Darth Wiki / The Codex Of Creation

The Codex of Creation is a work (currently unpublished and unwritten), by the troper Zennistrad.

The story takes place in an Urban Fantasy setting where magic is known to the general public, but not too common. Mages have a major role in most world governments, and their magic is usually sold to the highest bidder for the purposes of medicine, domestic science, espionage, diplomacy and warfare.

The story follows a teenage boy named Lawrence. His family moves from the east coast of the United States to a small suburb in the Midwest called Oakwood because of his father's new job.

There, he discovers that most of the town's population are mages, descendants of mages who migrated west to found a settlement based on the ideals of magic. While there, he makes several new friends, one of which leads him to the discovery of the titular Codex of Creation, along with its guardian...

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This work will provide examples of:

• Aliens Speaking English: Serenity is supposedly older than humanity itself, but speaks modern English perfectly. Handwaved by explaining that the person who breaks the seal on the Codex of Creation ends up unconsciously transferring any and all languages they know to the Codex Guardian.
• Ancient Astronauts: Inverted. A small portion of the precursors, to escape the Codex War, escaped the Earth in massive spaceships, eventually becoming an alien race.
• A Wizard Did It: The mere existence of the titular Codex of Creation can warp reality, so anything not scientifically accurate can be explained as "the Codex did it."
• Cosmic Keystone: The Codex of Creation. According to legend, it's the book that God himself used to create the universe.
• Drunk with Power: This is assumed to be what would happen if anyone took the time to figure out how to use the Codex of Creation. After all, it does essentially grant omnipotence if used to its full extent.
  • Also defied with Serenity, the Codex Guardian. There are magical safeguards on it that prevent the Codex Guardian from learning more than an tiny fraction of its abilities. It's still enough to make her a remarkably powerful shapeshifter, though her shapeshifting abilities do have limits.
    • Among said limits: she cannot safely transform into anything with too much mass, the upper limit being 320 kilograms by her own calculations; just to be safe, she never transforms into anything with a mass greater than 200 kilograms. Also, if she transforms into any fictional being, she can only mimic that being's appearance. She cannot, for example, transform into a Pikachu and suddenly be able to shoot electricity.
• Forever War: The Codex War, a war which spanned the entire Earth and lasted for 1,000 years. It single-handedly brought the precursors to their end.
• Magic A Is Magic A: There are two types of magic, elemental magic and shapeshifting magic. Elemental magic can create and destroy all forms of energy except matter, and is generally used to manipulate different forms matter and energy. Shapeshifting magic is a form of magic that can create and destroy matter in addition to other forms of energy, and is used to alter one's own shape. Only the precursors can use shapeshifting magic. The Codex of Creation uses a third type of magic, divine magic, which can literally do anything.
  • Elemental magic has five different types which work differently:
    • Air mages can create kinetic energy in gaseous matter, allowing them to control it.
    • Earth mages can create kinetic energy in solid matter, allowing them to control it. Especially powerful earth mages can also permanently alter the physical properties of solid objects and make them supernaturally strong, and are thus well known for crafting extra-strong tools, weapons, and structures.
    • Water mages can create kinetic energy in liquid mater, allowing them to control it.
    • Lightning mages can create kinetic energy in free electrons, allowing them to control electric current. Lightning mages that use their abilities for combat purposes will carry powerful capacitors that they use to carry electric charge, or will otherwise draw electric charge from the clouds.
    • Fire mages can create electromagnetic radiation within the visible light spectrum in addition to heat energy, essentially allowing them to create flame without a combustion reaction. Only the most powerful fire mages can generate light and heat separately, unskilled fire mages can only produce heat and light at the same time to produce a flame-like effect.
  • Also, elemental magic cannot be used to control the matter in living things. The best way to check if someone's dead in this work is to try to use magic to control that person's body. If it works, he's gone for good.
• The Masquerade: Averted in the world's history. Most ancient civilizations highly respected mages. Even when feared or persecuted, they were almost always tolerated as members of society. Even in Medieval Europe, mages were not usually subject to the Witch Hunt, as they were generally seen as conduits of God's divine power rather than individuals who had made a Deal with the Devil, and back then calling their powers "magic" instead of "miracles" was an insult of the highest degree. It wasn't until the late 19th century, when mages began to work out the true nature of their abilities, that "magic" started to become an acceptable term.
• No Such Thing as Wizard Jesus: Quite a few ancient historians believe that no, Jesus could not use magic and was not a mage. It's eventually revealed that the Codex of Creation may have been the book God used to create the universe, implying that Jesus may have been able to access a fraction of its power in some way. So he was a mage, but not in the traditional sense, he practiced divine magic, the magic of creation itself.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Even though it doesn't have a masquerade, the world of this work has a remarkably similar history to ours, save the whole precursors bit. Despite the fact that magic can reverse entropy by generating energy from nothing. Many historical events are supposedly greatly influenced by magic, only to have history play out in much the same way it does in our world.
  • One example: Hitler was able to survive multiple assassination attempts by mages by having powerful mages of his own as bodyguards to deflect any magic aimed at him.
  • Averted, however, with the oil and energy crisis. Quite a few mages are paid to stand in one spot in a power plant and move turbines with their magic, working in shifts. Oil is only rarely used as fuel in more developed countries because having cheap electricity makes electric engines more practical. Fossil fuels in general are seen as a bad substitute for magically-powered energy, as only the poorer areas of the world use them due to the tendency of mages to flock to the parts of the world with the most money.
• The Reveal: Humanity's evolution and capacity to develop new technologies was greatly aided by the influence of the Codex, and that was when it was sealed. Now that it's unsealed, mankind will likely experience massive leaps and bounds in technological discoveries. The Namformae are descendants of the Precursors that fled the Earth to escape the world-ending Codex War, but by doing so subjected themselves to Creative Sterility.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Justified with Serenity and by extension, her entire race. The form of shapeshifting magic she uses is unique in that it can create and destroy matter, which magic explicitly cannot do otherwise.
• Shout-Out: One of the first new forms Serenity learns to take on is that of a squirrel. She remarks that said squirrel form makes her feel graceful.
  • Nami's father is an archaeologist, and his surname is Kosugi.
• Super-Empowering: Opening the Codex of Creation turned Lawrence into a mage.
• Weapons Kitchen Sink: Justified. The main heroes, ahem, borrow their weapons and armor from Nami's father, an archaeologist who brings home various magic artifacts he finds for study.