elementology 101. Lecture 1 

Hello, and welcome to Elementology 101, where A.L. Hornbeck will discuss his magic system called Elementology. The magic system of my greater Computus lore is called Elementology because it relies on elements and, catalysts, and attributes as it's foundation. Imagientechs and magic are a way to draw upon this magic system, but they are mostly techniques on how to manipulate and control this system. In this blog post we will discuss what elements, catalysts, and attributes are. Then show how they are used in practice.


There are two types of elements in elementology there are primary elements and there are secondary elements as well as a pseudo-third element called Tertiary. The reason that Tertiary is somewhat of a pseudo element is something we will discuss when I talk about Catalysts and attributes. The primary elements are Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Light, and Dark. These are basic magical fantasy elements. They are the core of this magic system and also the first six elements.


The only thing to note about elementology besides the elements is it all powered by spiritual energy, at least the magic part of the system. There are three ways to generate spiritual energy or ki, or chi, depending on the culture that uses the term. Everything that is sentient as well as alive has the potential to use spiritual energy, generally only sentient individuals have been seen using spirit energy, but everything else in the Computus Galaxy that is living has spiritual energy within them.


It is a potential form of energy that can be called upon in three distinct ways due to the energy flow in the individual. Those types are focused, burst, and cycle. Focused Energy is typically done by mages and those who have trained in a form of theory to focus energy to a point and then release it. It is calculated and precise type of spiritual energy flow. The second type of energy flow is called burst which is gratuitous amounts of energy being uses at once in massive bursts of energy. This energy type drains a lot of energy, but a lot of energy is exerted making attacks or defense much more potent. The third type is cycled it is the weaker of all three energy types, but it regenerates energy back much more organically to the user, so that they can do more with less.


Now that you know what the spiritual energy does, how it affects the magical system is a mage or an Imagient or pretty much anyone else generating magic or techniques such as Imagientechs can use these energy types to generate one of the six basic elements.


The main rule of elementology is that when magical energies or elements collide they create catalysts. During a collision two things happen. One is that imagicite dust is created as a reaction. That imagicite dust is unrefined and generally not workable into a material. The other outcome is a catalyst. Generally when collision it is not controlled and the catalyst is brief such as when a fire mage hits a water mage and they block it with the various elements steam is produced as well as some unrefined imagicite dust.


A steam mage to create steam would have to draw upon their knowledge of fire and water to create steam as an attack. For example a ninja who uses smoke to attack can either use something that natural makes smoke such as a smoke bomb or if they can draw upon spiritual energy to create magical smoke. The easiest way to do this is to know a bit about fire element and apply dual fire in a technique which means no smoke bombs needed to create a smoke affect and allowing them to escape.


Steam itself is a catalyst, it is also a secondary element as well. Effectively all the secondary and tertiary elements are also catalysts, they can only created or reproduced if and only if the primary elements involved or in the case of tertiary elements the attributes are used. A catalyst is an affect that happens when two magical elements collide either in battle with one another or being used by a mage to create a stronger element.


The table above does a good job of showing the examples of the primary elements and what they do to each other when they interact amiss other elements. I also listed the attributes, but not their actual tertiary elements they make. This is mostly because primary elements and their respective catalysts are more important on laying a ground work on how the system works.


Primary elements are created via the use of spiritual energy to manifest the primary element. For mages they learn techniques on how to do this. For an Imagient, they just learn their Imagientech and it becomes second nature. The way these two people can harness elementology is different, but if a Wind Mage is taking on an Imagient who controls fire and they fight each other with the two elements one must know that if the magical elements hit that both attacks will create a catalyst which is sand.


Secondary elements can then themselves be applied to attributes to make certain things called tertiary elements. Which are not true elements because they need an attribute. An attribute is by definition something that is being caused by something else. For example Heat and Cold are attributes because they are caused by something being hot. A weapon is a weapon, because it is being used as such. To make things more confusing there are primary and secondary attributes. Which are well, the main difference between the two are that the secondary are generally applied ideas that are not really tangiable like the primary attributes. One does not simply pick up something that is positive or kinetic, those are more of the lines of meta-magic, which I will not necessarily go into detail with.


There are other attributes and tertiary elements that I am not listing, but the main one I will discuss for example is Poison. Poison is created magically, not naturally by knowledge of acid element and negative attribute. Biologically you have acids in your body, but that is not the acid we are talking about. Acid in elementology isn't even necessarily something that is considered an acid in chemistry either. An acid is just what happens when the Dark and Water elements collide. That acid if given some negative attribute will turn into poison. A ninja or a spy or assassin or anyone else who knows a bit about those elements and attributes can create poison that will magically poison a target, hopefully not the user.


I hope this is a good introduction to my magic system called elementology. If you like this blog and want me to continue with detailing the magic system, please like and comment on the blog. Next week, I will go into detail with what is an Imagientech, and how the system is used.

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