Magics are a strange species that live in a symbiotic relationship with their host, providing often powerful or useful benefits in return for a safe place to live (specifically, in the lungs. People who have these organisms living inside of them are called magicers. Magics mostly dissolve within the lungs, and spread out throughout the blood stream as they do in order to have access to the rest of the body, as well as oxygen, which magics need to live). Even the most powerful of magics can only live for a couple hours at most without a host, leaving them to feverishly search for a new one if the previous one dies (though they rarely succeed, most magics die before they even escape the body). They can dissolve in aerated blood outside of a host and remain in a sort of stasis if necessary. The majority of magic is weakened, and can be even killed, by salt (“majority” meaning about 99.9% of it, salt-resistant magics are very, very rare). This makes eating large amounts of salt uncomfortable for magicers and inhaling salt dust or getting it in cuts extremely painful. Large amounts of salt being inhaled can actually kill the magic within the host, causing symptoms similar to those produced as a result of magic removal.

Magics come in all kinds of forms, allowing for a massive number of different abilities, some being very helpful and others being useless. In fact, there are really only three restrictions when it come to magic abilities: magic must always have access to oxygen, so magicers always need to air (which is why magic is rarer in species like strelks), magics cannot time travel (though they can speed it up or slow it down), and magics cannot create new living creatures or bring someone back to life without taking someone elses’ life. (Yes, magics can create new matter and energy. The laws of conservation of energy and conservation of mass are moot on the Platform!) Magics can be made stronger with use (and using them also feels quite good in addition to often being useful), though the magic’s innate potential often affects how quickly the magic strengthens, and to what point it can strengthen to. Some of the most common types of magic are simple healing, and simple pyro/hydro/electrokinesis. While it’s technically possible for two different magics to inhabit a host, there aren’t any ill effects for the host except lower tolerance to salt, it’s rarely heard of. Magics don’t like sharing and will attempt to kill each other, so dual magics usually don’t last long unless they inhabit separate lungs.

There are two main ways to get magic: to either be born with it, or to get it through infection. Desert-borns are born with magic fairly regularly — around one fifth of sentient desert-borns are magicers to some degree. It is also possible for organically-born individuals to have magic. Generally, as long as at least one parent is a magicer, the child will be a magicer as well, often inheriting their parent’s type of magic as-is, almost as if the magic was cloned. Children of two magicer parents tend to be particularly adept. However, in these cases, the abilities of the parents don’t necessarily determine the abilities of the child, who may have abilities that are a mixture of those of the parents’, or something new altogether. The second method, infection, is slightly more traumatic. It involves removing or cloning (normally done through splitting a magic in two and taking one half, then allowing both to recover back to their normal potency) magic from a living magicer, which is then ingested by the person who wishes to have said ability. It is fairly rare, as only particularly strong magics will survive cloning or removal and these tend to be the most dangerous to pass on, and is closely regulated by most governments. It is very rare, but possible, for someone to be accidentally infected with magic; this occurs if someone is very close to a powerful dead or drying magicer, at which point the magic will occasionally choose to “jump ship” and force its way out of the host’s body and into a new person’s lungs. Regardless of how it is obtained, infected magics tend to be more likely to warp their hosts.

Warping and Removal

If magics are powerful enough, they can change their host’s physical appearance to better suit their own needs. This is called warping. The host often has no control over this. However, warps don’t always seem to serve a purpose. Some warps just seem to be based on the magic’s preferences, which is something that interests many scholars and prompts questions about how intelligent magics really are. As warping progresses, it alters the host’s body in ways that prevent the host from being able to live without the aid of the magic (such as weakening the immune system, weakening organs, or even completely atrophying organs and body parts in the most severe cases. In these, there’s no way the magic can be removed without killing the host.) Strong magic can also cause degradation of the mental state after a while. This slipping sanity usually coincides with warping. Not all magicers show all symptoms or experience symptoms in the same way, and some effects may occur during earlier or later phases of magic warping than usually experienced during. However, these are the overwhelming trends. Of course, not all magics can warp their hosts enough to reach the later dangerous phases, or even warp at all. Here’s an example of warping as it progresses (which includes magicer’s charcoal):

Signs of mild warping (removal is best during this phase):

• Increased sensitivity to salt.
• Change in eye color.
• Magic becoming more powerful, or taking less effort or concentration to use.
• Magic usage becoming increasingly pleasureful.
• Intrusive aggressive thoughts, often towards others with magic.
• Thinking or talking about magic often.
• Difficulty sleeping.
• Immune suppression.
• Stuttering.
• Feeling restless.
• Feeling out of breath.

Signs of severe warping (removal still possible, but dangerous, during early phases. Often no longer possible during later phases, if it progresses to that point):

• Growths of “magicer’s charcoal” (a black, chalky, opaque substance that grows to replace the skin. This substance helps the magic be less obvious in theory, as the opaqueness prevents the glowing magic in the blood being visible, but the substance has grown to be pretty recognizable as a sign of dangerous magic in its own right. If warping progresses, this substance will often condense to become hard, smooth, and shiny, resembling an exoskeleton).
• Blood glowing consistently, often including glowing of the eyes or other blood-rich tissues.
• Internal pains, or feeling as though organs are “moving”, and organ atrophy.
• Necrosis and loss of body parts.
• Blastoautosis-like symptoms (such as self-healing and inability to age) when they did not previously exist.
• Growth of body parts that don’t fit the previous body plan of the magicer.
• Change in pigmentation of certain tissues, sometimes including making said tissues glow.
• Magic affecting environment even without active choice.
• Personality changes.
• Memory loss.
• Introversion or aggression.
• Low hormone levels.
• Lack of appetite.
• Lack of ability or need to sleep.
• Hyperventilation.

Signs of total warping (removal impossible):

• Loss of ability to speak.
• Inability to understand speech.
• Lack of physical coordination.
• Sudden muscle spams or twitching.
• Hunched posture.
• Lack of use of limbs, normally arms.
• No longer relying on sensory organs like eyes and ears, and instead relying on what the magic senses.
• Head angled upward with mouth opened wide, coupled with constant hyperventilation.
• Extreme aggression towards other magicers, and disregard for the health of any nearby eus.
• Inability to recognize anyone the magicer previously knew.
• Presence causes headaches or eye strain in others.
• If kinesis magic, coalescence of things magicer can affect around the body

Magic can be removed by someone with magikinesis or another type of magic that functions similarly. However, magic removal is quite a dangerous process for both the magicer and the person performing the removal, especially when involving individuals with more powerful magics. The magic will do everything in its power to resist being removed, often attempting to warp the magicer further prior to removal, lashing out at the remover or others in the vicinity via magical affects, and physically clinging to the inside of the lungs and trachea. There’s also the issue of magikinesis being quite rare, and taking some training to learn how to use without accidentally killing the magicer by removing it too quickly or, in a worst case scenario, ripping it out of the magicer’s chest cavity and taking their lungs with it.

The process usually begins by having the magicer do three things: avoid using their magic as much as possible to avoid increasing its strength, consume a larger amount of salt (often in the form of salt-filled capsules), and start smoking in an effort to weaken the magic by partially suffocating it. In more dire cases, magicers will also occasionally be made to inhale finely granulated salt. All of these actions are quite unpleasant due to the natural addictiveness of magic usage and due to the magicer’s sensitivity to salt.
The removal itself is the most dangerous part of the process. The remover begins by gently, slowly drawing all remnants of magic out of the blood vessels and collecting it into the lungs. This step alone often takes upwards of an hour, as it must be done slowly to prevent rupturing blood vessels (though internal bleeding almost always occurs in small amounts during removal regardless of the remover’s expertise). The magic will also begin attempting to resist at this point, which can very easily put the remover in danger if the magic is powerful enough. Once the magic is collected in the lungs, it is carefully drawn upwards through the bronchi and trachea. The magic will often cling to the sides of the bronchi and cause damage to these tissues, or become lodged within them and cause the magicer to suffocate. The magic is finally drawn up into the throat and out the mouth, where it is expelled by the magicer. It is critical for the magicer to receive medical attention after removal due to the internal bleeding and other respiratory damage that occurs. The expelled magic will die quickly unless it is stored safely in blood plasma, though more often than not the magics are simply crushed and killed.

Recovery from removal varies depending on how severe the warping of the magicer was. For every magicer, removal can be mentally difficult, as loss of magic can result in withdrawal-like symptoms. Those with magics that made certain parts of life easier may also have some difficulty relearning to how accomplish tasks that they previously had to need to do. For those with only early phases of warping, the respiratory damage is usually all that needs to be healed. For those with powerful magic, though, it can be more difficult, as some of the effects of later warping (organ atrophy, immune suppression, etc.) can make it very difficult for the magicer to live without their magic and they will often require several years of assistance to fully learn to live without it (and even then, most will always be physically damaged). In all cases, even after magics are removed, the warping effect is permanent.

General Magic Naming

Magics are named using a prefix to describe what type of thing the magic affects, and a suffix to describe how it affects said thing. As some magics can affect things in multiple ways, and some affect multiple things, prefixes can be combined in order to make a longer, more specific magic name. These names can occasionally get decently large and complicated, in which case they’ll often be shortened or described as another type of magic with similar properties in day-to-day life for the sake of convenience. Warping isn’t taken into consideration when naming magics, as even two people with the exact same magic may warp in different ways, so it’s a bit hard to nail down in the name and would simply be a hassle. Nonmagicers, when needed, can be called eus.

Common Suffixes:

• -kinesis: ability to manipulate or move certain objects. This may sometimes manifest as a subcategory where the user can change the properties of objects; “enchant” them.
• -genesis: ability to spontaneously generate objects.
• -autosis: ability to affect oneself in a certain way.
• -demosis: ability to affect other people in a certain way.
• -autodemesis (AD): abilities of both autosis and demosis.
• -kinegenesis (KG): abilities of both kinesis and genesis magics.
• -anesis: abilities that don’t conform to any of the previous categories.

Common Prefixes:

• Botano-: relating to plants.
• Hemo-: relating to blood.
• Geo-: relating to earth/crystals
• Hydro-: relating to water.
• Electro-: relating to electricity.
• Pyro-: relating to fire.
• Photo-: relating to light
• Blasto-: relating to cells/cell growth (usually healing magic will have this prefix).
• Aero-: relating to air or, more generally, gaseous substances.
• Chromo-: relating to color.
• Morpho-: relating to changing physical form.
• Dynamo-: relating to strength (type of strength it provides can be specified by adding the root name for the body part before this prefix).
• Thermo-: relating to temperature.
• Metallo-: relating to metals. A more specific subset of geo magics.
• Magi-: relating to magics (Exmagi- is used when refering to removing it).
• Phono-: relating to sound.
• Tele-: relating to motion or movement in general.
• Pano-: relating to everything (mostly just used with kinesis magics — this would be the ability to move anything).
• Meteo-: relating to the weather.
• Ome-: relating to determining possible future events (whether they are certain to occur varies by individual magic).
• An-: relating to multiple topics at once to the point where listing them all would be too troublesome. Many more common magics that relate to multiple things have specific prefixes.