|
--Bona al la encycla lorica.
The Lorican Magical System[]
The Earliest Spells[]
The earliest spells, performed in a water medium and hence called potions, simply involved the combination of two components. With a light potion, this is done by placing a spell initiator into the liquid, hence lighting up the liquid. Of course, both of these components must first be processed from faera. For the liquid, you must first obtain a create-light faera, such as a pulsphere. A pulsphere is capable of blinding fauna when it feels threatened (and, being a faera, is far more complex than any basic spell can get). This increases its ability to survive outside, since the destruction of the pearl-like object inside (such as by an animal) necessarily results in disastrous, seemingly magical consequences outside. However, it has no form of locomotion or escape. This is also one reason why a budding mage would want to go after such a faera. You can use a chisel to scrape parts of the pulsphere outside (and into the potion). This is akin to slightly wounding the faera; the pulsphere will still be alive. With scraping, the pulsphere component will already be highly broken up. However, much like skin or muscle without nerves to control it, the chiseled-off portion of the pulsphere will not act by itself. You'll have to provide it directly, without waiting for its stimulus.
Spell Inhibition (Stopping spells)[]
Normally, each species of faera has its own method of stopping its functional groups from going on nonstop. Otherwise, it would use up all the energy available to the faera, killing it. With higher level, more recent faera, this is in the form of a nervous system that controls its processes. Lesser faera do this with variable signals, which are their version of an animal's endocrine system. Shutting down is a good thing to do if there is no prey nearby, or if there are predators nearby, for example; with flora this is almost never used and thus flora don't often possess this ability. However, if the energy-generating functional group is effectively shut down for too long, faera can be killed. There is a certain inhibitor that can be isolated. It prevents the reaction in question from proceeding, thereby shutting down the faera's ability to continue. In its concentrated form, this inhibitor acts like a bleach, asphyxiating just about any faera there, much like a near-universal antibiotic for faera. It is also useful for casting spells when only temporary, such as when you neutralize or wash it out after a while (there are indeed other faera which can be sources for the neutralizing functional group). Ordinarily, a create-light faera would periodically create light inside to fuel itself outside, but the signal never gets very strong. With the use of an inhibitor, the faera won't be able to activate their energy-generating functional group, thereby saving energy. Meanwhile, if there is already considerable energy there that they can tap into, energy outside, they will be able to survive, while storing more energy. Then, when you actually get around to releasing this energy, the create-light faera will temporarily shine with a much more powerful glow, a create-heat faera will temporarily be much more effective at doing that, etc. Gradually, it will return to its original state. The trade-off is that this limits the total amount of energy the faera receives, meaning you will end up with less faera at the end.
Spell Amplification (Strengthening spells)[]
If you just apply the spell initiator directly to an intact create-light faera, nothing will happen because all faera life forms have a membrane that resists the spell initiator - they would need such a protective outer layer in order to survive to begin with. The crudest way to attempt to use a create-light potion is to just cut the pulsphere in half, thereby killing it, and add the spell initiator. However, this results in an incredibly weak result. The light you'd end up getting would be a barely noticeable glow, just along the planes where you had sliced it, and the light would be blocked off by the two halves themselves. You could try cutting it into more pieces, thereby greatly increasing the contact area with the spell initiator, but it would still be an incredibly weak effect. If you scrape or grind the create-light faera, magnitudes more of the faera-cells would be destroyed, allowing the creae luma functional groups to spill out into the solution. Only in the solution can the creae luma functional group react with the spell initiator, thereby bursting into light. The more of the creae luma you can spill out into the solution, the stronger the effect of the potion when you add the spell initiator. Grinding it is a very good way for a beginner mage to tap into this magic. This is true not just for a pearl-like faera such as a pulsphere, but for a grand spectrum of faera species.
Spell Relocation (Spell anchoring)[]
All faera are anchored to something inside; however, this is not necessarily the same thing that the stars outside are connected to as they must. Therefore, faera are capable of living a different life from whatever happens inside, even though it may result in ephemeral disturbances across the reality. Faera are often anchored quite tightly because they have numerous instances of components attached to anchors which are in turn connected to atomic matter (which is called that faera's residence). There are certain functional groups which specialize in separating an anchor from its residence, allowing it to be transported. For example, certain clay-based faera are anchored to clay, but when this separator is applied, you will be able to wash it out of the clay and into whatever liquid you are using. Then, when you have brought the liquid, and the faera within, to another location, you can then apply a attacher (another functional group) which reacts with the separator and pulls it off the anchor it had earlier been attached to. This frees up the anchor to attach to the new surface it is next to (which, in the case of clay-based faera, may only be clay). The separator and attacher then precipitate off out of the solution, allowing the solution itself to be washed off, with the original faera now firmly anchored to a new residence. This process can be done regardless of the type of faera (provided it has an anchor) and regardless of whether that faera is alive or not. Many varieties of non-low-level faera are able to, when alive, shift their anchors of their own accord.
Spell Extraction (getting moieta from cells)[]
Simply grinding the faera that has the functional group (moieta) you want isn't going to get very far when you want to have a rapid reaction. Cells are too small to be ground very effectively. You can use other methods, such as intense heat, acids/bases, or electrolysis, to lyse the cells of the faera, if the functional group is more hardy than the rest of the faera. However, this is often not the case. There are, fortunately, other faera that can lyse a variety of faera effectively. This would allow all the functional group that you want to spill out from within the already-ground faera. Now they can be more easily reacted with the spell initiator. However, there is still a lot of other, highly ordered matter within the solution which can interfere with the process. These pollutants can even stop it entirely, if the spell initiator you're using is susceptible to denaturation or decomposition by certain secondary functional groups within the faera you're trying to purify. This means that you'll have to seek out other faera which can decompose the lysed cell and clean up the particular cell membranes that are being the pollutants. However, you would want to be careful not to end up denaturing the functional group you're after. Then you can use another medium containing another functional group to wash them out. The final product is a more purified version of the faera, consisting of the functional group you're after, and plenty of free stars (stars not being part of any functional group).
One major detractor for extracting from a faera is that it kills the faera, which prevents your casting the spell from being used to generate even more faera or even to generate even more cellular energy that functional groups need to get going to begin with. This is because the harvesting mechanism, which works in living faera, has become denatured in the process. You are effectively working with a battery: after so much use, the energy runs out.
Spell Purification (isolating wanted moieta)[]
Now you can also use certain other processes to isolate what you're after from the pollutants (the dregs of the reaction), which will allow you to obtain a much greater concentration than you can have otherwise obtained. The degree to which this filtration process succeeds depends on how much of the original faera was comprised of what you're going after - if it's 50% of the entirety, filtration will do no more than double the concentration of the effect. If it's 0.01% of the entirety, you can greatly increase the concentration of the spell, for more powerful effects, but you will still end up with the same amount of functional group regardless of whether you've purified it or not so you'll have a reduced volume of more concentrated functional group. This can be useful if, say, the unfiltered version of a flare throwing-potion (fitting easily in your hand) takes the size of a box - which obviously can't be thrown effectively. An purified sample has far fewer chances for having side effects (which you generally don't want) because there are fewer types of functional groups present which can cause them.
A purified (isolated) specimen is highly susceptible to contamination by other faera. This is because a purified sample is necessarily comprised of dead faera, though they are highly concentrated in star-compounds which possess energy. They also lack the protective mechanisms that faera generally have to stave off attack from other faera, the immune systems which living faera have to defend themselves with. This means that they are an optimal medium for an opportunistic faera to grow in. The more purified the specimen, the more easily ruined the specimen and the earlier its effective expiration date. There are of course ways to decontaminate (make them faera-free) the materials you work with so that you can handle these purified versions without having to worry all the time. No matter how well you take care in trying to limit contamination, it will happen, and sooner or later the specimen will become utterly useless and ruined. Certain other faera can provide for a medium hostile to the survival of living faera, which can be quite appealing at first, but if you are not careful you may end up choosing a preserver faera that will also end up ruining the specimen you possess. In general, however, since microbial faera are anchored to something and not very mobile, and macroscopic faera are rare and easily spotted/barred, and it's hard to be anchored to the atmosphere (perpetually airborne), it's similar to a matter of not letting bacteria contaminate your sample, which is generally done to a satisfactory degree through some basic practices.
Spell Initiation (casting a spell)[]
There is a certain type of beetle, living in mutualism with a faera, that spits at its prey a concentrated form of spell initiator, coupled with a liquid that has a create-acid functional group mixed in. Such derivae faera are actually not all that rare: they use whatever methods, magical or otherwise, to attack and maim its prey. In this case the spell initiator works with the handful of stars right outside its target, causing them to use their energy to generate acid. This in turn lyses the faeras' cells' membranes, allowing the energies within to spill out and fuel the process. The spell initiator is necessary to get this to actually do anything, since the faeras' own spell initiators won't be simply out and about in its cell. Therefore, a chain reaction occurs that acidifies and lyses its prey, which the beetle then consumes. From this beetle can be isolated this spell initiator, which can then be used by beginning magi to initiate other spells via a simple reaction.
The spell initiator, were it to be in solid form, would be very weak indeed. However, since this type of beetle spits it out in concentrated liquid form, it's already ready for use. That would be a very good thing too; spell initiators don't handle stress all that well and rather need to be protected from harm, much like an explosive, or they'll denature. This, and many others, is why faera often need to seek homeostasis and why they don't often show up in environmental extremes. There are, however, other good sources for spell initiator (every faera is at least a bad source of spell initiator), just not as good. For example, in solid form it'll have little effect, and the result will be uneven light creation in the case of using creae luma. Then you'll have to grind it up to expose more surface area to the other elements necessary to the spell. However, if the functional group you're trying to cast is already dead, there is only a certain amount of energy you can use, so it's often not optimal to grind the spell initiator because doing so will cause the spell reaction to proceed quickly. This in turn uses up the store of energy in the sample (potion, etc) extremely quickly, which would not be useful if you were trying to light your way around a forest for an entire night, for example.
Spell Cloning (faera reproducing)[]
if you're working with faera that has not been purified (ie. some faera are still alive), then the weak energies that the functional group generates (provided it's a functional group that generates energy rather than deletes it) upon adding spell initiator will slowly but steadily be used by the still-living faera. (Of course, this won't work with certain types of faera; it all depends on whether the individual faera cells absorb from their surroundings.) The living faera will be able to use it to grow and reproduce. You'll be able to start off with some and then quickly get a lot more, a process called cloning (even if the faera reproduce meiotically - a manner that isn't considered cloning). In doing it in this artificial way, you get to partially avoid some of the other things that faera do, which allows you to speed up the process. On the other hand, cloning in vitro like this is oftentimes less effective than cloning in vivo, because all faera species have evolved to be the most efficient at surviving, growing, and reproducing in the wild. Of course, if you're working with them they aren't in the wild, so if the energy-consuming processes are only useful in the wild, cloning in vitro is preferable.
Faera husbandry (cloning in vivo), which is a lot more like growing livestock, requires that you know a lot more about the lives of the faera you're working with, such as what to feed it and its optimal growing conditions. This is different for every faera, since each faera has evolved to claim its own niche, which can be a pain; however, it is much more likely than not far superior to cloning in vitro. Sometimes, cloning in vitro simply isn't possible, as is the case with most macroscopic species of faera. Of course, you wouldn't want to be killing off these faera just so that you'd release their functional group into the local medium, because that would defeat the purpose of cloning them. Magi may often set up "growing areas" where they place the faera in a container and get them to keep growing. Once you know about a particular derivae faera's feeding habits, you can feed it what it requires to thrive; otherwise, you won't be able to keep them alive for long, since there is a cost to their living after all.
Eventually you'll end up with too many individual faera for any given environment you're trying to contain them within. The environment would then start to become hostile, or else the amount of work you'll have to do to keep up will increase exponentially. At this point, you have enough of the faera, and can afford to waste or destroy any excess of faera in your collection. Alternatively, you can extract part of the faera and place them in another container, with its own growth medium, so that it may continue to grow. In this way you can exponentially increase the number of individual faera of the strain you want, and minimize the chances of contamination. However, cloning is strictly limited to living faera, which means that it can't be used for any spells you want to create artificially.
If you're working with faera that has been purified, and the cellular energy has been entirely used up, then you have a lot of unharvested energy anchored to the sample but you don't have the harvesting mechanism to convert it to cellular energy. This sample is thus a very good growth medium for any faera introduced, so using it effectively would entail adding living faera (of the same or different kind) to the expended sample. The living faera would harvest the free energy and reproduce, quickly increasing the amount of that faera you possess. Of course, tessae are not compatible with this process because they obtain their energy directly, and not all kinds of energy are the same, especially since they may be in different forms of capture (and require different functional groups to properly harvest). Also, the fact that it is such a rich medium also means that opportunistic faera will easily bloom in the medium, quickly ruining it unless you add in the faera you desire within a short span of time.
Spell Selecting (drug-resistant faera)[]
You can also isolate certain functional groups that act as antibiotics against particular other faera. This comes in handy if the purity of any medium in any stage in the development of your spell is highly important. To identify which does what, you are aided by the fact that faera possessing these antibiotic-like functional groups often kill off certain types of faera that are near them (a bit like the clear region of bacteria around penicillin). Of course, sometimes it won't be easy to ascertain which antibiotics will work and which won't, which means that considerable testing and plenty of failures will be involved. However, with determination you will be able to determine which functional groups (selectors) select for a certain faera (by killing off the others) and which faera are weak against certain functional groups acting as antibiotics. Of course, these are not antibiotics that have any effect on flora or fauna, but only on faera.
Also, if you do too much testing with any given selector you will end up with strains of faera which are resistant to that selector, which can become a big problem because then you will have to seek out a different antibiotic to wipe them out. So the more testing you do on this subject, the more urgent is the need to find new selectors. In the worst situations some of the resistant pathogen strains can get into and infect a particular spell and completely wipe it out, forcing you to start from scratch. Oftentimes it is best to combine multiple selectors from the outset, as well as to apply natural predators, so that you don't end up with a workspace contaminated with such faera.
Spell Enhancement (transgenic spells)[]
Faera, fauna, and flora all have similar ways of reproduction, including encoding for their attributes in much the same way (though of course not identically the same). However, just like DNA, it is incredibly long and complex, and hard to understand. If you don't want to just keep trying random combinations (which is certainly a bad idea), and what you seek does not exist in nature, then you must find a different way to create a mutant (transgenic) which has what you want. To further enhance the potency of your spell, you could introduce the genomic sector of a certain other faera which is more effective at generating and sustaining certain functional groups (or whatever else) to another type of faera (akin to a virus) which will puncture the former faera's cell membrane. The virus-faera then burst out, some carrying with them specific parts of the genomic code of the now-lysed faera host. You can then wash out (or centrifuge) the shattered host and filter out the solvent so that you just have the virus-faera. Now you would need to obtain yet another different kind of functional group which can enter the virus-faera, neutralizing its ability to lyse cells it infects. When you introduce this twice-modified virus-faera to another faera, say, the create-light one, the virus-faera infects it, inserting the transgenic coding it carried into the host. You end up with a still-living host faera with altered DNA. Some of the end product will be transgenic; however, most will not be. In that case you must select for the transgenic one using antibiotic functional groups, as mentioned in a previous section. The inserted (unnatural) genomic code must include resistance for a certain antibiotic; the same one you use to select with. That in turn requires that you know sufficient information about antibiotics and resistant genomic sequences.
Of course, there are a tremendous number of variables that goes into getting this to work, requiring lots of attempts, time, patience, and resources. If you really wanted to be effective, you'd have to fully sequence the faera's genomic code - a monumental hassle. However, some modified faera may be tremendously superior to the wild types in particular ways. This technique gives you the power to mix and match and thus arrive at extraordinary, chimeric mutants, opening up a whole new world of what magic is possible. There is, however, one very important problem: mutants almost always aren't as good as the wild types at surviving and reproducing, especially in the wild, since their altered genomic code must now compete with those of wild types which have survived for so long in endless competition with all the other wild faera species. For this reason it is important to keep the transgenic faera isolated, especially from their wild type counterparts.
Spell Scripting (conditional receptors, starscript)[]
The basic method of making a spell's activation conditional is through the use of conditional receptor in the component. Only when they are activated can the operants comprising the other half of the component perform their specific actions. However, this does not allow for much variation.
More advanced spells use a starscript. A starscript is like a chain of components, connected to each other one after another, and looks a lot like RNA: a single, very complex long strand that codes for something. In this case, however, a generic starscript codes not for the reproduction and maintenance of a faera, but for exactly what a spell does. Much like a component, a starscript has a logical order to it; it too has a spell initiator receptor (a conditional receptor) at one end (the start end). Once a spell initiator binds to that receptor, the components attached to the starscript then activate one by one, only going onto the next step after the component above it has resolved (completed its task). In this way a starscript may very quickly (nearly instantly) resolve all the way to its end (the stop end). The advantage to using this method instead of using a spell with many free-floating components is that you get to decide in which order everything in the spell resolves.
There are downsides to using this method which are unavoidable to the serious spellcaster. It is not easy to create a starscript. You must first decide what the script (outline) of the spell is to do at every stage, use a certain functional group that allows you to start a starscript from just its initiator receptor, and then you must use a functional group that specializes in attaching components to the growing starscript strand, then finish by immersing the specimen with yet another faera that "caps" the stop end of the starscript. If this is not done, the starscript will remain sticky, which will potentially result in spell errors. If any step in the process cannot continue, however, and you don't account for this possibility, the entire spell can become stuck at that point.
Spell Memorization (variables)[]
Higher level spells all require "memorization" of certain pieces of information, such as the timing, what has already happened, input variables, static variables, which part of the spell it's in, etc. You can liken this to the variables that are stored in any program that runs on your computer. Much like the code in such a program, you have to have fully analyzed the code (the script) before you can determine exactly which variables you'll need and how they are to be used by the spell, and generally you'll have to spend considerable time troubleshooting the script. This debugging process can be a major hassle to all but the most advanced of spellcasters, because alchemically combining all the parts in just the right way is inherently imperfect and far more time- and resource-consuming than creating a computer program with a compiler.
Spell specimens have their own versions of a computer program's variables. A spell can utilize a starscript without needing to use variables, but of course the conditions available to you (and hence the versatility of the spell) will be severely diminished. However, you can't use variables without also using a starscript to give it some semblance of order.
There is a faera that provides the bond of the variable, from which other parts are added. Another faera allows you to add the variable's marker (its name) to that bond. A third faera is needed to give a variable its initial value (all variables should be given an initial value, although another faera can be used to essentially provide a value of "null" to a variable). To make a complete variable, get yourself a clean vial and add these three components in any order. In doing this it is best to make the variable bond the limiting reagent or else you'll get unreliable (non-homogeneous) results. Then you may transfer parts of the resulting mixture to specimens of your other spells.
There is an infinite variety of values that you can give to a variable as its initial value, depending on how you use the value functional group. There are different species of value-faera. Each is shaped much like a key, with switches arranged in linear fashion across its molecular body, much like the particular ridges along a key. A common (and handy) value functional group has 7 such switches; less often used ones have 13, 29, or more (it all depends on which faera you find). These switches have only two possibilities, an "on" and an "off", much like bytes. Certain other, flip functional groups are combined with value functional groups to switch them on or off; these are specific to just one particular switch location on one value functional group. After you combine them, you must then wash out the flip functional groups so that they don't "lock" the value forever. Once you get the value to what you want it to be, you combine it with the variable bond.
Variables float loosely in the spell's medium.
If you want to prevent a variable from being changed (making it static), once you have created the variable, you cap it with a stop-cap functional group.
Spell Arraying (arrays of variables)[]
The next step beyond the basic variable is having arrays of variables. This is done through use of a variable backbone, the variable's equivalent of the starscript backbone. You first start with the variable initiator, which also serves as the array's starting point and its call name. To that you then string up multiple pre-assembled variables, which bind to it and form a chain. Then you cap the array's backbone using stop-cap, preventing anything else from being added onto the array. Hence, you will not be able to change the size of the array in the spell, but you can still modify the individual variables. An array is certainly useful for organization when you have large bodies of information, and necessary for when you are working with strings (words, strings of characters). In converting from using an array as an array to using it as a string, you must also implement a method for reading them as strings.
From this point you can create matrices (multi-dimensional arrays). First, create the array head (the variable initiator), and fill in all the variables for one plane. Then use another variable initiator (provided by a different faera) to attach a chain in a different direction, and attach all the arrays in the other planes this results in. You can keep doing this provided you have enough different variable initiators. After a while these matrices can become inordinately large and unwieldy, however.
When doing this you can get around to using "null" as just a default value for everything. But once you attach it, it's a pain to remove it specifically for something unless you have the process for doing so developed already.
Spell Singling (keeping variables unique)[]
With the most basic of spells, it's okay to have the reaction occur much like a complex chemical reaction would, that is, having a near infinite amount of spells, all acting independently and at the same time. You can't, however, do that with a more complex reaction such as a starscript combined with variables that the starscript actually changes. This is because you'd end up with quadrillions of copies of both starscript and variable, and the interactions between them are random, meaning starscripts in different stages of resolution will be interacting with variables with different values. Some variables will be acted upon (such as incremented up) by more than they should; others will be, by chance, ignored by the spell's various components. This would cause severe unpredictability in the spell and not all parts of the spell will do the same thing. This problem is called spell confusion.
In order to resolve this problem, you will need the use of another functional group (called a singler), one that can temporarily bind to just about anything and destroy all but one copy of that target. This singling process eliminates the spell confusion problem. However, it also means that your entire spell will end up with one copy of everything - clearly not enough, since most spells utilize quadrillions of individual components. Once you've crafted your spell, you must then incorporate another star medium, one which, like the phospholipid bilayer in cell membranes, forms spherical membranes nearly uniformly throughout the spell specimen when given a shock with yet another faera. This causes the space within each cell to retain far fewer copies than were originally in the spell. Now, you can use the singler on the specimen so that within each cell there lies only one copy of each distinct object, but there are still trillions of cells remaining. Each cell thus operates as its own clone of the overall spell, each one contributing a tiny part to the overall reaction. These cells are incredibly small, ranging around the size of a virus depending on which version of singler you have access to.
Spell Structuring (logical structures)[]
Once you've mastered the use of variables as initiators of particular components, you can use the values you get from these variables to determine what happens next in the spell. You can fork a spell, where at the forking point the singular strand of starscript splits in two (or rather uncommonly, more), with only one side resolving depending on the conditional operator used. This allows your one spell to actually be an infinity of different spells, only better, because you can decide exactly which sub-spell to resolve.
You can also have one side of such a fork lead back to a previous or another part of the starscript altogether, with the chain of resolutions being diverted along another path. This is useful if you want your primary starscript to call another part of the spell (another part of the starscript or even a part of a secondary starscript). In this way you can have two separate paths reunite into one. Additionally, you can create loops using a similar method, by inserting a component at the critical junction point. This component determines at the beginning of each iteration whether or not to go through with the loop, and specify which parameters will cause the spell to go through with the loop. You can also design such a component so that it works with variables, thereby allowing a for... loop, which iterates through a specific set of values of particular variables. You can nest and convolute loops all you like, even make the spell continue ad infinitum if you would like. Looping is essential for spells that must lay in the background waiting until a certain situation arises (such all high-level enchantments).
One of the first things spellcasters make when they get to this level of proficiency is to design a calculator (so that a spell knows how to work with numbers) and to design a string reader (so that a spell can work with characters and words). Both of these feature heavily in a spellcaster's future spells and are instrumental in quickly making a spell, and designing it to run optimally.
Spell Disjunction (complement-oriented)[]
Spell disjunction offers a powerful way to quickly recreate modified versions of spells you've already made, and assemble spells from spell parts you've already made. The system is based on a concept of reusable parts. Many components of high-level spells tend to be reusable, for example, a star-based calculator. There is an infinite variety of spells that need to work with numbers, such as incrementing the values of variables or those that need to perform any of an infinite variety of mathematical applications. A star-based calculator is an incredibly difficult specimen to make, so once you've made it, you really don't want to make it a second time. By disjointing this part from the rest of your spell and designing it as a standalone entity (called a complement), you would then be able to add the complement to any other spell that would work with numbers, without having to recreate the star-calculator. In fact, with this method you'll be able to simply add it to all your spells, and it'll only take a few seconds to do so.
Advanced spellcasters work almost exclusively with complements, each with its own task. They create one to generate random values, another to perform trigonometric calculations, another to perform voice recognition, another to project images in 3D, etc. They tend to keep large libraries of vials, each with its own type of complement, and oftentimes combine the complements they use most into a single container which they then add to each spell specimen they create. In this fashion they are able to focus on creating the actual spells without having to worry about whether a certain process the spell needs has already been added, and there is just about no downside to doing so. However, there is a downside to keeping such a great collection of vials: it's not travel-friendly. Therefore, they will often choose a well-out-of-the-way location as their base of magical development. This location is called their sanctum, or demesna.
Spell Replication (copying spells)[]
It is possible to replicate a spell. This is very useful if you find yourself low on one of any of the ingredients needed for a spell you've used too much of. Instead of recreating the spell from scratch, you can combine it with another faera, called Genecite, which will bind to the spell specimen (on a molecular level of course) and incorporate it within its own body, much like a phagocyte. Then, the Genecite is allowed to reproduce for a while, each period of time doubling the amount of material is in the spell. Once you have waited long enough, you can harvest the spell back using Ossilocite, a predator and decomposer of Genecite, which also happens to leave just about all artificially created spell specimens unharmed. Using this method it is possible to attain a recovery of over 95%. Consider the fact that Genecite is capable of doubling its population every 20 minutes if given the opportunity, and you can see why spells can be perpetuated ad infinitum in this manner.
Spell Modification (modifying a spell)[]
Making your own spell is all good and all, but the more complex and tedious to develop your spells become, the harder it is to make alterations, even small ones, to them, because you'd have to design a new one from scratch. This can easily become a pain if you're trying to develop a complex spell and are attempting to troubleshoot a wayward spell, and certainly a hassle for beginners. However, there is a way to modify a spell once it's made.
The idea is that different components in a starscript, and different variables, are unique by virtue of either their own constitution or their location among neighbors. There are faera possessing functional groups that can, when isolated, allow you to remove or swap out a certain target part of a spell, but these generally are nonspecific, and the isolated dissociator can wipe out your entire spell. Instead, you must only expose your component to modified versions of these substances. This is done by combining the dissociator with a mould, which prevents the dissociator from matching up with and breaking apart any part of the spell except for the target itself. This mould is derived by just stringing up the components around the target component, though with a simple addition of a tagger functional group to the copy of the target (provided by yet another faera), and starting with a different initiator, one that does not lend it self to being destroyed by the dissociator but instead binds the dissociator. Then the dissociator is attached, and washed out so that the only dissociator left is that which has already bound to the mould. Then the specimen is added to the original spell.
The danger here is that you must first check your script (outline) of the entire spell before doing this because if the mould is not specific enough the dissociator will end up cutting through and modifying things you don't want to see changed. There are different types of modifiers. Some remove components from within starscripts. Others add them in between two specific components. Others swap out components for entirely different ones (or blocks of them). Others modify certain parts of one specific component. As with just about everything else, your collection of such faera determines what is possible and what is not.
Spell Analysis (celestiamancy)[]
There are functional groups for just about everything, in part because faera have had billions of years in which to evolve to their present state. This also means nearly infinite opportunities, hence Lorica's motto, everything is possible. We have come a long way from creating light (creae luma). Functional groups can determine how spells work, help in producing and modifying those spells, create energy, molecules, atoms, or subatomic particles, bend the fabric of space-time, create alternate realities, and create secondary insides. From these, you can of course design even more advanced effects, such as performing calculations, moving objects, destroying things, restoring life, creating living organisms, procreating other spells, and much, much more.
Of course, a large part of this is made possible by the ability of the star to cross the boundaries of inside and outside. However, they are also able to detect whatever else is on their side of that boundary. They are able to identify, locate, create, and destroy other stars, and here is where great opportunity lies. For superior spells are able to hack into or altogether disable spells that don't have resistance to them; spells and faera compete for a livelihood and a posterity in their very own dimensions; spells can interact with others and the individual cells in a spell specimen can coordinate efforts. Older spells can replace or update newer ones, and battles may be waged not only inside, but also outside, in an esoteric plane even few spellcasters can understand. One can use a powerful spell to destroy every opponent one meets inside, but that may not hold up to a counterspell that operates outside, against which the former is vulnerable. And thus the tide may be turned.
With the advent of the worldspell Loricae, magic as we know it was entirely rewritten, including the weakening of a lot of magic from what they used to be capable of accomplishing. This is made possible only because Loricae is able to analyze all other spells, counter them, seek out their vulnerabilities and modify them nearly instantaneously. And this is also the means by which the most complicated magic - medicinal magic - is able to collaborate with the rest of the spell's self, a must before the spell is able to restore a lysed cell back to life or to revive a corpse.
Spell Procreation (spells making spells)[]
Spells are able to not only use variables, complements and starscripts, they are also able to create new ones themselves. The process, however, is tedious. Certain components provided by faera are required for this process to occur. You must also know exactly what you have in mind for the spell to create, since the spell is creating a part of another spell (or assembling it into a full spell) and you must do the commanding before you ever start the spell. In essence, the spell you're going to create must in some fashion be hidden within the previous starscript (the one you made), modified in certain ways depending on how you design it and what the accompanying variables are. For example, all undead are animated because of some spell or another, but undead spellcasters are animated by more complex spells that are able to procreate projectile spells to attack their targets.
Spell procreation can be used to make more of a spell from itself without using Ossilocite/Genecite, and to do so incredibly quickly. However, it is also much harder, often requiring that the spell is able to read itself and create a double of itself based on what it observes about itself - all of which sounds fit for only very complex spells. However, once this is mastered you'll be able to create endlessly replicating spells (much like the nanites of science fiction). All worldspells (charms that encompass the whole world) are at their core comprised of spells that can create more of themselves and which yet cooperate with all the other instances of itself throughout the world. With mastery of this side of spellmaking, you will have truly given life to the spell you have created.
Spell Facilitation (charmases)[]
All this probably gave you the impression that developing any spell is an incredibly difficult chore. And it is, and far more than you'd imagine, for all but the most expert of spellcasters, precisely because they would have to develop all this magic from scratch, learn it all, troubleshoot, etc. However, it is possible to use certain methods to facilitate the spell-designing and creation process. In order for you to develop such a tool, you must first be able to have your magic do everything that this tool is going to be doing for you, because you will have to program it into the tool itself. If you're working with logic, you must be able to design this tool to work correctly with logic, which can be inordinately confusing to all but he most talented. Then you must have a method for your tool to gain input information.
This tool, too, generally takes the form of a spell - a very complicated one. In computer programming analogies, you are essentially designing a compiler through which you can write your other programs (the spells). Such spells are called charmases.
A basic charmase would take a string of light and dark patterns and interpret it as meaning something (thereby creating the spell). In other words, you're trying to have the spell translate flickerings of light into meaning, much like binary code or morse code. Alternatively you can do it with sounds, with colors, with change in position or pressure, etc. More advanced charmases work with movements, so that it would create a certain starscript depending on which motions you make; such charmases are called choreases. Further advanced ones work when you place certain recognizable objects in certain positions; such charmases are called ligases. Even more advanced ones work with the written word, much like computer programming works today; such a charmase is called a scriptases. Beyond that there are charmases that interpret spoken words into spells, like acting-on-command; these are called dictases. It is of course possible to create a charmase that can create spells based on thoughts alone; such would be called pensases.
Spell Standardization (eutrises)[]
Alternatively you can have charmases cast certain pre-programmed spells upon command, which is a shortcut much like using a "hotkey" on a computer program. Each such shortcut is called an Eutris. EUTRIS stands for Elementary Universal Translational Runic Instancing Scriptase. (Lorican name: Scripta instanta runa translata universa elementa (SIRTUE) / Sirtuea.) It's useful for when you want to get fast results. As the saying goes, you can't get quick results quickly. You have to get ready for them, and in the case of magic that involves creating your own Eutris for every slightly different version of something. Thus, Eutris is good for particular, standardized results, but not for specific results.
There are literally thousands of even the elementary Eutrises. And even so, very often the charm you want isn't one of them. There are also a handful of massive Eutrises that are used in programming/developing others; these are known as charmases. There is in a sense a cycle in that a charmase allows you to create eutrises more quickly, but charmases also are eutrises; this can be likened to a factory that manufactures robots used in setting up another plant.
Eutrises feature prominently in post-Unification Lorica, where the worldspell Loricae acts as the standard charmase through which eutrises are made.