#moon school

if you want me to lie and say i edited this i will but . i didnt.

(Prompt List)

Three aspects to battle. The magical spells, the magic used to cast them, and the body that acts as a vessel for that magic.

In turn, you have the schools of Sun, Star, and Moon, a set of three, the celestial schools of a more dangerous, esoteric magic than the two triads of elemental and spiritual. 

A wizard is still unable to learn all three schools of a triad. Not fully, when two already pushes some to their limits, mana bursting at the seams of their being as their magical schools merge and clash in their own ways, an unseen battle beneath their skin. 

Combining celestial magics is more simple of a matter on the surface. 

Sun and Star, one the larger and brighter version of the other, one that sustains life and the other dead long ago before we ever saw it. They intertwine as the wizard gilds their spell cards with enchantments, as magic itself circles them as an obedient hound would before creating a shield that bubbles them and expands their potential if only for a few rounds of combat.

Star and Moon, both concerned only with the self, both looking inward so far they lose themselves in it. A Star wizard is more prone to facades, to masking their true self from the world for their own protection and privacy. A Moon wizard is one of shifting faces, until they cannot remember who or what their original form truly was. And so they transform in battle, a shifting phase obscured by glittering stardust, and many never look past the surface of this. Others will never question the facades and masks, and so the wizard changes more and more, trying to gauge if anyone is paying any attention at all. Until drastic actions are taken, they won’t. And a Star and Moon wizard is far too subtle for such things.

Sun and Moon, opposites intertwined, two sides of the same coin, obfuscating the other’s light or creating it. Lovers or rivals or siblings in whatever world one travels to, gods aplenty to describe the celestial bodies that pull at their oceans and nourish their crops. The sun is the leader, pulling every other insignificant piece of rock in its gravity, spinning them endlessly. The moon can hide the sun’s light, if only for a brief moment. Still a wizard’s eyes could be seared from looking directly at this eclipse, yet they will anyway, entranced by what happens so infrequently, a reversal of power. Sun magic will enchant spell cards, and Moon magic will twist the body. There is no full connection, and so if the transformed wizard enchants their cards, it will never be quite right. Moon magic has a tendency to eclipse the sun magic, and if a wizard does not know this, it could be a fatal mistake.

To properly utilize all three schools, one would need all three of their magics at their beck and call. Yet no one does, they physically cannot. No mortal can dictate the heavens in such a way, not when there is a song these celestial bodies have already choreographed a dance to. Not when there are gods and beings far beyond the wizard’s comprehension. 

Star magic is from the superficial. Seeing what is not there, romanticizing what is already dead and gone, or a person who was never there. Star magic is dazzling, searing into the eyes of the wizards who use it, the afterimage of fireworks or glitter or holographic explosions tattooed beneath their eyelids, a constant reminder. They are surrounded by star magic, so others will make a constellation of them. Others will see the star wizard as more than they truly are. Others will tell stories about shapes and lines they connect between the stars that are not there, but the magic compels them.

Welcome to Day seventeen of wiztober2020. I finally pushed past the executive dysfunction of actually typing this out, because the first draft was written on paper T_T took me literally like. at least a week. maybe two?

Content warning for identity issues, in general?

(link to prompt list)

The moon wizard is a constantly shifting, entrancing presence while in battle. They are a person of well reasoned strategy, predictable to those who know them, strange and alien to those who do not. They are a good ally, willing to adapt and change, sometimes even pushing for more.

They are different. Quirky, with forged affectations to emphasize this. This is, of course, a facade.

While the storm wizard has their inventions and innovations, the ice their protective instincts, fire their passion, death the macabre, myth the past, present, and future, life the body, balance their meditation and philosophy, star their selfishness, sun their leadership, the moon wizard has little to anchor heir sense of self to.

They are defined by an ever changing nature, nebulous and confusing, and so outside of battle they become listless, drifting off.

The moon controls the tides, but there are so few true oceans unless a world is drowned. They cannot remember what it feels like to be in the body they were born into, the one they inherited through genetic luck, whether good or bad. They change recklessly, painfully, shifting bone and muscle, transforming their very magic into something else.

The cards in their hands change into new ones, more advantageous for the situation. Their eyes are different, and they see the world in a different color scheme, they see more light, they all too easily find the darkness.

The shadow is the other side of the coin, where many think the Moon should lie, but the moon is merely a small satelite of every world. It is not the negative space to accompany the center of the Spiral, that burning star of light and warmth and magic.

Moon is linked to shadow magic, it is an echo, another changing magic, with darkness and coldness buried deep. It is a magic that works best where the Sun does not shine, at night or in deep dungeons. Moon changes the perception of reality, it shifts what it's user experiences, but it will never have the permanence of Shadow.

(link to the original post)

I decided to make an addition to my most popular post, with the four additional schools. Content warning for blood mention.

When a star wizard is marked, the bright, sparkling energy of something so bright seems to blind them. Pinpricks of pain rise in a cold, detached fire, widening and filling their vision with nothing but white. When the pain abates into a slight tingling, there will be marks on the apples of their cheeks, stars that glitter, holographic markings on their skin forever. They can grow, with time, and more seemingly erratic or selfish plans pulled off to the benefit of more than themself. They will scatter across their face, varying in sizes and glittering in the sunlight, they will glimmer with strange, eclectic wisdom. They will carry constellations on their faces, amalgamations and dot-to-dots in order to represent their power.

When a sun wizard is marked the sunlight fills their body, warm, warmer, and then burning from the inside out, an instant incineration that leaves them bereft of any breath to scream with. On their back, where the spine tapers off, where their spine dips when they arch, stretching up, towards the heavens, there is a small sun. It shimmers golden, the size of their palm. It radiates warmth, loosening muscles ever tense from the stress the wizard takes upon themself. When they stray from the right path, falling into selfishness and greed, the mark freezes, turning their surrounding skin black and blue with the cold. But if they continue, if they do what is good and right, then the sun expands, gradually, until the circle is as large as their hand, fingers splayed, and the flares of the sun grow ever larger, up and down their spine, circling around their sides and to their hips, more coppery or orange as they grow older.

When a moon wizard is marked, a cool breeze hits them, pushing them around, controlled as the moon controls the tides. They are unsteady on their feet as a strange wet feeling, like a stamp pressed into their skin, hits them on their side. A phase of the moon, clear as day on their skin. The grey of the moon is darker depending on how light the wizard’s skin tone is- the mark wants to shine. As they change more, and accept these changes, on both their sides from their underarms to hips, there are lines depicting the phases of the moon, the full moon at their middle. The texture of the moons themselves are smooth, like touching a stone that had lain in a river bed for centuries. 

When a shadow wizard is marked, they don’t feel it. They don’t notice anything at all. Usually they only learn shadow after already being skilled and powerful enough to be marked from their primary school, and even then, they don’t spend enough time gawking at their mark as if it was new to notice the addition. But it is there, a dark indigo, almost black mark that lines the mark of their primary school. It will continue to spread as long as the wizard still practices and progresses in shadow magic, spiraling out with cut off lines, left in the strange triangle of shadowmancy’s casting sigil. After a while they may start to emanate from a secondary school’s mark, if the wizard manages to get one of those, a rarity. The shadow marks continue, regardless of how they potentially mar the body of the wizard. The shadow always continues on, unending in it’s existence.

So few wizards even know of these schools and their existence. To obtain a marking from them is strange, an alien concept that many scholars would tell you is impossible. A made up school, a made up mark, a waste of time. 

Moon shapes something's form, what it is perceived as. When it is a crescent, or full, or new, it will still be the moon. It is still a rough sphere of rock, controlling the tides. It merely rotates, playing with light and becoming something different to the wizard's eye.

Shadow shapes reality. It is definitive, every movement cannot be undone, but a new move will change things into what a wizard wants, even if they think they put themselves back exactly the same.

Moon magic wears off after battle. It is an illusion, even to the wizard themselves. They feel as what they've polymorphed into feels, they hear and smell and see as they would in that form. But they always change back, and magic of this sort will wear off after a time.

Shadow magic is unending. If the wizard shifts, they are what they've become. They are a being of shadow, and can move with a born grace that a moon wizard never could achieve. Shadow magic changes reality. If not undone properly, the user can change into an approximation of themself when they are searching for an undoing.

To not know yourself in shadow magic is to become lost in it. They come back differently, their shade of hair off, their skin too pale or dark, tattoos strangely mirrored, fingers too long. The pupils of their eyes will shift into an impossible shade darker, absorbing light and destroying the inner sense of self.

When they look in a mirror and do not see themselves, and know they will never see who they were originally, know that they have shifted reality to their needs and thus will have always looked this way, it will grate on them. A mockery from their own magic, breeding resentment like a bastard child, a mistake who knows what it is and shall not repent.

Their nose slopes differently, their mole is too small, they are sure their freckles were never in that pattern.

Reality warps and twists around them like a mirage in the desert, like shimmery waves of heat that hide a vaccum of space, a black hole folded into the planes of existence and only visible when they fall from their high peak.

They know that these eyes are not the ones they were born with. They know that every time they do this, even if it goes perfectly, their finger prints won't match because they do not know their own original form well enough.

But it is an old conundrum, how many mistakes are made before reality puts a new person in their place with the same conciousness and memories?

How many planks of wood can you replace on the Argonaut until it is no longer what first set sail, what carried heros and legends and nameless warriors?

The lines of their palms are too short, and they are sure that their stretch marks hadn't been that pink before.

The fabric of the Spiral can be altered, it's song first woven by beings who's knowledge is beyond comprehension. Why create something that changes what was deemed good enough to give life?

Unless the shadow magic is what was used to create the Spiral, and thus the magic was left there, hiding in the dark spots and waiting to be called upon by fools and puppets and scholars. It was left there like a carpenter leaving the hammer, the saw, something that can destroy as easily as it creates.

Shadow and Moon twist in a dance, shifting and changing but always recognizing each other, one knowing what lies underneath and the other knowing that the surface tells only truths.

Something deep in magic changes when a wizard learns and uses shadowmancy.

But, considering it's nature, wasn't that part already there? Hadn't it always been?

INFINITE CRIME!! HONESTLY i’d love that as a function in people’s narratives, ppl doing Crimes but then changing reality so that that money/person/thing they effected never was as it was before.