World Building a Magic System

One method I use to help explain the rules of magic in my fantasy world.

Fantasy implies magic. But what is magic and how does it work? Well, that depends on the author. If it is unique, it needs to be shown and explained enough to prevent the readers from getting confused and lose interest in your story - and the rest of your stories.

You can show it in your story. But what if it is very complex like what I developed for my fantasy world - and you want to make those complexities clear to the readers?

Sometimes it helps to have short inserts between chapters or book parts that give the reader some ground rules. The short lesson from these inserts educates the reader before the topic at hand gets too complicated to follow. The difficult part is making them interesting to read.

Here is a sample from one of my stories in progress showing how magic is inherited. It may need a little more refinement, but I think you will get the point.

DEVELOPMENT OF MAGICAL ABILITIES

(Excerpt from ‘Knowledge and Theory of Magic’ by Wizard Bethanna, Cerwillia Wizard’s Guild)

It is common knowledge that magical abilities usually appear in early adulthood and become stronger with age and use. Since the early days of the Empire, many have debated the theory of how people inherit magic, but no one has ever understood the mechanism for such inheritance. Instances of people becoming wizards when neither parent was a wizard and children from wizards never developing wizard abilities has confounded research on the subject. Because of this apparently conflicting data, alternate theories abound including many farfetched ideas such as magic ability comes from being around other wizards.

All past reliable research, including my own, has concluded that children with wizards for both parents always develop magical abilities. There are a few exceptions, but those instances appear to be due to questionable parentage or no one recognizing the developed abilities as magical. Many scholars have similarly concluded that having only one wizard for a parent does not always lead to developing wizard abilities. Also, wizards without wizard parents often have wizardry in their grandparents or other close relatives.

In my studies, I found what many other observers have noticed - non-magical parents of these wizards appear to have enhanced mundane skills above those found in the average person. Enhanced skills are also prevalent in people closely related to wizards.

These observations lead scholars to definitively conclude that inheritance is the only method to gain magic abilities. Also, the mechanisms for this inheritance provide more than two choices or outcomes. Instead, there must be multiple levels of magical ability, with wizardry being the highest level.

Based on this concept, I theorize that there are three truths of inherited magic development. One, there are distinct levels of inherited magic potential. Two, non-physical abilities including those of Wise Sight and advanced mundane skills are magically enhanced and require inherited magic potential, but not necessarily at wizard level. Three, magic abilities are far more common than most believe since few people can recognize these lower-level abilities.

Some people may consider the type of magical ability one develops as a fourth truth. However, my analysis presented in Chapter Three shows that one’s magic type is environment based and not inherited.

One study, dating back to the Jessian Empire, appears to offer the best explanation as to how wizard inheritance works. This thorough study suggests people have four internal vessels, for lack of a better description, which can hold inherited magic. The more vessels holding magic, the greater the enhancement of that person’s trained skills. When all four vessels in a person contain magic, the person will become a wizard or wizard equivalent after reaching early adulthood.

Further, people inherit these magical vessels from both parents, each who contributes up to two of these vessels to their children – if they have them to pass on. A series of mathematical tables developed from the study shows how this inheritance works. Those tables give the chances, depending on their parents’ vessels, of becoming a wizard.

A respected scholarly wizard, with the help of a brilliant mathematician, conducted this study and created these tables prior to the fall of the Empire. My own research confirms that these tables are reasonably accurate, though I must admit what physical law or science that makes these tables work is beyond my humble abilities to understand.