Questions tagged [magic]
For questions that have to do with magic, as opposed to science/technology. Remember to explain any limits.
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How to explain magic scientifically? [closed]
I'm writing a story and I'm having trouble finding credible explanations for certain elements of it.
Basically, in the late 2090s, technology has advanced to the point that it is possible to ...
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How dangerous would a vertical water surface be?
In my setting, there is an area that is usually filled with water at high tide and a land bridge at low tide. One day, a magical wall appeared that does not let water through, but does let through ...
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How is it possible that some extra-dimensional pouches can store living things while others can't?
The extra-dimensional pouch is a portable and lightweight container that is capable of storing almost unlimited tangible objects of any sizes inside a pocket dimension, but why might certain extra ...
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Aircraft Carrier or ship with similar functionality for Dragon Riders?
My World has Dragoons, these are Dragon Riders and the riders are expert marksmen. They use magic arrows like explosive/fire/wind/homing arrows for offensive (basically magic archers) along with ...
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How to prevent adventurers from ganging up on dragon?
In the 13th century A.D., the king put up a hefty bounty for anyone who can help defeat the dragon and rescue his daughter. Actually, this was all according to the king's devious plan. The dragon was ...
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Can demigod city be spared from divine judgement by staying neutral?
Lately more and more worshippers are becoming materialistic and are abandoning their faith emass, this has been brought up to the attention of the Olympian god who suspect it was the doing of the ...
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How can demigods living among us in the 21st century prevent losing powers?
Generations of demigod and semi-demigod have been hiding and living among us to this present day, they made a pact with the god to never reveal the existence of God or themselves in public unless they ...
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How would winged mounts affect the architecture and layout of cities? [duplicate]
So, the setting I am building for a story has gryphons, which are used as the primary mounts by the people of the main country. I am trying to figure out the implications of this, and how it would ...
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How does a demigod city enjoy freedom while also pretending it is not?
Spill over is never a good thing in nature, from the tragedy befalling Hercules in mythology to the current pandemic are some of the side effects reminding us never to underestimate the power of ...
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How would a community of people living in densely packed treehouses receive food to their treehouse?
In my novel, the characters live in treehouses that are practically piled on top of one another, so there is little room to climb down to pick up food, and it would be a challenge trying to take it ...
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How would a company write a magically binding NDA?
In my setting an artificer company is being created which specializes in making advanced technology and is essentially bringing about an industrial revolution. They need to hire workers, and so have ...
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Psychic/Telepathic Piloting System
Comic artist. I'm looking to mess around with the 'floating islands' trope to see just how 'hard' a magic system I can make it. The idea is to finally explain "what keeps the islands up" and ...
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How can the law of equivalent exchange lead to diminishing returns from sacrifices?
The astral realm is the place where magic in our world originates from. Priests of the Aztec empire can access that magical power for their own purposes through the use of spells and rituals. The ...
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How can high mana areas remain egalitarian without being dominated by a single witch coven?
The astral realm is the place where magic in our world originates from. Beings called witches can access that magical power for their own purposes through the use of spells and rituals. The amount of ...
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Mesmerake Hypnosis: How Does It Work?
Mesmerake are dragons, serpentine with two arms and no legs, but endowed with plenty of fins-four fins come off of their back, resembling butterfly wings but more frilly, sort of like betta fins, a ...
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Best way to stop a rotting zombie
The Context
I am designing a type of zombie that is made through a ritual involving an eldritch abomination called the Unsound Vulture. These zombies manipulate their decaying flesh and bones to move, ...
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Gastric Reversion: How Can It Work?
Scerafin, a species of quadrupedal darkeyed dragon that resemble sharks but live on land, are known for their telescoping necks (range of 3 yards), razor-sharp lance (read: snout horn) and tailfin, ...
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Could jumps between floating cities happen in this setting?
Jumps between floating cities.
In this setting floating cities exist because of floating rocks and people already live in them for a long time.
Jumpers, jump between close leveled cities carrying ...
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How can I make this sword useful?
The sword I'm talking about is about 7 human heads tall.
In the lore the sword is magical or at least thought to be magical. It is swung around by a creature capable of going invisible, which gives ...
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What would make a Hemomancer only capable of controlling his own blood?
In the book that I am currently writing, all vampires have this kind of "control" over their own blood using magic. Only vampires who are extremely experienced in magic can interact with the ...
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Zombies: if magic kept them "living" or at least conscious, what would they experience as they rotted? [closed]
Instead of being spread by a virus or the temporary effects of a voodoo-induced trance or paralysis, zombies are created by a magical curse that causes the person to rot while remaining relatively ...
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Creatures which can be mortal in one dimension and immortal in another dimension, How do I avoid time freezing forever?
These beings can live a normal life, except they switch dimensions, their body still remains in the same place. But almost as if time froze, they are transported in another world, an infinite ...
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How would a chronologically accelerated/slowed object affect a chronologically normal object?
The world has a kind of magic called chronomancy, essentially time manipulation. It can be done on two scales: local and universal.
Due to how the cost of magic works even the most experienced or ...
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How to defeat a pyrokinesis user using tech and science
The user can manipulate fire in many ways, and to a certain extent, he can also manipulate electricity. The fire he uses is special and can reach temperatures above sun, but the average temperature ...
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What could be the reasoning behind why Elves go into metamorphosis?
For my setting, I really want to push the non-human aspect of the other typical fantasy races. For Elves, I've been throwing the idea around that they go through a metamorphosis of sorts. I was ...
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If magic violates causality, then why there is no instant death spell? [closed]
In a parallel universe people born with high affinity can apply magic directly on the material world, you can use magic to harm others at the expanse of risking magical feedback similar to the ...
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What are the Legal Responsibilities of a Police Officer with this Runaway Child?
So per this question- a month before the Police Officer meets the Runaway Child 'magic' suddenly appears in a 90s era Earth. Roughly 1 in 10,000 people start demonstrably using 'magic' and they can be ...
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How would griffins collect materials for their nests?
Seeing as griffins are much bigger creatures than birds, plenty more twigs and sticks would be required and so larger size too. So how would griffins go about collecting materials for their nest? One ...
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Population recovery time after a fantasy nuclear winter
One of the major events of my setting is an all-out war between two factions of gods (and their human subjects) using basically the magical equivalent of nukes and nuclear technology. The world was ...
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Why must all magic teachers master the basics of forbidden dark magic?
In the school of fine magic, all magic teachers must undergo a course on forbidden dark magic such as witchcraft and voodoo curses and achieve a satisfactory result in the exam before they are ...
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What's in it for the most detested and lonely god to perform his duty diligently?
In my story there is a god of misfortune that always brings bad luck to every living thing, including other gods, that get in the way. The bad luck worsens the longer or closer the individual is ...
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Possible ways of conjuring "matter"?
How could matter, or something that behaves similarly to matter, be conjured without absurdly over excessive amounts of energy under following assumptions:
energy can be added to the equation at any ...
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If magic can manipulate memories for inmates on death row, why hasn't capital punishment been abolished?
This is set in the modern day but in a parallel universe. As usual we have a food crisis and climate changes, etc.
Imagine a serial killer was finally arrested and sentenced to death, as the country ...
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What could someone who is able to add to their muscle mass accomplish?
In my world I have a type of magic user who grows stronger the more they kill animals and people.
Currently I conceptualise this as a sort of pocket dimension muscle, whenever they kill a creature, ...
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Would "empathetic" plants dominate over other plants?
I've been digging into some very interesting, related questions from the past (the one I found the most useful was this one) and I don't think anything covers my question. So if I missed it, please do ...
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How would portals that link Earth and a fantasy world work?
I don't exactly want the science on how portals work (though I wouldn't complain if someone did), but I suppose they would work lore-wise. Portals can often be found behind long forgotten entrances, ...
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How can witches compete with mega-corporations who benefit from economies of scale?
Mana is the life energy present in all humans. It also gives us the ability to use magical spells and rituals. However, only witches are able to access their Mana in order to use it directly. For ...
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Advantages of my runic magic system that can be used to build machines and computers over electronic circuits [closed]
Mages can use runes to
Transfer over distance and transform easily between different types of energies (heat, kinetic, electrical, etc and magical energy)
Store raw analogue signals or accurately ...
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How would using trees as sarcophagi affect the forest?
Long story short the people of the forest use trees to 'bury' their dead instead of actually burying them into the ground. They use plant-manipulation magic to accomplish this, making the tree open up ...
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Could multiple sentient humanoids live in the same environment?
In my Fantasy Story there's multiple fantasy species which have achieved human intelligence and many share a close common ancestry with humans (humans also live in the same lands). But I have realized ...
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How could a Fantasy World remain hidden?
This Fantasy World has very large monsters, intelligent humanoids, expansive unique biomes, ect. While I was making my fantasy world I realised how hard it would be to hide all of this from humans. I ...
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How can a wizard make a deal with a demon without interacting face-to-face? [closed]
Remember Bob the Wizard from this question? Well, Joe's annoyed him one too many times. However, he can't kill him the normal way, so he's decided he's going to hire a demon to kill him.
Bob knows all ...
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What would prevent Big Pharma from marketing witch potions to consumers in pill form?
Potions have been the traditional solution for medical issues throughout history for populations within witch society. Witches were seen as the doctors of their community, treating people with various ...
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Extending the lives of indeterminately-growing animals with magic
The whole question goes like this:
What magical abilities such animals could develop or magically enhance existing ones to greatly increase the likelihood of drastically outliving an average specimen
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Why wouldn't all wizards be buff?
So in my universe, magic (and especially magical healing) are commonplace, and an applied application of healing magic can heal almost every injury at the cost of some "mana". Any healing ...
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How can seals of various complexity be the preferred option for a firewall?
Eons ago, an ancient demigod was imprisoned by a group of his siblings within a separate realm for crimes against humanity. A cult of witches in the modern day has formed to free this individual, and ...
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Would making newton's 3rd law of motion unidirectional allow you to jump higher or will you break your legs?
Imagine a magic that allows the person to decide in which 'direction' the forces of an impact or imparted force are applied with regards to newton's 3rd law of motion. Either all of the force goes ...
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Biological siege weapons: Part 2 - Can a living thing effectively perform the role of ranged siege weaponry such as trebuchets?
As was pointed out by the great answers of my first question regarding biological siege weapons, organisms can be rather capable of making it through fortified defenses at close range, but what about ...
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How can cross-contamination occur among ingredients made from magical beings?
Sentient beings, such as elves, humans, orcs, dwarves, etc., all contain mana that can be used to perform spells, or alternitively, can be stripped for the purpose of being used to create items or ...
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Use of magic life-sucking creatures in warfare
Imagine a creature that sucks life force out of wounds. The creature, called a Aurelias, will happily consume the life force of any being, regardless of their allegiance. It has some special features, ...
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