demonic.corvid
notes from a decade-old world
World / Cosmology & Magic

in the beginning

The Goddess of Balance

There was once one goddess who held fire, water, earth, air, life, and devastation inside her, balancing the elements against light and dark. Devastation corrupted the rest. To save what she could, she split herself into four — Ifrit (fire), Cyanna (water), Kai (earth), Zephyr (air) — keeping light and darkness for herself.

She lost that fight. The darkness overtook her light, and she became the Corrupted Goddess — a mindless force of destruction, and the reason the center of the wheel below isn't safe to touch.

the magic wheel

Magic is drawn from the Eidos — a shared environmental field that depletes and recovers locally. Heavy magic use in an area is visible and strategic, not abstract; a place can be fought dry. Every school of magic Erabrath knows sits somewhere on the wheel below: adjacent elements mix easily but weakly, opposite elements are far more powerful but far harder to reach.

The Magic Wheel — eight elements and their schools arranged in a circle, Destruction at the center.
FireEvocation
[fun fact TBD]
SmokeIllusion
[fun fact TBD]
AirEnchantment
Illegal in Atria — altering someone's emotions without consent. Lyra uses it anyway, as an underground performer.
IceDivination
[fun fact TBD]
WaterConjuration
[fun fact TBD]
PlantNecromancy
Valas's secret specialty — and, by a wide margin, what he's actually best at.
EarthAbjuration
[fun fact TBD]
CrystalTransmutation
[fun fact TBD]

hover / tap a card to flip — element on the wheel, its D&D school underneath

the magic system

reaching across the wheel

Adjacent elements on the wheel mix easily, but the results have a low floor and a low ceiling. Opposite elements are far more powerful — but reaching one means looping all the way around one whole half of the wheel, borrowing power from Time or Space, or — rarest and most dangerous of all — cutting straight through Destruction at the center.

Casters acquire elemental affinities through circumstance — birth, environment, study — rather than a fixed class.

casting methods

Six primary methods, independent of element or school, each with its own cultural baggage. [Full descriptions & stereotypes TBD — placeholders below.]

Etchers [TBD] Resonants [TBD] Binders [TBD] Kinetics [TBD] Voicers [TBD] Hybrids two methods combined
the pantheon
placeholder — Goddess of Balance / Corrupted Goddess portrait
The Goddess of Balance balance · corruption

The original goddess, now the mindless, destructive force at the dead center of the wheel.

placeholder — Ifrit portrait
Ifrit fire

[blurb TBD]

placeholder — Cyanna portrait
Cyanna water

[blurb TBD]

placeholder — Kai portrait
Kai earth

[blurb TBD]

placeholder — Zephyr portrait
Zephyr air

[blurb TBD]

placeholder — Mystra portrait
Mystra magic itself

Killed once, by Cyric, triggering the Spell Plague. The Mystra who reformed afterward is stricter — magic has never been as easy to reach since.

placeholder — Cyric portrait
Cyric chaos · blood

The only person in Erabrath's history to go all the way: mortal → Entity → full God. Currently re-imprisoned.

gods & entities

Gods

manifestations of a concept

  • gain power through belief, conscious or not
  • exist in tiers, from hyper-local to universal
  • can climb — a god of bread can become a god of agriculture

Entities

mortals who ascend through infamy

  • sustained public association with a concept — usually dark
  • need followers to sustain power, and can consume each other
  • can die, but don't age, and slowly lose their humanity

Cyric is the only person in Erabrath's history to go all the way: mortal → Entity → full God.