Spatial Magic: A Reference For the Less-Than-Knowledgeable

Spatial Magic is the set of skills that allows you to travel from one planet to another. It includes a wide array of skills and knowledges that take much time and effort to learn, and an infinitely longer amount of time to even vaguely understand. Because of that, I’m providing some of the basic information regarding these skills and their practical and impractical uses.

Spatial-Related Knowledges and Actions:
in order of prerequisites
Elemental Magic (EM)
     Basic Spatial Magic (BSM)
          Aerial Magic (AeM)
          Aural Magic (AuM)
          Spatial Magic (SM)
               Portalcraft (PC)
          Advanced Spatial Magic (ASM)
               Expert Spatial Magic (ESM)

All Actions with Relevance to Spatial Magic:
Listen Earth (EM)
Charge Space (BSM)
Charge Space II (BSM)
Fly (AeM)
Echo (AuM)
Trigger (SM)
Disrupt (SM)
Energize Portal I (PC)
Energize Portal II (PC)
Gather (ASM)
Build Weir Gate (ESM)
Align Weir Gate (ESM)



Listen Earth
Associated Skill: Elemental Magic
Associated Knowledge: Elemental Magic
Knowledge Prerequisites: None-- Possible age requirement
Base Time: 4 minutes
Cost: None
Results of Casting: When you cast Listen Earth on a square where “the air shimmers” (can be seen on a detail screen) you could get any of three (four, really) messages that pertain to how high a square is charged. The "first" is when you get nothing, so you have way a lot of people to the charge on the square, or the square isn't charged at all. The true first ("second") is when it says the air glows dimly. This means there's enough charge to warrant a message, but when the ratio of people in your tribe to dragyns/amount of charges (known as the Charge Ratio, or ChR) is more than 5. The second (or "third") message is that the air shimmers. This occurs when the ChR is less than 5 but more than 2.5 The final message is that the air flares with pungent sparks. Any ChR between 0 and 2.5 will display this message.
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Charge Space
Associated Skill: Spatial Magic
Associated Knowledge: Basic Spatial Magic
Knowledge Prerequisites: Elemental Magic 1
Base Time: 3 hours
Cost: None
Results of Casting: This spell increases the amount of charge on a square. It is believed that the amount of charge (I measure it in dragyns) is constant per casting, but as you can see, I’m sure to distinguish between charging (increasing the amount of charge on the square) and dragyns (a numerical value for the charging itself). But basically, very straightforward. Some amount of charging is required for basically all of these actions to work correctly.
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Charge Space II (Sky-only!)
Associated Skill: Spatial Magic
Associated Knowledge: Basic Spatial Magic
Knowledge Prerequisites: Elemental Magic 1
Base Time: 5 minutes
Cost: 1 spiritual energy
Results of Casting: (see Charge Space) ‘Tis basically the quicker, yet more expensive form of charging.
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Fly (Sky-only!)
Associated Skill: Aerial Magic
Associated Knowledge: Aerial Magic
Knowledge Prerequisites: BSM
Base Time: 10 minutes
Cost: None
Results of Casting: This handy spell allows you to fly between two charged spaces with 1 person. However, the casting depletes some amount of dragyns from each space (exact amount has yet to be found). That’s it really. Basically why most Sky folks charge all the time in their lands and walk around with 1 person :D
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Echo (Sky-only!)
Associated Skill: Spatial Magic
Associated Knowledge: Aural Magic
Knowledge Prerequisites: BSM, others unknown
Base Time: 3 minutes
Cost: None
Results of Casting: This spell allows you to determine, roughly, the amount of dragyns on a square by seeing how many dots (or periods, points, whatever) follow a base message from the spell. Dots after “You listen to the air” denote increases by about 1 dragyn, dots after “Your ears attune themselves to the airs” denote increases by about 10 dragyns, and then there are even higher messages, such as those found when one is stupid enough to echo upon Pakaran’s village on BFW (disgustingly charged is an understatement). However, the spell has some amount of error between individual castings, which means a space charged 6 times could have readings of anywhere between 3 and 9 dragyns (as an example, in no way is that scientific or extremely based in fact-- but uncertainty has been seen). Therefore, don’t use this spell as a be-all and end-all measure of charge. By the way, messages with only 1 or no dots following them means that either the spell was a failure or its charged very little. Echo has also been seen to have slightly different results based on the number of people in your tribe when casting, so try to have few people to get an effective measure.
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Trigger
Associated Skill: Spatial Magic
Associated Knowledge: Spatial Magic
Knowledge Prerequisites: Spatial Magic 1
Base Time: 52 minutes
Cost: 1 spiritual energy
Results of Casting: This spell will move you to the person who has last gathered. However, the square needs to be charged up quite a bit (about 2.5 ChR or lower, meaning the air is flaring when Listen Earth is cast). Triggering while burdened is possible, however, it increases the amount of charge needed. Also, if you’re triggering many people, even if they all read a “pungent sparks” Listen Earth message, it may not mean the square is charged enough for all of them, because Listen Earth only depends on your own tribe count and does not factor in others on the square. For best effect, use Echo, divide by however many is on the square (to get the average charge per person) and then calculate ChRs. Trigger cannot partially succeed-- it either moves you to the last person who gathered (the anchor, as its commonly referred) or it does not. Finally, Trigger only uses up (on that square) the least amount of charge required to move whomever is being triggered.
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Disrupt
Associated Skill: Spatial Magic
Associated Knowledge: Spatial Magic
Knowledge Prerequisites: Spatial Magic 1
Base Time: 2 hours
Cost: 1 spiritual energy
Results of Casting: Disrupt is a whole different spell than Trigger. This does not depend on the anchor, rather, it dissipates all the charge on the square and moves you either in a random direction on planet, or if the area is charged highly enough, it will move you to another planet. There has been speculation regarding Disrupt by many folks (see my MAJIK article for some of my own) but no one at this time is totally sure how exactly it works. A lesser known use is merely the disruption of low-charged squares. If you have a large enough tribe (and a high enough ChR) then you can do away with charges on squares without any threat of moving yourself. Rather useful for keeping people from flying after you, I think :P
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Energize Portal I
Associated Skill: Spatial Magic
Associated Knowledge: Portalcraft
Knowledge Prerequisites: Spatial Magic 4 (possibly)
Base Time: 8 hours
Cost: 17 spiritual energy
Results of Casting: It’s failed everywhere it’s been tried, and believe me, it’s been tried everywhere. However, that does cause one to speculate on the existance of an advanced knowledge that creates portals.....hmm...
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Energize Portal II
Associated Skill: Spatial Magic
Associated Knowledge: Portalcraft
Knowledge Prerequisites: Spatial Magic 4 (possibly)
Base Time: 2 minutes
Cost: 1 spiritual energy, 71 tungsten
Results of Casting: (see Energize Portal I). Basically this is the Charge Space II to EP-I’s Charge Space. If that made any sense at all.
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Gather
Associated Skill: Spatial Magic
Associated Knowledge: Advanced Spatial Magic
Knowledge Prerequisites: Spatial Magic 1
Base Time: 90 minutes
Cost: 3 spiritual energy
Results of Casting: Gather is used to make you the receptor for any aspiring Triggerers out there. Basically, for the duration of its casting (which is until anyone else casts Gather) anyone in the universe with sufficient charge who Triggers will land right on your square with you. Of course, this makes it nice to gather (no pun intended) your friends to you, but a more malicious form of usage known as "spidering" can be quite dangerous. To get an idea of why it’s called spidering, merely think of what a spider does to things that fall in its web. Then replace that with a two thousand person aggressive hamlet. By the way, to check if someone currently has the anchor, just Probe them, and see if the message seems at all conducive for travel.
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Build Weir Gate
Associated Skill: Construction
Associated Knowledge: Expert Spatial Magic
Knowledge Prerequisites: Spatial Magic 5
Base Time: 28 hours
Cost: 5 spiritual energy, 3 starstone, 60 stone, 3 wood, 1 tungsten
Results of Casting: This, of course, builds a weir gate.
A closed weir looks like this:
An open weir looks like this:
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Align Weir Gate
Associated Skill: Spatial Magic
Associated Knowledge: Expert Spatial Magic
Knowledge Prerequisites: Spatial 5
Base Time: 2 hours
Cost: 1 spiritual energy
Results of Casting: This spell is used to connect two unconnected weir gates together. In doing so, you create a basically permanent (barring the destruction of one of the gates) travel route that takes merely an hour to travel, or "weir" through, independent of how many souls you have, how burdened you are, etc. However, it takes two angels casting it at the same time on two rather highly charged (40 to 60 times, to be safe) weirs for the spell to work. If you happen to ever try and Align, try and get your times as close together as possible, to avoid misalignment. Remember, friends: no one rehires a sloppy aligner...because the aligner will be dead. On that note, weirs have names like any other gate-- one name (the false one) when the gate is first built, and another true name when the weir is aligned. That name is shared between the two weirs, unless one is destroyed and another realigned.
Oh yeah, and if you’re an escape world owner, benevolent dictator of vast swatches of land, or maybe just someone looking for an easy way to Blue Crone, talk to anyone in the NUPA (that’s New Universal Portal Alliance to you!). We’re a group of friendly souls from varying political and world backgrounds that are always willing to help arrange weir gate connections. So, uhh....yeah.
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[gokrida]