Excess Liquidity: the Water Element.

We finally get to the first physical element! Why now? Well, there's a rhyme and reason to the order. The colors may lead the way.

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Color: Blue
Sin: Greed
Virtue: Nurturing

  Nature and Applications: Though it's commonly referred to as the water element, this is a bit of a misnomer. The school of water includes every liquid substance in the temperature range where water is liquid. Like earth and air, water users retain their control over these substances should they change state; ice and vapor are still within their realm.

  Water is the overbearing parent of the elements. It believes its influence is the best, and therefore wants to spread it everywhere. Control is very important to water, though once it has control, it doesn't necessarily exercise it. It clings to the other physical elements, but though it may accompany them everywhere, it rarely intervenes. It's content as long as the option is there, and only takes that option if the option is in danger of being taken away. It doesn't need attention, it doesn't need heeding, it doesn't need any sort of acknowledgement of its presence; it simply needs to be there.

  When used offensively, water is entropy. It fights wars of attrition, erodes defenses, infiltrates and destroys from within. Like the element itself, it's hard to harm a water mage because it doesn't try to resist opposing forces. They simply flow out of the way, harnessing the enemy's momentum to strike where the opponent is weak They subvert the strong by condensing water into their eyes, ears, nose and mouth, slowly depriving them of their senses and making every breath a struggle. They cripple the quick by ruining their footing, making any surface either too slick or soft for acrobatics. Subtlety is not sacred, however; if sufficient pools are available, wizards can divert rivers to smother their foes, use underground deposits to create quicksand or sinkholes, or even stir a lake into an inland tsunami, given enough time.

  They aren't helpless in dry environments either; in fact, they may be more dangerous, as they are more inclined to resort to underhanded resources like poison, drugs, or corrosive fluids.

   There are easily as many constructive uses as their are destructive ones. Many sorcerers have made a fortune off droughts by locating underground wells or causing a cloud to rain prematurely. They can propel a ship to its port in record time, and they take all the challenge out of fishing. It's even rumored that a master can create a palace out of a glacier.

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I really want to escape the 'water means frost' trap when it comes to magic. I know it's not universal, but it seems like most uses of water as an element in combat mean frostbolts or pointy ice shards or whathaveyou. While such things are feasible in Arbiter - where ice is already present, at least - the act of changing temperature doesn't belong to the school of water. Without it, though, we need to rethink how it's used, and that's partially where the poison/acid/nitro glycerin/liquidsthatain'twater usage comes into play.

I think it was Stevo who first mentioned microwaves, either him or Bryan, and I think it's a brilliant idea too. Going way back to the 'what is magic' post, it's possible that 'to live is to be a wizard,' or in other words, you can't control the elements of another person's body because they're already controlling them, but that doesn't stop anybody from vibrating the water in the atmosphere around somebody. Steam the guy in his armor! This eliminates the possibility of Avatar's "blood-bending", unless you're using a corpse's blood, but I haven't decided if I'm ever going to be that graphic in this series. I'm not writing for kids specifically, but maybe I don't want to exclude them?

That said, while they can't control blood that's already being controlled, there's nothing to stop them from 'communicating' with it. Perhaps they can read people's blood pressure and heartbeat and the like to know whether they're lying or agitated, similar to how an electric mage might catch glimpses of people's thoughts.

Water is a really versatile element, and it might be easy to make it too good. So I might need to make it clear that a river can't just rise up off the ground and then slap somebody standing nearby like a whip. If a wizard is changing a river's course, it's slower, he's modifying the flow far upstream so it slowly cuts a new path until it carves out enough of the shore to swallow whoever they're fighting.

It's really tempting to imagine it like Pokemon's water type or Avatar's water bending, but I gotta keep it from getting excessive. Water doesn't have enough structural integrity to support water, so I don't want it rising in the shape of a snake out of a still lake or something like that. It can't just come spouting endlessly out of a turtle's mouth because he's water type, either. I want it to be more limited and sneaky. Water can't flow uphill because Santa's magic, water flows uphill by using the ground's sponginess to choose which soil gets to absorb it, and it sponges its way up the hill by a train of absorption through the soil.

Y'know, rules, even if they slap real-world rules in the face. If ya wanna crush somebody under the weight of a lake, it doesn't just suddenly rise up into a crest and fall on the guy. You gotta spin it around in the lake until it builds up the momentum to splash over the rim. I'm willing to ignore physics enough to say water forms a current because water moves itself (where real-life currents are obviously a complicated product of the spinning of the earth), but not enough to pretend it can defy gravity and float on the air.

It's all about balancing real physics and the whimsy and "cool factor" of magic again. We can't have Korra wave her hand to have a jet of water shoot from the pool and knock a guy off the diving board, but maybe a water mage can stick his canteen into a stream and have the water pack itself in there so tight that he can shoot somebody with it the next time he takes the lid off.

Then there's ice and vapor. Without the built in freeze mechanic other franchises like to include (they'd need to be a hybrid to freeze or evaporate), we can have a water mage have ice creep over itself across the ground and then freeze its way up somebody's leg if they're too slow getting away from it, have steam move in a cloud to cook anyone it catches. Maybe we can even have ice act like the frostbolts and ice-shrapnel we're used to by having a big chunk of it crack itself, and then squeeze the resulting chips or shards in such a way that they fly out and puncture somebody.

So, what other ways can we picture water being used? What mechanics might we contrive to make it do what we want it to? Who has done it well, and who provides the best examples of what NOT to do? What kind of synergy are you seeing with the other elements we've seen so far, or even the ones coming up?

Electricity: an Elemental Butt Sandwich.

Light seemed like a pretty straightforward element. At least, when compared to electricity. Does that sound backward? Well, after this, maybe you'll agree: electricity is trickier.

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Color: Purple
Sin: Wrath
Virtue: Wisdom

  Nature and Applications: Most people don't have a grasp on the concept of electricity, and in ancient times, even the most scholarly people believed it only existed in the sky. To this day, most people only know it as lightning, as some foreign spirit in the clouds that only comes down to punish any who dare anger it.

  The rare masters of this element profess a poetic irony in the superstition surrounding electricity, particularly because it plays a crucial role in every human mind. The layman equates electricity to lightning, and therefore as an irrational and strictly destructive force. However, the principle element that causes lightning is actually the source of rational thought. While light fuels the consciousness of water, wind, and earth, the elements lack the guidance of true thought, their awareness confined to blind emotions and impulses. Electricity is what sets the living mind above the elements.

  Electricity is a pragmatist. It craves efficiency and order, and therefore, reacts violently when order is upset. Like many great scholars, it is curious and easily absorbed in the search for knowledge. Just as a professor is prone to strike a student who interrupts their reading, electricity attacks anything that disturbs its flow.

   The most conspicuous use of this element is always in its offensive capacity. The human body is regulated by the nervous system's natural charge, so a sorcerer of electricity can easily disrupt that control by introducing a foreign current. Further, many physical elements naturally try to resist any invading flows of electricity, and the conflict between matter and energy can result in burning. Electricity is a fickle element, and requires special conditions in order to be weaponized, but its users are famously good at finding clever ways to meet those requirements. For instance, many common weapons double as a natural candidate for storing charges and transmitting shocks.

  When used with subtlety, it has more constructive applications. To know an electric mage is to know an inventor; their understanding of the energy inspires the creation of all sorts of gadgets. Electricity is known for its ability to coordinate with light and heat, and as such, electricians are known to employ devices that can make light, cook, and even do manual labor for them.Electricity is truly a tool that only the clever can use.

In a more direct applcation, since electricity is such a fundamental part of thought, these mages are known to be better at understanding what other people are thinking.

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Alright, so as you may be able to tell, I don't have as strong a grasp on how electricity will play out in Arbiter. The difficulty is that, usually, sorcerers can pull their element directly from the environment. While I could technically just claim a mage can siphon from the charges in the electron clouds of all the matter around them, but electricity is special. Asperger special, to be precise. The title finally makes sense! Asperger, Ass burger, butt sandwich, you get it... essentially, electricity is the Patricia Tannis (Borderlands) of the elements.

Brilliant, but irritable to the point of neurosis. While, like heat, light, and even life, sorcerers will still source their power from their environments, electricity won't simply gather through the air. They need some method of conduction or generation.To try and gather it directly from the atmosphere's molecules or from the earth's particles or from whatever substance disturbs electricity's love of order, it would probably just have an autistic-style fit and fry you for violating the system. So you have to play ball and have some kind of battery, generator, or conductive tool to collect the raw energy before you can cast with it.

Say they're in an environment with an abnormally strong charge, like one of those super sandstorms in the Sahara Desert (rumor has it, they produce ground-level lightning storms). Perhaps a mage has a device to capture and redirect or even store that energy for later. Maybe they live their lives around the gathering of energy, they're the 'come prepared' sort of battler. It could all be about batteries, and while they might have countless generators around the house to convert light, heat, and motion into electricity slowly over time, they can only use as much electricity as they bring to the battle in the form of a limited-capacity and heavy battery? Maybe they just scooch across the carpet in their onesies a lot?

For hybrid mages, perhaps they can use other elements to help them generate electricity. For instance, a light mage's understanding of light might enable him to produce solar power (photovoltaics) in some way. Electricity is among the most difficult elements to use, and to me, that suggests most electric users can use other elements and thereby generate electricity by using another element in a clever fashion. Unless your personality is completely high-functioning autism, a la Rainman, you probably studied your way up to electricity through another school of magic.

Also, magnets. How do they work? (you lose points if you know why that's supposed to be funny)

Seriously though, magnetism falls into their specialty.

This is the best opportunity yet to get ideas from you guys. How might an electrician (an electric magician, get it?!) source their spells? Plus, I electricity is such an awkward word, what should we call this school? Shock magic? Furthermore, there's a distinct lack of spell description here. I have more ideas than lightning strikes, but this is already long, and a lot of those ideas incorporate concepts that warrant their own articles. Be as creative and indirect as you want: how could you see electricity being used in battle?

Phrisky Photons: the Light Element.

Forgive me if I've said this before, but I currently plan to have magic in Arbiter be comprised of 8 different elements, and that collective will be known as the elemental spectrum. The classic elements, the ones that really spawned the idea of elements in fantasy, are earth, air, fire, and water. Why am I doubling that number? Well, I guess because other people have, and I liked it. Plus, they divide neatly: four are energy (light, electricity, fire/heat, and life/nature) and four are physical (earth, water, air, darkness).

If you're confounded by an element's categorization there, save it for that element's individual profile in the weeks to come!

So we'll start with Light, an element that isn't on the classical list, but one we've seen frequently enough. Warcraft and Warhammer, Final Fantasy, Zelda, Magic: The Gathering, and holy crap all my examples are games. You know what, though? I'm not gonna care, because if we tried hard enough, we'd find it elsewhere.

Anyway, here's the profile:
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Light element

Color: White (shut up, we're calling it a color)
Sin: Lust
Virtue: Love

   Nature and applications: Light is the purest form of energy. It is plentiful and generous, giving itself freely to whatever it touches. Those who are fond of it claim it to be the source of love and everything that is good. Cynics associate light with promiscuity and impulsiveness. Some say it is the easiest school of magic, because all the element desires is to give itself to others.
 
   Light is believed to be the source of the physical elements' consciousness, that it brings the energy required for wizards to be able to manipulate water, earth, and air.

The most common use of light is in healing magic, where it is used to supercharge the body's ability to regenerate.

From a utility standpoint, someone's sight is entirely dependent on light, so light can be used to play tricks on the enemy's vision or even deprive them of it entirely. And since Light is necessary for sight, Light can be used to spy on things you'd normally be unable to see; Light obviously travels swiftly, so as long as there's light around to ask favors of, it can travel to a target and return to reassemble what it saw in a matter of seconds.

There are offensive applications too, however: light mages can concentrate light into beams of pure kinetic energy, which can be used to inflict blunt-force trauma or even punch holes through solid objects.
 
   Indeed, many scholars believe light and kinetic energy are the same thing: any object that moves at sufficient speeds will glow in proportion to its velocity. This is why stars and comets shine: they either burn hot or move swiftly enough. Even weapons have been purported to glow with an unnatural light when swung by particularly-skilled warriors, though the light only lasts a moment, and it's not common to find a person with the prowess to achieve such speeds.
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That's how we might describe it from within the world of Arbiter. From outside, there's a couple more things I want to say about it.

First and easiest, associating a color with each element is important because they'll be used with runes (we'll explore that in the post about runes).

While light and heat are closely associated in reality (can't think of anything that generates light that doesn't also generate heat), I want to separate them for Arbiter. I want to change its nature a bit, to make super concentrations of light less like laser beams and more like the repulsor blasts from Iron Man's hands, or maybe even the Kamehameha. Like it says above, kinetic energy. I feel like it would make light more identifiable from "fire" magic. And, if my wildest dreams ever came true and I had the chance to work with a comic artist or game developer or movie producer or something, they could have fun with the whole "an object's brightness is proportional to how fast it's moving" dynamic. If his hammer glows, you know the hit is gonna hurt. Shut up, it's fun to daydream about the idea!

Unlike other franchises, which like to use light as a metaphor for good and darkness as a metaphor for evil, I want to avoid that suggestion. Sure, there will be churches and societies in Arbiter that might claim that light is pure good and dark is pure evil, but I hope to always have credible characters to dispute that claim. Just like all the other elements, light has a neutral alignment. The whole reason I plan to assign one of the seven deadly sins (and a similar virtue) to all (except one!) elements is not to suggest how good or evil it is, but to give you a better idea of the element's consciousness, its personality, and an idea for what type of person would like to use which school of magic.They are what motivates the element to do anything at all, the desires a sorcerer needs to appease in order to get their element(s) to play along.

In this case, Light is the Snooki of the group. People who love her do so because she's outgoing and friendly and innocent. (I don't see promiscuity as a crime, really) People who hate her do so because she's intrusive and impulsive and shamelessly stupid. Ya feel guilty for hating her because whenever she does something bad, it's simply because she didn't know any better. She never does anything with the intention to harm. She's only intolerable because she NEVER knows better, although my entire judgment comes from the clips they played during Beavis and Butthead...

Was probably a mistake to make that association, but Light, more than any other element, might need a strong example of why a given person may not like it, why not everyone can be a light mage. Which is why it might be okay to compare to Snooki right now.

So. When you guys hear 'light magic' or 'light element,' what comes to mind? What games, books, or shows immediately stand out? (right now, I'm either thinkin' Warcraft priest/paladin or Kizaru and the Pacifista from One Piece) Has anyone used it in a particularly clever way? Most importantly, can you think of ways you might make use of light in spellcasting? Perhaps in somewhat more real-world ways, like mirages or inducing seizures/hallucinations, or would you rather break the laws of real world physics like I did? (light is the fastest thing ever, therefore, the faster something moves, the brighter it should glow!)

What is magic?

The focus of this little focus group is on a project I call Arbiter. It is a fantasy project, and there's not a mammoth amount I can tell you about it, because I'm hoping all of you can help me build this thing.

So back to the title; what is magic? I have three things to immediately say about it:

Magic is...

1. Totally gay.

2. An alternative to technology. After all, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - All due credit to Arthur C Clarke.

3. A fundamental alteration to the physical laws of the real world that would allow its denizens to manipulate their environment in spectacular ways without physical exertion or complicated devices.

I don't suppose these help a ton yet, particularly not #1, but the other two are important for what will (hopefully) make magic in Arbiter different. The idea is: if magic were real, why would scientists and engineers get their hands dirty with gears and wheels? In line with that, I plan to have witches and shamans and wizards (different cultures will use different names) approach magic more like scientists and engineers than most of the more famous fantasy mages.

Fantasy has been far more popular than science fiction for the past couple of decades, and the reigning theory suggests it's because fantasy comes across as optimistic and Sci-fi often feels bleak (dystopia reigns). A lot of that comes from the implications of magic, which makes anything seem possible. It's a big draw for people, an escape to a place where wishes can come true. From a marketing standpoint, appealing to the broadest audience means prolific and potent use of magic. That said, I have some gripes with the status quo.

A lot of times, a character uses magic a way we've never seen in that world before, and it feels like cheating. Either the hero saves the day with some unprecedented spell and the story ends in an unsatisfying way (an example of deus ex machina, something to avoid at all costs), or a villain exploits it in a way that just feels cheap and uninteresting (Aizen, in Bleach, was literally unbeatable so long as he wanted to be.)

So what I want to do is have clearly-defined rules that I must follow. They don't need to be laid out for the reader in the actual story, not all at once. I just feel like I should have a system worked out beforehand, and by doing so, never create a deus ex machina. The challenge is to have such a system without killing the optimistic whimsy that lets the reader escape into the book's world.

Currently, my explanation for the existence of magic is an over-abundance of energy in the world. This excess energy grants a sort of consciousness to the different elements (earth, wind, fire, whathaveyou), and thereby, a sorcerer can appeal to the environment to manipulate itself to suit their need.

Communication will be an essential component. Magic is used by imagining how the environment needs to manipulate itself and then communicating the desired process to the proper elements. Most of that communication can be described as telepathic, but I hate that word by itself, it's not quite right. The more precise explanation would involve the human body being made of the same elements found in the environment, and the body's elements are still conscious, so the magician can communicate with the environment's elements using their body's elements as a mediator. Perhaps even 'living' is an unconscious use of magic; each person is magician enough by default to assemble and regulate the bits of water, earth, electricity, etc. that compose the body, and true sorcerers have simply expanded that control to the world around them.

I plan to have incantations (Harry Potter) be wholly unnecessary, though novices often use them to evoke the proper mindset for themselves, to help them feel the emotions that will persuade the correct elements. Runes will play a crucial role (in a future post!), though.

Another barrier to success will be aligning the sorcerer's will with that of the elements' personalities (lightning feels like it needs a good reason to strike that guy). Since the elements are conscious, they possess individual personalities that the magician needs to learn how to cater to (earth is a prideful element). We'll probably explore that later, with a post for each element.

Finally, there will be some taxing of the user's mental fortitude, but it will be less about mental will (think Luke and Yoda lifting the X-Wing out of the swamp) and more about focus and multitasking ability (think playing Star/Warcraft or playing Ophelia and microing all those minotaurs.) That distinction is important to me; I don't want magic to be sourced by some abstract power reserve inside the user (mana, aura, will, chakra, ki). I want it to be about clever use of the surroundings and strategy.

One thing I want to avoid is the idea that a mage can make something from nothing, like conjure water for their thirsty friends (a la Warcraft); they need the raw materials in their environment.

So, in conclusion: Who do you guys think has done magic best? Who has done it worst? (As far as I'm concerned, you can even consider X-men mutations and ki from Dragonball Z to be magic). Any authors I should read or shows to watch to know what (or what not) to do? Most importantly, if it were you in the pilot's seat, what would you be sure to include or exclude in your magic system?