I realized last night that, before I begin to delve too deeply into the socio-political landscape of both the over and under worlds of Ticonderos, I had better get a more concrete grasp of what magic exists in the setting and how each of them works. Being a “classic fantasy” setting with some twists, and being one of the major campaign settings for an accompanying tabletop RPG, of course there’s going to be magic, and in fact there’s going to be several different kinds of magic. Ticonderos is saturated with magic deep down into the roots of the continent, magic trickles through ancient glacial streams, springs up as ferns and flowers from the ground, and flows through the marrows in the bones of fantastic beasts and fearsome monsters. The people of Ticonderos cook with magic, for gods sakes. Oh, there’s magic, alright. Let’s talk about it.
Forget what you think you know about wizards and priests. Magic isn’t (just) written down in books to be studied and condensed into specific, single-use spells waiting to be unleashed upon the world. Magic lives. Perhaps, the Dhogem of The Deeps understand this best of all. They’ve been hunting and eating magical creatures for centuries and using the bones and organs to build and craft objects and structures with innate magical powers. This kind of magic can be preserved and perpetuated through the creation of new forms. It’s grisly to talk about, but so long as the body part has not rotted or dried out, the magic contained within can be harnessed for new purposes. Dhogem use fire beetles instead of hot coals for cooking and smithing, create powerful magic weapons and armor that form a symbiotic relationship with their wielder and even build new “creatures” so to speak, splicing together parts from numerous magical creatures to form living tools, structures and vessels such as the Vesac Barges that float above the City of the Wheel in the north of the Great Chasm, guarding the skies of the Dhogem capital from monstrous flying predators.
But just as magic lives within the blood and bones of creatures, it also flows through the earth itself. Magic can be eaten and drank and used as a tool, but it is also something that can drawn upon and allowed to flow through one’s self. This requires a quality called Attunement which represents a person’s awareness of, connection to, and ability to interact with “extranormal” forces – in the case of Ticonderos, “extranormal” explicitly means magic and includes things such as divine blessings and miracles. On other Shards, perhaps the symbiotic relationships forged between self and eldritch eidolons of immense power constitutes the “extranormal,” or even the interface with high technology and post-human cybernetic enhancement. On Ticonderos, those with enough Attunement can call on the magical forces within the Shard itself to flow through them in order to achieve some desired effect. They are channelers of powers gifted to them by the mana flowing through their world or by cosmic or otherworldly powers like gods and demons. These individuals do not waste their time composing spells, outlining formulas, or studying dry tomes. They have no need to follow rules or learn how to coax magic into specific shapes, because they are directly “plugged-in” so to speak. Ticonderos has ancient orders of druids possessed of powerful Attunement as well as pious priesthoods devoted to several gods and goddesses (and even other things as well) able to weave potent magical effects on a whim. Their magics aren’t spells as such, they need not, and generally do only rarely, produce the same effects with their magic twice.
Wizardry – The Science of Magic
The science of magic is something that has been studied for a few hundred years and has begun to crop up in some of the larger, more secular settlements, human settlements in particular, as a sort of “neo-magicalism” movement involving what you might typically be familiar with as Wizard Schools. Wizards in Ticonderos typically have only the barest amount of Attunement required to sense magic and interact with it at a basic level and use years of accumulated knowledge about magic as well as their own high intellects to study magical effects, their origins, what causes them, if any, how to reproduce them, if possible, how to alter and/or enhance them, etc, ad nauseum. As such Wizards codify magic and create and reproduce spells but they do not truly channel magical power in the same way a Druid might. Wizards must study, memorize, and catalyze magic using inherently magical components alongside spell focuses such as staffs, wands, or other totems. Because potentially anyone with the brains for it can learn a spell here or there, and because humans trend toward lower Attunement than the Dhogem or the Oreiads, these Wizard Schools are seen by many as ways to elevate and modernize human society. Not only can the common folk someday better their lives with a minor spell here and there, structured magic spells can be preserved and built upon over time so that cities can employ them over a grander scale.
The Waybetween 