Slatepaw : Writing inclinations

Insert better term here.

Another attempt at writing development.

When writing for my Slatepaw characters focus on smells and sound, reactions should be reasonably animalistic. Sudden sharp sounds tend to make Slatepaws jump. And get increasingly nervous depending on the smells that cling to people.

Sound example.

The busy streets of down town Seized-Port rang out with the beat of early Monday.

JinJin already out and active darting around the sluggish Monday zombies. She climbed into the corner of the street, Michael's City Postage, to get work. The hum of the city died down, Jacob waved her in, "Hey my favorite orange lightning bolt.", He handed her the first package of the week. Jinjin did her best to reply "Thank Jacob.", The orange kobold turned around and bolted out. The beat of the streets returned, moving with the step of the city JinJin shot off to earn her rent.

Wow, that is so much harder than you would expect. I read it back to my self and I know that it isn't that good, but it isn't ... bad.

Slatepaw Character : Jareko reference

Bwuhahaha! Reference for Jareko, with a few mistakes.

Also Torok, do not try and fight the berserker kobold of DEATH.

Slatepaw characters : Timithy

Timithy...

Family, given, chosen, and claimed.

Aelpht, Yust, Timithy and no claimed.

He has no claimed, because he is better known as Aelpht Timithy.

The Aelpht family is mostly known for the exotic fur colors and patterns their kobolds have.

This also makes it next to impossible to hide from the local fanfair.

He is generally untrusting about unknowns. He hates to be left in the dark. Once commited to a job he tends to finish them. He dislikes freeloaders. He dislikes if he is a burden. Other details in progress.

I dunno.

Slatepaw characters : Jareko

(I am not happy with this colorscheme yet, but its gonna be greenish.)

This is Jareko.

Following, family, given, chosen, and claimed...

Urnsurpt, Lek, Jareko, Feysin.

Urnsurpt because it sounds long winded.

Lek, short and sorta sounds like link.

Jareko because he wanted to have a longer name.

Feysin was... Elderin spell blade? I suppose so, but it's like calling oneself Moontin when you are a werewolf.

He doesn't use his claimed name often, it feel into pretty much complete disuse after he was sent to SeizePort.

He is pretty forward with his opinions. Likes experimentation. Will get even in some shape or form if you knowingly wrong him. He is properly paranoid about otherworldly things. He is very aware of all escape routes, never wanting to be in the nightmare that he was in.

He has survived a rather psychopathic adventurer attack, he was the one that managed to kill the adventurer in question. He is reasonably adept with magic, however preferring passive magics over magic. (For example, elemental brands versus fireballs.) More of a selfbuffer than offensive blasty pow pow.

Slatepaw characters : Shale

ACTIVITY GOOOOOooo...

Following the same... Family, given, chosen, and claimed.

Tenth, Met, Shale, and no active claimed.

The Tenth family. Which may or may not be the actual tenth formed family.

The given name Met because his parents thought it sounded fancy and from another language.

Shale another simply because he liked it.

He is fairly naive about how the world works. Once he makes a decision he sticks to it, adversely he rarely gets a chance to make such decisions for himself.

Tends towards fight or flight. Is the nervous type, tends to cling to familiar grounds.

Is a reasonable judge of character.

He was sent to SeizedPort due to lack of discipline, he was not fairing too well in his assigned role.

He had the talent to become a Spell thief, but the required skills to be military level alluded him. With no other skills the management dumped him over in SeizedPort on a equally troublesome agent, with the hope that maybe something productive will come of it.

Slatepaw characters : JinJin

And to keep the writing up... All of my slatepaws need to be defined.

On the left here is Jinjin. (Urg that shading hurts...)

Following the, family, given, chosen, and claim names...

Tenth, Pet, Kit, JinJin.

Tenth family, I'll have to pun this...

Pet, following the short names, that will also have to be punned.

Kit, because she liked it and it was short.

JinJin, a once famous hobbit delivery runner, replaced in fame by Lulzy.

Directly related to Shale, they came from the same litter.

She was the best off of the whole group of story focused slatepaws.

She likes to explore, is independent, and is fairly adventurous.

She is easily frustrated, she tries to avoid asking for help.

She was shipped of to SeizedPort (I dunno what to call it.) Due to association with her brother Shale. Who for reasons related to him was booted over there as well.

World building : Slatepaw naming system

Besides the fact that I should be writing more. letsee what I can do.

Slatepaws operate by family names.

How one slatepaw's actions reflect on their family is empathized. when it comes to recognizing names one's family envoke how one should treat them, respect or scorn.

For lack of better term, dishonored families are unlikely to stand for long. Younger family members tired of the scorn they receive disown themselves, losing all value, except for their personal relationships, often preferred from the complete ill they receive from others.

Now rarely do individual Slatepaws become notable. It is more often that the family in general receives credit for what they did.

Most often because of this, the individual kobolds take "claimed" names of famous persons from any culture. The names are taken when the person in question feels like they match the abilities and other qualities of this other person.

When a kobold does somehow gain enough fame that they are recognizable, it is polite to actually wait until that kobold at least dies before others use it as a claimed name.

Timithy Yarnt (RANDOM LAST NAME GO!!)

For example is recognizable for his name and is also very easy to pick out of a crowd.

The event that pushed him into being famous was a historical event for the kobolds.

His tower along with four others fought off the entirety of a swarm of abominations and fiends.

The four other members may not have received such fame as he, being more recognizable in fur pattern. But their names will become claim names for courage and all that good stuff.

Eventually I will have to write and illustrate this event, but that day is not this day.

So in the end the common Slatepaw kobold has a...: Family name, Given name, Chosen name, and a Claim name.

For example Shale's names respective to the last.

Tenth, Met, Shale, no claimed.

Family names tend to be at least two parts long. Given tends to be short and end sharply. The Chosen is of course what ever sounds cool to the kobold in question.

That is pretty much what randomness I have to say. It is unstructered, makes no sense, and isn't any fun to read. :)

At least I got this on paper now.

Tact's tale : 01 - Beginning stupor

Recollection flows like a river, it swirls, foams, slows, and speeds by. Like a river it captures emotions and feelings, evoking lost memory's.

The smoothly traveling river flows through the landscape, not far unlike ordinary scene.

It shifts into a rushing twisting mess, and finally rapids.

Gravel rasped at his body. The great force of the water pulling and pushing him like a rag doll.

He felt himself risen in the water, freedom of moment returned as the weight of the water lifted from his body. "Vooruuggle" fresh pain flowed through his body, but the water flowed away from him. The stinging water left the eyes, and sound took its place and the rest of the senses followed.

He felt different, but the pain and the near drowning made it hard to tell. Soon the salt teared out of his eyes. He laid there looking around on the sandy beach under great cliffs. Exoitic bird's chirps filled the air.

............

I wasn't expecting locals, but its hard to pick know example where the survivors get jumped expecting them. At least it wasn't those blasted birds. The natives were not human, not that is even a good comparison for myself any more.

It didn't take long to figure out the language used, at least that is what I thought, everyone knows so many different languages it is more amazing to know only one.

Said locals were called Sarnaks. From what I understood they have only been around in force for the last dozen generations. The level of coordination, tactics, and scheming was simply amazing to me. They took and used every resource they had, this included people like me getting put into a partially productive job.

I had been dumped into the military, then the scouts bucket for the short rats like me, followed by the miscellaneous bin of sorts. My primary was a strange sort, Jacob was one of the minorities running any sort of military position. He was a human but he still towered over me. The actual training I was given was to stab things and which way to hold the sword, every thing self was untrained and free form. It is amazing that bin I was in actually got any thing, from what I understood he just set his men loose and random things got done.

The secondary and tertiary, that stick around with Jacob told me that once I get deployed I should just ask if any thing needed stuff done, both of them confirmed this from personal experience that it works.

I don't understand that a working military could even function with this, however it is clear that the rest of the military works like expected.

He dropped me in the middle of no where, at least relatively on such a isle.

....

The river then again from rapids to crooked river then once again rapids.

Three weeks... he was dumped out of the middle of reletive nowhere. Among his many exploits include...

Killing aviaks, killing crabs, killing more aviaks, going fishing, killing lizards, killing more aviaks, more lizards, more aviaks, and followed by killing a assaulting force of aviaks, their captain, and ride a griffin back.

Get sent next door.

Kill pirates, kill crabs, kill lizards, harvest a splattering of naturally accruing resources. Blast boats of pirates with magical blasty potion. Kill more pirates. Kill raptors, capture Glassador, Tag/kill lizard dogs, kill several boats worth of pirates. Their second mate and captain, riding their griffen back and forth for said captain killing.

Get sent else where.

Kill great apes, kill and poison ettins, Kill/steal the metaphysical manifestation of skeletons. Kill panthers, kill more raptors and killer plants. Get sick of that. Head out to dismantle the actual entirety of the Aviak's society. by... Killing Fishers, Killing Sap tappers, Killing egg care takers, Killing Archivist, Killing their current leader... Not to mention while doing so poisoning their whole city with harmless until tiggered by a magical blast of doom. (which in the end wasn't used because it would... say kill a entire race to "Deader than dead" status and bring the wraith of the gods upon the Sarnaks.)

Finish that blahblah, go kill at least another few dozen Aviaks, sort out what is happening, enable sarnak to kill at least 4 dozen aviaks in one go. So yeah... Busy month.

..............

I had killed so much... so many so many.... so many...

ureah...

For that reason I took a break and decided to craft.

--

Already done crafting, it seems that what profession I choose made steroids for fighters it seems. (skill upgrades, how do those work for fighter types?)

--

And so I leave this isle that I didn't really care for, without any true connects to Jacob and at least a few hundred kills in my name, meh... And so I left for Butcher Block Mountains.

----------------

RAhirdhigaeriyawirhet

I should have started this earlier, this was a quick spam spam spam spam and spam, update to get this to the point that my character is at the moment in game, at level 23. I just have to make sure I write a bit per level up with every thing that I did fresh in my mind.

Currently level 23 Ratonga Brigand, level 15 scholar.

Andrian : destilled backstory.

The goal of this post is to write up something short but concise. My blog posted focused on Andrian's general backstory is very wordy and contains things not needed for the game I am in.

So letsee...

Now the bits I want to get through.

He is a stranger to these lands. (The DM's setting.)

He quickly grasps languages, or at least the local "common."

He takes a cautious approach until he needs to stab the crap out of something.

He is very Alert (Max possible ranks in Spot/Listen/Search.)

I want to play him off as pretty strong, and fast. As in a Lightning bruiser. (Of hard hitting speedster type.)

He prefers melee.

He has seen Cuthulian monstrosities and lived. (Ran or fought, or both.)

He has dealed with the FEA! (dun dun dun.)

Now shoot. Its already pretty much time to go... So yeah.
At least that is the general things I want him to have, I'll try and write up a decent backstory for next game, Maybe...

Crystal Construct

(Quick Picture done in 30 seconds.)
Another world building bit.

The standard method of storing magic in a ready to use medium, and programed for non-magic users and practiced.

The crystal's size directly corresponds with the possible energy stored and total programmable channels on the crystal.

Standard created sizes run from civilian size at around one's thumb, to work and military that range around three times that.

The type of stone used increases in quality as it goes from civilian to military. From simple rocks, crystals, and refined glass and metals. The constructs once prepared have a fine layer of runes, to hold on to the magic of the owner and allow it to be programed.

The effectency of cost of creation and use ratio evens out around high end work crystals. Military grade crystals are actually specifically commission for war mages that have trouble controlling more than 3 crystals and still need more output of power for their job.

Use for the crystal is mostly limited to mages, however a attuned crystal a non-mage can be programed to shield the user from outside harm, but the use is limited due to the untrained mana recovery rate of the owner.

Civilian crystals are used by inexperienced mages learning the ropes, so that they can actually experiment with their power. Though these crystals do not require much licensing, the greater power available for young practitioners really help them on their way. The crystal however does drain the innate recharge rate of the mage, practicing that bit of their ability that is normally impossible constantly strain on low budgets.

Work grade crystals are used for long work hours, excelling on normal drain like handling in house and on the field magic. They do not have any more output than the normal civilian crystals, but they can store many times more energy. It is best of the owner keeps them on his person at all times, so they can be charged off the job.

Military grade crystals are similar to work grade, however their output is much greater, allowing a mage to pour every scrap of energy into its destructive job to overwhelm their target.

-

The crystals are at most used in threes, but experienced mages can use more than a dozen with proper management. Past three crystals direct management is possible but very hard to use in stressful work to effective levels.

Depending on the users type of magic the energy and color of the crystal is different. Some sources of arcane power cannot be stored as effectively, but they can still be used as shield buffers like non-magic users.

Not much else to say, but I think any trained users can use another's crystal and the power taken can be from any donor. Willing or not... bwahhahahaha.

Familiar Ritual

Familiars are directly connected to their master's soul.

To actually join them together the process is extensive.

The ritual takes 5 minutes to actually do the binding part, but it requires building a basic circle and two weeks worth of energy stored to be used during the 5 minute cast.

The energy required to bind the two takes roughly a fortnight from only the person who is going to partake in the ritual, the time it takes to charge is at the common rate for inexperienced mages.

Once the energy is collected, the mage needs to prepare their familiar to be.
This process requires special ink, to be incribed unto the animal's fur. This ink is to act as a gateway for the mage's energy. This Ink will stay after the ritual no matter what happens to it's fur.

For the ritual it requires a simple animal to be tamed to the point that the owner can inscribe all of the runes. Followed by this the mage takes their familiar to be into the circle and flows the energy though what ever they stored the energy in, and through themselves to their familiar. The unfocused energy will during the sustained 5 minutes connect the two.

This connect is young, but will quickly flourish into a impossible to break bond that no matter the distance the two will feel each other.

The young bond directly effects both the Mage and Familiar, Bahavours start to cross over.
The first few hours the familiar and mage must be directly next to each other.

The second week the familiar starts to form solid personality, that will stay with it even if the bond is broken. The bond is strong enough to survive periods away from each other.

Once a month has pasted, the dou can easily focus though each others senses, and can spend extended periods apart without any problems.

At this point the familiar is completely bound to its owner, and the familiar then starts forming its own independent magic.

Familiar creations.

I have been throwing ideas around for characters who are Familiars, Or characters that are Familiars.

To prevent some of the annoying bits with familiars, like they only turn up when needed for something, like in Order of the stick before the current arc, I want all familiars to have personality, or at least the same level as a extra should they be an extra's familiar.

The bases I want to cover in my setting.

1. Familiars are intelligent, if still tied to the fact that they are animals.

Familiars start out as dim as a doornail, but after the ritual that binds them to their owner is finished, over the next few weeks the familiar will reach a similar level of intelligence as it's owner.
So if I was going by 3.5 type attributes, WIS, INT, and CHA, would rise to at most the master's reflected stat, perhaps WIS and CHA lowered to reflect the animal's nature.

2. Familiars are a battery and conduct for magic.

Besides the expected small bonus to it's owner, a Familiar allows a mage to run around wielding significantly more energy then they could without their Familiar, allowing greater feats of magic, as well being able to use magic through their familiar like normal.

Both the master and the familiar hold their own supply of magical energy inside them, a mature familiar can use their own supply of magic to do things. But togather, the master and familiar can dish out far more powerful spells, (mostly in the evocation sense.) because the output is doubled.

3. Familiars can only be small animals.

Unless say, you have some insane level of resources to drug a large bear and getting the whole ritual done while preventing it from starving while doing so.

Besides the familiars view their master as equals, (at least early on.) and should the larger animals play as if their master is a equal, it could lead to accidental mauling. As well Familiars tend to misbehave before they mature, and it is much easier to handle familiars that you can physically pickup with one hand.

4. Familiars become a super power version of that same animal.

Of course we got the dire versions, but not in that sense, more of the animal becoming magically better, endurance and the ability to claw you of course.

As the animal is infused with magic from it's master, it matures, and it becomes very hard to kill, and tend to be significantly supernaturally better at it's own species focus. For example a Ferret familiar can find a rat to eat, and catch it far easier than a normal ferret. As well the normal small sized animals after maturing become next to impervious to falling to their deaths, they just shake it off... their masters not so much.

5. Familiars mature
As a familiar exists, it ages on a different scale, it no longer ages as a animal, but as a immortal magical beast... of cat sized doom.

Immediately after the ritual to bond to the familiar is not any different from the mage that did the ritual, how ever its behavior is practically super glued to the mage. As the Familiar matures they can spend more and more time away from their master, and in the end become independent.

The Speed of maturing is time as well magical ability based, and they tend to mature faster under tense experiences. At the very least, the Familiar improves with the Mage.

Maturity effects a vast group of things, mostly meaning they can survive should their master go say die, and they become increasingly magical in their own right.

6. Familiars reflect on their owner, and the opposite.
The tendancys of both sides of the bonds reflect unto each other.

Like for Example, my character Kloe, and her familiar Alex.
Alex likes Shinies of course, and is a bit hyper active.
Kloe likes to learn odd bits of things, and hyper focuses on things.

Now after the bond matures.
Alex in addition from before also actually picks up random information.
And now Kloe has problems focusing on things. (And she has a passing interest in shinees.... meheheh...)

Positive and negative reflect on each other.

7. Familiars and their masters share their senses.
Both sides can always find each other, unless extreme measures are taken.
Before maturing the mage may be overwelmed by the familiars senses.
Later on after filtering that over load, it just takes a bit of focus to see through each others eyes.

Extreme emotions are felt on each side, until the the familiar matures, when the familiar get's its own personality, and full on emotions.

If they are together in the same place, they can direct each other too threats, and all that.

8. Blah blah and blah.

Yeah, internet is going to die again, next time I guess I will write up on what I see the familiar bonding ritual is, I want to make it decently interesting.

Character design : Andrian - Part 1

And now for more character development for Andrian.

This picture on the left was drawn by me.
Two weeks ago I decided to illustrate Andrian.


I think I have a creative fun way.

Lets rattle off some basic things.

Name : Andrian ' Marten ' Drake
Race : Human
Height : 6'1 / 6'2 (Undecided)
Weight : 175'ish pounds.
Eyes : Green(mostly)
Hair : Rich Brown

Personality : Normally cautious until the fight begins. Generally with conflicts he takes cautious routes, only taking the direct method when the stakes are risen.
He acts very aggressively should any thing be taken from him, seeing that he had some uh... "every" thing taken from him at one point. I'll talk about that later on.
While fighting he gets a bit excitable.

Now his back story.

His family was generally known as fearsome combatants, known for coming back to avenge their own deaths. These stories were formed from some legal outmaneuvering that a long past ancestor did to the Fea which allowed all members of the family to reincarnate and comeback.

The catch was that only actual fighters, those that have seen combat and are always relatively ready for it counted. (So the retired actually go to final rest and do the full death cycle thing.)

The reincarnation though took years for the warriors to come back, because this reincarnation is just skipping a few steps of the normal process, and rudely bumping into other parts of the operation.

(In general reincarnation is set to :1 in my setting, mostly just souls get recycled type stuff.)
The cycle is like this.

1. Death
2. Soul is sent into limbo. (While the proper paper work is being done.)
3. Soul is sent to the correct Afterlife/punishment (If applicable)
4. Soul is sent to the astral sorting machine to be reincarnated as similar creatures.(Mostly Levels of life, intelligent souls tend to stay that way, and animal souls are just that. Though punishment can include a cycle as a animal then back as a humanoid creature.)
5. The Creature's soul is sent to a creature as it's being birthed. (If space is vacant.)
6. Creature goes about life and dies, go back to 1.

The Fea's boon skips the system from 2 to 5. In a way joining both souls together. But it only goes from Intelligent to animal to prevent some painful story justifications.

Andrian actually dies now, and is reincarnated. Before that the bounty hunters come and actually kills him instead of him somehow running away. At the time the bounty hunters came he was a member of the milita, all other members of the family having fled the bounty hunters before had become more "Civil" in profession, meaning no reincarnation.

The group making sure his family doesn't comeback know the type of creature that this part of the family becomes after death. (After I get to comic story stage, I will explain this further, after all the family's original bloodline must be getting thinner, it could be many generations.)
Time their attack with a mass pouching of their own design to kill off all pine martens they could find. Reducing the population and the birth rate massively of the target reincarnation creature.

So when Andrian fights and falls to a strangely compentant group of assassins, there were no new births of pinemartens, the assassin's mastermind was hoping that Andrian would end up in the next part of reincarnation (3) before any were born.

That would have been true if the Changeling in charge of making sure this reincarnation thing gets messed up dropped him into another plane, were there was no mass hunting.

In this new plane Andrian was merged with a Pine Marten, and lived out 3 years ignorant of his past ability and existence, until the third year where his human mind started to resurface.

Normally it takes until the end of the animals normal lifespan for the human mind to come back, but a strange mix of magical happenings jump started the process. Namely a unnamed kobold attempting to make him a familiar, the ritual failed and he fled.

Over the next few months his mind came completely back, still abnormally effected by the pine marten that he is effectively still is. Using the idea that were-creatures, the first ones were of evil spirits possessing animals, Andrians resurfacing mind does the same, in a less malicious way of course.

From the start I wanted Andrian to be a weak shape shifter, or were-weasel of some sort.
Though the classification is confusing now, after reincarnation is he now a Were-marten or Were-human... Either way he can change into both, but prefers human simply because he can over all function better human.

So once his mind resurfaces he attempts and succeeds at learning the local language, and what he had known before stays with him erreily. (A part of the Fea's boon.)

The boon also instructs him how to turn back, which he tries after preparing with a decent sum of stolen clothing. But the transformation took much longer than it should have, reflecting the presence of the pinemarten inside him. instead of cleanly turning him into a human, he has become a natural were-pine marten/human... THING...

That transforms slowly, I dunno, I don't see him changing in a round.

After a few weeks he gets his bearing, and starts a quest to return home, and deal with those that had killed his family! and himself? ... yeah. I got plot twists in the future for that.

I have decided that this is Andrian's Canon, even if my 3.5e game for some reason won't allow it, I want it to be some how mentioned. The next part I am going to brain storm on methods of getting the spirit of this in 3.5 dnd, and working.
Also with decent draw backs and other stuff as a conflict only for this character.

Character design : Andrian - Part 0

Andrian... my first orginial character who mutated and budded other characters before the first concept died off as each aspect became their own character.

Andrian's current incarnation is a Physical adept, a term that I use for my setting for people who have broken the glass ceiling of the body. Now... this says nothing of the actual skill that the person has.

But before we go into the aspects I wish to create and forge for this character lets go over his history.
urg...

He started out named Flint, Who was from the FUTURE, in the setting he became a mage knight. Who was insanely fast, durable, had silly amounts of magic, and reaked of suetastic existence to myself now.

At one point I had even decided his personality got drastically changed when he was in danger or people needed him, to a bit of a bazerker.

I am now actually glad that this version of him faded, and now afterward in my great self proclaiming "Duh", I noticed I could put each "Cool" concept into a completely different character, instead of concentrating them into one guy making them godlike.

--
Flint himself, still from the future, became more of a ghost in shell type augmented person, with technician skills rather than mad melee and magic. In fact I had decided despite the low tier magic being dabbler access, he has non and is completely immune to non-psychical blows. (Fireballs works, Ability drains do not.)

Any fighting Flint does would be with a SMG, raining down decently accurate bursts while using wireless "Hollywood hacking" to take over things or taking off limits of mecha destroying the target and the mech.

I still need to decide on the limits that the augmentations give him, I see him surviving explosions, rattled but survivable with a repair job and a new can of spray on skin...
--
But enough on that, lets actually talk about Andrian.

Andrian "Marten" -Last name pending. (Maybe like Drake or something silly "Royal" like that.)

His first name randomly pulled from the Extraordinary book of names by the late Gary Gygax.
The second while punning kinda weirdly, if it makes sense it depends on the order the story goes.
His last name hmm... I want something low level aristocrat sounding, because his family earned the name during large conflict. (Far far before Andrian's birth.)

Conflict rises up, now somewhat lazy Drake nobility high-tale it away, far away.
They are reasonably safe were they were, but the Drakes were remembered as very fearsome warriors, so they got dealt with by lots of well payed assassins.

The majority of the drake family was seperated, but Andrians parents stuck togather and gave birth to him. It took 18 years after this for the assassins to find his parents.

Andrian coming back from mandatory milltia training came home in classic movie style with both of his parents dead. A bit with lots of dead assassins, a few holes from the mage that the assassins hired, including a hole that the mage's corpse is in. His parents heads were gone, but at least a dozen corpses of fallen assassins littered the small homestead.

He quickly scanns the area and grabs his stuff, knowing that they will find out that his parents had a kid. Even if it pains him to leave the body unburied.

And probably like a idiot or something somehow manages to hide for a few months without being found, then fails at one time, manages to escape through fea bargin and then falls through a demtional rift! Bam... ok, yeah.

World development - Magic -

Letsee...

Let me start with what I don't want for magic.
-LIMITLESS POWER (It's OP! nerf it now!)
-Deus Ex Machina producer.

Those are the two things I really cannot have in my own setting, they would be hard to explain away to have a actual plot.

Magical limits -
I prefer to have some sort of limitations to magic, it may rely on some sort of mana, but it will constantly strain the user. Devastating spells cannot be easy to pull of.

So I have decided to have it sort of run off stamina, so exhaustion and other strain induced affections take hold if constantly used. Mana would have to be a type of stamina as well, allowing practiced mages to at least cast for a while.

On the note of Mana, I think it is a neat idea for squads to sort of draw mana from each other, allowing the one magic user to keep sending off spells longer to support the group.

But what happens when one runs out of mana, I think they would feel a tad drained, but in a unexplainable way, like feeling tired from running upstairs for a while but without any thing to directly connect the drain to.

Though on top of the Mana-Stamina and everything, I want emotion to fuel magic, I want fury to be personified by the raging spells that angry mages unleash, I want it to have emotional impact as well as cinematic awesomeness. So yeah... As it is developed.

Deus Ex Machina -

I think I have come up with a decent way to prevent story elements from whisking themselves away. Too prevent the skeleton key of plot keyholes.

What marks a very experienced wizard/mage/sorcerer/whatever is the ability to complex spells without a focus. Focuses would be objects with the spell's guts, it is what the mana/stamina is channeled through to get focus's effect.

For example a novice mage would be able to throw magic missile, but it is really just a straight dumb fire burst of energy. The bolt its self may not last that long if the mage is unpracticed.

In contrast to having the mage with a focus, that may just allow a mage to cast it like it was the 3.5e DnD spell. Fire away, don't worry about actually hitting the target, it doesn't miss.

Too the more extreme end of the magical knowledge and experiance base, a master mage would be able to throw off spells without the focus with much greater effect than the novice with the focus. But that is not too say that the master cannot benefit from using the focus.

While the above examples kept to reasonably simple spells (At least in my mind). The simple spells would just be force, maybe elemental in nature and execution. But it takes a great wealth of experience to do proper healing and mending on the field. Stopping someone's bleeding by healing them would be much harder than "Ta-dah!". It would be healing it close, healing ONLY the original flesh, you can't have germs and other nastiness suddenly growing to life threatening sizes or quantities.

Things that may have been simple in terms of caster level in dungeons and dragons will be complex but also very useful to their users. Perhaps a barkeeper shelled out the money for a channel and crystal that gathers energy that will reform glasses that are broken.

Generally I want to prevent magic from being a catchall for solving problems. I will define more of Magic A is Magic A, when I actually get to writing my stories... Then I can start reconing! whooohooo!

World development - pt1 of nil

Now, lets say... actually update.

The general setting I have in mind has these features.

- All fantasy races represented (But with hopefully my own twist)
- Races of my own creation represented (Like my kobolds, that I will dedicate a whole post to)
- Different racial types of each respective race, so there are not just Scandinavians(white people), we got them all.
- Technological level will be staggered realistically, but a general splatter.
-For example, heavier than air flight has been around long enough that there are attack planes.
-(With what ever medical level was around about then. So think reasonably modern.)
-Magic will be around, but will not be all encompassing utility source.
-For example, it will take a combination of magic and medical knowledge to properly deal with fatal problems.
-I like the spiffy idea that combat medics use magic to stabilize a combatant until extraction.

That is the general mess that comes to mind at this time.
I am always brainstorming on this setting, I want so many neat things, but I really don't want too over load it.
But one thing I really want to avoid is monoculture. There isn't just one elven group, or dwarves that all share the same values with each other. They must be people in their own right.

Later on, say tomorrow if I remind my self, I will post up the general magic system and other topics.