Creating Magic

Most of my stories don’t have any magic, sparing me the pain of having to create a magic system, no matter whether it be rational or not, high magic or not. Yet, I’m regularly on Mythcreants, where spec-fic of any kind is a big topic, so I have read articles on magic systems over time and it has definitely helped me recently.

Along came “Alex Dorsey” and with it the first supernatural content. I’ve had a ghost in “A Plague of Rogues” and seemingly supernatural creatures in some “John Stanton” stories, but all of those were fake. “Alex Dorsey” had vampires, zombies, and revenants - and a vampire rat. It also had some alchemy, so I needed to cobble together a basic principle by which all of that worked together. I came up with the idea that zombies and revenants have a natural expiration date - when the brain is too damaged, they drop and never get up again.

Vampires are another can of worms, naturally. I had to come up with basics, such as how their powers grew, what they could and couldn’t do, and what to use against them. The last was the easiest - there’s a lot around in mythology and adapting some classics like sunlight and the stake only to add something rarer like whitethorn wasn’t that hard. With the rest, I have to admit, I played fast and loose. No real rules there, I just picked a few things which Jeremy could do, despite being too young for them, and came up with that blue fire which burns brighter and longer, the older a vampire is and that was, very much, it. After all, the novel was a one-shot, so I would never need the system again.

Not so with “Theoretical Necromancy”. The first volume will be out in August, it’s finished already (all books for this year are, I have finished the first volume of “The Eye” last month). Gabrielle Munson, the theoretical necromancer, can do magic - raise the dead - and she’s an alchemist, so I also have had to come up with a few potions.

I have mostly winged it, I admit that, but with the migration to Campfire Pro, I have codified my necromancy and alchemy a bit. I plan on more stories with Gabrielle (the plans for the first of the second volume are already drawn up) and that means I need to get it all down to paper, I need to work out a magic system. Necromancy is an integral part of Gabrielle’s being, of her past and of how her present is shaped. It’s not just something mentioned in passing.

How did I work out the basics of the magic in her stories, then?

First of all, I had to get my mind around the limits of her powers. Magic is always shaped by limits more than by what is possible, at least in my understanding.

Magic without limits is useless for stories, because then the main character (or whoever uses magic in the story) could just snap their finger and all problems would be solved. No, magic needs limits. In my case, I decided while writing “Stray” (the first novella) that the limit would be the energy used to do the deeds. Gabrielle needs to invest her own life energy which keeps her body working into the necromantic rituals she does. If she uses too much at once, she’s very weak (that happens in “Stray”) and she could even die.

Rituals were limits imposed on Gabrielle for other storytelling reasons. A ritual needs time, it doesn’t work in a moment or two, which means Gabrielle can be (and is, again in “Stray”) caught while doing magic. That isn’t good. In addition, the rituals need ingredients, reagents. That means another limit - those reagents aren’t always easy to get, although Gabrielle has less troubles with some than most of her colleagues (on account of not having a deal with Hell).

It’s not all about limits, of course, but they are the starting point. They define the rest of the magic. Once you know what your mage can’t do, you can also see what they can do. You can see how the magic can help them in the story, but might also hinder them. Where the limits mean that they have to find something else to do. That’s important, because a story where the main character simply waves their hands and everything is fine is boring. Conflicts and challenges are what makes a good story and they can very well come from the magic.

Another way the magic can shape the story is in how it is seen by people. I’m not a fan of the ‘oppressed mage’ trope - it seems highly unlikely that regular humans could oppress mages in any setting -, but necromancy is the kind of magic which would be forbidden in most settings. People simply don’t like it when you raise Uncle Herbert and Aunt Catherine and have them shamble through the town in search of brains.

Gabrielle, for instance, has a death sentence hanging over her head - for crimes against God, Nature, and Humanity. The type of execution would vary, but each country in which she was so far (only Italy and England, but Croatia is on the list for volume 2) has a death sentence for necromancers. In this case, I think it works. Gabrielle can’t use her powers willy-nilly. She needs a ritual to call them up (see how limits help?) and that would be stopped by everyone who wanted to catch her. As a matter of fact, I brought in the Inquisition (which still exist in this setting) in the very first story not so much as an enemy but as a nuisance.

People despise necromancers and Gabrielle has to hide what she is. It’s a little easier for her, because she can enter consecrated ground (churches, churchyards, etc.) and handle holy water without danger (it’s like acid for everyone with a satanic deal). That is simply because of the way she got her powers. She’s never asked for them, she never made a deal for them, but they’re there.

For me, the way society handles magic is also important, even though it may not be part of the system as a such.

I’ve always been fascinated by magic and read my way forward, backward, and sideward through quite some books on magic over time. Books about mythological mages and how they did magic, books about witchcraft and the accusations against witches, books about alchemy - a lot of stuff. Yet, it helps. A little bit of Google can take you a long way, provided you know what to look for. With my memory of what I’ve read before, I can find new information online more easily - I can cut out the first ‘what could be useful’ part because I know what to use.

That’s another part of creating magic - having a basic idea what you want to do with it. How it could be working, according to the past, whether in mythology or otherwise.

So, for me, the magic is all about the limits, because they make things interesting. I start from there and then I look at the rest. The limits get the mage in trouble and force them to find a way out again. The limits make the world interesting. Give something limits and it gets a lot more challenging.