Magic

There are three commonly accepted sources of magic:

• Blood: Suffuses the flesh and change and manipulate things you can touch, or your body itself.
• Ether: An omnipresent and invisible force some manipulate to touch others' minds from afar and sense the unsensed.
• Gnosis: Working the magic itself, the ability to cause other spells to behave differently or conjure effects.

This power comes from your ancestors, and the purity of your bloodline. Powerful parents tend to have powerful children, but this is not a necessity, and many prodigies are born to surprised parents, while as many once-proud lines are no more. Though the family plants the seed of power, each must grow it to find its full potential.

Many have some instinctual magic. Perhaps one in twelve are touched in a fundamental way, allowing them to heal quickly, churn figures, or talk with those unseen. Those of the first type provide a measure of deterrence against outright war. Those in the last two provide the backbone of a complex communication and trading system which forms the backbone of the Land of Still Waters' economy.