Magic hovers and flows between all realms, mind and matter, known and unknowable.  It calls like a siren to those blessed and cursed to be able to hear it, and many explorers and theorists have crashed on the rocks of a flawed practice or only partially correct theory.  Some of its structure is known but every attempt to make a fully realized and formalized system to explain all its facets has failed.  So far, anyway.

The force or presence that animates and empowers magic comes from some place or state of being that is unknown.  What is known is that it interacts with everything, though its effects are only noticeable now because of the Curse.  Whatever it ultimately is, it seems mostly attracted to things that change more often than other things.  Living things attract it the most strongly.

It responds to patterns, whether they are physically inscribed somehow or mere mental constructs.  The proper pattern can send the occult power flowing in particular ways to accomplish various changes in the state of the mundane world.  Effective patterns are recorded by practitioners, who try and often fail to form a concrete theory on why a particular pattern or set of patterns works.

There are five main schools or theories of magical practice, five flawed structures meant to contain the infinite.  Each has their own basis of practice, their own preferred method and patterns.  Some have tried to draw an over-arching theory to contain all of them into one thing, but that unity remains elusive.

Crimson Magic

Crimson magic is visceral, even gory and disturbing.  The practitioners use patterns of mental focus on various points of the body and concentrating on various bodily sensations in sequence to provoke the magic into the desired effect.  It’s connected to what could be tenuously described as “the life force” and, in humans, to the blood flowing through the body.  This type of magic is often practiced by those with are more common connection to blood: butchers, surgeons, and those with a uterus.

Azure Magic

Azure magic is abstract and dreamlike, formed by a tumble of thoughts and thought fragments.  Single words, images, mathematical calculations, and other mental experiences, all performed in the proper sequence.  It’s the favored form of magic for anyone whose life is heavily focused on the mind: authors, scientists, the insane, etc.

Veridian Magic

Where crimson magic and azure magic focus on the internal side of the one invoking it Veridian Magic focuses on the world directly outside of the spellcaster.  Space and time, matter and energy.  Nature itself.  The spellcaster mentally and physically connects themselves, as best as they are able, to the world outside of their apparent solitude and unity.  They focus on the sensations of the wind, they thrust their hands into common dirt, listen to the leaves rustle, etc.

Alabaster Magic

Alabaster magic is focused on what we wish the world was: ordered, comprehensible, kind, and forgiving.  In some ways it forms the practical side of many religions in this world of darkness.  A light, or perhaps merely hope, to get through the dark times.  Various deities and saints are invoked, short prayers are made, sacred symbolism invoked, all with the goal to bring about something that is hopefully better than what we already have.

Unfortunately, this has a threatening and terrifying side as well.  Through the pursuit and expression of an idealized world, things are by necessity excluded.  And no one can agree on what things should be excluded.  The exclusion can, in fact, be violent and destructive.  Holy power purging anything it considers impure.

Obsidian Magic

Obsidian magic is as dark as its namesake.  It rests upon and even fetishizes the flawed nature of the world.  Practitioners of obsidian magic abase themselves to the corruption of the world, staining their entire being in hopes of mastering the more vile and disgusting aspects of existence.  They use the supposed “True Names” of abyssal entities and the most extreme, negative feelings and symbols to call upon this power.

Most contend that this type of magic should be abolished.  The laws of New Wallachia heavily proscribe its use but have not quite banned it.  The common folk hate and fear this kind of magic and kill its practitioners whenever they get even the slightest excuse.  Thus, an Obsidian mage walks with physical and spiritual dissolution on all sides.