okay if I could time travel to the past, you know what I’d be most excited to see? THE QUALITY OF TEXTILES. Clothing was built to LAST before the industrial revolution and everything was HAND-MADE. We lose so much of women’s art from the archaeological record because textiles are perishable and we only get vague snapshots of what clothes and tapestries, etc, were like, and these would have been so important to everyday life! What did a hand-made toga feel like! How heavy was it! What did the tapestries hanging in castles look like! How did needlework enrich the home! Fuck! I love textiles!
Magic is different here. I can’t easily explain it, but the energy of thus world feels…. Tarry. Sticky. Mucky. Like it drags you down. I’m no magician, but even I can tell the difference.
It’s harder to do and more complicated and the basic mechanics are less emotion driven and more energy driven. Even magic that relied on elements back home invoked emotion and communication with elemental spirits in order to get them to act on your behalf. Emotions also acted as a catalyst that allowed personal energy or willpower to have an effect on things. If someone were truly desperate not to die, it made them harder to kill. A person with a significant amount of will can break into pieces and become many to deal with horrors. Promotions and social climbing come more easily to those with sufficient will.
Willpower is different than intent. Intent is having an outcome in mind, and in magic can tint the magical energy a certain way, willpower is the term for the collective force behind said intent. Most good magic involves calling upon spirits to supplement your willpower because most people are either not emotional enough or not powerful enough to have any great effect on the world around them. It’s not a mark on them. It simply is a fact, and it doesn’t prevent magic, just changes how you do it. You would not accuse me of ableism for saying a person in a wheelchair has to take the elevator rather than the stairs. Using spirits in magic is like taking an elevator. You have to follow a series of steps to use it, and failing to do so can prevent magic or cause injury. The stairs are harder to take and if you’re not strong enough, you can hurt yourself and fall down. Most people are not able to climb more than half a flight of metaphorical stairs, which can still alter things, but not as dramatically as real magic.
You might be curious how I do magic with seemingly so little emotion and a willpower that while strong, wasn’t strong enough to do magic before I became a parrot. It’s actually rather simple. As a member of the Godhand, I am connected to what is called The Idea of Evil. What this is, is a collection of the fear, negative emotions, and desire for meaning experienced by suffering humans. With this connection to a massive source of emotion, I simply use that to lower the effort needed to cause said effect, and then cause said effect. Every member of the Godhand can do this. It’s how you create forms from the flesh of others or create plague in a clean city.
Falcon Feathers and White Hair 