This got much longer than I expected, and I'm still not sure it makes sense. But, for my own reference, this is how magic works in Theron's part of the world.
Radrezhaea is shaped kind of like a long rectangle, and doesn't have many concrete borders. To the north is a giant forest that belongs to no country (Here There Be Dragons, literally), and there's an ocean to the east. The south dissolves into desert, which is no man's land the same way the forest is- nothing but monsters and barbarians past a certain point. The southwestern border is a mountain range, and the western border, which Radrezhaea shares with Rothcar, is marked by an enormous wall of fire. Yes, fire. Only a very small number of outsiders are permitted through the border every year, and Radrezhaeans who wish to cross over to the other side are encouraged to give up their citizenship and never come back.
The Firewall is between fifty and three hundred feet high at its highest and lowest points, and a ten feet thick everywhere but the crossing points. It was erected as a byproduct of Drazhene's Ascension- Drazhene being the first Voyance and the founder of the country in its modern, isolationist form. The Firewall is tied directly to the Voyancy, and draws its power from the same power well.
"Drazhene's Ascension" refers to the large scale magicrafting Drazhene performed when he killed his mother and father and achieved a state of godhood. The countryside was flattened, several thousand people were killed, and the entire western border caught fire in the process- but that's another story, entirely.
For the record, it's
really easy to become a god in this world. People do it all the time, and there's a reason Rothcar is known as the City of a Thousand Little Gods. Being a god has a lot of niggly little limitations; self-made gods are rarely immortal, but they do have some control over reality in small areas. Technically, Theron becomes a god when he becomes the Voyance- the position is, by definition, that of a god.
Anyway, that's the country- ocean to the east, Rothcar and a wall of fire to the west, mountains and desert to the south, big scary forest to the north. Bren's village is on the edge of the big scary forest, the Capital is a little to the south east, along a major river, and the rest of the country is really, really flat. There are occasionally problems with floods in the central areas, when the Weavers and Watersmiths don't do their jobs properly.
As far as magic goes, it is
incredibly rare for a person to be born without some magical talent. The country is a Thaumatocracy (that was probably spelled horribly, horribly wrong); it was originally founded by Magicrafters who were fleeing persecution in other countries. During Drazhene's Ascension, the Magicrafters were the only survivors left to repopulate the now-flat countryside.
Magicrafting is just another skill: everyone can do it to a certain extent, the same way anyone can play soccer, or play an instrument. Not being proficient in magic is treated much the same way as sucking at sports or music is. It's nice to have the talent, but if you don't, there are plenty of other things you can do.
Magicrafting divides the world into elements- earth, water, air, fire, aether, and a number of secondary elements. Everything in the physical world has a spark or an essence that corresponds to one of these elements, but these essences have more to do with the state of matter of an object than its composition. Anything in a solid state falls into the category of "earth," while any liquids or gases are considered water and air respectively. Fire is a tricky case, as is aether, and I'll get to those later.
The first skill a Magicrafter learns is to See the spark of elemental essence in a physical object. This is something just about anyone can do, unless they're magically numb. Most people only See elements, and feel them as lines of force, but there are cases of magical synaesthesia. A Crafter might Smell and Taste elements in addition to (or in place of) Seeing them, or they might assign textures to different elements.
Bren and Theron are both magical synaesthetics; Bren's Sight is exceptional, but he also Feels elements as different textures. The world looks and feels like a pile of regurgitated quilts to his magical senses- colorful and kind of squishy. Half the reason he's such a tactile person is because he gets both physical and magical feedback from touching things. The rest of the reason is just that he's a cuddle whore. Theron is magically colorblind as a result of the unfortunate circumstances surrounding his birth; he can See and Taste elements to make up for the his inability to distinguish individual types of elements by Sight alone. This is why he hates eating- he can't stand the taste of food in addition to the taste of magic.
Once a person has mastered the ability to See or otherwise sense elements, they'll go on to choose a discipline, if they have the ability to do so. Whistling is the most basic discipline, and it's a skill all Magicrafters must master with some amount of proficiency- professional Whistlers are always in high demand, though. Weavers and Smiths are the upper level disciplines, and the ones who do the actual "crafting." Smiths are much rarer than Weavers, but are often less useful.
A Whistler is able to extract the elemental essence of a thing from its physical components and give it physical form. Whistlers can work with any element, but most people usually have preferred elements or materials that they work best with. Crafters who can work universally are very rare. I'll use earth as my example; it's Bren's preferred element.
All Whistlers have different extraction techniques, but nearly all of them involve music. Music helps the Whistler align with the right frequency to extract the element; music also keeps a person grounded in the physical world when they're using their magical senses. A person goes outside of themself when dealing with elemental essences, and it's possible to get lost in them. Weavers have more trouble with this than Whistlers and Smiths, though.
A Whistler will need a piece of raw material- everyone has their preferences, and some Craftings require the essence of a certain type of material, depending on the desired outcome. Metal behaves differently from stone or wood or bone, though all of them go under the general heading of Earth. Raw elemental essence appears as a tangle to magical Sight; the Whistler's job is to untangle it and spin it into a form that can be used by a Weaver. Once untangled, the element is considered a "thread."
Extracting threads of earth from a stone will damage the stone's integrity and cause it to disintegrate, which is why Whistlers are supposed to work with their own raw materials and not, say, the support beams of a building. Very talented Whistlers can extract earth from dust motes; more often than not, professional Whistlers will just use Corpses for generic raw materials, and will expect their clients to supply any specialty materials they might wish to include.
Weavers take the basic skills of a Whistler and go a step further; Whistling doesn't actually
do anything. They spin the thread, so to speak. There's not a whole lot you can do with a spool of thread; you could peg it at someone's head, but that's about it. Weavers generate patterns and latticeworks to hold the elemental threads. These patterns can then be applied to physical objects or people.
Weavers create enchantments- long term magical effects. A healer might Weave a latticework of earth, water, and air and apply it to a stab wound like a magical band-aid. The earth and water in the pattern would bind the wound closed and facilitate the growth of new cells, while the air in the pattern would keep out dirt and bacteria. Fire and earth Woven in the proper patterns can be applied to clothing to keep wearers warm; air and earth Weavings are used in smokestack filters on factories to remove dirt and other chemicals. Earth, water, and fire are woven together to fertilize crops and protect them from insects and disease.
A Weaver's versatility is limited only by his imagination and money. Because most Weavers can only handle a very small number of threads at a time, they need to work in tandem with other Weavers and Whistlers to be effective. It's important to remember that Weavers and Whistlers cannot work directly with the physical world; they can only interface with the essence of things, and then apply that to physical things.
Weavers and Whistlers are related in the way they work with magic; Smiths work in a different manner entirely. Magismiths are considered the elite among Magicrafters- nevermind that most of them are so weak as to be completely useless. They don't See the world in terms of threads and patterns, but they don't need to.
They interface with the physical world directly; they are the alchemists of the Magicrafting world. They are more limited by the element (or physical state) of an object; an Earthsmith could turn lead to gold, but they can't do a damn thing with molten steel. (Earthsmiths are also the plastic surgeons of Radrezhaea.) They do have complete mastery over that state of matter; a Watersmith with enough power can divert rivers, and a Windsmith can play with the weather. Magismiths produce immediate, direct results, which tend to be much more impressive to your average Sightless rube than the most complex and beautifully crafted elemental pattern.
Of course, powerful Smiths are amazingly rare; most of them can only manage very small works of transmutation. People like Shanonil and the rest of the Crafter's Council are one in a hundred thousand; the difference between their levels of power and those of a typical smith is like the difference between a faucet and a floodgate. For the most part, subtlety and versatility are the skills Magicrafters cultivate; raw power is unnecessary.
On Fire and Aether as Elements: In Which I Do a Lot of Hand Waving and Pretend It's Science.
If earth, water, and air refer to physical states, then fire as an element refers to energy- light, heat, sound, electricity. It's a tricky element to conceptualize and work with, but there are Weavers who specialize in patterns of light and sound- illusionists, basically. Smithing and Weaving tend to overlap in the area of fire, because the elemental threads are just quiescent forms of energy. Firesmiths are usually referred to by their specialities- Lightsmiths or Soundsmiths are the most common. Talented Firesmiths are capable of massive amounts of destruction- but those with the capability to screw around with gravity usually end up killing themselves very quickly.
Aether is magic, the sort that proper mages use. Magicrafters can See threads of aether, and they can extract it, but aether doesn't behave the way normal elements do, and there's a level of taboo associated with working in aether.
Normal magic in my Generic Fantasy World is done by taking a handful of aether and telling it to do something- "Set that person on fire," or "Pick up that book," or "Convince that person to lick my shoes." There are countless techniques for dealing with aether- things that involve herbs and incantations, or ritual circles and candles. You can have elemental mages, but even elemental magic uses aether- a mage from Rothcar or anywhere else in the world, no matter what sort of magic they practice, will use aether as their only energy source. Magicrafting is a dead practice outside of Radrezhaea, and only Magicrafters are able to extract elements from physical objects and interact with them.
Normal magic, with its incantations and rituals and reliance on aether, is completely and utterly illegal in Radrezhaea. They call mages "Arcanists;" the penalty for being an Arcanist in Radrezhaea is Blacklisting and exile or death. It was the mages who chased the Magicrafters out of their homelands, so even though the actual history has gotten kind of fuzzy, the Radrezhaeans are still holding a grudge.
So when a person, by some incredibly bizarre fluke of genetics and fate, is born with mage abilities in Radrezhaea, he or she becomes an Aethersmith. Magicrafting and mage skills are usually mutually exclusive, but every now and then someone will be able to use both.
Aethersmiths are mages who view the world from a Magicrafter's perspective; Shanonil was one of the eight Aethersmiths born in her century. Of them all, she was undoubtedly the most powerful and the most versatile. Aether, as an element, calls to the other four elements and all of their subcategories. In a Weaver's hands, aether is a binding element and a creation element; for a Smith, aether allows cross-element transmutation. Shanonil could set water on fire or turn air into mud; she makes it look like Magicrafting, but in reality, she's just using magic the way a very powerful mage would.
Magic is just a matter of willpower and imagination; Shan takes it as a matter of course that the universe would bend to her wishes, which is why she's so good at what she does.
The Voyance doesn't follow any of these rules and is a category unto himself, and so is Theron, to a lesser extent. Then there are the three divisions of magic outside of Radrezhaea, and the Shrive, but those are all subjects for another entry; this one has gone on long enough.
