Introduction and Workings of Magic

Mana is a type of energy that sets Life apart from our own world. It has the ability to transform into other types of energy, for example heat, kinetic energy, or even matter if packed densely enough. It also has the ability to move said energy from one point to another. It's known to radiate off of some matter, but the earth itself is known as the most important source of mana energy through a mechanism not well understood.

The manipulation of mana central to magic requires the correct organs to be present inside a creature. The most important organ is named the glamra and acts like a magnet for mana energy, drawing it towards the body and directing it parallel to the nerves and veins. The energy doesn't literally flow through the body, but gravitates to the nerves and veins like an object caught in a planet's orbit. The more energy the glamra has been saturated with, the weaker it becomes at attracting new energy until at its capacity it stops at a hard cap. When the body spends or releases the energy it can once again be attracted. The glamra has been known to constantly renew the mana energy of the body, creating a flow with the environment.

The three main organs aren't a rare occurrence, but a large majority of the creatures with this organ lack the functionality to cast magic, be it because of having an incomplete glamra, being unaware of how to cast magic, or failing to activate the necessary processes. The organs are most common in mammals and are considered a mutation, but demons have them by default. In mammals, the glamra is found between the stomach and the liver, located in the center of the body. Several other organs exist with an unknown function, one ventral of the heart named the ertra and one in the prefrontal cortex named the stamsra, and all three organs lie on the medial axis of the body.

Every body comes with its own natural mana capacity, which can be trained to become larger and more efficient. The combination of a creature's capacity and speed of charging is called the mana pool. When evaluating a mana pool, quickness refers to how fast the pool recharges, width refers to its capacity, and size to the total package. Quickness varies between slow, median, and fast. Width varies between narrow, median, and broad. Size varies between small, median, and large. Slow mana pools recharge slowly, broad mana pools have a large capacity, and small mana pools have a low capacity and recharge speed, to give a few examples of terminology used.

Since the mana pools people are born with are laughably small, one of the largest challenges for beginning mages is to expand their pool to become large enough to allow for consistent training. It can take up to several months to expand the pool to such a strength that it allows for visible spellcasting, and it can take up to a year to become large enough to allow for consistent training without having to wait for enough mana to recharge. Enlarging the mana pool starts out slowly, then picks up its pace around a lower median size, and eventually slows down again as it gets to an upper median size.

Naturally, the mana pool is inactivated and somewhere in life activates. The glamra always attracts mana energy, but only the body's autonomic nervous system can use it in bodily or passive processes if the mana pool is inactivated. Once it is activated, it can be used by the somatic nervous system for active processes as well, which in most cases means in spellcasting. What triggers the activation of the mana pool is unknown; in some it's active from birth, in others it never activates. Once activated it remains activated, unless someone who knows what they're doing uses the correct technique to inactivate it again. This condition is referred to as gutlock or heartbane.

Most of a mage's training comes down to learning how to access and control their mana pool. First and foremost that means expansion and increase in recharge speed, but it also ties into how quickly the mage can direct already attracted mana into spellcasting, how good their grasp on their mana is, and estimating how much mana they have left.