For now let it slide. However in the future if something like this is to occur again it should make clear and upfront to the players what the effects are rush to get a free be as compensation for being corrected While others weren't punished.

Xen never collected the ring from the box at the beginning. He also shifted into this Interim before the magic-nullifying effect took place. Also, as far as I'm aware, Zenovia doesn't necessarily use 'magic', and thus has no mana stores. Tho you would have to ask @Rekaigan about that one.

rush to get a free be as compensation for being corrected While others weren't punished.

I second this idea.

Thin, its time to make some choices, some your not going to like and or are happy with, but your going to have to make them for all its worth.

@Darkwatck01

And what choices would that be, precisely?

Quite ones.

That sentence doesn't make sense. Care to not be so vague about it?

@Thinslayer

So allow me to explain what Zenovia actually did:

She absorbed the spirits that stayed with her and asked them to become a boon for her allies. This isn't really 'magic'. The spirits themselves are sentient beings that basically do what they like. As a Spirit Walker, Zenovia can ask them to do things for her. Asking entities for assistance isn't magic. It'd be similar to asking Eru for help.

@Thinslayer

It might be a good idea to explain what you explained to me how 'Magic' works in this universe.

Say a set of enchanted armor's minor magic is fortified with the integrity of a dozen mage's souls to grant a slight yet stout resistance to magic.

What kind of impact would a spell that dampens/dispells magical effects have on such a fortification before it applies to major-magics? Or would the dampening impact all facets of the armor, equally?
That in mind, what kind of effect does offensive dark magic have against defensive dark magic?

#DevilsAdvocate
#IHateHashtags

Sorry, its the only cay I can contribute to the conversation.
>_<;

From what I have on the Transcripts, Magic of this level starts out by effecting (Well as stated with in the first 'step') as more or less the wind up. Magi are able to feel the building of energy. (Steps representing the times he took a step)

Step 2: Starts out as a Silence, stopping the formation of new Magic or spells.

Step 3: Acts as a massive dispell, causing enchantments or things that have enchantments to stop, not removing just stopping them from being used/activated while the Second Step STOPs the reactivation of said enchantment (because the spell that was used to forge it).

Step 4: Now this is more advanced level on it, but it starts to effect the mind, as most would of assumed. Causing you to have blank stops (temporally of course) when it comes to knowledge. Just Knowledge related to spells, not full on mental memory...brain surgeon we are not.

Step 5: This is what made this spell a rather high level spell: It starts to effect the soul, never stopping one from ever causing/using magic but rather, stopping the soul (As Thin explained) from acting in a way to make more Mana/acting as a point from which Magic is formed before taking its Physical/Ethereal from.

This would reach across all levels of know magic. Its basicly a big old EMP for Art...of course it isn't something that can be sustained for extended periods of time with out effects on the caster meaning drop it once, let it ride till a timer runs out. Then its done. Stronger the caster, longer the timer before it starts to show effects on its caster.

Hope this helped.

@Darkwatck01
Ah kay.

I was going to make an analogy about cutting the throat of an immortal entity merely preventing it from singing for a brief moment, but if the full effect prevents the wound from healing, than the entity would merely freeze until the effects wore off, unable to sing.
Sucks to be those who depend on listening to the song, but all of this is what I based my post about the effects on Kaite off of.

Helps a ton, actually. xD

I guess dark magic is an inter-conflicting war of attrition with no allies or opposition other than divine magic and appropriate timing.
*not trying to be condescending, just ever-intrigued by the inner-workings of dark magic*

Magic is fairly simple business, theoretically. Conceptually, magic is conversion of mana to energy. Mana is the "energy" that binds your soul to your body. Your soul, in turn, is basically your mind. So to cast magic, you must "think" in a way that moves mana from the spiritual plane to the physical. The energy will be manipulated in the manner you will.

There are a few difficulties with this. First off, you must dictate the spell precisely, like a programmer, because raw energy has no interpretive power. Secondly, our thoughts are all over the place, and attempting to cast a spell without focus yields unpredictable results.

There are a few ways to handle these issues. Speaking forces you to focus, so most mages chant their spells until they get good at focusing. The precision problem is rectified by soliciting the aid of an intermediary interpreter, usually a spirit of some sort. Soliciting spiritual help carries its own risks, though, so modern mages have devised a better solution - tomes. With a tome, you can simply look up the spell you want and read it. While the tomes themselves have no power of their own, the knowledge they carry is painstakingly researched and often proprietary, so they are closely guarded.

But there is another level of magecraft that deals only in mana and never touches energy conversion. It is purely spiritual, and deals in things like curses. Some go even further and cast their spirit around. Any non-converted mana manipulation is labelled "dark magic," mainly because it is generally unresearched and rarely has any positive/beneficial uses.

The spell that the enemy cast on the party is primarily dark magic, since it only locks down mana production and verbalized thought within a specified area.

With what thin said amd what I have present means, this spell was mostly dark magic with a handful of normal magic woven in to help the blank stops, this still don't take away the risks of using the way he did, just made it stronger.

None of this information was presented from the original concept and I'm sure many of us kind of took it in stride, as you say, "ease of access". So now we're all scrambling to try and fit concepts into an ever-narrowing world. Normally this would not be a bad thing, given that certain information be brought forth outright, so that everyone has a clear understanding of the mechanics of the world.

No where in your posts, @Darkwatck01, was there mention of any strain or debilitating effect casting this spell would have on the warlock. As it reads now, he is some omnipotent being with unlimited power. I'm going to be honest with you all. Perhaps it is better to scrap the current RP and allow both of you guys to collaborate on the world and truly hammer in the details. Once a foundation is built you can start addressing the details, and in turn, allow a much more cohesive RP environment.

As it stands now, I'm just not having fun with it.

None of this information was presented from the original concept and I'm sure many of us kind of took it in stride, as you say, "ease of access". So now we're all scrambling to try and fit concepts into an ever-narrowing world. Normally this would not be a bad thing, given that certain information be brought forth outright, so that everyone has a clear understanding of the mechanics of the world.

No where in your posts, @Darkwatck01, was there mention of any strain or debilitating effect casting this spell would have on the warlock. As it reads now, he is some omnipotent being with unlimited power. I'm going to be honest with you all. Perhaps it is better to scrap the current RP and allow both of you guys to collaborate on the world and truly hammer in the details. Once a foundation is built you can start addressing the details, and in turn, allow a much more cohesive RP environment.

As it stands now, I'm just not having fun with it.

Do you want more structure or less? If I develop all the lore and settings, there's less room for the players to create their own, and the RP falls apart from boredom. If I don't develop all the lore and settings, the RP falls apart from inconsistencies.

I'm only the GM here, guys. I can give you tools to write your story, but you have to write the story. And if I'm to provide the tools, I need to know what will help you best. I can't work on mixed messages.

@Thinslayer

I'm not sure what mixed messages you are receiving nor do I understand what you mean by "more structure means less freedom".

What it sounds like to me is you want everyone to pitch in and write the world with you, which is a completely different kind of RP entirely and one in which requires immense dedication. Since you are the GM, the responsibility falls on you to create a world that feels alive. Currently, it feels empty mainly because a lot of things are left up in the wind. Not talking about every minute detail needs to be accounted for, but generalities like kingdoms, culture, influence of magic and aristocracy, beastiary, lay of the land, temperature, etc. etc.

These things create a world worth exploring.

@Thinslayer

I'm not sure what mixed messages you are receiving nor do I understand what you mean by "more structure means less freedom".

What it sounds like to me is you want everyone to pitch in and write the world with you, which is a completely different kind of RP entirely and one in which requires immense dedication. Since you are the GM, the responsibility falls on you to create a world that feels alive. Currently, it feels empty mainly because a lot of things are left up in the wind. Not talking about every minute detail needs to be accounted for, but generalities like kingdoms, culture, influence of magic and aristocracy, beastiary, lay of the land, temperature, etc. etc.

These things create a world worth exploring.

I suck at landscaping. Nations I can do, politics I can manage, territories I can draw, but ask me to make a landscape, and it'll bore you to death.

Now, I agree that some more worldbuilding should be in order. Most stories handle that in the story itself. When I established this RP, I thought I made it fairly obvious that this was your typical medieval fantasy setting. You have peasants, lords, aristocrats, knights, and kings. The main difference is the presence of a world government, namely by the high elves. You have your world, for the most part; you're just not doing anything with it.

Regarding your statement that writing the world with me is a completely different RP, I totally disagree. I believe it is the very essence of freeform RP. When Tiberius picked up the Heart Ring from the chest, he did something that hadn't happened before. When Xen'Desh ordered the party to assemble the next morning, he said something nobody said before. His tone of voice, mannerisms, and personality implicitly added culture to my world where it previously had none. You've been worldbuilding all along, adding to an in-game history I didn't write.

The difference is not in whether or not you're pitching in to help write my world with me. You do that already, just by signing up with a character sheet. The difference is in degree. You already add to the culture and history of our world; why not some of its land and its people? I give you boundaries to play in, and you get to create the rest.

That's how stories are built, after all. Whether it's a character you want to play, a setting you want to be in, or a world you'd like to see, the story begins with a bounded idea, and then you fill in the blanks to make it happen. You want more boundaries? I'll make you more boundaries. But we're all responsible for worldbuilding.

Take the worldbuilding away, and this may as well be a dice game or something, or better yet, I should just write the whole darn thing myself and ditch the RP gig.

If I may be a bit clearer (tl;dr), I'm not completely disagreeing with you. I need to work more on worldbuilding than I am, and I intend to correct that. I've mostly GM'd for fan-games, so I have little actual worldbuilding expeience (which isn't none - I once hosted a successful RP based in a fully indigenous world). What I'm trying to say is there isn't as much worldbuilding effort being made by the players. This isn't like an MMORPG where the world's already fully made for you down to the last detail and you just have to mess around in it. I'm quite incapable of describing things that well. This is a story game, not an MMORPG. You create the world you play in. All I'm really asking for is a little more involvement with that.

Because I'll probably burn out first, otherwise...

*Edited to remove some provocative verbiage.

Not going to lie. This is kind of how I look after reading your post.