friendyousohard | 20th Spell [Video/Action for Cianwood]

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20th Spell [Video/Action for Cianwood]

Tower- Tower no!

[An enormous roar accompanies the sudden rush of sand by the lens of the Pokegear as an enormous Tyranitar begins stomping around, roaring at something that can't be seen through the sandstorm. Twilight backs up a few steps, holding her arm in front of her face as the sand threatens to blind her.]

Gah, it's everywhere... Tower, stop! It's just a-

[With another roar, the hulking monstrosity sends the object of its rage hurling over its shoulder past Twilight.]

... Tentacool.

[The hapless jellyfish is forgotten already, though, as Tower seems to have taken the opportunity to just start stomping around wildly, roaring challenges at what appears to be the world at large.]

Oh by Celestia's mane... When I get the sand out of my eyes you are going in your ball for a week!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

We haven't been able to pin down an exact reason, but... the most convincing theory these days suggests that there are multiple factors leading to the decline of magic.

First off, it's believed that there's a limited amount of magic in the world to begin with. Mages have generally been a fairly small percentage of the population, but even a small percentage of over six billion human beings is going to be an extremely large number, so it's spread more thinly nowadays than it was when, say, there were only a few million humans in existence. An individual human soul has less "weight" to it now than it would have five thousand years ago.

Second, the gods stopped being a factor in everyday life, which caused a transition from the Age of the Gods to the Age of Man. This had its own impact on the amount of magic and knowledge in the world, as well as allowing life to become far safer for humans. This, of course, lead to the problem addressed in my first point.

Finally, the population increase caused humans to spread out over the entire globe, which lead to the decay of the Unified Language of ancient Babylonia. This language was spoken by every being that existed back then, and it is thought to be intimately connected to the root of all knowledge, Akasha.

I'll admit that was a lot of information and it was all a bit complicated, so if you don't understand any of it, I'll be happy to explain further.

[don't blame him for this wall of absurd magibabble. blame yourself... or Nasu.]

[Now that was a whole lot of information to absorb at once. But she's Twilight Sparkle, she can totally handle it... Even if a lot of this seems utterly bizarre.]

Okay, so let me see here. I think I'm going to have to tackle these one at a time. Let's start with the idea that there's a limited amount of magic in your world. If that's the case, what's the source of the magic? It's clearly not human beings themselves, or the magic would grow as you did.

[how does one even nasuverse man]

Well... the true source of magic is Akasha, which is the source of all events and phenomena in the universe... but that's not what causes magic to be more limited. It's a bit strange to say, but the advancement of humanity in terms of technology and things like that actually caused the decline of magic by making more things possible through normal means. Magic is, by definition, something that cannot be accomplished through normal means, so if something becomes achievable it stops truly being magic and begins being a craft. For example, in the ancient past, manipulation of electricity by humans would have been magic, but now that it's commonplace it can no longer be considered such.

So, magic was effectively limitless at the dawn of humanity, but over time we've put our own limits on it.

[Very carefully and with lots of confusion.]

I see. So that's it. The definition of "magic" in our respective worlds is fundamentally different. In Equestria it refers to the capability to enact one's will onto the fabric of reality directly. Which sounds impressive but usually is just used for things like low-level telekinesis. The fact that it could be done by other means is irrelevant.

Of course, there are several things that can only be done magically, as well, but that's only a coincidence.

Regardless, I think I'm seeing a bit more of the picture here. As an example, "create fire" wouldn't be an acceptable spell in your world because you can create fire through entirely mundane means. But "create fire with no burnable material at hand" could work. Do I have that right?

That makes sense enough to me-so magic is more of a general thing in your world, while in my world things are divided into "true magic" and "magecraft..." though I tend to use "magic" as a blanket term for people not from my world because it's probably going to feel like the same thing to the majority of people.

Honestly, it would count as a spell both ways, but it would be considered "magecraft" rather than "magic." I don't want to say that magecraft is more like taking a shortcut because it still does some things that are borderline impossible by mundane means, but they don't upset the balance of the natural world too badly. For example, creating fire with no burnable material at hand would still require the use of mana or some object imbued with magical power beforehand as a substitute for the mundane means that could be used to create fire otherwise. It's still "magic," in a sense, but what we consider to be "true magic" would have to be something completely against the laws of the world, like travel between worlds or time travel. There's nothing even resembling those things that can be achieved by mundane means at this time, so they still qualify as "magic;" however, if scientists in the future managed to find a way to travel through time purely through science and technology, it would stop being magic.

Does that make sense...? Like all forms of knowledge, even we find it rather convoluted and still don't fully understand it, so I don't really blame you if you have difficulty with it.

I see... so "magic" in your world is synonymous with "miracles", wherease magecraft is the use of mana to cause effects as opposed to more mundane means. Except of course that miracles are dictated by a deity or Fate, and your true magic would be in the hands of mortal magi.

So depending on what the source of our transportation to this world is, it could either be an example of true magic by your definition, a miracle, or a technological cause... which if I'm understanding this right would invalidate one of your true magics as being... well, magic. Correct?

That would be it, yes. There are some borderline cases, of course-a striking example would be Reality Marbles, which allow a person to temporarily reject reality and substitute their own reality that has a specific set of rules. These are close to true magic, but because they're more like bending the rules than breaking them due to their limited scope, they're considered to be in their own category.

If we were assuming the cause originated in my world, then yes. This world and many others seem to function quite differently from my own, so I can't say that a technological cause here would invalidate travel between worlds as a true magic in my own, since there is no technology in my world that could achieve it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

20th Spell [Video/Action for Cianwood]

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