The Nature of Magic: Druidic v. Arcane

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Branched from the “Alternate Athasian History” thread by WingofCoot, because I don’t want to clog that.

Me:
Tangent: In a way, arcane magic on Athas is druidry-by-theft. Both draw their power from the land itself, but while a druid makes friends with the land, a defiler rips his power from it, and a preserver takes what she needs.

WingOfCoot:
On the tangent: I’ve wondered about that. Do druids draw from the land in the same way that preservers do? Given that they use the same elemental spheres as clerics, I had kind of figured that their power was ultimately elemental (even if indirectly, like templars: I think all the “priest classes” in the 2e sense have an ultimately elemental source). I see the spirits of the land as being something like metaphysical trees, with their main presence (their “trunk and branches”) on Athas but their “roots” reaching into the elemental planes.

So, here’s some thinking on this:

Spirits of the Land may well have their roots in the elemental planes, and express it through the land itself… plants, animals, soil, sky. All are aspects of the elements, given concrete expression on the Prime Material.

Wizards, in one possible view (not saying this is canon, just a way of looking at it), draw on the power of the Spirit of the Land via those expressions, specifically the plant (and, to a lesser extent, animal) life. They use, in effect, the expressed power of the elemental planes to power their spells… but they do it in an off-label way, if you follow the metaphor.

A cleric taps directly into a given element; they’re less versatile because of that, but they are explicitly getting the power by permission.

A druid casts a druid spell in line with the will of the spirit of the land, as shown by the elemental spheres they have access to. They draw power from the land to express the land, as it were, just as grass draws power from the soil to express itself; a druid spell is, in effect, completely natural, expressing the will of the land through its chosen representative, and the (spirit of the) land itself is the licensed distributor of elemental power.

An arcane spell takes energy from that grass, but it doesn’t use it to express what the land wants… it is a tap on the hospital power line that runs a bitcoin harvesting darkweb server. Preservers pay for the power; defilers just take it. Because they use the power however they want, they don’t necessarily do it in the way the land wants… they can cast spells at complete odds with the will of the elements and land, because they’re just using power, not receiving it under contract from an authorized dealer.

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That makes a lot of sense.

The only issue, I think, is the “life energy comes ultimately from the sun” quotes in the Prism Pentad and Defilers and Preservers. While you could take an elemental interpretation of that (Fire/Sun as the elemental force that ultimately represents/underlies all energy), I think Defilers and Preservers is going for a model where arcane magic is strictly distinct from elemental magic. It makes a special point of how Cerulean magic isn’t really elemental since the life forces of Rajaat (and Tithian) are involved.

Defilers and Preservers has other oddities though, and I think the Prism Pentad references can be reconciled with an elemental interpretation.

You could also go with a model where conventional arcane magic is strictly Prime (drawing from plants/soil or animal life and thus ultimately indirectly from the sun), elemental magic comes from the Elemental Planes (either directly for clerics or indirectly for druids or templars), and Gray/Black magic is actually its own weird thing neither arcane nor elemental.

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Yeah, you’re right. I think there may be something here, but “the energy ultimately comes from the sun” is pretty unequivocally WOG, rather than Watsonian exegesis.

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Part of the oddity is that the sun is … kind of … elemental/paraelemental energy too. But there’s obviously a physical sun on the Prime Plane, in addition to the Plane of Sun (though the Prism Pentad seems to treat it as a manifestation of Fire instead). So how does that interact? Is the physical Prime sun directly powered by the Plane, and if so doesn’t that kind of introduce an imbalance (the other planes don’t have anything equivalent)?

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This may be related to the question about how defiling vs. preserving actually works.

It seems like there’s more there than just a matter of degree… multiple preserving spells cast in the same location don’t add up to a defiling effect, which you’d think it would if it was just a matter of “preserving takes X energy, defiling takes X+Y energy”.

But also … while everyone seems to talk about defiling killing plants, the actual key problem seems to be killing the soil. People kill plants for all sorts of purposes (food, wood, etc.) … the actual way that defiling wrecks the world seems to be not that the plants die, but that the land dies in a way that keeps it from supporting life for a very, very long time.

The way it’s described in the Prism Pentad, it seems like you draw energy, there’s a “warning” point where the plants begin to droop a bit or whatever, and if you ignore that warning and keep drawing the plants die and the soil is defiled. It seems like the soil isn’t hit until past that ‘warning’ point.

So maybe what’s actually happening is that basic preserving, before that “warning” point, is just grabbing sun energy indirectly through the plants … it’s replenished really quickly, so preserving doesn’t “add up” to inflict damage?

But defiling isn’t just a matter of drawing more energy, but a matter of the rate of energy being drawn - the difference between flowing water through a pipe, and increasing the water pressure to the point that the pipe bursts?

In that case, what Sadira is doing is just getting the energy directly… so she can draw way more ‘safely’. She’s essentially using an indestructible pipe.

(or… is it safe? Sure, the land isn’t getting defiled… but Athas’ sun has been drained of energy before. Is every spell Sadira casts moving the sun a little bit closer to finally dying? Is that a shadowpeople backup plan … that at some point Sadira will realize that, and have to allow Rajaat’s release, since he’s the only one that can fix the sun?)

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A possibility (that actually works better on Athas than some other campaign settings) is that what they’re actually drawing is positive energy from relatively uncomplicated life (plants), which is replaced like normal; it would be similar to a Tree of Life, in that respect, but more spread out. The default explanation for wizard magic in 1e was, IIRC, that it was powered by Positive Energy.

Defiling, in this case, rips all the positive energy out, killing the plants and the soil. It might even be fueled by negative energy, which works well if you go with the “Athas is currently near Fire and Negative Energy”… Defiling works because it draws on negative energy, and you might even go with “defiling drags Athas closer to the Negative Material Plane”, which is a neat concept.

How did they kill the Brown Tide? Negative energy. How did Rajaat empower the Champions? Negative Energy (in this hypothesis). Each act of major magic changed the sun and dragged Athas further towards the Negative. Minor acts of defiling (regular magic) pull it slowly; it would take major positive magic (and the elimination of the pull of defilers).

Again, I’m speculating wildly, trying to figure out an explanation that works for the way the world canonically is.

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That makes sense.

I always kind of thought that Athas couldn’t reach the planes properly, which is why magic ends up taking energy from life (unless you find a way to access a plane that is reachable, like a Shadow Wizard or Necromant).

But the sun energy/life energy as a form of positive energy already present in Athas’ Prime Plane, accessed indirectly through plants and animals (unless you’re Sadira!), that works very well.

Defiling shifting Athas’ balance toward the negative (maybe in an actual planar geography sense, maybe just in terms of composition: defiling burns up positive energy without replacing it, so what remains is more and more biased toward the negative) also works really well.

Athas in the later material doesn’t have quasielemental planes (though Dragon Kings does use them) but regardless it seems tainted by negative-quasielemental material.

Silt is like Quasielemental Dust (and the Sea of Silt doesn’t act like natural dust or silt), the Great Ash Storm could be related to Quasielemental Ash, the Great Ivory Plain to Quasielemental Salt (ok it’s probably just a natural salt flat like the Bonneville Salt Flat, but it also fits).

The Deadlands are almost like a paraelemental Magma thing turned to a quasielemental version.

Athas’ sun problems make way more sense as a planar effect than a physical astronomical one. The energy in a physical real star is ridiculously out of scope to turning fifteen guys into Champions and/or 21st level dragons, especially if you can do the 21st level dragon metamorphosis with just 1000 HD of living things per person. Several thousand livestock vs a couple billion years of a star’s life … Not remotely eqial things.

Also, messing with a star on a physical level that drastically should have made Athas way more uninhabitable than it is.

But if it’s a planar effect none of the physical stuff is relevant.

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WOW! Really cool ideas here. I have often pondered the difference between Druidical (Land/Spirit) Magic, Elemental (Cleric) Magic, and Arcane (Preserver/Defiler) Magic. Using the idea of the Positive energy being depleted, possibly even destroyed through Defiling works really well. Especially , when framing it as a Planar effect drawing Athas closer to the Negative Energy Plane. It makes the physical sun issue a moot point, as it really doesn’t have anything but the barest of cosmetic effects on magic. However, it still keeps with the eco-destruction that has nearly destroyed Athas. This of course can explain nearly all of ecological problems pollution, dead soil, intense climate change, deforestation, oceans boiling away, etc.

All in all, I think your ideas make it easier for me to explain those parts of the setting but it also allows for ideas on how to “repair” the planet for a heroic world quest for the players if they choose to go that route. Coming up with ways to reverse the pull of Athas towards the Negative Energy Plane and revitalizing the Positive Energy of the world totally invokes my imagination.

It also plays nice with the setting information and once again gives Druids that niche spot of having the power to undo the defilement of the world and still keeping their humanity (elvish, halflingish, dwarvish) empathy with the worlds peoples. In contrast to the somewhat inhuman, if not inimical views of the elemental clerics patrons. Plus you still have the idea of the Sorcerer Monarchs stealing Elemental Planar power and imbuing their Templars with the stolen energy.