"Many great spirits abuse
such facts and have risen to the level of local gods who provide healing and farming services in
return for wealth, power, and worship." Would it be abuse if as a very powerful kitsune I would actually be helpful with providing these services, saving people from harm and famines? :3 If someone wanted to go against me it would be in the interest of others to crack down on that dissent, since it would harm the entire population if I wasn't there anymore and so on. In logical conclusion it's good to worship me. ^^

And really fun lore! I have read that very quickly with a lot of curiosity! I like the idea with mana being kinda geological like that. And the way it has to work within the confines of matter and energy is nice. I definitely like this lore and universe. If you will create that game that you have been speaking about, I will play it surely (if I will manage to have enough money to buy it and so on lol).

I'm sure that's exactly the way the spirits justify their actions and elevate themselves to the levels of lords with their own theocracies existing below them. Also these things do take time and it isn't like there are infinite hours in the day so I guess who get's the services will be based on the highest bidder.

A lot of these things where things I conceptualized around 12-14 years ago when I was reading about people talking about the D&D setting and how logically magic would completely break the economy and not allow the more agrarian middle ages society to exist (mostly because food production would be so much easier). So when I set out to make this setting, I heavily limited what magic could do and created risks for it. One thing that maybe I'll add a section on is the number of magic users per race. Other than the klyra (which most users are magical), spirits (which all users are magical because they are literally magic), and mindor (which are immune to magic since they do not have a mana body, but also can't use it) every other major intelligent species has about 1/100,000 having magical abilities. This heavily limits the impact magic can have in the world through mages since there just aren't a lot of them. Some races have an innate ability to only use magic to alter certain elements, such as earth, water, plants, etc. but do not have the full magical spectrum at their disposal. The klyra, being so magical actually have had it highly effect their society since the mere touch of anyone has the ability to alter someone's mind. So that has highly effected their behavior and how they interact with one another. The slightest touch is considered an act of great trust.

And the game I want to make is at least 5 years out. It's definitely going to be a challenge to create gameplay around a system like this.

Quite the unique deep-dive into a single aspect of Alsier. Most interesting, indeed. I want more Alsier stories now!

I do think that perhaps it may be beneficial to at least link Ren's story, just for anyone reading through this but has not read the accompanying story in order to give a bit of context.

Good idea. I'll be honest, there's a lot I didn't cover that I only noticed afterwards. I'm considering just taking this down and putting up a version 2.0. There's things like the different magic usage levels of the different races, how those magical crystals briefly mentioned actually work, other magically infused elements (element as in the periodic table as magic can actually bind to atoms to create new forms of matter with unique properties), and the entirety of magi-tech in this world to name a few.

Still, I feel like this was probably the basics and mostly answered why Ren would have to do the things he did and why he couldn't just use magic to heal Elior.

Oh, and thanks for the fav.

Lots of food for thought. Thinking in the setting and the relationships with character in setting like this is important for good world design and story telling. What is lack and liquated in that relationship is the building blocks of good conflict.

As you said to fromthedead, a v.2 is important to get at those smaller world building details as you described.

I do love the issue of magic on living things outside of "spirits" and that "spirits" are not what they are cropped up to be, stuck in a cultural lens. I like that a lot because it is major lack and liquidation in the world. One of my favorite quotes from a unique fantasy series with a really weird pantheon issue on the nature of gods: "There are no such things as gods, only guys that want to take your money, want you to suck their dick, or guys with really funny hats, except for Yawgisthmouth (the satan equivalent who actually once upon a time in the series was a mortal man)." Weird aside out of the way, the healing thing lets for plot holes to be avoided. Thinking on things like the economy, etc. is something overlooked that hurts so many fantasy things, especially video game and RPG esque fantasy worlds.

Good stuff and thinking in world and stories.

I really need to do the 2.0. I typed this whole thing out and thought I was done before realizing just how much I forgot. Despite working on this world building project so long (or maybe because of it), my notes are a giant scrambled mess with many small details just bouncing around my head rather than actually being written down anywhere. This definitely covered the basics though and could answer why the characters didn't just use magic to solve their problems.

I really wanted to avoid magic based plot holes in this setting which is why I limited as much as I did. As you said, video games are especially bad for this. I'm playing through the FF7 Remake/Rebirth right now and they had a character dying of an injury. It's supposed to be very dramatic, but I was just wondering why they don't cast healing magic. That always takes me out of the moment.

The spirits themselves could probably use an entire write up like this. Their properties are rather unique and are one of the more alien aspects of this setting. The nature of gods and religion are also another thing I'll have to cover at some point. I didn't want to create actual gods coming down to perform divine intervention. Instead most of the gods are either local spirits having risen in power so that people believe them to be gods or are creations of faith to explain natural phenomena.

Thanks for the comments. I'm actually not exactly sure what you mean by lack and liquidation if you don't mind me asking.

Yeah, that always has been a crux issue of FF7 and other fantasy games of why nobody dies when healing magic is so common.
The MM series solves this issue by most spells that raise the dead cease to work when someone reaches the age of 75 (because cancer go figure) and praying health insurance guilds makes getting healed by magic expensive for a non healing caster.

Plot much like TF depends on what is lacking or what needs to be lost (liquidated). Usually in the relationship of one thing to another. Character to character, setting to character (very powerful storytelling), character to self, character to thing, character to event, setting to setting, etc. The wants and desires of what is wanted versus what is gained and what is lost in exchange. Exchange of fate: It is that relationship to magic and each other and what is gained and lose there.

My TRPG group (I was a player in these campaigns rather than GMing) ran into some moments where healing magic completely invalidated the drama and tension of the story on two major occasions. The first was when one of our characters got his hand chopped off for being a thief (we were using the GURPS system so these things are actually something we could model unlike D&D). After we rescued the fool, our healer brought up that he actually knew a spell to regrow the man's missing hand. So any consequences from that whole misadventure just vanished. On a second occasion, the "main character" of our party (in our campaign one player was playing a prince and the rest of us were his entourage) got a nasty shot with an arrow while we were in a precarious situation. One turn later and he was back to full HP.

It was because of these events that my GM banned healing magic from our next game and made it so we had to go to some sort of temple and pay for healing if we wanted any. I found from a gameplay perspective that ended up being a bit too much of a drain on the party, but in my own games I've pretty much removed the regrowing limbs magic and made healing magic take long enough to cast that it isn't viable to do in the middle of combat.

Still, I ended up taking that and moving it into the world building of this setting because I felt that outside of a game it actually makes the setting a lot more interesting and fixes a ton of plot holes about why doesn't magic solve these problems (and actually creates a lot of interesting economic and world building opportunities).

Ok, your explanation of lacking and liquidated makes a lot of sense. I do tend to think about that a lot with my writing, just didn't know those terms in relation to it.

Oh banning outside of temples that is something. Though in my tradition, if the party is not using 90% of its resources in a pivotal fight, its not using its resources correctly.

Yeah healing and limp chopping always wanky.

Glad it was useful.