Shadow magic, Say whaaat?

Just gotta say, love this discussion, but it needs to be said.
Every light casts a shadow. Despite not seeing the shadow, doesn't mean it ain't there. Most faithful choose to ignore this, as I've read that paladins undergo training that make them ignore it completely in terms of using this, while most priests will stay aware of it, or even embrace it fully. Aka, what I believe would be an ICly shadow priest. Just personal opinion though.
Also, I think(My limited knowledge of lore) that Scourge magic has indeed origins in Fel, due to the Burning Legion empowering Ner'Zhul who began the Scourge, as we all know.

Vectoria wrote:Right, another topic I feel needs to be discussed or atleast mused.

How exactly does one -learn- each of the schools of magic? Are they limited to just one, is it appropiate for a charecter to be able to master more then one? two? three? all the whole lot. I'm looking at you Draenei-orc-human Shamageadin.

With enough time and (in order to master faith-based magics) faith.

One learns them through either faith or studious research. It depends on the type of magic. Arcane-type magicks require tons of knowledge on the subject matter, on the connections between all things, cosmic balance, why certain objects/people/places are infused with some element or another, what the meaning is of shapes and patterns.

All of that requires years of research and dedication. It is a science. It is learned like a science.

Now there are some magi that can do it by raw talent and force of will, but I'd almost treat those magi as divine-type mages.

Faith-based magic is different. It is about personal faith. It can be learned faster or slower depending on one's faith. There might be some need to shape that energy you are calling forth with faith, through ritual and prayer and so on, but for the most part, it is not something you learn but something you fee. Other people just help you learn how to open your mind to that feeling--they are guides, not really teachers, they are not necessarily needed.

Certain talents of magic are carried by blood and one is far more likely to be able to both access magic at all and be better at accessing it if one parent, or both channeled said school of magic. One example of this is my Gilnean mage, Emberstone, Her mother was a Harvest-witch and her father was a traveling mage. She is incapable of even watering plants correctly but showed her Father's talents from a young age. Resulting in her favoritism amidst her three siblings. Her brother, Mikhael showed promise in the Old ways and therefore became a Harvest-cleric, but her youngest sister Saphra, showed no exceptional or obvious allignment to any schools of magic.

People can be talented or not. There is nothing wrong with that. That doesn't make them completely incapable of ever learning magic, though. Saph was bad at learning magic. She is, in fact, capable of it, she just wasn't talented and gave up.

Whereas Dru was also not talented at it. But instead of giving up, she pushed herself onwards, dedicated herself to it, and has become incredibly powerful and knowledgeable as a result.

In comparison, I feel like certain schools of magic have very open ended uses. Take for example a pair of twins are born and raised by two celebrated arcane using parents amidst gnomish society, however only one brother is capable of channeling the craft, whilst the other can barely curl his tongue, the powerless brother grows jealous and turns to Fel magic, now Fel magic is about power and addiction. Anyone can wield it, it's just about infusing it and seeing how long they last, now the now Warlock brother could end up being possessed, having his soul eaten by some Demon or evidently just blow himself up with a mischanneled fel flame spell. The point is it's a Dark art and it comes at a price, a price many people will pay. So in it's nature the dark arts do not exclude, more honey for the pot, I'd imagine. Hrm?

I do believe fel magic is easier to learn, but I attribute this to demons 'cheating'. Fel-infused energies being easier to shape than normal ones, for example, or perhaps the demon implanting proper knowledge into the mind of the warlock. It still requires knowledge, but that knowledge is easier to get, or easier to apply.

On the other hand, we have those classes that show multi-use of different schools of magic. I personally, don't believe that anyone should be capable of over-stretching their merits. I often bite my tongue when I'm asked to conjure a portal in charecter because it just feels like my Mage: Even if she's spent her entire life time studying magic, shouldn't be able to fling fire and frost, and -then- conjure food, portals and all sorts of arcane trinkets.

I don't see why. You shouldn't be a master of all schools, but as a mage you would know the basics of all.

Drustai, having been practicing magic for millennia, is a master of Illusion, Enchantment, Conjuration, and very close to being a master of Necromancy. She's had enough time for this. She still knows how to use the other magicks, though, with her worst field being Divination (she looks too much to the past to have any skill at seeing the future).

She also knows plenty of runemagic (she is an Inscriber IC), due to having learned it while the draenei were limiting arcane magic to avoid detection by the Legion. She has also started learning a handful of blood magic from IC events, but that training has been more or less stopped. Not to mention, she knows how to use fel magic--but she's completely sworn herself off of that.

The more obvious example is the priest, wielding both the shadow and the holy? Honestly, they're two completely different animals and although there is much evidence towards them being simply siblings at two different ends of the scale, it's two different mindsets that are far, far apart.

With a priest it is much different, because their use is not about what they know but about what they feel. Holy and Shadow are two completely different fields of belief. You cannot have absolute faith in both because their ideals are completely opposite of each other. The Light is about giving while Shadow is about taking. You should not be able to really use both (at least to any great degree) because they are each the 'sin' of the other.

Following a religion and using its powers are about faith. Therefore if you are to maintain that faith you must follow the ideals of that faith. If you are constantly breaking those ideals and falling to the sins of that faith, then you will not have the faith necessary to call upon the powers.

This is why, while Dru was briefly a priest, she has lost all ability to use any of that magic because she lost her faith. She was a priest of the Light for thousands of years, then the Orc War happened and she lost her faith in it. So she was no longer able to cast any holy spells. She turned to shadow worship, and so was able to briefly use Shadowpriest magic, but has since lost her faith in that too. She is now practicing no faith-based magic, because she has no real faith in anything.

Magic is more then just studying a selection of books to learn to do this and that. Even the most anicent charecters should struggle with weaving more then two or three schools of magic, what channel becomes part of -who- you are and that shouldn't be something that can be relearn't over a few days, weeks, months, years, centuries.

Arcane magic is about studying books. That is why it is Intellect based. It is about knowledge, nothing else. Raw talent can make you -better- at something, but it doesn't make it exclusive. Drustai was never a talented mage and so she learns much slower than most magi and can't use it as easily or creatively. But she is still an incredibly powerful and knowledgeable mage because of her dedication and study.

Thormag wrote:Just gotta say, love this discussion, but it needs to be said.
Every light casts a shadow. Despite not seeing the shadow, doesn't mean it ain't there. Most faithful choose to ignore this, as I've read that paladins undergo training that make them ignore it completely in terms of using this, while most priests will stay aware of it, or even embrace it fully. Aka, what I believe would be an ICly shadow priest. Just personal opinion though.
Also, I think(My limited knowledge of lore) that Scourge magic has indeed origins in Fel, due to the Burning Legion empowering Ner'Zhul who began the Scourge, as we all know.

Created by the Legion, doesn't mean they actually use fel magic. Some might, but necromancy as a whole is not fel based.

Kristeas Sunbinder wrote:Scourge necromancy comes from from the fel magic of the legion. Death Coil is the first thing that comes to mind for me concerning a link.

Fel magic is a variable that can be applied to normal magic. The Scourge left the Legion's service and while a few may still use fel magic, I imagine most no longer do (we see very few warlocks in their service). Either way, necromancy is not fel. It can be empowered by fel, but it does not need fel.

And what the closest source says:
http://www.wowpedia.org/Necromancy

Necromancers are mortal practitioners of death magic, commonly referred to as necromancy. Channeling their knowledge of the arcane into manipulation of the forces of life and death, these men and women were instrumental in the forming of the Scourge in Lordaeron.

Necromancers twist arcane magic to manipulate the power of death.

http://www.wowpedia.org/Arcane

Lore also includes some so-called "shadow" spells as part the arcane as well, as magic practiced by warlocks and necromancers.

And states at the end:

Shadow (aka necromancy school, dark arts, demonology), shared with divine magic.

Because necromancy is a school of arcane magic. It is Arcane-type magic. Magic of shapes, patterns, knowledge, cosmic connections.

It does use arcane energy as well, because arcane energy -is- the elemental forces. An arcane elemental is an elemental that is comprised of all the elemental forces, this is stated in-game.

Necromancy is as much Fel, as Fel is standard Arcane magic. They all fall in the Arcane-magic category.
The four laws apply to the different types of Arcane magic, not to divine magic.

Although I sorta have a pet-peeve with immortal races and the whole idea that because they happen to live longer they have more life experience the more mortal races, or a inheritance of being wiser or more intelligent then humans, gnomes, dwarves etc.

I can understand the concept of years and decades of study. Even if I dislike the idea of one person being masterful in more then one school of magic. I mean the rare few known lore charecters that are capable of wielding more then one craft can be counted on the hand. Aszhara for example is considered the most powerful known sorceress in exsistence. I'm just careful with making my charecter having too many strengths and being able to do more then a few things.

Anyway, off topic.

I'm gonna be further exploring the connections between negative emotions and the ' Divine Shadow. ' on my Gilnean, perhaps in some more morally ambiguous social experiments...

Vectoria wrote:Although I sorta have a pet-peeve with immortal races and the whole idea that because they happen to live longer they have more life experience the more mortal races, or a inheritance of being wiser or more intelligent then humans, gnomes, dwarves etc.

I can understand the concept of years and decades of study. Even if I dislike the idea of one person being masterful in more then one school of magic. I mean the rare few known lore charecters that are capable of wielding more then one craft can be counted on the hand. Aszhara for example is considered the most powerful known sorceress in exsistence. I'm just careful with making my charecter having too many strengths and being able to do more then a few things.

The trick to making yourself knowledgeable and powerful is to apply limits elsewhere.

Dru, for example, is very bad at battle magic... that is, in combat she simply doesn't have the training or the reflexes to fight with her magic. Her skills are very much in utility spells that are used outside of combat. So she's not really going to best even a much younger human battle mage in a fight, unless she's had a chance to thoroughly prepare herself and the battle beforehand. When she solo-fought a death knight and their frostwyrm, where she actually had the chance to prepare, she made an illusion of herself to fight on the battlefield, while she stood in a house overlooking from a window in order to properly concentrate on her magic. And she still ended up losing.

Also, I believe in making my magic very ritual-based and esoteric. Drustai knows a lot, but she can't just wave her hand and "poof, magic happens!". Her skills are her knowledge of a great many fields of magic, but that doesn't mean she can cast it all on a whim. She has to gather the proper reagents, set up the spell at the proper time and place, and so on. When in events where magic would be a solution to X problem, I'd have her send out all the other characters on reagent-gathering hunts, thus giving everyone else something to do and making them an integral part of the solution.

Thus, at no point does she walk into a situation, wave her hand, and solve everything. Her knowledge is exactly that--knowledge. Not application. Application still requires a lot of work. People come to her when they need to know something. If they come to her wanting to do something, she always tells them, "well, I can do this, but it will take time to get everything ready, and I might need you to do X or find Y first."

This is why, the soul ritual we just did in EA on Nov 1st, has been in preparation since June. Yes. 5 months of preparation before the spell could be cast. Doesn't matter that she has such a repertoire on magic and souls... that knowledge still doesn't change the fact that such a complicated spell requires tons of other things to be cast. (and it ended up being a shaman ritual anyway since no one wanted Dru to use her necromancy for it)

I have a very similar method of application with Vectoria, yes. She's a capable Deathstalker and uses her shadow magic in both illusions and her cloak of shadows, but those are rather simple tricks and techniques that keep her from getting her head cut off and keeping up with the more well-trained asassins and gadget equipped goblins.

She has a deep connection to the shadow, having died more then once. (Long story.). She is capable of eating flesh to heal her wounds in a sort of cacoon stage before she reaches her final death, Her soul isn't anchored to her body like a normal being or even a ' normal forsaken. '. It allows her to shift and project her image to the mind of others. The only way she's going to truely die is if a Paladin, A priest or someone smart enough to sever her spirit from her corpse: gets the drop on her.

Very ritualistic based and situational, she would be like any other rogue when fighting against a Warlock or a Mage, she couldn't shift her way through fire or perform her mind tricks in such a short space of time.

The most memorable time I had her flex her little talents, was her interrogation of Olian (Who was later turned, awesome Cultists we are.) she forced herself into his weakened and tormented mind, shifting through his memories with very little care for his sanity or well-being, she was literally stabbing away at his mind and ripping out his will. Quite an enjoyable and enlightening experience to roleplay. Ironically now, Olian is one of her most trusted allies. ..I wonder if that has anything to do with her shoving her thoughts into his brain? ;D maybe, maybe.

Anyway, to compare her to Evalinn. Shes a very inexperienced " Shadow Priest. " and most of her research is hastenly writtern from past experiences and notes taken from scriptures she's stumbled upon. But her channeling of the shadow is far more combat ready then Vectoria, she hasen't ever had to focus on her blades, or her posture, or even how quickly she's going to dodge. It's just her focusing her thoughts on her opponent and how she can drop them in the most possible way. Her craft is her only weapon, and I suppose that's a blessing and a curse.

It's essentially as you said, Knowledge is different to the application of knowledge.

Drustai wrote:Shadowpriests use divine spellcasting. That means their faith and willpower (much more willpower in the case of shadowpriest, but also faith in themselves). As their faith is in themselves, their own selfish desire for power, their spells manifest as shadow energy, which is the energy of selfish personal desire.

Given the freedom Blizzard's "slacking" attitude towards a more sophisticated analysis of the magical powers provides, there are ways around this. Certainly the norm is what you describe, but there are variables one may not immediately perceive until actually roleplaying a shadow priest for a long while and those are immensely interesting to say the least.

On the tangent of long-lived races being more experienced/wise, one trope I miss seeing played out with them is The Fog of Ages

Just because a being can live into the thousands of years in age while retaining their youthful vitality physically, doesn't mean they have to remain sharp-witted mentally as well.

WoW lore already has examples of characters that are still as mentally capable at several thousand years in age as when they were at human-comparable ages, but I'm fascinated with the idea that they might still be struggling with forgetting large parts of their life experiences and having to increasingly resort to various means, magical or mundane, to keep their mind sharp. Could be things like having to consciously choose and store memories that you want to keep for more than a couple of months, with total capacity being limited. So for the incredibly old, it'd be a choice between continual inconvenience, or some degree of senility regardless of how young they might look physically.

...

Though I'm sure Blizzard would find a way to contradict that at the first opportunity with something that simply made such minds last perfectly through the ages.

I'll quit derailing now, promise ^^

Saevir wrote:On the tangent of long-lived races being more experienced/wise, one trope I miss seeing played out with them is The Fog of Ages

That is something I RP out with Dru, personally. She doesn't remember what Argus looks like (at least, beyond what the stories say it looked like), doesn't really remember much of her life on it, and doesn't even remember the names of her parents much less what they looked like.

I try to RP that, outside of major events, Dru only really remembers the last couple hundred years with any clarity.

It helps greatly with the fact that we have such limited lore for draenei.

I do not think it is really necissary to artifically boggle down immortal races with baggage like that though. Immortality has its own inherent weaknesses. I tend to think of Draenei as having a youth; and then an endless maturity without seniority. That means that, besides the odd spiritual one out, Draenei do not benefit from the atvantages of old age like Humans do. They do not get to enjoy their wisdom and elder-sage status with a nice kickass long gray beard atop a mountain top. No, they stay in their physical peak forever. Though you could say it only has atvantages; I disagree. Old age has atvantages too. It is an entire phase of life Draenei lack all ogehter. This has its own inherent disatvantages. In some way Fortesgue will always hold some atvantage over Thelos when it comes to some aspect of wisdom. Because he's old. Thelos is incapable of growing old. Therefore, he will miss that serenity and acceptance of things that comes with old age. I feel people tack on this "Fog of Ages" think because we Humans fail to think the proper consequences of immortality trough because it is so alien and incomprehensible to us.

Really it comes across to me as "Immortality is unfair and overpowered! We must nerf it by some means!" just like earlier someone discussed that powerful mages that knew too much magic need to be nerfed in some way in order to prevent them from being "too powerful" or something. I dont think that's really necissary. These kind of powers always have an inherent weakness in them.

For Thelos, it is that he is incredibly stubborn, conserative and narrow-minded. It will take something drastic to change his ideal. I also tend to think that for Draenei, "mastering" a craft is not something one can do in a lifetime, because that concept does not excist for Draenei, but a quest that has no end. A Draenei can spend millenia trying to learn one particular song and still feel he has not completely mastered it. He also lacks the lifephase of old age with its inherent wisdom and inner peace. Because he lack said lifephase he also lack the mental toolkit to properly deal with death. Draenei do not quietly fade away into the night. A Draenei's death is always abrupt and tragic, unnatural and painful.

And I'm sure other people can think of many other unwanted consequences derived from immortality. "Fog of Ages" could be one, yes, but it is not one I fancy much because it feels tacked on and artifical, a too obvious external attempt to nerf something.

The Fog of Ages is because a typical human brain only has so much storage capacity, like your computer. Eventualy it will be full and you will be unable to store more.

Yet neurons combine so that each one helps with many memories at a time, exponentially increasing the brain’s memory storage capacity to something closer to around 2.5 petabytes (or a million gigabytes). For comparison, if your brain worked like a digital video recorder in a television, 2.5 petabytes would be enough to hold three million hours of TV shows. You would have to leave the TV running continuously for more than 300 years to use up all that storage.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-memory-capacity

Maybe very long lived/immortal races are unable to develop a photographic memory. Or lose the concept of time after a few thousand years. -Have-to focus on one aspect of their studies as time goes on as their mind becomes less flexible.

...This thread is epic.

I'm glad that the discussion seems to have turned from "what are the exact mechanics and how can we make sense of them" to "What do we know and how does that influence my character and how I play him/her."
Once you've figured out what your characters motives and history is, there are tonnes of cool interpretations and playstyles you can get away with in warcraft, and I like to embrace that.

Delidah for example has studied hard to learn about the arcane arts, she's proud of her accomplishments in it and likes to show it off. But this only applies to "pure" arcane magic, like conjuration and translocation.

Fire however is a different story. This is something that comes very natural to her; too natural. She has to make an effort to keep it away from her. Once she's started casting a fire spell, it is very hard for her to stop. It changes her. What she thinks is fire, is the corruptive influence of fel magic, wanting to get a hold of her.

The Arcane is her escape from it. She believes that her studies and mastery of the pure arcane arts will help her better control the fire, and keep it away. She doesn't know that her extensive use of arcane magic will, in the end, make her more susceptible to the "fire" because the nature of that magic is different from what she thinks it is.

Classic satanic trickery, really.

Kristeas Sunbinder wrote:
Maybe very long lived/immortal races are unable to develop a photographic memory. Or lose the concept of time after a few thousand years. -Have-to focus on one aspect of their studies as time goes on as their mind becomes less flexible.

This sounds more like what I try to do on Thelos, yes. His studies being the Divine and Music only, not leaving place for much else.