Nameback
Troubadour
OK, so in the world I'm building right now, magic revolves around numina, named for the Latin word meaning "divine will," but also alternately translated as "divine potential." I got in my head the idea that the magic is based around possibilities and potentialities.
So, in its simplest application, this means numinati (wizards/witches) store up magical energy (by stealing potential from something/someone else), and then use it up permanently to endow themselves with an ability. So, just as a regular human possesses the numina for speech, or locomotion, a numinatus may acquire and assign numina to develop the ability to shape-shift. Once stored numina is assigned, it is done so permanently, and the numinatus cannot adopt any further powers until accumulating more numina. This means, unless you're willing to resort to mass human sacrifice, it probably takes years at a time to add a new ability. So you have to choose wisely and try to stay out of situations for which you have no relevant powers.
Now, beyond that, I want something a bit more distinctive. I thought, since we're talking about possibilities or potential, why not invoke randomness? It would be really jarring to replace traditional deterministic cause-and-effect with stochastic (random) or probabilistic processes. One thing that came to mind immediately was immortality. If a numinatus wants to become immortal, how can he accomplish that? Immortality is a state of being, not an ability, like speaking. It's not something you turn on or off.
So the solution, then, is a more dangerous and arcane branch of magic, called Tyche. Tyche is stochastic magic. To become immortal, the numinatus replaces the cause-and-effect of death (e.g. you get sick, you die; you drown, you die; someone stabs you, you die) with two randomly-determined states: life, or death. At any given moment in time, the numinatus will be either alive or dead -- but it has nothing to do with what is happening to them, their age, their health, etc, but only to do with random chance. And the more power and skill the numinatus has, the better odds he can generate for himself.
I was inspired by the idea of the Markov Chain, which is a statistical concept where two (or more) possible states are regulated by certain probabilities. For example, when in state A, the object in question has a 95% chance to remain in state A in the next time period, and a 5% chance to move to state B. In state B, the object has a 70% chance to remain in state B, and a 30% chance to revert to state A. This can describe, say, the way the stock market moves from bear to bull in week to week. So, using the numinatus and life and death, we can see that the wizard has, let's say, a 95% chance of being alive tomorrow if he is alive today, and a 5% chance of being dead tomorrow. And if dead, he has a 30% chance of returning back to life.
I like this idea for several reasons. (1) It seems novel, and it is fantastical. Numanti with these powers become truly alien, and seem very intimidating to other characters. (2) It has constraints and sets up obvious dilemmas. If you can never know whether you'll be dead or alive tomorrow, or perhaps from hour to hour, and you don't know how long your life/death will last before switching states, then it can really throw a wrench in your plans. You'd have to have some kind of assistant or protege to watch over your body if you died, until you came back.
But it has some problems. (1) It's complicated. How do I explain it easily to the reader without getting overly technical or bogged down in exposition? (2) It would be tempting to use in a deus-ex-machina fashion, since I can always kill or revive someone at a convenient moment and claim randomness, since no discrete cause is necessary. Oh, the villain is about to execute my hero? Well, he just died suddenly! Ooops!
Still, I think these are solvable problems. My bigger issue is -- what the hell else do I apply this to? Immorality seems worth it; sure, you don't want to spend any time dead, but better to be dead 10% of the time and alive for 90% of the time, forever, then be alive 100% of the time for 40 years and then dead forever. But in most realms, we probably wouldn't tolerate a power that only worked some of the time. Imagine a numinatus with super strength--but how strong he was varied from moment to moment. That doesn't seem practical. Better to just endow oneself with an ability to increase one's strength at will. Perhaps it is much cheaper, in terms of magical energy, to give oneself a stochastic power than a reliable power. Still, I'd rather use stochastic powers in places where there are decidedly appealing -- either because the power doesn't make sense as an ability (like immortality), or because it's more useful as a stochastic process.
I'm also toying with the idea of probabilistic powers, perhaps applying certain oddities of the quantum world to my wizards. For example, a magical warrior who exists not in one place at one time, but in many places simultaneously? And the odds of interacting with him at one place at one time are slim? He'd certainly be very hard to hit. But I imagine it'd be rather hard for him to hit his foes, as well.
Any suggestions?
So, in its simplest application, this means numinati (wizards/witches) store up magical energy (by stealing potential from something/someone else), and then use it up permanently to endow themselves with an ability. So, just as a regular human possesses the numina for speech, or locomotion, a numinatus may acquire and assign numina to develop the ability to shape-shift. Once stored numina is assigned, it is done so permanently, and the numinatus cannot adopt any further powers until accumulating more numina. This means, unless you're willing to resort to mass human sacrifice, it probably takes years at a time to add a new ability. So you have to choose wisely and try to stay out of situations for which you have no relevant powers.
Now, beyond that, I want something a bit more distinctive. I thought, since we're talking about possibilities or potential, why not invoke randomness? It would be really jarring to replace traditional deterministic cause-and-effect with stochastic (random) or probabilistic processes. One thing that came to mind immediately was immortality. If a numinatus wants to become immortal, how can he accomplish that? Immortality is a state of being, not an ability, like speaking. It's not something you turn on or off.
So the solution, then, is a more dangerous and arcane branch of magic, called Tyche. Tyche is stochastic magic. To become immortal, the numinatus replaces the cause-and-effect of death (e.g. you get sick, you die; you drown, you die; someone stabs you, you die) with two randomly-determined states: life, or death. At any given moment in time, the numinatus will be either alive or dead -- but it has nothing to do with what is happening to them, their age, their health, etc, but only to do with random chance. And the more power and skill the numinatus has, the better odds he can generate for himself.
I was inspired by the idea of the Markov Chain, which is a statistical concept where two (or more) possible states are regulated by certain probabilities. For example, when in state A, the object in question has a 95% chance to remain in state A in the next time period, and a 5% chance to move to state B. In state B, the object has a 70% chance to remain in state B, and a 30% chance to revert to state A. This can describe, say, the way the stock market moves from bear to bull in week to week. So, using the numinatus and life and death, we can see that the wizard has, let's say, a 95% chance of being alive tomorrow if he is alive today, and a 5% chance of being dead tomorrow. And if dead, he has a 30% chance of returning back to life.
I like this idea for several reasons. (1) It seems novel, and it is fantastical. Numanti with these powers become truly alien, and seem very intimidating to other characters. (2) It has constraints and sets up obvious dilemmas. If you can never know whether you'll be dead or alive tomorrow, or perhaps from hour to hour, and you don't know how long your life/death will last before switching states, then it can really throw a wrench in your plans. You'd have to have some kind of assistant or protege to watch over your body if you died, until you came back.
But it has some problems. (1) It's complicated. How do I explain it easily to the reader without getting overly technical or bogged down in exposition? (2) It would be tempting to use in a deus-ex-machina fashion, since I can always kill or revive someone at a convenient moment and claim randomness, since no discrete cause is necessary. Oh, the villain is about to execute my hero? Well, he just died suddenly! Ooops!
Still, I think these are solvable problems. My bigger issue is -- what the hell else do I apply this to? Immorality seems worth it; sure, you don't want to spend any time dead, but better to be dead 10% of the time and alive for 90% of the time, forever, then be alive 100% of the time for 40 years and then dead forever. But in most realms, we probably wouldn't tolerate a power that only worked some of the time. Imagine a numinatus with super strength--but how strong he was varied from moment to moment. That doesn't seem practical. Better to just endow oneself with an ability to increase one's strength at will. Perhaps it is much cheaper, in terms of magical energy, to give oneself a stochastic power than a reliable power. Still, I'd rather use stochastic powers in places where there are decidedly appealing -- either because the power doesn't make sense as an ability (like immortality), or because it's more useful as a stochastic process.
I'm also toying with the idea of probabilistic powers, perhaps applying certain oddities of the quantum world to my wizards. For example, a magical warrior who exists not in one place at one time, but in many places simultaneously? And the odds of interacting with him at one place at one time are slim? He'd certainly be very hard to hit. But I imagine it'd be rather hard for him to hit his foes, as well.
Any suggestions?
Dreamer
Auror
