Re: Political intrigue

[Steve Ames <steve@ns1.cioe.com>]

> Also, I have a couple of questions about the nature of 
> magic.  Where does elemental
> magic come from?  Same for divine magic.  I've been under the impression that
> they were opposite sides of the same coin.

I'll take a crack at this one. Two schools of thought (from the 
development days, but hey things could be back rationalized a lot of
ways).

1) Magi-physics. You all know my opinions on this, but here goes:

Priests get their magic from the emanations of the god-ship. Its a
form of nuclear decay but altered by the presence of the matrix' that
Gods have. To become a priest you have to be attuned to these emanations
and that involves your soul. With time you are able to use your soul
to store more of the godship energy (battery theory - but thats another
topic).

Mages get their energy directly from the radiation that occurs from
everywhere (including the god-ship). Elemental magic, not being as
specialized, doesn't require the use of a soul (in fact rumor has
it that it actually interferes, but thats an elven rumor and elves
are just more powerful elemantalist because they live longer...
probably).

2) PFM (Pure Froggin Magic)

Priests get their power from the God and from the Beliefs. Gods
get their power from the piety of their worshipers and are able
to redirect portions of their power back to their priests. How
good of a priest you are determines how much power (spell units)
a diety is willing to give you.

Mages get their power from the universe. Its everywhere and
everyone feels it. Mages tap into it to magnify their own
abilities with magic.

Going on theory 2, teresium probably shouldn't affect priests.
Going on theory 1, its all the same.

A divine spell takes a divine revocate. I believe a ring of
teresium can stop either type from getting spells back.

Its the revocate thing thats the kicker here... if magic was
magic either revocate would work. Since they don't (do they?)
teresium shouldn't either. Making divine items is crap. There
really should be no formula for it. The god should take a hand
in matters and either allow the creation or not. Especially in
Jaern where gods are not adverse to putting in a personal appearance.

In the Earth setting where Gods are more subtle (and refuse to
give irrefutable evidence one way or the other) a formula for
creating a divine item would definately be in order. Then people
couldn't say if it was the god or the formula. But not in Jaern.

						-Steve