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Collapse internal reserves to a single unbounded pure pool with attunement-gated conversion; add the Three Laws of Pneuma and an elemental square table; retire "deepening the breath"; reframe annihilation as an ungated craft; defer imbuing and anti-/tainted pneuma to open questions. (via update-page on MediaWiki MCP Server)
State rules positively: drop denials of unimplied negatives ("not destroyed", "not dead", "loses nothing", "no regeneration", "cannot condense", "never decreases", "consumes no soma") (via update-page on MediaWiki MCP Server)
 
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'''Pneuma''' is the animating spirit of the world — breath, life-force, and the fuel of all magic. Everything alive contains it; to be alive ''is'' to carry pneuma. It is both a collectible resource and the foundation of character progression.
'''Pneuma''' is the world's life-force. It is a resource that creatures gather and spend, and the basis of character progression. Its counterpart is [[Soma|soma]], the matter it animates: pneuma is energy and soma is matter. A creature's pneuma is its power and its soma is its health.


== The Three Laws of Pneuma ==
== Form ==


Everything about how pneuma behaves, for players and for design alike, derives from three laws. Where any later section seems to conflict with a Law, the Law wins.
Pneuma has one form, '''pure'''. An element is a kind of [[Soma|soma]]. Pneuma bound in fire soma is the same pneuma as pneuma bound in anything else.


'''Law 1 — The Square.''' Elemental flavors relate by shared quality. Neighbors share one quality and combine into something new; opposites share none and, forced together, annihilate back into pure.
Pneuma is always held in one of two ways: circulating through a vessel (Law I), or bound in soma. Bound pneuma is inert. It can be carried, stored and traded. Pneuma released outside any vessel or soma goes dull where it is (see [[#Land|Land]]).


'''Law 2 — Origin.''' Pneuma is generated wherever life is or has been. Every living thing produces it constantly; the world holds its residue in sites, creatures, and remains, shaped into a flavor, or unshaped as pure.
A '''phial''' is soma made to hold bound pneuma. It is the only physical form of pneuma (see [[#Physical form|Physical form]]).


'''Law 3 — Shaping.''' What a person draws into themselves becomes plain, unshaped pure. Giving it shape again — a cast, an exertion — costs pneuma, and only pneuma spent this way builds mastery of the flavor it was shaped into. Mastery makes both the drawing-in and the shaping-out of that flavor cheaper and stronger, and mastering one flavor never costs another.
== The Three Laws ==


== Forms ==
'''Law I — Vitality.''' Pneuma circulating through a '''vessel''' — soma arranged to carry it — is alive; pneuma bound in soma is inert. The structure of a creature's vessel determines what the creature can do, and the amount of pneuma in it determines the creature's power. An empty vessel is exhausted (see [[#Death|Death]]).


Pneuma exists in one '''pure''' form and four '''elemental''' flavors it takes on when steeped in the world:
'''Law II — Attrition.''' Every shaping (see [[#Key terms|Key terms]]) loses part of the pneuma moved. Carrying and storing bound pneuma are free.


# Water
'''Law III — Affinity.''' Affinity for a soma lowers the Attrition loss of shaping through it. Affinity grows by spending pneuma through that soma.
# Fire
# Earth
# Air


Pure pneuma is the unflavored animating spirit itself. Life is not a fifth element: healing, growth, and other "life magic" is pure pneuma work, since mending a living thing means handling unflavored spirit directly. Earth is cleanly stone, soil, and mountain.
== Key terms ==


By Law 3, a person never carries elemental pneuma internally — only pure. Elemental identity lives in the world (sites, creatures, condensed crystals) and in a person's mastery of each flavor, never in a body's own reserve.
* '''Creature''': anything with a vessel. A '''player''' is a creature a person plays.
* '''Working''': a spell or an ability.
* '''Shaping''': any move of pneuma between a vessel and soma. Every shaping loses part of the pneuma moved (Law II).
** '''Binding''': shaping into soma.
** '''Absorption''': shaping out of soma into the absorber's own vessel. Sources are elemental sites, slain creatures and phials.
** '''Condensation''': binding from one's own vessel into a phial.
* '''Mastery''': one [[Ability|ability]]'s accumulated experience, measured as the total pneuma spent through it.
* '''Affinity''': a creature's alignment to one soma, with pure counted as one more. Affinity for a soma is the sum of mastery across the abilities tagged with it. Affinity lowers shaping cost (Law III).


=== The elemental square ===
== Sources ==


The elements follow the classical (Aristotelian) square of qualities (Law 1): fire is hot+dry, air is hot+wet, water is cold+wet, earth is cold+dry. '''Opposites share no quality''' — fire↔water, air↔earth. '''Neighbors share exactly one''', and only neighbors can combine:
* '''Elemental sites.''' Wherever an element is concentrated — a river, a fire, a mountain — pneuma is bound in the soma there. Absorption removes the pneuma; the soma remains. The soma yield of a site is on the [[Soma#Sources|Soma page]].
* '''Creatures.''' A slain creature releases its pneuma (see [[#Death|Death]]).
* '''Phials.''' Pneuma condensed into a phial can be absorbed back out of it.
* '''The self.''' A creature below baseline refills from the land (see [[#The pool|The pool]]).


{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
=== Land ===
! Element !! Qualities !! Opposite (annihilates to pure) !! Combines with → hybrid
|-
| '''Fire''' || Hot + Dry || Water || Air → lightning / storm-fire; Earth → magma / forge-heat
|-
| '''Air''' || Hot + Wet || Earth || Fire → lightning / storm-fire; Water → mist / ice / tempest
|-
| '''Water''' || Cold + Wet || Fire || Air → mist / ice / tempest; Earth → mire / clay / the deep places
|-
| '''Earth''' || Cold + Dry || Air || Fire → magma / forge-heat; Water → mire / clay / the deep places
|}


Laid out geometrically, neighbors sit adjacent and opposites sit across from each other:
Land holds a pool of usable pneuma. Regeneration draws from it (see [[#The pool|The pool]]). Its level is described as '''rich''', '''spent''' or '''void'''. A void pool is empty, so regeneration on void land is zero.


<pre>
The pneuma lost to a shaping goes '''dull''': it settles into the land where it was spent, separate from the usable pool. Pneuma released outside any vessel or soma — a creature slain with no victor, a [[Soma#Alchemy|dissonant reaction]] with no vessel in reach — goes dull the same way.
                FIRE
              (Hot + Dry)
              /      \
        EARTH            AIR
    (Cold + Dry)      (Hot + Wet)
              \      /
              WATER
            (Cold + Wet)
</pre>


Hybrids stay ''physical''. Water+earth is mud and clay, never "growth" — verdant life magic belongs to pure pneuma, not to an element pair.
'''Reclaiming''' converts dull pneuma back into the usable pool. [[Celaborans]] reclaim. Whether anything else can is open.


A hybrid spell consumes pneuma of both parent elements, and its mastery feeds both attunements. Hybrid casters are naturally neighbor-pair specialists (the storm-caller and the frost-caller share nothing), with no extra machinery.
== The pool ==


=== Opposition ===
Each creature holds an unbounded reserve of pure pneuma.


Opposition lives '''in the world, never in the soul''':
The '''baseline''' is the amount of pneuma that circulates in the creature's vessel (Law I). Below baseline the creature is '''depleted''' and draws from the land's usable pool to refill: faster the deeper the deficit, faster where the land is rich, slower where it is spent. Regeneration stops at baseline. Pneuma above baseline is '''surplus''', and comes only from absorption and trade. The regeneration rate is below the spend rate of combat.


* '''Annihilation.''' Opposed pneuma forced together cancels its flavors, leaving pure pneuma at a loss. This is a craft, not a cast: anyone can force two opposed typed items together — an alchemist's bench, not a caster's own body — and it requires no attunement at all, because Law 3's mastery only governs a ''person's own'' drawing-in and shaping-out, never a reaction between two inert items. Annihilation is how pure enters trade: it cannot be node-harvested directly, only refined this way or generated by a person's own effort.
* Filling: absorption from elemental sites, slain creatures or phials.
* '''Interactional counters.''' Counters are verbs, not percentages: water quenches burning effects and extinguishes fire walls; each element counters exactly one and is countered by exactly one. No flat damage multipliers.
* Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing into phials.
* '''No attunement opposition.''' Deepening one element never impedes its opposite (Law 3: mastering one flavor never costs another). Mastery of all four is honestly achievable — the ledger already prices it; no wall is needed.


== Where pneuma comes from ==
=== The vessel grows ===


* '''Elemental sites and nodes.''' Typed pneuma is drawn in at places where an element runs strong — springs, vents, groves, currents. Abundance is a ''gradient'', not a zone: everywhere has some of everything, and sites shift the local mix. A mountain riverbank yields both water and earth. There is no "fire area."
Baseline is a function of lifetime pneuma spent. The function is sublinear; the exact curve is open. Baseline only ever rises.
* '''Creatures.''' Everything alive carries pneuma and releases it when slain. A fire spirit yields fire pneuma — it was life-stuff steeped in flame. An ordinary animal yields a trickle of pure. Drops are not arbitrary currency; you are releasing what animated the creature.
* '''The self.''' Every character slowly regenerates pure pneuma just by being alive (Law 2) — their own breath. Deliberate practice (exercise, meditation) can push this harder than passive regeneration alone, though it remains far less efficient than engaging the world or the market.


== Carrying pneuma: the pool ==
=== Surplus and condensation ===


A person's own reserve is a single, unbounded pool of plain pure pneuma (Law 3). There is no separate reserve per element, no capacity to grow, and no cap to hit. What varies by flavor is not how much you can hold, but how efficiently pneuma moves across the boundary of your own body in either direction:
Condensation uses surplus only. Spending below baseline is allowed.


* '''Absorbing.''' Drawing typed pneuma out of the world — a crystal, a vent, a fresh kill — and into your own pool always converts it to plain pure. How much pure you get out of a given amount of typed pneuma is set by your mastery of that flavor: a fire adept draws deep from a vent that leaves a novice with barely a trickle.
=== Death ===
* '''Condensation.''' Pneuma also moves between bodies and vaults without ever entering a person: typed pneuma condensed into crystals or vials (or pure, refined by annihilation) is inert, storable, and freely tradeable. This is the only form pneuma takes while it is not inside a living thing.


Because absorption is where pneuma stops being effort and starts being currency, everyone — caster or not — feels their own mastery here first: a well-attuned fire warrior fills their pool at a vent faster than an unattuned one, before either of them ever spends a drop.
Death is the vessel breaking (see [[Soma#Death|Soma]]). A creature at zero pneuma is exhausted.
 
When a creature is slain, its surplus is released. The victor absorbs a fixed share; the rest goes dull into the land where the body fell. The share is open. Baseline, mastery and affinity are unchanged by death. On respawn the pool is set to baseline. Phials are kept on death.


== Casting ==
== Casting ==


Casting a spell spends pure pneuma, shaped into the spell's flavor as it is spent (Law 3). There is only one path: draw on the pool of pure everyone carries, and pay whatever your mastery of that flavor makes the shaping cost. An unmastered flavor is not blocked, just expensive and weak; a mastered one is cheap and strong. This is symmetric with absorption — the same underlying mastery governs both directions of the boundary — but the two are trained together, since mastery is built only by spending, never by gathering (see the ledger, below).
Every working spends pneuma. An elemental spell spends soma as well:


== Progression: the ledger ==
* A '''pure''' spell (Blink, for example) spends pneuma straight from the vessel. Its cost is set by pure affinity.
* An '''elemental''' spell has a body of soma. The caster supplies the soma and the cast consumes it (see [[Soma#Casting|Soma]]). The cast binds pneuma into that soma. This is a shaping: it costs less with affinity for the soma (Law III) and always loses something (Law II).


Progression is resource-bound, not time-bound. The rule:
A spell's intrinsic requirement is fixed. Affinity lowers only the shaping loss around it, so cost falls with affinity toward a floor. Mastery raises the effect.


<blockquote>Pneuma channeled through a cast becomes that spell's experience. A spell's accumulated experience is its '''mastery'''. Your attunement to an element is the sum of mastery across that element's spells.</blockquote>
== Abilities ==


Consequences, all deliberate:
Abilities spend pure pneuma, and pure affinity sets the cost. An ability's body is the creature's own body and the weapon in hand, so its soma cost is zero.


* '''Spending is progressing.''' There is no tension between using pneuma and growing; hoarding is never correct. Absorbing pneuma into your pool, on its own, grants nothing — only pneuma actually spent through a cast or an exertion builds mastery (Law 3).
Every working spends pneuma, gathering and utility actions included. A gathering action spends pneuma and absorbs pneuma from the site in the same action. At a rich site the absorbed amount roughly matches the spent amount; at a spent site it is less. The exact ratio is open. Only the spent amount counts toward mastery and baseline.
* '''However you play is how you align.''' Attunement is derived from what you actually cast, not chosen from a menu.
* '''Attunement cannot be bought.''' Pneuma held grants nothing; only pneuma channeled counts. A rich buyer skips the gathering half, never the casting half — two gates, one for sale. Cast throughput (cast times, cooldowns) is therefore the progression pacing lever.
* '''Practice casting counts.''' A cast need not accomplish anything to leave residue — channeling fire into the air is legitimate practice. The pneuma cost makes it self-limiting.
* '''Grinding a cheap spell is self-limiting''' by construction: it burns real gathered resources slowly.


'''What attunement does:''' it makes your spells in that element stronger and cheaper, and grants passive effects. It does not unlock spells — individual spells are learned from masters, spellbook drops, and quest rewards, then deepened by use.
== Affinity ==


=== The warrior ===
Affinity is tracked per soma, with pure as one more, and equals the sum of mastery across the abilities tagged with that soma (see [[#Key terms|Key terms]]). It lowers the Attrition loss of shaping through that soma (Law III).


The non-caster is not outside the system; they are its internal practitioner. Elementalists channel external, typed pneuma drawn from the world; a warrior cultivates the pure pneuma of their own body through exertion. Physical effort invests pure pneuma into weapon mastery, which sums into '''pure attunement''' — the same ledger (Law 3 treats "a cast" and "an exertion" identically), the opposite direction of flow.
The effect of the [[Soma#Elements|elemental square]] on affinity is open: whether allied affinities help each other ('''synergy''') and enemy affinities hinder each other ('''dissonance'''), and how (see [[#Open questions|Open questions]]).


== Trade ==
== Physical form ==


* '''Typed pneuma — sites, drops, crystals — is the primary market good''': freely gatherable and tradeable, and the raw material for both absorption and annihilation.
A phial holds bound pneuma. It is filled by condensation from a vessel's surplus and emptied by absorption; each is a shaping (Law II). Every other physical elemental good is soma (see [[Soma#Sources|Soma]]).
* '''Pure pneuma cannot be gathered from the world directly.''' It only exists refined — by annihilation of an opposed pair (a craft anyone can perform, always lossy) — or generated by a person's own effort (self-regeneration, deliberate exercise). Refined pure is a legitimate market good like anything else; trade sells fuel, never power, since the same handful of pneuma does more in a more deeply attuned pair of hands.


== Open questions ==
== Open questions ==


* What does deep '''pure attunement''' concretely grant the warrior beyond weapon mastery? Likely tied to how elemental imbuing works, which is proposed but not yet designed.
* The effect of the elemental square on affinity: whether and how synergy and dissonance affect affinity growth or shaping cost.
* Should warriors and other non-casters reach elemental effects through imbued gear (weapons, armor)? Proposed, not yet designed — deliberately deferred until the base pneuma system above is settled.
* Whether affinity also lowers the soma cost of an elemental working.
* Is there a "death" or corrupting force opposed to pneuma? Largely rejected as a new substance in favor of death being a violation of Law 1's annihilation (destruction with no pure residue) and undead being beings whose Law 2 self-generation has failed — but this is explicitly deferred until the base system above is fully settled.
* The victor's share of a slain creature's surplus.
* Ambient dynamics: should weather and time shift local pneuma abundance (storms surging air)?
* The baseline curve, and the gathering absorb ratio.
* Concrete numbers everywhere: absorption and casting efficiency curves at each mastery level, self-regeneration rate, annihilation loss rate, condensation costs.
* Whether anything besides Celaborans can reclaim dull pneuma.
 
 
 
 
CONCEPTING
 
Problem; having only Pneuma has a single type of resource inherently causes certain content/sources of Pneuma to be irrelevant and useless as they are much less efficient than other methods, thus is dead content and wont be used/played
 
Solution: having different "types of Pneuma/resources" would make many more situations viable to do as all types of resources are needed to do anything and avoids content becoming dead and makes the world a little more interconnected
 
-these supplemental resources would be similar to catalyst runes in OSRS, not like another element

Latest revision as of 04:54, 7 September 2026

Pneuma is the world's life-force. It is a resource that creatures gather and spend, and the basis of character progression. Its counterpart is soma, the matter it animates: pneuma is energy and soma is matter. A creature's pneuma is its power and its soma is its health.

Form

Pneuma has one form, pure. An element is a kind of soma. Pneuma bound in fire soma is the same pneuma as pneuma bound in anything else.

Pneuma is always held in one of two ways: circulating through a vessel (Law I), or bound in soma. Bound pneuma is inert. It can be carried, stored and traded. Pneuma released outside any vessel or soma goes dull where it is (see Land).

A phial is soma made to hold bound pneuma. It is the only physical form of pneuma (see Physical form).

The Three Laws

Law I — Vitality. Pneuma circulating through a vessel — soma arranged to carry it — is alive; pneuma bound in soma is inert. The structure of a creature's vessel determines what the creature can do, and the amount of pneuma in it determines the creature's power. An empty vessel is exhausted (see Death).

Law II — Attrition. Every shaping (see Key terms) loses part of the pneuma moved. Carrying and storing bound pneuma are free.

Law III — Affinity. Affinity for a soma lowers the Attrition loss of shaping through it. Affinity grows by spending pneuma through that soma.

Key terms

  • Creature: anything with a vessel. A player is a creature a person plays.
  • Working: a spell or an ability.
  • Shaping: any move of pneuma between a vessel and soma. Every shaping loses part of the pneuma moved (Law II).
    • Binding: shaping into soma.
    • Absorption: shaping out of soma into the absorber's own vessel. Sources are elemental sites, slain creatures and phials.
    • Condensation: binding from one's own vessel into a phial.
  • Mastery: one ability's accumulated experience, measured as the total pneuma spent through it.
  • Affinity: a creature's alignment to one soma, with pure counted as one more. Affinity for a soma is the sum of mastery across the abilities tagged with it. Affinity lowers shaping cost (Law III).

Sources

  • Elemental sites. Wherever an element is concentrated — a river, a fire, a mountain — pneuma is bound in the soma there. Absorption removes the pneuma; the soma remains. The soma yield of a site is on the Soma page.
  • Creatures. A slain creature releases its pneuma (see Death).
  • Phials. Pneuma condensed into a phial can be absorbed back out of it.
  • The self. A creature below baseline refills from the land (see The pool).

Land

Land holds a pool of usable pneuma. Regeneration draws from it (see The pool). Its level is described as rich, spent or void. A void pool is empty, so regeneration on void land is zero.

The pneuma lost to a shaping goes dull: it settles into the land where it was spent, separate from the usable pool. Pneuma released outside any vessel or soma — a creature slain with no victor, a dissonant reaction with no vessel in reach — goes dull the same way.

Reclaiming converts dull pneuma back into the usable pool. Celaborans reclaim. Whether anything else can is open.

The pool

Each creature holds an unbounded reserve of pure pneuma.

The baseline is the amount of pneuma that circulates in the creature's vessel (Law I). Below baseline the creature is depleted and draws from the land's usable pool to refill: faster the deeper the deficit, faster where the land is rich, slower where it is spent. Regeneration stops at baseline. Pneuma above baseline is surplus, and comes only from absorption and trade. The regeneration rate is below the spend rate of combat.

  • Filling: absorption from elemental sites, slain creatures or phials.
  • Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing into phials.

The vessel grows

Baseline is a function of lifetime pneuma spent. The function is sublinear; the exact curve is open. Baseline only ever rises.

Surplus and condensation

Condensation uses surplus only. Spending below baseline is allowed.

Death

Death is the vessel breaking (see Soma). A creature at zero pneuma is exhausted.

When a creature is slain, its surplus is released. The victor absorbs a fixed share; the rest goes dull into the land where the body fell. The share is open. Baseline, mastery and affinity are unchanged by death. On respawn the pool is set to baseline. Phials are kept on death.

Casting

Every working spends pneuma. An elemental spell spends soma as well:

  • A pure spell (Blink, for example) spends pneuma straight from the vessel. Its cost is set by pure affinity.
  • An elemental spell has a body of soma. The caster supplies the soma and the cast consumes it (see Soma). The cast binds pneuma into that soma. This is a shaping: it costs less with affinity for the soma (Law III) and always loses something (Law II).

A spell's intrinsic requirement is fixed. Affinity lowers only the shaping loss around it, so cost falls with affinity toward a floor. Mastery raises the effect.

Abilities

Abilities spend pure pneuma, and pure affinity sets the cost. An ability's body is the creature's own body and the weapon in hand, so its soma cost is zero.

Every working spends pneuma, gathering and utility actions included. A gathering action spends pneuma and absorbs pneuma from the site in the same action. At a rich site the absorbed amount roughly matches the spent amount; at a spent site it is less. The exact ratio is open. Only the spent amount counts toward mastery and baseline.

Affinity

Affinity is tracked per soma, with pure as one more, and equals the sum of mastery across the abilities tagged with that soma (see Key terms). It lowers the Attrition loss of shaping through that soma (Law III).

The effect of the elemental square on affinity is open: whether allied affinities help each other (synergy) and enemy affinities hinder each other (dissonance), and how (see Open questions).

Physical form

A phial holds bound pneuma. It is filled by condensation from a vessel's surplus and emptied by absorption; each is a shaping (Law II). Every other physical elemental good is soma (see Soma).

Open questions

  • The effect of the elemental square on affinity: whether and how synergy and dissonance affect affinity growth or shaping cost.
  • Whether affinity also lowers the soma cost of an elemental working.
  • The victor's share of a slain creature's surplus.
  • The baseline curve, and the gathering absorb ratio.
  • Whether anything besides Celaborans can reclaim dull pneuma.



CONCEPTING

Problem; having only Pneuma has a single type of resource inherently causes certain content/sources of Pneuma to be irrelevant and useless as they are much less efficient than other methods, thus is dead content and wont be used/played

Solution: having different "types of Pneuma/resources" would make many more situations viable to do as all types of resources are needed to do anything and avoids content becoming dead and makes the world a little more interconnected

-these supplemental resources would be similar to catalyst runes in OSRS, not like another element

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