Sunday, March 6, 2011

Magic on Venn-La

There are many different magical disciplines on Venn-La. 
  • telekinesis. controlling objects with one's mind.  allows for flight.
  • scrying. seeing the future or present, or past.  several different methods developed to tap into this, including merely concentrating upon the mind's eye, but also using methods such as mirrors or pools or entrails of beasts. 
  • mind control.  usually used for the taming of wild beasts.  use on other kuls is outlawed in most lands. 
  • energy control.  like telekinesis, only with energy not matter.  lncludes manipulating fire, light, lightening, but also controlling temperature or creating illusions.
  • spirit walking.  making one's spirit leave one's body and go waking and traveling elsewhere, then returning with what information one has gained.
  • teleportation.  moving your body from one place to another, traveling in the corridors between reality. 
  • healing powers.  The manipulation of energy at a deeper level to heal and alter the body.  can also be used in the cultivationg of plants or animals, imbuing them with more spirit or order.
  • transmogrification.  turning one substance into another.  water to wine, lead to gold.  
  • necromancy.  controlling the dead or spirits of the once living.  often illegal, and widely viewed as evil.
  • wizardry.  simply shaping or altering reality in total with one's own will.  creating something from nothing.  Very rare, often outlawed.  such a being, if suffiently powerful,  can become like a god.
Many of these abilities can be used in a variety of creative ways to perform many technological functions.  

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Venn-La

On the planet Venn-La, the dominant species, a race of intelligent beings who call themselves kuls, have long ago learned how to use magic.  After an initial stage of tool developement they began to move more and more to a dependance on the mystic arts.

They build buildings by shaping the earth, create weapons by molding the rare materials.  Feed themselves by creating cauldrons of plenty, or bewitching creatures from the seas, or gardens by controlling the flowering of plants.  They light their houses with orbs of energy floating in the air.  They cook in furnaces lit with magic fires.  They communicate across vat distances by water pools, and in hulls with flying spells cast upon them.  They teleport from city to city.  They have built cities in the air, on mountains upturned and made to float by ancient spells.  They keep cities that float upon the seas. 

Their are two types of Kuls, those with magic, and those without.  The magical ones all have green skin, and are called mors.  Those without magic are orange skinned and called wors.  Kuls of both skin types can breed with one another, and have children of different colors.  Wors have children who are mors, and mors have children you are wors.  Only about one tenth of kuls are mors, and they tend to be women (there are two sexes on Venn-La).  Those born wors train to be great fighters, or fine artisnas, creating the simple tools that will aid the Mors in doing the magic that runs society.