I love how your world is coming along, but this part seems arbitrary. How did they know this ritual would work as intended? Presumably, magic had never needed to be bound like this before so how did they know exactly what to do and when and where to do it? There are a lot of rules to your magic that don't seem to come from anywhere, or connect to anything. Your wielders can just create dragons? Did dragons exist in some shape or form before wielders manifested their magic as dragons? Was there a reason their magic took this form? And why do their spirits inhabit the dragons when they die? Is there a reason or is it just because it's a cool idea? I can see that you have a lot of ideas you really want to use but so much about it is "just because" or "because magic". The idea I really love is that wielders need to be cut off from their secondary element because the power is too overwhelming. That's a solid idea with a lot of emotional, dramatic potential. By that I mean there is potential for personal struggle here. Everything else about your world should be tied strongly to this idea. Why are some people channelling a secondary element? - Because magic has become unstable. How did magic become unstable? - Because of a ritual performed a long time ago. What was the ritual supposed to do? - It was supposed to bind all magic, never to be used. How was it going to achieve this? - By blocking or severing the connection between people and magic. And what is the source of magic? - Um...? How the beans do you make dragons with it? - Yeah um....? What is to stop people from destroying the source of magic altogether? - Umm...uh.....Hey look over there! <runs to car, slams door, revs engine, speeds away>
I love this! It'll go down well with the Devonians and Cornish, they already think that down here is the bastion of society.
I cannot read this thread title without adding 'Usul' on the end, and it is so many years since I last saw the film Dune. You guys all amaze me. My writing is set in historic periods in the UK. I do loads of research to get it right, but the creativeness and thoroughness in creating a new world, political system, race - mind blowing! So glad there are creative people like you all out there, as sci-fi/fantasy is a big love of mine. I don't attempt to write it because I'd be too influenced by what I've read - believe a flat world carried on the back of a large pachyderm already exists!
They didn't know it would work, but they had to try something. The where didn't matter. The when is part of an idea that I may or may not keep: the sun and moons (there are two) influence the waxing and waning of the elements - Water is more powerful at night, Fire during the day, etc. A lunar eclipse near midwinter is when the days are shortest and the moon is hidden - hence, all forms of magic are at their weakest, making it easier to bind them. The ritual to reunite magic was intended to take place on the summer solstice when the moons are visible in the sky, but I don't know about introducing a "race against time" element; I've done it before, and it didn't turn out well. I cut out a lot of information in the interest of brevity. Sorry about that. * Someone developed a ritual to bind elemental matter into a discrete form. Said creator was using it for the purposes of killing people, so he chose the biggest, baddest thing he could think of - a dragon. * No, dragons don't exist except in legends. * Every Wielder's dragon is different, because they're not built from a template - they're built from the creator's imagination, so you have the classic European dragons, wyverns, Oriental dragons, fairy dragons, etc. * When a construct (dragon) is created, there's a mental link between the Wielder and the construct - this enables the Wielder to control it. The downside is that the Wielder must remain nearby while it's active, but they can be put into "sleep mode", where they become inactive and the Wielder can go off and do other things (like sleeping). I'm not sure what the original source of magic was (I was pondering that very thing the other night; I'm leaning toward something like a river or something similar - a flow of energy). I think the ritual wasn't trying to cut off the flow of magic itself so much as block everyone from accessing it, by placing a barrier between the source and the Wielders. When the ritual went awry, the barrier turned into a prism, scattering magic into many different forms. After magic was broken, the four greater elements manifested as physical "nodes" of energy, which are located in various parts of the world emanate magical energies. In case you're wondering: no, distance from a node doesn't affect power - you can go anywhere in the world and still be able to use, say, Fire magic normally, because (and I'm spitballing here) the original source of magic is still present - it's just diffuse now, filtered through the prism placed in the flow. (Why are they physical locations now? Noooot quite sure - it sounded like a good idea at the time. It never occurred to me that I should think of a reason for it, but I really should, because it's kind of a major plot point. Thanks for pointing that out.) I was actually considering that question too - would it be possible to eradicate a node, and if so, what would happen? Still working on an answer to that. Might make a good story idea. I mean, it's not possible to obliterate the magic itself - if they'd tried to use the riual to eliminate the source of magic instead of blocking it, they'd have failed miserably - but would it be prevent a node from emanating power, somehow block anyone from accessing that power?
This made me say "Nifty!" out loud. Because this would also answer another annoying question I have, which is; why do people only have access to one particular magical element? Just a suggestion, but if your wielders, back in the good old days, had access to all the elements and could freely merge and blend to achieve all sorts of incredible things, with this prism idea you have a solid reason as to why people can now only access one, and the reason it is dangerous having access to two is because the magics can't work harmoniously together due to the prisming effect.
The problem with developing a setting/story over the course of years and years is that sometimes you forget why you made a decision, or how something came about. Case in point: the elemental nodes. I remembered last night why I put them in - there are four non-human races, and I needed a reason for them to be there. At first, I just added them because it sounded like a good idea (or something like that). Later on, when I got more serious about things, I went back and tried to find a reason for their existence, hence the nodes. See, those races weren't around from the beginning of time - they're actually descended from humans who were altered by the nodes' energies, though very few people know that. Anyway, I was pondering the nodes question last night. Something about it been bothering for awhile now - if they're the only sources of each type of energy, why doesn't it affect Wielders who got too far away? For example, if you're on the other side of the world from, say, the Fire node, how can you still Wield Fire? Sure, I could say that it does indeed work like that - which would be interesting - but I came up with (I think) a better idea: there are smaller nodes all over the world. This ties into something I'd already established: Elemental affinity. Some materials have affinity with certain types of energy; brass, for example, is compatible with Fire, which means that an item made from brass can amplify the power of someone Wielding Fire with it or through it. The nodes as they are now (we'll call them major nodes) are located in a gigantic volcano, the roots of the tallest mountain, the top of another mountain, and at the bottom of an ocean trench - in other words, places that exemplify their given elements. When magic was a single stream flowing through the world, these places gathered energy over hundreds of thousands of years - much like a piece of metal near something radioactive absorbs the gamma rays and becomes radioactive itself - and when magic was broken, they started to emanate all that energy. They were not, however, the only places that absorbed energy - just the largest. I've always had the idea that a Wielder in close proximity to his/her element is stronger: an Earth Wielder underground or touching the earth, a Water Weilder on the ocean, etc. - so this is really just an extension of that idea. It also helps to explain why, for example, Fire Wielders become less powerful in cold climates, or why Earth Wielders are useless on the ocean - lack of available power (as opposed to the old "diametric opposition" thing). As for the ritual: I also remembered why I did it that way. Yes, part of it was the influence of sun and moon, but I also needed a reason why the dragons couldn't just do the ritual any old time they pleased, once they gathered the requisite materials - and why they couldn't try over and over again if it failed. The answer: It had to be done at a certain time, aka celestial confluence. I forgot that I could set the date whenever I wanted it to be - a year, two years, five years after the start of the story - so that I could set the pace at whatever rate I was comfortable with. Exactly.
