Close your eyes, breathe in deep, and bare your soul. Can you feel it yet? Open yourself up to the great beyond, and reach for the magic within you — draw from the well that was always there and bring forth power.
What does this power feel like? Which does it feel like? Mana comes in several types — not quite colors, and certainly not the shallow elementism of earthly materials and reactions. It’s more… tangible than that.
Mana may take seven fundamental forms. The form of mana dictates its texture and affinity. Mana will behave in ways similar to physical matter, and object can be imbued with mana that shares (and augments) properties in common, but there is for instance form of “fire” or “water” mana, though some forms are more readily compatible.
Seven Forms
- Blocking mana feels like punching a wall. Hard like stone, cold like metal, this is a thing of weight and resistance. Spells cast with blocking mana are erected slowly, built to last.
- Scouring mana feels like a whetstone or frothing washrack. It cleanses and strips away with rigid insistence, penetrable as a filter. Spells cast with scouring mana are discerning, by turns brutal or refining.
- Molding mana feels soft like flesh or sand underfoot. Malleable, flexible, yet not insubstantial or easily broken. Spells cast with molding mana are crafted carefully or grown just so.
- Flowing mana is a plunge into a raging river or the caress of a mere breeze. It is a thing of motion and purpose, neither resting nor easily diverted. Spells cast with flowing mana strike swiftly yet unravel just as quick, persisting only by continual strain.
- Drenching mana pervades and clings to you, like wading into muck or breathing in a powerful aroma. Some feel it taints and sullies, while others view it as a deep and welcome transformation. Spells cast with drenching mana insinuate and infest, with effects subtle and unseen.
- Stinging mana burns and repels, like tongues of flame or lightning strikes. Fire dominates the perception — the pain, the potency, the sheer intensity — yet a beast’s bite and churning gut also stings. Spells cast with stinging mana will consume foes and temper allies.
- Cracking mana feels like ice or glass: hard and brittle, but shattering to one’s great peril. It may provide a fleeting shield, but the sharp edge of a blade is far more suitable. Spells cast with cracking mana protect and penetrate, reveal and entrap, a fragile antithesis.
These seven forms align themselves at points of a septagram. Thus, each form has two form that bolster, two forms ambivalent, and a final two that hinder.
Cycles
Bolstering Cycle:
- Blocking and Scouring will fortify. Walls are inflexible and crumble if not maintained; critics on their own cannot create nor command adherence. Blocking grants authority and defense to the scouring, and scouring provides supports and roots out enemies within.
- Scouring and Molding will cleanse. Ablution is empty without something sacred; what is easily molded is easily corrupted. Scouring grants purity to the molding, and molding grants meaning and moderation.
- Molding and Flowing will flourish. Clay needs a hand to shape it; a river must be drunk and dammed lest it flood. Molding soaks and directs the fury of the flowing, and flowing nurtures and empowers growth.
- Flowing and Drenching will subsume: Each river has its source and tributaries; stagnant waters cannot remain isolated forever. Flowing supplies a vector for drenching to spread and infect, while drenching drags the helpless into the maelstrom.
- Drenching and Stinging will digest: Why infiltrate without sabotage? Why bite without venom? Drenching traps and infuses what stinging will devour, and stinging overwhelms any that would resist this encroach.
- Stinging and Cracking will smolder. Fire and lightning are fleeting and self-destructive; glass and ice are fragile. Stinging repels threats to the vulnerable core, while cracking provides a vessel to the energy that exhausts itself.
- Cracking and Blocking will crystalize. What is beautifully clear without being brittle? What is enduring without being opaque? Cracking provides the form with smooth focus, while blocking preserves it against temperature and impact.
Hindrance Cycle:
- Blocking impedes Flowing: overwhelming force crashing against a wall that won’t budge.
- Flowing explodes Cracking: slithering into weakpoints to force them wide open.
- Cracking punctures Molding: jagged blades driven into the soft and defenseless.
- Molding smothers Stinging: hands snuffing a fire, enduring the pain through flexibility.
- Stinging corrupts Scouring: a clensing flame raging out of control, soapy water turned cautic
- Scouring purges Drenching: wiping away the muck, a filter for foul air.
- Drenching erodes Blocking: walls weathering away, subverted at their foundations.
Ambivalence Cycle:
- Blocking and Molding: combines as bones or chainmail armor, opposes as crushing weight or grinding, squirming subversion.
- Molding and Drenching: combines as mud or drugs; opposes as watertight vessels versus poison and disease.
- Drenching and Cracking: combines as poisoned blades or sticky secretions; opposes as dripping through and sealing out.
- Cracking and Scouring: combines as piercing examination or sterilizing cold austerity; opposes as idk.
- Scouring and Flowing: combines as bathing in a river; opposes as idk.
- Flowing and Stinging: combines as lightning surging forth and molten rivers; opposes as extinguished flames and boiled water.
- Stinging and Blocking: combines as barbed fences or furnaces; opposes as walls blasted open or aborbing fire.
Philosophy
- Blocking: safety through perserverance. Blocking promises a world of order and stability for those with the strength to endure. Victory is its enemies crushed and outlasted; failure comes crumbling and collapsing, constricted from within.
- Scouring: glory through exclusion. Scouring promises a world of sacred beauty, purified of weakness and deception. Victory is the enemy exterminated, converted, forgotten; failure comes as doubt and contradiction, zealousy that destroys even the noble.
- Molding: harmony through adaptation. Molding promises a world of fitness and function, everything slotted into place, even obstacles. Victory is problems solved and enemies bent to its will; failure is balance destroyed by the invasive and uncontrollable, yielding to those that take all and give nothing.
- Flowing: freedom through impulse. Flowing dreams of a world of progress and novelty, a journey which can neither be stopped nor exhausted. Victory is riding the wave of a rising tide, enemies drowning below; failure is going astray far from home, and the horizon of death inescapable.
- Drenching: insight through transformation. Drenching promises a world of mad wisdom and alien expression. Victory is surrender, embracing the enemy as yourself, your superior, finding truth on the other side of madness; failure is finding nothing but madness on the other side, alienation that never ends, rejected or exploited by friend and foe alike.
- Stinging: satisfaction through aggression. Stinging promises a world of anarchy and delight, a playground for those with the hunger to seize their ambition. Victory is a gleeful cackle and the sweet suffering of enemies getting what they deserve; failure is being caged and outmaneuvered, the consequences of past actions catching up.
- Cracking: clarity through focus. Cracking promises a world of understanding and perfection, all things transparent and meticulously sorted, sharpened to the finest detail. Victory is a click of piecing falling into place, enemies frozen like specimens to be studied; failure is blurry, melting, shattered, all reduced to a mess.