Think of magic- QUICK!
What comes to mind?
If you didn't answer "Fireballs!", you clearly haven't read high fantasy in the last thirty years.
All joking aside, magic in most books is pretty similar. They may have different mechanics and different invocations, but the results are typically the same: there are lots of fireballs, and lots of healing spells, and lots of funny words. This type of magic, I'll term "loud magic." I call it this because the affects are physical and outward, and also because the magic is usually vocally summoned.
But what if magic had a very different basis? What if, instead of affecting the physical world, it was limited to the mental one?
This is the type of magic I plan on writing, which I've termed "subtle magic". It has no spoken invocation, and relies solely on the mental will of the caster. It affects only the mind- though, as your mind controls your body and your "self", or "soul", it can be very powerful.
So far, my abilities include:
The power to cause physical sensations without actual harm (pain, pleasure, weakness, illness, strength, etc.)
The power to influence emotions with fear, lust, love, anger, joy, or anything else you can think of.
The ability to hijack the mind of a corpse, provided the corpse can be sufficiently repaired to allow it to function. (Wouldn't want it to just drop dead again immediately, would we?)
The ability to hijack the mind of a living person for a while, and make them do anything you want.
The ability to break into a mind to share, see, add or even steal (and thus remove) memories.
Immortality, of a sort- assuming you can find a new body to inhabit whenever yours grows old and verges on death. And, of course, assuming you can strangle the existing mind into submission for years on end.
The power to force random or carefully planned illusions and hallucinations into the minds of people.
The ability to manipulate perception of time- thus seemingly speeding up or slowing time down for your target(s).
The ability to simply turn off some of an opponent's (or ally's) senses.
The ability to alter a mind so that it can no longer function- and the victim becomes a sobbing, insane mess for the rest of his or her life. This can be done by removing a large amount of memories, right down to those about basic motor control, by overloading a person with emotion, crippling them with horrible hallucinations, by greatly altering their perception of time, by dropping them in to a pleasant, realistic dream world of which they have no desire or means to escape, or by just generally lingering in their mind to confuse them and cloud their thoughts severely.
So, what do you think? Is this good? Stupid? Has it been done before?
What comes to mind?
If you didn't answer "Fireballs!", you clearly haven't read high fantasy in the last thirty years.
All joking aside, magic in most books is pretty similar. They may have different mechanics and different invocations, but the results are typically the same: there are lots of fireballs, and lots of healing spells, and lots of funny words. This type of magic, I'll term "loud magic." I call it this because the affects are physical and outward, and also because the magic is usually vocally summoned.
But what if magic had a very different basis? What if, instead of affecting the physical world, it was limited to the mental one?
This is the type of magic I plan on writing, which I've termed "subtle magic". It has no spoken invocation, and relies solely on the mental will of the caster. It affects only the mind- though, as your mind controls your body and your "self", or "soul", it can be very powerful.
So far, my abilities include:
The power to cause physical sensations without actual harm (pain, pleasure, weakness, illness, strength, etc.)
The power to influence emotions with fear, lust, love, anger, joy, or anything else you can think of.
The ability to hijack the mind of a corpse, provided the corpse can be sufficiently repaired to allow it to function. (Wouldn't want it to just drop dead again immediately, would we?)
The ability to hijack the mind of a living person for a while, and make them do anything you want.
The ability to break into a mind to share, see, add or even steal (and thus remove) memories.
Immortality, of a sort- assuming you can find a new body to inhabit whenever yours grows old and verges on death. And, of course, assuming you can strangle the existing mind into submission for years on end.
The power to force random or carefully planned illusions and hallucinations into the minds of people.
The ability to manipulate perception of time- thus seemingly speeding up or slowing time down for your target(s).
The ability to simply turn off some of an opponent's (or ally's) senses.
The ability to alter a mind so that it can no longer function- and the victim becomes a sobbing, insane mess for the rest of his or her life. This can be done by removing a large amount of memories, right down to those about basic motor control, by overloading a person with emotion, crippling them with horrible hallucinations, by greatly altering their perception of time, by dropping them in to a pleasant, realistic dream world of which they have no desire or means to escape, or by just generally lingering in their mind to confuse them and cloud their thoughts severely.
So, what do you think? Is this good? Stupid? Has it been done before?