As outlined in my analysis of fantasy settings, magic boils down to communication. According to the structure of reality and natural laws I’ve designed, all kinds of magic are possible: sympathetic magic, animism-based spirit magic, beseeching great beings etc… . I will focus on redesigning just one common magic system: ‘circle’ magic; where magic is formed of ‘circles’, the more of them the greater the magic. I see references to circle magic all the time, and the lack of precise explanations on how it works has always bothered me.

  The mind and body leave imprints on the soul, and these imprints then influence it to produce abilities. How can one wield language to imprint something on their soul? We know it’s possible without communication, so let’s assume the user is already capable of this through some method (e.g. instinct, biology, meditation…). For a generic circle mage, we’ll assume they can conjure a spark by meditating for long periods. The next step is to associate conjuring a spark with a word, gesture or some other form of communication, by repeating it while meditating for example. Once this association is learnt, the circle mage can conjure a spark simply by chanting the word rather than meditating for hours: they have learnt the spell ‘spark’, a 0 circle magic. This shortcut isn’t perfect: they have associated a word with conjuring a spark in front of them, but what if they want the spark a bit to the left? Or a bit hotter? Indeed a single word can’t communicate everything about the desired action, so some use of the non-language based ability (meditation in this case) is still required, though in much lesser quantity as language communicates most of the spell.

  The spark is underwhelming, and the circle mage only has so much mana to fuel it. Instead of directly converting their mana into the desired action, they conjure an intermediary (a circle) that wields mana in the environment around them. For this example, let’s say the circle mage conjures an intermediary called ‘circle A’. Once conjured, circle A naturally has its own soul that leads to the concept of circle A, and so releases mana with properties coherent with the concept of circle A. The goal here is to design circle A such that its mana interacts with the surrounding mana in a useful manner (law of mana interaction). Continuing with the spark example, we might want circle A’s mana to attract and concentrate fire mana in the surroundings. According to the law of mana instability, fire mana is constantly being converted into fire. In nature this might not occur in noticeable quantities, and all kinds of other mana in the environment can interact with it destructively and even produce opposing action. However, circle A ensures an unnatural quantity of fire mana in one spot, and so an obvious fire is conjured. Once the circle mage associates this entire process with a word, they have learnt the 1st circle magic ‘fireball’. In addition to the issues of 0 circle magic, this ‘fireball’ presents another huge difficulty: wtf is circle A?? What can we possibly conjure whose concept is coherent with ‘attracting and concentrating fire’? Well, this is a fantasy setting so there can certainly be some material with such properties, but the mage might never see it or even know of its existence. In this case, the mage must conjure something that (to them at least) doesn’t exist, and so perhaps surprisingly circle magic might require creativity.

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  Circle magic doesn’t really have anything to do with circles, as when a mage conjures something that doesn’t exist, there’s no reason for it to resemble a circle or even have any shape at all. The ‘circle’ of a magic is simply the number of intermediary conjurations used to produce the final effect. The caster’s mana conjures something that guides mana to conjure something greater, which itself guides more mana for yet another conjuration etc… As you can imagine, higher circle magic gets exponentially more difficult but has the potential to harness more and more mana in the surroundings. If conjuring something that doesn’t exist sounds difficult, imagine conjuring something that conjures things that don’t exist… Just 2nd circle magic is so far removed from reality that it’s borderline impossible for the common mortal to achieve.

  A big part of being a circle mage is designing spells. Instead of associating the first circle magic ‘fireball’ with a single word, it’s much more practical to split it into multiple smaller instances of communication with the soul: conjure that which attracts things of attribute fire. The mage first learns to conjure something with no particular purpose, then something that attracts things, and finally something that attracts only fire. By learning a bunch of individual pieces, the mage can suitably combine them to perform a variety of spells: conjure that which attracts things of attribute fire/water/air…