What kind of world would result from this?

So I am working on the basics for a urban fantasy.

In my setting magic is the result of the emotions that follow from strong desires. A point in which a person's sole thought is towards reaching it.

When this happens it takes root in the world and feeds off of other weaker magical entities. It bends the world to match the wish/curse of the original person. More powerful ones will kill threats or feed off of other humans for essence. Some are sentient and are self-preserving to a degree.

Magic users are people who have special devices or trinkets that give them a limited about of control over their magic. Only some people are able to become magic users.

The impression I want to give to the readers is that magic is mysterious, powerful and very dangerous. Teaching someone to use powerful magic is like giving a nonnuclear physicist a nuclear weapon. Powerful magic must be discover by the user to obtain a full understanding.

Since more powerful magical entities see people who know them as dangerous they will kill normal people who are told about them. Normal people are kept as far away from the mess as possible.

Since magic has always been around, I want to know how it would effect history and the modern world. It wouldn't be the same after all. Are scientist on the verge of discovering and proving its existence? What are the specifics of magical entities? What do magic users call them? I have a general idea if someone could help me come up with specifics I would be happy.

1) If magics always been around, science should have proved its existence as soon as people began to say "no, that's dumb and here's why" to the church.

2) Magical entities could be strongly associated with the emotion that created them. Like d(a)emons from Dragon Age or Warhammer.

3) I personally would shy away from "demon" since it's cliché and apt to rile up the Soccer Mom Brigade.

Yeah calling them demons would be unfitting.

Calling these things entities might be unfitting to. Only some of them are actually intelligent. When A person reaches the point in which they possess a single desire above all else it can magically manifest in the world outside themselves. It takes root somewhere in the world and bends it to grant the wish that created it.

Some of these manifestations can be come intelligent. One of the roles of magic users is to make sure this doesn't happen.

Perhaps "Tulpa" would be a good word for those manifestations, then.

Tulpa seems to fit at least in origin.

Actually I am not sure. Tulpa seems to refer to the manifestation of objects or beings. Does it match with the manifestation of events? I am not good at explaining but, I want to be sure.

edited 30th Jun '14 5:51:32 PM by higurashimerlin

Well, calling magical entities 'spirits' seem perfectly fine to me. Demons would be spirits born from negative emotions, tulpas/thoughtforms would be spirits born from religious fervor, etc.

This train of thought comes from the [[New World of Darkness]] games. There, a spirit is basically emotion made alive. Everything can have a spirit reflection, and they really mean 'everything' - from animals to places to concepts.

I don't think spirit is fitting to describe what I have in mind. How can I explain why not to anthropomorphize these things? That is my fault though for not being able to explain properly.

Just call them "Powers" or "Forces" or whatever and be done with it. Or just pick your favorite verb associated with them and make it their name. What do all of these things have in common - they manifest. Call them Manifesters or Manifestations.

Ummm okay. I want to focus on how others respond to them. What effect has their historical existence had?

Let's see here. At the moment, your magic system seems kind of vague so I can't really say whether my elaborations to come will have relevance. You said you intend an urban fantasy sort of thing. I can't really help you with that since that genre is beyond my specialty. However, I'll see how I can help with your system and possible historical effects.

From the gist of things, your magic generates based on desire and emotion. These can form entities, tulpas, or whatever sort of thing you want to call them. There exist ways of exerting control over this magic.

However, in order to model your world and historical developments accurately, you're going to need to pin down just how this magic works. To clarify, does high emotion/desire only create vague entities meant to manifest desires, or can they also perform feats akin to common spellcraft? If the latter option exists, military forces are probably going to try to condition troops to feel these emotions more frequently as the specifics become more understood. Also, what emotions correspond to what types of magic? Drugs will probably play an important role in both your spellcasting specialists and your military for both conditioning these emotions and expanding their abilities. Do mental disorders have any effects on the sort of magic performed? Can non-humans harness emotion magic? I can't really give anything specific in this part without a list of what's possible with this form of magic.

Now, more specifically these entities. You seem disinclined to the spirit/tulpa idea mentioned by the others, but I wouldn't entirely abandon it since it does have some interesting implications for your world. Now suppose you have an arbitrary tribe or clan who may or may not have full comprehension of the magic around them. Say they make up some deities or spirits to explain the nature of the world around them. Suppose they believe one of these guards over them and looks for their well-being, codifying this belief through rituals. Through the collective belief and worship, this guardian becomes actuality. It may not be fully sentient or intelligent, but it does whatever the people think it's supposed to do and acts like they think it should act. These beings may be as powerful as the mechanics of your verse say they should be. Now, how this might affect history lies in the fact you have "gods" walking around everywhere. You're probably not going to have rulers who claim their right to rule from divinity; you're going to have actual gods ruling in their place. The fact people can meet gods might also affect holy wars. Priesthood structures might be more dependent on how people interact with the manifestations instead of whatever they're already dependent on.

Now, let's look for potential implications directly from these vague entities or "blobs". Magic results from emotion and strong desires. How about hunger and thirst? You're probably going to have meat-blobs all over the place to satisfy this desire, especially if animals can tap into this magic as well. If this a reliable and near-limitless source of sustenance, your societies won't necessarily need to develop things to get more food and may invest their energies on other activities. People may actually develop less of an inclination for hunger because they are never really at risk for starvation, unless things start affecting the meat-blobs. Or, intense hunger will settle in quicker for magic to take effect instantly. A similar thing might happen with water due to thirst, with added potential to cause floods and terraform deserts if people settle there. This in turn will cause ridiculous population growth. Siege warfare, when people start getting into warfare, will involve less of surrounding enemy cities and waiting for them to starve and more of bombarding enemy defenses, possibly with magic. Course you could always go with these things eating people instead.

Additionally, if and when people figure out what sorts of emotions cause dangerous blobs, they'll develop institutions for preventing these emotions from coming about. This will place an increased emphasis in finding out how people think and react to things to prevent disaster from a destructive despair-blob for example. If these things are invisible, people will probably find some way to detect them. If they become malevolent when people try to use magics, people will probably try to find a way to control them.

I'd also mention possible life form developing a "second mind" to simulate emotions without actually feeling them by the primary mind in order to have control over the benefits of emotion-desire magic without needing to have emotions cloud their decisions.

That's pretty much all I have to say. It's a bit late for me so my later paragraphs aren't as in depth/coherent. Upon a couple of rereadings I probably misunderstood what sort of system you were going for. But you really need to have hard guidelines/rules for what magic does so it's easier to track how society develops, because I can't really give a specific answer without that information..