Dark Magicks

So, here's my ideas for Dark Magicks within my story. I'm going to lay out how each one works, and why they are considered 'Dark' Magicks.

Blood Magic: A type of magic that is channelled through blood.

This style of magic involves drawing magic from an outside source, usually the environment- although you can draw energy from your opponent, or even yourself- and channelling it through blood.

Blood has mystical significance, see. Magic flows through a body, supercharging the elements of a body as it interacts with the persons' soul.

The resulting Magic is very powerful. But, in order to do anything large-scale, you need a fairly large amount of blood. So, in order to gather enough power to, say, Amplify your body's natural power; you're going to have to risk bleeding to death.

If you want to do any large-scale magicks- the ones that would actually be useful in anything but one-on-one combat; you're going to need more blood than your body can possibly give you.

Blood Magic- or rather, the rush of power you gt for wielding it- is terribly addictive. It's not as addictive as Soul Magic or Death Magic, but it's several times more addictive than crack.

Soul Magic: This involves unravelling someone's soul and drawing the power from within them into yourself.

You can do this to yourself. However, unlike Blood Magic, your soul will not put itself back together. Any damage you do to it is permanent.

It is possible to only partially unravel a soul. However, without a Healer Mage to constantly take care of it, it will soon fall to pieces on its own anyway.

Soul Magic is extremely addictive, to both the caster and the target. Once you have wielded Soul Magic one time, it is next to impossible to stop. Once you wield it a second time, it is impossible to stop.

Even being the target of Soul Magic will cause you to become addicted to it. The level of temptation is about level with that of Blood Magic.

Without a soul, your body, which has become accustomed to the flow of magic throughout your body, will cause itself damage. Part of this damage is damage done directly to the part of your brain which allows you to feel empathy towards others.

Death Magic: This Magic involves killing someone, and then, as their ka, or life-force, leaves their body to go to the afterlife, drawing the ka into yourself, and absorbing the magic into yourself.

Death Magic is extremely powerful. A single use of Death Magic is enough to elevate you to the status of Equal to the Spellweaver- the next most powerful Magician in existence.

However, Death Magic... A single touch of Death Magic, and you will fall prey to the addiction. You cannot stop once you have started. You cannot help but kill, more nad more, becoming more and more unhinged as you do so- until, eventually, you begin to wonder how powerful you would be if you performed Death Magic on yourself.

---

So, thoughts on this system?

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

Could you add Hybrid arts where you mix the two? Or are they certain arcane styles that cannot intertwine?

Usually when it comes to fighting against death magic, the only option is to be something that cannot have life force taken away, such as undead or spiritual creatures. Are there different races in your story, or are they all one and the same?

Troper Page

You can certainly combine the three.

For example, Acatin has combined Soul Magic and Blood Magic. Or, perhaps it would be better to say, she used Soul Magic to further her Blood Magic, by using the Soul Magic to restore her much faster than usual- or, in other words, regenerate blood loss in minutes.

A better example may be Eros. He is a Soul Mage, who also uses Blood Magic to compliment his Soul Magic's weaknesses.

As for races... There are three races; Humans, Magical Creatures, and the Leastiathe. Blood Magic, Soul Magic, and Death Magic can all be used on Humans, and power can be drawn from them; you cannot use Blood Magic or Soul Magic on a Magical Creature, but you can use Death Magic; and you cannot use Blood Magic on a Leastiathe, but you can use Soul Magic and Death Magic on them.

An effective method against Death Mages has not ben found yet, short of calling in someone who uses Ancient Magicks.

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

Leastiathe? That sounds interesting. What are they?

Troper Page

They're a race of demonic beings I've spent the past week redesigning.

Uhhh, they're still not quite finished yet >.>

I can give you what I have on them now, if you want. But it's all subject to change, because I'm still redesigning them now >.>

They were very flat and boring before. I'm trying to make them more interesting now.

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

These all sound good.

To make it simpler for the audience, you may want to combine these in some way.

For example:

"Dark Magic capabilities are obtained upon draining the life of another creature. This can be done by drinking their blood, eating their brain, or devouring their soul; but the difference between these three methods is negligible."

Basically, I find the simplest and most straight-forward explanations to work best.

So, life force and soul are different? How so?

Read my stories!

Why are you spelling it with a K in the title and properly everywhere else?

The following critiques are mainly because I find my suspension of disbelief stretched.

Blood Magic: Why is it addictive? The castor is losing blood and all the associated symptoms would make for a very weak mage. I understand how drawing from other people can be easily be construed as evil, and addictive due to getting power without the pain, but not when drawing from oneself as you seem to imply.

Soul Magic: Why is it not gradually addictive? And why does it perpetuate to the victim? Unfortunate Implications abound and it sounds like a cheap ploy for future drama.

Death Magic: Why is it instantly addictive? There are people who kill for good reasons (i.e. in defense, or to prevent the other from killing even more people, or even a mercy kill). There are people who accidentally kill people. The way you describe it, Death Magic seems to immediately transform people into sociopaths. The concept is quite Narmy. Also, the last sentence provides a ridiculously easy way to take out a mage who gets out of hand. Just talk him into killing himself and the problem is solved! In fact, that's the problem with Blood magic, too.

edited 11th Jan '11 3:41:29 PM by Slan

@ Cygan: Are there other forms of magic besides these Dark Magics?  ^*

When I see "Dark Magics", and read how addictive and dangerous each one is I think of the trope The Dark Side. Also I think that wherever there is a dark side to something there is a light side,  ^*

^{Mainly due to darkness being the absence of light.}

and thus if Dark Magic exists there must be a more benevolent counter part.

Has ADD, plays World of Tanks, thinks up crazy ideas like children making spaceships for Hitler. Occasionally writes them down.

AHR: A person's soul acts as... their source of magic, if you will. Everybody has one, even if they can't access the magic. It's not so much an abstract concept, as it is an extra organ mmade entirely of magic.

You know it's there. It's a definite concept.

Your life force, on the other hand... It's basically what keeps you and the world connected. Magic isn't natural in this world, see; it was forced into the world by a group of intruding Gods aeons ago.

Your life force acts as an anchor to you, stopping you from being swept away by the floods of magic around you.

Once your life force is cut... You're dead. Those currents of magic will sweep away any trace of you but your physical body and crush it to pieces.

Life force isn't the corrct term for it- but, as far as the people in-story know, it is, so that's how they, and by extension me, refer to it.

Slan: The 'k' in the title is an archaic spelling of the term. Tht was the way it was referred to during the Dark Ages and before. But nobody has really seen any sense in changing the title- writing the extra 'k' is hardly a bother. It's when you're not using it as a title, but rather a noun or whatever, that you spell it withoutthe 'k'.

So- 'Dark Magicks are very dangerous' = correct.

'Lilith has been using a lot of Dark Magick recently' = incorrect.

Alright, this one is... harder to explain.

There are three types of magic in the world; Magick (That's just plain, boring Regular Magic), Ancient Magick (That's the typpe of magic that comes from the dimensions that bleed into this one- it's quite difficult to learn, and only Gods have ever astered it) and Dark Magick (That's power drawn from the act of unravelling people.)

Each type of magic has a different... feel to it. Magick feels plain, unexciting, vanilla. You can live on it quite easily; it's harmless, and won't tempt you very much.

Ancient Magicks feel like gourmet food. It's exciting, it's really good, but it's bloody difficult and expensive to obtain. Those people already rich- Gods- can otain it easily, but otherwise, regular people have to struggle to just get a taste of it.

Dark Magicks, though... They feel like drugs. Crack, or maybe ice, if they're different drugs. They're horrible, they're unpleasant, the aftereffects are so bad... But while you're using it, it feels so good. And fterwards, you just want another taste of that drug. And then another one. And another. And soon, you desire nothing more than to feel that sensation again. And once you're at that point, it's next to impossible to pull yourself back out of it.

As to why each one scales in addictiveness... That's due to the amount of power you're drawing frommm it. Blood magic isn't very powerful, and you're not drawing so much power from it; therefore, it's not as easy to get addicted. Soul Magic draws out a lot more power, and so feels a lot better.

(Incidentally, that's why the target can also become addicted to Soul Magic. The caster cannot draw all of the power from the soul into themselves- that would be like trying to drink from a sieve. You can get some power from it, but a lot of the power will flow back into the person it was drawn from- and that rush fro that is wht addicts the target.)

Death Magic, on the other hand... For that second, when you're reaching to draw the power from the lif eessence, you're connected to the magic all around you. You're connected to an entire ocean, when you're only used to having a bucket of water. There's just so much power you can draw from it... You can't help but to draw more, and more, and more, way beyond healthy limits. If Blood Magic is taking half a tablet of Ecstasy, then Death Magic is overdosing on Ice. And once you're out... You can't help but miss that power. Everything's so dull, so drab... You want to feel that power again. You're consumed by it.

(Incidentally, that last line? Yeah. I'd like to see you talking a Death Mage into killing themselves. They will kill you the instant they ctch sight of you, the instant you say one word to them. If you meet a Death Mage, you're screwed. It's up to them to finish themselves off eventually- you don't stand a chance in hell of hurrying the process along.)

Eldritch Blue Rose: Yes. As I stated earlier in this message, there are indeed. You have Magick, Ancient Magick and Dark Magick. There are more, but noone has figured out how to wield them yet.)

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

Cough. There are different degrees of drugs. Pot is pretty much a medicine-level painkiller, while heroin is more harmful.

Don't fall into the trap of using magic as a metaphor for drugs. Especially not without doing research. At least parallel them to specific types if you're going to be all Anvilicious about it.

Blood magic, for example—think of drugs that are mostly mainlined (injected with syringes into a vein). Soul magic could be similar to hallucinogens and good or bad trips. Death magic... er. Less clearcut but anyway.

This is a bit of a Pet-Peeve Trope for me.

edited 11th Jan '11 9:06:51 PM by Slan

:<

I didn't intend for them to be a metaphor for drugs. Or, if I did use it as a metaphor, then that Aesop is warped to all hell and back, considering three of my main charcters use it, only one actually falls into full-blown addiction to it, and it turns out to be a good thing at times.

Mainly when regular Magic is ineffective, or is for some reason unavailable.

I was simply comparing the addictiveness of drugs to the Magic. Nothing else.

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

If you compare it as a substitute for traditional drugs complete with addiction, it is still a metaphor for drugs with or without a Warped Aesop.

You still don't seem to have done your research.

Actually, just spare yourself a bunch of work and don't bring in drugs at all. The second that word comes up people will read way way way way way too deeply into your stories.

edited 11th Jan '11 9:21:18 PM by Slan

If you say so.

Guess I'm back to the drawing board then.

See y'all next month.

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

What? Why does this dismantle all of your current plans?

Well, if the addictiveness of the magic will lead people to see unfortunate implications, then I can't very well include that.

But large sections of my plot, and part of the story for each of the affected character, was dealing with this.

So, yeah, it's kinda a stumbling block :/

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

It won't be Unfortunate Implications if you do all the research and portray each magic as a parallel to a separate, distinct drug instead of lumping them all into one mush of Aesops.

Also if you have some characters overcome their addictions. Because even hard drug addicts can break the habit.

But I don't fucking want the story element to be compared to drugs.

The magic is fucking addictive.

Drugs are the only thing I could think of that can lead to anywhere near the level of addiction I wanted. Therefore, that's the comparison I used.

I did not want magic = drugs. But that's what happened anyway.

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

Ah. That is a problem.

Sorry. At least you found this out soon enough to remedy it?

Yeah, I guess :/

Dammit. I was really excited about this, too :/

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

If you have a character describe magic's addictiveness as "an addiction like any other: gambling, drugs, sex, et cetera," you can get around this. This makes more sense anyways since addiction does in fact present itself in a variety of ways. Think of the apple in the Adam and Eve story and how it represents any and all temptations in life instead of something specific.

I second Slan on how, if you're going to bring up drugs in specification to other addictions, you should do your research. There are big differences between them. For example, I'd probably group them like this:

Magic: mild drugs that make little to no difference like Anti-depressents

Ancient Magic: Stimulants (note the intense low that follows the intense high as well as sugar and chocolate being stimulants despite what the FDA says)

Dark Magic: Rohypnol (spelling?), Driving Under the Influence, and Carrying a firearm while getting wasted all for obvious reasons

If you had a wild, uncontrollable magic, that should be hallucinogens (marijuana is a very mild hallucinogen and more importantly a worthy pain-reliever). Anyways, maybe this can hasten your research: just research the drugs I mentioned here.

In my opinion you should forget about the drugs metaphor and just write the thing, without changing anything. If the readers think you're talking about drugs then it's their problem, not yours.

Don't waste your ideas because of something like that. Some people will misinterpret your words no matter what you do. Screw them. It's not worth abandoning your project.

It's the readers I'm writing for, though. Not me.

There are too many toasters in my chimney!

Those that will read your story as a drug metaphor are probably not the majority of your readers.

I think I agree; just because some people will interpret it as 'magic=drugs' doesn't mean that you have to drop that aspect of the idea completely. I've read plenty of books were magic was addictive but never made me think of drugs.

In fact, some of what you describe reminds me more of things like self-harm or eating disorders than drugs.

Be not afraid...