Thaumaturgy and Sourcery

"I would like to remind students of these arts that everything contained within are merely abstractions and analogies, They approximate how things work quite well. But they are not the truth."
Alexander Nostra - Foreward from Treatise on Magical Mecahnics, 4th ed.

This section will contain spoilers for the story. It is recommended you not read this untill fully caught up.

Magic has gone by many names in many cultures, but it was the Parda who fisrt formalized its rigorous study, and categorized it into two distinct groups based on its origin and capabilities; Thaumaturgy and Sourcery.

Truesight

Truesight is the ability to see the objective reality of what is there; instead of seeing an apple, one "sees" the photons of particular wavelengths eminating from it, the thermal energy cycling between it and its surroundings, every layer of material of the apple, not just the outer skin.Parsing out adn understanding all this stimuli is a skill that must be developed.
Truesight can be used by anyone, but some are more sensitive to the feelings of truesight. It is a prerequisite skill for a thaumaturge to learn, as it is the only way in which to actually perceive and perform thaumaturgy.

Thaumaturgy

Thaumaturgy is the ability to move ether within a Material State system. This includes:

* Moving enery from one place to another
* Changing energy from one type to another

Technically all Thaumaturgy is considered moving energy from one place to another, as all instances of performing thaumaturgy is two actions:

Inhale step: Moving energy from a material to the Thaumaturge as ether.
Exhale step: Moving ether from the Thaumaturge into energy .

In most instances however one is moving them at effetively instant speed, and the energy spends 0 time as undefined ether with the Thaumaturge.

Anyone can manifest these abilities, but most are not truesight sensitive enough to even realize it. Those that are more sensitive and begin to experiment on their own are typically the only ones to ever pursue becoming a truly skilled thaumaturge.

Visualizing and thinking of the world through truesight does not come naturally when one is used to experiencing the world through eyes, ears and nose. Thus performing Thaumaturgy requires focus of the user. Starting off one will practice entering a meditative state to remove the distractions of the natural senses.
The experienced a Thaumaturge, the more they can quickly and easily shift to using truesight and performing thaumaturgy. More experienced ones will be able to perform thaumaturgy with less need to remove distractions. Extremely good Thaumaturges may even be able to perform thaumaturgy while still doing other mundane tasks.

Difficulty of Thaumaturgical actions

Nostra's codified the abstract idea of the difficulty of doing any Thaumaturgical action as an 'Information Cost'. It is difficult to measure any type of standardized infomrmation cost for an action, as it varies even based on the user, but by controlling for as many variables as possible (The performing thaumaturge, amount of energy moved, ect...), The following factors have been identified as affecting the IC of any action:

* The amount of energy moved
* The distance energy is moved (both from source to sink and from both points to the Thaumaturge)
* The complexity of energy moved (Moving a sphere of energy vs a squiggle, moving one type of energy vs a mix)
* The ability of the Thaumaturge to Intuit their actions. (How naturally the mind understands what they're doing)

Factors affecting the difficulty of things for Thaumaturges seem to carry over for shackled and sapient state ether.
A Theory of why this is, and for why Thaumaturgy itself exists as a phenomena is that a material state mind is a coincidental second order approximastion of ether. When performing thaumaturgy one's mind does the same as what ether does, 'Will' reality to a new state. (another analogy: Imagine a human mind as a Virtual Machine.)
Over exerting oneself, going over one's IC limit will usually result in nausea and fainting.
Going over one's IC limit too quickly could result in a brain bleed or death.

Common Thaumaturgical Techniques

*Holding Ether - One can choose to pull energy in, but then not move it elsewhere, so that one can then use it immediatly at a later time. This is a potentially dangerous technique as it requires constant focus to keep the ether in line, it will be constantly attempting to turn back into any type of energy. The more experienced the Thaumaturge is, the longer they will be able to hold it, and with less 'leakage'. When enough ether leaks back into energy, the closest things it will become part of are the air, and the Thaumaturge. The air being much less dense, will statistically absorb much less of this new energy, and so most goes into the thaumaturge.
The flesh of the thaumaturge is subjected to an influx of thermal, kinetic, electromagnetic, and whatever other type of energy the ether jumps to. This most commonly leaves one burned or bruised, but symptoms of radiation or chemical burns are not unheard of either.

*Keying - A trick to help the mind quickly perform set Thaumaturgical actions. One practices repeatedly doing the same Thaumaturgical action while doing some physical action, an arm or hand movement. Eventually this association can become strong enough that one can perform said physical action to trigger performing the Thaumaturgical action. This would be referred to as 'Keying' movement X to Thaumaturgical action Y.

*Sinks/Flywheels - Having an item around that it is safe to store and pull energy from without negative consequences. Especially useful if one needs to safely dump a large amount of energy quickly without accidentally hurting themselves. Flywheels are the most common way to do this. Sometimes also referred to as sinks, which is more inclusive of devices that store KE in a different manner or that store heat.

*Constructs - Bleeds into Sourcery in a sense, but is generally lumped in with Thaumaturgy. Small amounts ofEther is 'convinced' (willed) to have some ruleset. Ether being self interacting of course means that these will degrade over time; changing their own ruleset/instructions. The more complicated the ruleset, and the more other ether it is around, the faster they will degrade and have to be 'reinforced'. Often used to create objects to quickly perform some action that may be simple for ether to perform but require more focus from a human due to it being more difficult to intuit.

Sourcery

This section will use vocabulary explained more thoroughly in the codex entry on Ether.

The name comes from the idea that one is tapping into the direct "source" of magic. Sourcery involves drawing abilities from making a pact with an ether intelligence. Ether intelligences can remain in a very unstable state before "deciding" what it will be, and during this period it may dissipate all together before "condensing". Any being desires to, at a minimum, exist, and forming a pact during this period will guarantee that at least a part of the intelligence lives on to perform whatever purpose it may have been drawn to.

A pact involves merging a still unstable Sapient State intelligence with a Material State intelligence. The process involves the Sapient State "taking root" within the Material State; both physically and mentally replacing some parts at random. The amount replaced is relative to the "size" of the Sapient State. The Material State intelligence (person) will have access to whatever abilities the Sapient State was forming, and be able to use them up to the IC limit of the Sapient State. The physical replacement manifests as black glassy sunken flesh. The mental replacement can be memories being lost, or changes to interests and personality. For this reason Sourcery is considered extremely risky and only to be undertaken with an understanding of the risks; if you are lucky, you will lose cherished memories, if you're unlucky, you won't be quite the same person you were before.

The process starts with contact being made between the person and the ether entity. People describe it as a sort of psychic "understaning" between them.
The merger itself is described being incredibly painful in the moment the flesh is replaced, but only for a brief second, with no residual pain even immediately after.
Either party forcing the process is catastrophic. Resistance by either mind can end up destryoing both parties. Something living might come out the other side, but it won't 'be' either of the starting parties, and may not even be sapient.

Common Misconceptions

The demonization of magic use has resulted in most "common knowledge" of it being superstition; the result of religious dogma and propaganda. The name given to magic users; Notra; derives from Alexander Nostra, one of the greatest thaumaturges to ever live, and often blamed for the proliferation of its use in ancient times. (Despite the fact that he lived during the end of the Pardic Empire and thaumaturgic practices were already well established at that point.)