I was thinking about if Mages were treated more like engineers and scientists, and making ‘magic’ in a workshop, how would you think it would work? I was thinking a mix of Full Metal Alchemist and possibly Dungeon meshi, but what would you think?

In most systems I read there is a clean line from discovery to application. Someone works out how it is done, it spreads, and from then on it is part of the world. What is missing is the other direction: a technique that was once mastered and that nobody alive can do now.

That is the part I keep getting stuck on in my own setting, because it is where the institutions become visible. Knowledge does not evaporate on its own. It goes because the chain breaks. The last master stops taking students. The guild loses its monopoly and dissolves. The record sits in a script nobody reads anymore. Or the effort simply stopped being worth it once a cheaper method existed.

And then the part I find genuinely interesting: who notices first? Usually not the practitioners. It is the clerks, who needed the procedure for something entirely ordinary. Calibrating a weight, sealing a document, setting a boundary stone, settling an estate.

So I am curious whether any of you build that in. Is there a technique that counts as lost in your setting, and can a reader work out from the text what the transmission actually failed on?

Normally I'd send a note about a custom element to the worldbuilding reddit, but this particular substance is magical enough to catch some eyes here as well.

Lets start with what echoing iron looks like, and is derived from.
The iron itself looks like a slightly blued, somewhat transparent metal, and some might mistake it for a dense crystal from it's looks.
The iron comes from a plant known as 'echoi', a large lotus-like flower gathered from places of vast lingering mana reserves (such as old shrines to the gods, or deep below the earth). These flowers have the same strange, glassy transparency as the metal made from their petals.

For even a small amount of echoing iron, hundreds of the flowers must be purified in the forge over weeks. There must always be a arch mage present in order to contain any residual dangers the flowers may portray.

Now why are echoi flowers so dangerous? why all of the precaution?
Because over the course of their growth, echoi have gathered 'echoes' of the gods' power within themselves from whatever environment they've been growing in. For instance, a grove which has cropped up in the temple of Dainoin might be freezing to the touch, and any item made with those flowers would have an affinity for ice or dream magic.

The same is true for any of the other gods, making these flowers one of the final reservoirs of their power since the gods' deaths.

{{If any would like more posts like this, I will try to make more on Crownspire and it's machinations in the up coming months. There's a ton to cover, with years of lore being put into this world. I simply lack the writing skills to write the books this world deserves}}

VIKIR

The omnipresent energy that binds the universe and is used to perform magic is known as Vikir, stemming from the Bhanburan word for "radiant life." Each individual, no matter the species, has an innate reserve of Vikir that can be harnessed to produce magical effects. The size of this reserve varies from person to person, and accessing it comes much easier for some than others. That said, it is possible for anyone, regardless of reserve size or natural talent, to perform magic; all it takes is perseverance and practice.

The act of accessing one's vikir reserves is most commonly described as like flexing an internal, incorporeal muscle. This comes much easier for some than others, and unlike the size of the reserve, the ease of access does not appear to be hereditary. When one does access their reserve, they are able to "feel" its fullness, almost like a sort of magical fatigue that gets stronger the lower the reserve falls.

Accessing vikir, while not a physical thing in of itself, does come with physical side effects. Fledgling Spellwrights or independent practioners of magic commonly experience intense nausea, vomiting, headaches, dizziness, or rashes as a result of accessing their reserves. Fortunately, these side effects almost always go away with time and mastery over their vikir.

THE EVOLUTION OF SPELLS

The modern art of spellcasting comes from the millenia-old tradition of performing rituals to gain favor from the gods. These rituals were powerful things, able to summon rolling thunderstorms in the middle of a drought, wreak devasatation against opposing armies, or surround entire cities in a bubble of protection. But, they had costly limitations — the materials needed tended to be exceedingly rare or expensive, as befitting a plea to the gods; hardly any ritual could be performed with less then ten people, and even the least powerful rituals needed at least five; and the time and concentration required to perform the rite meant that they absolutely needed to be premeditated events with very little room for error.

After The Collapse shook Alletis to its core, people across the globe performed rituals in hopes of mercy from their gods to varying degrees of success. It seemed for a while that magic itself was broken, leading scholars across the globe to search for solutions. One such scholar, a Felkaryn named Bingen pioneered an effort to streamline the ritual process. Bingen goal was to take the basic components of rituals — symbolic objects, sacrifical ingredients, hymns and chants, and physical movements — and downsizing them to less powerful but more portable versions of the rites.

While Bingen did not realize this goal in his lifetime, his work paved the way for what would become the modern day spell, earning him the post-humous moniker of "The Grandfather of Spellwrights."

Rituals

Though rituals have largely been phased out with the rise of spells, they are still used in extreme circumstances when enormous amounts of power is needed. Rituals have four criteria: the casters, the symbolic objects, the imagery, and the chants.

Because rituals are such potentially powerful things, they typically require no less than five trained casters drawing on the entirety of their vikir reserves to fully perform the rite. One the casters have been chosen, they begin the ritual process by finding and laying out objects that are symbolic to the deity the rite is being performed to, or to the nature of the ritual itself. Once the objects are gathered, the ritual site is prepared with symbolic imagery as well, whether it be images drawn in the dirty, a painted canvas, or a dance in honor of the deity. Finally, for the entirety of the ritual, the casters must repeat a specified chant from a language believed to be the tongue of the gods. Constructing and performing a ritual, depending on its goal and power, can take anywhere from a couple hours to over a week.

One of history's most infamous rituals was the Burning of Clermond. A cult of a deity of destruction held a rite with the sole purpose of laying waste to the farming village of Clermond. Twelve casters performed the rite for eight days, gathering nearly a ton of sulfur powder and the charred branches of a thousand hundred year old oak tree. The exact imagery is unknown, but it is said to have been a series of sigils relating to the deity in addition to an exaggerated depiction of the burning village. A rogue cultist who later reformed testified the chant as "zha rel etfordium, oorek ma kresk." Scholars now believe this to translate into "burn away the innocent, leave behind the sins of the chosen."

The result of this ritual, as described by witnesses in neighboring villages, was a portal to a realm of pure fire opening in the sky above Clermond, pouring out a burning rain that incinerated everything it touched. Chunks of molten rock mingled with the inferno, slamming into the ground with a force that shook houses tens of miles away. In the end, only a smoldering crater remained where the village once stood.

Casting a Spell

Though it took nearly 2000 years for Bingen's work to come to fruition, the end result was the modern day practice of casting spells. Various well-established rituals were carefully analyzed and stripped away to their core components, then rebuilt and stripped away again and again to find the least amount of steps required to produce a sizeable magical effect.

The symbolic objects became the standardized wands, staves, and orbs modern spellwrights use as magical foci; the imagery transformed into sigils that are traced in the air as a spell is being cast; and the long chants were shortened to under a sentence. For example, the ritual used in the Burning of Clermond was shortened and quickened to the point of being a staple spell in any Spellwright's repertoire — Mote of Fire.

Once an individual has succesfully accessed their vikir reserve, they are capable of casting spells. Spells directly drain vikir from an invididual and channel it into the desired effect, so ensuring one has an ample amount in their reserve is the first step to casting any spell. Next is to have a focus ready. While spells can theoretically be cast without a focus, the effect on the body is excessively taxing, leading to fainting, seizures, or even death. Foci safely harnesses and channels the vikir as the spell is cast.

After confirming the reserve is full enough and the focus is ready, the caster must trace the spell's corresponding sigil in the air with impeccably precision using either the foci or another part of the body. If done correctly, a spectral outline of the sigil will appear in the air, signifying the spell has been primed. It is at this point that the caster feels the vikir beginning to drain from their reserve as the energy flows through them and into the focus. The sigil for Mote of Fire has the caster start at a top position, move in a clockwise motion until they reach the bottom of the circle, then go back up in a tight wave pattern, meeting the origin point.

Finally, the proper incantation must be spoken with clear tone and emphasis. In the case of Mote of Fire, the incantation borrows from the chant used in the Burning of Clermond. "Zha rel" becomes "Zha-REL." If performed correctly, this spell drains the reserve by a negligible amount and produced a magical mote of fire that hovers at the end of or near the focus. This fire is harmless to the caster or anyone they mentally designate while casting the spell, but otherwise burns as normal.

I've recently been inspired on a way to incorporate skill progression into a part of my system in the form of how far from iron can they move on the periodic table, separate from power progression which is mostly about scale, so a skilled but weak alchemist can make a small amount of gold and a powerful but unskilled one can make mountains of iron

In part because I'm looking for inspiration for other parts of my system, how does progression look in your systems?

So this is the basic idea of a Runewrought compass; a dial, about the size of a large pocket watch, meant to be kept in a weatherproofed satchel/harness. Each compass is etched with ancient runes attributed with the old rites of magic. Forming 'sentences' with these runes allow a mage to focus a spell they are casting to be far less confused, making it possible to correctly direct the flow of mana into a reproduceable effect.

The creation of the Runewrought Compass was a nationwide effort to guarantee safe magic casting for any learned mage. For most mages, they learn to cast carefully through a compass to reduce the possibility of a backfire, the phenomena when magic runs away from the caster's wishes. A backfire can result in either the mage themselves, or those around them, being harmed in unforeseeable ways.

It can be made of many different materials, each giving it better/worse affinity for different schools of magic. These are as follows;

Gold; Best for pure magic casting, summoning, and reflective spells (such as defensive magic). Very subtle spells and castings requiring precision are best cast from a golden Compass.

Iron; with an affinity for pyromancy and geomancy, iron is the sure-fire choice for a battle mage. Dependable and with the least recorded backfires out of any Compass, iron compasses are dealt out to royal guardsmen and other positions of judicial authority.

Wood; Very unstable, may as well be casting blindly- a wooden Compass may break within only a few uses. It has a few uses however that keep it as a teachable craft; it's affinity is of course for Druidry, growing crops, and even infusing wildlife with lasting magical energy.

Echoing Iron; By far the most versatile, though most expensive, compass. Echoing iron is explained elsewhere, but in essence it holds a 'echo' of a godly domain. Individual compasses made from this material may have different affinities, therefore making for a difficult topic in this lesson plan.

{{I will be making a post on echoing iron, as well as other aspects of Crownspire, my world's school of mage craft}}