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Cleanup: move elemental-square image into the definitions block and condense the elements to one line + image; fold in hybrids table; delete now-duplicate Forms and elemental-square sections (drop ASCII diagram) and the three redundant per-law essays; promote Opposition to a top-level section (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.


== Pneuma, and how it's handled ==
== Form ==


Pneuma comes in one '''pure''' form and four '''elemental''' ones. Pure pneuma is the plain breath of life and carries no element. Elemental pneuma is pure pneuma that has taken on one element. Life-magic works on pure pneuma directly.
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.


'''The four elements'''
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]]).


[[File:Aristotle's Elemental Square.gif|thumb|The four elements arranged by quality. Each edge names the quality its two elements share; the pair across a diagonal shares none.]]
A '''phial''' is soma made to hold bound pneuma. It is the only physical form of pneuma (see [[#Physical form|Physical form]]).


Each element is a pair of qualities, a temperature (hot or cold) and a moisture (wet or dry): fire hot and dry, air hot and wet, water cold and wet, earth cold and dry. Two elements that share a quality (adjacent on the square) are allies; the two that share none (across a diagonal) are enemies. Every element has two allies and one enemy.
== The Three Laws ==


'''When two elements meet'''
'''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]]).


{| class="wikitable"
'''Law II — Attrition.''' Every shaping (see [[#Key terms|Key terms]]) loses part of the pneuma moved. Carrying and storing bound pneuma are free.
! Relation !! Reaction !! Result
|-
| Allies (share a quality) || Synergy || Combine into a hybrid
|-
| Enemies (share none) || Dissonance || Cancel into pure, less than went in
|}


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


{| class="wikitable"
== Key terms ==
! Allies !! Shared quality !! Hybrid
|-
| Fire + Air || Hot || lightning, storm
|-
| Fire + Earth || Dry || magma, forge-heat
|-
| Water + Air || Wet || mist, ice, tempest
|-
| Water + Earth || Cold || mire, clay
|}


Hybrids are physical; water and earth make mud and clay. Verdant life-magic is pure pneuma, not any pairing.
* '''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).


'''Terms'''
== Sources ==


* '''Shaping''' moves pneuma between pure and elemental: give pure breath an element, or unmake an element back into pure.
* '''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]].
* '''Affinity''' is how strongly a living thing is aligned to one element, measured separately for each. It belongs to the breather, not the element.
* '''Creatures.''' A slain creature releases its pneuma (see [[#Death|Death]]).
* '''Carrying and storing''' moves or holds pneuma without shaping it, keeping its form. This handling alone comes free.
* '''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]]).


== The Three Laws of Pneuma ==
=== Land ===


Every breath-worker learns these three before anything else.
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.


<blockquote>
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.
'''I. Vitality.''' Pneuma is life. Anything holding pneuma is alive, and anything alive holds pneuma. Put pneuma into something lifeless and it wakes; take its pneuma away and it goes still. To breathe is to live, to live is to breathe.


'''II. Attrition.''' Shaping always costs. Whenever pneuma crosses between pure and elemental, or two enemies cancel into pure, part of it is spent in the crossing. Only carrying and storing come free.
'''Reclaiming''' converts dull pneuma back into the usable pool. [[Celaborans]] reclaim. Whether anything else can is open.


'''III. Affinity.''' An element only answers someone who breathes it. Your affinity to an element grows by shaping that element and no other way, never by holding, hoarding, or buying it. The higher it climbs, the less each shaping loses, always just short of a clean crossing. Growth means spending; no coin buys mastery.
== The pool ==
</blockquote>


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


Opposition plays out most plainly in the world, yet it is felt within the practitioner as well:
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 both elements and leaves pure pneuma behind, always less than went in. This is a craft rather than a spell: anyone may press two opposed typed items together at an alchemist's bench, with no attunement at all, since a practitioner's mastery governs only the pneuma they themselves draw in and shape out, and has no bearing on a reaction between two inert items. Annihilation is one way pure pneuma reaches the market, since no elemental site yields it directly; it stands alongside the pure harvested from slain creatures and the pure a body generates of its own accord.
* Filling: absorption from elemental sites, slain creatures or phials.
* '''Counters.''' Counters take the form of actions rather than modifiers. Water quenches burning and douses walls of fire; each element counters exactly one other and is in turn countered by one other, and none of it reduces to a flat damage multiplier.
* Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing into phials.
* '''Opposition of attunement.''' Deepening one element suppresses its opposite within the same practitioner — the deeper one's fire, the weaker and slower-won their water, and likewise air against earth — while neighbors carry no such penalty. This is a rising cost, not a wall: every element stays masterable, and even both halves of an opposed pair can be won with enough effort. Alongside it, a gentler drag on all further gains as one's total attunement grows makes mastering everything a long road rather than an impossible one. Pure stands outside the square and has no opposite, so it neither suffers this opposition nor imposes it, feeling only the drag of the total.


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


* '''Elemental sites and nodes.''' Typed pneuma is drawn in wherever an element runs strong — at springs, vents, groves, and currents. Its abundance shifts by degree rather than by boundary: every place holds a little of everything, and a site only tilts the local mix. A mountain riverbank yields both water and earth, and nowhere is wholly a land of one element.
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 gives it up when slain. A creature steeped in an element yields that element — a fire spirit gives up fire pneuma — while a common beast, bound to no element, yields pure. What a creature releases is simply what animated it, set loose. The pure drawn from ordinary living things is the surest source of pure pneuma the world offers, and the warrior's counterpart to the elementalist's vents and springs.
* '''The self.''' Every living body slowly regenerates pure pneuma of its own accord — its own breath (Law 1). Deliberate practice such as exercise or meditation quickens this beyond idle regeneration, though it stays far slower than drawing on the world or the market.


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


A practitioner's own reserve is a single unbounded pool of pure pneuma (Law 2). It keeps no separate store for each element, has no capacity to raise, and never runs full. The pool's size never varies; an element governs only how readily pneuma crosses the body's boundary, inward or outward:
Condensation uses surplus only. Spending below baseline is allowed.


* '''Absorbing.''' Drawing typed pneuma out of the world — from a crystal, a vent, or a fresh kill — into one's own pool renders it down to pure. How much pure results from a given measure of typed pneuma depends on one's mastery of that element: a fire adept draws deep from a vent that leaves a novice with barely a trickle.
=== Death ===
* '''Condensing.''' Pneuma can also pass between bodies and vaults without ever entering a person. Typed pneuma condensed into crystals or vials — or pure pneuma refined by annihilation — sits inert, and can be stored and traded freely. This is the only form pneuma keeps while outside a living thing.


Because absorption is where pneuma turns from labor into currency, every practitioner feels their mastery here before anywhere else: a well-attuned fire warrior fills their pool at a vent far faster than an unattuned one, before either has spent a single 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 element as it leaves the body (Law 3). Every caster works the same way, drawing on the common pool of pure pneuma and paying whatever cost their mastery of that element sets. An unmastered element still answers a caster, though dearly and feebly, while a mastered one answers cheaply and with strength. Casting mirrors absorption — the same mastery governs pneuma crossing the body's boundary in either direction — and the two grow together, since mastery is earned by spending pneuma and never by gathering it (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 bound to resources rather than to time. The governing 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''', and one's attunement to an element is the sum of mastery across that element's spells.</blockquote>
== Abilities ==


This carries several consequences:
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 advancement.''' Using pneuma and growing in power are one and the same act, so hoarding gains nothing. Pneuma merely absorbed into the pool yields no progress on its own; only pneuma 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.
* '''Play shapes alignment.''' A practitioner's attunement follows from what they actually cast, and is never chosen outright.
* '''The system leans toward specialization.''' Alignment comes quickly at first and slows as it accumulates, and deepening one element suppresses its opposite (see Opposition, above). Committing to an element and its neighbors is the path of least resistance, while straddling an opposed pair or mastering everything at once is a long grind rather than a barred door.
* '''Attunement cannot be bought.''' Since only channeled pneuma counts, wealth can carry a caster past the gathering but never past the casting. For this reason the rate at which spells can be cast — their cast times and cooldowns — is what ultimately paces a practitioner's growth.
* '''Idle practice still counts.''' A cast need not achieve anything to leave its residue; channeling fire into empty air is practice enough, and its pneuma cost keeps such practice from ever being free.
* '''Grinding a cheap spell limits itself,''' since even a cheap spell steadily consumes gathered pneuma.


'''What attunement grants:''' it makes a practitioner's spells in that element stronger and cheaper to cast, and confers passive benefits as well. It does not by itself unlock new spells — those are learned from masters, from spellbook drops, and as quest rewards, then deepened through 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 stands within the same system as an inward practitioner of it. Where an elementalist channels typed pneuma drawn from elemental sites, a warrior works in pure pneuma alone, replenished by their own breath and by the pure released from all they slay. Physical effort invests that pure pneuma into weapon mastery, which gathers into '''pure attunement''' by the very same ledger — for it counts a cast and an exertion alike (Law 3) — with only the direction of flow reversed.
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''' — from sites, drops, and crystals — is the chief good of the market: freely gathered and traded, and the raw stock 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''' comes from three sources: the pure harvested from slain creatures that hold no element, the pure a body generates for itself through regeneration and deliberate exercise, and pure refined from an opposed typed pair by annihilation — a craft anyone may perform, though it always loses a little in the making. No elemental site yields pure, so it never wells from the ground the way typed pneuma does. Pure trades as freely as any other good; what the market sells is fuel, while the power to spend it well belongs to attuned hands alone, where the same handful of pneuma achieves far more.


== 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 3's annihilation (destruction with no pure residue) and undead being beings whose Law 1 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.
* The '''opposition of attunement''' rule reverses the earlier "no attunement opposition" decision, which was settled jointly in an earlier design round. It wants that same joint review before it is treated as final.
* Whether anything besides Celaborans can reclaim dull pneuma.
* Concrete numbers everywhere: absorption and casting efficiency curves at each mastery level, self-regeneration rate, annihilation loss rate, condensation costs, the strength of opposition suppression between opposed elements, and the soft-cap curve on total attunement gain.
 
 
 
 
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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