I’m not of this #universe: I’m a #fictional #character, #heteronym and #counterpart of… her, who lives in this universe. Think parallel/alternate universes, if you will.
To you all, my universe is fictional: it has magic. #Magic is just another force of #nature, like gravitation, but can be influenced by magical people, and by amulets and other enchanted objects.
Despite the magic, my universe is pretty close to yours: major historical events are the same, most minor events are the same, and it has Internet, Wikipedia, ActivityPub, Mastodon, Twitter, Meta, Google, Microsoft…
Based on my family and hers, and people we know, I think that the people are nearly the same in both universes: a few differences in most people, and some that are unique to each universe. I expect that people will diverge more in later generations, as small differences pile up.
I think that the designers of this enchanted internet router here, at my desk, scryed for a similar universe to mine on purpose: given the networked-many-worlds theory, finding such an universe by chance is all but impossible.
About 7% of the population has a little bit of magic (myself included), 0.5% more than a little, and 0.03% is really powerful.
The distribution of magical people in uniform by sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, etc. Magic simply cannot care about our petty distinctions about people.
Magical education, on the other hand, has the same deficiencies as regular education, and more: magical guilds, not the government, control it.
Traditionally, magic was done by enchanting #amulets: crystals of various types, imbued of magic and a precise intention by the enchanter. A person in contact with the amulet (the recipient) is affected by its intention.
An amulet can use ambient magic (subject to frequent variations, thus brittle) or the recipient’s magic (constant influx, but can exceed the person’s magic: small risk of exhaustion or death).
Most traditional amulets are one-off creations, highly dependent of the mind strength and magical capacity of the enchanter, and with a very precise effect; generic effects, or too widespread ones, will fail and/or consume all the magic of the enchanter.
Due to the effort of creation, amulets are very expensive. The average price of an amulet, nowadays, is in par with a low-priced car. A few amulets are works of art: think Fabergé eggs.
One of the cheapest amulets is the one mandatory for every professional enchanter: the Amulet of Pure Intention. The intention for its creation is: “The recipient believes in, and will enchant with the intention of, exactly what they speak.” Thus, an enchanter using this amulet cannot lie about the intention they’re putting on the crystal. They simply speak the intention while enchanting.
I used an Amulet of Pure Intention once, in class, a long time ago; it’s a weird sensation, like your mind is being twisted to believe your own words - even if they’re a lie.
It was widely believed, since the 1600s, that magic is part of nature, but only after the 1930s, with the mathematics brought by quantum mechanics, scientists managed to interpret magic in a physical framework; Thaumaturgy, the field of knowledge about magic since times immemorial, is merging with Physics since then.
From late 1960s onward, computers became just powerful enough to run models of magic flow, and reliable detectors/reproducers for magic followed in the next years.
By early 1980s, the field of technomagic established itself: mass-produced enchanted items, with subtle (and not-so-subtle sometimes) effects, and low cost. People and corporations create new types of enchanted items daily; the sky is the limit.
I had magical classes, theory and practical, in my 3 years of high school, plus whatever I could learn on my own later in life.
The classes were sponsored and taught by the local magic guild, which was ran by the same guys of the Freemasonry shop. They spew some tripe about magic being a gift of the Maker, but the real reason is pragmatic: headhunting for potential enchanters, and trained magicals have better job prospects than untrained ones.
I can’t enchant, not enough power, but I can do the basics: move around objects (up to a few kilos), and conjure and disconjure very small objects, without an amulet.
Telekinesis gets harder with mass: it requires about half the physical effort of moving the object with your own body, plus mental strain. I moved a big wardrobe once, and ended half a day bedridden, exhausted and with a monster headache.
Conjuring and disconjuring is even harder: apparently, matter resists being so violently changed, who knew? To me, it’s hard enough to conjure up to 200 grams of anything; I don’t dare to try more.
Página atualizada em 2024-01-07 20:31:50