Post:On Time Magic - 04/01/2020 - 17:59

From Elanthipedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
On Time Magic · on 04/01/2020 17:59 1734
Let us put aside the perfect introduction, for there is nothing perfect about the matter which we are going to speak. I have a story of cosmological violence only a Moon Mage would find wholesome, and if you refresh my cup it'll be yours to share too.

Ah, thank you! Have you ever heard of time magic? No? Well, some adventurers have! Notoriously fickle, notoriously the domain of the fae... and notoriously the focus of quiet research programs across all four magical realms. Never heard of that either? Feh, that's why I call them quiet!

Anyway, let's take a step back. You see, there's magic like Big Magic wants you to practice, and then there's sorcery. Sorcery gets conflated with necromancy a lot, but it's... well, it's a lot bigger than that too. Each of the possible combinations of realms has some technical term, but then you get to the apex, what happens when you throw everything together even the bits that you know don't go together and try to harness the result. The discipline is called "Feral Energy" by most researchers and it's basically the art, if art you're gonna call it, of trying to control backfires and explosions.

Then somebody did it. Somebody actually did it. I donno, some people blame the True Sorcerers -- never heard of them either? That'll be another drink, later. Some claim it's Necromancers, but some people always say it's Necromancers. I got an idea, I'll tell ya later. But somebody did it.

I mean, the easiest thing to do with Feral Energy is to blow stuff up! But then you get a Cleric or Moon Mage in charge of something like this and they start thinkin' what if you go around blowing up laws and concepts rather than things? And they did it. They blew up time.

Okay, we're still here. I mean, the plane didn't end or anything, but they found a backdoor into the fae's magic. So far it's nothing too crazy, ya know. Unhinge time a bit, making it go quicker or slower. But I've... I've seen things. There's this man, we call him 'V,' he has big plans. Big plans, and funding from the Immortals know where. Because ya see, that idea I have.

So far, most Feral Energy users don't think time travel -- like, actually skipping back to another era -- is technically possible outside of divine whatsits. Creates bizarre problems with the narrative of history we call time paradoxes, which make the whole thing implausible. But V's group thinks they can do it, and nobody else in our little quiet community knows how.

Until I realized. What if the time travel magic is coming... from time travelers? If the Plane of Abiding abhors a paradox, then paradoxically you'd need to, I donno, create the paradox of time travel in order for anyone who travels in time to not become the paradox they're paradoxing. Oh Meraud what have we done.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

This message was originally posted in Discussions with DragonRealms Staff and Players / Game Master and Official Announcements, by DR-ARMIFER on the play.net forums.