Admitted newbie, here, but the sense I’ve gotten is that the affinities are spells (or classes of spells, maybe?) for which people in particular guilds have a more intuitive understanding. For a mundane example, I have a more intuitive understanding of language than I do of math. I can do math, certainly, but I don’t see the connections between mathematical concepts as easily as others do which makes it harder for me to learn and implement.
So an affinity could mean the spell is stronger or easier to cast than other spells might be, but not necessarily that they couldn’t make use of a spell aligned with a different guild. I’d imagine the effects might be a bit more unpredictable and the spell sickness might be worse when working outside your guild affinities, though.
Navimancy - true knowing of actuall physical placement in world/worlds, enhanced tracking/route planning, knowledge of object/people locations within spell boundaries, cant get lost, directions/path to what you want/need even if destination isnt actually known
The Swift Tongues of Kalivar - The Swift Tongues of Kalivar is a specific Fall Watch spell that allows the caster to channel Kalivars spirit and his clever, witty, magical, dexterous tongue.
Calls a spirit into the casters body. Weatherwatch know it specifically as this, because Kalivar was one of the greatest Weatherwatchers ever, famous for talking his way into and out of every situation he could and ensuring that not a drop of his crews blood was ever spilt, he is outgoing and amazingly easy to channel. TSToK can be applied to channel any ancestor or person you have a link to.
For most Weatherwatch learning this skill through the guild, Kalivar is the first person they will successfully channel. Kalivars spirit and his clever, witty, magical, dexterous tongue are great if you’re in a tight spot and need a hand from a devlish gent.
Unanchored - ability to unbind 2+ things, eg ignore gravity and fly/float, out of body exp disconnection body and mind/soul, split the atom
Fall Watch - Calls forth the spirits of the dead as independent corpreal forms.
Languidimensional Touch - can access other dimensions and pocket universes (think Discworld Unseen University Archchancellor Ridcullys inderdimensional pool table/filing system, Room 3b, the tropical paradise in Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geographys’ bathroom) Neithercourirs?
Torchminder - control, dim/turn off/turn on a source of illumination (credit to @Cj_Heighton)
Working on the other guilds too, posting each as they reach as close to completion as I can get atm.
Artificer’s Whim - ability to make changes and tweaks to a created object, change its colour, material. eg make a stair banister out of wood and then whim it into forged iron work. Apply as a long term charm on a notebook empowering the end user to change its colour at will.
Alchemical Tranfigurations - Alchemy does work, but we’ve forgetten the nack and although remebered history is acurate, its missing a step. Lead → Gold, Philosphers Stone, Heal All, Elixr Imortality, Acension etc all possible plus everything that is in journals still squirled away.
Undo, Multimystics - Angrygrind some metal too far… undo, cut some wood at the wrong angle… undo, add the wrong ingredient… undo. CTRL - Z for crafting. Potential paradox effects when deployed at a larger scale or when applied to spell work.
Assembling Runes - Rune powered objects, think sygaldry in The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.
Many Hands - Spell in its own right, to share power/load of spell, possibly used to share/lessen the effects of spell sickness on to multiple people or give power to the spell caster for them to shape with their intent.
Flinterforge do this inatly with load being shared among all Flinterforge members, unless explicitly spelled against. When all of flinter forge sneeze at the same time, someone probably did a pretty big spell.
Breath of Creation - breathe an intention/imitation of life into an object. Think myths about Golems or the paper Skeleton/Dog/birds in the Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg.
I have a story about being a Thornmouth before I knew what a Thornmouth was - I think it’s relevant to either the Peering Arts or Astral Thinking, or possibly a combination of both.
Ever since I was small, I’ve had prophetic dreams.
I would dream about a conversation, or something breaking, or a close swipe by a car - nothing particularly remarkable, and I would dream of it only for a brief instance. As is the nature of such things, I very rarely received warning about the event itself - my visions were so short that I only knew that it was coming to pass as it actually happened. I’d see a glass teeter too close to the edge of a table and realise then that my vision was manifesting, or know the end of people’s sentences before they’d finished the start. Nothing useful, but enough to know that there wasn’t much the mundane world could do to explain it.
The day that I realised what these dreams meant was the day I started to explore magiq proper. I hunted through bookshelves and libraries, delving deep into the internet, all to find a hint of the mystical world I knew had to be linked to my dreaming manifestations of the future.
Is it my knowledge of the present that led to these dreams? Was it deduction, mere coincidence? As I was losing hope of finding proof, I dreamt of a forum of magiq seekers, and finding for the first time what I was truly looking for.
A few weeks after that I stumbled across a strange thing called the Guide to Magiq on the internet…
And now its Ebengaurds turn. I struggled working out a few of these, so really credit goes to the amazing tales posted here. I’ve tried to credit individuals when I’ve attempted to summarise their stories, they’re worth scrolling up for.
Ebenguard
Grim’s Convergance - manipulate a person and their events, nudge their timeline to maintain a world(s?) wide balence. credit @grimangel53 and @Deyavi
– Specalists in Living Grim’s Convergance live a hard life, 1 day the nudge may lead to a wedding, another day a funeral, that kind of work takes a toll and is a commitment made to balance rather than a spell cast on a whim.
– Specalists in Dead Grim’s Convergance, arent as tied up as Living Grims, the spirits they nudge can know they are being nuged and are oftern grateful for the assitance, closure, absolvance offered. (Think Yelena in the Poison Study series by Maria V Snyder)
Makepeace - White Flag / Parle / Truce magically enforced with repercussions to anyone who breaks it (Think the conclave of WitchLords in The Defiant Heir by Melissa Caruso)
Truth and Calling - to know somethings name is to know its very nature, the truth of itself that knowing grants control over it. Someone with a strong affinity may find themselves called to locations and professions as their own soul calls to be recognised and named.
(Think naming in The Name of the Wind, by Partrick Rothfuss)
Combat Magic - increased perception bordering on foreknowing, avatar style elemental defence/attack, Asterix and Obelix style increased beserk/strength
Sand and Stone Scrying - seeing/knowing/divination of things you couldn’t possibly know by using sand and or stone/s
Evolutionary Magimystics - DNA level perma changes, credit @nomad.
Evolution ‘overnight’ instead of thousands of years. EXTREME CAUTION REQUIRED, solid ethics and a stomach for the potentially unpleasant preperations needed.
Having talked to @Presley about some of the Thornmouch affnitites.
I feel the need to clarify this one.
This is more akin to Ancestoral Magiq, Weatherwatch know it specifically as this, because Kalivar is outgoing and amazingly easy to channel, TSToK can be applied to channel any ancestor or person you have a link to.
For most Weatherwatch learning this skill through the guild, Kalivar is the first person they will successfully channel.
TSToK differs from Fall Watch. Fall Watch calls a 1+ spirits into a ghostly/independant corporeal form (think Army of the Dead in LotR - The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien)
TSToK calls the spirit into the casters body. It is possible for the caster to loose control and for the invited spirit to take over. It is also possible when mixed with Second Mind to end of with a terrible case of split personality.
Inviting spirits into your body is pretty stupid, but in the case of Kalivar, he’s a true gent there to look after his own and never overstays his welcome.
Weathermancy - influence/full control of a weather pattern, usually very localised, nudging a cloud to let the sun through, agitating clouds to trigger thunder/ rain, maintaining a specific climate (think Lower Tadfield in Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman)
Uproot - pull on/remove/destroy an object/concept eg a plant from soil, a nail from a plank, a book from its shelf, a person from their home, darkness from a soul, memory from a mind.
Faulton Fray’s Decay - decay caused by magiq, closely mimics mundane decay, but more grotesque and prone to rippling effects. Known to manifest on its own, causing distress to the caster credit @native-signal. Proficient casters can control the decay, sped it up, slow it down, control the scope and ripple effect or even displace decay (think The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde)
Charm and Deception - bluffing++, likeability ++, talk your way out of/in to anything, invisibility plausible(Susan Sto Helit in Hogfather/Theif Of Time/Soul Music by Terry Pratchett), Glamour (The elves in Lords and Laries by Terry Pratchett), Mission Imposible esk face/voice change.
Mend - Fix visible fractures/tears/breaks/imperfections. Easier on inanimate items. eg repair a broken plate, repair broken bow/bow string, cuts/scratches, broken tree branch, ‘ruined’ masonry
Bestiary Arts - Unnaturally good with animals, injured animals are extremely unlike to act out agressivly and have been known to seak out guild members. credit @Courtney_Bradford
Caster can sense near by creatures and call on/direct them. This sense can increase into telepathic like comunication when there is a unique bond between castor and animal.
Weathermancy seems to be a touchy business, if the greenhouse question in the Guide is anything to go by. You’d have to use it quite carefully, since it will affect the greater weather pattern. As a weathermancer you’d have to understand that and be willing to accept any consequences. Which I guess is why this falls under Balimora, even beyond it being a naturey maqiq.
Uproot I feel is quite versatile. Used gently it would be most useful for repotting plants or moving trees out of the way of construction projects. Why cut down a forest to build a road when you can just ask the trees to budge over a bit, right? I really like the idea of using Uproot on anything that’s “rooted”, not only on things with literal roots. I’d been thinking about that myself recently and it could be quite a devious magiq. Though I also think with many Balimorans working together we could make the Huorn army from Lord of the Rings. hroom-a-hruum!
My husband is listening to The Wheel of Time right now and at the end of the first book a character is destroyed by what seemed to be a version of Faulton Fray’s Decay. He was basically eaten by accelerated mushrooms. Since I’d been thinking of Faulton Fray himself as a particularly (in)famous botanist with a specialty in magiqal mushrooms and other fungi, it seemed appropriate. I think that’s how it would manifest for me and it would definitely be exhausting to make them work and grow so fast. In some ways Mend seems like FFD’s opposite, speeding up the natural repair process or returning to cohesion something that would otherwise be in pieces/succumbed to entropy.
Charm and Deception sounds like the Trickster side of things for sure! I grew up learning to be wary of faeries and this seems like all the faery mischief. Though I think there could also be a camouflage aspect. Like a cuttlefish! Or stick bugs! Or those butterflies that look exactly like monarchs, but aren’t to fool predators because monarchs taste awful (so birds say). Also puts me in mind of angler fish and pitcher plants.
Bestiary Arts to me includes not only communing and bonding with animals, but the ability to understand the animal in a way that just observation or telepathy doesn’t quite reach. I expect this would be a more advanced application, but someone very versed in Bestiary Arts would be able to sort of set their sense of self aside and adopt that of the animal partner. While not full Shapeshifting on its own, it would definitely change your perception of the world. It could be used to gain a hound’s sense of smell, or a bat’s echo location, or a bird’s sense of direction. The trick would be balancing the animal mind with holding onto your own, and combining it with actual Shapeshifting would probably be a little dangerous. You could completely forget you were ever a person.
And lastly Gosmere, possibly the hardest guild to nail down any kind of detail as a lot of the skills are personal or tailored to a 1-1 interaction.
Gossmere
Communion Magics - mind and dream linking. (think Dreamweavers in Age of Five series by Trudi Canavan)
Shapeshifting Arts - varies depending on level of control/practise, full or partial transformation to another creature. Full shapeshift risks becoming too much like the animal and getting stuck. Partial transformations take a great deal of control eg bat ears for enhanced hearing
Therapeutics - medical magic relating to the body and physical damage; herbalism, potions, charms, healing touch
Trusted Confidant - medical magic relating to the mind/soul; herbalism, potions, Vision Quests(similar to practices of Native Americans), headology(cite Granny Weatherwax, Witches Abroad/Masqurade by Terry Pratchett ). Significant cross over with Therapeutics as the link between phsyical and mental health is explored and understood better.
Call To Hearth - Honestly not a clue on this one.
I have no idea what this magiq is or does, but I can describe how it feels.
It’s the comfort and peace of being home. eg hygge, snugling by the fire with with your partner/book, walking along a feild/wood/stream that is home, being round a camp fire with your nearest and dearest, feeling like you belong in a place or with a person.
Choreomancy - Any magic is possible but its the movement of the caster that powers and informs the magic.
eg Gossmerian friend not currently on the forums or caught up. He used this to purge himself of a VOID that was taking over his soul and preventing him access to his ritualised magics. The movement will be different for each caster, but in this case a cross between tai chi and fencing, his movement was tailored to his intent and his power was drawn from his movements.
To me Call to Hearth sounds like drawing people together for a common, positive purpose. You know the vibe that exists among students in the weeks leading up to summer break, or the general idea of “Christmas cheer”? It seems like it would cause that sort of feeling in people, but in a more direct and intentional way. Kind of a magiqal “Come hither and celebrate!” psychic invite?
Gossmere magiq feels so snuggly! I’m imagining healers Shapeshifting into whatever therapy animal would make their patient most comforted.
Oracle: Great interpretation of Shapeshifting arts, as well! In the past we’ve discussed Shapeshifting forms and what animals we feel most connected to. I personally believe a bear would be mine because I grew up in Vermont, and frequently encountered bears from afar growing up. I always had a deep love and adoration for them!
i feel i’d change to a birb, or a maybe some kind of terrestrial mammal, like a wolf, or lion, or stag.
just depends on how those things re understood yeah?
Saberlane: And remember, from what we know about magic, the unpredictable nature of Neithernor, and your individual intention, what happens when one person performs something like Faulton Fray’s Decay may be different from when someone else performs it. Even if you don’t have access to Neithernor (I mean, I literally only got there last week) we’d love to know how you think something like Decay or any other affinity might work for you.
now to think of how my affinity for certain magiqal arts and practices may change due to my Ebbie guild affinity. like, I for one, definitely feel like i’d have quite teh affinity for a few flinterforge magiqal affinities, and i could def try performing a few of the goss and WW ones. just to see what happens.
Because thats how i see my magiq and my guild connections. but that all depends on how magiq holds and how my own take on it changes things.
also, experimentation, imagination, and careful curiosity, are the keys to innovation and understanding. so i’d love to give it a shot!
hroom-a-hruum!