Magic (Eon)

Eon is a Swedish fantasy role-playing game set in the fictitious world of Mundana. It's developed and published by Swedish company Helmgast.

Source
Magic in many forms constantly courses through Mundana and are necessary for its existence. It is divided into several power sources, called aspects, that governs life and events in the kosmos. The aspects give rise to different types of forces that can be used by a mage. Most mages divide the aspects into seven groups: primal forces, base forces, psychic forces, life forces, cosmic forces, elemental forces and symbolic forces. Each of these groups contain the different aspects. Outside of these groups exists two inaccessible sources of power that have their origin in deities and demons. There are 21 widely recognized aspects. It is possible that more exists, but they are unheard of. A possible aspect is Oneirotrophy, dream force, that would be included in the life forces. This theoretical aspect could possibly be accessed when dreaming, which poses some practical difficulties to researching it. Aspects may sometimes manifest on Mundana as so called high-magic locations which are very rare. They influence their surroundings radically and almost everything is reshaped to adhere to the meaning of the aspect. The strength and sizes of such manifestations waxes and wanes over time, and might influence the rise and fall of kingdoms.

Harnessing
Mages in Mundana achieve their abilities through study and practice. All harnessing of magic by a mage begins at collecting magic energy from at least one of the aspects in a process called generation. Magic energy is quantifiable in units known as filaments, coming from the meaning of thread and alludes to magic "weaves" a mage can accomplish with the filaments. The effects of magic actions are determined by the nature of the filaments involved.

Through an alchemical process, filaments can be "frozen" into a solid form, known as congelated filaments or congelat. Congelats are used as reserve energy in rituals and in alchemy, for research purposes and as currency.

Each aspect has its own associated skill for generating filaments, and has to be learned separately. Mages in general know how to use a skill named transforming, which transforms generated filaments from one aspect to another. Transforming becames easier or harder depending on if there is compability between the aspects involved or not.

The aspects daimotrophy and theotrophy stands out from the other aspects in that one cannot generate filaments from the aspects or transform filaments of other aspects into filaments from one of these aspects if one is not a demon in the first case or a god in the second case. Demons can be summoned and convinced to give a mage daimotrophic filaments in return for something the demon wants. Mages generally don't deal in theotrophy at all. Priest of various religions on Mundana might be given theotrophic filaments from their god to use for some purpose.

Generated filaments that are released by a mage without being consumed in any form of magical effect dissolves back into the magical background field in a natural process known as dissipation. In the use of magic by a mage, there are two forms of dissipation, controlled dissipation and uncontrolled dissipation. A mage maintaining control may let any filaments they have generated dissipate without consequence. Controlled dissipation causes a perceptible but harmless phenomenon whose form depends upon the aspect the filaments belong to. Uncontrolled dissipation occurs when a mage loses control over their workings with magic at any point of the process, like during generation, transformation or weaving. The filaments dissipate back into the magical background field violently, causing temporary magical side effects whose form depends upon the aspect the filaments belong to. Aside from these side effects, which might be bad enough, a mage that causes an uncontrolled dissipation risks to lose a portion of a supernatural quality known as Qadosh.

Qadosh
Qadosh is a supernatural quality that a person might possess. In most cases, the word signifies 'holiness', but mages associate the word with 'non-existence' instead. Qadosh is a measure of how close a person is either to the divine or to non-existence. A completely normal human has neither a positive or negative amount of Qadosh. A person might obtain a positive amount of Qadosh through religious work (for an organization that is backed by an actual god presumably), and signifies holiness possessed by that person.

A negative amount of Qadosh tends to be caused by uncontrolled dissipation, which implies a failure to properly exercise control over magical workings. Possessing a negative amount of Qadosh causes accelerated aging, meaning that many mages tend to look older than they really are. After reaching a certain amount of negative Qadosh, a mage begin to experience a phenomenon known as  'evanishing'; the mage slowly begin to fade from existence. Evanishing involves not only physical non-existence, the mage's spirit itself ceases to exists, a fate presumably worse than mundane death.

A person with a negative amount of Qadosh might reduce that negative amount with time by abstaining from the use of magic. It takes a full year to remove the smallest quantifiable amount of negative Qadosh, which means that complete recovery might take several years of complete magical abstinence. At its best, this method only allows a person to turn a negative amount of Qadosh into a zero amount of Qadosh, it cannot be used to obtain a positive amount of Qadosh. Various religions is in possession of methods that allow a person to raise their Qadosh into a positive amount, but a person with a negative amount of Qadosh cannot be part of a religion nor use these religious methods to raise their Qadosh.

Usage
Broadly speaking, all magic used by mages are done either with spells or with rituals. Spells are by nature quicker than rituals. The mage generate filaments from one aspect, using transforming if necessary to aquire all types of filaments required by the spell, and weaves them together to accomplish a magic effect or a combination of magic effects.

There are two types of spells, formalized spells and improvised spells. Formalized spells are calculated and formulated ahead of time so that the mage know the best way to perform the spell in question. Formalized spells are the most common and easiest type of spell. Improvised spells are created for the needs of the moment and have not been worked out ahead of time. The mage can generate, transform and weave filaments to the effects he desires. The downside is that it is harder to succeed with the spell and it takes longer to perform.

Rituals takes longer to perform than spells, but can be much more powerful since each step can take its time. In a ritual, a mage has the option to generate filaments several times, and they can generate filaments from several different aspects for use. By its nature, a ritual can not be improvised, but much be meticulously formalized ahead of time. A ceremony is a special type of ritual that can be performed by several participants. In principle they are performed by religions and lead by a priest or another high-ranking religious individuals.

Besides spells and rituals, there is the skill of alchemy that uses complex methods to accomplish magical effects through the use of a laboratory. Alchemy is used in the production of magical objects, drugs and other substances.

Many traditions of magical education exists, from national orders dedicated to precise research to lone superstitious practitioners in primitive cultures.