Dreaming

The most powerful forces in the world originate from the mind.

Dreaming is the universal magic found across the world. It also relates to much of the world's cosmology.

Dreamscapes
It is known the true nature of magic is dreams imposed upon reality. By manipulating one’s dreams, one can change reality.

Every caster has a unique mental space known as a Dreamscape – a mind palace which they enter while asleep. This place represents their magic. By exploring, expressing and advancing this space, they impose their dreams upon the world while awake.

A Dreamscape can be anything, so long as it is related to the individual's magic. A druid might dream of floating islands covered with plants and animals, which they explore to uncover new spaces, representing new spells. A bard might wander an entire town inside their mind, where puzzles can be solved to unlock new areas and magics. Even if two dreamers study the same methodology from the same school, their individual minds will always make differences. Each Dreamscape is unique to the caster.

The Deep Dreaming
Casters create their Dreamscape by entering the Deep Dreaming, which might be best imagined as a plane of thought accessed while one dreams. It is typically depicted as nebulae or neurons arcing over clouds of pink and purple, representing the purest essences of the mind. Supposedly, all knowledge can be found here – all that is, has been, and will ever be. Naturally, it is a tantalising prospect for would-be loremasters.

While attempting to take in the entirety of the Deep Dreaming - all  knowledge - would be a fool's errand, spellcasters succeed in grasping at tiny portions. Through their Dreamscape, a spellcaster accesses a pocket of the Deep Dreaming and calls it their own, fixing ideas into their head. Once these ideas, expressed in the form of ​​​​​spells, are brought into reality, they lose their clarity, disappearing into foggy memory. Hence why a spellcaster must sleep to recover their magic: to fix their spells in their mind once again.

In most circumstances, a mind will return to the Deep Dreaming after death.

Insulae
Insulae are alternate worlds that exist between the Deep Dreaming and the Waking World. Travel between Insulae is usually only possible through the use of magic. The Waking World is usually undisturbed by Insulae, though many folk in the world have connections, immediate or distant, to these other worlds: most notably Elves, Djinn and Outlanders.

The Cost of Magic
While there is no inherent cost in using magic once it is acquired, the process of developing magical faculties is usually incredibly time-consuming. Magic can often take decades to learn, so long-lived folks such as Elves and Dwarves are highly advantaged in this way.

Shorter-lived folk have long since developed workarounds to these limitations - Vel, for instance, undergo a process called Saga by which new Vel inherit the experiences of their ancestors, allowing them to develop magic much more quickly by 'relearning' rather than learning. Magical schools typically also have methods to teach magic 'quickly' - in a matter of years, rather than decades.

However, the true cost of magic manifests in the dreamer's personality. Since one spends time in the Waking World, and then remains conscious in their dreamscape while asleep, a caster is essentially always conscious. Much of this consciousness is spent by themselves, completely isolated from reality, and this almost always has an impact on their personality in some way. Casters are often mocked, even pitied, for the eccentricities that result from their craft.

In many ways, dedicating oneself to magic involves giving up on having a normal life.

Types of Dreamers
While no two dreamers are exactly alike, there are observable trends amongst those who dream.

Wizards and Philosophers
These casters are the most common and varied, developing their dreaming through specific, practiced methods. Such methods often include improving one's memorisation, keeping dream diaries, encouraging meditation, perceiving natural forms, and so on.

Wizards, such as those taught at the Rinespire, have a wide range of techniques acquired through study and practice, and usually specialise in a single 'school' of magic. Due to the reliability of these methods, magical 'schools' are most commonly run by wizards, for the express purpose of producing more wizards. As such, wizards are the most common and widespread variety of dreamer. Wizards' dreamscapes are usually small but highly detailed and ordered places, such as gardens and studies.

Philosophers, on the other hand, tend to acquire their magic by focusing on specific ideas or goals that their magic should achieve - this can manifest in the mastery of various art forms, as well as economic, political and of course philosophical study. As such, many philosophers are referred to by more profession-based names: artists, bards, historians, and so on. Hence the magic of philosophers is taught more individually than that of wizards. Philosophers' dreamscapes usually centre around other people (or entities to converse with), whether they be role models, aspects of themselves, or folk that are important to them.

Witches
Also called druids, these dreamers are distinguished by their powerful abilities of shapeshifting and influence over nature. While the teaching of wizardry is generic and reliable, the teaching of witchcraft is highly specific. Powerful witches only take on a few apprentices at any given time, and of those only some will be able to practice witchcraft successfully. As a result, practicing witches are rare.

Some dreamers use witchcraft to a lesser extent, often using it for the express purpose of combat - though not considered druids, they are usually referred to as hunters, rangers, couriers and so on. Witches' dreamscapes are usually expansive places which contain fewer specific details. Often they reflect natural environment: fields, shores, seas, mountains and so on.

Psychics
While most dreamers start off with their minds as a blank slate, psychics - also called sorcerers or deep dreamers - have some inherent aptitude for magic. In 100% of psychics, this is due to their mind containing a rift into the Deep Dreaming. This is potential for magic however, rather than an obligation. An unpracticed psychic can go their whole life without using this rift, while a practiced one can achieve power very quickly, even becoming a Dream Eater without outside influence. Psychics' dreamscapes vary wildly, often including elements of highly specific meaning to the caster, and not making spatial or temporal sense. They unfailingly incorporate a rift into Deep Dreaming.

Spellbinders
Rather than starting from nothing, spellbinders - also called warlocks - acquire dreamscapes by inhereting a fragment of a much larger one. This is typically given to them by a powerful entity to develop on their own, though in some cases a spellbinder might somehow take this fragment by force. Their magic is often limited as a result, though it replenishes quickly.

Since this entity is often 'dreaming' while the spellbinder is still conscious, they essentially dream so the spellbinder doesn't have to. As a result, spellbinders can restore their magic even while they're awake.

Spellbinders' dreamscapes are small fragments of larger entities' dreamscapes which they develop into their own spaces. They are compromises between minds. Since Spellbinders think about these spaces frequently, they usually contain objects or people of recurring interest.

Disciples
Disciples - more often referred to by religion-specific terms - are dreamers who acquire their magic through dedication to certain ideals, whether that be those of gods, other Higher Beings, or any system of belief. While disciples that venerate certain entities are more common than the rest, one's convictions can often be enough to manifest a dreamscape.

Since the Cascade, disciples have become far more rare, and may even be the rarest variety of dreamer.

Disciples' dreamscapes are expansive and typically reflect their ideals or goals. Sometimes they serve as minitature utopias of what they strive for.

Methods of Magic
Though the aim of any magical method is to develop, master and express one's dreams, the way this is achieved is far from universal.

The Chirellian Circuit
Taught by the Rinespire, this is the most common form of arcane magic in Cleocadia. It predates the school by centuries, and is thought to have been conceived even before the old empire.

The Circuit is thought of as a persistent field of energy that underlies the world, which can be called upon by understanding it. It manifests in spirals, recognised as magical even by other methodologies.

The Rinespire teaches that spirals can be found in many aspects of the world: in plants (what would be the Fibonacci Sequence), in animals, in weather, in the stars, and in the Golden Ratio which the universe seems to follow. They achieve magic by matching this Ratio, spiralling energy into focused points which they use to bend physics. The Rinespire contends that spirals can be found in every magical effect.

It is easily recognisable for the lights that surround its practitioners' spells: electric-blue circuitry that appears near the caster's focus, arcing at right angles before forming the edges of a circle, and swirling into a spiral. The centre of this spiral is the point at which the caster's spell manifests.

The Circuit has proved particularly useful for artificers due to its correspondence with engineering principles. As such, the Rinespire has a hand in the vast majority of magic items made in the modern day.

The Old Ways
The tradition taught and followed by the many druids of the world, not just limited to Cleocadia. Its elder practitioners would say it predates any civilised magic.

Speechcraft
Sometimes known as 'the art of persuasion', this method views all things as open to persuasive influence - not just living beings, but inanimate objects, even the forces that bind the Waking World. It is commonly taught and achieved through other disciplines, particularly musical study and rhetoric.

The centre of Speechcraft in Cleocadia is the Spokeforth Academy.

Stonesmithing and Metallurgy
While not methods of magic in and of themselves, these are practices used to enhance and draw out magic through material things. Dwarves practice stonesmithing, while Vellin practice metallurgy.