Item:Sanowret crystal

Sanowret crystals are magical crystals imbued with knowledge, based on the workings of an Item:Achaedi crystal. Sanowret crystals both teach the Arcana skill (regardless of guild and skill) and come with extensive notes about one of nine topics of magic theory.

To use it, one merely gazes upon the crystal while fully concentrated and absorbs the knowledge therein. Arcana is learned as the notes on magic theory progress, over the course of approximately half a minute. The amount of Arcana experience granted scales upward with your skill.

This is a permanent item, without needing to be recharged. Non-magic users can use them. It consumes concentration to use. The initial lecture the crystal is prepared with is random, although more may be unlocked with potency crystals.

They are currently only available as consolation prizes from the Bacon Man's Birthday Bash as a special sneak-preview. They are scheduled for general release some time after Hollow Eve 2016.

Usage

• STUDY CRYSTAL

Looking at the sanowret crystal, you believe it to contain some hidden knowledge that you can access if you GAZE into the crystal, or EXHALE on it to gain rudimentary knowledge of arcana.

You also think that you can turn, raise, rub, and clean the crystal.

The crystal looks fragile. You think you could LOWER it to put it on the ground instead of dropping it, which might damage it.

• GAZE CRYSTAL

View a lecture on a magical subject. Arcana experience is earned with each new pulse of information.

• EXHALE CRYSTAL

Gain a single pulse of Arcana experience.

• LOWER CRYSTAL

Used to put the crystal on the ground without damaging it.

• PUSH CRYSTAL

Changes which lecture is viewed when GAZEing at the crystal. Only available for crystals that have been upgraded with a potency crystal.

Notes

• GAZE seems to take roughly 30 seconds to discharge the lecture. Each pulse of lecture information gives a pulse of exp. It seems to consume 51% of concentration regardless. Learning is dependent upon current arcana ranks.
• EXHALE appears to teach roughly half as well, but it's instant and does not have a wall of text. Concentration hit seems to be the same.
• Both commands have no noticeable cool down and can be used as soon as concentration hits 100% again.

Care and handling

• Crystals should not be DROPped or they will be damaged.
• They can be LOWERed to the ground instead to avoid damage.
• Damaged crystals can be repaired by using an infuser stone on them.
• They do not require any other special handling and are weather-proof.

Lectures

Elemental Magic

Knowledge from your sanowret crystal about Elemental Magic rings clear in your mind:

The oldest scholarly body of work on magic concerns Elemental magic. While Holy and Arcane magic have mythic histories and Lunar magic a scattered archaeological record, only Elemental magic has a continuous history stretching multiple millennia. Broadly, Elemental mana derives its power from natural forces and interacts with the physical fundament of the Plane of Abiding.

At the heart of Elemental magic is the knowledge that all things on the Plane of Abiding are complex mixtures of simple building blocks. The commonly accepted elements are Aether, Air, Earth, Electricity, Fire, and Water, though fringe scholars within the Warrior Mage Guild have recently begun championing the existence of Metal as an additional element. These compose the atoms of which all material is made, and Elemental magic exploits (and, commonly, explodes) this.

Elemental mana is resonate with or created by (depending on your point of view) natural forces. Everything from waves to earthquakes, storms to volcanoes, find Elemental mana in abundance. Conversely, places that are stable and geologically 'dead' are bereft of elemental might. In addition, some mana appears to come into Elanthia from the Elemental Planes, springing forth from seemingly nowhere.

The Warrior Mages are perhaps the most iconic magicians on Kermoria, summoning relatively simple but powerful manifestations of pure elements. Lightning bolts, sheets of ice and pyroclastic clouds are their staples. Bardic magic, through the medium of sound waves, focuses more on subtle manipulations.

Elemental magic has the distinction of being the first 'legitimized' branch of magic in the current epoch. While the other branches were still mired in mysticism and elaborate ritual, Elemental magic had already grown to regard itself as a science. The first consistent Attunements were to Elemental mana, and the first magical devices made by mortal hands were Elemental powered.

By the Imperial era the study of Elemental magic was so well entrenched that the College of War Magics was the single institution of scholarly magic within the empire. This hegemonic force would last until the formation of the Moon Mage Guild, which sought and acquired legitimacy despite the College's best efforts.

Attunement

Knowledge from your sanowret crystal about Attunement rings clear in your mind:

Attunement is a descriptive term referring to an individual magician's capacity to see and manipulate the mana of a particular frequency in their environment. While attunement can happen naturally within certain species of animal and even in extremely rare instances spontaneously within people, in modern times the various guilds are responsible for the vast majority of attunements and each possesses their own traditions and methods. In particular, the Moon Mage Guild has been known to persecute those who pursue Lunar attunement outside of the hegemony of their organization, ensuring their monopoly on the practice of Lunar magic. For other frequencies, small and exclusive enclaves of hedgemagicians still exist largely in rural areas and practice various means of their own attunement processes and minor feats of spellcasting.

Through guided meditation a nascent magician learns to see or feel the normally invisible, incorporeal frequency to which they wish to become attuned. This process and the resulting experience of a particular frequency of mana depends on the magical lineage of the teacher and can vary wildly between traditions. The experience of mana to the senses can be thought of as an illusion or sensory shortcut rather than a literal manifestation of the force in question for example, an Elemental magician trained by the Bards' Guild will experience mana aurally as a kind of ambient harmony, while one trained by the Warrior Mage Guild experiences a visual illusion of a more roiling, violent force flowing around them. Neither is a more correct way of experiencing Elemental mana than the other, but instead reflect the traditions and dispositions of either guild.

The initial process of attunement can take anywhere from hours to months based on an individual's proficiency with the exercises in question, but once a magician is attuned to a frequency certain changes take place within the nervous system that allow them to access that frequency with relatively a small exertion of mental effort. This alteration is effectively permanent and attunement to more than one frequency at a time is physiologically impossible. Certain exercises have proven capable of 'shifting' a magician's attunement to a different frequency, but in the process they completely lose access to the old one, and such a shift is has not been known to occur without the specific effort of the magician in question.

Once attuned, a magician may then concentrate to feel their mana and manipulate individual streams into patterns to produce the spell energy necessary to create a magical effect. Doing this is mentally and physically exhausting as well as potentially dangerous. Simply through normal spellcasting, a magician will eventually find themselves too mentally depleted to continue without a period of rest, much as one may need to rest their body after lifting and carrying a heavy weight. Additionally, as the nervous system is the means by which a magician interfaces with their attuned frequency, channeling spell energy through it or mangling spell patterns -- known colloquially as backfiring -- can lead to increasingly crippling damage to the nervous system, which in turn affects a magician's ability to continue manipulating mana.

Nearly everybody possesses the basic mental and physical capacity for attunement to any frequency given adequate training, though attunement in the population at large tends to be quite rare and restricted to those privileged with wealth, power, or those otherwise capable of accessing some kind of formal magical training. Individuals who attempt to become attuned may also fail to be able to attune to a particular frequency of mana while being capable of attuning to another for no readily discernible cause. The most common anomaly however is a condition known as mana blindness, defined as a physiological inability to attune to any frequency of mana. Mana blindness is congenital, can be inherited from either parent, and is known to breed true, with magicians estimating anywhere from 1-5% and growing of the population lacking the ability to perform magic entirely.

Fables exist about attunement the same as any other magical subject with the most famous being legends about so-called 'true sorcerers': individuals capable of attuning to multiple or even all frequencies of mana simultaneously. As noted, the nervous system is not physically capable of being altered or adapted to attune to more than one frequency at a time, and attempts to do so at best lead to a magician's attunement simply shifting from one frequency to another. The manipulation of mana outside of a magician's attuned frequency is possible but dangerous and must be done blindly, with no means of actually measuring or sensing the mana in question. No evidence has ever been found to suggest that multi-attunement is anything but an urban legend, and sorcerous casting remains a dangerous and frequently hubristic pursuit.

Mana

Knowledge from your sanowret crystal about Mana rings clear in your mind:

Mana, simply, is the basic building block of magic. It is a form of energy that surrounds and suffuses all of Elanthia and the raw potential that is shaped into spell patterns.

Invisible and intangible to untrained senses, mana responds to psychic effort by an appropriately attuned nervous system. Mana is manipulated through the nervous system into specific, usually complex, patterns that compose the spell. This manipulation generates a secondary energy called 'spell energy' which gathers in the shape of the disturbed mana. Upon completion of the spell, the mana returns back to its original configuration and the spell energy, suspended in the shape of the pattern, activates, generating the manifested spell.

It is spell energy, not mana, that is created and expended in the process of casting a spell. Mana itself is considered by all reputable scholars to be impossible to create or destroy by mortal hands. Sufficient magic can shape it, divert it, or even enable wide-scale change of its layout, but nothing short of an Immortal or the forces of nature can create it. This answers one of the questions many apprentices have regarding magic: There is no threat of mana ever running out due to too much magic use.

There are two competing theories for to categorize mana, the frequency theory and the field theory. Frequency theory is by far the more popular and colors all of our descriptions. In it, we describe mana as existing in discrete units called, frequencies or realms, which do not interact with each other. Each frequency of mana is a separate natural force which shares many similarities but are nonetheless complete unto themselves.

Each frequency of mana is traditionally arrayed within something confusingly called the 'mana spectrum,' though careful scholars note that this metaphor is misleading. Mana, according to the frequency theory, does not exist in the smooth granularity of a spectrum, but instead is separated by stark leaps. Nonetheless, it is at least helpful as a construct that mana is categorized as going from 'more physical' to 'more rarified' from Lunar, to Elemental, Life, and then Holy.

Field theory, which is proposed to better explain sorcerous casting, argues that mana is a holistic force. Mana field theorists imagine mana as a single field or 'aura' of energy emanating from Elanthia, which in turn is aspected or 'colored' by various forces to produce the different sub-types that we know.

While field theorists lack evidence for their model, it is fair to say that sorcerous casting flies in the face of frequency theory and cannot be accounted for by conventional scholars. Meanwhile, field theory accounts for this by stating that since mana is a holistic force that we are selectively blind to, it is possible for any one manipulation to impact and warp the rest of the mana field, allowing for manipulation of other realms.

Spell Patterns

Knowledge from your sanowret crystal about Spell Patterns rings clear in your mind:

If mana is the building blocks of magic, spell patterns are the buildings magicians make out of them. Spell patterns are three-dimensional drawings, often but not always geometric, that are the raw 'formulae' of the spell being cast. While spell patterns vary in complexity, they are often extraordinarily complex 'images' that are vanishingly rare in nature. There are legends of spell patterns manifesting naturally by freak happenstance in the waving of tree branches or carved in gulleys by wind and rain, but no example of this has ever been formally documented.

While each magical guild has a corpus of spells unique to themselves, spell patterns tend to vary by frequency rather than guild. For example, Bardic and Warrior Mage magic both use very fundamentally similar patterns, even though both guilds keep their own grimories. This, in addition to attunement and mana compatibility, allows magicians that share frequencies to also share spells relatively easily.

Conversely, spells across frequencies tend to look bizarre to those who are not used to the rules and physics of that type of magic. For example, Holy patterns most often appear to have trinary elements to them, while Lunar patterns most often look like spirals or fractals. Nothing stops a Cleric from making a mana-spiral, but the figure would make no sense in terms of Holy magic and, at best, backfire.

Most spell patterns are rigid in their definitions and effect. The Clear Vision pattern does one thing and only one thing, and cannot be casually modified to do other, even conceptually similar, things. An exception to this rule is the relative rare 'spell matrix.' Spell matrices are an advanced form of pattern that have built-in redundancies and adaptive functions, giving them a limited ability to shift function based on environment or other contingencies. Even matrices are limited and mechanical, however. There is, as far as modern scholarship is aware, no such thing as a truly adaptive or 'living' spell.

The science, or perhaps art, of creating new spell effects is called spell research. Spell research is an incredibly dangerous practice of trying to find new, functional patterns from the basis of existing ones. While some of this work can be done theoretically to some success, radical new inventions in magic require physical, and typically explosive, experimentation. Spell researchers tend to blur the line between genius and madness, especially those that survive long enough to be published.

Complicating both casting and research further is the existence of confounds. A confound in tradition research is an unaccounted for variable; in spellcraft, it is a natural or supernatural force that influences the effect of magic. Many, perhaps even most, spells in existence benefit from or even flat out require a confound to function.

Each confound is unique and all known magical guilds have at least one if not more. For example, Moon Mage teleportation magic requires an extensive and intimate knowledge of multi-planar geometry to function correctly. The Teleport pattern, in what other guilds would consider a fatal flaw, does not include proper handling for targeting the destination correctly. That aspect is 'missing,' but the average Moon Mage is perfectly capable of filling in for it.

Indeed, to outsiders confounds often look like missing bits in patterns. There is no part of the Resurrection pattern that actually deals with the reunion of flesh and spirit. Likewise, the Fire Rain spell by itself lacks sufficient elemental power to form a pyroclastic cloud. In all these cases, the magician adds something special to make the spell function, and without it the spell is simply nonsense.

Magical Devices

Knowledge from your sanowret crystal about Magical Devices rings clear in your mind:

Magical devices are, simply, devices that use mana or spell energy to function. While this covers the vast majority of all 'wondrous' items seen in Kermoria, it is not all inclusive. Godly artifacts, soul stones, Chakral and Gnomish steam-engineering are all examples of objects which defy common understanding but nonetheless do not rely on magic to function, therefore are beyond the scope of this topic.

A popular theory of magical genesis places the first magical devices as naturally-formed runestones, where wind and water by sheer, improbable happenstance created spell patterns in stone. No such natural magic has ever been found (though there have been numerous hoaxes in recorded history), but it's a convenient theory for explaining how mortals first learned to manufacture spell patterns.

The mechanism for devices typically come in two forms: conductive or resistant. Conductive devices contain a core of some kind of mana-conducting material in a configuration that, when charged, forms a spell pattern. Resistant devices are made out of mana-resistant material so that when enough mana is 'pushed through' it the hollow interior forms the pattern. Both forms of device have advantages and disadvantages to manufacture, keeping both styles alive.

In addition, devices can be characterized as self-powered or requiring an external source of mana or spell energy. Self-powered devices employ what's typically referred to as a fount (or, in gnomish circles, a 'mana engine') to deliver the necessary power. Founts can be incredibly complex, up to and including self-recharging. Other magical devices either are built to hold a limited magical charge, or require the input of energy from a magician for every use.

There are some practical limits to these devices, especially self-powered ones. While founts of sufficient simplicity (or ingenious craftsmanship) can be 'free standing' or purely magical in nature, most of them require a cambrinth core. The more power, the bigger the core. This places a practical limit as to the power of a device, before you start needing a wagon team to haul it around. Likewise, there is a limit to how miniaturized a spell pattern can be while still remaining coherent at a desirable level of potency. Once again, particularly powerful devices tend to be larger.

Activation of a magical device can range from simple to incomprehensibly complex. The simplest devices include physical levers or buttons, while increasingly complex devices can require complex ritual, chanting, or even esoteric qualities like projecting an emotion or having a specific parentage.

Due to the nature of mana incompatibility, devices tend toward being based on one frequency of mana and accept no other kind of energy. Typically this is the mana most aligned with the device's effect, however relentless ingenuity has time and again proven you can create very similar effects from different frequencies if you try hard enough. However, in recent decades an Analogous Pattern that 'scrubs' spell energy into a mana-neutral state has become increasingly popular for pan-discipline usage. First seen in the Crossing's temple defenses, the 'scrubbing' pattern has since been miniaturized for common usage, though it remains an expensive and rare enchantment.