Reply With QuoteI mean, that's GETTING IN TO the realm of high-magic. Like, that's some powerful shiznit right there.
... Or maybe not, but it seems like they have a lot of power. With not all that many drawback.
Ghostman's original proposal:My vision of them, which appears to be very different from Ghostman's original vision of them, is that there exist these fissures and anomalies in the world which take various forms and which I've been calling nodes. These nodes represent magical interaction on a geographical and extra-planar level, some of them are magic additive, and some magic reducing depending on their structure and evolutionary stage (some are active like our volcanoes, some like dead volcanoes, the dead ones are collapsing magic). All these nodes and their magic are aspected i.e for water or fire or light or whatever. All the nodes lead to an extra-planar realm (think wormholes), some of which are small in scale, some large, the tunnels are aspected to the magic of their attached node or nodes. Some times these tunnels connect to other distant nodes, allowing great distances to be traversed very quickly as long as one doesn't get lost in the node tunnels and as long as one can deal with the magical ravages contained therein.If we end up going for fantasy instead of sci fi, we could make it a world where instead of magnetic poles, compass needles will point toward mystical locations -- stonehenge-esque megalith structures of unknown origin, holy mountains, eternally swirling whirlpools in the world's oceans, places where deities fell to the ground, gates that lead to other dimensions, etc. That could affect cartography, as it might not make as much sense to refer to longitudes and latitudes when defining a geographic location.
Some societies venerate nodes, and build systems around them, some study them and learn what they can. Some societies have made use of these tunnels and explored them for travel, trade and conquest, and have mined them for magical resources. Some have also done exploratory mining within these node tunnels to find exits where none were known. Not all tunnels lead anywhere. Nor do all tunnels with exits lead to other nodes on our planet, some may lead to exits on other planets in the system, or indeed some exit directly into space. Sometimes certain nodes "wander" leading to unreliable knowledge of the exits or entrances. Sometimes nodes may have been secured by some ancestral knowledge so that they are reliable sources of travel or resources.
I mean, that's GETTING IN TO the realm of high-magic. Like, that's some powerful shiznit right there.
... Or maybe not, but it seems like they have a lot of power. With not all that many drawback.
Yeah probably.
When I was considering the magic levels I was mostly considering them on an individual basis. But the draw backs seem severe enough to me. You can't just waltz into a fire node whistling Dixie. None of the nodes are unaspected which means that you have to have the knowledge, power, and ability to deal with whatever is inside. You can get lost in the nodes. You can accidentally choose the wrong exit. You ma accidentally eject yourself into space... not fun. Nor can you just walk up to a node and harness raw magic. Doesn't work that way. Think of it as a magic volcano, waltzing up to a caldera full of hot rumbling magma in nothing but shorts, t-shirt, and flippy floppies isn't exactly without drawbacks...
I also forgot to include one more caveat about my vision of nodes, which is that if the tunnels attach to opposing aspected nodes the magical turbulence within the tunnels can create the equivalent of energy maelstroms, liable to rip apart even the most prepared of explorers. Even with closely aligned but different aspected nodes attached to one tunnel system the unpredictable roiling turbulence of differing magic streams can cause mush trouble.
