Chương 32: Interlude: Progression Systems

One thing every would-be-mage needs to take into account at the moment of choosing their first Alignment are the very progression systems that form part of said Alignment. The following text is a comprehensive yet non-exhaustive description of the progression systems of every Alignment. Light Starting off, Light has a very unique progression system among all Alignments. Whilst most could be considered to be of 'infinite progression', Light works through a mechanic that most photomancers like to call 'the slider'.

This slider could be considered a numerical line that goes from -100 to 100, 0 being the starting or neutral point. Now, what do the extremes of this slider entail? At one end we have the path of Morality. This extreme end of the slider focuses on the healing properties of Light. To incline the slider towards this path, one must be selfless, prioritizing the wellbeing of others before the wellbeing of oneself. Any such act done in good faith will incline the balance to the side of Morality.

At the other end of the slider, we have the path of Materialism. This one focuses on the offensive properties of Light. To incline the slider towards this path, one must put oneself before others, normally to increase one's terrene properties. It must be mentioned that this is not the opposite of the Morality path, performing actions in bad faith or outright crimes will lower the slider if it previously was on Morality, but will not increase Materialism. The same can be said for Materialism.

Losing properties and assets will not necessarily make one's slider change as what matters is the conjurer's mentality. Some people tend to misinterpret Light's progression mechanics with 'good versus evil' but that is wrong. The slider only values who you prioritize: others or yourself. The reason why this progression system is not called an 'infinite' one is because the bonuses obtained are capped upon reaching one end of the slider.

That being said, those bonuses tend to be stronger than most other progression mechanics early on. Of the more notable Boons of Light, there is One For All at the pinnacle of the Morality path, which greatly boosts healing for as long as the slider is capped for Morality, and then All For One at the pinnacle of the Materialism path, which passively boosts the power of the conjurer the more people are around them or in their following for as long as the slider is capped for Materialism.

(Note: It is said one Original ruler once used it to single-handedly end a battle of ten thousand mages.) Arcane The Alignment of Arcane has a mirrored progression mechanic to Chaos, so the explanation for their progression will be split between these two schools. Much like Light, Arcane does not possess an infinite progression system, and instead opts for freedom of expression, so to speak. The Arcane progression mechanic is all about locking oneself with rules and self-impositions.

This mostly manifests itself in the form of limiting one's repertoire of spells, being physically incapable of casting any spell outside their grimoire, but in exchange, the power of the spells in said grimoire is greatly increased. This augmentation of power is inversely proportional to the number of spells, meaning that fewer spells in the grimoire will result in greater potency provided to the remaining ones.

The Arcane Boons seem to allow any build that the conjurer may choose, but practically speaking, only three rough categories exist. First, the one that forgoes the use of a limited grimoire. Arcane is one of the few Alignments that allows a mage to cast spells of another Alignment with relative ease, so these types of builds focus on an increased number of spells and a wide range of them throughout multiple Alignments.

One notable Boon of these builds is called Learn Spell, which allows the conjurer to learn spells of another Alignment through study, gaining virtual proficiency with one spell at a time until learned, very similar to the stuff gnosiamancy can do. Second, limited grimoire builds. These ones are more Arcane-focused, where the caster imposes limits upon their grimoire to give more of a punch to their selection. One notable Boon of these builds is called Grimoire, the very namesake of these builds.

Taximancers with this Boon can manifest their grimoire, gaining the ability to rewrite their selection manually, which allows a swifter change to their repertoire. Quite the ironic Boon considering the existence of bibliomancy, yet at the same time, grimoire builds tend to excel at that hybrid school of magic even if they lack the proficiency in question. Third, monolithic spell builds. These ones are the least popular, as they forbid the taximancer from using more than one spell at any given time.

Of course, the increase in power of that singular spell is massive, but the time required to change spells often tends to be too oppressive to make these builds work. One notable Boon of these builds is called Narrowminded. Upon selecting this Boon, a taximancer can forgo every spell they have ever learned to increase the power of ONE spell to an absurd extent. As a result of this however, they will have more difficulties upon attempting to learn any future spell.

Of course, build choices tend to matter little with taximancers as they are the only ones—barring edge-case Boons that allow some interaction with others—that can switch Boons at will in the same tiers, giving them a rather ironic freedom that no other Alignment has. Life Life is the first school of magic on this list that presents an infinite progression system. This Alignment focuses on the Physicality—though not exclusively as we will see later—and the biomancer's body.

Biomancers have the capacity to choose between two resources to fuel their magic: vitality—tonalli for Tezlans and Cahtulis—or mana. The difference between them is not appropriate to speak of here—for I am not qualified for it—but in broad terms, mana doesn't hone in on anything, whilst vitality focuses strictly on the biological component. Such difference is only really appreciated in the Boon selection and builds. For a biomancer to grow, they quite literally reinforce their body.

Whilst a slow process, this mechanic has no upper limit. Whilst accruing maximum mana doesn't make a common mage stronger, the same cannot be said for biomancers as the backlogging of vitality make them more resilient and physically stronger. There are a plethora of builds to Life, especially due to the fact that a biomancer can dictate freely how they want to develop their body, but we can crudely describe three rough trends: Firstly, healing builds.

There are many ways to heal with Life, either with natural magic, herbalism, or neuromancy—sometimes called oneiromancy. One notable Boon of these builds is known as Essence Transfusion, where a biomancer can heal and regenerate another mage's casting resource through giving up their own vital force. Two things to note regarding this Boon. One, this transfusion is never lethal.

Two, for some—excuse my language—starless reason, this Boon works better through the exchange of fluids and copulation, adding even more to the existing stereotype that plagues biomancers. Secondly, body builds. There are even more of these types of builds than with healers, especially when taking into account the innate abilities of Terians, so the best summary I can provide is that these builds focus on upgrading one's body.

One notable Boon series of these builds is called Release Animal Form series for Terians, though non-Terians can pick it to gain an Animal Spirit of their own. Thirdly, the rest. These types of builds tend to be of a more generalist quality, the ones that most people associate with the term "biomancer". These builds can heal, maybe shapeshift, make plants grow, sling poisons around, et cetera. If I were to highlight one Boon of these builds it would be Mother Nature's Embrace.

It gives a boost to the caster when in contact with nature and makes them tougher and healthier. Time This Alignment also possesses an infinite progression system and a choice between resources like Life. These resources are the common mana or temporal flux, flux in short. Chronomancy is one of the least explored schools of magic thanks to its high bar to entry and difficulty, but it is somewhat known that chronomancers can store time to make themselves more powerful.

This stored time works as a backlog of power that no longer increases their lifespan, and in some cases actively reduces it, but it allows them to infinitely accrue power. There are not many solidified builds in Time, most of them deal with applying debuffs or healing recent wounds due to chronomancy's communal casting school of restoration. Besides the early Resistance to Anachronism Boon, one of the most notable Time Boons is Rewind, where upon death, the chronomancer revives at a point prior to their death.

This Boon isn't as powerful as it sounds as it cannot be activated again for more than double the time rewound, and the time rewound greatly depends on the chronomancer's stored time. This being said, some chronomancers will kill themselves in order to redo some conversations because they are drama queens. Ahem. Information Information is the opposite to Time in terms of difficulty, and that can be seen in the sheer numbers of practitioners.

Gnosiamancers are the most common type of mages thanks to the low bar to entry, though the infinite progression system of Information makes it one of the most difficult Alignments to progress through as in some sense scales far quicker in difficulty than most. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. This Alignment is also the first to interact with one of the three planes, namely, the Cognition.

Most gnosiamancy takes place on the Cognition, meaning most spells have no physical component and take place entirely within one's mental faculties. All gnosiamancers have a sixth sense that allows them to navigate through the world of thoughts, giving them an insight that is normally classified as 'wrong' by their peers. Depending on their build, gnosiamancers can accumulate knowledge or computational power to increase their own power, which they can use in the stead of mana.

Most casters of this Alignment don't tend to choose offensive capabilities, meaning that most known Boons of Information are of a supportive character. This is seen as the most popular build of scribe. Most mages don't like to refer to scribes as their fellow mage, but it is true that they perform magic, besides being incredibly useful thanks to their limitless number of supportive Boons, personal or otherwise.

An example of a personal Boon for scribes would be Perfect Recollection early on, and a broader one around the middle levels would be Simulated Self, which allows the user to precalculated their actions before executing them with far more efficiency than normal. Other builds are too diverse to document as gnosiamancers are known to do anything and everything, even if not particularly well; their main distinction is if they accumulate knowledge like scribes or computational power like mentalists.

Of the latter, a very popular Boon is Mind Over Matter, that not only gives the caster minor telekinesis, but also the opportunity to shed their mortal body and become a cognitive entity. Of course, when I say popular, I'm being hyperbolic as most would classify that Boon as one reserved for archmagi. In summary, Information is the Alignment that can focus on two things: do anything, even if it will never excel at it; or focus on the aspects of the mind.

The most common types of hybrid mages tend to be related to Information due to this versatility. Space This Alignment is one of the other three that works on one of the planes, namely, the Physicality. An important distinction to be made is between the body and the physical. Life acts on one's body, whilst Space acts on physical reality. Much like gnosiamancers, topomancers have a sixth sense that allows them to feel the Physicality, this is tightly related to their infinite progression system.

Topomancers have a boosted spatial sense, which can be increased further for an even greater understanding of their surroundings. The greater their reach, the more power and influence over the Physicality they have. Space is the only planar Alignment that is strictly limited to their plane, but mostly because of the existence of the Physical Supremacy Boon that impedes the caster from ever again using spells on any other plane in exchange for greatly boosting their spatial sense.

Topomancers tend to pick it regardless of build. (Note: the other two planar Alignments have similar Boons, though they are less popular due to not many people being pure minds or souls.) There are mainly three distinct builds with the school of topomancy: that of movement, that of locality, and that of summoning. Movement, as the name implies, is concerned with the various forms of magically induced displacement. Teleportation, portals, and even gravitation to a lesser degree.

These builds tend to focus on the range of their spatial sense instead of its granularity and degree of control. One notable Boon of these builds is Blink, which allows the conjurer to teleport anywhere within the range of their spatial sense with almost no cost, making the Boon choice quite popular even if it is a rather common spell by itself. Locality is more about the fidelity of the spatial sense and the degree of control over tangible reality.

Depending on the topomancer, some may refer to their spatial sense as their "Territory" or "Domain" when applied to locality. With these builds it is more common to see actual gravitation control, space deformation and expansion, as well as pocket dimension creation. One notable Boon of these builds is known as Domain Expansion, as it allows the normally crippled range-wise locality topomancers to have a more prominent spatial sense range.

This Boon alone is what caused the disagreement regarding the name of the locality topomancer's spatial sense. It must be noted that Domain Expansion is a diluted version of the existing spell—and Boon—going by the name of Demiplane Deployment. I am not jesting when I say that topomancers become the most dangerous mages in existence when they reach this level of mastery. Summoning mostly focuses on the generic school of Space: conjuration.

Summoners can bring forth creatures from other planes or realms to the Physicality, and sometimes order them to do their bidding, though that isn't guaranteed. Most of the time the Boons for summoners are guided to being able to summon things that won't kill them on the spot. Though because this category deals with a generic school, it's not unusual to see other Alignments like Death or Void tiptoeing in this field.

Death As morbid and off-putting as the sound may sound to non-mages, Death is not as aggressive of an Alignment as it would first seem. Death and Life are two sides of the same coin, and this Alignment shows it to be so by also allowing their conjurers to heal. This is the third and last Alignment that relates to one of the three planes, in this case, the Spirituality. Whilst not much is known about the Spirituality, it is also easier to comprehend than the Cognition.

Most scholars agree that this is the place where souls reside and remain before they pass to the afterlife. Like the other planar Alignments, Death gives the casters a sixth sense to peer into the Spirituality, alongside being able to deal with that which no longer lives. Sharing similarities with Life—and Information to an extent—this Alignment has an infinite progression system where the conjurers grow the size and quality of their very soul.

Necromancers tend to be very secretive and defensive regarding their souls and their progression, but be assured, there is no need to kill for a Death caster to progress in their path. If anything, the only Alignment rewarded for violence is, ironically yet fittingly, Life. Necromancers have many builds, but they differentiate themselves in their capabilities. First, the common image of necromancy.

These necromancers are what people would normally—emphasis on normally as there is a lot of nonsense out there—expect of Death magic. These builds focus on raising the dead or that which has never lived to do their bidding. One notable Boon of these builds is Army of the Dead that allows a necromancer to expand their mind over their minions and raise them again remotely if they were to ever collapse.

(Note: Most 'standard' necromancers are actually factory workers instead of lords of darkness as tireless minions that obey every order are very effective in such environments.) Second, healers. As stated, necromancy can heal others, mainly by the sake of keeping death away from those who are near it. Normally that healing is focused on the soul as that is what they manage best, but necromancers can reconnect bisected limbs and remove necrosis better than any other type of healer.

One notable Boon of these builds is Defy Death that allows the necromancer to mark a target such that upon their demise, they are instantly resurrected to their optimal capabilities. (Note: One may start hearing the whispers of the dead after being affected by this Boon.) Finally, cursemongers. Like the aforementioned summoners, cursemongers focus on the generic school of Death, curses. Necromancers in this field specialize in the propagation of curses and getting a greater proficiency at them.

Not all curses are negative per se, but this is the field that tends them to garner most of its animosity, even if the general public tend to think of necromancy as corpse subjugation. Chaos As mentioned in the beginning, Arcane and Chaos have mirrored progression systems. Instead of limiting one's grimoire, Chaos thrives in quantity. This is especially the case as Chaos is one of the few Alignments that allows one to directly cast spells from others.

And unlike Arcane, Chaos' progression system could be considered infinite as while one opts to limit oneself to only a few spells in Arcane, there is no limit to the number of spells an ataxiamancer can add to their grimoire, as it only benefits them to do so. The grimoire works differently from Arcane. Instead of boosting a limited number of spells, Chaos gains power with more of them as they are selected randomly. Yes, you have read it right.

Ataxiamancers have no control over the spells they select, with some caveats. This is mostly due to their starter Boon Surrender to Chance that allow them to transform any spell into a wild magic. There are mainly three builds that ataxiamancers choose from. First, limited grimoire builds. These are identical in functionality as Arcane, where the conjurer opts for a more comprehensive repertoire of spells to select from.

The main difference with Arcane is that these builds have multiple grimoires, or rather, entries on the grimoires to separate different types of spells so they don't cast Fireball when they intend to heal a patient. The main requisite for this build is the Compartmentalization Boon, which allows the ataxiamancer to create multiple selections of random spells to pull from. Second, grimoireless builds. These are less interesting and weaker as they ignore the progression mechanic of Chaos, but they do exist.

Standardized Probability is the Boon required to make these builds work as it mostly guarantees a desired result, virtually allowing the ataxiamancer to cast spells from every Alignment like a taximancer—though closer to the capabilities of a gnosiamancer—but with Chaos. Third, gambler builds. This is not a jest, this is how the ataximancers following these builds call themselves. These builds, besides aching for the rush of randomness, focus on learning every possible spell at their disposal.

Technically speaking, gamblers are the type of mage with the most potential out there, but they tend to self-destruct as they are simply unlucky. Notable Boons are All In, which increases the potency of the spells but diminishes greatly the chance of being the one you wanted, or Born Lucky, which increases one's luck and the chance of getting the desired spell. (Note: this last Boon defies any logic as the Chaos Tower Master has been immolated and atomized multiple times yet still stands alive by chance alone. This wouldn't be so egregious if this Boon weren't a level 3 one.) Void Our last Alignment and probably the spookiest out there. All the uninformed opinions of Death should instead go to Void, I personally believe. To be completely transparent, we have yet to know if Void's progression system is infinitely scaling or not as it has the same difficulty problems of Time. This Alignment progression system is the only one that is actively harmful to the caster.

For the akyromancers to grow in power, they have to slowly chip away at their very existence. Many Void spells deal with obscuring one's presence, but the progression mechanic takes it a step further and more seriously. This being said, Void has the strongest damaging capabilities of any Alignment as it is the only one that actively works in the three planes. There aren't many builds out there, but most Void users either divide themselves into two: dematerializers and assassins.

Dematerializers can destroy reality, quite literally erasing it. Having said so, most of them work as miners because erasing any Aligned matter, energy, or information takes too much power. One notable Boon of these builds is Inner Abyss, which allows the akyromancers to store everything they have ever erased in a pocket dimension inside of them, similar to the topomancy Inventory Boon. (Note: these burst when the akyromancers dies. Violently.) Assassins are what you might expect from the name.

Technically they subdivide in two other builds, voidwalkers and harbingers, but whilst one focuses more on movement and the other in stealth and destruction, the end result is the same. One notable Boon of these builds is Voidform, which makes the akyromancers undetectable by normal senses alongside planar ones like spatial sense or those from Information and Death. On a small footnote about harbingers.

These also tend to branch onto summoning or curses centered around the void, but these paths are uncommon as Void is already a very demanding Alignment and this forces the akyromancer to shoulder generic schools of casting they are not proficient with unless they get the adequate Boons.