · 6:14am Oct 29th, 2014
The old gray pony scowled under his overgrown eyebrows, and leaned heavily on his staff. It wasn’t a walking stick; he had more than enough willpower to ignore his arthritis on his own, the same way he’d fought past the other ravages of age. He kept the dragon’s spinal column because it made his identity altogether clear. The wide berth that the commoners of the Crystal City gave him proved that the implement was doing its job.
His hollow cheeks and cleanly-groomed chin moved only slightly as his harsh, raspy voice spoke up. “Do you intend to wish your parents farewell before you depart, my student?”
“No,” the eight year old unicorn colt answered rather derisively. “My dad probably won’t even notice I’m gone.” The bitterness disappeared from his voice when he looked up at the old stallion. “I want to learn magic, Wintershimmer!”
A sigh followed the words, as Wintershimmer the Complacent shifted his body weight stiffly off of his staff, and stowed the grisly implement in the enchanted pocket he kept in his slimming robes. “Very well. There’s more than the time we require on the walk to the palace.” His hoof gestured rigidly to the towering crystalline structure that dominated the skyline, glimmering in the morning sun. “We shall start with mana, Coil. The proper name for magical energy. Every living thing in the world makes mana; it comes from the marrow, inside your bones. All of them, mind you; not just your horn as so many common imbeciles believe.”
“I know what mana is,” Mortal Coil grumbled from the height of the grown stallion’s knees. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
The outburst won the colt a spiteful scowl. “Mind your tongue, colt. I might be famous for the removal of my enemies' souls, but other limbs are not outside my talents.” When Mortal Coil shrunk back at the cruel statement, Wintershimmer’s harsh brow released a single crease worth of tension. “I’m not so cruel as to expect that you obey me without question or reluctance, my apprentice. However, the soul of the sorcerer is speed of thought. The next time you deign to insult me, consider the matter of wit. And once your wit has been sharpened to a razor, you too can use it to cut out the tongues of colts who insult you.”
The grown mage’s horn, perpetually clad in a pale golden glow, grew brighter for just a moment. As his hooves began to move toward the palace, the glyph of a seven-pointed star appeared in the air before them. “The seven-pointed star is the symbol of arcana, which you probably think of as ‘unicorn magic’. Each of the points represents one of the shapes that arcana can take; we call them ‘schools’. Every school has three fundamental spells called ‘cantrips’—essentially, extremely basic spell components that you can combine together to make more complicated magic. Complex spells often require a careful balance between their constituent cantrips, but for the most part, you can pour as much mana as you want into a single cantrip without harming its function.”
With a surge of magic, the first point on the star, centered at the top, ignited purple. “The first school, at the top of the star, is thaumaturgy. We use it to manipulate mana, and magic. When one unravels the spells of another, or places mana into a gemstone to enchant a physical item, they are practicing thaumaturgy. Thaumaturgy has three cantrips: unraveling, sealing, and storing. Unraveling is the act of pulling bits of magic out of a spell somepony else is casting, to make it go away. Sealing is wrapping up a spell in a sort of ‘shell’, so it will stay active without you having to focus on it. Eventually, the spell will run out of the mana you give it, though, so don’t expect to make something permanent. Storing is putting mana into a physical object like a gemstone, and taking it out again, as I’ve done with my coat here.”
“Your robe is magic?” Coil asked, cocking his head.
Wintershimmer frowned, folding the tight coat of his concave cheeks. “It is not a robe. A robe is what a self-important wizard like Starswirl wears, to convince other ponies that he is a real wizard. Everypony I care to interact with already knows that I am an archmage.”
“Who’s Starswirl?”
Wintershimmer’s right eye twitched of its own volition. “The second school of arcana is divination, which manipulates information.” Rather than glowing, the second point of the ethereal star turned an ominous black. “Divination is a darngerous school, because it insists on being right, regardless of the cost. When you use divination, you create a sort of magical ‘mind’ that goes off and tries to find out whatever information you want. If you ask about the future, the ‘mind’ will just make something up, or pick whatever outcome is most probable, depending on how you cast the spell. Then it will use the mana you provided to try and force that outcome. Spend very little magic, and your look into the future is just a blind guess. Spend too much magic, and you might wind up with a future you do not desire, but cannot prevent.
“Divination’s cantrips are insight, farsight, and foresight. Insight aids your mind in processing information faster. It won’t make you ‘smarter’ than you already are, but it will help you come to conclusions much faster. Consider it a magical enhancement to wit, as we discussed earlier. It is very useful in battle. Farsight is more frequently called ‘scrying’. It lets you see something far away, including backward in time. Foresight is what I seem to have already explained, in regards to seeing into the future.”
After those words, Wintershimmer cast his glance at the crystal fortress as it grew closer, before igniting the third point of the star in blue. “Illusion is next—the manipulation of perception, or as some less insightful ponies might say, consciousness. It is a school very closely related to divination, but where divination concerns itself with what is, illusion is about what belief, or faith, or the more intricate and artistic processes of the mind.
“Illusion’s cantrips are figments, suggestions, and sympathies. Figments are what you most likely know, and what I am using as we speak to create this symbol: making a visual image, or a sensation of another kind. You can make smells and touch and sound and taste just as easily as sight. As I shall teach you later, a more cunning pony can do even more potent and subtle senses, like the fear that somepony is being watched, or the curious vertigo of hanging upside down that can ruin another pony’s sense of balance. Learn figments well, and you hard earned fruit will be just as sweet at any you could ever steal.”
“What?” Morty cocked his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Wintershimmer rubbed his temple with a hoof. “Foals… ‘Stolen fruit is the sweetest’ is an idiom, Coil. It implies that the things we enjoy the most are the guilty pleasures we have convinced ourselves that we should not partake of. Of course, those sorts of morals are most often the driveling of impractical philosophers, rather than any beneficial warning. Now, let us continue. Suggestions are, essentially, putting an idea into somepony else’s head. The more abrasive or out-of-character the thought, and the stronger the will of the subject, the more likely the magic is to fail, and to be noticed. On the other hoof, a thought like ‘everything is fine’ or ‘that stone looks strange’ are simple, comortable suggestions which nevertheless are more than sufficient to incapacitate the average pony you will ever cross in the street. And, finally, sympathies are the opposite: they pull thoughts out of a mind.”
“Wait, mind-reading?” Mortal Coil took an eager step toward the old stallion. “You can teach me that?”
Wintershimmer shook his head. “Perhaps, someday, when you’ve proven yourself a worthy successor to my legacy. A sympathy is more useful for grabbing an emotional reaction or a subconscious fear or hope than a conscious thought. Such ideas require a great deal of mana, and the subject will usually notice.”
The next point on the star lit up in white. “Ah, here we are. A truly useful school. Necromancy: the manipulation of souls. In River Rock, its practice is closely monitored by the Diamond Guard, and in that upstart city of Everfree, I hear rumor that Commander Hurricane seeks to have its practice eradicated. Here, though, the pale school lives on with us.” Wintershimmer donned the slightest hint of a grin, and Coil decided he liked his mentor straight-faced. “Its cantrips are seance, animus, and binding. Seance lets one pull back a soul from the afterlife—the Summer Lands, the Tartarus, or even the Between—to talk to them. It can be a bit traumatic for the soul in question, but any soul worth the effort of calling forth can endure a bit of pain. Amongst other uses, it is quite useful in the resolution of murders.”
“Why make it illegal, then?” Coil asked.
Wintershimmer frowned. “Because of the other things one can do once one has summoned a soul. But first, we have animus. Animus is the term we use for the creation of an artificial soul. Animii, the plural, are very useful for servants who interact with magical auras, but they cannot do anything physical on their own. I maintain several in my quarters, and we can take a look at one this evening if you care to do so. Regardless, most such artificial souls are very simple-minded, literal, and blindly obedient. It takes a great deal of work to make one that can come up with a useful thought on its own, and such thoughts most often come with the risk of rebellion. For somepony as practiced as myself, they can be quite useful servants, though even my best animus makes for a poor comparison with the soul of a once-living pony.”
The stallion sucked down a deep breath, and then trod forward with a heavy step. “Now, the final cantrip of necromancy is why idealistic fools like Star Swirl and Commander Hurricane and the late King Lapis seek to ban its practice. Binding. The act of attaching a soul—whether an animus or a real soul pulled back by seance—to a physical object or a body. Whenever you hear stories about skeletons or zombies, this is where they come from. Binding a natural soul does permanent harm to whomever it used to be, but it permits you to subjugate the resultant undead creature or animate object—we call such thing golems—to your will.”
Coil shivered. “So… you could take somepony away from the Summer Lands?”
Wintershimmer nodded. “It is truly the pettiest form of revenge, though. In most cases, the bound soul won’t remember its own name, or why you desire to harm it. All it will feel is loyalty, and pain. Binding a soul is most frequently evil; I won’t argue against that. But to pretend there’s no good to be had from necromancy, because it can be used for evil? That is where you will find that I differ from the preachy legalism of the Diamond Kingdoms, or this new-founded Equestria.” Concluding his thought, the elderly unicorn spat on the gem-paved street.
“So… have you ever bound a soul?”
The archmage of the crystal ponies regarded the young blue colt, looking up at him with a strange mixture of fear and excitement. “Three times. Always with good reason. But those stories will wait for another lesson. For now, we must move on, both with our lesson and our hooves. Our next school—” the fourth point of the star ignited green. “—is translocation. The name really does say it all. Its cantrips are teleportation, summoning, and dilation. Teleportation is pretty obvious, with one special exception: it works in time as well as space.”
“Time travel—” Coil began, wide-eyed.
“Another lesson for when you have more practice. Trust me when I warn you: it is almost trivially easy to age yourself to death, or rot away some vital organ. Even the mare who discovered the magic of time ultimately fell victim to it. Now, second cantrip. Summoning: also very simple. Although conceptually, the action of teleporting oneself would not be much different from the act of teleporting another object, summoning is mechanically quite distinct. Teleportation is achieved by connecting two non-consecutive locations, and then throwing oneself through. Summoning, in contrast, is actually managed by disassembling the subject of the spell into pure mana, and then reassembling it in another location. Now, the third cantrip, dilation, is the strange one: it allows one to slow something down or speed it up in the flow of time, or grow or shrink its size. There are lots of very, very strange uses for dilation, but it is also substantianlly draining. Most ponies write it off as a spell for preservation, growth, or shrinking. You can probably already think of three better ways.”
The colt nodded once. “Yeah, but I want to know more about time travel. If I could go back in time—”
Wintershimmer cut him off with a stern. “You are a little young to have a regret worth traveling back in time about, aren’t you, Coil? Going back to your own past is an easy road to making your problems worse. Now, the next school is transmutation.” The next point on the star ignited in gold. “Star Swirl’s favorite school.” Wintershimmer spat again. “It lets the user manipulate matter: physical objects like stones and wood. The cantrips are metamorphosis , transformation, and genesis. Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by the names though. Metamorphosis is changing something’s shape without changing what it fundamentally is: turning a bunch of lumber into a table, not with nails and saws and telekinesis, but by actually reshaping the wood. Metamorphosis is permanent, unless somepony else comes along and undoes your work. Transmutation is changing what something is: turning that pile of wood into gold. Unlike transfiguration, it isn’t permanent; it only lasts as long as your mana does. And finally, there’s genesis: making something out of nothing, or destroying something that exists. Well, sort of. It lets you turn solids into liquids or gasses, and vice-versa. When you ‘disintegrate’ something, you actually just turn most of it into air. Like metamorphosis, genesis is actually permanent, though it’s another cantrip that will use up all your mana before you make anything meaningful, most of the time. Despite the name, it’s mostly used to destroy things. Disintegration is perhaps the most worthwhile aspect of transmutation, and it is something I will be certain to teach you as soon as you are able.”
“Can you transform yourself?” Coil asked. “Could I grow myself wings and be like Empress Jade?”
The question earned a chuckle from the older stallion. “You can manipulate your own body with transmutation, if you are brave, but you are likely to do more harm than good. Without alicorn magic—the combination of arcana, pegasus magic, and earth pony magic—you’re likely to wind up with new body parts that rot and fall off after a few hours or days. Even if you do manage to work your magic right, the wings won’t actually let you fly.”
“Oh…”
The last point of the star burned red. “Evocation,” Winterhsimmer explained. “The manipulation of energy. Not fire or electricity; those are pegasus magic, called empatha. Evocation controls energies like force, and gravity, and the chemical energy present in the food we eat. Evocation’s cantrips are telekinesis, ignition, and transference. I don’t need to explain telekinesis; every little unicorn can put force on something from a ways away. When you put it all into a single surge of force, the result is not dissimilar to the blasts you used on the other three candidates for the title of my apprentice.
“Despite the name, ignition doesn’t actually make fire; at least, not directly. Instead, ignition lets you convert the energy within something. You can throw a piece of food across the room, you can take away the energy of it moving, turning it into energy inside the food. Or you could turn it into heat, and have the object burst into flame, or light, and have the food start glowing. Obviously, with enough heat or enough cold, you can burn or freeze something, but you’re never going to out-burn or out-freeze a pegasus. Transference lets you take energy from one object, and move it to another object, without them otherwise transferring.”
Coil scratched the back of his neck. “So… if I wanted, I could put energy into something to make it start moving, or float in the air?”
Wintershimmer nodded once.
“Then… what’s the advantage of telekinesis?”
“Efficiency,” the old stallion answered. “Telekinesis doesn’t require any existing energy other than your own magical energy—your mana. Transference requires another source, and most often, as much as half of the energy is lost in the transfer. The same is true of ignition: you don’t get all the energy in a piece of food if you elect to turn its nutrition into heat or light. Your body will always be more efficient at extracting the energy by digestion than your magic will. So no matter how good you are at magic, you won’t be able to get away with eating your brussel sprouts.”
Since the invention of the shit-eating grin, there have only been five grins that were rated the most sarcastic, the most cocky. This one left them all behind. “I’ll make you eat those words.”
Wintershimmer smiled.
Very interesting! It makes me want to take a second look at the magic being used and see what school they fall under.
Now how does it work with unicorns...are some more gifted in certain schools than others? Is it kind of like athletics, where you have natural talent to a varying degree, but can also hone skills through practice and instruction?
Does magical skill place more emphasis on natural ability, or training? Can one theoretically increase their mana capacity and skill through sheer dedication and willpower, or there is only a certain ceiling a pony could reach?
Are some schools harder than others? What schools are some of our main unicorns in WLL disposed towards? (Twilight, Shining, Flag, Foresight, etc)
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You bet some unicorns are better at certain schools than others. It gets even crazier than that, though. First, here's something Wintershimmer didn't cover: ever since the Twilight War, and Equestria's near-universal ban on necromancy, the symbol for arcana has become a six pointed star.
It's surprisingly hard to find a good image of Twilight's cutie mark, but the one at the top of your avatar will do just fine. Note that her top point (thaumaturgy) is the longest, her bottom point (translocation), and her top-left point (evocation) are both fairly long, and the other points (divination, illusion, and transmutation) are comparatively short. Now think back to canon. Twilight has a tough time keeping a stone turned into a top-hat when she's working with Spike. In contrast, her brute force magical blasts and her ability to manipulate abstract magic are top-notch.
Don't take that as "every pony with a star on their cutie mark is a power-indicator". Morty's cutie mark is radially symmetrical, but that doesn't mean he's equally good at all seven schools.
I'll go into the subjects of 'power' and 'skill' that you ask in another post, but to give a brief summary: the ability to do complex magic is about the willpower, mental discipline, and education. Those limits are roughly equivalent across all ponies: the capacity for discipline doesn't differ that much outside of disease or mental dysfunction. The one factor which really does vary from pony to pony is their cutie mark. A pony using magic related to their special talent is strictly going to find that magic easier, period - and further, they might even be able to work magic that literally nopony else can do. When Masquerade uses illusions, they come naturally to her, and you're going to have a hard time finding another non-illusionist unicorn who can match her. Sometimes special talent magic lends itself to a specific cantrip rather than a whole school (Foresight), or it can lend itself to a number of different schools of magic, as long as they are being used for a specific purpose (Shining, who can make shields using transmutation, evocation, and even translocation). Rarity is able to do stunning feats of technical control with her evocation and transmutation while making dresses (see: Art of the Dress), but she doesn't have vast control over either of those schools at large. Twilight, Morty, and more than a few other magically-inclined unicorns (Star Swirl, Wintershimmer, Clover, Diadem, Sunset Shimmer...) wind up with cutie marks that just flat out make them better at magic. While these ponies often have all magic come easy to them, they very rarely have spells that are unique to just them. And, on the opposite end of the spectrum, ponies like Mirror Image have a unique spell that really doesn't fall very neatly into a school category, and that don't otherwise benefit from their cutie mark when performing magic.
(Image's cutie mark story is the subject of later in WLL, so I'll drop that subject for now).
The ability to do powerful magic is much more about the sort of 'discipline' analogous to a body-builder: pushing your horn(/antlers/tusks/claws) until you start to get hairline fractures (totally natural, and they heal in a matter of days, but they're painful and distracting) and your body gets tired from the caloric exertion of so much mana. That being said, there are human beings whose physical builds are simply stronger than others. Similarly, certain shapes of horns are more efficient at using mana, and certain body types are more prone to producing it in large volumes. No matter how hard Rarity works, she will never have as much mana as Shining Armor; he simply has more bone marrow to produce it. On the other side of the coin, no matter how carefully Shining casts, he will never be as efficient with his mana as Rarity's slender, more tightly coiled horn.
In theory, all schools are of the same difficulty. In practice, however, some schools (and specifically some cantrips) simply require more mana, focus, and power to be meaningful or useful. Any foal can lift a teacup. If that same amount of power were applied toward a seance, the unicorn would be able to summon a soul that was about three feet away. However, (practically speaking) a 'loose' soul is never three feet away. And reaching as far as the Summer Lands takes a lot more mana. I'm too tired to give a comprehensive list, so here's an easy rule: Wintershimmer gave the points of the star starting at the top and going clockwise.
Thaumaturgy
Divination
Illusion
Necromancy
Transmutation
Translocation
Evocation
I might get Ruirik to do me a nice diagram for that sometime, but for now, you'll have to picture it yourself. Anyway, in general, the points of the star to the right of the vertical midline are generally more reliant on skill or knowledge. Those on the left are more prone to depending on brute force or power. Remember, that rule holds for the *seven* pointed star, and as such, transmutation is slightly pointed to the left (and not truly centered, which thaumaturgy is).
And for the record: the seven schools aren't an abstract concept; they exist as a natural byproduct of the way arcana works; you could think of them analogously to the states of matter. Celestia's ban on necromancy doesn't actually change the fundamental underpinings of magical "law"; it just changes the way ponies are educated concerning them. I may or may not cover this as well, but it isn't a *hard* ban. A pony can be licensed through the Royal Academy to take a very specific set of training and gain permission to perform a limited set of necromantic spells. That being said, binding a real soul (not an animus) is one of the two crimes that falls under the jurisdiction of the Night Guard.
And to answer your final question:
- Twilight is the Bearer of Magic. I rest my case.
Apart from the obvious, he's a skilled illusionist and thaumaturge. He went through enough magical college to do pretty much anything, but his body doesn't lend itself to hurling magical blasts willy-nilly.
- Shining Armor favors the left side of the star heavily; like most guardsponies, his heavy emphasis is on evocation.
- White Flag is in the peculiar position of technically being a necromancer; she's one of the most proficient users of animii in the world. She's also gifted at divination, but is just flat out well-educated enough to be considered 'good' at all the schools. Unlike Twilight, her cutie mark doesn't lend itself to magic in general; Flag's skill comes from a very, very long career.
- Do I even really need to tell you Foresight?
- Mirror Image can really only focus on evocation and translocation long enough to do anything useful before the pain makes him either lose the spell or pass out.
- Celestia favors the left half of the star.
- Luna favors the right half of the star.
- In addition to illusions, Masquerade is more than passable at evocation and transmutation.
- Princess Cadance is a better illusionist than she will admit in public; after all, that's the school her cutie mark spell falls into. She's also quite talented in general, and knows more alicorn magic than she pretends to...
- Reflection is probably the strongest combat-thaumaturge in the world. AS the leader of the Blue Army, she is a master of group casting (in a cadre; see the guards blog post from earlier), which relies on thaumaturgy skills. Thus, she's also great at interrupting other unicorns' magic, and enchanting objects. Like most guardsponies, she's also skilled in evocation.
- Tsar Eye used to be a passable thaumaturge, illusionist, and transmuter. In the twenty years since he last meaningfully practiced magic, both his skills and his mana supplies have atrophied to the point of near-uselessness.
- Star Swirl is called 'the Father of Transmutation' for a reason. His omniomorphic spell (aside: yes, I'm damn-well aware it was a Harry Potter joke in-canon, but I work with what I've got here) proved that a unicorn *could* temporarily transform their own body without losing their intelligence or magic, and without permanently damaging their body.
- Like her master, Clover the Clever was as skilled transmuter, but also did specialized research on the subject of thaumaturgy.
- Without spoiling anything beyond where 24 already is, Diadem's abnormally potent mana supply gave her a considerable advantage in the realms of transmuation and evocation.
- Wintershimmer the Complacent was a pretty good necromancer, and an excellent evoker.
- Ponies who didn't like to call him 'Morty' actually refer to him as The Necromancer. Even if his magnum opus spell wasn't technically necromancy, by virtue of being alicorn magic.
- Princess Platinum was a passable evoker and transmuter, but generally avoid excessive use of magic because of the 'Scourge of Kings', the genetic disease that ran in her family, which the medicine of the era believed was hastened by excessive use of magic.
- Gale was the guardspony who made 'being good at evocation' a thing for guardsponies in the future. Not only was her brute force impressive, but the agility with which she could apply her telekinesis made her rapier, Aestas Melos, a legendary and deadly weapon.
- Jewel was mostly good at assholemancy, but he occasionally took a break from its practice to be really excellent at translocation.
- Krenn uses all manner of magics, but like most dragons, prefers to blend his arcana with his empatha, instead of using either 'pure'.
- Khagan doesn't appreciate any magic except brute force.
- Valdria is a diviner and an illusionist above all else. Like most elk, she uses illusion to communicate "telepathically" instead of speaking aloud.
- King Sombra was the second best necromancer who ever lived.
- Chrysalis is arguably the best illusionist who has ever lived. I'm not talking about the shapeshifting, but you'll note that she more-or-less contradicts Wintershimmer's comments on illusions with a different use of her magic.
Fascinating blog post, but possibly even more fascinating comment.
One question that just occurred to me, how does Morty's magnum opus spell differ from Luna's thestral spell? From what we've seen in 24's stories, she was using hers long before he was even born.
2562270
It is absolutely true that the thestral spell is older. Morty's masterpiece results in actual *life*, not just animate undeath. Also, like most undead, a thestral is bound to the strict commands of its creator. Morty's work restores true, unrestricted free will. It also prevents aging (in fact, that was its original intention). The downside (a result of its incomplete state) is the issue regarding the soul not being "fully attached". The spell is based heavily on Phoenix magic.
In contrast, a thestral is undead, lacks true free will (more on this subject in GotP 23), and is usually "better" (faster, stonger) than the original pony. They get access to alicorn magic, and lose the need for most biological functions.
Does that sufficiently answer your question?
2561960
Wow, talk about dumping information. Don't get me wrong, I love the amount of details you've put in your magical system, but there are some things I personally find odd and illogical.
First, considering how often I tended to misinterpret things in your posts in the past, I would like to mentiont some points in your blog post and your comment which I'm not sure I understood correctly and fully. My current understanding of them puts them in the aforementioned 'odd and illogical' category.
1) Mana generation and storage capacity being correlated to bone marrow. To be precise, you didn't make any clear statement on whether or not there is such thing as a considerable magic reserve, so I'm not sure if casters empty it and then have to wait until it recharges slowly, or if the mana always have to be made on the spot and it's production simply drains the user physically.
Anyway, this idea excludes a whole bunch of creatures from ever being magical, and makes one wonder how exactly do spirits wield magic if they have nothing to generate it with? That can be a possible explanation of Changelings' inability to create mana, but it conflicts with all those magic-tossing spirits we saw in you story and in canon. Oh and the difference in amount of mana that any of the 'Immortals' produce can't be fully explained exclusively by their difference in size.
Also, if you need only a certain type of marrow to generate a certain type of magic and it has nothing to do with anything spiritual, there are some very weird possibilities for bio-engineering and transplantation. You can have a boar use Arcana and Endura to transplant some parts from an Empatha user (which we know is possible) to himself: lo and behold, Magnificent Flying Flaming Pig is ready for action. Alternatively, someone can create a design for the Ultimate Horn/ Other Mana Conducting Organ, one that will have perfect balance of possible conducted mana per second output (which I assume is what power means in your system), and precision, then create an army of creatures wielding those and curb-stomp the opposition.
2) There is no cantrip for detecting and analyzing magic in general and Arcana in particular. In almost any magical system I know about those things are crucial parts of magical practices, and I expected them to be a part of the Thaumaturgy school.
3) Outside of cutie-mark related spells, there seem to be no existing or even possible hybrid spells that use cantrips from more than one school.
4)It's not clear to me which school governs the process of hurling magic missiles of various kinds, as well as shooting friking beams, laser or otherwise.
I have a couple more questions, but i would prefer to clarify things listed above before asking them.
Thank you for all your patience and dedication LL. It sure is awesome,being able to get your hands on a good AU creator and to ask him questions like that.
2562324 Quote thoroughly. I am a tiny bit disappointed, though, it kind of kills my ability to think of Rainbow as a zombie.
I suppose that also explains why raising Dash took so much out of Celestia but Luna seems to raise thestrals all the time without nearly so much visible effect on her, the spells involved are just very different.
Next question, which spell was used to raise Reckoning? I'm pretty sure it was Morty's since I think we've seen him use his pegasi magic, but since he was raised by Luna and not Celestia (if I'm remembering correctly) I'm suddenly wondering.
2562353
It's not AU! It's the one true canon!
Forewarning: for the sake of saving myself a headache, I'm going to use "ponies" below, except when I absolutely can't. The statements below are also true of other races, unless I specifically say otherwise.
1) "Magical reserve" (how much mana a pony can keep in their blood) varies from pony to pony. One of the factors is volume of blood. Shining Armor can hold a fair deal more magic in his blood than, say, Rarity. He just has more physical space. Other factors are less obvious - its partially genetic, but it can be trained. Shining has enough mana to keep a shield over *all* of Canterlot for a full day, so that tells you what "a lot" looks like, at least in anectodotal terms.
Casting magic at all - that is, gathering mana from the 'reserves' - takes calories. But in addition to that, whenever the blood isn't fully saturated with mana (when the "reserves" aren't full), the body also spends energy replenishing them. That rate of replenishment is also not constant across ponies - Twilight and Diadem are two examples of ponies whose reserves refresh very quickly; they can go from empty to fully refreshed in five or six hours. Mortal Coil and Shining Armor are on the slower side, taking as much as fourteen hours to 'refill'. During that time, however, a pony isn't *completely* without magic. They can directly siphon off of their 'refilling' mana, taking it directly from their marrow and out into their horns/wings/bodies/whatever. That sort of magic is not only extremely physically draining, but also substantially painful (like a drastically worse version of "the burn" after you've been at the gym for a few hours). This practice is called 'hollow casting' amongst some unicorns, and is known to cause several magical disease (and arthritis) if performed too frequently.
2) (This isn't by your numbering, since your point #1 contained 3 issues)
Spirits (and changelings) do not generate mana on their own; the two are actually very closely related. I'll go into the subject more in the "Afterlife" Worldbuilding blog post, but the short version is this: creatures or spirits that can't produce mana on their own usually siphon it in one way or another. For shades (like Morty) that means being remembered. For spirits (like Discord or the Sirens or the Windigoes) that means chaos, strife, and/or music. For changelings, that means love. For physical undead like zombies and thestrals, that means eating the living.
You have a slight misunderstanding, in that "raw" mana isn't intrinsically typed. Until the mana goes into a horn or a tusk or a wing or a leg or whatever, it's just "mana". Thus, even "non-magical" races like Diamond Dogs produce mana. They just don't have a way to actually use what they produce.
3) Yes, with enough skill, you can stick wings on a unicorn (*cough*
*cough*), or grow yourself an 'uber-horn'. You've got to be careful, though; even a slight mistake, and you wind up with this wonderful anecdote.
4) Analyzing a spell is just a combination of academic knowledge and the 'unraveling' cantrip. You don't actually undo the spell, but you worm your way into the metaphorical threads so you can see what makes it up. So yes, it does fall under Thaumaturgy.
5) It was my goal to create a magic system where almost every conceivable spell is something that can be constructed from a set of basic building blocks. That way, you have the narrative advantage of "its still magic", but the reader can at least begin to grasp what's going on. That being said, there are a few extremely rare non-cutie mark spells that can't be derived from cantrips. This is why Celestia makes such a big deal about Twilight's ability to swap her friends' cutie marks: she's managed a spell that really can't be replicated with the cantrips.
6) Bolts of magic and laser beams come from various schools. The classic examples are evocation and thaumaturgy. When you shoot an evocation blast at someone, you're quite literally hitting them with pure force, and as such, you get things like recoil and concussion. Thaumaturgy by itself isn't terribly useful, but it provides the basis for most high-order magical dueling. A powerful unicorn will take, say, a disintegration spell (transmutation), use Sealing to wrap it in a nice 'shell', and then magically hurl it at their enemy. That might sound strange and complex, but the end result is this:
36.media.tumblr.com/0f0b49979f2f5bf3e93c43587e5a788b/tumblr_n2o4n610eW1rj0g5ao1_1280.jpg
Since you seem to have more questions, have at me.
2562446
...you are caught up on Ghosts, right?
2562530 Yeah, I am, there's just a lot of stuff I don't remember like I probably should.
Anyway, thanks!
2562560
I didn't mean that to come across as "wow, you should remember this". I asked to make sure I wasn't dropping a huge spoiler on you.
2562682 Don't worry, that's what I figured you meant, I just didn't phrase my previous comment very well.
Since alicorn magic also incorporates Empetha and Endura, how much different is it from pure Arcana? Does it categorize as nicely as arcana does, into schools of it's own and such? Are the physical attributes of Alicorns the reason they can wield such magic, or could alicorn magic be acquired somehow?
2563107
Alicorn magic is an intrinsically self-destructive force. Arcana, empatha, and endura react violently when combined, so 'study' of alicorn magic isn't a common subject. Further, the number of alicorns in Equestria at any given time is roughly eight, counting Celestia and Luna.
That isn't to say alicorn magic has never been studied or practiced; with complex arrangements of crystals and obscure thaumaturgy 'tricks', it can by synthesized over the course of weeks. However, in general, it is simply too chaotic and too impractical a force to be worth dedicated study. Historically, most discoveries in the realm of alicorn magic have actually come from a pony with a specific goal in mind for pure arcana, after they realize that arcana alone isn't sufficient to solve their problem.
Curious.
You did misspell apprentice in the blog title though. :P
2563679
I hvae no idea hwat you're tallking abowt.
2563684
Excellent. You sure you weren't trying to swallow marbles there?
2563503
But do all feats of alicorn magic fall outside the realm of those seven schools in arcana and can't be defined by them? So that alicorn magic can pretty much accomplish any potential thing, or is there still a certain set of rules and principles it must abide by?
You made mention that Twilight did that cutie mark switch spell that didn't follow the arcana rules... Did she still use arcana, or is unknown what she did and how?
Is there still room in the study of magic to further discover new possible schools or cantrips, or have the ponies got it pretty much mapped and figured out by this point?