#alseide

In the beginning, there were two forms of magic - shamanism, which involves invoking the spirits of nature, and chaos magic, which calls upon the very essence of creation and destruction from which all comes and to which all will return. Of these, chaos magic is the more powerful, being able to create almost any effect that the caster can imagine rather than individual spells, but will inevitably corrupt and ultimately destroy the caster. As is such, chaos mages were rare in those days, and are even rarer now. Some shamans were also capable of using blood magic, which involves performing special rites drawing power from the caster's blood and lifeforce to create various effects, as well as forming blood pacts. Unlike shamanism and chaos magic, blood magic is still commonly used today, but is rarely taught in academies.

In ancient times, dragons came to the world and brought with it their own form of magic, which effectively focused chaos magic into a weaker form, but without the corrupting effects, using natural ethereal waves and the innate magic of the ancient draconic language. This style of magic came to be known as dragon magic. Some dragons, fascinated with the "lesser" humanoid races, took on human-like form and intermarried with those races. Their descendants gained magical abilities similar to, but not as powerful as, their draconic ancestors. These descendants became the first sorcerers, and their art became known as sorcery. At approximately the same time, some shamans gained contact with the extraplanar entities now known as gods and were granted the power to cause miracles through prayer to these gods. These shamans became the first clerics. Other shamans came to revere the forces of nature as gods and abandoned direct worship of the spirits in favor of worshipping nature itself. They would become the first druids, but their art would still be called shamanism. Still others refused to believe in the existence of individual gods, instead venerating the divine masculine and feminine energies. They would become known as warlocks (male) and witches (female), and their highly ritualistic style of magic would become known as witchcraft. Sadly, due to the more abstract natures of their worship, many druids, warlocks, and witches would come to be persecuted by the worshippers of the "true" gods, and true shamans would begin to die out as these new forms of magic became popular and people became less attached to the spirit world.

While the first druids began to emerge in mainland Zellia and the Isles of Avalon, some shamans in the northern land of Scandia began to develop a new form of magic centered around the mystic letters known as runes. This rune magic was centered around support and protection, with its practitioners, the runecasters, primarily relying on physical weapons in the Scandian tradition. Also at this time, some clerics were tempted with power by the demons of the Abyss, being granted a powerful, but corrupting, new form of dark magic known as thaumaturgy, which was similar to both prayer and chaos magic, but drawing its power from demons instead of gods or Chaos.

Through the study of sorcery and dragon magic, certain researchers gained the ability to learn a way of focusing magic through the three spheres and thirteen elements of reality to create their own form of sorcery. They would eventually become known as wizards, and would eventually divide the spells of the world into eight schools - the Light Arts of abjuration, conjuration, and transmutation, the Dark Arts of enchantment, illusion, and necromancy, and the Grey Arts of divination and evocation. At the same time, other people learned of the inherent magic in music and managed to find a way to use it to emulate the effects both sorcery and prayer. This art would become known as bardsong, and its practitioners bards. Still others would discover the power of spoken words, and especially of truenames, creating a new style of magic based around this power. Due to the focus on truenames, this form of magic would become known as truespeech. Some sorcerers, wizards, and bards also learned to use a distinct school of magic derived from the stars and constellations in the firmament, which is now known as star magic. While it is generally considered the ninth school of magic, its spells are not listed in most grimoires or taught in most academies.

Certain wizards focused on the four prime elements of earth, fire, air, and water and developed a new style of magic centered around those elements, known as elementalism, which would eventually cause its users to take on the properties of their favored element due to them accepting the element into their very being. This process was known as the Translation. Another form of elementalism, called shugendo, was developed in the eastern land of Hinoda, but without its practitioners, called shugenja, undergoing the Translation, and with some shugenja studying a mysterious fifth element known as the Void.

Although true shamanism was fading away at this time, it continued to exist, and indeed still does. However, some shamans, most notably those attuned to spirits of death and decay, began to hear voices from the spirits of the dead themselves. From these restless spirits, they learned a new form of magic known as necromancy (not to be confused with the sorcery school of the same name), and became the first necromancers. Like sorcery, necromancy was divided into schools, but only three of them - white necromancy (life), grey necromancy (death), and black necromancy (undeath), although most necromancers would practice all of them to some degree. Despite the existence of white necromancy, the general connection of necromancers with death and the undead led to much fear of both necromancers and shamans, especially from those outside societies where shamanism was practiced regularly, and led to much persecution of shamans and necromancers alike. At roughly the same time, a conclave of sorcerers and shamans discovered a method for summoning spirits using magical seals and then forming pacts with these spirits, gaining great power at the cost of binding the spirits to their very souls. Due to this, the conclave, and all others who learned this powerful, but dangerous art, would become known as binders.

Sometime later, a skilled dwarven weaponsmith realized that she had the ability to use a form of sorcery powered by the body, rather than the mind. She would call this art forge magic, and became the first magesmith, specializing in using her arcane gift to create magical items, mostly weapons. She also taught the ways of forge magic to any dwarf who was willing to learn, regardless of clan, thus spreading the art throughout all of dwarvenkind. Eventually, the secrets of forge magic would become known to other races through an alliance between the dwarven Kingdom of Gilent and the human Archduchy of Arithea.

Another form of magic was developed by a half-elven scholar from the Kingdom of Masconia, who learned to use a variant of sorcery by creating special talismans using astrology and mathematical calculations. Not long after, tarot magic, also known as cartomancy, was created by a Bathuran fortune-teller who analyzed the symbolism within her tarot deck and converted said symbolism into a wide array of actual spells. Both forms of magic now exist throughout the continent of Zellia, but are still rather rare, especially the latter.

I created Alseide mostly using D&D 3.X and Pathfinder First Edition materials, so it uses a lot of elements from those games, most notably the arcane schools. In Alseide, they're divided into the Dark Arts (enchantment, illusion, and necromancy), the Light Arts (abjuration, conjuration, and transmutation), and the Grey Arts (divination and evocation). Necromancy is further divided into white necromancy (life), grey necromancy (death), and black necromancy (undeath). Some mages can also specialize in the rare form of magic known as Star Magic, but most academies don't cover it, and it's not included in most grimoires. None of the schools are considered innately evil, even necromancy - magic is generally seen as little more than a tool or, at worst, a weapon. Of course, there are exceptions to this belief.

In addition to the arcane schools, Alseidian magic is divided into thirteen elements, split into three spheres - Elemental, Spiritual, and Dimensional. Elemental magic is composed of four pairs of elements - Fire and Ice, Electricity and Water, Air and Earth, and Wood and Metal - and a ninth element, Ether, that represents the essence of magic itself. Spiritual magic is composed of Dark and Light magic, which are primarily considered the respective bailiwicks of wizards and clerics, although both professions are capable of using either element, or even both of them. It should be noted that the Dark and Light elements are separate from the Dark Arts and Light Arts - for example, Mirth is a Light-elemental Dark Arts spell, and Death Cloud is a Dark-elemental Light Arts spell. Finally, Dimensional magic is composed of Time and Space magic, generally considered the most powerful elements.

Wizards, sorcerers, and magesmiths cast spells by drawing power through ethereal waves, focused through the spheres and elements. Some spells invoke multiple elements, but are always only listed under one in grimoires - for example, the spell Plasma Bolt invokes both Fire and Electricity, but is listed only as a Fire spell.

Some individual spells are considered evil, but this has nothing to do with schools or elements - while most evil spells are Dark, most Dark spells are not evil, and there are evil spells that aren't Dark. In fact, the evil spells Ignis Fatuus, Protection from Good, and Unlight are Light-elemental. Furthermore, all three spells are considered Light Arts, being from the schools of conjuration, abjuration, and transmutation, respectively.

Curses are a fairly small group of debilitating spells that, unlike most spells, can't be dispelled by normal means - they require more advanced spells to lift. Like evil magic, most curses are Dark-elemental, but Ether-elemental curses are also relatively common, and there are also three Light-elemental curses (Graven Covenant, Mark of Justice, and Pacifism) and one Wood-elemental one (Nature's Curse). It's also worth noting that while there are curses that are considered evil, the majority are not.

Alseidian wizards and sorcerers match their D&D/Pathfinder definitions, with wizards gaining their magic through study and sorcerers through bloodlines, but warlocks and witches do not - they are based on the third-party sourcebook The Quintessential Witch by Mongoose Publishing, drawing their powers from the divine masculine and feminine energies, and could best be described as wizard/druid hybrids with a few unique spells.

"Necromancer" has two definitions in Alseide - wizards who happen to specialize in necromancy, and true necromancers. The primary difference is in the source of their powers, with necromancy-specialist wizards drawing their powers through the same waves of ether that power other wizards, and true necromancers drawing theirs directly from the spirits of the dead. In addition, necromancer-wizards have access to the same spells as other wizards, whereas true necromancers have a separate and distinct set of spells, albeit with some overlap. Finally, true necromancers are more likely to be evil than necromancer-wizards, but are by no means universally evil. In fact, it was a true necromancer who developed the powerful anti-undead spell Dust to Dust, although today it's better known as a clerical spell. It may also be worth noting that true necromancers are also often shamans, due to the disciplines of necromancy and shamanism both centering around communing with spirits.

While it is possible to raise the dead with divine magic, there are restrictions on it:

The caster must either have at least part of the subject's body, except with the rarest and most potent resurrection spell.

The subject must have died within a certain timeframe, which varies depending on the exact spell used.

Even in those cases, it's impossible to resurrect anyone who died of old age, or anyone who doesn't want to come back.