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The Essence

magicDraft

Force that gives life to all that exists and that only the gifted can touch, at the cost of their own.

Description

The essence is what makes hearts beat and time flow. It drives the forces that govern the world and keeps the balance among them. It is in everything that lives and everything that changes.

Most mortals live on it without ever being able to touch it. The gifted are born with something that lets them feel it and move it: that is The Gift. No one knows why a few carry it and the rest do not. The masters of the Vesper College of Mages have not found the answer either.

Rules and limits

A spell takes the essence and focuses it on an end: a flame, a closed wound, a voice heard leagues away. Moving it takes strength, and that strength has to come from somewhere.

It comes from the caster. Their body holds the essence that keeps them alive, and every spell spends a part of it. That is why those who cast grow old: they lose some of what keeps them alive and of the time they had left.

A being’s essence can also change without anyone casting anything, and the change can last. The Hesmerites are the proof: their essence was altered in Hesmar, and that alteration passed to their children. The gift is not inherited, but this change is.

Essence tends toward its natural form. A change passes whole to the children only when both parents carry it. If only one does, the child is born with ordinary essence and keeps at most a few marks on the skin. So it is with the Hesmerites and with the Drocani, whose essence bears the trace of a dragon’s.

How much is spent depends on what is asked, on the caster’s endowment and on their channeling. What does not change is the rule: touching the balance of the world always has a price, and the one who touches it always pays.

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