Magic & Otherwise - Part 2

Phew! All right, with that heady mix from last week churning around, let's step back into something more sane: actual and unapologetic magic in an actual fantasy world. In this case, I'm thinking of the magic in the Trench Dungeon story that I'm presently writing. To explain the setting in brief: a fantasy world has just been through a magical version of World War I, and now a small band of protagonists are desperately making their way through the trench dungeons - a series of extraplanar spaces dug into the no-man's lands of the former battlezones, as part of the magically enhanced trench warfare that was a major part of that international conflict - in the hope of finding a means to stop the Total War that is presently being planned by the leaders of the major world powers, a second and far greater conflict where they intend to finish what they started.

In the Trench Dungeon universe, there are three major sorts of magic: theurgy, thaumaturgy, and goetia. There's also alchemy, but in this setting that's just taking one of the preceding three types of magic and then applying it to something physical, like a sword or an injection or a pair of boots; in other words, taking the magic of that other type, which requires specialized training to use, and then putting it into a format that anybody can use, at any time. This can also include creatures, such as one of the protagonists of the story, an alchemically modified human, a literal war-child, since she's still in her adolescence and so hasn't come into her full potential yet, but was made with the intent of creating a magical super soldier.

Theurgy is the safest of the forms of power. The world of the Trench Dungeons has a variety of supernatural entities that take an active part in its daily life. These might be called spirits, or elementals, or angels, or even gods. The last isn't inappropriate, since these beings were put in their present places by the Creator, and so act with that greater being's authority, which can be called a form of godhood. Their purpose is to maintain the world and educate its people however they can. They can also provide themselves as living conduits of power, allowing those who follow them - usually people, but animals and plants and similar creatures have been known to be granted similar abilities, depending on their needs and the specific purposes and oversight of the spirit in question - to tap into the flow of raw power that flows through the world itself. They're very much like the gods in various fantasy games in this regard, though especially like those in the Dragonlance setting, or like the kami of Japanese mythology, the Celestial Bureaucracy of Chinese (and related) mythology and the Exalted game setting, or the manitou of North American belief systems. (Though, a necessary disclaimer: these are all concepts a lot more complex than my very abbreviated attempts at translating them; I strongly recommend you do research on them yourselves to get a far more complete understanding.)

Magic, in this case, is the potential energy that brings about life: its generation and also its evolution. Whereas on our world, we are right in the middle of a massive extinction event, and so our world's life energies are at a low ebb, the Trench Dungeon world is right in the middle of an explosive evolution event, which is what typically follows an extinction event and continues until...well, it stops, really. So this is a world with multiple life forms, including sapient life forms - humans are only one of several, though I honestly only include humans because that makes for an easier point of understanding for my presumably human readers - and there are more showing up all the time. There's an apparently unlimited wellspring of the forces that make life happen, and so it's fairly easy for these spirit beings to tap into them and then share them with those in need.

Of course, as with any resource, there's always the danger of wanting too much. While magic in this fictional universe isn't quite like that in the series of The Magic Goes Away stories or the Darksword universe, which uses magic as a metaphor for limited resources, like petrochemicals, it can be overdrawn, as in the Dark Sun fantasy game setting, and it can have horrific effects if not carefully controlled, as in Terry Brooks' Shannara series.

The problem started with people starting to do for themselves what was being done for them by the spiritual creatures set into the roles of guardians and guides of the world: learning methods and rituals for tapping into the wellspring of the world's life energy themselves. This is thaumaturgy, a fairly scientific "cause-and-effect" sort of magical system. Unlike theurgy, which requires that the practitioner abide by the wishes of the spiritual being that helps provide the power that the user then gives direction, anybody can learn thaumaturgy, anybody can make use of its processes. Just like in our world, where there are people that have a natural knack for the fields of engineering, or the specialties of medicine, or the mind-blowing concepts of astrophysics, there are always going to be people who are better at thaumaturgy than others.

Going back to the Dark Sun setting, which arose out of the "darker-and-edgier" times of the 1990s, thaumaturgy uses magic that would be called "preserver magic" on Dark Sun: drawing power out, but then channeling it back after using it. Essentially the practitioner becomes a conduit for the endless and overwhelming flow of the planet's field of energy, much like the Polynesian concept of "mana." In this process, you have to put back just as much as you take out, eventually, though the tension of the potential energy drawn out is also what drives the magic itself, like drawing the string of a bow. This takes the form of a very Vancian sort of magic system, where you have to prepare what you want to do well in advance, though it's then possible to "hang" a spell for as long as you like, just so long as you can keep mental track of all the rituals you've got stored up like this, ready to be finished.

The "look-feel" and timing of the spells, though, is more based on the magic systems presented in the mostly forgotten tabletop roleplaying game Furry Pirates (which, incidentally, I think is one of the best games I've run across for running adventures on board an Age of Sail/Golden Age of Pirates ship), and on the ritual magic in GURPS: Spirits: based somewhat on early-middle black powder artillery and personal firearms, capable of immense power, but requiring a lot of time to "reload" when used in the field. Yet another reason for the popularity of trench fighting in this setting, and for much the same reasons as when it was adopted for general use in the United States Civil War. I've been to the battlefield of Vicksburg, toured the site (back when they rented out a cassette tape that you played while you drove, to hear the events unfold at each stage of the journey), and the experience has left a lasting impression. I have not yet visited the fields of Verdun in person, but from the various material I've researched thus far, I do not doubt it will be at least as soul-touching.

In the Trench Dungeon story as I've written it so far, an example of this is when one of the main characters, a war-scarred Trench scout named Quilt, binds an explosive combustion effect - a fantasy fireball, basically - into a bit of knotted string. Pull the knot free, completing a ritual he started a long while back, with just that last act unfinished, creating a state of cosmic tension, and the whole area gets blasted as the ritual completes, closing the magical loop. He then ties one end of this little knot to a bit of very thin wire, which he then runs tightly across a passage down which he and his friends are being pursued by bad guys. Then, just like that, he's used a thaumaturgical ritual to create an explosive booby trap. (I'm still debating him turning it into a magical Claymore mine by dropping the knot into a can filled with bits of scrap metal; definitely something to consider.)

If you can tell me who did this bit of art, I'll credit them properly (I can't quite read the signature on this particular image, sadly, though I've done my best to make it visible to provide as much credit as I can); the internet is far too full of random and unsourced wonders

Of course, thaumaturgy has some significant drawbacks. First, you absolutely have to go through the rituals, and you have to put back the energy you draw out: if you don't, the backlash tends to cause serious damage to the thaumaturgist's body and mind. Often fatally, if you're lucky. If you're not lucky...well, it's best not to think about it too much. These rituals can be of a "rough and ready" sort, but they still take time, and so you have to plan out well in advance what sorts of effects you want to create. It's possible to refine a general effect that's been "hung," such as with the use of alchemically prepared items, like wands or knives, but a pre-prepared fiery explosion is always going to be a fiery explosion, albeit one that might be directed somewhat depending on circumstances. It can't be remade into a cool drink of water, or a curse to make someone clumsy and drop their flintlock pistol, or an instant bird's eye view of your present surroundings: those all require separate rituals all their own. While thaumaturgic rituals can create some pretty specific effects as well, some of them quite powerful, such as redirecting rivers or causing earthquakes, they tend to require a lot more time and effort and have to be performed with steadily increasing amounts of precision to match the level of power and precision in the effect to be produced - perfectly measured lines and circles, carefully crafted ritual objects of significant expense, and so forth.

These drawbacks are what led to the last sort of magic, goetia. This is the one with the real problems. Going back to Dungeons & Dragons, I suppose that goetic magic is like sorcery from that game, at least on the surface and from the everyperson's understanding in-universe, a magical force that you can call up and shape however you like, whenever you like. It's pretty easy to learn and about as easy to deploy. The major limiting factor in its use is that goetia doesn't draw its power from the life energy of the world at all: instead, it draws on the energies of Other worlds.

Some of those places are Not Nice.

On the safer end, this can create a toll on the body and the mind of the goetic magic user; if you draw on more power than your body or mind can handle, you run the risk of quite literally tearing yourself apart, ala the Scanners headsplosion. Over time, these practitioners can become stronger, more hardy, more able to cope with the forces they're unleashing. Such effects tend toward the more direct and the less complex, though, rather than the fine control that a theurgic pact or a thaumaturgic ritual can provide.

For more specific and adjustable effects, and for the effects with the greatest degree of power, the goetic user runs the risk of tearing right through the fabric of reality itself.

That last idea I take from the sorcery of the old game Dark Conspiracy, put out by a few presently defunct gaming companies - this was another game where I loved the setting, which I regard as quite revolutionary, but found the mechanics difficult to easily use. In that game setting, sorcery deliberately created a series of micro-tears in the fabric of reality, drawing on effects that are normal in other planes of existence (e.g. fire from an all-fire world, slowed falling or flight from places where gravity works differently, and so forth), but in the process this gradually weakened the boundaries between worlds, allowing Things to get steadily greater influence on Earth.

Which is exactly what is really wrong with goetia. Just as in the Shannara universe, this is a twisted sort of magic, something that pretends to be obedient, to serve, to give its master-mages just what they want. And all the time there are dark intelligences behind the flow of this power, encouraging it to be used in ever greater quantities. In the process, the world itself is being slowly warped, mutated, changed into something dark and terrible.

Trench Warfare by Ignacio Bazan-Lazcano, for the game Call of Cthulhu

This is how the Trench Dungeons came into being. At first, they were just trenches, which are basically like the old-style dungeons and castle systems of older times, military fortifications made to go down rather than up, so as to better avoid the dangerous "artillery" of the modern battlefield. Except in this universe, the artillery takes the form of magical bombardment, or the lethal attacks of powerful magical creatures, like dragonfire or a manticore's fusillade of tail spikes. The recent innovations in firearms just made the development of trench warfare all the more essential to the fantasy-modern battlefield.

By Arvalis on Deviantart; I think this picture shows pretty clearly why trench warfare is likely to be adopted early in most fantasy worlds

Then the powers of goetic runoff started to seep into the trenches. Already gouges in the earth, literal holes and tunnels, they became an easy route for sympathetic forces to open up gaping holes into other worlds, allowing the monsters to come flooding into our world.

Thus far, the monstrous entities are more-or-less limited to the trench dungeons, which have evolved over time into apparently infinite spaces that are much larger and extensive on the inside than should be possible. Sometimes these creatures creep out and cause trouble, stealing children, devouring livestock, spoiling crops, before returning with their spoils. In this time of peace, when everybody wants so desperately to forget all the horrors of the war that's just ended (and in the process, unfortunately, all the lessons that war should have taught), there is still a need for people who know how to take the fight to these new enemies of far more monstrous mien.

And so our story begins.