I'm not too familiar with the high fantasy sword-and-sorcery genre outside of video games, so I have a question for all the readers and writers of that genre: are there any settings that have interesting explanations for how their magic works? In most cases I've seen it's Just Magic, suspend your disbelief, which is totally fine. But I was wondering if there's any writers who went bit deeper with their explanations for how some people can throw fireballs and see the future and whatnot.
I would say: Five Kingdoms by Brandon Mull, Young Wizards by Diane Duane, and the web serials Pact and Ra.
Brent Weeks has amazing magical system in his Lightbringer series. I personally dislike systems that have "It's just magic" because it leaves a lot to be desired with logical issues such as the Harry Potter novels.
Earthsea, if you've read any of those, probably has my all-time favorite magic system. It's briefly explained in the first book (A Wizard of Earthsea), it's a very simple and intuitive premise but still just opens up so many thematic possibilities (also helps that LeGuin is a genius who knows how to make use of those possibilities).
Do you mean explanations and consistency in how the magic works, or justifications as to why humans have access to magic at all?
Mostly just the nature of what we would consider magic. How come this person in Fantasy Land can throw a fireball and I can't? What's different about their world that makes this possible? Something about the fundamental forces of nature and the underlying laws of the universe must be different, otherwise we'd be making it rain and force choking bitches left and right. So, why is magic? What is magic? How is magic? Again, I've got no inherent problem with Just Magic, Don't Worry About It, but I'm curious about the routes authors have gone with this.
In Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, it's hereditary. Some people way back when were exposed to SOMETHING and could then do the magics, and then their descendants could also do the magics. I want to say such access to magic is often hereditary. It's a good place to start a YA novel, creating a built-in system of haves and have-nots for your Katniss equivalent to throw a wrench into. In some of my stories and others that I've read, magic is technically something everyone has access to, but despite the appeal of descending upon someone with lightning from your palms like a sith lord, there's far more effort/education/harrowing experiences one must undergo to become such a magician and the layman isn't particularly interested or dedicated enough to do so. One story I read (not gonna say title because mild spoilers) where all the main characters have magic powers because they were all born at the same time, and that happened to coincide with the Earth being exposed to a magic THING happening. So there's that too.
Brandon Sanderson, whom @Fiender_ already mentioned, is a really great example of this. Magic systems are one of his specialties, and he does a really great job of creating interesting, creative and diverse magic systems. For starters there's an element of science to his magic systems. Magic is clearly defined in his stories, how it works, it's mechanics, it's limitations. And you earn more about it as the story progresses. In Mistborn, all three magic systems are based on metals. You've got Allomancy, Feruchemy and Hemalurgy. Allomancy is explored somewhat more than the other two (at least in the first Mistborn trilogy) as it's the magic that the main protagonists use. How it works is that am Allomancer can ingest and then 'burn' a metal' inside them which gives them a certain ability depending on what kind of metal their burning. At the beginning of the story 10 metals are known to hae Allomantic qualities. Tin gives you enhanced senses, peweter gives you strength and endurance and so on. Most Allomancers can only burn one specific metal, but there are some rare people who can burn all the metals which obvously makes them super powerful. They're called Mistborn. In Warbreaker, Brandon created a really cool magic system which is based on colors. In The Stormlight Archive series, the magic system is called Surge Binding and you do it by sucking in a substance called Stormlight. Different people can do different things. And Spoiler: minor spoiler for Stromlight Archive in order to be able to gain access to these powers, people need to bind with these beings called spren These are simplified explanations of the magic systems, in story Sanderson explores them in great details and it's one of the fascinating parts of his books. I really recommend reading his books, it'll help you a lot when it comes to creating magic systems for your own world. I suggest the Mistborn series as a start. Good luck!
I don't have any published books I could direct you to, so I will type out the workings of magic in the book series I am currently writing. Helpful insight for you, and useful fleshing-out for me. I took a very good, hard, look at the real world before I constructed magic. I knew that consistent rules are what separates good systems of magic from poorly written ones. Systems of magic can make or break a book. Knowing this, I decided to take it one step further. I wanted to draw parallels between the way that our world works and the way magic works in my universe. So, I based my system of magic on the laws of physics. You've probably heard of conservation of energy, Newton's laws, all of that. Well, my magic follows a similar set of rules. Exposition and Background- If you are interested only in the workings of the magic itself, and not the source of it, skip to the next section. In my universe, there are eight spheres of magic, based on the combination of light vs dark and entropy/energy/chaos vs order/lack of energy. Each of these combinations is an extreme of magic. Each sphere has an associated deity (called a Daei). Sevanya- Rising Sun (Light), Thawing but still cold (Order) Silvenya- Midday (Light), Air (Neutral Element) Paran- Setting Sun (Light), Lightning (Entropy) Zapan- Dusk (Neutral Morals), Fire (Entropy) Demnya- Waxing Moon (Dark), Smoke (Entropy) Terran- Midnight (Dark), Earth (Neutral Element) Temeran- Waning Moon (Dark), Freezing (Order) Moranya- Dawn (Neutral Morals), Ice (Order) There is also a great creator, Praboginya or Aura who represents all aspects of magic, but favors none. In the pantheon of Arkir, one of my nations, she is said to be the mother of the world and the eight Daei. Each Daei then created its own children, the Daei-Talan (God-children or God-servants). The Daeian are in a way the spiritual energies of the world, and have little will. But their children, the Daei-Talan were beings of terrible capability, but also given powerful free will. Magic being volatile, and the Daei-Talan representing the extremes of magic, a great war erupted between the Daei-Talan, and threatened to tear Praboginya's world asunder. Great volcanoes erupted, mountain ranges rose, canyons were burnt into the earth, continents were sunk or raised from the oceans. To save her world, Praboginya created new lands beyond the vast oceans of the known world, where she imprisoned the Daei-Talan so that they may never harm the world again. Eight Daei-Talan, one for each Daei, were imprisoned in the known world, to act as prophets of their gods. They were granted the abilities to throw their voice into the world- manifest themselves as human beings who could walk beyond their underground prison chambers. When Praboginya created humans, they did not have magic. For a hundred-thousand years, humans were primitive, just a step beyond beasts. But they adopted civilization and created kingdoms. Tens of thousands of years ago, the voices of the eight Daei-Talan began to mingle with humans and taught them Daei-worship. Pilgrims discovered the sights of the imprisoned Daei-Talan, who taught these pilgrims to pray to the Daei for magic, and the Daeian bestowed their gifts upon small groups of men. These gifts were present on a pseudo-genetic level, so magic is at least partially hereditary, but far from all who have the genes can cast magic. Only the most pure-blooded descendants of those originally blessed with the gift could do so. Over time, the men and women gifted with this power came together to form communities. They were half wizards, half priests. The first magic relied upon prayers to the Daeian to carry out the prayer's wishes. But over time, humans meditated upon magic and learned to more directly change the world around them, without asking the Daeian to do it for them. These new discoveries somewhat dispelled the original religious nature of spell-casters. I mentioned magic as pseudo-genetic, but that is somewhat of an abstraction. Magic is not encoded in the genes, but passed through the soul in a similar fashion. Imagine an ordinary human soul as eight empty cups. If a human's parent had the gift of one of the Daeian, then the respective cup would be filled. Rarely, both a human's parents would be blessed by separate Daeian, and he/she could inherit both magical abilities. Rules of Magic- Conservation of Energy and Magic is a fundamental rule all gifted humans are taught. Spellcasters in my universe cannot draw energy or siphon energy to/from non-existence. Energy must come from or go somewhere. Thus spellcasters must sense the world and feel the flows of energy around them. Let's take a disciple of Paran, the Daei of the setting sun and lightning. To create a bolt of lightning, a spellcaster must act as a conduit of energy. He/she will draw energy from their surroundings, let it come into themselves, and then travel through them and out into the world in the form they choose, a lightning bolt in this case. This means that a spellcaster must channel enough energy to form a powerful bolt of lightning, but not so much energy that he/she loses control. The caster must then direct their attack and control it to prevent it from acting unpredictably- arcing at the floor at their feet, for example. This takes an enormous amount of concentration, because the spellcaster must consider every small detail or he/she risks the spell backfiring. Additionally, they must consider that when they draw energy from their surroundings, they are drastically cooling the air around them. If they draw too much energy, even if they can control it, they must be careful that they do no freeze themselves and those around them to death. Spellcasters who are gifted with Moranya's powers of ice have the opposite problem. They are taking energy from something to freeze it, and must direct it somewhere. They can't control what form it takes unless they are also gifted by a Daei of energy like Zapan, Paran, or Demnya, and so the energy just emanates from them directly into the air around them. Not much of a problem for a wizard trying to inflict lethal frostbite, but a wizard who attempts to freeze a river to make a bridge is very likely to end up releasing so much energy into his immediate surroundings that he would turn himself and everyone around into overcooked BBQ. That energy has to go somewhere. EDIT [Here's an analogy. Transferring energy is like picking up a ball from a small stool and putting it on another stool. It seems simple. But the ball is perfectly round and will roll off easily, so you have to be very careful when you are placing it. It's the same way with magic and energy. To throw a ball of fire, you must take energy from a source, then carefully form it into a concentrated point of heat, and then project it at the target. Just as how if you are not careful in placing the ball on the stool it will roll off, so too a lack of concentration during a spell will have unpredictable and devastating effects. A more powerful spell is like a heavier ball. It requires more concentration and effort to move it and place it, and if it gets too heavy for you to hold, you will drop it on the floor or on your foot, crushing it. So too a more powerful spell will be more difficult to cast properly, and improper casting will have dire consequences.] Inexperienced wizards will make the mistake of using their own energy or body as the source or destination for energy. A young boy may try to create fire and exhaust or even freeze himself to death by drawing energy from his own body. Or another one could try to make the rain into snow and blow himself up. It's a mistake wizards make exactly once. They either survive and never do it again, or... well, you already know. As spellcasters practice their art, these complex equations with energy become like muscle memory. Wizards begin to cast spells quickly and effortlessly, but are always restricted by the quantity of energy they are transferring. Even an experienced cryomancer cannot freeze a lake without setting himself on fire. An experienced pyromancer cannot belch flames like a dragon without cooling the air around himself to absolute zero. The best they can learn to do in this regard is give the source/destination slightly more direction, so that only the ground will heat up/cool down rather than the air around them, but even this has its limits. The ground cannot be cooled beyond absolute zero. It cannot be safely heated above a certain temperature. The most powerful wizards are those who have been blessed with the gifts of Daeian with opposite or near-opposite magical aspects. I mentioned earlier someone blessed by both Paran (light/lightning) and Moranya (neural/ice). Such a wizard can exactly direct both the source and destination of elemental spells involving ice and lightning (and fire). Thus this caster can freeze a distant tree and use this energy to shoot an incredibly powerful lightning bolt at an enemy, much more powerful than an ordinary electromancer could achieve without turning into an icecube. However, there is still a limit to how much energy even this kind of caster can transfer, kind of how there is a limit to how much electricity can flow through a wire without burning it to a crisp. In this analogy, the wizard's body will be destroyed and he/she will become a wraith until someone performs a ritual to release their soul from the world. Wraiths lose their identity and are usually a semi-physical manifestation of volatile magic. Unlike their human selves, wraiths can transfer incredibly amounts of energy without harming themselves. They take a physical form and cannot spellcast without it. When their body is destroyed, their soul lingers and will regenerate a physical state within several days in not banished by a ritual. Due to the extreme concentration required for spellcasting, most wizards who go to battle do so heavily armed and armored and train as the elite warriors of their culture would, so that they may fall back on sword and shield should they lose the concentration required to cast spells. Therefor they are very often warrior-monks like the Templars or Hospitallers were, as much as they are wizards. A few wise wizards will research the past and relearn the spells their forefathers used. These spells are prayers to the Daeian and ask for their assistance with these spells/transfers of energy. The Daeian lend protection to the mortal and prevent them from destroying their own body and becoming a wraith, thus allowing them to cast more powerful spells. However these prayers are far too time consuming to be used in battle, and are used more for purposes of general blessings such as favorable crop growth or curses like asking for the death of a king. There are rumors that the dark fog that engulfed and destroyed the homeland of the all-conquering Empire of Asgariath a century ago was conjured by Arkirian mages with the aid of Terran and his Daei-Tal, Bakhor. Prayers demand sacrifice. The more demanding the prayer, the more powerful the blood sacrifice may be. Ancient kingdoms are said to have sacrificed thousands for fortunes in war or in salvation from drought. Some say that wizards are not the only ones at risk from magic. Many wise men who study magic believe its misuse leaves behind instability with unpredictable effects. An uncompleted spell may trap and kill an unsuspecting traveler as sacrifice for its completion. An unpaid debt to a Daei or Daei-Tal will be repaid in one way or another. Most in Arkir believe that magic is to be used as a weapon or tool, as a sword or shovel would be. Magic outside these restrictions is seen even by wizards as dark sorcery and the people in my story are as awed and wary of it as people in our world would be. These rules of magic come to play a very powerful role in my story, despite most of it being about politics and characters without any aptitude for spell casting. How magic affects my plots Like any fantasy world, mine has a lot of prophesies, predictions, and rumors floating about. Some are true, and some are contradictory. The ones I list below are from an Arkirian perspective. Arkirians worship the Daeian as Gods. Needless to say, Tavron, where Daeiam are considered demons, has a different perspective. Here are some of the ways magic has repercussions on the story in my world. Darkness has crept into Arkir's forests, some say as the result of the pact made between the wizards of Arkir and the Daei-Tal Bakhor to destroy Asgariath with a malevolent fog full of evil beasts and demons. Surely the most horrifying use of prayer in history must require a tremendous sacrifice... Did the wizards of Arkir give Bakhor something worth more than the souls of many thousands, or does Bakhor now seek to collect a debt left unpaid? There are prophesies that Tagarh, the ancient prophet and the blessed of all eight Daeian, and Champion of Praboginya the Great Maker, will be reborn to purge darkness from the world and lead the sinners to enlightenment of the Daeian. There are prophesies that Meiva, ancient scourge and heretic against the eight Daeian, murderer of Tagarh, and Champion of Nauva, the Great Unmaker, will be reborn to bring darkness to the world and extinguish the Daeian. There are whispers of a gray metal pendant, lost to time, with the destructive power of the sun itself. There are rumors that the Cult of Nauva is gaining strength and the Sworn of Nauva have infiltrated every kingdom in preparation for Meiva's rebirth. Some believe Asgariath survived the Fogs of Akadra underground, and they believe Tagarh reborn will vanquish Bakhor and release Asgariath from the Fog, so that they may show the world the errors of their ways. Others believe Meiva will defeat Bakhor to prove her power and to unleash a wrathful Asgariath upon the world. A few wizards are said to have felt the tremors of distant blood pacts echoing from the uncharted continent far to the south, roamed by savage races of men that worship demons. Are they trying to summon Meiva's spirit so they may destroy the world?
For me, when someone goes to great lengths to explain how magic works, it just makes me roll my eyes. I think it's probably best if the writer knows what rules apply, to a degree, but doesn't mention them to the reader. Be vague, I say.
Well, in the story I'm writing now, ghosts are created with certain abilities that depend on the circumstances of their creation and necromancy (broadly, using the powers of ghosts) requires being able to access a certain state of mind, through a strong and often unpleasant memory. For example, being able to see across the barrier between the living and dead worlds requires a memory of desperately wanting something yet being unable to attain it. It's working well so far, offering an explanation for why the main character can access certain powerful abilities while struggling with ones that should be simpler. As well as fictional worlds, there's a lot of mileage you could get from historical magical traditions and mythologies in our world--that, and it's a really fun subject to research. For an example, take animistic traditions where (very much generalising here) the world is full of spirits that relate to creatures, places, objects and forces of nature. "Magic" consists of stopping crises by appeasing the right spirit, or to getting them to do you favours. They can be appealed to by diplomacy, intimidation, shows of fealty or bribery (making offerings of precious items, food or drink, or even offering to lend them your body so they can experience the physical world).
Agreed. If you were referring to me, btw, I won't explain all of it in an info dump the way I did above when I write it into the books. Clementine_Danger just asked for how magic works in fantasy universes, which is why I explicitly described my magic system.
Will you count the Elder Scrolls universe? Magic is based off of mainly emotion, and is provided by the sun, or, "sun," depending on the interpretation. But basically: the sun is pure magic; everyone has the potential for magic; few have the emotional discipline to manage it.
I've never heard this before. The Imperial Library turns up only this. Is there another resource describing the nature of magic? (I'll admit I was very lax in reading the books in Skyrim, so it could easily be I missed it.)
I goddamn love Elder Scrolls. I sometimes sit and listen to those damn lore videos on YouTube. Awesome stuff. Thing is, they never really provide much in the way of an explanation of the mechanics of magic. Is that not what we were discussing? I may have misinterpreted the question. Edit: An example of the kind of thing I find annoying is probably Full Metal Alchemist.
I may honestly be mixing up my lore with fan fiction. I read this: and this: and I interpret it as saying that all life is literally sustained by magicka, hence the potential for it in every person. I'm not sure if you were questioning that part too; I'm just covering my bases and elucidating everything. I'm almost positive that magic being controlled by emotion was a fan fiction I read. Right, I slipped up and mixed lore with fan lore. But "emotion" is still defensibly a mechanic.
I think it depends on the series and the author. I loved how the Death Gate Cycle dealt with explaining how magic worked, but one mention of Midichlorians enraged most an entire fan base.
I really liked how Sever Bronny covered magic in The Arinthian Line series. He really detailed how hard they had to work to learn it, and it seemed a lot more believable because of that.
That's because of how they handled it. You had the first trilogy which left the Force as a vague, semi-magical thing that permeated all matter. No one really cared about it beyond that - the fans were perfectly willing to believe "it's magic, yo". Then came the second trilogy with the pseudo-scientific explanation that stripped away all the mysticism. People might've been fine with it if they'd used the "midichlorians" thing from the beginning, but it would have definitely changed the tone of the series. Readers like magic because it's magic. It's not supposed to be defined or quantified. Yes, it should hold to a set of rules, but beyond that, who cares? Unless it's relevant to the story, we don't really need to know where it came from.
I really enjoyed the take in a Wizard's First Rule Series by Terry Goodkind. Not really heavily explained in the first book, but the way he talks about building a "Web" and additive and subtractive magic, was ingenious.
QFT My brother (who's mildly autistic, which is probably why he does this) will go apeshit on anyone who says that Harry Potter magic makes sense. It's insane. I'm of the 'it's magic, it sort of does what it wants' camp, but he has this insistence that any universe with magic in it MUST FOLLOW A SET OF RULES. After knowing him for the 22 years of his life, I still can't tell you whether he wants them to follow their own rules or an oddly specific set of rules that only he understands and insists upon. We did have a rather delightful conversation one day about how I was defining technopathy 'wrong'. He was quite adamant that the proper definition of technopathy is the way that old Sky High movie did it--something I'd refer to as technokinesis long before I'd call it technopathy. He insists to the point of zealotry that technopathy has one definition, and I'm doing it wrong. In my book. That takes place in a similar, but very clearly not-real universe. With gods and dragons and stuff. My definition of magic as a system is this: On the one hand, it's a force in the universe/world/setting that functions on the same fundamental level as gravity, or electricity, or any other scientific 'force'. It has its pushes and its pulls, it has a shape it wants to take and a reaction to being forced into another. Even in Harry Potter, which (admittedly) occasionally fails to follow its own rules, even if the characters aren't entirely sure how everything works, magic knows how it works. It knows what it's doing, and it knows what you're trying to do. On the other, any hedgewitch-level mage in my novel will tell you that magic is, at its core, infliction of willpower on reality. A strongwilled man may not necessarily be able to wield magic, but a weak-willed magician will never do anything better than card tricks. Sometimes, magic gets...unruly, and if you don't have the strength of will to rein back in what you've sent out, it can be catastrophic. EDIT:: I realize now that I may have failed to answer OP's question. I don't really know who I'd suggest as a...paragon of 'logical magic', but I will say that I lean heavily on the authors I read as a child: Lynn Kurland's fantasy series, Tamora Pierce, the whys and wherefores of Avatar: the Last Airbender...
