Worldbuilding: Magic part 2
Parameter 3: Magical: magic comes from the gods, and is powered by faith in them. There are four forms, each requiring faith in the specific god it is tied to, as well as more general magics such as healing, which also require faith.
At the dawn of creation, when the sibling deities were dividing up the moon world given to them by the grandfather god, the siblings agreed to a special covenant for the benefit of the people they would create. Each deity would have a special magic their people would have access to, as long as a person prayed to them and had faith. But the siblings agreed that more should be done, that some things should be accessible to all people since they, the deities, also have one, the grandfather god, that they follow.
Body: For those that believe and have faith in any of the sibling deities, they have the ability to heal others through magical means. Like any magic, there are limits. Limbs cannot be restored, defects from birth cannot be corrected, and the person doing the healing must have an adequate knowledge of the effected anatomy. The largest limit, however, is that if a person is meant to die, being called home by their deity, then healing them will not work.
- Implications: Knowledge in physiology and anatomy is a lot further along than would be expected for the various time periods. There would also be a lot of specialization among the healers, since the body is a very complex system. So it would almost replicate the real medical system. There would be a triage healer, who would identify the issue, then the person would be sent to the specialized healer. People would be less careful about injuries, and the immune systems would be less developed because if someone is sick, they can just go get healed, especially in larger cities where the density of the faithful is thicker, since there are more people in general. It would also mean duels and fights can go harder, and wars are more prolonged, as violence doesn't have the same fatal danger as in places where healing magic is not available.
Spirit: As guardians of the world itself and as great repositories of the element of magic, the siblings created sky serpents, colossal wingless serpentine dragons of feather and fur and scale born of crystalline eggs deep in the earth. Because the highly intelligent sky serpents do not have the mouths to speak the languages of the people1 and do not have telepathy to speak regardless, the sky serpents require a bond, much like the concept of dragon riders, in order to facilitate that communication. The purpose of the sky serpents is to connect the people across the world, and to maintain the supply and flow of the magic that powers the faith-dependent abilities.
- Implications: Because the sky serpents are so large, living in the sky and sleeping around mountain tops, the bond requires two people working together. The number of them correlates to how many people in the world have faith and are actively using magic, so the more people the more sky serpents. There is a chance of apostasy here, with the possibility of the people putting their faith in the sky serpents rather than the deities. The ability of the sky serpents to travel across the world quickly means the various peoples know of the existence of others long before they can travel there themselves, and trade between cultures is able to be facilitated much earlier than in an ordinary setting.
- Extra implications: The presence of the element of magic, outside the deities themselves, means it is the faith that gives access to the abilities, rather than the abilities themselves. So in a way, the deities are the connecting force between the magic and the people. Something to think about, could the magic element be something specifically related to the grandfather god and that's why it requires faith in the sibling deities to access?
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I'm not going to call them humans yet, because I don't know if all of them are human or if I'm going to mix in elves and other fantasy staples or if I'm going to create my own humanoid species.↩