//------------------------------// // Magic isn't Just Friendship // Story: Letters from a Fascinated but Frustrated Scientist // by Andoriol //------------------------------// Dear Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and whomever else it may concern, Magic. A force that permeates all of Equestria, magic is strange, powerful, and only vaguely understood. But it has many powers and applications in daily life throughout Equestria. While I’ve been trying to understand the basic functions of magic, what makes it tick, how it works, things which Equestrians have been puzzling over for centuries… I’ve also studied its applications, something that ponies have been studying with considerably greater success for millennia. The following is based on the common understandings of magic with my own understandings and commentary based on my understanding of some of the more basic functions of reality. Foreword This is intended less for Equestrians, but far more for those who may not understand magic on anything more than an instinctual level or who have never been exposed to magic in any shape, way, or form. I will try to introduce it as best I can in its entirety, but the sheer amount of material there is to cover on the subject means that I am limited to the basics. The Basics Magic is defined as the use of mana to affect the world in some way. Mana is the energy of magic and has been defined many ways by many different beings. Some theorize that it is the energy of life or the energy of a soul, but having been the Alicorn of the Earth, I am able to say that while the world is powerful and in some ways, alive, it is not alive in the way that those theorists state nor does it have a soul. As such, these theories fail to accommodate the presence of lay-lines and non-living artifacts such as the Elements of Harmony. Living things generate mana, but the amount of mana generated seems to be linked to the soul and the degree of sapience an entity has. Insects do not appear to generate mana in any measurable quantity for example. Most things however, respire (absorb through a natural process) mana from the environment. Equestria’s sun and moon both generate mana, as does the planet itself and many of the things that live upon it, but many natural processes require mana in some form or another. There have been recorded cases of living things entering areas deprived of all ambient mana in some form or another and slowly dying due to ‘mana deprivation’. The signs and symptoms of mana deprivation appear to be a terrible cross between highly accelerated malnutrition and oxygen deprivation. Given these facts, I have no feasible explanation to the source or nature of mana in any meaningful way. I can merely be certain that it exists. Spells are capable of detecting the presence of mana, but not any individual particles of it or even indicate that such particles exist. While all of Equestria is suffused with mana, there are some natural locations in which mana appears to pool such as the legendary Crystal Caverns or the Mirror Pool. These locations are referred to as demenses in modern Equestrian terms. Most attempts to actively harness the mana within these demenses is futile, as it exists in a structured pattern and does a certain effect. Altering the area can easily ruin the magic, reduce the demense to nothing, or even cause the mana to destructively build up, but there exists a theoretical structure that would harness the power of a demense and use it constructively. Such a building, called a manse, would have to be tailor-built to the demense it would harness, and such knowledge is currently beyond ponies. I personally believe that the Princess has a certain degree of knowledge on how to build a manse, but restricts such knowledge due to the dangers in its implementation and the power it could cause. The only known manse to have ever been successfully built was the capital city of the Crystal Empire. Magical things or beings are entities that use mana in a rigorous manner. Griffons are magical beings, as their bodies harness the power of mana to increase the strength of their flight muscles. Zap Apple trees are magical entities as their apples have a large concentration of mana packed into them (theorized to protect them against small predators and parasites as well as entice larger creatures capable of spreading their seeds at a distance to eat them). All magical beings have mana flows in them, conduits and tubes which the mana flows through their body in. More actively magical using beings such as ponies or dragons also have a magical reservoir, an area in their body in which mana is concentrated and pools, normally a thick band of concentrated mana that follows the entities spine. These are not physical structures, at least as far as I and the past two centuries of pony physiological study have been able to determine, merely magical ones. Mana flows seem to correlate to the physical structure of the being or entity rather than the other way around, though they can influence said structure once they are in place. This is supported by the lack of set mana-flows in younger ponies and young dragons like Spike, such entities instead have much broader, slower ‘currents’ of mana flowing through their bodies. Mana flows appear to be more efficient ways to transport mana quickly through a being’s body, much like a cardio-vascular system is for blood and oxygen. It is my current working theory that the soul acts as both an additional reservoir for a being’s mana, as well as the ‘pump’ which moves mana about the being. Spells: While Spells are defined as a rigorous construct and usage of mana used by sapient beings that can be taught to other sapient beings, the term is (incorrectly) used to refer to the structured effects of demenses like the Mirror Pool and select magical abilities of certain magical entities. Magic is something difficult to quantify, for while Unicorns are built to perceive magic, there exists no analogous thing in all of existence, and as such, the understanding of magic and spells must be filtered in some way or form depending on the perceivers understanding of magic. There have been three basic understandings of magic classified over the centuries of Equestrian society and are as follows: Construct Based Spell Understanding: This is the most common and basic form of understanding of magic in Equestria. It is the perception of spells as physical constructs and mechanisms. This form of understanding of magic is easier to achieve when one is born with the ability to perceive magic as the “construct” referred to in the name is based off of the actual mana-flows required to implement the spell. Spells are visualized and perceived as constructs and artistry. It is the baseline of magical understandings in Equestria, and thus the one the other two understandings are compared to. Emotional Based Spell Understanding: A more unusual and actually actively suppressed understanding of magic, it is based on understanding the emotions the user feels to implement the spell. Magic is perceived as a mix of emotions, colors, and smells. This Understanding tends to allow for greater power than the Construct Based Understanding, but make the implementation of more complicated spells more difficult due to the finesse of emotional control required. It is far easier to accidentally cast spells from this Understanding, and this is the reason ponies are discouraged from learning magic this way. Language Based Spell Understanding: The rarest form of magical understanding in Equestria, it is the understanding of magic in the way of formula’s and runes, as a ‘coding language’ of the universe. This is the understanding of magic that I have. It is not the rarest entirely by suppression, though Celestia’s discouragement of the knowledge of Runic magic does make it more difficult. It is rare because unicorns have the ability to use and sense magic from birth, and are more likely to gain a Construct Based Understanding before they have the requisite understanding of the universe, logic, magical theory, language, and level of literacy to view magic as a language. Despite what the ‘requirements’ of this form of Understanding may imply, this Understanding is not better than Construct Based Understanding. Rather, due to building spells as a code or poem, one with this Understanding of magic can normally create or tweak spells within minutes to days rather than the hours to months of effort the other two Understandings require. However, viewing magic as magical language and code does not necessarily mean you know the whole language, and larger spells are seen as compressed magical code and thus difficult to parse. It makes it difficult to learn new spells compared to Construct Based Understanding, and some spells are in strange syntax and ‘grammar’, and must be unpacked to be properly understood, much in the way a poem might. It should be noted that one has little control over which form of Magical Understanding they gain, only those teaching the prospective student of magic have any influence over it, and even then, it takes a master spellcaster to be able to guide a prospective student towards a Magical Understanding they themselves do not have. Once one understands magic in one way or another, it’s almost impossible to change, to the point that the Princesses have only known it to have happened three times over the course of four millennia. Spell Circles The study of spells has gone on for millennia under the gaze of Celestia and Luna, advanced by brilliant ponies such as Starswirl the Bearded and likely Twilight Sparkle. Magical spells are divided into 10 “circles” based on the required power. The input of mana to the output of power naturally creates these “circles” or “levels” of spells. The curve continues beyond the 10th circle, but the differences between peak and trough of the “power bands” of ideal mana-input to effect output slowly even out as the power increases. The difference between the peak of the 11th circle and the troughs on either side are a mere .1%, which while noticeable considering the immense amount of mana involved, is non-meaningful. Current magical theory designates all spells that use more mana than the power band of the 9th circle to be 10th circle spells. The scale is exponential for mana input to power output. First Circle spells are the first spells a foal learns, soon followed by Second Circle spells. Most unicorns operate within the Third Circle of spells for most of their life, with the average specialist operating within the Fourth Circle. The Fifth and Sixth Circles of magic are occasionally seen with more powerful unicorns, but they are a minority. While a Fifth Circle spell may affect an entire room, a Sixth Circle spell would affect an entire household. A Seventh Circle spell an entire town. An Eighth Circle spell an entire city. Spells of Ninth Circle and above rarely are further reaching, but are oftentimes even more powerful in their effect, choosing strength over breadth. Note that currently, there are only a few handfuls of ponies capable of reaching the ninth circle of magic in their specialties, and a mere handful capable of reaching the 10th circle at all. Most of which are alicorns or imperfect tri-hybrids. Twilight Sparkle is one of only 3 ponies capable of casting 9th circle spells from more than one school. Schools of Magic Current doctrine divides spells based primarily on their effect rather than their basic construction and function, and fall into the following categories, known as “schools of magic”: Clairvoyance – Currently a relatively unexplored school of magic, Clairvoyance covers spells which attempt to perceive the future or past, see things at a distance, analyze things too large or too small to otherwise perceive, or otherwise attempt to gather information using magic. Surprisingly, this school of magic is extremely inter-related and have a large number of similarities on a functional and implementational level despite their considerably varied effects. Ponies tend to have considerable difficulty with spells of this school that deal with places they have not been to before. Tracking – A specific subset of spells, these deal with the locating of objects or entities. Very few ponies appear to be capable of these spells to any degree of accuracy, making this sub-school little more than a curiosity at best. Farseeing – It bears mentioning that ponies are surprisingly capable when it comes to extending their visual range or their arc of vision, but have considerable difficulty when it comes to seeing locations at extreme distances, especially ones they have never been to. The greater the distance, the more difficult the spell. Prediction – A specific sub-set of spells which attempt to determine the future. The exact mechanism of such is unknown to me and beyond my ability to perform. Illusion – This school of magic covers all forms of creating real and true projections for the senses to perceive such as visual projections, sound, smell, tastes, and physical sensations. Normally involved in overlaying an existing object with the illusion of the sensations desired. The hallmark of Illusion magics is that they do not actually alter the world, merely the perception of it and are incapable of truly harming There are two sub-categories of function within this school. The True and the Percieved. “True” Illusions are those that create audible, visible, or olfactory sensations as they truly create the sources of these sensations in the world. The gustationary and tactile sensations however fall under “Percieved” Illusions, as they do not physically alter objects, rather creating a field that interacts with the sympathetic nervous system to create the desired sensation. Sendings – Sendings refer to a specific sub-school of Illusion Spells, specifically to those that involve a Tracking component to relay an illusion to another. While these spells exist, due to ponies difficulty with Tracking spells, they are a currently unexplored niche and more of a fancy than worth dedicated study. Evocation – This school covers all forms of direct energy conversion and emission. Generating and controlling energy such as electricity, heat, light or entropic energy. The latter aggressively and quickly accelerating the entropy of something touched. “Cold” energy falls under this category as well, the mana rapidly ripping the thermal energy from anything it touches. While normally perceived as a school of “battle magic”, many weak evocation spells have been worked into every-day items such as refrigerators and ovens. Telekinesis – While, in theory, a sub-set of Evocation, the natural propensity of Unicorns towards this school of magic has caused them to separate it into its own dedicated school. The studies into its effects, its usage, and the best ways to achieve both. The difficulty of a task depends on the delicacy required, the precision required, and the amount of raw force required. Any considerable amount of one or another amount of these increases the effort required for a task and in many cases, the amount of mana used up, though not necessarily the amount used in the task as the amount of ‘wasted’ mana may change depend on the difficulty of the task. Medical – This school of magic is actually built from multiple smaller spells from different schools of magic such as Blood Magic, Telekinesis, Clairvoyance, Alteration, and even Reality Warping. These replace tools such as defibulators, scalpels, medical analysis tools, warmers, and more. Given the amazing power of Growth-Encouragement spells (which fall under the purview of Blood magic) ponies have an ability to heal things which were unthinkable to humans “modern medicine”. Counter-Magic – This school of magic is built around the un-doing magic and its effets. The most common form of this involves using concentrated mana pulses to safely unravel spells or magical effects in existence. Reality Calcification – I’ve got to admit to a mistake here, Reality Calcification is not a true school of magic, rather, a sub-school of Counter-Magic. Reality Calcification involves using mana reinforcement to cause the laws of reality to solidify and become more difficult to alter with external magic. Few spells outside of Reality Warping actually do this, and as such, has little effect on spells outside of that school. I was taught it as its own separate school due to its particular use to me personally. Alteration – This school of magic refers to spells which physically alter objects or materials without altering the laws of physics. The magics involved normally do things that are perfectly possible with dedicated work such as staining glass, altering the composition of materials, and non-telekinetic changes in an objects shape or size. Some spells in this school have elements of Blood Magic to them, the spells that alter the shape, size, or composition of living beings all have some element of Blood Magic to them, tapping in the living energy and self-healing nature of the body to ensure that the extremely delicate work on another living beings body can be done with relatively little actual knowledge of the task. Emphasis on the relatively. Seriously you need a Bachelors in Anatomy to do anything but the most basic of body-Altering spells. Charms – This school of magic refers to all forms of magic which affect the mind of a living being. Ponies that put effort into this school can achieve surprisingly subtle and powerful works in anothers mind. But thankfully, the magical resistance of ponies as well as the most common ways of countering these magics are widely spread. It takes considerable amount of raw power to actually overcome these basic defenses to the point that others won’t realize that some have been affected. Reality Warping – This is one of the most powerful and difficult schools of magic. It is in truth, extremely broad and encompasses a massive swath of magical functions. It involves many things simply not covered by other schools of magic, but at its core, it is defined by usage of magic to alter physical laws of reality such as Gravity, temperature coefficient, density, mass, inertia, the creation of matter from nothing, the laws of thermodynamics, and so on. Teleportation – Teleportation involves altering the nature of the quantum foam of reality within a bounded area to allow for a specific kind of wormhole to encompass the area and connect one location to another. The material between the two locations is swapped, passing one another in the wormhole in a brief instant before the wormhole is closed. The magic-resistance of most entities is such that it is impossible to teleport only a portion of a living thing. Time travel works similarly, and instead of simply designating another point in the X, Y, Z coordinates to transport, it designates a fourth dimension to travel along. The greater the travel distance, the more energy required not to create the spell, but to designate the target position with the spellcasters own mana. Conjuration – A specific subset of Reality Warping, Conjuration refers to ether teleporting a distant object to the spellcaster, or to creating objects whole-cloth from nothing. The energy required is considerable, but the latter is actually simple from the Construct Understanding of magic, it merely takes a considerable amount of mana, being a minimum 4th circle Spell. In addition to the ‘accepted’ schools of magic, the following are forbidden in normal teachings to varying degrees. Boons – Spells which alter probability negatively or positively, commonly called “curses” or “blessings” are a difficult and powerful form of magic, but the potential disaster involved and the lack of ability to counter these spells has caused Celestia to suppress the knowledge of these spells. The difficulty in properly implementing the spells has assisted in this suppression. While a part of this school falls under Reality Warping, the breadth and vague nature of these spells separates them from Reality Warping in both function and in form. Blood Magic – Blood magic refers to all forms of magic that directly affect and interact with the life force and biology of living beings. There are several major sub-sections of these magics. Power from Blood – This subsection deals with converting the power of life-force and the structured bonds that create a living being directly into mana. While symbolically using blood in this process, it is truly converting down the biological molecules down into their component parts throughout a being. Life Link – This subsection of magic deals with the linking of functions of a spell to the biological and magical predispositions of a living being. This is one of the few acceptable forms of Blood Magic, as it is commonly used to create safe-guards in spells that alter the composition or nature of a living being. Power to Blood – This is the reverse of Power from Blood, and involves converting mana into generative and reconstructive power for living beings. The difficulty is in bounding these effects. These form the entirety of “healing” magics, those that regenerate wounds. But a some of the principles of this subsection are also applied to Alteration spells that deal with living beings. Runic Magic – A mostly forgotten rather than forbidden school of magic, runic magic isn’t truly a separate kind of magic so much as an application of magic. It is the use of runes, symbols, and “magical coding” to transcribe a spell into an object in some fashion. This school of magic has almost entirely fallen into disuse, as there is almost no reason for its usage in modern Equestrian society. The things which runic magic is good at, enhancing objects, imparting spells into them, or creating wards are things which the other tribes can do (Earth Pony construction) or special materials can make far easier (crystals and certain metals for infusing heat or cold spells into). Soul Magic – This magic refers to the spells which directly affect the mana flows of an entity, as well as their soul. I don’t have any definition of a soul that can be translated well, but to put it simply, this is the power of binding souls to tasks, to objects, and is in many ways, a horrible school of magic that is rightfully forbidden. Greenfire Magic – The name is not indicative of what this school of magic covers. But it encompasses all forms of spells that must be powered by hatred, greed, the ‘darker’ emotions. These spells are oftentimes dangerously powerful but also self-destructive. There are exceptions, but these spells are truly corruptive, actively changing the mana flows of the user and adjusting the chemical balance of their bodies with every usage. They’re like a drug, and an extremely dangerous one at that. Spells in this category tend to have effects a full Spell Circle above what their input would indicate. Battle Magic – A “special” school of magic that is really a selection of spells from other schools as well as several merged spells. Spells to conjure items from nothing and imbune them with evocation magic in the process is battle magic. The ability to convert mana and willpower into temporary physical constructs is battle-magic. The usage of special telekinetic structures to create armor of force is battle-magic. The only real link between the spells of the “Battle Magic” school are their use in war and combat. It is something that I am horrifyingly good at. Name Magic – A horrifying school of magic that involves using the proper designation of an object or living being to gain a certain degree of control over it, generally reducing its magical resistance to nearly nothing. It is a simple, but terrifyingly powerful school of magic whose very existence has been removed from history. Also, fun fact. This text was written with special runic ink that specifically scrubs the capability of performing Name Magic from the souls of those who read it. If you’ve read this, you will never be capable of performing Name Magic. Yes, I got permission from Celestia to do this and actually got help from both of the Princesses in the implementation of this runic spell. Deal with it. Mastery While there are a number of different levels of skill in spellcasting, there are few formal titles considering the considerable breadth of possibilities. However, there exist some currently used as well as archaic forms of measuring competene. Currently, ponies are measured by their understanding of theory much in the way they are with any other advanced subject such as physics or general mediine and are given Associates, Bachelors, Journymares, and Masters depending on the approximate number of years they spend studying a subject in a university, being 2, 4, 6, and 8 respectively. Twilight Sparkle is on her fifth Masters at the time of this writing. Archaicly and “formally”, there exist degrees of Mastery, based on a combination of skill, speed of application, and raw power that equate to a degree of Mastery ascending from First Degree to Tenth Degree. Legally, First to Fourth Degree Mastery is the equivalent to either a Journeymares or a barely-passing Masters degree in the school and are not allowed to be added to titles. However, the Fifth and higher Degrees of Mastery refer to greater and greater power. As these are determined by a formula (which I am still unable to really understand), it is in theory possible to have an Eleventh Degree Mastery, but only the Princesses possess such mastery and power in magic. Twilight is a Tenth Degree Master in four schools of magic, and at absolute least an Eighth Degree Master in all other “accepted” schools of magic. I myself am a Seventh Degree Master or higher in all forms of forbidden magic, a Tenth Degree Master of Countermagic and Runic Magic, an Eighth Degree Master of “Battle Magic”, and a Sixth Degree master of Reality Warping. Conclusion Magic is a powerful, dangerous force in the world of Equestria, but one that has, through the careful efforts of the immortal Princesses, become a source of almost exclusively beauty when used by ponies. There are exceptions, but the knowledge of dangerous schools of magic can be likened to the knowledge of how to build instruments of murder and torture, and the world is a better place without them. To note: The Elements of Harmony, the Princesses' ability to manipulate celestial objects, and other unique aspects of magic will be covered in a separate report as they and their interaction with the world around them are surprisingly complex and in some cases, still not understood in any appreciable amount. And seriously, don’t try to figure out Name Magic, I will find your ass and buck you in the face so hard that your descendants will feel it. Then I’ll drag you before the Princesses so that they can punish you. So seriously, don’t do it. Best Wishes, Emeris Fillson