Patreon Insights: Magic Part 5 - Awakening

This is it, to conclude the first miniseries on Magic we will be looking at the most relevant system in the story, Awakening, and, by extension, Ardents and Stoics. Now, much like I did with Soulforging, there will be quite a few details that I will be avoiding here in favour of covering it in the narrative. There will still be fair part of Insight that may give hints as to why certain characters act as they do and what their motivations might be, so you may wish to leave this Insight for later. I will also be going into detail about are particular aspect of Awakening and how it ties in to Rowan's rather unique circumstances, so consider yourself doubly warned. Of course, some of the hints have already been addressed in the preview and others will come later in book 1, so it possible to reach some of the conclusions I am alluding to. 

With that said, let this be your final warning...

Still here?

Well in that case, let's get these deep dive started.

First off, I will take you back to the very first Insight where I went into my various inspirations for what became the different magic systems found throughout Ardent Tears. I mentioned Mistborn as being a big one and also discussed how Snapping reminded me of how trauma often served as a catalyst for BPD developing in adolescence. Well here I will expand on how those ideas informed my choices in terms of the Awakening process.

Basically, every single human, Ferran, Miriel, Kairosi, and any human-derived race that ever existed or might exist has the potential to Awaken as the ability is tied heavily to the Goddess and the two moons of Illyria. Still, while everyone has potential, this potential is by no means equal, not does it have any direct bearing on how strong the individual will be if they do Awaken. Furthermore, an individuals true potential at any given time is determined by their baseline potential and their age. To put it simply, an individual will never awaken before puberty and once they become an adult, the chances drop off dramatically. In numerical terms: <11 years is too young, 11-17 is prime for Awakening, 17-23 is a steep downward curve, >23 is essentially too old.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, the likelihood of someone experiencing what I like to call a spontaneous Awakening is still close to 0. To clarify what I mean here, a spontaneous Awakening is when someone Awakens without any intense emotional experiences of particular note. This is because the Resonance that causes Awakening is dependent on an emotional response from the individual and the baseline usually isn't enough to create the required feedback loop. As such, to increase the odds further, the individual needs to have those intense emotional experience. What counts as an intense emotional experience varies from person to person.

Now, due to the varied nature of these experiences and the roll of potential, it is very difficult to engineer a situation where an individual will Awaken. There is, however, an exception that Rowan discovers early on by way of trauma. This obviously leads her to her eventual theory on what is happening in the caves. As for why this is seen as the exception is because trauma almost always qualifies as an intense emotional experience and in those rare cases where it isn't, the odds were already infinitesimally low.

Still, even with there being a relatively well known exception, the majority of people in the world do not see it as an ethical practice. Another issue with using trauma to engineer an individual's Awakening is that there is a likelihood that they will turn on the "engineer" if the attempt is successful. With this being the case, many considered it a fool's errand.

So what does this all mean for Awakening and the likelihood of it happening? All in all, on average we might expect just under 0.3% of the population will experience Awakening, though there have been times in history where it has been as high as 2%, if not higher. There's also a fair bit of variance based on race and location, though I'll discuss that in a wee bit as race also plays a role in which way an individual is likely to go after Awakening.

With that said, why do some people become Ardents and why do other become Stoics. For most people it depends on the individual's mindset and disposition, particularly at the time of their Awakening. Basically, what this means is that someone who is more expressive with their emotions will have a higher chance of being an Ardent and someone that is more reserved will probably be a Stoic. It's not a guarantee, but it certainly does increase the odds.

As for the rolls that the different races play. Ferrans have slightly higher potential than the other races and are also slightly more likely to be Ardents. Kairosi, on the other hand, tend to lean in the opposite direction. Meanwhile the Miriel are kind of a wildcard in that they have the highest rate of spontaneous Awakenings whilst also have the lowest rate of Awakenings in general. They also have no particular leaning towards being Ardents or Stoics. Humans also lack any particular leanings for which way they awaken.

Now it's worth noting that in addition to their racial dispositions, Ferrans also tend to be more expressive and Kairosi tend to be more reserved which further skews things even further. Overall this leads to a rough 60-40 split compared to the 50-50 split you seen in the other two races.

Of course, this isn't the whole story when it comes to the process of Awakening. In some cases, individuals start showing signs of Awakening in the days or sometimes weeks or months before it actually happens. This is typically due to them being pushed to the edge of Awakening by an emotionally significant experience, but not beyond it. At this point it's all but guaranteed that they will Awaken and which way they will go once they do. They will also start experiencing lesser variants of some of the abilities that await them in the future. 

This phenomena can also be seen in people like Rowan who's Awakening was already guaranteed. Furthermore, in the case of Rowan, she started experiencing the effects of this phenomena long before finally Awakened. This is due to her bloodline making her stronger than most other Ardents and because of Bragi bullying her from a young age which got the ball rolling for her developing BPD. 

Rowan's BPD also played another, very important role in making her even stronger as an Ardent when taken in conjunction with the various emotional peaks of her youth. From being bullied by Bragi to finding about Rina, her romance with Kiriin, and then her guilt about failing Tehri as a sister. Each of these experiences, as well as many that haven't been mentioned, would push on the edge of Awakening with her BPD amplifying the emotional load. 

As for why this is significant, what I call the edge of Awakening is kind of like a dam that holds back a tide of Resonance and grows in capacity whenever it is pushed to the point of almost breaking. When the dam does break, the Resonance is released all at once and a channel is created that forges a connection between the Goddess, the individual, and the Divine Realm. This connection is what defines an Ardent or Stoic and their initial power is determined by the size of the channels which is proportional to how much Resonance is released.

This takes us back to the dam's capacity being increased whenever it's strained. Now in most cases, the dam can only be strained like this once at the very most without breaking. In Rowan's case, however, the emotional intensity that resulted from her BPD made her dam more resilient so it was able to experience more strain before it basically disintegrated on the night of the eclipse.

Now before I go any further and move on to some more specific details regarding Ardents and Stoics, I'd like to say thank you for sticking with the very technical second half of the segment on Awakening. In world, a lot of this stuff is theoretical at best and still being researched, but as Rowan discovered, researching Ardents and Stoics is hard on account of there being so few. 

That's also why I went into the level of detail that I did, as any coverage of this topic in the narrative will most likely be a load of conjecture on Rowan's part based on her personal experiences. Whilst I know I'll have fun writing those segments and I reckon you will all enjoy reading them, I also don't believe your experience of those segments will be negatively impacted by you reading this first. Of course, I may be wrong, but I did warn you.

With that brief intermission done, let's move on to Ardents and Stoics. I'll start with how they derive their powers from emotions. For Ardents, this is easy; they get their powers from feeling intense emotions. Stoics, on the other hand, are a wee bit more complicated. At first, you might think they get power from the absence of emotion, but if that's the case, how would they experience any variation in the power level. It's not like you can negative emotional intensity, after all. 

So what does this mean? To answer this, I'll go back to Ardents for a second as by correcting a potential misconception with them, I'll have a more concrete foundation to work with. As for what this misconception is, we need to look at where they get their powers from. While it's true that they get them from intense emotions, that doesn't say much if you don't also have a zero point. 

The misconception is that the zero point is zero. Instead, the zero point is derived from an emotional baseline which is the level your emotions typically return to at rest and without any stimuli acting on them. Ardent's get their powers from their emotions deviating from this baseline, especially when they let their emotions react freely to anything and everything. The strength of their abilities is thus tied to the strength of the emotion and to the inverse of how much control they try to have over their emotions.

Taking this all back to Stoics, they also have an emotional baseline, even if it's lower on average and they are typically less expressive. They also experience rises to their emotions whenever they are exposed to different emotional stimuli. Granted, those rises aren't as much as a non-Stoic but they do happen and Stoics get power from resisting those emotional rises. The strength of their abilities is proportional to how much they are able to resist increases to their emotions. They can also gain power from having emotions at level that is lower than their baseline with the strength being dependent on how much lower the emotion is. This is doubly true if they are able to do this whilst also experiencing any kind of emotional stimulation.

Having completed this segment on power sources, we will now look at the abilities that are shared by Ardents and Stoics. First off, they are highly resistant to the vast majority of pathogens and are completely immune to any of the deleterious effects of aging. By extension, they also heal much faster than the vast majority non-Awakened individuals. These abilities result in Ardents and Stoics being theoretically immortal. Alas, most don't live long enough to put the theory to the test.

Setting potential immortality aside, Ardents and Stoics are capable of influencing the emotions of others. There are some restrictions in this regards. For example, Ardent's can only enhance emotions of others that they are feeling and that are sufficiently above the baselines of the other people. When they do this, they also enhance the emotion in themselves without any increase to how much power they are getting from said emotion. Likewise, Stoics can only dampen emotions they are actively resisting. When they do the emotion is dampened further without increase in power from said emotion.

The last shared ability I'll be mentioning here is the general enhancements they get whenever they draw power from emotions. Basically, in addition to the specific ability that they get from the emotion in question, they also get a general increase to their various physical abilities such as speed, strength, durability, etc as well as their ability to process information. These enhancements also indirectly help the Awakened individual take advantage of any skills or talents they may have.

Of course, in addition to these shared abilities, you have the large array of abilities that are granted by specific emotions. For this last segment I will be looking at how I determine what counts as a distinct emotion and how I decide on what abilities to give each emotion. For the first question, I mostly took inspiration from Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. I then looked at other Emotional classification systems to see if there any gaps I could fill without going overboard. I also made sure to avoid any overlap with emotions already given by the wheel. 

All in all, I'm happy with the list. It does everything I want it to do and there is still room to expand upon it without causing bloat or plot holes. Still, the list is only half of the equation. We still need to look at what goes into deciding the different abilities. First off, each emotion only gets one ability for Ardents and one ability for Stoics. The abilities must also feel thematically in sync with the Ardent or Stoic interpretation of the emotion. Lastly, similar abilities must feel thematically and mechanically distinct. For example, there are a couple of emotions that can heal, but they do so in very different ways.

Now, these aren't the only rules, but I intend to keep the others to myself for now. Which means we're done. When you see me tomorrow we'll be moving on to a topic other that doesn't tie in to the magic of the world. At least not quite as directly as this mini-series. It will also be a lot less intense than the magic ones have been as I realise that some people may see this past week as being a bit much in regards to potential spoilers and the like. This wasn't my intent, but I also really wanted to gush about my magic systems as pretty much all my favourite bits of worldbuilding tie into the magic of the world in a big way. 

At the same time, I also need to pace myself before I accidentally write an entire books worth of insights. Whilst I'm not against the idea in the long run, I want to have book 1 and a good chunk of book 2 released before it gets to that point. I also want to cover a lot of the more interesting or spicy bits or worldbuilding in the narrative first, before diving into them here. 

As for what I'm going to cover next? I'm not sure. Hopefully something I can do in 500 words instead of 2000. Maybe an introduction to currency in the world. Its relevant to Rowan by way of her father but also something that isn't going to be much of a focus whilst being kind of neat. Anyway, This has taken much longer to write so I'm going to say goodbye for now.