The Magic of Velgarth, Gifts and Magic

[Stephamarie]

~One of the best collections of information I have found is on the fan-site "The Queen's Own". Much of the information I will have here has been compiled from that site, the roleplay board "Sun & Shadow" and "Haven of Valdemar", as well as straight from the books themselves.~

The magic of Velgarth is quite varied; from True magic to Divine magic and even Blood magics. It is most common in all of these that ones powers usually manifest around the time of puberty though sometimes even with potential one's powers may never come about at all. The following is a list of most of the documented Gifts and magics.

[Stephamarie]

Mind Magic
The form of magic most commonly used by the Heralds, referred to as 'Gifts'. This is not to be confused with 'True Magic' but is closer related to what we would know as psionics. Outside of Valdemar, Gifts aren't as well recognized (if at all) and are rarely trained to the degree that Valdemarens do if they are recognized. Gifts are accessed by sending energy through channels in the mind. These channels are dormant in most people; those who manifest Gifts have active or open channels. This is the same energy used by Mages, though those without the "Mage Gift" can only use the natural power within themselves except in rare cases where Companions can feed power from themselves to their Herald. Due to this limitation, those who over-use their Gift quickly collapse or die when they overspend their own natural energy.

However, those trained in Gift use are taught how to mesh together – someone Gifted with Farsight would often work with someone Gifted with Fetching, or more than one Gifted with Fetching, for optimal results (Krys and Dirk of the Arrows trilogy are good examples). Healing-meshes are also used when a Herald or Herald-Mage meshes with a Healer to provide them with extra energy for a Healing beyond that Healer’s strength (such as when Vanyel attempted suicide in the Temple in Magic’s Pawn).

The stronger a Gift is, the less common it is, and some Gifts are rare to begin with. It’s also very unusual for a Herald to have Healing or Bardic Gifts, and vice versa. Healing and Firestarting almost never show up as Gifts among the Heralds unless they are going to be badly needed. Please consult the Current Limitations before picking out Gifts, to make certain that we are not already at the maximum for that.


{Heraldic Gifts}

Communication Gifts

Mindspeech: Can speak mind to mind with another; distance varies depending on strength of the Gift. Can also hear the thoughts of others, although to what degree and whether through a mind-shield or not also depends on strength of the Gift. A strong enough Mindspeaker may be able to be heard by those who aren’t Gifted.

• Animal: Like Mindspeech, but only with ordinary animals, but able to hear their thoughts and communicate with them.
• Bonded: Can only speak to one’s bonded, be it Bondbird, Companion, Lifebonded, or a closely bonded twin. (Tayledras are always capable of bonded Mindspeech, a Gift of their Goddess)
• Thought-sensing: Receptive Mindspeech only, able to hear thoughts and Mindspeech, but unable to project their own.
• Projecting: Projective Mindspeech only, able to ‘speak’ to those who can hear, but incapable themselves of hearing thoughts or Mindspeech.
• Farspeech: A variation of Mindspeech, which allows the ability to project and hear over great distances usually impossible even for the strongest normal Mindspeakers. (Rare)

Empathy: The ability to sense another’s emotions and also to influence or outright project emotions onto others. The distance and degree to which they can do any of this depends on the strength of the Gift. (Rare)

• Animal: Like Empathy, but only with ordinary animals, able to feel their emotions and, to a lesser degree, to influence or project other emotions to them. More common in Heralds than regular Empathy.
• Bonded: Identical to normal empathy, but only with one’s bonded, although Lifebonded pairs have a lesser form of this with no need for a Gift. Primarily occurs in twin-bonds and in a Herald’s Companion-bond.
• Receptive: Able to sense emotions, but unable to project or influence them.
• Projective: Able to influence or project emotions, but unable to sense them.

Dreamspeech: The ability to ‘visit’ and speak to someone through their dreams. Also able to influence the dreams to a degree. While this depends on strength, the stronger a Dreamspeaker is, the harder it is for them to ignore those who need them (similar to the way Empathy draws an Empath to those who need them). (Rare)


Sight Gifts

Farsight: Can see over great distances, past human sight, and sometimes even through solid objects and spells designed to hide things, although the degree to which this can be done and the limit to the distance depends on the strength of the Gift.

Foresight: The ability to see into the future. Visions are sometimes quick glimpses-or even just hunches like an instinctual feeling about something-and other times they can be long and drawn out. They sometimes show one possible future and sometimes so many that it is hard to discern what is happening. A hard Gift to learn to control if even possible. Much depends on nature and strength of the Gift.

Touch-reading: The ability to know the history of an object by touching it. This ranges from a simple impression if a strongly emotional event has occurred involving it to actual visions of things that have happened to the object in the past. Difficult to learn to control at the stronger levels. Much of what can be learned from objects is dependent on strength of the Gift. (Rare)


Movement Gifts

Fetching: The ability to move an object with one's mind, either through instant teleportation or something akin to levitation. The size of the object and distance able to move it depends on the strength of the Gift. Living creatures require a strong Gift, and the larger they are, the more difficult it is, and it’s very dangerous no matter the size.

Firestarting: The ability to move the very particles making up an object at such a speed as to cause them to ignite. Almost unheard of at stronger levels and only really appearing at that strength when the Heralds will need it most. Quite difficult to control, especially as it gets stronger. (Rare)



{Healer Gifts}

Healing: The best known of the Healer Gifts, this is the ability to heal damage to a person’s body. A Healer is capable of closing wounds, curing illness, and fixing internal injuries, so long as there is still something to fix and the Healer has the strength of Gift, the training, and the energy to do so. Some things are outside their ability, however, including regrowing something lost (brain cells or amputated limbs), or fixing birth defects.

Double-sight: The ability to see injuries inside a patient, or identify the source of an illness. While a trained Healer will be capable of doing this while in a Healing-trance and in contact with a patient, it requires the Gift to see it without those, and with much better clarity.

Mind Healing: The ability to heal damage to a person’s mind/psyche, this includes emotional harm that is crippling. A Mind Healer is able to help those people who have been through severe trauma recover from it fully, or to correct harm that comes from overused and otherwise abused Gift channels. (Uncommon)

Empathy: The ability to sense another’s emotions and also to influence or outright project emotions onto others. The distance and degree to which they can do any of this depends on the strength of the Gift. A Healer uses this primarily to understand and help their patients.

• Animal: Like Empathy, but only with ordinary animals, able to feel their emotions and, to a lesser degree, to influence or project other emotions to them.
• Bonded: Identical to normal empathy, but only with one’s bonded, although Lifebonded pairs have a lesser form of this with no need for a Gift. Primarily occurs in twin-bonds and in a Herald’s Companion-bond. (Uncommon)
• Receptive: Able to sense emotions, but unable to project or influence them.
• Projective: Able to influence or project emotions, but unable to sense them.

{Bardic Gifts}

Talent: A natural genius for instrumental or vocal performance, this is what allows minstrels and Bards to awe an audience without the Bardic Gift. Talent is sometimes limited to one instrument, one type of instrument, or vocal, and sometimes it affects everything. The ability to duplicate something heard only once with little to no training, or to learn a difficult instrument in half the time it takes others is also attributed to this Gift.

Creativity: The compositional Gift, giving a minstrel or Bard the ability to create the masterworks that the two are known for. A musician can also make good use of this Gift during a performance, finding it easier to improvise or make harmony with others. Master composers in Valdemar usually have a strong version of this Gift, and have a near need to compose.

Bardic: The Gift that differentiates Bards from minstrels, this is a form of projective Empathy that gives the ability to project a mood and influence an audience. A trained Bard with enough of this Gift could halt a fight with just a few sung words – or start a riot with much the same.

[Stephamarie]

Magic of Velgarth
There are four types of magic in Velgarth. They are known as True Magic (otherwise known as the High Magics or Mage-Gift), Earth Magic (otherwise known as the Low or Lesser Magics), Divine Magic (also known as Shamanism), and Blood Magic. Of these, True Magic is what Herald-mages possess, Divine Magic is purely for priest or shaman characters of high standing, and Earth Magic is rare. No player in Arrows will be permitted a Blood Mage.

For information on mental and magical shields, click here.


{True Magic}
The best known and understood of the four categories of magic in Velgarth, this can only be used by a person with Mage-Gift. Tapping into either the mage’s own personal energies or (at stronger levels) into ley lines and nodes, a mage can manipulate the energy to cast spells. Ley lines are invisible streams of power that criss-cross the land, some mere trickling ‘streams’ and others uncontrollable ‘rivers’. Nodes are where several ley-lines meet, causing deep ‘pools’ of energy. The Tayledras Heartstones are effectively mage-created super-nodes, where many ley-lines are directed and collect, causing a massive source of energy that the Tayledras then use to cleanse the land that was warped by that same magical energy. Also associated with True Magic is Mage Sense and Mage Sight, which permit mages to sense and/or see the magical energies they work with. Most mages have at least one focus stone that aids in magical works.

Mage Gift: A person with Mage Gift can manipulate the magical energy described in the previous paragraph. Every mage starts at the Apprentice level, and through training and tests, may be able to reach a higher 'level' if they have the potential for it. Attempts to do things beyond your current level of magical skill can lead to burning out, insanity, and death.

• Apprentice: One of the two most common types of High Mages, a person with Apprentice-level Mage-gift can only tap into their personal energies, which are restored after they rest for a long enough period. Often dismissed as being weak, those who cannot go beyond Apprentice level often develop the most efficient and useful spells, making up for lack of pure power with creativity.
  
  
• Journeyman: The other common type of Mage, Journeymen mages absorb power from leylines latently and store up reserves in themselves and items. This makes it difficult for them to be detected as when they cast spells, they draw on the reserves that they have absorbed, not on the leylines around them. However, the amount they can absorb limits the amount of magic that they can do.
  
  
• Master: Master mages can manipulate the leylines around them so that they can use the energy and cast a larger number of more powerful spells than a Journeyman. This helps them to conserve their personal energies, thus tiring less easily. Becoming a Master is difficult due to the level of studying necessary and the far-from-easy tests to earn the rank.(Uncommon)
  
  
• Adept: An Adept is capable of everything a Master mage is capable of, as well as capable of controlling and drawing on node-energies. They rarely need to use their own energy, thus tiring only when physically exhausted by the magic they’ve been doing. An Adept will always have an Adept Manifestation, a semi-physical form to their magic that is used almost primarily in mage duels – if an Adept challenges another Adept, it must be answered and whosoever loses gives up any rank they’ve earned. Becoming an Adept is difficult due to the level of studying necessary, and dangerous due to the tests one must go through to earn the rank.(Rare)

Weather-magic: The ability to manipulate or outright control the weather with an ease that a regular mage could never manage. This Gift always comes paired with Mage-Gift. (Rare)

Mage Sense: The ability for someone – be they Mage-talented or not – to sense the magical energies in the world around them. For most, it translates almost to a physical sensation, other than sight. Anyone with Mage-Gift has Mage Sense, and nearly every magically-created being does as well. (Uncommon for non-mages)

Mage Sight: The ability to see leylines, nodes, and spells, to perceive Companions and magical constructs or beings according to their true nature, and to see the aura of a mage. Almost every Master or Adept mage has this ability, and some Apprentice and Journeymen have it as well. (Rare for non-mages)


{Earth Magic}
The ‘lesser’ magics, often not even acknowledged or known about. This is the magic connected to the land, and while the spells that can be worked with Earth Magic are ‘minor’, when well-used, they can be quite effective. This magic uses the natural world’s energies, so it is almost always connected to someone possessing Earth-sense. An Earth Mage is generally sensitive to harm done to the land, and a great deal of the magics they do are connected to restoring abused land to its healthy state. Rulers of Hardorn and Rethwellan are both bound to the land with an Earth Magic ritual, although they must have the Gift of Earth-sense for it to be successful – if it is, they’re able to sense trouble or strife within the boundaries of their country.

Earth Magic: Magic done using the natural world’s energies, used primarily to heal the land, but sometimes for minor spells that can be used for surprising effect. Not often recognized, it is currently best known in Hardorn, Rethwellan, and the Tayledras. (Rare)

Earth-sense: The ability to sense the condition of the land, and the natural energies it gives off. Someone with Earth-sense is likely to be vulnerable to harm done to the land they’re near. (Rare)


{Divine Magic}
The source of true miracles by priests and spells by shamans that work, Divine Magic doesn’t require any innate talent or skill. What it does require is devotion. Gods and powerful spirits are able to channel power from the spirit planes to those worshippers they deem devoted enough, and in enough need. Sometimes this is done through the worshippers, and sometimes it’s done with nothing needed from them except a prayer, or setting things up in a manner deemed necessary. Demons are also capable of doing much the same for those who serve them, but this is considered warped, unnatural, and evil.

Notably, the Son of the Sun in Karse and the Goddess-sworn Shin’a’in Oathbound (particularly those who serve Her as priests such as the Kal’enedral) are known to be able to do Divine Magic, as their Gods recognize the level of devotion they show.


{Blood Magic}
Those who follow this line of magic are called Blood-Path Mages, and are generally despised for the perversion of magic they practice. Taking power from the pain and suffering of others, they practice a corrupted form of magic that boosts their ‘level’ quite a bit higher. A mage who might never have been more than an Apprentice can do nearly Master level magics, if they learn how to gather the energy of their victims properly, and a Blood-path Adept is extremely powerful and very dangerous. The cost to this is very low, although to the ‘lesser’ and ‘weaker’ Blood mages, the rush of power and the pain of others becomes quite addictive. It also tends to leave a distinct taint to the magical aura they have, and in the magics they do, which can alert someone with Mage Sense or Sight to the nature of their foe.

Interestingly, there are magics practiced that are considered acceptable despite involving pain, blood and even death. The Dhorisha Plains were renewed by the willing sacrifice of one Elder or Shaman from every clan. Some mages use their own blood to bind spells or boost their energy. This is the exception, not the rule, leaving no taint on the user and generally not considered to be Blood Magic.

Note: No player in Arrows may play a Blood-path mage. No exceptions.