How
Would
You
Imagine
God?
- Writing Level: High Casual
- Style: Semi-Sandbox
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Fear Not The Darkness
Fear Not The Abominations
Fear Not The Unknown
Fear Not The Chaos
Fear Not The End
Fear Not The Mind
Fear The Self.
The Magi's Creed, The Tenants of Solomon
Fear Not The Abominations
Fear Not The Unknown
Fear Not The Chaos
Fear Not The End
Fear Not The Mind
Fear The Self.
The Magi's Creed, The Tenants of Solomon
Our world balances on a great precipice. The boundary between life and death, reality and oblivion, light and dark is becoming blurred. The center cannot hold and soon we will all come tumbling back towards the center point. This is the plight of humanity, we live on a dying planet, a dying reality and we cannot stop its eventual death. Though we can at least try to slow it down. For as long as humanity draws its breath their indomitable will we shall thrash against the chains of fate. This is where Magi come into play.
They trace their inheritance back to King Solomon of whom was the first to be able to see the slow death of our world. He was the first to attempt to battle the forces beyond the veil of our own reality by tapping into the natural energies found within the leylines to combat these forces. But Solomon as wise and brilliant of a man as he was was also filled with arrogance. So as he grew more accustomed and powerful in the arcane his mind wandered to fancy. In this great hubris he attempted to coerce these forces to his own will rather than banishing them from the realm of man. He would become overwhelmed by these forces, corrupted and eventually killed with his kingdom collapsing soon afterwards as the Tribes of Israel scattered.
The Magi originally were the descendents of Solomon who to pay penance for the King's greed took up the banner in the war that he originally started. This would mark the start of the Guild of Magi. The Guild still stands today battered by the test of time as the Premiere de facto leader of the Magi, policing their doctrine and making sure that the art of Magery would be preserved for as long as our reality held firm. But other groups have broken off from the original like branches upon a great tree and these competing "Philosophies" dominate most of the elder Magi's time as backroom politics is almost constant and unrelenting.
The most prolific and renowned group to come out of this all in the world of Magi are simply known as Keepers. Keepers have no allegiances, not to the guild, the other Philosophies or even each other. Each Keeper is an independent entity, an agent whose loyalty is only to the mission, the original cause of the Magi to hunt beasts. They are the men and women that keep the nightmares away, they are the demon hunters. Keepers work through contracts being hired out by the Guild or others to carry out their sacred duty. The most important of these duties is to deal with Reality Convergences.
Reality Convergences are what happens when leylines become corroded. Their inherent energy begins to leak out in great amounts like some sort of mystical reactor meltdown. When a Convergence occurs the line between our reality and the next becomes blurred and beasts make it through threatening the already fragile balance in our own world. Not to the mention the amounts of energy make them hotbeds of activity as other Magi began to fight over the sites to claim the Convergence. To be able to draw the power out of of the very life force of the earth itself to be able to cast true magic, that shapes the fabric of our very reality.
Well this is where you come in isn't it? Jizakai City within Hokkaido Prefecture is set to be the first Reality Convergence to occur in Japan since the Sengoku. You shall take the place of a young Magi gunning for glory, either working as a Keeper for one of the Philosophies, as an emissary of the Guild or as a freelancer trying to make their own move. But this battle for supremacy is only the top layer beneath is an underlying mystery that beckons to be solved. Jizakai is a dangerous place and the events of this Convergence could very well shape the rest of human history as the boundaries between realities has begun to collapse and this could be the end of it all.
Magery
Magery is as classically defined by the Guild as the art of pushing the boundaries of our reality. The more practical would think of it as an aspect of science but on an accelerated scale. While Magery of our time is at the pinnacle of continuous research culminating in an entire millenum, it is nothing compared to the power the original founders of the guild wielded who in turn would be dwarfed in comparison to the great powers that Solomon wielded his powers of true reality shaping that can now only be tapped into briefly through drawing in the power of a Reality Convergence. The leylines of the world naturally losing power as Technology grows.
Magery like most highly evolved concepts has very precise rules about them. These rules are broken into many tenants that are study over by Magi with an almost religious fervor. The most basic tenet though can be broken down to the fact that there most always be wood to fuel a fire. Basically to get energy out you need to put energy in. To create a fireball you must draw heat from your surroundings, an open flame or your own body to mix with the energy provided naturally by the Magi to create the desired effect. As a result air manipulation or at least basic air manipulation is a much easier concept for beginners to learn than fire manipulation as air's abundance is much easier to grab from.
The natural energy provided by Magi is best summarized as all Magi have limits. Magi are born naturally with what is called "tainted blood" tainted blood is simply blood that is able to carry the energy radiated by leylines known simply as The Lacrimas a supernatural substance that flows through the air around us, in varying densities depending on the concentration of leylines. Lacrimas control (the amount you can draw in lacrimas from your surroundings to fuel magery) is the mark of any true Magi. To control the very life force of the planet is to control everything. Lacrimas control is not something that can be learned but is rather gifted to a person at birth and measured is letter grades for F to S with most Magi leveling out at the C- level, extremely powerful casters at B+. Nobody since Solomon has ever been able to break past an A- Rank with Solomon himself being the only theorized S+ in existence.
The Four Philosophies
The Four Philosophies are simply the four greatest authorities of Magi in our reality. They included The Guild, The Unseen Church, The College and The Abbey. They each hold different views upon the place of the Magi in the world and how their power should be used as a result there is a lot of infighting between them all as they scheme to get the upper hand over the others.
The Guild of Magi:
The oldest of all, the Guild is still seen by most as the dominate force in the world of Magi, with most Magi following their rules and heading to their regulations. Generally they are the most conservative of the bunch and try their best to preserve the all mighty status quo. They are against human interaction and tampering as long as it can be helped and would prefer if everything just remained on its course as they try and stop oblivion day by day. They have their own standing army of sorts a group of emissaries and enforces that ensure the Guild's doctrine is followed under penalty of death as they spend most of their time hunting rogue Magi.
The Unseen Church:
The Church are an interesting bunch, one of the first splinter cells to break off from the Guild many years ago. The Church's whole ideal breaks down to the fact that the power they have been granted is a punishment put onto them by God for their unfaithfulness. Their penance is to save the realm of his creation from the beasts and they will do it through any means. They have their own group of Keepers known as Exorcists who deal with any and all "heathens" beast or magi alike and are considered some of the deadliest Magi to live and breath. They generally are considered allies of the Guild as both groups conservative ideologies mold together nicely.
The Magi's College:
The Magi's college consist of researchers and scientists. They are concerned primarily with the history and the further development of the art of Magery. They believe only through pushing the boundaries of what is accepted of Magery. Through extensive archeological digs and testing they are on the cutting edge of Magery with some very interesting developments indeed. They believe only through the mixing of technology and magery to unlock the soul will our reality ever be able to put back into balance again. They have little friends or allies but because of their reclusive nature the others tend not to worry about them.
The Abbey of The Void:
The Abby follows a malleable philosophy of the supremacy of Magery. Magi that follow the teaching of the Abbey believe that the gift of tainted blood is not a curse, a blessing. or the path to the future. They believe that it is the only path. They believe in the so called Inheritance of The Void. Meaning that each reality will eventually come crashing down upon itself and so it is pointless to fight it because Magery itself helps facilitate the problem and it is actually the Magi's duty to bring about the collapse of our reality. So within this collapse the Magi can arise as the new rulers of this transcendence. They are considered radicals and deeply opposed by the Church, The Guild and most of the College mainly because it is believed that their teachings facilitate corruption.
+Bonus+ Keepers
Keepers as mentioned earlier are the fighters of beasts and nightmares, the things that slip through when the barriers between worlds becomes weak. They hold value in their tenets and mission to purge the world of all beasts. These Magi are taken from a young age from their families and sent off to become remorseless killers. Keepers while can be hired out by other Magi to deal with dangerous, near suicidal problems that nobody wants to deal with they hold no loyalties. And so if their employer is perceived to be helping the cause of the beasts, they may be as easily stabbed in the back as well. Their name demands respect and fear amongst Magi as they are things that go bump in the night and they are watching you.
Channels
Channels were originally an invention created within the workshops of the College. They are weapons specifically designed to be used against Magery and the beasts that Magi face on a day to day bases. These weapons are able to harness the power of lacrimas much like the Magi that use them. Because of this they are of higher quality and have peculiar traits that set them apart from normal human weapons. Swords can cut through steel beams and be shrouded in fire, bullets can be embodied with ice and fire or even just explode bigger, staves can grow on command and change in weight to allow for devastating bludgeoning blows. The widespread use of the Channels came out after the Guild started having some of their own Magi analyze some confiscated from the College to create their own weapons for their own enforcers, and soon they become commonplace among the Magi as weapons of self defense as they are much more efficient than human weapons. Though as technology has advanced so has the Channels as they used to be just swords, staves, hammers and axes with the advent of gunpowder and new technologies rifles and new types of channels have been developed and joined the ranks of the Magi arsenal.
Beast
Beasts, Demons, Monsters they have a lot of names all throughout the world and all throughout history but they all share the same origins. When a Reality Convergence occurs and the boundary becomes weak Beasts begin to pour through into our realm. Some of these beasts are lazy, some are helpful and some are just plain stupid. They are complicated creatures because they are not evil in the strict sense of the word. Beasts are more like programs with set orders to perform, in their case it is to create balance by wiping imperfections, things that threatened the sanctity of realities. As human technology has evolved and expanded corroding the leylines and as a result slowly draining our reality of life in our pursuit for superiority, we have become a great big mass of imbalance and beasts are the fabric of reality natural way to return things to the status quo. They are just trying to the save everything but the Magi think that it can be done without killing everybody so they have been in conflict for some time.
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