The Sevenfold Paradigm

Here’s the state of the art magical paradigm in Capital, selected and conglomerated from the original Principia Arcana:

Spells, enchantments, souls, spirits, and elemental are all – to a greater or lesser degree – the same, and, at their base, are entities living are least partially within a dimension that coincides with all other planes. We call this ‘dimension’ The Weave.

Raw magical energy flows out of all entities in the Weave. Things like the sun or powerful adventures produce more, while beings with less authority like a pebble or pile of bugs produces less.

In addition to raw energy, seven Threads of magic suffuse the Weave and those Threads can be pulled upon (by words, actions, sounds, biology, or even with external help) to produce effects. Sufficiently powerful entities can produce effects that ignore normal physical laws of the world.

…wands and magical items are portable storage for magical energy …runes and engravings are a combination magic prison/factory…

The book itself goes on to explain the modern understanding of magecraft in much more detail, but only in this section does it touch upon the Sevenfold Paradigm to which many groups and religions on Aerth (sometimes even unknowingly) subscibe.

For reasons widely debated, but ultimately unknown, the number 7 appears constantly in fields of study across Aerth. A number of these ‘sevens’ are detailed below.

Schools of Magic

Though traditions differ, most learned mages are taught to view Threads on a spectrum of light and divide magic into seven schools of magic. Though they align with the seven colors of the rainbow, they are usually organized in a different cycle based on ‘allied’ and ‘enemy’ schools.

Abjuration: Yellow (White). The magic of protection, nullification, and magic acting on itself.
Transmutation: Orange. The magic of enhancement, shapechanging, and transfiguration.
Illusion: Blue. The magic of vision, senses, and mind injection.
Necromancy: Indigo (Black). The magic of undeath, spirituality, and vivacity.
Enchantment: Magenta (Purple). The magic of feelings, compulsions, and control.
Evocation: Red. The magic of power, heat, and force.
Conjuration: Green. The magic of teleportation, banishment, and summoning.

Though some other ‘colors’ are occasionally generated or detected, they don’t have true Threads and those aren’t part of the paradigm. Grey light is generated where Threads intersect with fate and time (eg. divination magic), and when raw magic interacts with divinity or normal matter the ‘color’ octarine is created. To those without magesight it’s often described as the ‘color’ you see when you squint your eyes closed and press them into their sockets.

Metals

There are seven magically responsive metals. Many leading researchers think metals are made at least partially from condensed magic. This explain why dragons hoard metal, and the affinity kin have for gold and silver items.

Gold: a powerful conductor and accumulator of magic strongly associated with the sun.
Silver: capable of altering the nature of magic, as the moon alters sunlight into moonlight. undead and shapeshifters are wounded by silver.
Copper: capable of negating spells or diffusing magical energy back into the environment. Magic shields and barriers are often made of platinum.
Mercury: a “live” form of silver. Acts as a magical capacitor, storing charge and then suddenly releasing it. Also has strong associations with light and scrying magic.
Iron: a strong association with blood and violence. Accepts enchantments easily.
Lead: absorbs magic and stores it. Used as the core of magic batteries or for heavy magical shielding. Ghosts and most magical effects cannot pass through lead.
Tin: a “dead” form of silver. Tin is used only defensively. It negates magical effects, but neither radiates nor stores any magical energy itself.

It’s fairly easy, using a small bit of magic and some basic tools, to transform a more magically reactive metal into a lesser one (i.e. higher on the list moving lower) but the reverse requires a lot of magical energy and usually results in an explosion.

Gems

There are seven true gems. All other gems are corruptions, variants, or “mere stones.”

Topaz: true yellow topaz can diffuse a spell or enchantment, blunting its power without destroying it.
Citrine: orange and sharp, citrines act as powerful magic resonators, increasing the power of spells and enchantments.
Sapphire: lighter sapphires enhance patterns and help invisibility. Ones with deeper colors ensure time flows at a constant rate.
Diamond: diamonds are fragments from a primordial tree. They enhance spells that deal with life directly; either sustaining, measuring, or ending it.
Amethyst: amethysts are often carved to throw light in deceptive ways and are used in charms to snare or free the mind.
Ruby: rubies act as a magical focus, gathering diffuse energy or spells into one point
Emerald: emerald is known as a thinking stone, and is used for many intelligent or near-intelligent spells.

Combining the theory of metals and gems, we can see why crowns (gold, a magic accumulator, surrounding a variety of beneficial gems) are such powerful symbols.

Other Sets of Seven

• Seven intervals in an octave
• Seven possible directions (up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards, and into time)
• Seven perfect geometric forms (sphere, tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron, and unahedron, the regular polygon with fewer than zero faces)
• Seven sins (envy, greed, pride, gluttony, lust, wrath, sloth)
• Seven virtues (kindness, charity, humility, moderation, concord, patience, diligence)

Academic Classification of Spells

The Stays Daily Telegraph, a broadsheet printed by House Tannith ran a comic illustration. In first panel, a group of mage sit around a table luncheon. The caption reads “They have agreed not to mention the Question of Classification.” In the second panel, the table is overturned. Mages bludgeon each other with flatware. Hats are punched flat, dishes and spells fly. The caption reads, “They mentioned it.”

The Question of Classification has consumed the theoretical magic community for a generation. The previous system of (abjuration, conjuration, enchantment, evocation, illusion, necromancy, and transmutation), a system that fits so nearly into the sevenfold paradigm, has suffered several esoteric but devastating blows. The recent discovery of a divinatory spells dealing both psychic and force damage have pushed an faction of soothsayers to claim they represent an 8th Grand School. Healing magic was shown to be the inverse of necrotic damage, not a separate class of power form evocation. Illusionists wrested some light-magic away from Evokers, who in turn split into Elementalists and a bewildering array of sub-factionalists.

A few hoary old souls still support the Grand Schools unconditionally, but tempers run high. Profs. Velpish and Furitan of the Academy Unseen fought a duel over dancing lights classification as either illusion or evocation magic. At a faculty dinner, a visiting lecturer was heard to shout, “If cure wounds is Necromancy then I am a jackass!” to which another guest replied, “Pray ma’am, we are not discussing polymorph at this time.”

To head off further degradation of magic relations in Capital, a 3rd Ecumenical Spell Council was convened to redecide where spells would land in curricula and books printed in Capital. At the conclusion of the Council it was of course made illegal to begin questioning the assignations for the customary 100 years and a day.

Nothing output by this council affects practical mages, of course, who cheerfully reference spell-tables four centuries out of date or sometimes even a few decades ahead of the curve.

Selected Excerpts Captured by Council Reporters

Master Jives, Evoker of Ketrix: “If you’d read my latest paper, Gorrik, you’d know that all sane mages consider Flesh to Stone to be entwined spells: one to destroy flesh and one to create stone in its form! And since according to Maston’s Heirarchy creation effects take precedence over destruction effects, the spell-pair must be classified as elemental in nature!”
Gorrik, Concordant Envoy: “Flesh to Stone is clearly an transfigurative transmutation and not an elemental effect! Only a buffoon would replace flesh directly! (addressing hte presiding mage) With the president’s permission, this one would like to do the good deed casting the spellform on Jives so that we all might be relieved of hearing another of his ideas on any subject.”

High Wizard K’trey: “Lock/Unlock Spells clearly use unseen hands for lock-picking legerdemain, and their formulae should fall into the “Force/Manipulations” section of all but the most sloppy apprentice’s Spell Books”
Seven-Man Army: “If you follow the Morgstern Conjecture – not that you would, of course – you’d see that Lock/Unlock spells clearly are Transformative effects. The lock is simply replaced with a materially indistinguishable lock in a different state!”
High Wizard K’trey: “I’ve been following Morgstern’s hacky ramblings since before you were shoveling Firedrake guano. The use of ‘replace’ reveals your true agenda! Next you’ll tell me that on the Keyless Plane, each of our Prime Locks finds it’s long-lost identical twin in the opposing state, and this minor hedge-charm merely swaps them! Quantum Locks, pah! Now that’s a new one for my ear-trumpet!”
Seven-Man Army: “You’re not even worthy to speak Morgstern’s name! And as soon as the committee has raised funds to fill in the crater we’ll put up a proper memorial statue. Breaking out the old ‘Plane of Ideal Forms’ theory then? I think Prime Plane of Dunces is missing at least one exemplar. Replacing a lock with an equivalent un-locked form is no more of a stretch than polymorphing one creature into another.”

Abraxas the Black: “It was by my thaumograph that I first identified, cataloged, and even painted portraits of the diminutive demons responsible for most diseases! But your prejudicial codification is plain as day and would undoubtedly allocate this type of important research as a démodé “Dark Art!” It’s positively unenlightened!”
First Healer Manwe: “Your so-called thaumograph is closer to a thaumometer than to a true spectumating instrument. Remember your famous rant about “cheese devils” that you’d spotted through your ‘micro-scry’ instrument? I can’t believe you’d even show your face in this hall after that debacle.”
Abraxas the Black: “The cheese devils are real! I’ve seen them! I’ve summoned them! I still hear their curdling screams!”

Rangers

Wait.

Listen.

There, south east, about a mile, a silence in the song.

Following. Can you know that? Well, it’s certainly not random. A hunter or chance traveller would have birds scattering and crying. This wasn’t that. So it’s something quiet, that moves well. A big cat maybe? Too close to winter, but you guess there could still be one roaming around. Possible, but improbable; And tracking the scent of multiple armed strangers? Maybe, if it’s starving and wounded and can’t catch anything faster. Possible, but again, improbable.

Somebody once said that the land speaks to you. It was one of the stupidest things you’ve ever heard. All you do is pay attention. It’s hard to do though. And a lot harder if people can’t stop making NOISE! How in the Seven Divines has this group survived this long? Stumbling, stamping, snapping twigs, snapping branches even! Coughing, wheezing, gasping, laughing and talking, always talking talking talking, you may as well have brought a bell factory with you.

It’s going to try to kill you tonight. It smells like rain around sunset, that will dampen the fire along with everyone’s wits. You’ll want to sleep and visibility won’t be good. Alright, plan time then. Keep walking. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Just like the Old Bastard used to say: “If you find their sign then they can find yours.” They will be here, in this spot, in fifteen, twenty minutes. You can’t let them see that you stopped, or that you discussed something. Depends how good they are… what would you do? Well, you’d wait, you’d kill whoever’s watching, then attack while everyone sleeps. Over in five minutes if you got it just right.

Couterplan then… you’ll get lost. Perfect. “Hand me the rest of that whiskey, will you?” The silly little elfling looks surprised. You realise you haven’t spoken since this morning. You smile and think about where’d it be best to make your stand. The crags somewhere, amongst those pillars of white rock the mage calls calls ‘karst’. That would be a near-believable mistake to make. Lead them into the karst. They will follow you in where the hard stone will hide tracks and the pillars will give cover.

You suppose this is as good a place as any. “Wait.” You say and walk around a little. Back and forth, back and forth. A tread here, a mark there, just four or five minutes of lost time total. Lean on this stump and make sure to take of a smear of moss. Other people like you have disappeared from the world of Humanity, walking off into the Spine or the Witchmire, surviving somewhere totally removed from the noise and murmur of thinking beings. But not you, or at least not yet. You keep coming back, back to the noise and the stink, the booze and the idiot politics. Why?

You need things, very occasionally, complex or manufactured things, and for those you need coin. But it’s not that alone. It feels good to be of use. There are things out here in the wild, things even you can’t avoid or escape, things that even you can’t fight alone. Some problems need different skills, different thinking. And it feels good to be needed.

You down the drink in one. They’ve never seen you drink before and someone makes a joke. Not the halfling with the quick hands though, they might not know you are being hunted but they know trickery when you see it. You hurl the booze-bottle into the bushes nearby, empty.

“I thought,” the elf says, “you told us never to leave signs behind?”

“This way.” You reply. “We don’t have much light left.”

“Are we stopping to camp?” Asks the halfling.

“Yes. But before that, in about fifteen minutes, we’re going to kill a silent hunter in a labyrinth of white stone. Then we can eat.”

The Bone Palace of Ifnir

Outside

The wise traveler will only ever see the roads into the Bone Palace, and even then, only from a safe distance. Patrols don’t go out as they did when The Vizier still lived and commanded his troops, but even a work-crew of three-dozen undead laborers is dangerous to a group of unprepared travelers.

There are no farms outside the Bone Palace, only huge plantations, each one crewed by throngs of bleached skeletons. The plantations produce grain which is then milled in building-sized grinding wheels turned by yet more skeletons. You can feel the ground rumble as the grinding houses are rotated from near on a half-mile away.

The Walls

The city is surrounded by a high wall made of earth and bone. The wall is nearly 150 feet tall and almost as thick. Before the Forbiddance was created the Bone Palace had the highest wall in Shurima. If you believe the tales the wall itself is honeycombed with secret tunnels, armories, sepulchers, and catacombs. It’s said that the right spell will make the wall exhume itself and march off to war.

As you walk through one of the long passageways into the Palace you can hear the shuffling of dead, watching you as you pass, ensuring that the leader of your party is wearing a merchant’s medallion.

The City

The city inside the walls is clean and well-patrolled. It marches in place waiting for a rightful leader to return. Supposedly, the undead will respond to the rightful ruler of the Bone Palace, and signify this by kneeling. Then the whole war machine will be there for the scion to claim.

Food from the plantations is delivered to every house daily, and older food is swept away and thrown into the canal, which is choked with rot.  The smell permeates the whole city.

At the ocean end of the canal is a harbor filled with barnacle-encrusted skeletons.  There are thousands of them down there, clad in lead boots for marching underwater. Ships are allowed to dock for a short while. Certain strange shaped skeletons will pay a bounty for every corpse left on the dock. They will firmly insist that no one disembark

The Palace

The Bone Palace itself stands at the center of it all. It is constructed of perfectly white bones from animals and sentient races rendered extinct during the Vizier’s purge. Skeletons and mummies peer out from every window and battlement. Your merchant’s medallion will not gain you entry. 

A single tall tower rises from the palace like the broken rib of some forgotten God. If there are any answers to be found in the city they would probably be there.

DM NOTES: Undead Strategy

“Feeding a normal army is a problem of logistics. With undead, it is an asset. Feeding is why zombies fight and skeletons don’t eat at all.”

Shuriman Strategist, discussing battle plans

The greatest strengths of an undead army is in logistics, and in sieges. 

Not needing food is a tremendous advantage in long campaigns, far from home.  The need for a supply line is minimal. This resilience is even more useful during sieges.  Undead armies can encircle a town forever. The undead have all the time in the world.

Skeletons are also resistant to arrows and burning oil, two common methods of repelling a siege. In fact, skeletal armies are so good at sieges that an opposing commander will often make great sacrifices to force a pitched battle elsewhere.

The greatest weakness of an undead army is the intellect of the soldiers, and their magical prohibitions.

An undead battalion must be led by a living soldier, capable of formulating plans and enacting them.  If this soldier is killed, the battalion becomes headless.  Multiple commanding officers offer redundancy, but also erode the unique advantages of the undead.

Another flaw of the undead is their limited ability to differentiate. An enemy order will be obeyed if they are wearing the proper armor and giving the proper code words. An enemy skeleton will be welcomed if they just… try to blend in a little bit.

DM NOTES: Undead Tactics

Skeletons are typically iron-shod, like horses.  Their feet erode during long marches, and then they become incapable of walking. They can continue to crawl, of course, but this is slow and somewhat less fearsome.

Skeletal armies are also capable of startling ambushes, with their combatants buried in sand, shallow swamp, or surf. Lead-shod skeletal marines can also invade a city through any deep body of water by walking on the bottom. This can devastate an unprepared city, and campaigns are often kicked off with this kind of sneak attack.

The most visible icon of a skeletal army are the gas wagons.  Huge things loaded up with burning arsenic, or possibly a mixture of bitumen and sulfur.  If you ever fight a skeletal army, you will do so in smoke. In many battles, the smoke claims more lives than the skeletons do.

Metallic Dragons

The eight chromatic dragons were split from the Ur-Dragon by a giant prism (or something) in the dim prehistory of Creation. 

The eight Metallic Dragons were created in a different manner entirely. Metal is magic – everyone knows this. It’s why gold has such a hold on people. It’s solidified, condensed, trapped magic. The eight metallic dragons were born from eight metals empowered by others, consciously or accidentally or in dreams. They were raised, created, and set loose; shining mirrors of the chromatic dragons, but in every way their equals. 

Silver Dragon

Silver dragons are contract writers and organizers. Their lairs are living memory palaces; each thing has a precise and properly marked place. They despise frauds and forgeries. Instead of a loose pile of treasure, they build compartmentalized, numbered, and monitored vaults. Their breath causes sleep; sometimes for a few moments, sometimes for years. Like Gold dragons they can change their shape at will. A bored silver dragon might change itself into a human, visit a city, and show off its form and skills. They take lovers, become patrons of the arts, live for decades without aging and then, one day, take offense and erupt into their furious war-form and savage an entire noble house.

Mercury Dragon

Alchemists might expect mercury dragons to be fickle. Instead, they are utterly fixed and completely imperturbable. A mercury dragon is never wrong and can never be corrected, contradicted, or surprised. They live in a haze of perfect equanimity, with all possible opinions and actions balanced and given equal weighting. Therefore, they are blessedly inactive. They are master tacticians, scholars, and counselors, but their advice will always incorporate multiple points of view. Their flesh is liquid; their touch induces madness and slow tumorous death. Their silver-fog breath creates illusions in the minds of all who are affected by it.

Lead Dragon

The seer dragons. Lead dragons are thankfully rare. They have molten hearts, radioactive eyes, and they leak poison. Few living creatures can spend long lengths of time near one. Leaving aside their thick scales and blunt, crushing teeth, lead dragons do not have weapons; their very nature is sufficient protection. Lead dragons are all but assured of immortality and almost never do anything except pursue their own goals at a glacial pace; they will carry messages forward in time, take long bets, sculpt using stone and water, and wait patiently for problems to solve themselves. They know a great deal about the past. Convince them they are in danger and they’ll rise like nuclear fury, shedding white lead and spraying toxins in all directions.

Gold Dragon

Gold dragons are the most majestic and desirable of all dragons. They are natural shape changers and shift forms as easily as a human putting on clothes or armor, but they are always beautiful. They love to be adored. They generate cults spontaneously. All other living creatures are treated with charitable indifference; kindness but without effort, if possible. Mere proximity to a gold dragon can heal wounds. A gold dragon will listen to your story with a kind, smiling face and make a token effort to help you. They prefer to build palaces in isolation; the better to ensure nothing distracts their subjects. In addition to fire, the oldest gold dragons can breathe paranoia or calmness, sometimes soothing a war or rebellion, sometimes infesting targets with waking nightmares and crippling doubt.

Iron Dragon

Iron Dragons know there is a war coming. They are conserving their energy. They rest in wild paces or cities reclaimed by nature, coated in layers of rust and slime. Small ones are the size of a castle; some are the size of cities. They leak blood and molten metal. Once in a century, perhaps, they could be persuaded to breath instant death onto the enemies of their flatterers, but only if they’re convinced it’s the best way to prevent a larger conflict. Sword wounds appear instantly. Invisible arrowheads plunge into flesh. The iron dragon yawns and retreats, its skills untested. In fact, they aren’t very good at fighting, but when you’re the size of a castle and you can fly it hardly matters.

Platinum Dragon

Platinum dragons are Creation’s greatest bankers. As immortal beings, they are risk-adverse to the point of mania. If you miss a payment, they’ll fly over your city as a gentle reminder. They have vast reserves and minds like machines. No one is sure who first taught platinum dragons the principles of loans and interest rates. It’s possible, as they claim, that they invented the idea. They live in great marble and granite halls, hollowing entire mountains to make mazes and vaults. Some breathe sand or cannonballs of worked stone. They assemble legions of accountants and lawyers, and keep property-less monks as curiosities. Creatures who willingly resist temptation amuse them. The greatest Dragon Banks conduct themselves like nation-states.

Antimony Dragon

Antimony dragons are bizarre creatures. They can shift between a dark, liquid “female” form and a dense, metallic “male” form with ease. In their “female” form, they move with incredible stealth and can use shadows as portals. In their “male” form, their scales absorbs metal weapons, growing stronger and thicker with every blow. They learn and use magic only to make their lives easier. Inside the choking clouds they breathe, creatures find their judgement altered and their perceptions distorted to the dragon’s aims. They have been known to set armies of slaves on half-baked or impossible tasks. Above all else, they prefer to be left alone and they will pay to have annoyances, from flies to mountain ranges, removed.

Chromatic Dragons

Once, there was one dragon, or one kind of dragon. It’s unclear, some stones say they remember it. It lived before the Authority created the moon and thousands of years before mortals were invented. The Ur-Dragon was immortal, invulnerable, and one of the most terrifying things the Authority had ever created.

The stones aren’t sure what happened next. Some of them say that other beings of free magic built a giant prism. Some say that the Authority himself interposed His form (the most perfect conceptual triangle) in the Ur-Dragon’s path. Others say something different.

In any case, the results was that the Ur-Dragon was split into 8 Chromatic Dragons, and ever since they and their offspring have have bounded around Creation, powerful, immortal, and immensely proud, but flawed and incomplete. All dragons love flattery, and all dragons hoard things, but no two dragons are alike, just as no two sunsets are alike. All dragons are intensely magical.

White Dragons

Spindly and feathered, but not frail. They are obsessed with improving upon and reordering Creation. They spend vast swaths of time devising traps and punishments for anyone who might try to steal from them or stop progress. As white dragons age they often withdraw from society into more austere environments (preferring vast snowy deserts) to develop their plans for a complete overhaul of Creation. Their bodies produce a constant chill; a wyrmling is cold enough to chill a room in the heat of summer. An ancient is cold enough to freeze the blood moving through a creatures veins.

Blue Dragons

Swimming as fast as they can fly, blue dragons are a well-known terror along many coasts. They can grow large enough to swallow whales whole. They sink ships by accident or by design, dragging the wrecks to the bottom and building wooden cities in the cold and sunless depths. They choose their targets with care. They can be reasoned with, and even bribed with herds of cattle or barques of fish. Some have limited ability to control water elementals and might call rainstorms or whirlpools. However, elementals are fickle and just as likely to instead race ahead to warn sailors and fishermen. As they grow they begin to store static electricity from storms at sea. Larger ones can unleash crackling bolts of electricity strong enough to level a building.

Black Dragons

Black dragons made a deal with acid elementals. They can breath horrifying clouds of caustic gas, or spray concentrated streams of acid that melt plate armor in seconds, but the dragon’s skin is coated in acid sludge. Their bodies are living toxic waste dumps. Mortal creatures burn near them. Because only spirits and the dead can withstand the presence of their caustic effluvia, they are masters of necromancy and live in palaces constructed of enchanted bones by undead slaves. They rarely meet outsiders but conduct themselves like rulers in exile anyway. You can offer little to a black dragon.

Red Dragons

Red dragons are warm enough to boil water. They glow like a hot stove. They are the slowest and dimmest of the dragons, but they are also the most ferocious. They delight in combat. Most have scars and embedded weapons. Some bite limbs off knights or particularly interesting warriors and keep them as trophies. Red dragons that are allied with fire elementals have glowing guts and breathe gouts of choking fire. Those that rely on their own power breathe rays of pure heat, invisible and utterly deadly. They live in caves, accumulate food and worshipers, and occasional rise to destroy a city or devour an army sent against them.

Green Dragons

Green dragons are strange even among their kin. They have no legs, no breath weapon, and often no ambition except to allow things to exactly follow the natural order. [[TODO:Need more here]]. As they grow larger they become an aspect of the forest. The Maguuma Jungle is rumored to be the Eldest Green Dragon.

Orange Dragons

Unlike all other dragons, orange dragons give their hoards away freely. They seem to delight in giving gifts. They might rob, pillage, and extort for a century, only to turn around and release their wealth into the world. Their gifts are never random and always cruel. A poor man will be given unimaginable wealth. The dragon will watch as paranoia, new-found friends, or poor choices conspire to destroy the recipient. Their alliance with earth elementals let them fly through sand as if it were water so they prefer to make their homes using their strange breath and their burrowing ability to carve out crystallized caverns and tunnels beneath the sands.

Violet Dragons

Of all the chromatic dragons, the violet are the most delighted to merely exist. Other dragons validate themselves with hordes or flattery. A violet dragon knows exactly what it is; perfection. This maniacal self-obsession drives them to live on craggy mountaintops or unadorned caves. Carved stone would only weaken them. They collect buildings of other races to mock, the crowns of deposed kings, books of fallen empires, or the bones of the famous and the powerful. They attack on a whim and retreat beyond retaliation. Their fangs cut soul and flesh alike. They breathe an invisible, deadly light that sets the air on fire and sings like shattering glass. Those struck by the beam of a violet dragon go blind or develop hideous skin lesions