Magic

Magic in Nelwar takes three major forms. The first is the innate magic found in magical creatures such as Dragons, or Faeries. This magic is unconscious to those creatures, and is typically not very complex, though it can be powerful. The second is shamanistic magic, a method of spellcasting that allows its users (shamans) to indirectly cast spells through spirits. The third part is "high magic", the academic magic of most wizards of first world countries, including the Antiris Guild of Wizards.

Innate Magic
This magic is not extremely complicated. This is the inherent powers of magical creatures or plants, such as the ability of dragons to breathe fire, of faeries to hide their cities, or of Sneed Barlow to take off his thumb and put it back on.

GURPS Rules for Innate Magic
Generally speaking, the innate powers of creatures work the way I say they do. If your character is one that you feel should have some innate magical power, talk to me and we will work out the details.

Shamanism
There are two parts of casting a shamanic spell. First, the shaman must summon forth a spirit. This is typically an advanced magical ritual, unless you are somewhere that the spirits openly come into the physical world. After this, the shaman somehow manipulates the spirit into performing the desired magical effect. This can involve all sorts of things, from complex rituals to force the spirit into compliance, down to simply bargaining with the spirit, ex. "If you give me the power to breathe underwater for an hour, I will make sure that the village people stop throwing their waste in your river." These agreements are typically magically binding, and give the spirit significant power to punish the caster if their end of the bargain is not held up. Because this form of magic involves another being that actually wields the power, it is inherently risky. Spirits don't typically like being summoned into the physical world, and unless handled properly, can become angry and lash out at the caster. Because of this risk, shamanism is illegal in most of the more established nations of Nelwar, including:
 * Antiris
 * Belrast
 * Sordius, although many outskirt groups don't care as much as the crown
 * TBD small human kingdoms
 * TBD Usagi nation
 * TBD Goblin nation

GURPS Rules for Shamanism

 * No advantage is required for shamanism, but you must have the skill of Ritual Magic (Shamanism) [B218], which is IQ/Very Hard and has no default.
 * Spirit summoning requires elaborate ritual and expensive reagents. If you wish to fight using shamanism, you have to spend some time before combat preparing. The minimum a shamanistic spellcast can take is 10 minutes. However, you can have the spirit grant you some battle prowess (increased strength, etc) or give you some weapon enhancement. For example, you could exchange for the spirit to get a gift of fire, which you could put on your staff, and use your staff to shoot fireballs during combat. After that, you would have to hold up your bargain with the spirit, or face the consequences.
 * The norm for shaman cast failure is a consequence of some sort. Problems scale with the amount that you failed by, and include summoning elementals, giving you curses or selective bad luck (ex. auto-fail your next role related to X), or greater consequences, depending on what level of spirit you attempted to use the power of, and how badly you failed your roll.
 * There are modifiers depending on what you want to do. If you want to start a fire, that's probably pretty easy. If you want to send a plague upon an entire nation, you're going to have to really ritual it up to make a magical contract strong enough to actually hold the spirit to do what you want it to do.
 * There can be no truly permanent enchantments via shamanism. Spirits do not have the power to grant permanent effects.

High Magic
High magic has been the field of study of many wizards for ages. The high elves have a natural aptitude for this type of magic, and generally speaking lead the world in its innovation. Their main competition are humans and wood elves, but there are few that can match the magical prowess of the high elves. High magic is logical, and has been proven through mathematics and experimentation to follow three basic laws:
 * 1) Magic cannot bring back the truly dead. It can be used to restart the bodies of those whose minds have not yet left (the window for this is about an hour, though some wizards claim to be able to do it after around a day). The explanation that wizards give for this is that the barrier between our world and the next is absolute, and that no amount of magical power can breach it.
 * 2) No magic can last forever. Even the strongest and most well performed enchantments will eventually fade, even if all the world's greatest minds examine it and determine it to be perfect. Because magical energy is being expended to keep the enchantment "on", the power will eventually fade.
 * 3) Long-range teleportation is impossible, it simply cannot be done. To make a legitimate attempt (ie. to put the energy in and cast that mother) is certain death. Everyone who has tried has either fizzled (spell cast failure) or they have immediately disappeared without a trace. This is known as the "unproven law". Wizards can find no logical or mathematical proof of its truth, but it has been shown time and time again by experimentation. Fun fact - in reality, this is because Nelwar is moving through space, and the mages are effectively teleporting themselves into space. If you find an exploit based on this, I reserve the right to immediately change it. Your characters do not know this.

GURPS Rules for High Magic - These are big, read them if you are a wizard

 * The base rules for this are the rules for syntactic magic, in GURPS Magic pg. 202. However, there are several house rules. Read on.
 * You are capped in the amount of energy you can spend per spell. This cap is equal to your magery level + 1, then doubled. If you do not have magery at all, you cannot cast high magic spells at all.
 * Powerstones do not recharge. You buy them charged and can charge them yourself, but they do not charge by themselves.
 * Enchanting works through the use of symbol magic, GURPS Magic pg. 205. You literally write the runes on there, they are exactly the written form of the syntactic words. Enchanting requires daily rolls on the word you are currently working on. If you make it, you get to contribute your day's fatigue into the enchantment. If not, that day's work is lost. There is no such thing as a permanently self-powering enchantment in Nelwar. You must provide a powerstone, which will run out. This means that there is a business of recharging magical items.
 * Enchantments take twice the listed amount of money in reagents to create. Magical items are not at all common in Nelwar.
 * There is an additional syntactic noun: time.
 * You may purchase additional levels of magery during gameplay, but you must have access to a teacher for at least 3 months (at like 16 hours a day) to do so.
 * If you are a high elf, you must take at least magery 1 [B66].
 * If you are a wood elf, you must take at least magery 0.
 * If you are an orc, you cannot take magery, and must instead take magic resistance [B67]. Note that this advantage does not protect you from fireballs and the like, only from effects that are directly magical.
 * The only races that can voluntarily take magic resistance are the TBD Walrus People, and Dwarves. All other races may take voluntary magery, but may not take magic resistance.

Magical Foci
Foci (plural of focus) are objects created by wizards to aid them in their spellcasting by reducing cast time. If you want cost reduction, use a powerstone. Most wizards with the budget to do so use both foci and powerstones in conjunction with each other.
 * Shamanism does not use foci. The objects used in shamanistic rituals (branch of a certain tree, a certain type of stone, blood of a certain animal, etc) do not provide a bonus to the shamanistic cast, they are just required for you to be able to perform the ritual at all.

High Magic Foci
In the word-based high magic, there are two types of foci. Monofoci are foci of one specific word - they make casting that specific word easier. Spell foci provide a larger bonus, but only provide this bonus to one specific spell - not just one specific set of words, but one specific chosen effect of those words (ex. control body could be giving someone an itch or making someone fall, you have to choose when you make a spell focus).

To create a focus:
 * Roll against Thaumatology[B225] to determine a good material for a focus of the type you wish to create. Alternatively, you may roll research if you have access to a library/mage college/whatever, or pay another wizard to tell you.
 * Use Symbol Drawing[B224] to carve, etch, or otherwise adorn the material with high magic words that you know. This means you must have Symbol Drawing, and also have skill with the words themselves. If you fail three times or critical fail once with symbol drawing during the process of creating the focus, you material is ruined and you have to buy or otherwise obtain more. Exceptions can be made to this rule if the focus is huge (wizards guilds will build massive focuses for controlling the weather, etc).
 * Perform the magical ritual to activate the focus. This ritual costs X * 5 * the sum of the energy cost of the words written on it (you choose X. X is related to the quality of the focus, see below tables), and can be performed in pieces of the course of multiple days. Each day choose a symbol and make a roll against your skill with it. If you make it, you may put in as much energy as you like up to the amount you currently have into that specific symbol. If you fail, only half is added (but you keep the extra energy, you just cant put the rest in). If you critical success, add twice the amount of energy you spend. If you critical fail, the symbol is destroyed and you must start over on it with a new symbol drawing roll.
 * Scroll focuses are single use.