Witchery

The Art of the Soul
Witchery is the blackest of all magics in Scylla. Unlike blights or devotion, it is the willful manipulation of the lifeforce. Practised by the Orcish Shamans and Witch doctors under the title shamanism, the magic is a well-known are of Beast-Folk and other Heretics to Aliedian or Dwarven empires. It is characterised by the sacrifice of the living to manipulate the world and is outlawed by a large majority of the Scyllian civilisation, even Humans. Rarely is instantaneous witchery, dubbed arcany, considered the most frightening amoung outlanders to magic, as dredgery (the practice of lifeforce manipulation within living creatures) and alchemy (the practice of lifeforce manipulation within inanimate objects over long periods of time) are far more lethal. Practitioners are given a thousand names, though most commonly they are labelled as witches.

Life And Sacrifice
Lifeforce runs through every living thing within Scylla. It fuels living creatures and is fundamental in every magic system across the continent. Devotion magic, for example, is said to be the sacrifice of so much lifeforce from so many different sources, that an entirely new being is created. A god. Similarly, among witches, blights are described as having an excess amount of Lifeforce, which manifests as a strange quirk or trait. Within in witchery, lifeforce is tempered by Will and directed to solve tasks. Fundamentally, all witchery requires the usage of lifeforce.

Lore, Bought and Sold
Witchery is a time-honoured tradition and rooted deeply in the rules of witchcraft. Alchemy, for example, requires certain ingredients to produce effects that are outside the five basic arcany traits. Similarly, dredgery is riddled with the components and requirements, as even the most basic uses require something from its target’s body to form a connection. These secrets are often location specific, as witchery itself has vastly different presences in cultures. In orcish tribes, they would have a thousand recipes for potions, rarely bothering to test or try methods beyond the know; however, a witch among the Aleidian Empire might test and mix many a different ingredient to try and find these age-old recipes.

Will and Wit
Witches from any tribe or culture all must share a single trait, the Will to do magic. Will is what directs the lifeforce into action. What moulds the world to the witch’s whim. Without Will, witchery cannot be performed. And as thus, no witchery can be muscle learnt. Each action requires thorough thinking, and only the fundamental arcany traits can every be learnt to a point of instantaneous reaction.

Back to Basics
All witchery is founded in five basic traits: heat, the temperature of an object. Force, movement of an object; direction, the orientation of an object within space; position, space which an object takes place; state, the form the matter in the object takes (liquid, solid, gas). Further, sacrifice within lifeforce is governed by a single fact, the space which lifeforce takes up is directly proportional to the space which is affected by the trait. So, if a witch wanted to change a cup to make it steaming hot and be flying due north, they would have to kill something twice the cup’s size.