Magic isn't Just Friendship
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
Stats
Page generated in 0.1 seconds
Total duration
793 users online
839,060 hits today, 1,341,609 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
This is an initial report on magic. This is In-Character from Emeris PoV, this is to excuse any adjustments I may need to make based on stuff they do with things in MLP:FiM
That or if someone points out that this contradicts something shown in the series, which it's not supposed to
I couldn't figure out a good way to inject humor into this one until the very end sadly, so there's that. But these were never meant to be the most exciting reads anyways so I'll chalk up the humor I was able to work in as a win
Foolish Emeris, there's no magic runes on the Internet! AND you've given us your real name! Muahahahaahahahahahahahahahaha!
Alas, I'm not the author, so I can't pull shit.
Drat.
Question: Are magic and spells exclusive of ponykind, or the other races (griffons, dragons, or specially zebras) can perform it too?
What about Zecora´s alchemy and hoodoo ?
Good job, Emeris. Given my limited understanding of quantum mechanics and biology, I could use de facto reality warping, getting the power for it from a "feedback loop," making a meta spell to cause Wolverine level regeneration, another for "true" shape-shifting and a sub-set to make a "hibernation" state.
1786599
Actually, you need someone's full name to properly use Name Magic, anything less is basically useless against anything with significant magic resistance, and Emeris has more than significant magic resistance. Emeris Fillson is just his first and last name, not his middle and not the various titles that he has picked up that have become a part of his name. As revealing these titles counts as a minor spoiler, I can't do so, but as a quick and dirty example of the kind of titles I'm talking about: Vlad the Impaler. To affect him properly with Name Magic you would need to use Vlad Dracule the Impaler.
And who says the internet doesn't have runes? You haven't discovered Name Magic yet have you?
1787860
Note that it very rarely specifies a species in the letter. Something not mentioned is the Foci Requirement for magic. To use magic like a unicorn, to cast spells, or even the obvious magical effects of Pegasi or Dragons require a magical focus. Dragons have their Heart and their Wings, which act as foci through which mana is concentrated and shaped into the "spells" which give them their powers.
Without a Foci of some form, magic is still possible, but the amount of power possible is considerably smaller, to the point that even someone with the raw mana reserves of Twilight could barely cast a Second Circle spell. Creating Foci like wands or staves is a relatively unknown and mysterious art, to the point that few other species know of it. Most other species use Runic magic. Most species have a natural foci of some form, such as a cutie-mark or a Dragons wings, these specific organic Foci allow the creature to work at least one innate spell, and sometimes even more than that. But they normally have little conscious control over this spell, and it merely 'happens'. Casting a spell outside of those that one's Foci allows is no better than casting without a Foci. Unicorn horns are some of the most generalized Foci in existence, but even they have their limitations as noted in the Differences between the Tribes letter, these are caused by the shape and composition of the unicorns horn.
Alchemy is basically Chemistry with mana, acting as a combination of the chemicals, the mana channeling/gathering molocules that allow species to gather/channel mana in the first place, but also the individual "flavors" of mana and in-process spells that most species and things have upon them. Most of this is barely understood by ponies, and as such, Emeris as well. He should have acknowledged its existence in this letter, but he didn't because despite being a smart cookie, he's a bit of a derp sometimes.
1788004
Yes and no. Wolverine-level regen is possible, but extremely difficult. The complexity of a bounded, trigger-based spell to cause any part of your body to regenerate is ridiculous. And note that there is no way to just pull mana from the air any faster than you would normally, so while you could get mana from burning up your own blood and then heal the damage, you're going to start to run out of mana. Ponies respire mana at a decent rate, but the amount of power to heal like Wolverine is greater than even someone like Twilight could regain in a reasonable amount of time. And a "limited understanding" won't cut it for Biology, you need the equivalent of a Masters degree to do most forms of healing magic, and a Doctorate would be better as you need to understand exactly where the bits and pieces go, what needs to be encouraged to grow, what needs to be stem cells and what needs to be normal cells, the proper ratios of chemicals and so on and so forth. It's hard to do safely, and if you don't do it safely, it usually doesn't even work due to beings magic resistance and survival mechanisms.
"True" shapeshifting falls under Reality Warping, Blood Magic, and Alteration and is very complex, to do so without risking your life is... ah... hard. Even someone like Twilight has trouble with it, though it's easier to do it on yourself than it is on someone else as you can bypass your own magic resistance and can link to your bodies survival mechanisms more easily. Still, you need a serious understanding of anatomy to consider it.
A hibernation state though is more than feasible and there exists several ways to do so, involving either time distortion or biological effects or soul magic. So that one's possible, just having limited usefulness on its own.
1788200, give back the healing that salamanders keep, increase speed and tame "cancerous" growth. Blood is able to be reformed easily, and can still be used for material, making it a working form of the bull$hit radiation healing of the Hulk. The idea is to reactivate the unstable healing that embryos have and blood cells are the only part of the body that can multiply infinitely. Steam cells would be used to be a "base" for the mass of malformed cells, making cancer cells into the cells needed. And the shape-shifting is a combination of soul magic to keep the mind intact, blood to change the body into what is wanted and "extra" matter is stored in a rune stabilized singularity through time/space distortion. Basally, a necklace for infinite storage. The hibernation state would be done by taking basically every hardening method there is and turning yourself into an indestructible beetle.
1788376
Problem: The Hulk's powers are all explicitly bullshitium as he has done feats such as keeping matter and anti-matter separate, affected the core of a black hole, etc., which are physically impossible. These effects are explicitly not bullshitium and work very similarly to normal physical laws, just ones that we don't fully understand.
Now, read the section on Power From Blood a bit more carefully. It doesn't just affect the blood, the blood is normally just symbolic as part of the destruction of cells throughout the affected beings body, breaking them down entirely to provide the power in their chemical bonds for magic. If you could find a way to exclusively use blood-cells, the mass of cells affected would be relatively tiny, and as such, the corresponding amount of energy would be tiny.
Giving yourself back that special "regen" feature that people lose over time would require knowing which gene sequences you are affecting, otherwise it just wouldn't work. And considering the complexity of the pony genome in this verse... good luck.
Increasing the speed of your biological processes without forcing you to eat almost constantly would require a considerable amount of mana, and even if you were converting your own blood into power, you'd be expending far more power than you were getting. Because while your body would bring in mana and energy from oxygen, you would have to expend the mana to reform all of the ATP required to make your body function and create new cells. And if you're just getting back the energy from a portion of the cells you destroyed... basically, it's a lot like this or this, but is really closest to this if you removed the box.
In theory, if you burned up portions of your body such as your muscles using Power from Blood, then you could maintain the regeneration for a limited period of time, but the inefficiency of the magic would still mean you would be losing out and it would cost a significant amount of mana, more so than most ponies can respire. And if you lose control of the spell in the least... well... um... yeah, not good.
So... yeah... wolverine-style regen isn't exactly possible in this understanding of MLP:FiM Magic.
You can't just create a singularity, nor is it so easily stabilized without a very advanced understanding of physics. That and there does exist transformation magic, but it is a delicate and dangerous process if its anything permanent. Soul magic also doesn't work that way for most beings, so aggressively altering your brain is generally a bad idea.
The hibernation is, in theory, possible, but not really practical. The amount of energy you'd expend would be considerable and thus, would limit the amount of time you could stay "hibernating". Keeping the energy costs below your mana-respiration rate would be key to making it last, and most of those methods don't let you do much more than keep your biological processes running without consuming things or deteriorating your body excessively.
1788542, how is turning yourself into a beetle impractical? And you said that soul magic can be used to bind the soul to an object, so why can't it be used to hold the mind in place? And if there are spells to look at genes and mana, why can't it be used to take genes that tell what the exoskeleton is made of and mix-match materials? The shape-shifting relies on genetic copies, so it should work for things like swapping race and appearance. Genetics is hard to work with for a lot of things, but for materials in structures, it is easy enough. And I'm 14, so I have very little knowledge on the details
1788605
The amount of energy it takes to make yourself basically indestructible is considerable and usually not worth it. You'd be better off being more mobile or having barriers as they're less complex and harder to mess up in the middle of a pitched fight. Impractical, not impossible or even unworkable. Just impractical. The hibernation part of it is the part that makes it really impractical, because to stay like that for a long time, Energy-In must be equal to or greater than Energy-Used (Or Energy-Out to make it easier to think of), otherwise you'd use up the mana you have and end the spell.
Now, if you're referring to actually, physically transforming into a beetle... well.. then you've got the mass issue as well as trying to figure out where the hell your brain and all of its memories go among other things.
Because Soul != Mind. They're related, but one does not equal the other (for most beings, there are exceptions). You'd get fragments of who you were, you'd basically be a zombie of yourself in a new body. There are ways around this, but they're extremely energy intensive magics (7th Circle+) which few beings are capable of.
Because being able to "see" the genes is different from knowing what they do. And in a body with tens of thousands of individual genes, you can't exactly tell what one does very easily, and expirementing with these things is terribly dangerous. Note that the most brilliant minds in the world, who dedicate their entire lives to exactly this kind of thing, have been working for decades to understand the human genome... and still don't really get it worth a damn. And Genetics aren't like Legos, you can't select "Long Neck Genes" from a giraffe for example, it just doesn't work that way, see here for a bit more information on how genetics and genetic engineering work.
Long Story Short: Genetics are unbelievably complex, and the fact that Emeris has figured out as much as he has is supposed to be absolutely amazing when considered in depth.
1788714, I am thinking of taking the material exoskeleton of one beetle and putting it into another. There is a beetle that requires a hammer and chisel to crack. And when you think about it, magic could be VERY efficient for maintaining the body, because at its base, you can run the body on electricity, oxygen is only needed for the electron transfer chain. The human genome is incomprehensible, but it took one or two years to find the genes for the eyes of mice. And they spent a month or two for fruit flies.
1789904
There's more to having an exoskeleton than one gene or even a set of genes. An exoskeleton is a skeleton for the body, and the weight it would add would be considerable. You'd need to isolate the genes that allow the beetle to grow the exoskeleton, determine what the exoskeleton is made out of, and maintain the exoskeleton, then you'd need to figure out how to modify those genes to work with the different biology of a pony which would take an advanced degree in genetic engineering in of itself, and then you'd need to spread the genes throughout your body (actually the easiest part of this when using magic) and then accelerate your bodies metabolic processes so that you grow the exoskeleton in a reasonable amount of time, all while hoping that it doesn't grow an exoskeleton over your mouth and nose or through vital organs.
It's not a simple process, despite how fiction likes to portray it.
The electron transfer chain which multiplies the amount of ATP your body gets by 14 - 18 times, which your body is built upon requiring since without that amount of ATP generation your cells start to die, usually important ones like, y'know, brain-cells.
Sure, you could keep your heart beating with just electricity, but that's because it's a chemical/electrical reaction, it in no way keeps the cells of your body alive, which requires ATP, which requires the expenditure of energy to produce, whether it's mana or anything else. Your body doesn't "run" off electricity, not really, it just makes your muscles work which is a major part of your body running yes, but it doesn't actually cause your body to work.
And? I've explicitly stated that pony genetics are more complicated than a humans for one. And for another, you'll note that they just say they've "mapped" the genetics of those species, not that they understand them. There are still experiments going on with the genetic modification of houseflies to determine the full effects of changing one gene. Seriously, they tweaked one gene and it caused somewhere around 8 different effects, one of which was eyes growing on he flies butt. They were trying to change the flies eye color if I remember correctly.
Genetic engineering is potentially extremely powerful and useful, but it is unbelievably complex and still barely understood by even the best scientists in the field, don't let science fiction and Hollywood tell you otherwise. (Also don't let that knowledge get in the way of a fun movie or book, but seriously, genetic engineering is an amazingly complex field, it's seriously not as easy as "I want an exoskeleton so I'll get the exoskeleton gene).
Edit: And just to be sure here, I'm not trying to be a dick about this, I just want to make sure you understand that it's (unfortunately) not that simple. While the concept is cool and would be awesome in a work of fiction that didn't (try) to be so rigorously scientific as I'm trying to here, it... well, it doesn't work in fiction that tries to be realistic to the degree that what I'm doing tries to.
Name Magic sort of reminds me of the True Names in the Inheritance Cycle. Concidering what Galbatorix was capable with that, I agree with the erasure.
Gaining power over sentient creatures in that manner is bloody horrific, especially with how simple it is.
1792651
There's actually a necessary component of Name Magic that has been deliberately left out and no attention drawn to the fact to make it even harder for somebody to figure out Name Magic from first principles. But yeah, Name Magic is much like True Names in the Inheritance Cycle as well as Full Names in the Dresden Files. All of the "forbidden" schools of magic are that way for damn good reasons. While it makes Celestia seem like a bit of a tyrant, she's more than benevolent and entirely justified in her attempts to suppress the knowledge, much in the same way knowledge on how to build WMD's is suppressed as best it can be.
1792669
Well, you know what they say, knowledge is power, forbidden knowledge has great power, and great power corrupts greatly, unless you find an individual possessing great strength of character. The odds on that are fairly low though. . .
I suppose Equestria was spared in a way, someone with more malicious intents could have abused the Gary Stu/Mary Sue spell. Speaks a great deal about Emeris as well, though as you said, he's still not exactly recovered from that yet, is he?
Can't say I blame him, two years of what seems to amount to constant emotional torture would do that to anyone.
1788200
The internet has runes, but it doesn't have ink.
1792669
The knowledge that lets people build WMDs is the same knowledge that lets them build nuclear reactors. In fact, were it not for the former, the latter would never have happened.
1794111
Does a third of the population have access to plutonium in amounts sufficient to create a 'dirty' kiloton+ nuclear warhead?
1794141
No, but by the same token, nobody is rendered incapable of learning nuclear physics in the process of beginning to study it.
1794162
A full third of Equestrian society is capable of learning and using any form of "black" magic, and some forms of those magics are able to be used by anyone. This is literally the equivalent of giving them all the ability to create terrible bio-weapons, to carry around a gun with hollow-point rounds, the ability to casually drug and brainwash people, and to defile the graves and memory of past loved ones casually. This is in addition to the perfectly valid nuclear weapon comparison. While some of these magics are actively corrupting in the same way drugs such as meth, crack, or heroine are to encourage their use.
There is no good use for Name Magic, none worth the terrible things that it can do. It can make it easier to work on things, to perform magic on difficult to work on materials, but the sheer horror that it is capable of in the hands of anyone who may wish to use it wrong is flat out not worth having to ask someone to help you provide the power to work with this material.
There are uses of some of the portions of 'forbidden' magics, as evidenced by the school of Medicine drawing from them. But Name Magic in particular has no other uses.
To steer this discussion away from Name Magic, what sort of materials would be useful for an artificial magic focus?
I'm reminded of phoenix feathers for some reason *cough* Potter *cough*.
I imagine that those indestructible pegasus primary feathers (thank you Xenophilia) could be useful....
In other words, what'choo makin' wands of, boy?
1794293
Any particularly magically resonant material or item could be made into an artificial magical focus. Pheonix or Pegasus feathers, dragon bone, wood from a zap apple tree, etc.
The key point is that what you choose for your focus as well as how you inscribe and work it, heavily defines the magics which the focus is capable of casting, or in the case of a generalized focus, what it is good at. Dragon Bone is a particularly good magical focus due to the breadth of magic it is capable of implementing, as is the material a unicorns horn is made of.
The dust from filing a unicorns horn is actually often carefully smelted into metals to make them magically conductive, and during times that the three tribes were at racial wars with one another, it was used as a form of fertilizer to enhance the growth of plants and the effects of magic upon the plants by unicorns to supplement their food production due to not having Earth Pony magics (Pegasi are capable of eating meat and as such, ate fish to supplement their diets). Alternatively, shredded pegasus primaries would have a similar effect, though leaning towards making materials lighter or electrically conductive.
The key point for a magical focus though is that it be resilient, something a bit difficult to get due to the normally organic nature of most magically conductive materials. Crystals are one of the few inorganic, magically conductive materials, let alone common ones. Gold, silver and mercury are all magically conductive to certain forms of spells and can 'store' mana, and while brass and copper are horrendous magical capcitors/batteries, they're good magical conductors. Alluminum is actually extremely magically conductive, especially for pegasi magics (But due to the extreme difficulties in refining it properly, it is almost twice as valuable as gold). Iron and lead are both "dead" materials. Magically non-conductive to the point that they sap magic out of things that they touch, the more 'radioactive' elements actually radiate entropic magic unless properly and dangerously refined.
So yeah, there's a wide range of things that can be made into magical foci, it just depends on what you're going for. For a pony, I'd suggest a, hrm...
a necklace (since having to carry your focus with magic defeats the purpose of a focus), with a crystal grown in earth pony blood with unicorn horn dust and pegasus bone. Inset into silver and obsidian glass, heated with a fire stoked with pegasi feathers. Y'know, something like that for a proper, generalized magical focus that would supersede a unicorn's horn.
Humans though would have a far greater swath of things to choose from, yay opposable thumbs (we also have to since, well, no natural magical foci).
1794353
I remember reading a fic around here a while back that also had aluminium as a thaumic conductor, except the ponies had discovered electrolysis, leading to a magical industrial revolution of sorts. Magical constructs for the win! It was also a severe dystopia where Rainbow and Fluttershy had deposed Celestia and Luna, and Rainbow, using the military might of Equestria was slowly conquering the globe. Yeah. The world building in that story was pretty good, though.
Anyway, I notice that you have earth pony blood and pegasus bone up there, which I rather like. I imagine the magic of the pegasus make their bones lighter than the norm, so their skeletons must be chock full of magic residue. Is the earth pony blood a sort of 'we're a part of this land' sort of thing?
Anyway, what I'm asking is if the horn of a unicorn, blood of earth thing symbolic, or would the bones of an earth pony and the blood of a pegasus be less ideal?
Wow, I'm asking strange questions
"Yo, Twi! Mind if I have a borrow of your horn? It'll grow back!
"
1794432
Pegasus blood would work, but it has less magic than their bones (especially their wing-bones). And Earth Pony bones would work extremely well. Properly used, the dust from filing Earth Pony hooves is a powerful magical conductor as it's how Earth Ponies gain/use their magics. Pegasus blood is less ideal, but Earth Pony bone is workable. The reason I cited them in that order was based on a certain artifact in Season 3, Episode 5
And actually, a horn will grow back as I've noted eariler in this series. Provided it's not cut off at the very base of the horn, nearly flush with the skin. And even then, young enough ponies can grow that back. But it takes an extremely long time, and the horn of one unicorn or another usually isn't all that different or more valuable. Twilight and Trixie are rare examples, as are any even pseudo-alicorns due to their imperfect tri-hybrid status allowing their horns to work multiple kinds of magics normally not possible for unicorns.
Also: By this understanding, spa's are able to operate relatively cheaply compared to the amount of 'power tools' they require to properly work on a ponies tougher materials due to them being able to sell off the dust from horn and hoof-filings of the appropriate two tribes, though they likely have to get the customer to sign a waiver to allow them to do so. This also means that grooming of things like that properly is a major deal for unicorns as well as the more blacksmithing-inclined Earth Ponies.
1794566
Huh. Suddenly the spa becomes a necessity instead of a luxury. Locus and Aloe must be rolling in it.
1795233
Except for the expenses involved in things like hoof grinders, new horn-files every month, the cost of heating water in a society without electricity, various expensive oils that are used up constantly, and creams and proper mud...
All of these expenses are considerably greater than what we'd expect since the infrastructure to distribute them isn't up to par. Food's everywhere, but it's a lot more expensive to transport things (like the appropriate creams and oils) significant distances in large enough quantities for the spa to use.
Now, they're still making good money, but their expenses are higher than you'd expect if you think of spas in modern societies due to the (relative) lack of infrastructure.
1795354
Rail System still developing, then?
Equestria needs canals! Lots of them!
Come to think of it, those little 4-4-0 seem to be in mostly passenger service.
And I bet most ponies don't like water too much (Creatures of the plains on the bounding Main? I don't think so)
1794353
Oh! Here's a bit of worldbuilding that may interest you (and which seems to coincide pretty well with what you've got here)
http://lurks-no-more.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4flcta
I especially like his description of prosthectic unicorn horns, made of " a copper core, with a crystal mantle and often a gold or silver sheath"
Sounds like a good candidate for a wand, methinks.
1790020, I'm not trying to give a pony an exoskeleton, I'm trying to make one beetle's exoskeleton have the same material as another beetle's. ATP formation can be sustained with electricity, because the electron transfer chain uses oxygen’s bonding as a conductor for ion formation. And all I'm doing with pony genes is just making a di-hybrid into a tri-hybrid. Basally the same as making a clone of a man into a woman, just a bit larger scale. And if I got anything wrong, I did tell you I'm 14 years old
1794199
> There is no good use for Name Magic, none worth the terrible things that it can do.
> It can make it easier to work on things, to perform magic on difficult to work on materials, but the sheer horror that it is capable of in the hands of anyone who may wish to use it wrong is flat out not worth having to ask someone to help you provide the power to work with this material.
It seems like you're contradicting yourself here. Is it still evil even if only used on inanimate objects (no good use), or is the problem that there's no way to teach someone the good parts without also enabling them to use the evil parts (there are good uses, but it's not worth the risk)?
1806628
The latter. There's no way to teach them the good use without enabling them to use the evil parts first. Using it to make it easier to work on magically resilient substances with magic is a more advanced application of the principles which allow someone to control or kill another by bypassing their magical resistance.
Kinda like not being able to build a factory without giving every worker an AK-47 to take home with them to do their work and then paying them in ammo and date-rape drugs.
It's that vs. Hiring some more workers so you have the requisite mana output to work on the materials.
Did the Princesses use the Names of their respective celestial bodies to gain their alicorny attunements, or is that something completely different?
1806683
I am not touching that one IC or OOC for multiple reasons.
As stated in the paper about Alicorns, there's a difference between a "true" alicorn and an alicorn like the Princesses. The Princesses reside in an intentionally nebulous tier in this world-building exercise, somewhere between "god" and "Immensely powerful". The exact limits of what they can do, how they came about, how old they are, and exactly what they are is intentionally left vague.
They are immensely powerful, apparently immortal beings that are able to draw directly from the wellspring of mana that is their respective celestial bodies as well as exert an amount of influence on said objects. Beyond that, they are at least as strong, fast, and tough as a "true" alicorn (Perfect Trihybrid), maybe more, in addition to centuries, maybe milleniums of experience.
That is literally as much as I am defining them. I have personal notes on these things so I can't contradict myself, but nothing to share unfortunately.
1792651
Also i loved this chapter really reminded me of a pathfinder or DnD reference book
I know you mentioned it somewhere before (can't remember), but if you dropped a human in your Equestria can he use magic?
An alien that use to live in a mana free world usually has mix results. Unless they come from a magic world with different rules.
1851104
In theory? Yes a human could use magic in Equestria. However, we have not been trained in the use of magic, and in order to get any measurable effect one would need a magical focus (something that humans do not naturally have) such as a wand or necklace or other thing to focus the mana through.
However, getting them to the point to where they can use the magical focus that isn't inherent to their body would be very difficult, as we live in a mana-deprived environment. In this understanding of Equestria/our world, mana/magic exist in our world, but the field is so ridiculously weak that it is not worth mentioning. Much in the way that the astronauts on the Space Station aren't actually in zero gravity, but are rather in micro-gravity.
The (current) Micro-mana of our world/reality/dimension/totally-not-telling which would actually kill native Equestrian species with very, very few exceptions. However, as a counterpoint, the mana saturation does weird things to a human body over an extended period of time, altering basic physical composition in strange ways. Emeris is an exception to this because SPOILERZ
.
1851179
Hmm, would a human born and raised in Equestria need a magical focus?
Oh and name magic is used in everyday life. When a mother yells out their child's full name they know they are in trouble.
Pinkie Senses = Clairvoyance at a untamed but high level?
1851179
Lero would be in the deep shit, though
"Twilight, Dear, the basic fundamental forces of this world have spawned tumours throughout my body"
"Are they magical, friendship tumours?"
"Nope, just the regular ones"
1852948
Thought I'd replied to this earlier... guess it got eaten.
Yes. All spells require a magical focus of some kind, even many innate "magics" require a focus. Pegasi, Unicorns, Dragons and so forth have natural magical foci (the pair of wings, their horn, their wings and heart respectively) and as such, are able to convert and focus their mana into active and powerful effects. Earth Pony magic is subtle and generally inefficient, as they do not have a magical focus outside of their cutie-mark, and cultural expectations cause the cutie mark to rarely manifest in a way that would generate any obvious magical effects.
A human, even one raised in Equestria, would be just as "unable" to use magic without a magical foci as one who had not. Humans do not have the natural magical structures required to simulate an Earth Ponies strength, but some particularly magically gifted humans could display similarly subtle abilities as earth-pony craftsmanship or weak precognative or clairvoyant capabilities.
A human raised in Equestria would have two major advantages with regards to spellcasting over one that wasn't, but these have nothing to do with magical foci.
1). Their body would be acclimated to mana saturation and use. Magical-burn-out / Mana-burn could do strange things to a humans body, while generally harmless except at the highest levels, it could make magic do weird and unexpected things. Using mana for spells would inherently involve the movement of mana through the body, which is the main cause of magical burn-out. However, it's entirely possible for a human body to slowly acclimate to the higher levels of mana over time.
2). Mana-sensing would be easier for a human raised in Equestria. Due to the mana-deprived/micro-mana nature of our environment, our mana/magical senses have deteriorated. Not as a species, but as individuals. It can be likened to a person who had been raised in absolute blackness might be blinded by exposure to light, and even if they weren't blinded, be unable to process the sudden wealth of new information properly. It would certainly be possible to "re"-learn this sense, but it would be slow and difficult going. A human raised in Equestria would have developed mana-senses naturally, which would likely be somewhat more sensitive than the average unicorns.
Pinkie in general is a bit weird from a magical standpoint. But yes, her Pinkie Sense would fall under the school of Clairvoyance. Just remember, the "schools" of magic are mostly artificial groupings of spells and spell effects.
1864231
As was noted by Emeris in Consequenes of Unoriginality, Equestria does not have cancer or anything resembling cancer. There are reasons for this that extend past Equestrian genetics and would affect humans as well.
The high concentrations of mana would make a person feel weird for several weeks, maybe months, before their body acclimated to them, and the sudden change from micro-mana environment to mana-saturated environment could magically blind a person, but the visible effects would be minimal provided the flow of mana was small during the time it took for the persons body to acclimate. In some ways, it's like an electric charge, you can have a massive electrical charge stored in your body and it won't hurt a thing, but the moment the electricity starts going somewhere... you turn into a crispy critter. Something similar but a bit more... chaotic... is true of a human body and mana in such an environment.
1864360
coolio.
I had somehow forgotten about the non existence of cancer in your world- and that was a little tidbit that I really liked!
Oh well, no one ever said jokes had to be accurate. I imagine that a reaction to a large blast of mana (high powered spell< probably?) in a non acclimatized human would likely resemble the effects of poison joke? Albeit more permanent in nature.
Also: I like how a natural born Equestrian human would be better at sensing magic then a unicorn- presumably for the same reason we're better at tracking type spells then unicorns are? Predator heritage for the win!!!1!
2676199
This isn't normal genetics as (to my knowledge) there is no triploid genetic structure anywhere, but Hayquill did some awesome work and actually did the math here: 1570600
You're doing your math wrong
Remember, females can be either XXY or XXX, while a male is only XYY and only donates a single chromosome. An XXY female has about a 2/3's chance of donating an XY pair, sure, but there's more to the gender selection than just that
If that's not what's confusing you, then please say so and I'll do my best to elaborate
Now all I can think about is Name Magic. Shit, I wanna figure it out so badly just to be contrary.
Also, I thought he "lost" all that stuff when he was un-Stu-ed.
Interesting
Round two,1790020. The problem with the mind might be solved by turning your soul into a magical intelligence, and what I was talking about with the beetle shells was protein replacement, the one field of genetics that is explicitly LEGOs, as you really can take a protein gene and throw it in, then the protein gets made. HIV's virus class does that to make more of themselves. Also, the energy use problems could be solved by setting up priorities, with the regeneration being set up to work as a revival. And you didn't mention the possibility of 'power from blood' being used on the surroundings, which would drain all the physical energy from the surroundings, providing the energy for the regeneration. And the point isn't to be entirely immortal, it's to be so hard to kill you have to kill the whole planet.
Actually, the soul into a magical intelligence would solve all the problems you stated, as a soul with the mind intact would start off next to unkillable. With the near immortality set up, all you would need to do from there is get a way to interact, like the bones of your now-dead body, or the necklace itself. How hard would it be to make something like that? Either a lich or possessed armor, with extra fleshy bits so you can exist with less magic. You could even put it in the story, with the Alicorn Amulet being a failed attempt at doing it.
Greenfire Magic sounds a bit like Vice Magic... and green fire certainly fits the effects of Emeris's darker magics. That is... worrying.
Can I use some of the concepts from this chapter in my story?
Heck, even having a direct link to this page? It wouldn't be in-story cannon, I'd just be stealing your work of defining magic in Equestira.
You know, I've noticed in many fantastical realities that such spells usually try to cast a 'net' over wide-area probabilities - meaning, they're usually used to look into distant possible futures, with an obviously high error/failure rate. But here's the thing: if you can try to predict years, can you predict minutes? Seconds perhaps?
I mean, think about it: being able to look a decade into the future should not be more complicated than looking into the next five seconds of the future. Used in such a way (and with very limited area - for example, your immediate surroundings), it becomes a very useful detection tool, and if it could be repeatedly cast (or even held?) during a fight? Having even a second of advance knowledge of what your opponent most likely will do would be invaluable to a fighter.
Same thing with looking into the past. If you can look decades into the past, can you instead try to look into minutes? Especially if you can target it to some specific area. What does that do, you ask? Well, if you can slim it down into seconds, it becomes a very effective surveillance tool... Knowing reliably what's been said and done in arbitrary locations even five minutes ago is invaluable in this manner. This is also something I'd expect perverts would want to learn, don't you think? ;]
This would be something you'd need to learn anti-scrying spells/enchantments for, because if someone wanted to 'take a peek', they would only just need to wait until evening (or whenever they want to pleasure themselves), retire to the privacy of their basement, and just look into the past. Now, granted, ponies don't have the issue with clothing we humans have, but I assume you rather wouldn't have someone retroactively spy on your sexytimes from the relative safety of not needing to be hiding there in the moment...
Similarily, I'd envision instability hoofbands or some similar enchanted items that'd somehow throw immediate probabilities out of sync with the multiverse, in order to defeat combat prediction. I also imagine a fight between two fighters that use this to perfection would be very boring to watch... ;]
And yet, this is a school that has great potential for harm - not in how it works, but rather in how it could be used. True, an illusion of a red, tasty apple wouldn't harm you - but if it was used to cover up poison? Well, that's a different story now, isn't it. Or perhaps if you were to 'hide' a spike pit, or a mountain-sized drop from a cliff - you only need make it seem like it extends a few feet more than it actually does, really...
Mostly agree, but not entirely. Specifically, you need to understand what you're being attacked by in order to defend against it. Equestria isn't the only magical place on Equus, and there are still things Beyond that wouldn't shy away from use of such even if it was. I can understand not allowing ponies to learn them, for the most part, but I sincerely hope the princesses haven't removed all traces from existence...