Specifically the three easy-to-use forms and two not-so-easy-to-use forms
Use of magic is a tricky business -- it can have some benefits, but one screwup and if you don't fail completely to do anything, you'd be lucky to survive -- if, indeed, you do. Magic itself is kinda complex: it can heal, or harm, or screw with the space-time continuum, or any combination of the above, or it can summon forth a fantastic creature to do one of those things for you.
Fortunately, there are three relatively simple, if not exactly easy, ways to use various spells. First, there is Magicite. Second, there is Materia. Third, there is Junctioning.
Magicite: There exist in this world powerful magical creatures called Espers. When an Esper dies, he or she (or it) transforms into a crystal of a substance called Magicite. People can use Magicite to summon the essence of the late Esper to assist them. Also, some spells the Esper may have favored are imprinted in the Magicite, and over time, a Magicite user will be able to use the spells without needing the Magicite.
Materia: Lifestream is an energy that exists in the planet in the form of a liquid. If you've seen Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, you know kinda what I'm talking about. It's the Gaia stuff, only green. Anyway, the country of Midgar has figured out to take some of the liquid that comprises Lifestream (called Mako), process it, and turn it into stuff that has a spell imprinted in it. It's kinda like Magicite, only you don't need to have it memorized to use the spell. Magicite comes in five colors: Green is ordinary spells (Fire, Cure, Poison, etc.); Red is summon spells (Ifrit, Shiva, Kaniggits of the Round, etc.); Yellow is special "commands" (Steal, W-Magic, etc.); Blue is support for other colors with various effects; and Purple is independant of all the others, and each purple Materium its own personal effect.
Junction: Junctioning is completely different. You learn to draw magic energy from various locations called Draw points, where Mako gets close to the surface, maybe, and they learn spells that way. However, they only have a limited "number" of each spell, and they can run out. Anyway, each Junctioner can Junction to a Guardian Force, which is basically the latest fancy way of saying "s/he can summon". They also can Junction to a particular "element" (Fire, Water, Ice, Lightning, Holy, Tastes-Like-Orange-Tang, etc.) and take on a few attributes of that element.
In addition, there's two not-so-easy bits of Magic: Classes and Sorceresses.
Classes, are, well, character classes. Wizard, Cleric, Summoner, Red Mage, Temporalist, etc. This is very simple, although becoming one of the above is quite difficult.
A Sorceress, on the other hand, recieves power from another Sorceress. A dead Sorceress cannot rest until she has transferred her power to another woman, independent of whether the recepient either a) wants the power or b) already is a Sorceress. Also, for a sorceress to use the full potential of her power, she needs to have a Knight. Knights are males, usually stronger than average, maybe the odd Neo-Samurai has been one, and both the Sorceress and the Knight benefit from the relationship. The death of the Sorceress in this situation usually results in the Knight seeking (often suicidal) revenge, and the death of the Knight usually results in the Sorceress seeking another Knight.
Although this system uses a female Sorceress and a male Knight, there is nothing which states or implies that there must or mustn't be romantic love between Sorceress and Knight -- witness Sorceress Edea Kramer and Seifer Almasy, as well as Sorceress Rinoa Heartlily and Squall Leonhart. Granted, Edea was old enough to be Almasy's mother, and Rinoa and Leonhart were almost the same age, but still.
And what's weirder is a strange record unearthed a few decades ago that indicated a male "Sorceress" and a female Knight!
The actual abilities of the Sorceress are different from most forms of magic: their spells are more along the lines of "telekinetically throw your enemies across the room whilst setting up a fault in the space-time continuum so that all time is compressed to a single instant so that you can absorb all magic in the Universe" than "do a certain amount of damage in terms of HP." In other words, Sorceresses actually do stuff with their magic.
Yar Kramer's First Reality is hosted on Keenspace, a free webhosting and site automation service for webcomics. All content not already copyrighted by Squaresoft, Enix, Capcom, or whatever else I can come up with to borderline-copyright-infringe, is copyrighted 2001-2003 by Dylan. All your base are belong to us. Bebbies!
