Khrrck
29-02-2004, 03:04
The Inhabitants
Name
Scientific name: Draco minor.
Common name: Wyrm.
Plural: Wyrms.
Appearance
Wyrms are lizardlike, varying between seven and nine feet in length, with the occasional six to ten footer. They have short, strong claws adapted for digging in their native caverns and defending themselves against marauding predators. They vary in color from wrought-iron black to coppery gleam.
With their muscles and bones adapted to the high gravity of Newhome, they have an advantage in strength over most sentients. They walk on all four limbs, but can lift up, balancing on rear limbs and tail, to manipulate objects.
Wyrms vary greatly between clans, from the aquatic Greenscales to the resilient Ironscales.
Homeworld
The world that the Wyrms spent most of the previous 500 years on, (known to the Wyrms as Newhome) has a high concentration of metals (mostly iron) giving it a gravity of about
3.2 G. The life there has learned to survive in the brutal gravity, reinforcing their skeletons with metallic compounds. The terrain is mostly desert sand, with a few rare oasis spots where life can survive. There are no oceans on the planet; the rest of Newhome's life lives underground, in the harsh, barren caverns.
Equipment
Every Wyrm whose work requires fine manipulation is equipped with a toolpack. The standard light-work toolpack consists of a standard shell, with four mount points, multiple storage compartments, an interface computer, and a neural interface plug.
The plug is the center of the toolpack technology. This plug fits into a socket implanted in the Wyrm's neck, and allows the Wyrm to directly control the toolpack via its interface computer.
A wide array of attachments is available for the toolpacks.
Anything, from robotic arms to rocket launchers, can be fitted onto it.
Usually, however, the light-work toolpack is equipped with four lightweight robotic arms, each with a three-fingered claw.
The heavy-work toolpack is much like the light-work toolpack, except that it sports only three much more robust mount points.
Various specialty and military packs have been designed for specific purposes.
Ways have also been developed to allow Wyrms to use the neural interface to fly fighter jets, talk to computers, and drive tanks, with great success.
Communication
Wyrms cannot speak human languages; their vocal apparatus cannot make the necessary sounds. Wyrms who may have to deal with humans on a regular basis are outfitted with speaker implants, to allow them to speak English. The Wyrms' voices sound mechanical when speaking English; there are none of those little noises that a human's vocal apparatus would produce. They also have a tendency to hiss, for who-knows-what reason; the speaker certainly isn't causing it.
The Wyrms' language is harsh, full of "K"s and "A"s. Here's a sample:
"Kah'tar makik ahara ekal thakikar!"
History
Khrrck has a long and sad history. Khrrck's entire population is descended from a a group of about twenty thousand soldiers,
who were routed through a malfunctioning Gate, onto the planet of Newhome.
When they arrived on Newhome, every magical device in the group failed, except for those that had stored magic.
This relatively meager amount of stored magic was used by the magicians within the group to adapt the Wyrms to their new planet, taking useful traits, such as metal-reinforced bones, from the native animals.
For the next five hundred years (approx.), the Wyrms built and researched on their new home, looking for a way back.
Finally, about fourteen years ago, they thought they had found it.
Requiring massive amounts of electrical power, the New Gate would rip a hole in space, hopefully reconnecting them with their old home.
Unfortunately, they couldn't see what was on the other side, and by the time the New Gate was designed and built, almost all of the population had lost interest in getting back.
Nevertheless, a small group (about 1,000,000) of Wyrms decided to make the journey. They traveled through the New Gate, armed with construction equipment, a large library, and some formidable expertise with mechanical devices.
They came out in what is now Khrrck. It took them a few weeks before it was established; they were not where they had hoped to be.
The first few years were hard. The Wyrms were still adjusting to the low gravity, and several were mistaken for monsters and shot before they became established.
They made several massive purchases of blueprints and antique military equipment. As well, they began to design their own machines, using the expertise gained on Newhome.
One thing about Khrrck was better than Newhome.
After the first few months, it was discovered that a few antique magical devices now functioned again. The Wyrms immediately retrieved every magical text they could from the supplies they had brought, and began a series of experiments on the use of magic.
Khrrck
Terrain
Barren desert and the occasional dry plain. A few mountain ranges in the northeast. Caves everywhere.
Resources
Metals: Lots.
Coal: Little.
Oil: Medium-low amounts.
Agricultural: Not much.
Exports
So close to none as to make no difference.
Imports
The occasional military purchase.
Architecture
Not much. Well, actually there is, but you don't see it.
More than three-quarters of Khrrck's industrial activity is conducted underground. Most of the population lives underground, too.
Khrrck's cave-cities stretch for miles beneath the surface. Some of the especially deep, worked-out mines have been equipped with three-foot-thick steel blast doors and taken over as military installations.
From above, a Khrrck cave-city is a scattering of reinforced-concrete entrance tunnels, with the occasional magic-collection net; huge structures of steel mesh which rise hundreds of feet above the ground and scoop magic from the wind, feeding it into giant accumulators underground.
Smoke seeps into the sky from exhaust vents, and the distant rumble of heavy machinery is punctuated only by the occasional blast of mining explosives.
Government
The government of Khrrck does not strictly match any known system, although it resembles a republic. A large number of clans elect a system of officials (actually a separate, very powerful clan) to deal with the outside world and government in general. The clans have differing relations with each other, sometimes to the point of war.
The Big Three
The Big Three clans make up two-thirds of Khrrck's population.
Steelfang.
The Steelfangs are black, with iron-alloy skeletons, claws, and teeth. They tend towards the large and heavily-built end of the scale.
They produce some of the best fighter pilots and soldiers, and have a heavy industrial sector.
Ironscale.
The Ironscales are steel-gray, with iron-alloy skeletons, claws, and teeth. They tend to be aggressive, and their bodies are especially resilient; it takes a lot to kill an Ironscale. They have three lungs, and can operate perfectly well with two of them incapacitated.
Copperclaw.
The Copperclaws are a burnished-copper color, with copper-alloy skeletons, claws and teeth. They produce some of the best magic users, and tend towards "lightweight and quick".
Minor, Yet Still Important Clans
These clans are small, but still worthy of notice.
Greenscale
The Greenscale clan is unique among Wyrms. Their bodies are adapted for swimming, and the only metal in their bodies is in the jaws, teeth, and claws. They have a array of webbed dorsal spines, and webbing between their toes, and are coloured a bluish-green that blends in well with the sea. They are employed primarily in Khrrck's small, yet deadly navy.
Transportation
Transportation is mostly conducted by cave-train. A cave-train is a rectangular, boxy structure that rides on sets of four steel rails, bolted to the walls of specially-built tunnels. The average speed is about 80 MPH.
Overland convoy transports objects too large to fit on a cave-train car or be carried by a cargo plane are transported by overland convoy.
A full-size convoy is truly a sight to behold; the central crawler, with its three sets of treads; the cargo trucks, with their six three-foot-high wire-mesh wheels; and the scout buggies, with their oversized engine, large wheels, and dual machine guns.
Yes, dual machine guns. Convoys are always heavily armed, to defend against bandit clans, which make their living by raiding other clans' settlements and convoys.
Magic: Part I
Item 1: Magic Is Not A Constant
Magic is not uniform. Different areas have widely differing magic levels. Space has, on average, very low levels. Earth's magic level varies from none at all to some areas which are soaked in it.
A given mage can only handle a specific amount of power. While this "cap" increases slightly with experience, it is still basically limited.
Magic levels don't affect the amount of power available; rather, they increase what you can do with a given amount. Experience also helps when using magic.
For example, let's say it takes X magic for a beginner to light a candle.
With the same amount of magic, a master could set fire to an entire tree.
Item 2: Magery And Wizardry
Magic in Khrrck takes two basic forms.
Magery, or "Elementalism", taps the four primary elements and the many secondary ones to accomplish feats.
Wizardry, or "Chaotic Magic", taps the Chaos underlying space itself. In wizardry, cause does not always produce the expected effect, and humongous feats are possible with very little effort. However, wizardry has a random nature; failures and backfires are common.
Item 3: The Elements And Their Uses.
Primary Elements:
Earth (Usually used for rock-shaping, mine-scouting, and healing.)
Air (Usually used for winds, levitation, and shielding.)
Fire (Useful for all sorts of destruction, and heating objects.)
Water (Useful for cooling and freezing objects, walking on water, etc.)
Most Wyrms specialize primarily in Earth, and secondarily in Air.
Secondary Elements:
Air + Fire = Light (Used for illumination and illusion)
Earth + Fire = Electricity (Used with electronic devices, and for lightning.)
Water + Fire = Smoke (Used in illusion, though not as often as Light, and for stealth-magic, such as blurring.)
Air + Water = Storm (Used for weather-control.)
Air + Earth = Metal (Metal is used for mage-smithing, Sharpening, and Hardening.)
Water + Earth = Acid (Used for attacking, mostly.)
Earth + Air + Fire + Water = Space (Used whenever it becomes necessary to mess with the fabric of the universe.)
So, Let's Say You Want To...
Levitate a pebble? Use Air.
Or bend a spoon, perhaps? Use Earth.
You want to burn your enemies? Use Fire.
Want to make it rain? Use Storm.
Need to blast those rocks out of the way? Use Earth and Air.
Want to smite someone with lightning? Use Electricity and Air.
Want to remove that annoying bush from the rest of the universe? Use Space.
Now, About Wizardry...
There is no specific "set of rules" for wizardry.
Basically, you experiment, and see which actions lead to which causes.
There's a few theories about the functions of wizardry, but none of them explain everything.
So experiment, and try not to kill yourself.
Spells And How They Work
Spells are best thought of as something like an electronic device.
I'll use toast as an example.
You could make toast by sticking some bread on the end of a fork
and holding it in front of a fire, but that's difficult and you're liable to get burned.
With a toaster, however, all you have to do is feed it
electricity and it'll toast your bread for you, much better than you could have done yourself.
The same is true of spells.
You could, for instance, levitate a rock without a spell. But that requires good concentration, and you'll have to compensate for every gust of wind that comes your way, as well as many other factors.
With a spell, all you have to do is weave its structure, feed it magic, and it'll do the rest for you. You can even keep it in a crystal, so you only have to cast it once.
How To Store Magic
And this brings us to storage. Magic can be stored in the proper container. A simple metal "bottle" will work for storing small amounts of raw magic, but a spell would disintegrate in a bottle if you didn't keep a close eye on it and maintain it.
Crystals, however, with their structured lattice of atoms, allow you to "hang" a spell in the lattice, where it will stay without degrading. They can also hold more magic than a simple bottle, storing it in the spaces between atoms.
Certain elements are faster to degrade than others. Earth spells can hang around for weeks without degrading, and Water spells will stay for a few days before dissolving. Even Air spells will stick around for a few hours.
However, spells made with Fire, the most volatile element, tend to evaporate if left unattended for more than a few minutes.
Spells take time to cast, and so some magic-users prefer using raw magic, rather than taking the time to cast spells.
What Magic Looks Like
Magic when used can look like pretty much anything. However, raw magic has certain colours, like so;
Earth = Green
Air = Yellow
Water = Blue
Fire = Red
Magic and Machines
In Khrrck, magic is often used to enhance or complement technology.
A good example is the KASS missile, which combines a magical warhead with a modern radar-guided missile.
A machine of sufficient complexity suffers odd effects when exposed to magic. Fighter planes and ships, for instance, acquire a sort of sentience, ranging from a sort of vague intelligence to, in the case of fighter aircraft, a complete personality, capable of outperforming most pilots.
Common Uses of Magic
Metal is often used to Sharpen blades. A properly Sharpened blade will cut rock with ease.
Metal is also used to Harden a Wyrm's scales, or armor. If done right, Hardened scales will stop bullets. (As long as the bullets aren't fired at close range.)
Smoke and Light is used to blur a mage's outline and fade him into the background, making him hard to see. Blurring ranges from simple blurriness to near-invisibility, including radar stealth.
Part II: Magical Critters
Dragons
The dragon, or at least the form of dragon found on the Wyrms' long-lost homeworld, is very dangerous, even without magical training.
A untrained dragon still has magical ability. Firebreathing is merely summoning pure Fire from the ether. A dragon couldn't fly without magic.
Dragons are also extremely strong, and can take serious injuries that would have killed lesser beings. Add the fact that dragons are armed with some very sharp talons and teeth, and you've got a major problem on your hands.
When trained in magic, however, the dragon becomes deadly.
Let's describe magic as being like electricity for a moment. It isn't true, but it allows a nice analogy.
The average mage puts out about the equivalent of a diesel generator.
Compared to that, a adult dragon is a fully-fledged nuclear reactor.
Dragons aren't particularly good at precision magic, and their spells tend to be sloppy. But they make up for that with sheer force of magic.
A magically trained dragon has everything from gale-force winds to lightning* at his disposal. None of these attacks are as useful or effective as flame, but each fills a little niche; for instance, winds are particularly effective against flying objects.
*Arced between the wingtips, not called from the sky.
Part III: Everything Else
Information in this section doesn't always apply. The section on intrinsic magic, for instance, is useless unless I'm employing magical creatures in a RP.
Intrinsic and Normal Magic
Some creatures don't merely use magic; they are magic.
Let's take the dragon as an example.
Dragons can fly. Since something the size of a dragon usually has no buisness flying, dragons have built-in Air magic that allows them to fly. Thousands of years of evolution have hammered this "intrinsic" magic into every particle of the dragons' bodies. It's impossible to interfere with it, short of killing the dragon. However, a dragon still can't fly if it's exhausted, injured, or otherwise incapacitated.
Mage-smithing.
Mage-smithing is using magic to reshape metal into new forms. Simple.
The substance doesn't necessarily have to be metallic, but metals are much easier to reshape than more complex substances, such as rock.
Mage-smithing can be performed with Earth, and in fact Earth is best for altering nonmetallic substances, but Metal is best for reshaping (you guessed it) metals.
Shapeshifting.
Is it possible?
Yes.
No.
Maybe.
It all depends on your value of "yes". If you mean, for example, "Can a mage transform himself into a pig?", no.
If you mean "Can a mage alter the shape of his body?", yes.
Total shapeshifting is theoretically possible, and practically impossible. Nobody's been mad enough to try it.
However, Wyrms have an advantage in altering their own bodies. Since their skeletons are metallic, they can use mage-smithing to mold their skeleton and claws into new shapes.
Actual skeletal reforming is much more difficult than just altering the shape of a claw, since when the skeleton changes to any significant degree, the musculature has to change also.
Since muscles are so much more complex than metal, they are much harder to reshape. A exceptional mage could theoretically do this, but reshaping muscles also requires large amounts of power; more than any mage could provide.
Seeing The Future.
You're all familiar with the analogy; time as a straight line, beginning at the Big Bang and heading off to who-knows-where.
Khrrck's mages have discovered that time is more of an infinitely steep slope than a straight, level line.
At the bottom of the slope is the Past, and the Big Bang. The slope extends infinitely, straight up towards the Future.
As a result, two things become apparent.
1. The energy required to haul anything (even a single photon) up the time-slope from the Past is infinite, or at least so near infinite to make no difference.
2. The energy generated by dislodging anything from the Future and dropping it down to the Present is infinite as well. Infinite energy doesn't fit into this universe's laws of physics, and the universe reacts to it by removing it, and a good deal of the surrounding area, from the universe. Permanently.
"Why not use the energy generated by dropping something from the future to lift something from the past?" I hear you cry. One reason.
Any movement through time happens instantaneously.
For that to work, you'd need to time it with perfect precision. Even the smallest error in timing would result in either:
A. The attempt to haul something from the Past occurs before the thing from the Future arrives. The attempt to haul something from the Past fails, and the infinite energy concentration that arrives moments later removes you from the universe.
B. The attempt to drop something from the Future occurs first. Hello, infinite energy; goodbye you.
Due to quantum mechanics, perfect precision is impossible. Ergo, time travel is impossible, right?
Not really.
If you could somehow curcumvent the slope, stepping off it at one point and stepping back on at another, you could travel through time without having to deal with all those messy infinities. However, this is very difficult, and has never been accomplished, to the best of our knowledge.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Suggestions are welcome, but I think it's pretty complete already.
Do ask if you want to use this system, OK? I'm rather fond of it.
Name
Scientific name: Draco minor.
Common name: Wyrm.
Plural: Wyrms.
Appearance
Wyrms are lizardlike, varying between seven and nine feet in length, with the occasional six to ten footer. They have short, strong claws adapted for digging in their native caverns and defending themselves against marauding predators. They vary in color from wrought-iron black to coppery gleam.
With their muscles and bones adapted to the high gravity of Newhome, they have an advantage in strength over most sentients. They walk on all four limbs, but can lift up, balancing on rear limbs and tail, to manipulate objects.
Wyrms vary greatly between clans, from the aquatic Greenscales to the resilient Ironscales.
Homeworld
The world that the Wyrms spent most of the previous 500 years on, (known to the Wyrms as Newhome) has a high concentration of metals (mostly iron) giving it a gravity of about
3.2 G. The life there has learned to survive in the brutal gravity, reinforcing their skeletons with metallic compounds. The terrain is mostly desert sand, with a few rare oasis spots where life can survive. There are no oceans on the planet; the rest of Newhome's life lives underground, in the harsh, barren caverns.
Equipment
Every Wyrm whose work requires fine manipulation is equipped with a toolpack. The standard light-work toolpack consists of a standard shell, with four mount points, multiple storage compartments, an interface computer, and a neural interface plug.
The plug is the center of the toolpack technology. This plug fits into a socket implanted in the Wyrm's neck, and allows the Wyrm to directly control the toolpack via its interface computer.
A wide array of attachments is available for the toolpacks.
Anything, from robotic arms to rocket launchers, can be fitted onto it.
Usually, however, the light-work toolpack is equipped with four lightweight robotic arms, each with a three-fingered claw.
The heavy-work toolpack is much like the light-work toolpack, except that it sports only three much more robust mount points.
Various specialty and military packs have been designed for specific purposes.
Ways have also been developed to allow Wyrms to use the neural interface to fly fighter jets, talk to computers, and drive tanks, with great success.
Communication
Wyrms cannot speak human languages; their vocal apparatus cannot make the necessary sounds. Wyrms who may have to deal with humans on a regular basis are outfitted with speaker implants, to allow them to speak English. The Wyrms' voices sound mechanical when speaking English; there are none of those little noises that a human's vocal apparatus would produce. They also have a tendency to hiss, for who-knows-what reason; the speaker certainly isn't causing it.
The Wyrms' language is harsh, full of "K"s and "A"s. Here's a sample:
"Kah'tar makik ahara ekal thakikar!"
History
Khrrck has a long and sad history. Khrrck's entire population is descended from a a group of about twenty thousand soldiers,
who were routed through a malfunctioning Gate, onto the planet of Newhome.
When they arrived on Newhome, every magical device in the group failed, except for those that had stored magic.
This relatively meager amount of stored magic was used by the magicians within the group to adapt the Wyrms to their new planet, taking useful traits, such as metal-reinforced bones, from the native animals.
For the next five hundred years (approx.), the Wyrms built and researched on their new home, looking for a way back.
Finally, about fourteen years ago, they thought they had found it.
Requiring massive amounts of electrical power, the New Gate would rip a hole in space, hopefully reconnecting them with their old home.
Unfortunately, they couldn't see what was on the other side, and by the time the New Gate was designed and built, almost all of the population had lost interest in getting back.
Nevertheless, a small group (about 1,000,000) of Wyrms decided to make the journey. They traveled through the New Gate, armed with construction equipment, a large library, and some formidable expertise with mechanical devices.
They came out in what is now Khrrck. It took them a few weeks before it was established; they were not where they had hoped to be.
The first few years were hard. The Wyrms were still adjusting to the low gravity, and several were mistaken for monsters and shot before they became established.
They made several massive purchases of blueprints and antique military equipment. As well, they began to design their own machines, using the expertise gained on Newhome.
One thing about Khrrck was better than Newhome.
After the first few months, it was discovered that a few antique magical devices now functioned again. The Wyrms immediately retrieved every magical text they could from the supplies they had brought, and began a series of experiments on the use of magic.
Khrrck
Terrain
Barren desert and the occasional dry plain. A few mountain ranges in the northeast. Caves everywhere.
Resources
Metals: Lots.
Coal: Little.
Oil: Medium-low amounts.
Agricultural: Not much.
Exports
So close to none as to make no difference.
Imports
The occasional military purchase.
Architecture
Not much. Well, actually there is, but you don't see it.
More than three-quarters of Khrrck's industrial activity is conducted underground. Most of the population lives underground, too.
Khrrck's cave-cities stretch for miles beneath the surface. Some of the especially deep, worked-out mines have been equipped with three-foot-thick steel blast doors and taken over as military installations.
From above, a Khrrck cave-city is a scattering of reinforced-concrete entrance tunnels, with the occasional magic-collection net; huge structures of steel mesh which rise hundreds of feet above the ground and scoop magic from the wind, feeding it into giant accumulators underground.
Smoke seeps into the sky from exhaust vents, and the distant rumble of heavy machinery is punctuated only by the occasional blast of mining explosives.
Government
The government of Khrrck does not strictly match any known system, although it resembles a republic. A large number of clans elect a system of officials (actually a separate, very powerful clan) to deal with the outside world and government in general. The clans have differing relations with each other, sometimes to the point of war.
The Big Three
The Big Three clans make up two-thirds of Khrrck's population.
Steelfang.
The Steelfangs are black, with iron-alloy skeletons, claws, and teeth. They tend towards the large and heavily-built end of the scale.
They produce some of the best fighter pilots and soldiers, and have a heavy industrial sector.
Ironscale.
The Ironscales are steel-gray, with iron-alloy skeletons, claws, and teeth. They tend to be aggressive, and their bodies are especially resilient; it takes a lot to kill an Ironscale. They have three lungs, and can operate perfectly well with two of them incapacitated.
Copperclaw.
The Copperclaws are a burnished-copper color, with copper-alloy skeletons, claws and teeth. They produce some of the best magic users, and tend towards "lightweight and quick".
Minor, Yet Still Important Clans
These clans are small, but still worthy of notice.
Greenscale
The Greenscale clan is unique among Wyrms. Their bodies are adapted for swimming, and the only metal in their bodies is in the jaws, teeth, and claws. They have a array of webbed dorsal spines, and webbing between their toes, and are coloured a bluish-green that blends in well with the sea. They are employed primarily in Khrrck's small, yet deadly navy.
Transportation
Transportation is mostly conducted by cave-train. A cave-train is a rectangular, boxy structure that rides on sets of four steel rails, bolted to the walls of specially-built tunnels. The average speed is about 80 MPH.
Overland convoy transports objects too large to fit on a cave-train car or be carried by a cargo plane are transported by overland convoy.
A full-size convoy is truly a sight to behold; the central crawler, with its three sets of treads; the cargo trucks, with their six three-foot-high wire-mesh wheels; and the scout buggies, with their oversized engine, large wheels, and dual machine guns.
Yes, dual machine guns. Convoys are always heavily armed, to defend against bandit clans, which make their living by raiding other clans' settlements and convoys.
Magic: Part I
Item 1: Magic Is Not A Constant
Magic is not uniform. Different areas have widely differing magic levels. Space has, on average, very low levels. Earth's magic level varies from none at all to some areas which are soaked in it.
A given mage can only handle a specific amount of power. While this "cap" increases slightly with experience, it is still basically limited.
Magic levels don't affect the amount of power available; rather, they increase what you can do with a given amount. Experience also helps when using magic.
For example, let's say it takes X magic for a beginner to light a candle.
With the same amount of magic, a master could set fire to an entire tree.
Item 2: Magery And Wizardry
Magic in Khrrck takes two basic forms.
Magery, or "Elementalism", taps the four primary elements and the many secondary ones to accomplish feats.
Wizardry, or "Chaotic Magic", taps the Chaos underlying space itself. In wizardry, cause does not always produce the expected effect, and humongous feats are possible with very little effort. However, wizardry has a random nature; failures and backfires are common.
Item 3: The Elements And Their Uses.
Primary Elements:
Earth (Usually used for rock-shaping, mine-scouting, and healing.)
Air (Usually used for winds, levitation, and shielding.)
Fire (Useful for all sorts of destruction, and heating objects.)
Water (Useful for cooling and freezing objects, walking on water, etc.)
Most Wyrms specialize primarily in Earth, and secondarily in Air.
Secondary Elements:
Air + Fire = Light (Used for illumination and illusion)
Earth + Fire = Electricity (Used with electronic devices, and for lightning.)
Water + Fire = Smoke (Used in illusion, though not as often as Light, and for stealth-magic, such as blurring.)
Air + Water = Storm (Used for weather-control.)
Air + Earth = Metal (Metal is used for mage-smithing, Sharpening, and Hardening.)
Water + Earth = Acid (Used for attacking, mostly.)
Earth + Air + Fire + Water = Space (Used whenever it becomes necessary to mess with the fabric of the universe.)
So, Let's Say You Want To...
Levitate a pebble? Use Air.
Or bend a spoon, perhaps? Use Earth.
You want to burn your enemies? Use Fire.
Want to make it rain? Use Storm.
Need to blast those rocks out of the way? Use Earth and Air.
Want to smite someone with lightning? Use Electricity and Air.
Want to remove that annoying bush from the rest of the universe? Use Space.
Now, About Wizardry...
There is no specific "set of rules" for wizardry.
Basically, you experiment, and see which actions lead to which causes.
There's a few theories about the functions of wizardry, but none of them explain everything.
So experiment, and try not to kill yourself.
Spells And How They Work
Spells are best thought of as something like an electronic device.
I'll use toast as an example.
You could make toast by sticking some bread on the end of a fork
and holding it in front of a fire, but that's difficult and you're liable to get burned.
With a toaster, however, all you have to do is feed it
electricity and it'll toast your bread for you, much better than you could have done yourself.
The same is true of spells.
You could, for instance, levitate a rock without a spell. But that requires good concentration, and you'll have to compensate for every gust of wind that comes your way, as well as many other factors.
With a spell, all you have to do is weave its structure, feed it magic, and it'll do the rest for you. You can even keep it in a crystal, so you only have to cast it once.
How To Store Magic
And this brings us to storage. Magic can be stored in the proper container. A simple metal "bottle" will work for storing small amounts of raw magic, but a spell would disintegrate in a bottle if you didn't keep a close eye on it and maintain it.
Crystals, however, with their structured lattice of atoms, allow you to "hang" a spell in the lattice, where it will stay without degrading. They can also hold more magic than a simple bottle, storing it in the spaces between atoms.
Certain elements are faster to degrade than others. Earth spells can hang around for weeks without degrading, and Water spells will stay for a few days before dissolving. Even Air spells will stick around for a few hours.
However, spells made with Fire, the most volatile element, tend to evaporate if left unattended for more than a few minutes.
Spells take time to cast, and so some magic-users prefer using raw magic, rather than taking the time to cast spells.
What Magic Looks Like
Magic when used can look like pretty much anything. However, raw magic has certain colours, like so;
Earth = Green
Air = Yellow
Water = Blue
Fire = Red
Magic and Machines
In Khrrck, magic is often used to enhance or complement technology.
A good example is the KASS missile, which combines a magical warhead with a modern radar-guided missile.
A machine of sufficient complexity suffers odd effects when exposed to magic. Fighter planes and ships, for instance, acquire a sort of sentience, ranging from a sort of vague intelligence to, in the case of fighter aircraft, a complete personality, capable of outperforming most pilots.
Common Uses of Magic
Metal is often used to Sharpen blades. A properly Sharpened blade will cut rock with ease.
Metal is also used to Harden a Wyrm's scales, or armor. If done right, Hardened scales will stop bullets. (As long as the bullets aren't fired at close range.)
Smoke and Light is used to blur a mage's outline and fade him into the background, making him hard to see. Blurring ranges from simple blurriness to near-invisibility, including radar stealth.
Part II: Magical Critters
Dragons
The dragon, or at least the form of dragon found on the Wyrms' long-lost homeworld, is very dangerous, even without magical training.
A untrained dragon still has magical ability. Firebreathing is merely summoning pure Fire from the ether. A dragon couldn't fly without magic.
Dragons are also extremely strong, and can take serious injuries that would have killed lesser beings. Add the fact that dragons are armed with some very sharp talons and teeth, and you've got a major problem on your hands.
When trained in magic, however, the dragon becomes deadly.
Let's describe magic as being like electricity for a moment. It isn't true, but it allows a nice analogy.
The average mage puts out about the equivalent of a diesel generator.
Compared to that, a adult dragon is a fully-fledged nuclear reactor.
Dragons aren't particularly good at precision magic, and their spells tend to be sloppy. But they make up for that with sheer force of magic.
A magically trained dragon has everything from gale-force winds to lightning* at his disposal. None of these attacks are as useful or effective as flame, but each fills a little niche; for instance, winds are particularly effective against flying objects.
*Arced between the wingtips, not called from the sky.
Part III: Everything Else
Information in this section doesn't always apply. The section on intrinsic magic, for instance, is useless unless I'm employing magical creatures in a RP.
Intrinsic and Normal Magic
Some creatures don't merely use magic; they are magic.
Let's take the dragon as an example.
Dragons can fly. Since something the size of a dragon usually has no buisness flying, dragons have built-in Air magic that allows them to fly. Thousands of years of evolution have hammered this "intrinsic" magic into every particle of the dragons' bodies. It's impossible to interfere with it, short of killing the dragon. However, a dragon still can't fly if it's exhausted, injured, or otherwise incapacitated.
Mage-smithing.
Mage-smithing is using magic to reshape metal into new forms. Simple.
The substance doesn't necessarily have to be metallic, but metals are much easier to reshape than more complex substances, such as rock.
Mage-smithing can be performed with Earth, and in fact Earth is best for altering nonmetallic substances, but Metal is best for reshaping (you guessed it) metals.
Shapeshifting.
Is it possible?
Yes.
No.
Maybe.
It all depends on your value of "yes". If you mean, for example, "Can a mage transform himself into a pig?", no.
If you mean "Can a mage alter the shape of his body?", yes.
Total shapeshifting is theoretically possible, and practically impossible. Nobody's been mad enough to try it.
However, Wyrms have an advantage in altering their own bodies. Since their skeletons are metallic, they can use mage-smithing to mold their skeleton and claws into new shapes.
Actual skeletal reforming is much more difficult than just altering the shape of a claw, since when the skeleton changes to any significant degree, the musculature has to change also.
Since muscles are so much more complex than metal, they are much harder to reshape. A exceptional mage could theoretically do this, but reshaping muscles also requires large amounts of power; more than any mage could provide.
Seeing The Future.
You're all familiar with the analogy; time as a straight line, beginning at the Big Bang and heading off to who-knows-where.
Khrrck's mages have discovered that time is more of an infinitely steep slope than a straight, level line.
At the bottom of the slope is the Past, and the Big Bang. The slope extends infinitely, straight up towards the Future.
As a result, two things become apparent.
1. The energy required to haul anything (even a single photon) up the time-slope from the Past is infinite, or at least so near infinite to make no difference.
2. The energy generated by dislodging anything from the Future and dropping it down to the Present is infinite as well. Infinite energy doesn't fit into this universe's laws of physics, and the universe reacts to it by removing it, and a good deal of the surrounding area, from the universe. Permanently.
"Why not use the energy generated by dropping something from the future to lift something from the past?" I hear you cry. One reason.
Any movement through time happens instantaneously.
For that to work, you'd need to time it with perfect precision. Even the smallest error in timing would result in either:
A. The attempt to haul something from the Past occurs before the thing from the Future arrives. The attempt to haul something from the Past fails, and the infinite energy concentration that arrives moments later removes you from the universe.
B. The attempt to drop something from the Future occurs first. Hello, infinite energy; goodbye you.
Due to quantum mechanics, perfect precision is impossible. Ergo, time travel is impossible, right?
Not really.
If you could somehow curcumvent the slope, stepping off it at one point and stepping back on at another, you could travel through time without having to deal with all those messy infinities. However, this is very difficult, and has never been accomplished, to the best of our knowledge.
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Suggestions are welcome, but I think it's pretty complete already.
Do ask if you want to use this system, OK? I'm rather fond of it.