Medstone

This is confusing and needs to be organised. It might also contain outdated information as well as unanswered (or answered) questions.

This might need to be separated in two pages, one about Medstone, one about Magic. Maybe even more to distinguish between Medstone and non-Medstone materials.

Unlike the Magic Basics page, this is going to be a thorough exploration of the topic of Medstone, all its variants, and other types of Magical or Mediating Materials. Not all of this will be always relevant, but the intent is to have the lore established for whenever and wherever, if ever, needed. For now, I will be compiling existing materials in one place. In the future, I might synthesise this in better or more expanded form. Information here is as always still subject to change.

Magical and Medium Materials

• Blackstone - Type Altering (Natural: Mutative/Corrupting)
• Yellowstone/Amberstone/Philosopher's Stone - Type Altering (Triggered: Transmutive)
• Redstone (till we get something better) - Type Altering (Natural: Mutative)
• Moonstone (might as well call it that) - Type Altering (Unknown Properties)
• Rich Oil (don't know just something I came up on the spot) - Type Productive (Triggered, Natural: Self-productive, that is it produces more of itself deep in the earth)
• Medstone/Ashstone/Magistone/Devil's Ash - Type All (Triggered)
• Refined Medstone(/...) - Type All (Passive, Triggered)
• Experimental Substances attempting combination of the above different than Medstone - Usually failures (they either don't work at all or the effects fail to combine and are pretty weak).

By the way, the listed sub-properties of each are the ones that have been confirmed, but not necessarily the ones they're limited to (e.g. any one of these could possibly have natural magic effects, only they've not been observed so far)

Types of Altering Magic

According to my old notes:

• Transmutive
• Mutative
• Corruptive(? should this be different from Mutative?)
• Should there be more?

Types of Activation

According to my old notes:

• Natural
• Passive
• Triggered

Black Goo

Now on the matter of the "Black Goo", what is it? Where did it come from? Like blackstone, somethingstone and yellowstone, the "Black Goo" is also a pre-medstone substance, but of a different nature. Whereas the "stones" have altering powers generally and came from the meteors which crashed on the earth and altered it, the "Black Goo" on the other hand is naturally produced in the depths of the earth and gushes out in the North, possessing productive powers. When combined "Black Goo" and alienstone together form the much stronger medstone that can both produce and change. Hurrah! Human magic is born!

Moonstone

I also mentioned something about the moon. See Sci-Fi-land is a bit jelly because they don't have much ashstone, so they want more. Importing it is a bit of a difficult process since the other lands aren't much inclined in giving it. So, Sci-Fi-land thinks "We're clever enough. We can make our own". They study medstone and the volcanoes whence it came from to discover the truth about it and how to make it. So they then go searching for the materials. "Black Goo" exists plentiful in the North, though fools who don't understand its value usually just burn it. The South, however, is nearly run out of yellowstone and what is there the locals keep to themselves. The Sci-Fi people, though, know about the meteors. Still, taking advantage of that info is gonna be hard. Somethingstone is mostly in the hands of the "Egyptians" who are recluse people who don't usually allow foreigners in their lands and wouldn't give up their holy artefacts anyway. The Darkness of the Sea, on the other hand is a considerable risk in acquiring the blackstone (combined with the difficulty of searching for it in the depths of the ocean). They'll still try, because they're greedy, but they've also found an alternative solution.

A theory exists that suggests that when the three meteors fell to the earth, there might have been one or two more that crashed on the moon instead. And that is why it's imperative to go to the moon and find that source of alienstone. And while talk of going to space might come in rather early in the story, I think these kind of developments, of this search really happening and the heroes and readers hearing about it would come a lot later (after a whole bunch of foreshadowing through talking about the ventures to the moon). And yet even if/when they actually get the alienstone from the moon, another issue stands in the way for our sci-fi friends. We like to make things hard for them after all.

Even after acquiring it, a problem arises. The medstone they make isn't working. At first, they think it's an issue of analogies in composition, but then they see the alienstone isn't working alone either. I've said so before, I believe, but ashstone or alienstone or the Black Goo aren't the source of magic. They're merely the medium. Where exactly it comes from is uncertain, but perhaps a good guess would be to say from the hearts of the earth or from the spirits residing in it that embody the medstone and make it work. Or it could be anything else. But the existing hypothesis becomes that the alienstone and thus the ashstone produced lack the Heart of the Land. Yellowstone, previously, and the Black Goo have existed on the earth for ages and perhaps it's something from it, the so called Heart of the Land that awakened them. Now, will they be able to awaken their own alienstone in the future? Maybe. We'll see. This is very much in the brainstorming stage still.

And a note just in case this wasn't clear, all of these names of stones and goos I used now are placeholders to help conversation. We'd hopefully find better names by the time we need them.

Magicians

Now for what a magician is, I think the question lies on what exactly is the requirement for being able to activate magistone. I can see a few different scenarios:

• Everyone can. Everyone potentially could, it just comes down to who is willing to use it, learn to use it and acquire it raw or refined. It's ambiguous whether you can call anyone a magician.
• Everyone can if they study (and/or train) hard enough. There's something in the process of using ashstone that makes it a rather hard art to learn and therefore only a few choose to commit to it. In this case, those people could very well be called magicians [personally not a fan of this one, because I can't quite find what would be the complication of using magistone that would require such intense studying]

(Note: when I first wrote that I didn't much consider the training factor; if the issue is that it requires a lot of training to use medstone right, that would probably make more sense; though that could still be combined with something else to a lesser degree of training though)

• Only the ones born with a certain natural talent to connect with the Ashes can do so. Would be called magicians [Also, not a fan of this one, because it feels too arbitrary; in other cases I wouldn't mind natural-talent-based magicians, but I don't feel it fits here]

• The resonance with ashstone, for those who have it, isn't natural, but acquired through some method. I originally had considered the consumption of a small amount of medstone (which could have been risky) as a possibility, but for reasons that will become apparent in just a little, I am no longer in favour of that idea as I'd like to use the medstone-consuming thing for something else.

• Everyone can use medstone, but different people resonate more with different types of medstone. There are some that can only use one or two types well, while some may resonate with lots of types, but not as much as the former -it is also conceivable that one may not resonate with any kind of medstone though that would probably be pretty rare, if it happens. That could be considered as arbitrary as the previous one perhaps, but I think not necessarily. While the previous choice simply separated people between magicians and non-magicians, the lines here are blurrier and the distinctions multiple. It could be said that the differences are based on the person's heart of hearts or whatever (you know what I mean). Similarly to how people have different patronuses in Harry Potter or different semblances in RWBY and it's based on their personality/soul, but at the same time you can't exactly tell the rules of how it works. I also find that a system like that is pretty convenient. It allows for all-rounders if we want them, but at the same time it limits most people to one or two effects they can use better, making for a more interesting variety where each person has a limited skill set and they must make do with that and strategise around it. It also allows for people who don't use magic at all, because they're not very good at it or they haven't found any refined ashstone they resonate with. Perhaps, we could add a little training factor for controlling it and there'd be a reasonable amount of people who don't typically use it (unless it's a passive magistone tool, which also I suppose could happen and wouldn't need activation per se, but would instead work all the time, probably providing an effect to itself or to its surrounding area; that would then make for a nice family-friendly tool for all to use -should they find one).

The thing is, though, it's not exactly certain whom we should call magicians in a scenario like that. Is it everyone who uses (active) medstone? Just the all-rounders? Is it actually the refiners of ashstone who in the first place make the tools (and who are quite rare, because that at least would be a difficult art to learn and master)? Or is perhaps no one a magician since they can't freely manipulate magic? I think it's interesting that we could potentially (emphasis on potentially, we don't have to) give any character some ashstone tool providing them with an ability (and also entry to the Tournament if they want to) but without having to treat them as magicians. Or at least that's how I see it.

Human, Natural and Free Magic

Since I touched on the subject of freely manipulating magic though, I would like to add that what I've said so far is about what we shall now for simplicity's sake call HUMAN MAGIC. Other types of magic that may or may not appear might not exactly work like that.

FREE MAGIC or TRUE MAGIC: This isn't something that has actually been confirmed to exist, but is rather an ideal, something desired, but not ever found. As I've explained beforehand, magic as humans know it comes with some restrictions, more or less depending on what we decide in the end. As such, there are many people who do not see the users of ashstone as true magicians and therefore nor do they see their magic as true magic. Some of those people then seek that ideal of True Magic, the free magic that really allows one to manipulate nature according to their whims. There may often be examples of things that look like Free Magic when you don't understand how they work, but eventually just turn out to be clever ways to use medstone (e.g. the aforementioned "wizard" who seems to be able to cast magic without medstone, but is in fact eventually turned out to have been consuming little amounts of raw Ashes over the course of his life -little because it's also toxic to ingestion- so that he himself becomes the medstone; or a technique that might be used by the nobility of sci-fi-land (who might be more traditional despite the sci-fi-ness of their land) where they use quasi-refined medstone ink to write logographs of their language and upon writing the character the refinement process is complete as the character itself provides the last component which is the idea of what the desired effect is: the result is that the ink can be used for any effect (depending on the character drawn) as if raw ashstone was used, but has the power of refined ashstone). I don't think we're ever going to see Free Magic throughout the run of the story.

NATURAL MAGIC: a kind of magic that just happens on its own naturally where magical sources/mediums of large quantity and power exist. It slowly affects its surroundings over time in a way that doesn't necessarily obey the well-defined rule that Human Magic has. An example of that would be the animal-ish people of the "Egyptian" people who have for years been in the presence of a thing like medstone, but not exactly it, until it eventually mutated them.

INNATE MAGIC of magical creatures: don't know how much we're going to include magical creatures, but there could be cases of creatures with Innate Magic that is more free than humans'. An example I was thinking of was the possibility of Djinn in the Arabic and maybe Persian area with the Djinn being basically creatures made of flame and medstone (later on I might give more details on what I'm thinking about them). As really different creatures their connection to magic is also sufficiently different and allows them for great powers, an example being the known example of the genie in the lamp that grants wishes. Wishing magic wouldn't normally be possible with medstone, but Djinns have really different capabilities. That is, though, if we include them.