Revaliir

Author: Sophia Desher, Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 8:56 PM, Post Subject: The Grimoire of Magnolia Desher

PREFACE

The stars that shoot through the night sky. The butterflies that dance to the scent of flowers. The water that flows seeking lower altitudes. The sun that rises in the east and sets in the west. All natural phenomena have some cause behind them. Humans reasoned and created explanations for these phenomena. And so, everything that could be seen was to be explained by the human race.

Supposedly.

Naturally occurring phenomena were explained differently throughout different parts of the world. The human race, who sought a unified form of reasoning, would come to believe that all but one, or maybe even all forms of reasoning, were false.

However, the fantastic creatures of this world think like this: all observations, phenomena, and all forms of reasoning behind them are true. This is precisely because all fantastic creatures were born from the thoughts behind the phenomena themselves. Or perhaps the phenomena are born of them - it's not my place to understand. I'm only human.

I happened to see Baba Yaga's journal once. The witch had written all the events of the world in that book. The book described all of the most insignificant things of daily life from a completely different view from mine. It seemed as if the creature's observational skills transcended my capability to comprehend the world the witch had claimed as its own.

Even if it was just insignificant daily life, by recording everything, she was able to see something unseen before. Inspired by that, I've decided to compile a book of what has become the everyday environment of my life: spells.

Although I have to recall memories far older than when I saw the witch's journal, I may be able to acquire hints for new magic by writing them down. And from that train of thought in mind, this book was born. I will chronicle every spell I have ever cast, and every spell I have seen other mages cast. It will be the only magical grimoire in Revaliir that a human has ever written. The validity of this statement is pending.

I want to be able to use more magic. No, this thinking is wrong. The quantity of magic means nothing. The quality of magic is what matters. I want to be able to become more capable of magic. I hope this book will be another step in obtaining that goal.

And, if it doesn't, I'll just name it something grandiose like "the Ultimate Arcane Artificer Incantation Encyclopedia," and palm it off to some library for a high price, so it'd be okay either way~.

Regardless of this book's fate, someone will get some use out of it someday. I'm sure of it.

FOREWORD

Now, when talking about spells, it is a must to know the differences between different types of spells. I have taken the liberty to name each classification. I'll ignore the academic terms, such as elementalism, thaumaturgy, conjuration, necromancy, speisiomancy, et cetera. Those sorts of things only matter to standard, by-the-books mages.

I've been described as a very nonstandard mage, so (although I'm writing a book,) I'll be using my own classifications.

A theatrical-type is a spell that prioritizes visual aesthetics over attacking. Although this book doesn't follow a strict classification, any attacks I felt could be used for leisure without an opponent were classified as theatrical types. Most theatrical-types are fun to watch. These kinds of spells exist for no reason other than to show off. If the purpose was to annihilate the enemy, theatrical spells would be impractical to use.

Slave-types make something other than the mage attack. Ghosts, familiars, elementals, sometimes even corpses are used as the slaves. the cost performance is rather high, but it requires a high standard level of skill from the user. I'm still in the middle of researching this type.

Stress-types severely limit the options of the opponent. They include both sight and motion varieties, as well as combinations of both. Because of that, the attacks are actually quite simple to counter, so as long as the opponent doesn't give in to the pressure of restriction, the spell is easy.

Desperation-types are uncontrolled explosions of magic. Just a random shower of random energies. It isn't very pretty. Weak creatures tend to use them.

There are others, like doping-types which increase one's own physical strength, meteorology-types which change the weather, liar-types which create illusions and other falsehoods to fool the opponent, and a number of other types I'll cover in greater detail if I cover them in this book.

It seems that placing magic under the rules of arbitrary incantations, the rule limits the freedom of the user, but that isn't true. To be unrestricted means to be able to do anything. On the contrary, that means the immediate pursuit of the best, which in turn destroys variation.

If one were free, they need to pursue only the most efficient, the most effective.

For magic, that would mean spells with no gaps, or the fastest and largest attacks possible. That kind of attack can't be described as magical at all. It'd just be boring and predictable - the opposite of magic.

At least I think so.

Magnolia Desher

Hint: Hover over a field name if you want to know what it's for.

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