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FallenreaperI’ll start off simple – the major taboos are
1- No time and space travel
2- No matter/essence creation
3- No essence manipulation (in the sense of complete change. If you have a angel+human+demon chimera and you’re a Musician (or possibly another spell-caster) you can enhance the angelic part to subdue the demonic one but you can never remove either completely.)
4- No essence destruction either.
Aka – no teleporting, time-travelling, species change (there’s a small loop-hole here if anyone’s interested).
Themerlinhawk said or could it concievably be used to bring beings from other planes to the plane of the wielder? (I'm thinking something along the lines of calling a Demon from Hell to the surface or something like that)
That would be possible but hard. You’d have to impose your will over another creature and while some are capable (like Tamer angels) it’s still quite the feat. I need to point out here that I’m also banning parallel realities, pocket dimensions and such. If you were looking at Saella, the reason why she had those minions in an amulet was more complicated than a pokeball – the amulet was a portal linking her to a particular place in Hell that acted like a prison. Until 200 years ago, in-between was void (abyss/nothingness/netherworld of a sort) which couldn’t be crossed by almost anyone. Nowadays the Gate is broken and there’s rifts in the void so it’s more likely that you can easily access Hell but still – Heaven, Surface and Hell are the only planes (if you don’t count the void) in this world.
Oh, saying that, it is possible in this season to have amulets and obviously, Instruments, to collect essence in.
Apropos, summoning animals and such will also need to be very well-explained so it doesn’t fall into the banned “matter creation” category.
I see there’s a bit of a confusion about enchanting. I think that all of you have valid points so allow me to suggest a summary: Enchantment is the art of bestowing an item or person with some additional properties.
Themerlinhawk said Your deffinition of Enchanting is what i refer to as Alchemy or Transmutation. Enchanting for me is the manipulation of perception, thought, feeling or will of another being.
I see where you’re coming from but let’s try to call that illusion/possession/taming and IPC for simplicity’s sake. We could call both of the above examples enchantment but it could get messy. That’s just my opinion.
As for changing into another creature, I’d say that’s a no-no. It IS possible under certain circumstances (through prolonged exposure or consumption of essence which I’ll also demonstrate IC) but it’s not the “snap your fingers and turn yourself into a giraffe” kind of thing. Plenty of demons can change appearances but the cost is essence, and not their own. xD Anycase, randomly changing yourself into something else is a tricky business and I’d say almost exclusively demonic, with a few human and no angelic exceptions.
Merlin, I’m still undecided about Necromancy. The main question is should essence fragments/spirits still have consciousness and personality or should they just serve as raw power. Other than that, the bringing a body back to some semblance of an animated state and leeching/giving away essence/life force is pretty much what I’m thinking about, yeah.
As far as Divination is concerned are we talking Oracle status where what you see in the future is set in stone? or is it kind of a murky sense of what might be? (I'm just assuming that farseeing, reading peoples thoughts, sensing demons/angels/magic and sorting through past events also fall under this category but I don’t have any specific questions about them)
It’s the first. The Clairvoyants and oracles are valued so highly exactly because their visions always come true. They’re involuntary, though, and uncontrollable – a clairvoyant can have only one vision in their lifetime and it could be something trivial or it could be a sixth sense that “a tall man with a black beard is going to do something great” that was a main component of the angelic Council and its modus operandi. But the visions don’t have to be murky either, I do like breaking clichés so it’s likely that some clairvoyants rap their visions out rather than put them in fine poetry.
As far as Alchemy is concerned I'm assuming Magic has to play by the Laws of Physics for the most part so I'm assuming matter has to be conserved when changing one substance to another. Also could magic theoretically be used to alter the properties of a material (I.E. make stone malleable like clay, make wood as strong as steel, ect...)
We haven’t delved into alchemy or magic as much as you might think so many things are up for grabs as long as you’d have them and are willing to explain it to everyone to understand. We’ve always operated on the basis that magic requires essence so yeah, you could say those are the rules, though you don’t have to be super pedantic about quantity and such. For example an interesting detail is that the angels always made sure none of their deceased ended up in demonic hands exactly for that reason – it would allow the latter to have a little essence-feast and then use the charge for whatever goal. And yeah, while we haven’t used magic to alter physical properties I think it could be interesting to see, again, if it’s not OP like turning every weapon coming your way into jelly and melting people’s fingers. :)
Btw Rtron, Luciana’s snake-bite thing doesn’t need to go. Creatures like the Battle and Tamer angels, the Sirens and let alone the Gatekeepers, have the ability of subduing others to their will as has been demonstrated in S1. Obviously it has to be well-played so no players get offended but I believe for the sake of the story and with enough player-dialogue there should be no problem with a few OP techniques like that. I trust players’ sportsmanship, hence the option to play as Musicians.
*wipes forehead* And there I thought I could let go on being pedantic…. But Merlin asked for it and it’s interesting to delve into details! *wines petty excuses* Ahem, anyway. For the people who don’t want to go that deep, you don’t have to. You can try to keep things simple and so can we.