The Laws of Neomancy

Posted by Jacob Santos on August 9, 2011

During High School, I was fascinated with Geomancy type magic systems. You know, the Earth, Wind, Fire and Water primary systems that Fantasy books sometimes fall into. It didn’t quite occur to me that there was a system beyond that until I discovered Brandon Sanderson. I think it was more of a lack of imagination and more that it is truly really difficult to create a magic system that is unique and not totally stupid. Geomancy type magic systems also had a lot of depth and originality to them in the different rules that each Fantasy series would establish.

My problem was that I enjoyed Fantasy more when Magic has defined set of rules and is used often. I liked Circle of Magic series more than the Earthsea series, because I felt that magic in Circle of Magic was used more often. Well, the real reason was that reading Earthsea was more like a chore and I never finished book 3 and skipped to book 4. What I did like in Earthsea was the Necromancy type magic system and the difference between its necromancy and the normal D&D type necromancy of raising skeletons and undead.

This leads me back to Neomancy and I thought why not combine the two? Why not create a magic system that combines Geomancy and Necromancy? Well, I thought there are limitations.

  1. Geomancy and Necromancy are opposites. They are they Geomancy light to the Necromancy dark.
  2. Normally you only have one or the other in series. I think that given the complexities of having two competing magic systems that conflicts would occur naturally.

Discovering these limitations, I decided that it should be possible anyway and decided to come up with a magical system that did allow for both to exist. Oh, wait, I did come up with 5 other distinct magic systems.

  1. One was based off of the stars in a sort of Pagan ritual. This one would be extremely limited since it required time, preparation, and precise execution in order to perform spells. However, this was countered by almost anyone being able to perform the magic.
  2. Another was based off of the D&D magic system of warrior mages type magic. Not that I completely researched this form of magic from D&D books, I wanted it to be less restrictive and more enhancing of the warrior’s abilities. Sure, there will be fire throwing spells and water control spells, but most of the warriors will use regular swords and strength and use their magic to enhance how fast they move and ensuring that their sword doesn’t break.
  3. Nonrestrictive Geomancy magic. This magic system relies of how powerful the user is and what spells they know. I suppose it is like the Harry Potter or Tolkien magic system.
  4. Nonrestrictive Dark magic. Not quite necromancy, this dark magic is more about curses and well, I never really fleshed out what this system would be like. I think really I didn’t want to go into it that much. Just be something that is alluded to and in the background or part of the lore and history.
  5. I forgot. It has been a decade and I lost my notes.

That said, majority of the outlines doesn’t actually go into any of the other magic systems. The problem with having too many magic systems is that there is no way to describe them all. In the original outlines and drafts, they aren’t even part of the story in at the least the first book. I think it is okay to establish the magic systems or perhaps it might be better to simplify the systems to a mage based magic system a warrior class and then have necromancy, geomancy and neomancy.

Limitations

The limitations of geomancy and necromancy is what you can form in your mind. The other magic systems have spells that form the basis of the spell and allow the caster to not fret the difficult stuff. However, it does limit the caster to what the spell caster can memorize. A geomancy or necromancy can do whatever they can hold in their mind and limited only to their imagination and strength. Breaking the concentration of a necromancer and geomancer breaks the spell and often the spells are complex enough that the caster can be defeated relatively easily. I mean, this does sort of sound a little Harry Dresden, but meh, I do think that this is a fairly common limitation in many magic systems even predating The Dresden Files.

Even the most basic spell, the casting of orbs while simple and part of every caster spell list relies on mental capability. For a geomancer and necromancer to last long, they have to practice several basic, moderate and advanced spells so that they can quickly call them up when needed and with little to no thought. The least powerful regulate themselves to the basic spell and then for a fee will perform other spells. The more powerful will either help others or wage war with armies. The most powerful are usually loners traveling the countries either looking for trouble or helping when needed. The most powerful usually don’t need to worry about being killed, because there are few of them and they are well known. Usually, from having to kill quite a few people or destroy a few towns.

Spells

There are 3 levels of the spells and some can be used to offset the disadvantages of the magic systems.

  1. Orbs. The basic level is throwing orbs of magic at the enemy. These balls range in size and thus damage. They are easy to create once enough practice has been established and can be thrown quickly by experienced or even moderately skilled geomancy and necromancy casters.
  2. Mental. Again, the next step is forming the spell in the mind and then releasing the spell. If done carefully, a powerful spell could be casted without the enemy realizing what they are defending against. Necromancers can be deadly assassins, which is also why they are barred from entering some countries and would be killed on sight. Other nations actively hunt down necromancers and in some parts, geomancers too.

    There is a payoff, which is the more often the mental spell is casted, the easier it is to cast the spell later. Some advanced users can form part the spell in their mind for calling up and completing at a later date. Older spell casters can call up several complex and deadly spells very quickly.

  3. Rituals. Very rare, because it relies on special items and also either a necromancy or geomancy dagger. These daggers are very rare and if found by the other magic systems or anyone outside of the daggers magical system will seek to destroy the daggers. I never really created how exactly the daggers were created. I had a few ideas and one was metal smiths helping extremely powerful necromancer or group of necromancers and the same for geomancy. I think the problem would be that it would be relatively simple for recreating the daggers if this was the only requirement. I do think the character in the book does create another set of daggers with the help of a metal smith. Another idea was to only allow neomancers to create daggers and, or use a special metal that naturally has the properies inherit of necromancy and geomancy.

Politics

The point of Neomancy is to be rare and mysterious. Yeah, yeah, same old same old. The point is that it isn’t mysterious to keep the reader in the dark, the magic system is extremely simple, the point is that in the world that the character that uses the magic system is extremely dangerous to those that are able to do Neomancy. I won’t get too in depth on why this is because I’m still kind of fleshing out and revising a lot of the story elements so that they aren’t too complicated and dumb. The point is that the mage magic systems don’t like geomancers and necromancers and absolutely will not tolerate neomancers. In that they will actively seek out and find neomancers and kill them.

The problem I have is creating a dynamic where the mage magic system is not totally evil from the perspective of the reader and where neomancy is good. This is not the case and the main character who uses neomancy is not good. Far from it actually. I mean, what else would you be if you were hunted and hated by everyone, normal people and mages alike.

I don’t know, the recent outlines that I have planned sort of offset the neomancy character and bring forth the other secondary characters. Soft of Circle of Magic fashion and giving each character their own book and then ending with the Neomancy book. I’m not sure I want to write 6 books, because each story has to be interesting to write and to read. I had other ideas where I sort of do a multiple point of view characters like Wheel of Time, Way of Kings, etc but damn those tend to be extremely long stories with complexities that I’m not sure I’ll have fun mapping out and writing. I don’t think I’m that smart to be able to pull it off as well as I would want.

I’m also not sure how dark I want the story. With The Song of Fire and Ice and other books, I could just go all out, but I don’t want the book to be unreadable. The world building I had previously was, I think, too broad and too difficult to comprehend. I think I will instead work on developing the politics of one country where the main character and another secondary character interact and then branch off into the politics of the magic system. In this, I think having the interactions take place in schools could also add another level of conflicts.

I want to keep the world simple, because it is really the only way I could write. The problem is that I don’t want to write a long book, but I don’t want it to be too short. Writing is quite a bit more difficult, but I mean the systems still need to be developed even if all you are going to do is work within them and never tell the reader what the rules are of the countries and schools are.

The world is not cheerful, but I think borrowing from my other themes might mean something here. I think there is enough with the character’s backstory to provide some interesting flashbacks and insights into the politics.

Religion

There is a religion that the magic systems are based on. It isn’t really faith based as the religion origin are real in the context of the book and there are certain elements that I might keep and relate in the book. I keep going back and forth with whether I should describe the religion or not. It is silly really and since I’ve created the origin of the religion, I’ve since seen similar types of themes and I’m thinking about either not revealing the origins or recreating the origins. It is frustrating that I’ve thought of the idea, only to find out that it has been done a crazy amount of times. Hell, there are real world religions similar to the one I thought of.

Well, I think I’ll leave religion out of any book, I’ll develop this idea further in Spirit Keeper instead. I also don’t like how religion is described and used in fantasy and anime series. I’d rather magic be the religion and I don’t think it is wise to attempt to create a new religion for every story. Many fantasy stories do not even talk about religion or describe the world’s religions, so I don’t think I will here.

I will keep in mind that Neomancy, geomancy, necromancy and the other magic systems were formed out of the religion and are based in part on the religion. I never really imagined that the characters would need religion since everyone simply assumes it to just be. To them, religion is more science than faith, because the magic is living proof of the religion. Therefore there is no reason to build churches or pray to a god or gods, everyone knows that while they exist, they won’t do a damn thing.

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