Captain Jenno

Forwards Unto Dusk

We will, yes! Sorry for the delay, but as Princess can attest I've been on death's door the last couple days. I've got a terrible immune system exacerbated by an inherent sleeping disorder, so when I get hit with the flu I am effectively dead to the world for a little while. Working on the start now.

Forwards Unto Dusk

For clarity's sake, is anybody else confused about the nature of magus?

Forwards Unto Dusk

I feel like I shouldn't even have to explain this, you don't need a degree to be in this roleplay, I made magus a field of scientific study just so people couldn't pull exactly this routine and claim any sort of finesse with using other powers.

Forwards Unto Dusk

Science is something that can be empirically proven. Two luxomancers can perform the same mental equation and get the same energy bolt, in this respect luxomancy and magus in general is a science. Perhaps a better analogy would've been a biologist trying to give a lecture on metaphysics, except they're not any sort of physicist. If your character was a luxomancer they would be able to learn how to perform the spells of other luxomancers, not through observation or intuition but by being taught the processes by the luxomancers themselves: If you are not a luxomancer, then it would take ten years just to get to the point at which you understood the theory behind luxomancy, and even then you wouldn't be able to cast the spells, given that yours is a different sort of magus.

The reason magus is so diverse then is because, just like any group of sciences, there are veritable thousands of subdivisions of study and- much like when one is working towards their degree- it is a necessity that many Arcanists develop their own personal fields of study just as one would research their thesis. Two people may both be pyromancers, and both will be capable of conjuring generic fireballs and setting things alight. However if one devotes their study time to causing spontaneous explosions, and another studies towards spewing molten rock from their palms, the way they've achieved this is known only to them, and not the adjacent pyromancer. This isn't to say that what they're doing isn't an empirical science, it's just that they're studying two different areas of it: They could just as easily exchange notes, and- both of them having studied pyromancy- they would both understand. But someone who isn't a pyromancer and instead studied, let's say, Terramancy (earth manipulation) wouldn't understand a word of it, just as a biologist wouldn't understand a lecture on metaphysics.

Ibyxx has not studied pyromancy. He hasn't put the decade into learning its fundamentals, just as he hasn't put the decade into learning about umbramancy, luxomancy, opacamancy, auroramancy, necromancy or any other form of magus. Just because it cannot be emulated by people who don't study the same subject doesn't make it any less a science, if that were the case biologists and physicists would be mighty skeptical of one another.

Define illusionist.

Forwards Unto Dusk

What you came up with is inaccurate, then. Naturally I know what decides upon an Arcanist's magus, but it hasn't yet been divulged because it's a plot point to come. I can however tell you that there is no inherent link between an Arcanist and a hypothetical vast omnipotent universe. Magus is something specific to Luxas and has an origin point. The long and short of it is that magus is demonic mathematics, it's knowledge from The Nocturne, which itself is a vast unknown. The reason Arcanists can draw power from The Morrow Realms and the planet itself is because The Nocturne helped establish two of the realms, and exists in the shadow of the other.
What decides upon an Arcanist's magus is not something that can be appropriated. You've said that the information isn't inherited, just the ability, and that Ibyxx learns through observation, but that's akin to learning how to speak Russian through lipreading without a dictionary: You have all the tools you need to speak English (and use your own magus) but the language they're speaking is an entirely different one, the internal processes invisible and the point of reference basically non-existent, the only thing you have to work with is that both of you are definitely speaking some sort of language. And again, I've made it that way specifically so nobody can use the "every power" model.

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I also feel that I should mention, because there seems to be some mild confusion, that magus isn't something you're gifted with. In theory anybody can be an Arcanist, you're not born as an Arcanist or else magically infertile. If they're clever and you do well in school, or they've got parents who'll educate you themselves, then they can learn to use Magus. Arcanist isn't an inherent race or title, it's more or less Luxas' equivalent of having PhD in your name. The only thing that restricts your studies is what magus manifests when you know the basics. If you learn the fundamentals of magus and it turns out you're an opacamancer, that's the point at which studying auroramancy ceases to become feasible.

Furthermore, magus is not an energy inherent in anybody, either. An Arcanist doesn't pulsate with it in their veins, or anything. They draw it from other places. From the Duskthorough, from the Dawnstream and The Nocturne. Or even from the planet itself. The reason Arcanists are hard to come by is because it takes a lot of work to become one, not because they've got some sort of low magical birth rate.

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The problem is that this magus is out of place. Magus isn't the deus ex machina one might expect it to be, there is a limit to it and I wrote it as such just so nobody could use the 'my power is to have all of the powers' card. That limit is that it's a science, a complicated system of metaphysics, mathematics and ancient linguistics that take years to master. It's not just information that can be borrowed, it's such an intense field of study that the only magus you rightly understand is your own. Even if, hypothetically, somebody could change their magus, they couldn't also appropriate the knowledge of how to use it because that's maybe a decade of fervent study, the implications of stealing knowledge like that would make this a skill already far more overpowered than it is.

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This is why the Order of the Twilight Monks fits into his theme.
The science is an internal understanding of how your own magnus works, or rather in this case how another's works.

Any suggestion then on what to do?

@The Grey Dust

Yeah, that's another thing. Nobody really knows how Magnus, like... works. If science knew everything it would stop, as they say. Arcanists study how to use it, but nobody knows why it behaves the way it does and what makes a person's magus that particular magus. Honestly if I had to suggest how to make this in any way fair I'd probably need some time to ponder it and talk it over with my co-GM.

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Also, as a rule of thumb it's healthy to remember that roleplaying is a team sport, if you're ever under the impression your character could take on a couple of the other PCs from the very start then there is something wrong with the distribution of power.

Forwards Unto Dusk

I'm sort of inclined to agree with ravenDivinity here, particularly the part about fooling the universe, that's... well. I know this is a liberal fantasy setting, but I feel as though Arcanism and Magus being a science makes this magus a little unfeasible. There's no science to taking another person's work. This is akin to answering a sum with the answer of another. The way magic works is based around an intimate understanding of its fundamental building blocks. Stealing another Arcanist's powers would mean needing to appropriate all of their skill-specific knowledge, too, otherwise the magus itself is useless.