<– 003.020 | Index | 003.021 –>
An excerpt from Supernatural Flora, Fauna, and Things that Just Do Not Fit by Carlos T. Rivas:
How is one to classify magical life?
Mundane scientists begin with deciding whether or not the item of their interest is living. A reasonable starting point. They then categorize it based on its characteristics. Is it an animal? A plant? Fungus? And so on and so forth. They then further divide it down a list of taxonomic ranks until they end up with a the item’s scientific name.
However, mundane scientists exclusively deal with the mundane.
Or they did until the Lansing Incident. When the magical world’s masquerade was torn down to the rest of the world, all manner of researchers found a whole slew of new topics to explore. Since then, there have been numerous discussions on how the magical world’s many creatures should fit within biological classifications.
The simple fact is that many do not. Where is one to place the man who turns to a wolf on the nights of a full moon? If that were a sole exception, it could be classified relatively easily. A man and a wolf are not so far apart in taxonomic ranks.
Where then should the man who can turn into a tree be placed? Or the fae who turns to whatever it wishes on a whim?
Are vampires, ghouls, and liches even alive in the first place?
That has been the topic of much debate over the last few years. Many mundane creatures fit within a single classification. It might not always be perfectly neat, but at least mundane creatures do not often change domains or kingdoms.
With further study, it becomes clear that the standard hierarchy of biological classification’s eight major ranks are simply insufficient. New proposals have gone out through scientific circles to resolve this issue. From the simple adding of new categories to the extreme destruction and reconstruction of the entire taxonomic pyramid.
The most popular proposal is one of the simpler ones. A new binary rank. Any item is sorted first into mundus or magus. A cat will keep its current classification prefaced with mundus while a lamia or a goblin will fall under the magus category.
Some believe there should be another rank in addition. A plane rank.
It may come as a surprise to many, but a number of creatures living alongside us do not originate on Earth. Or at least not this Earth in some cases. These planes of existence, or realms to some, come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
Some realms could be mistaken for Earth by the unaware. Some are alien enough to make one wonder if they hadn’t walked into a storybook.
Most are accessed through specific rituals. Sometimes the creatures living on the other side need us to open a door for them, sometimes they can open a door from their end.
Fae originate from the Wyld. The Wyld is an exact copy of Earth as if it were looked at through a mirror. Most fae can use mirrors to hop between their version and our version of Earth.
Mirror-Earth is at least somewhat understandable to most people, but the fae are not the only ones to come from other places that the magical community has dubbed as planes of existence.
Demons hail from Hell. Yes, Hell is a real place and verifiably exists. No, you do not actually go there when you die. While the fae all live together in a version of earth, every demon is segmented into individual separate worlds. The worlds themselves are at the beck and call of the owner.
Volve come from another plane as well, though far less is known about that side of reality. While plenty of demons will talk about their ‘domains’ with enough enticement, volve tend to be far more volatile. Few humans have braved what the magical society calls The Corruption. Most do not return. The few who do tend to be far less… helpful.
Elves lost their origin plane and are now residing alongside humans in the mortal plane of existence.
For reasons unknown even to magical researchers, the mortal realm–Earth–is the plane of existence that all the others are bound to. Here connects to everywhere and everywhere connects to here. How and why are questions best left to other researchers.
Goblins, dwarves, gnomes, and plenty of other species all come from our plane of existence. The mortal plane. Even that, as shown by the Lansing Incident, is not everything it appears to be.
Who knows what secrets could be hidden even from the secret keepers in the magical society.
Perhaps in time, more revelations will be made that require modifications to how the scientific community views the world. For now, we must deal with what we have on hand.
Very enlightening. The volve sound intriguing, are they an original invention of yours or just a different name for something already known?
Original invention. A lot of creatures and things that appear are based in mythology, but not everything.
Though I do concede that over the course of human existence, there has been tons upon tons of mythology across the world. There may be something similar out there that I am unaware of or have simply forgotten.
Sometimes, I wish I could just sit around studying mythology for a living.
Typo:
“Hell is a real place and verifiable exists” – should be ‘verifiably’.
Thanks!
Fucking secret keepers.
The research done by davaros was done in the time of the greeks. SEE THE TRAGIDY SEE THE HORROR OF THE SECRET KEEPERS.
They make the star all over from scratch knowladge lost just cause some fool wants to keep everything secret.
I bet there are hidden libaries neglected cause those Secret keeprs are too afraid to even look at them. And the books avalible are written by resent research that has been done like a 100 years ago but if it gets advanced enough the secret keepers swoop in and steal all of that and lock it away or burn it or whatever. Or the secrets are just kept in a family just waiting for one of their litter to not care about the family research and let it rot and be undone just by that.
The age of war is over.
The world is too big. Too big. Think magic tools combined with a factory and than we mass produce and automaticly charge the enchantments. You could be a milionere in momenets as long as you get the infrastucture and the right gadets.
Look into alloys into chemistry and do some R&D for a ideal material maybe some plastic is better material for runes than plain old woon or marble or whatever. Why not use a projector and a computer to get a magic circle It would be pretty easy. Spend some time in photoshop making the perfect magic sircles and than vola use them whenever however. Or use some magic hat will put the clarc into that very ideal shape. The occult lacks ease of life inventions. Davaro should get onto that, but hes really busy :/ next project after the demonification i suppose.
A magic that takes a pattern and copies the same image, proportions and all onto the ground at any scale provided you have the sufficient clark or paint or salt or whatever one desides to use. A simple contract with the picture and clark, a simple ritual. Keep proportions, keep shapes, magnify size by 23 project around catalyst pralarel to its ground.
But hey, its just school. You are suppose to be ignorant of the opportunities and options out there.
Well that was a useless rant ^^
But what is really facinationg?
In alchemy magic can change matter into 4 states.
Cristal, liquid, gas, solid.
But there is also plasma.
Im not fully sure what happens in transmution classes but i didnt hear them turning fire into plasma or a solid earth like substance. Not sure about liquid.
But this aspect would be very interesting to observe under controlled conditions. Microscopes and seeing how the fire (gas, chemical reactions) stays reacting in different states and how the states really change and than how magic affects. Can they see the magic happening. Can they separate magic out. Can they find the magic particles. Some multidimensional hypothesis that part of it gets moved between worlds or something I’t wont become a theory unless it has predictable results and it will stop being a theory if it is proven wrong even one time.
Because of magics existence it invalidates all theories of physics because you can prove any phenomenon wrong by just adding a tiny bit of magic. But if you remove the magic from the environment you would have non magic physics. But magic being a part of the world would imply that some of the quantum physics is connected to magic and it could likely start explaining stuff. + all the equipment could be enchanted with runes and stuff to amplify their effect. Think of the most powerful and accurate telescope and than to use magic to filter out the atmosphere and local light… That is as if the telescope where in space all interference removed. Or enchant it in unique ways that let us see even more accurately at stars… or specific stars. Or even telescopes enchanted to see magic or enchanted to ignore spesific aspects that are really expensive or ineffective naturally
What would they do if they used some magic with a hidron colider. Or some power reactor. Controlled mutations in animals, cells, viruses. What about magic + programming and computer language, VR?! All the cools science stuff.
That is the first and easiest part to test.
The 5 states are the easiest thing to compare agins’t non-euqledian physics or whatever normal is. To isolate magic out and seeing what it really is.
But who is to say that magic isn’t limited by the laws of physics as much as physics are limiting magic.
That seems weird. I mean life is classified based on evolutionary history, based on that a lot of creatures could be sorted, artificial ones can have their own thing and ones with an entirely different origin can have their own tree.