“At the very edge of reason where all others see only madness is where true genius lies. To look upon the world as it is and accept it is the most abominable kind of weakness. The universe is what we make of it. To accept limitations is to shackle ourselves. To break the bonds of law and reality is our birthright.”
—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar
Kaya was kind enough to remove the metal blade from her hand before slapping Sylvas across the face. He jerke...
2025-02-10 17:00:09 +0000 UTC
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“To be limitless is the end goal of any mage. But to achieve that, most construct a cage around themselves. Dangers they will not face. Things that they will not do. Magic that they will not use. Counterproductive.”
—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar
Sylvas had to maintain a palm on the controls or the door would stop opening, but that did nothing to stop him talking to his team. The screeching of metal did interfere with that a bit, but before the d...
2025-02-07 17:00:01 +0000 UTC
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“Emotion has no place on the battlefield, but a mage is no soldier, and it is their passions that ignite the magic within them. To separate the feeling part of the mage from the thinking part is to cripple both. Intuition is born of emotion. Decisions are made at the meeting point of the rational and irrational mind, and to discount either’s influence is to cripple oneself.”
—The Psychology of the Wizard, Remo Aurea
Amongst them they had not suffer...
2025-02-05 17:00:01 +0000 UTC
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“Necromantic constructs differ from mana constructs in many ways, but their physicality is not one of them. All manner of golems and servitors are constructed in an identical fashion to those made of the dead. It is only the way that death affinity mana interacts with the existing systems of the body to instantly conduct itself that differs.”
—The Case For Death: An Affinity Maligned, Gren Stalt
Bael clapped his hands together as if there hadn’t ju...
2025-02-03 17:00:03 +0000 UTC
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“But with the freedoms granted to our soldiers we encounter the fringe elements. Choices made that in any other army would be considered a liability or worse. Not so in the Ardent. The universe is a vast and dangerous place, full of niche situations that regular naval or ground force incursions would simply have to brute force their way through. The diversity that our detractors so revile is what grants us the advantage. The uniqueness of each member of the Ardent provides us with a too...
2025-01-31 17:00:04 +0000 UTC
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“The Standard Issue Empyrean Slate is, in spite of everything about it, an extremely advanced and complex piece of enchantment. Soulstone technology, bound to an individual and to a local network. The amount that it can do in the hands of a master is unbelievable, and even in the hands of a child it can prove to be the most potent tool of learning available to us.”
— A Visitor’s Guide to the Empyrean
They ran back to the docking bay, Sylvas heading...
2025-01-29 17:00:04 +0000 UTC
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“Combat in space is always curtailed. At a distance from the most common sources of mana, conservation becomes even more vitally important than when fighting planet-side. In addition, you are dealing with an environment inherently hostile to your survival, greatly limiting the tactical value of any assault. Any space-craft or station is a bubble of life just waiting to be popped, so unless both sides of a conflict are equally committed to maintaining the integrity of that bubble, you ar...
2025-01-27 17:00:04 +0000 UTC
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“When you serve, your time is not your own. It might seem like it belongs to you, but you handed it off to the Ardent the moment that you signed up. And one of the first and hardest lessons that many learn as they train is that their time, however long or short it might be, is entirely out of their control. And quite possibly outside of the control of those commanding them too.”
—Keeping the Peace Among the Peacemakers, Gorgan Wartback
The klaxons ha...
2025-01-17 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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“Death affinity magic, often called necromancy, is a dark mirror to life affinity magic and healing. And that perfect mirroring often surprises those who encounter it. A necromancer cannot only summon the powers of death to lay waste to their foes, they can create a false approximation of life from amidst the death. Reanimating flesh and bones that healing magic can no longer touch. Each unit created in this manner begets more death, fueling its own continuation, and also flooding the n...
2025-01-15 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Hey everyone! It's me again!
As we get into this new year, I’m looking to get some feedback on my new website, store, content, and future planning, and as such I am looking for your help in answering some questions for me!
The first set of questions are fairly simple and available for everyone here at my website:
https://lukechmilenko.com/feedback
Feel free to take a look and answer whateve...
2025-01-14 14:11:38 +0000 UTC
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“There are some who argue that a true mage can have no friends, only competitors. But this is both reductive and psychologically damaging, particularly in an organization that relies upon the teamwork of various mages to maintain its optimal fighting form. The Ardent require every individual to excel, rising to their highest possible level of competence, and in many cases the best way for them to do so, is competition. There can be no denying that. What does not follow is that these com...
2025-01-13 17:00:01 +0000 UTC
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“Herein lies the great irony, of course. For possessions are ultimately fleeting and temporal in comparison to the self. Yet still we look to enchantments and their longevity as the immortality of the mage.”
— Mageobolgus: Elvish Philosophy Primer, Komlaeth Havenspring
Tragically, the item Anak had thrown was a boot, which Sylvas had discovered he didn’t need, since his were still on his feet. They had taken them off to get to his pants, then put t...
2025-01-10 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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“The mage is nothing in solitude. Their powers mean nothing. Their learning means nothing. It is only when they are placed into contrast and competition with other mages that they come to realize the value of what they have and begin to push for more. Complacency and contentment are two sides of the same coin.”
—Systems of Abuse, Thele Bovradia
Once upon a time, Sylvas would have said that there was nothing worse than death. That when a life ended, t...
2025-01-08 17:00:01 +0000 UTC
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Hi Everyone, Happy 2025! It’s that time again and I am looking to replenish my ARC Team in preparation for all of the books slated to come out this year!
At its heart, an ARC Team is a group of individuals who do a read through of a pre-released version of a book, give general feedback to me (errors, missing words, etc), and prep a review to post on major sites (Goodreads/Amazon/Blogs if you run one) when the book goes live.
Reviews and feedback are critical for us authors in bo...
2025-01-08 16:59:04 +0000 UTC
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“There is always a question, when discussing world-souls, of the source. From whence the springs of mana flow. There are tidal floes of mana between worlds, a natural interchange between the different planets to seek a state of harmony. Worlds possessed of too much fire mana project it into space and it seeks worlds that are lacking it. Worlds possessed of too much of any mana will project it out into the interlinking tides and flows we refer to as the universal matrix. Yet the question...
2025-01-06 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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“If knowledge is power, then why are idiots so effective? Simple. Knowledge isn’t power. The application of knowledge is power, and more often than not, those possessed of too much knowledge end up tripping over it in their pursuit of application. Sometimes the correct response to a situation is exactly what the idiot would do.”
—Squad Tactics, Fal’Vaelith
Sylvas was immediately taken aback by what he’d just heard. There was a lot of passion th...
2025-01-03 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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“There are some that say the only constant in life is death. That inevitability is the most potent force at work in all of the universe. As potent as gravity but pulling us towards our end through time rather than to the dirt through weight. To those people I point to the undead. As prevalent as societal collapse due to Eidolon incursion is, second only to that comes the end of a world through necromancy. Death affinity magic is much maligned in modern society as a result of this, with ...
2025-01-01 17:00:04 +0000 UTC
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“Consider the Relic world of Castigation. From it, and the Eidolon of Knowledge that consumed it, we assume that there was a vast interconnected empire based on the planet, extending out to encompass the local star systems. An empire built exclusively on the trade of knowledge. Their currency was known as the Secret. Their university buildings occupied a solid 49% of their world’s surface. Think how much more they must have known than has been uncovered. The crafting of many key encha...
2024-12-30 17:00:03 +0000 UTC
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“It is no coincidence that spellforms are comprised of interlinking fragments of arches, that the language of the aions is one of circularity and ceaseless repetition that we must introduce false ends into so that their pronunciation can be achieved or that mana can be bound in a simple circle. The circle and its derivatives are magic, in its most fundamental form. An energy that never depletes, never departs and never changes. It is eternal, flowing back into itself even as we use it. ...
2024-12-20 17:00:07 +0000 UTC
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“The measure of a king is not taken in war, when all rally around him, but in peace, when old allies become enemies, and every soft word masks a knife. Luck is all that is required to survive war, but to survive peace takes an entirely different animal.”
—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar
Waking up in a strange place usually meant that Sylvas had suffered a gruesome injury. On this occasion, it felt like an eidolon may have breached the campus and sp...
2024-12-18 17:00:01 +0000 UTC
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“The study of alchemy, the extraction of arcane power from the combination of naturally occurring ingredients and their derivatives. It is rarely taught in modern curriculums, looked on as quaint and archaic. But in some places the art is still alive. Often in the most unexpected of places.”
—Potionometry: The Lost Art of Alchemy, Kyuben Lanceswan
Once again, Sylvas did exactly as he was told only to be confronted with a sending spell the moment he l...
2024-12-16 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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“Forging a weapon does not only require time with the hammer and flame, but also periods of cooling. Time in which the metal rests and recovers from the changes made to it. So to must it go with mages. The more that things change, the longer stabilization requires. The greater the change, the longer the delay. It is for this reason among others that rapid advancement is rarely advisable. Change heaped upon change can result in unforeseen mutation without time and temperance.”
...
2024-12-13 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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“A recruit’s combat aptitude cannot be assessed solely in measurable statistics. The number of spells that they have memorized, the mana they have at their disposal, the number of circles they have ascended, the scores and rankings by which we scry their physical and mental attributes are all data points which can be assessed, but they do not define their character. The most powerful mage in the universe might freeze when confronted with danger. The most talented spellcaster might fli...
2024-12-11 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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“Power is all that matters. Others will argue for strategy, or cunning, or even logistics, but all of these things can be overcome with sufficient power. Any spell can be borne down and crushed if you have enough mana at your disposal and the wherewithal to use it. Any enemy can be broken on the rack of your raw might if it exceeds theirs. We measure the rings of containment that we use for our mana as though they are the defining trait of our power. A circle five mage more than a match...
2024-12-09 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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“There are some who question the freedom that the Ardent are granted to choose their own course for advancement. These people argue that while choosing one’s own progression is a fundamental right of everyone else in the Empyrean, the soldiers who die to protect that right should be exempted from it. The most prevalent argument against this freedom is the idea that Ardent recruits might choose to deliberately sabotage their own advancement to avoid active service. This works off a num...
2024-12-06 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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“Enchantment is the only kind of magic that matters in the end. Everything else fades. The fireball that burns so bright burns out. The teleportation spell makes the journey pass in an instant. But that journey is everything, and you missed it.”
—Mageobolgus: Elvish Philosophy Primer, Komlaeth Havenspring
By the end of the session, it was well past time for breakfast and heading past lunch too. Sylvas had never really bothered much about food, not th...
2024-12-04 17:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Belief is formative to magic but even as all of reality opens itself like a book to you, and everything becomes possible, so too do limitations become apparent. Without limitations, each mage to ascend would become unto a god, remaking all of creation to their whims. There are fundamental rules of magic which can be bent, but never broken. There are fundamental laws of the universe that cannot be ignored if one wishes to perform magic. The first of those laws is this. Do as you will....
2024-12-02 17:00:04 +0000 UTC
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“Relic worlds are a warning. They are what could have happened to us if our path had strayed just a little. Yet few see the warning, few go to the places of the dead and witness the destruction wrought there. Few delve into the wreckage of civilizations just as advanced as ours and recognize that like us, the dead were people. As virtuous and sinful, stupid and intelligent, lucky and unlucky as us. To walk through the necropolis world of Perisanté and see the murals still painted on th...
2024-11-22 17:00:05 +0000 UTC
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“Allow the mana to come to you. To flow through you. It is everywhere. It is as much a part of the universe as you are. It wants to be with you. It wants to be inside you. All that you need do is let it in. Release your inhibitions. Open yourself up to the cosmos and all the wonders it can offer.”
—Basics of Meditation, Stratas Peetal
Lecture Hall F was not one of the usual selection where Sylvas had attended classes, it was actually far higher up th...
2024-11-20 17:00:07 +0000 UTC
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“Desire is at the root of all things. It is what guides us to our greatest triumphs and our lowest defeats. Some argue that to be free of desire is to be enlightened. Those who argue that, are wrong. Without desire, without hunger, we would stagnate. If our ancestors had never looked with avarice upon the stars, we never would have known the glory of creation.”
—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar
To Sylvas immense and immediate surprise he woke up the...
2024-11-18 17:00:05 +0000 UTC
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