Interest Check
Themes: Modern Fantasy, Hidden World
Inspirations: Mahoutsukai No Yoru (Type-Moon), To Aru Majutsu No Index


Upon rain-soaked streets, where whispers exchange in full view
In the corners of grey high rises, nestled in upscale lounges
Crumbling towers and filthy tunnels
In the halls of masters, and the abodes of nameless

Unseen workings toil where the common know not
Kings and queens of ancient lineages persist undying wars
Heroes and monsters shed life in perpetuity

Here dies innocence
Here reigns ambition

Magic
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Magic in the Park (henceforth shortened as MitP) is a world in which you will play as a practitioner of the arcane -be you a confused newcomer to the clandestine scene, or a veteran born of magic nobility- wherein you must merely survive or thrive in power. The world of magic is fraught with danger in the form of wayward curses and abominations, or as murderous fellow mages who see you as a stepping stone to their goals. Ancient grudges and competitions pervade the established houses and organizations of this world, and many can find themselves pitifully caught between them or belonging to one of many sides.

To engage with magic is to delve into the greatest labyrinth ever conceived by once-mortal minds. In the beginning all was permitted, and in the chaos that was afforded naught but impermanence was achievable, for everything that could be was also instantly undone. The combined spirits of ancient visionaries saw to it that this untenable existence would not go on, and smote infinity from the fabric of reality. Since then, magic has existed as a path upon which the existences within the now stationary world may explore.

Loops, halls, mazes, towers, traps, walls, bogs. All these things now exist between ambition and ultimate victory. A spell is a room within this meta-reality, found after deliberate and persistent delving. The means by which a mage reaches these ends is myriad, and not all are entered unharmed. Within the endless-scape manifest misgivings, hatred... but also hope and joy. Monsters and creatures preside here foremost and sometimes they find their way into the realm otherwise reserved for man. Some are tamed and incorporated, while others remain as perilous haunts.

In their quest for ultimate power, truth, and fame, those that access the labyrinth oft seek to stifle the journey of those behind them. To enter a room is to be its occupant and thus suffused in the knowledge its shelves of text provide... to share such with another is to divulge weaknesses, partition energy, and to give up uniqueness. For those within families, whose learned history and progress passes by blood, this sharing is a begrudging capitulation. For those who wander alone, it is an unacceptable act.

Not all within the dark sphere ascribe to the same misanthropic view -all mortals are, necessarily, still their human selves. Such is the binding which had similarly limited magic. Within the hearts of men lay still the trappings of life, and the array of emotions that come with such an existence.

Condensed into an unfathomable finite, magic has come to express itself in manners fundamental to mortal imagination. These Aspects are thus:



[Obscurity]
Enigmatic darkness and invisible depths. Unknowable and ineffable songs hide behind a veil while touchless blades tease at strands of spirit. None -save the master that brings them from pits of nameless centuries- may ever define them. And for those masters who do, visions of black, aetheric seas flood the soul with madness.

[Manifest]
A giant of insurmountable will lifts mounds of unquestionable destiny from the earth and tosses them through walls of the deniers. The presence of its bulk pushes away doubt and uncertainty, and crushes under sight all that question even its faintest breath. Determination and desire is ignorant to the realities that seek to stifle action.


[Dynamicism]
Shapeless material twists and expresses, changing as light-speed evolution into the form that should see it fit into an eternity that cannot compete. All missing is obtained, all that never was, soon to be. Looked upon, only the echoes of past victories are seen, and the hum of innovation teases just out of sight, never to be caught up to.

[Complexity]
Labyrinthine towers, etched together in beautiful arrays that render appraisal hopeless. A river of camaraderie whose infinitely divisible droplets speak together in languages of timeless libraries. Worlds of meaning touch and depart, each affording movement into ever deeper crossroads whose signposts never signal the final destination.


[Precedence]
In greater lights and deeper shadows exists nobility and notoriety that transcends the wishes of lesser. Pure authority -without equal- and the shared-consciousness histories prevail atop uncultured and untested modernity that shall never age to the peaks of godhood. From thrones steeped in divinity, kneel.

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For any mage, a mark of their attachment to these concepts renders unto their skin, and forevermore governs their journey. For some, this mark comes as lineage, and for others as the signal of acceptance into a new existence -borne by effort or happenstance otherwise.



Most representative of the labyrinth glooms an alternate half of human confluences -the Dark City. This phenomenon manifests in high-population areas as the realm behind a thin veil wherein the arcane-touched may find their way. Dominant in the night and faded by day, the Dark City serves as a place of meditation, a place of settling, and an escape for the hunted. Meaningless and confounding but subtly familiar in its construction, the endless cityscape offers usually uninhabited spaces to use for chargeless purposes.

Though present for many, little of the dark sphere exercises itself within the Dark City. Great families and brotherhoods make their mark primarily upon realspace, wherein their own efforts and magicks serve to maintain the façade of a mundane world whilst their disciplined numbers hoard what lay beneath it all. For most, life within this dance is met at first breath. For others, it is a wondrous accidental discovery, or a dreaded curse.

But no matter how one steps upon the stage, there exists a constant to every actor:

Continuing in the play is to be mired in tragedy.