Worldbuilding IV: Magic! · 3:42am Aug 15th, 2014
Worldbuilding IV (or IIII if you prefer): Magic!
Magic is something you study and practice. It only happens when you decide to do it, and it's meant to make something specific that you choose to happen, happen.
—Twilight Sparkle
It's time to talk about magic.
I'll begin with the obvious. There are three tribes of pony. Or maybe four, five, or six, depending on how you count. There are pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns (and alicorns, zebras, and donkeys).
I'll disregard the last three for the time being, since that's beyond the scope of this blog.
Each of the three tribes has their own 'magical' skills. Earth ponies can grow things—sometimes in an instant—pegasi can fly and walk on clouds, and unicorns . . . well, they can pretty much do whatever they want to.
This isn't a blog about what kind of spells a unicorn can cast. From the show, it's pretty apparent that unicorn spells can have all kinds of different effects, from aging spells to come-to-life spells to time travel, gravity manipulation, and fake moustaches. I am sure that the Wiki speculation pages are full of theories on what unicorns can and cannot do . . . but that's not the point here.
Let's begin with what spells a unicorn knows. We'll discard Twilight from our sample, since she's so far outside the normal parameters she became an alicorn. We're also gonna discount infants from our list, because it's obvious that the Cake's offspring are demons.
—Telekinesis. Pretty much every unicorn, even Sweetie Belle, can perform TK. Based on canon evidence, it manifests around the time a pony gets her cutie mark, but may be before or after. It's a really handy skill to have when one doesn't have hands—if I had four hooves, I'd want to know TK.
—Light spells. That's a bit presumptive, perhaps, but Snails can cast a light spell, and he's hardly the sharpest tool in the shed. It's possible that a light spell is just an unguided, unspecific spell, since a unicorn typically has a corona of light around her horn (and lights up what she's manipulating). If that's the case, it would stand to reason that it could be learned fairly easily, even by accident, when a pony was developing her magical skills.
—A spell which relates to her cutie mark. Here we have only one canon example: Rarity. She's got three gems on her butt, and she knows a spell to find gems. It's quite likely that other unicorns have similar spell talents, and we just haven't seen them in the show. Amethyst Star likely has some gem-related spell in her arsenal (but she can't open a jar of penut butter with it), Sea Swirl likely has some kind of nautical spell at her disposal, etc.
—Generic Defensive Spell. We saw this in the season finale, when Noteworthy(!) tried to defend himself from Tirek. His cutie mark doesn't imply any kind of defensive magic, so perhaps it's just a lashing out of magical force. We also saw it in an IDW comic, when unicorns were defending Canterlot from some threat.
There are also two other types of spell which we've seen from multiple sources:
—Motion spells. I wouldn't even mention this if it was only Twilight's come to life spell we'd seen, but Flim and Flam made their machine go with spell energy, and Tank's helicopter rotor has a distinctive glow to it. I would suspect that such spells have to be renewed. This could possibly be grouped with the offensive spell, since both might be a non-specific use of spell-power.
—Shield spells. Twilight, Shining, and Cadance can cast them. Based on canon evidence, they're draining, since both Shining and Cadance's spells failed eventually.
I'm not including teleport spells in this list, since we've never seen a normal unicorn cast one.
Okay. Now it's time to take a step back.
Think about magic. Most of us, I'd imagine, watch and read things that aren't My Little Pony (hard to imagine). Most of us probably have some familiarity with fantasy, and fantasy often has magic. The next part is going to be generalizing, but I'm sure you'll get the idea.
In Dungeons and Dragons, there are multiple types of spellcaster, but the spells all have something in common: they have to be learned, and they have multiple components: Verbal, Somatic, and Material. Verbal means you have to say something; Somatic means you have to make a gesture, and Material means that something is consumed to make the spell work.
In Harry Potter, they have wands and need to speak 'command words.' If they don't speak them right, bad things happen.
In Lord of the Rings, you need to be a wizard (generally) and speak a command word.
To the best of my recollection, in the Chronicles of Narnia, you need to have a wand or be Aslan.
In My Little Pony, you just need to be a unicorn.
Sure, it takes effort. But there are no command words spoken.
It might be easiest to imagine a unicorn as a player of Magic: The Gathering. You have a certain amount of mana, and as long as enough of it is untapped, you can cast any particular spell you happen to have in your hand (a spell you know). Once you're tapped out, though, that's it. No more spells until your mana untaps.
Or, for the gamers, think of your magic bar. Once it's in the red, you've got an issue.
Okay, one more piece to move into place, and then I'll wrap this all up into a neat little package. How do unicorns learn spells?
As I said earlier, light spells may not require any real thought. They might be unfocused magic, simply raw magical energy spent for no real purpose. Granted, I'm pretty sure that Snips or Snails referred to a light spell specifically, but wouldn't it make sense that unicorns would categorize every type of spell, no matter how simple or universal it was? A baby doesn't think about feeding from an analytical perspective, but they all know how to do it.
I'll provisionally give the Generic Defensive Spell and the Motion Spell the same type of categorization. From the evidence we've seen in canon, it's possible that both are non-specific spells cast on (or at) a target, with no special requirements besides I want to put magic energy in that thing. The GDS in particular, from an evolutionary standpoint, seems a very likely candidate for this—in a griffon-eat-pony world, being able to strike back from a distance helps ensure your survival, and make the predator choose something more appealing.
TK is another spell where the potential applications make it worth everymare's time to learn. Even though I have hands, there have been times I've wanted to pick up a tool that was just out of reach, and have to drop what I'm holding to get it. Even Star Wars lets Jedis and Sith use TK. Plus, it makes sense, given what Twilight said about magic.
I think it's fair to accept two possibilities for the shield spell: It might be a somewhat common unicorn spell, for a suitable level of caster, or it might be Shining's special talent, and Twilight and Cadance both learned it from him.
This segues neatly into my final point. Magic users gotta learn stuff. Fortunately, here canon has provided us with three examples of how that's done.
Spellbooks are the number one method, and they're a staple of magical universes everywhere. The particular method ranges from class at Hogwarts to inadvertently reading the Necronomicon, but the process can be boiled down thus:
A: The unicorn doesn't know the spell.
B: The unicorn reads a book and learns the spell.
C: The unicorn knows the spell.
Not surprisingly, Twilight is our prime canon example of this, but she must not be the only unicorn who can learn that way, since they maintain magical libraries in Canterlot, Ponyville, and the Crystal Empire, and even Starswirl kept a notebook. If Twilight was the only unicorn who could learn that way, what would be the point?
Method number two is more instinctive. It's what we see when the Cake's demonspawn foal uses magic, and it's how Rarity learned her gem-finding spell. While I won't put it past her to have embellished the tale somewhat, it came to her like a bolt out of the blue. This is surely how most unicorns also learn TK and light spells, as well. Now, they might have to study and practice to refine them from their crude beginnings—think about what Rarity can do with her TK versus what your average background pony does.
The final method, and the one which might be reserved for prodegies, is mimicry. Here I have to use Twilight as an example, but if she can cast by ear (so to speak), perhaps other unicorns can, too. Twilight said Rarity showed her the gem-finding spell, and she was able to use dark magic (maybe) in the Crystal Empire . . . which Celestia had showed her, earlier in the episode.
I feel one ought to be cautious about this last example, since Twilight is a prodigy. She might be one of the very few unicorns who can see a spell being used and then mimic it (and if so, her potential power is frightening to consider). That might be how she learned a shield spell, too.
Of the three, mimicry is probably the weakest. We don't know for sure, but I imagine that Twilight's version of the gem-finding spell isn't as good as Rarity's. We can assume in the season finale that Celestia didn't have time to teach her how to raise the sun, so she might have been using her newfound power on it for the first time (which explains how sloppy it was). Her tactics against Tirek were familiar (but more powerful). Even in the Running of the Leaves, reading a book on running only got her so far.
Conclusion: Well, I'm not sure I answered any questions, or just sort of threw a bunch of random stuff up on FimFiction for y'all to wade through and comment on. But, if nothing else, consider the following:
Unicorns only have to think to cast a spell.
Unicorns can learn spells by instinct*, by books, or by mimicry.
*that might not be the best word choice, but I feel it fits with the spirit of the show, especially given the three pony types. None of the CMC have the finesse of an adult of their type, yet I bet Apple Bloom could grow a better plant than a unicorn, and I bet that if you carried Scootaloo up to a cloud, she wouldn't fall through.
¡SunSetShimmer teleports multiple times in succession in Equestrian Girls!
2371605
Oddly, I don't remember that, but it's been a while since I saw the movie. Nevertheless, as a personal student to Princess Celestia (at least, that's what I've gathered from the evidence in the move and comics), she is probably also a magical prodigy.
Besides those two, we've also seen Princess Celestia teleport, so once again it's a spell which is know to high-powered unicorns. Trixie fakes 'teleportation' [at least, that's my interpretation of what she's trying to do] with smoke bombs in her first appearance, which I think suggests that teleportation is reserved for the most powerful unicorns (and alicorns).
I disagree that there is no verbal component to all unicorn spells. I mean look at starswirls unfinished spell. I posit that for complicated magic, the unicorn is doing SOMETHING other than simply concentrating to have the spell happen, be that a visualization, a mental verbal component, or whatever.
Yes most unicorns only have a few basic spells, but there is a celestia's school for gifted unicorns and are likely other schools as well in the cities. There are more than a handful of unicorns that have some significant amount of magic scope.
Oh, and griffons have to be in the same class as pegasi for their magics.
I thought that Noteworthy's "defensive spell" was his magic getting sucked out by Tirek.
Interesting, though different from my personal headcanon. It's quite well thought out though, and I enjoyed reading this
2371631
I agree that they have to learn the spell in order to cast it--Twilight has provided ample evidence in her words and actions that there is some learning and practice involved in spellcasting (she's gotten better at teleportation throughout the show, for example). If that wasn't the case, unicorns would be more overpowered than they already are, if they could just visualize something and it happened.
We also know from canon that spells can be re-directed or interrupted.
We don't see evidence that during the process of casting a normal spell that any verbal, somatic, or material component is required, though.
2371640
IIRC, he began casting a spell and then Tirek sucked out his magic. I did not re-watch that part of the episode, though, 'cause my internet is being glacially slow.
2371665
Thanks!
Ill have to pull up my archive for working on this, but fortunately there has been some extremely successful experiments announced that back me up.
Look up electromagnetic, and water wave versons of tractor beams, and Ill go through how ultra wide band prime harmonic coding and stochastic oscilators with PRBS coding give rise to the effects required.
After all, when I did the computer simulations back in the 90s, I got a shield spell.
It was a force field.
Fortunately a lot of magic can be related to Psionics, etc, which Id looked at for Dragons of Pern. Even managed to get a theoretical power basis for the dragons, based on cold fusion.
5am and too tired to remember the rest of the song.
2371673
I've only seen it once so I could very well be mistaken, but that is how I remember it.
As for teleportation, it is not in the illusion school that Trixie is good at. Could she learn true teleportation? Possibly, it depends upon just how much she needs it. Lets say that it would take her a few months of study and practice to learn it? Would she? Or would she work to improve her illusions?
Teleportation also strikes me as the kind of spell that can cause you a lot of trouble if you botch it. Learning to teleport would be a dangerous business. I see it as being something that is of moderate difficulty but being worse to botch than your typical moderate difficulty spell, so a significant number of unicorns are actually afraid to learn it. I mean think of your first teleport. You are taking your life into your own hooves.
Then there are also magical devices -- the most obvious example being the getup that allows Tank to fly.
I've always liked the idea with magic that the closer things are to your cutie mark/special talent, the easier the spells are. So basically, if you've got a perfect match (Rarity seamstressing/gem hunting) the spells are basically as easy as thinking, and come more or less on instinct; she could then teach others the same sort of spell, but depending on how close it matches up, the harder it becomes for them to 'get it'.
So basically, on a scale of 1-10, your 'inherent' cutie mark spells are difficulty 1 (gemhunting, telekinesis); related but not inherent spells maybe a 3-4 (some illusion or glamour to touch up a dress); a vaguely related spell a 7-8 (a magnifying spell) but something completely unrelated would be a 10 (Playing a musical instrument). Anything higher than a 2 would require effort, learning and practice; anything higher than a 5 would likely require serious study and education; anything higher than an 8 would probably require the user to be dedicated to study and magic to learn, and would probably never be perfect.
Twilight breaks this system by having a generic 'magic' cutie mark, which means for her, just about all spells fall in the 3-5 range... which then has the downside that she would not actually instinctively 'get' any magic. So Twilight doesn't have any 'inherent' spells and has a very slow start, but can study and learn just about any spell with a little effort. Combine with her studious nature and she can take in and cast spells like a sponge; combine with her natural magical capacity for the lovably overpowered protagonist we know and love.
I tend to then go on an additional offshoot explaining how the best way for a pony to expand their magical capacity is to gain a greater understanding of their cutie mark and talent, and the greater the number of interpretations and expansions of your cutie mark the more interesting spells start shuffling down in difficulty - leading Twilight to associate magic with stars, study, and friendship; Rarity to expand from gems to beautification to inspiration; Celestia to expand from the sun, to the natural order, to just about everything ever - but that's getting much more into my own expanded headcanon than speculation on the show.
2371618
Sorry for the delay, but I had to find this:
¡SunSetShimmer Teleports!
I agree that it is a rare ability. I imagine that very few ponies can have the potential to learn it and even fewer learn it.
I wonder whether Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie manages to teleport without a horn. I suspect that she has dragon and draconequus in her family-tree. Her sister, Miss Maud Pie, eats rocks like a dragon eats gems.
2371683
Dr. Edward E. Smith wrote a science fiction story back in the day where the heroes fight their enemies by using their psychic powers to summon balls of some high density metal then teleporting the same inside the enemy base. When the balls appear inside the structure of the base enough particles are occupying the same space as each other to cause a catastrophic release of energy. In the book they say it is equivalent to converting the entire mass of the two groups of particles to pure energy.
I think the motion spells (and probably the Basic Defensive) are just telekinesis applied differently.
And then Dresden Files has a whole boatload of differing magic systems.
Just want to reinforce your point of Twilight not being the only one to learn spells from books/tomes/grimoire/dictionaries/whatever, as Rarity does just that in Inspiration Manifestation, so this method of learning must definitely be possible for other unicorns.
i.imgur.com/ai9CNCZ.png why do I know of this comic
Now that I think about it, there sure in the fuck aren't any other unicorns that are major-enough characters to have anything special.
WAIT!
Yes there is! Cadence! (Alicorn, unicorn, same dif) She has that stupid love spell, remember? That's related to her cutie mark! Even if her cutie mark is a crystal heart that basically hadn't existed for 1000 years... and how in the fuck does that work? Ah screw it.
Her, and Tia and Luna, but uh, their whole history is a subject matter for another time.
2371682
It looks like he steps forward, casts a spell, and then Tirek takes it and all the other unicorn's magic. It's a quick scene, so it could be interpreted either way--but I think by the look of determination on his face in the one clip, he's fighting.
2371679
I've seen a video of the water tractor beam in action. It's pretty cool, but how much energy is expended to get the result desired?
Hey, their powers do make sense in the light of griffon predation. Unicorns evolved to fight them off, pegasi evolved to run away and earth ponies ... evolved to grow so much food and have so many young that it didn't matter if many were taken. Well that's depressing.
2371683
I'm less certain she could learn it--she might not have the magical energy. If lots of her shows end like the one in Ponyville, being able to teleport away from an angry crowd might be a a very useful skill. And let's not forget Flim and Flam, who would also benefit from quick getaways.
But, either way, this point is more important. I think she'd most likely work to improve her show.
I see what you did there.
The way the magic seems to be depicted in the show, its failure tends to be generally benign. Thus, it's conceivable that a unicorn has the power to teleport somewhere and does it with no trouble. That having been said, when Twilight teleported with Spike on her back, he got singed. I will grant you that it's a common staple of fantasy and sci-fi that teleportation can go badly wrong, if one is not careful, and it's certainly possible that is the case on MLP too . . . while it's unlikely that the unicorn will wind up injured or killed, she might find herself somewhere other than her intended destination.
2371698
Yes, that's very true. Lots of magical devices, pools, mirrors, flowers, etc. They're kind of beyond the scope of this particular blog post.
2371699
I won't argue with this premise, but the question is whether that's a cause or an effect? That is to say, can a pony learn a spell more easily if it falls under the purview of her special talent, or is she more motivated to learn that spell because it aligns with her cutie mark? Either might be a valid interpretation, or it could be a combination of both.
In the sense of her having a 'signature' spell, you're right--she doesn't. She just has an enormous amount of power and a desire to learn everything (especially if she thinks she might be tested on it later, or can use it to 'fix' something).
Exactly.
So the secret of improving one's magic is a journey of self-discovery. That's an interesting, and possibly very valid interpretation of canon. Depending on how much of Rarity's cutie mark story is literally true, and how much of it is her embellishments, it's entirely possible that's how she finally found her special talent.
Which means that the Cutie Mark Crusaders might actually have the right idea, almost.
2371700
Interesting that Sunset's teleport flash was a different color than Twilight's is. Cadance's shield is also a different color . . . which suggests in both cases that those spells also have the unicorn's signature color in them.
In the case of teleportation, that might be a restricted spell, taught only to unicorns under Celestia's personal instruction.
My own headcanon is that other types of ponies can do magic or magic-like effects (Daisy levitating the stick), but they very rarely learn how, since they haven't got the horn to focus, and nopony tells them that they can. I think Pinkie does it without thinking, possibly not even being aware that she has done it. But that's a subject for later.
2371703
Do you remember what it was called? I don't think I've read that one.
2371737
That's certainly a possibility--maybe it's like the magical equivalent of a good hard shove.
2371747
I'm not very familiar with that 'verse, so I didn't use it as an example,
2371799
A very good point; I'd forgotten about that episode. I really need to take the time to re-watch all of Season 4.
2371818
Celestia can be such a bad role model as an older sister.
2371914
I really don't think alicorns should count in a discussion of unicorn magic. It's like saying that nobody in the T-ball team can hit a ball over the fence, and then someone says "What about coach Mark McGuire?"
I just think they're in a class on their own. Going back to Equestrian pre-history, we know that teams of unicorns* used to raise the sun, and I presume since they'd been doing it for a while, the unicorns in question had sun-related cutie marks. Then Celestia comes along and does on her own what it took a bunch of skilled unicorns to do.
*I seem to remember in the Hearth's Warming episode it was phrased in such a way that it implied that it took many unicorns working together to raise the sun, but I don't have the transcript handy.
2372220
On the other hand, after Tirek took everypony's magic . . . the unicorns were helpless, the pegasi couldn't fly . . . and nothing really changed for the earth ponies, except that come next harvest season there were going to be a lot of hungry unicorns and pegasi, just like back in the Windigo days.
2372251
It might be Skylark, but it has been a while since I read it.
I read somewhere that the glows the we see aren't actually there... it's just for us to see...
TvTropes I think?
2372289
I'll check it out.
2372297
If that's the case, than unicorn magic is potentially way overpowered.
2372313
The full title is The Skylark of Space, and it is even more over the top than the Lensman Series.
2372313
Why would it be over... powered... Invisible Magic??!! Well, In-universe, the horn might glow... maybe...
2372338
If you can't tell a unicorn is casting a spell (and they don't speak command words or anything), you can't prepare a defense against it. That's one reason why psionics are so overpowered in a lot of campaign worlds--a psionisist can get into somebody's mind and make them do things without there being any apparent external sign.
2372236
Your CMC comment made me think of a short segment from ch 8 of Discord's Parting Gift to the CMC.
She started reading. "There are two primary reasons why a pony does not acquire their cutie mark in the normal time frame. The first is that while the pony knows what their talent is on some level, they refuse to acknowledge it as their talent. This can be from being embarrassed about their talent, awkwardness in performing said talent, or having a talent that conflicts with what is expected of the pony in question. It can also be from having two potential talents and the pony dragging their hooves on choosing one. If this refers to you then go directly to chapter 7, Finding Commonalities—Your Choice Can Be Both."
Babs, noticing that Apple Bloom had sagged into her part of the bean bag, her eyes downcast, raised a hoof.
"The second is that the pony's talent is a complicated or broad one, and can not be expressed simply through one singular skill. This is a good thing. Some of the most useful talents almost never show up in a timely manner on ponies. The key here is to find the common thread that links the many things the pony is most adept at and why. A good process for discovering these sorts of talents is provided in chapters 8 through 11."
2372241
It is canonical that all ponies have magic, just in different ways:
EarthPonies have their magic enhance their strength and project magic through their hooves into the soil for making things grow.
Pegasi have magic in their wings allowing them to fly and tn aura around their bodies allowing them to not fall through clouds as well as manipulating them.
Unicorns project magic through their horns.
It would be very hard for NoUnicorns to teleport, but hypothetically possible.
Magic is probably how ponies manipulate objects with their hooves, tails, and manes. That is why I have no problem with Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie walking up a wall in Filli Vanilli.
2372193
The important thing to consider about current tractor beams, is that they are like AM radio, the use a single signal at brute force power levels, in order o get the effect they want. they use a single channel.
Now, imagine the fun you can have with a per cycle modulated 2,5 Ghz microwave signal, in a 256 channel WiFi router, where the constructive, destructive interference patterns form energy fields localised at n^2 strengths.
Now, imagine Caltech optical phase array emmiter, in the Gigapixel size, and Megawatts output. Roughly? Should be into Kilotons force. Focusable down to micron dimentions.
If you use the right design, one theoretical value is the beam can stress spacetime so much that the focal point starts to spew matter and antimatter, check SLAC for the announcement of trialing the technology.
Look up plasma field densities for reflection of energy to a given limit, the more energetic te plasma, the higher energy impinging it can reflect, which has always been the big argument against forcefields, reflecting energy when theres nothing there.
I wish I could remember what I was actually going to post her except asides. Oh well, hopefully later.
2372372
I really need to read that. It's been on my "read later" list for about forever.
2372408
That's very true, and that's the subject of a different blog post. In short, I tend to distinguish between contact magic and casting magic: the first is what can be done by touching an object; the second can be done at a distance. Typically, only unicorns can do the second (but they're not as good at the first).
2372498
I've said it before and I'll say it again--it's a good thing that Grey's School of Wizardry is close to the SLAC--if the SLAC boys really screw up and let some monster through, the wizards ought to be able to fix it.
2373511
I know what you mean. 1 of the most interesting properties of contact-magic is that it can propagate whence initiated through materials whither needed. The most common example is the Apple-Buck:
AppleJack sends a surge of magic through an appletree to the applestems, thus severing them, with no apples missed and no collateral damage.
2372258 Weeeell, that's why I didn't mention Tia or Luna, and their respective cutie mark abilities. Point remains, Cadence has a cutie mark-related spell. Whether or not it's OP is up for discussion, but it's still a specialized spell.
And they just said '[the] unicorns raised the sun.' Referring to unicorns as a a society. So it is reasonable to assume it was a team effort of sorts.
2372258
¡The Transcript for Hearth’s Warming Eve!: