Realm Magic
The art which gods value and fear the most. It's hard to become a god without mastering it (although not impossible; you could steal the font from a dying deity, but killing a god is hard).
Low end effects:
- Creating view-portals. Like a regular portal, this is an area of overlapped space, but the synchronicity between the two spots is so poor that all you can do if you enter it and concentrate is to see the other side as though you were there. With a full portal, concentrating on it would move you to the other realm.
- Detecting the presence of inactive portals. Artificially created portals (as opposed to the naturally occurring kind) are often designed to remain hidden and inactive until triggered. You may not be able to tell how to trigger it, but you can detect its presence.
Moderate effects:
- Analyzing an inactive portal to try and figure out how to trigger it.
Hm. Perhaps a different format?
Interacting with Inactive Portals: triggered portals are normally almost indetectable when they're not in operation.
- Detecting one.
- Analyzing how to trigger it ("It needs a code phrase") or which Realm it goes to.
- Analyzing exactly how to trigger it ("Say 'Shazam is Cool!' while clapping your hands") or exactly where it goes. Triggering it via magic, without needing the "real" trigger.
- Changing its trigger to something else.
Creating Portals: create an overlap between two sections of space, quite possibly in different realms. Anyone in the overlapped area can concentrate on one or the other to end up there. A normal one is about 3 yards across. You can make bigger ones by bumping up the spell difficulty (house-sized +1 step, castle-sized, +2 steps).
- Making a view-portal... a section of overlapped space that isn't connected enough to do more than look through. You'll have to be familiar with both ends.
- Making a real portal that connects between two pre-prepared locations (you have to get to both spots some other way to do the prep). Making a view-portal without being familiar with the target destination.
- Making a real portal between your current locale and a desired other locale. Making a triggered portal with prep on both ends.
- Making a triggered portal between two spots without having to do prep on the other side.
Creating Pocket Dimensions: you take a certain sized area of the realm you're currently in, and cut it off, making it into its own realm.
- Make a temporary one large enough to hold a person. Making a permanent one large enough to hold a pocket's worth of stuff.
- Make a temporary one about the size of a house. Make a permanent person-sized one.
- Make a temporary one the size of a castle. Make a permanent one the size of a house.
- Make a one the size of a decent chunk of countryside... enough to house its own population. Once they're this big, they tend to be self-sustaining and don't need any special effort to make them permanent.
Interacting with Mana:
- Create a "mana depression" where mana tends to settle there. It's easier to recover mana in it. If the mana level is really low, this may be the only way to do it.
- Create a mana barrier... an invisible wall that mana can't flow through. This can be used to protect an area against many of the more subtle spells or to just make a zone where you can't recover mana once it's all used up in there.
- Break a mana barrier. Create a huge mana barrier.
- Open a font of mana within yourself, making you into a new god. Of course, established gods may well consider you a threat and smite you, and if you enter Hybris you're liable to vanish mysteriously. But for many students of Realm Magic, this is their ultimate goal. Make yourself into a minor deity, steal a decent chunk of someone else's Realm, and set yourself up as absolute ruler of a small population. Once you feel powerful enough, start seeking out other realms and try to expand yours.
I'd also need Closing Portals (might be part of Creating or Interacting) and Creating Stuff (really difficult... but making Avatars and such should probably fall under Realm magic, just because it's a god thing).
Posted by Kiz at December 2, 2004 11:31 PM