Pneuma: Difference between revisions

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

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-'''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.
-== Forms ==
+== Form ==
-Pneuma exists in one '''pure''' form and four '''elemental''' flavors it takes on when steeped in the world:
+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.
-# Water
+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]]).
-# 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.
+A '''phial''' is soma made to hold bound pneuma. It is the only physical form of pneuma (see [[#Physical form|Physical form]]).
-== Where pneuma comes from ==
+== The Three Laws ==
-* '''Elemental sites and nodes.''' Typed pneuma is harvested or mined from 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."
+'''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]]).
-* '''Creatures.''' Everything alive carries pneuma and releases it when slain. A fire spirit drops 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 regenerates a small internal reserve of pure pneuma — their own breath. It is slow to refill and never large.
-== Item and reserve ==
+'''Law II — Attrition.''' Every shaping (see [[#Key terms|Key terms]]) loses part of the pneuma moved. Carrying and storing bound pneuma are free.
-Pneuma is both a thing you carry and a stat you have:
+'''Law III — Affinity.''' Affinity for a soma lowers the Attrition loss of shaping through it. Affinity grows by spending pneuma through that soma.
-* '''World pneuma is physical''' — motes, crystals, vials — held in inventory, banked, and traded.
+== Key terms ==
-* '''The internal reserve is personal''' — a small, slowly regenerating pool of pure pneuma. It is enough for casual casting or making do, never enough for serious work. Even a master fills their pouch before a real fight.
-== Casting and transmutation ==
+* '''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).
-Casting an elemental spell consumes pneuma of that element. There are two ways to supply it:
+== Sources ==
-* '''Consume carried typed pneuma.''' Anyone can do this, attuned or not. Harvested pneuma is always the efficient fuel.
+* '''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]].
-* '''Transmute from the internal reserve.''' A caster attuned to an element can convert their own pure pneuma into that element on the fly. Transmutation is gated on attunement (the unattuned cannot do it at all) and is ''always lossy'' — deepening attunement makes it less wasteful, never free. It is an emergency reserve, not self-sufficiency; the deepest fire adept still wants harvested fire pneuma.
+* '''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]]).
-== Progression: the ledger ==
+=== Land ===
-Progression is resource-bound, not time-bound. The rule:
+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>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>
+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.
-Consequences, all deliberate:
+'''Reclaiming''' converts dull pneuma back into the usable pool. [[Celaborans]] reclaim. Whether anything else can is open.
-* '''Spending is progressing.''' There is no tension between using pneuma and growing; hoarding is never correct.
+== The pool ==
-* '''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.
+Each creature holds an unbounded reserve of pure pneuma.
-=== The warrior ===
+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.
-The non-caster is not outside the system; they are its internal practitioner. Elementalists channel external, typed pneuma harvested 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, the opposite direction of flow.
+* Filling: absorption from elemental sites, slain creatures or phials.
+* Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing into phials.
-== Trade ==
+=== The vessel grows ===
-* '''Typed pneuma is the market good''' — freely tradeable fuel. Trade sells fuel, never power: the same handful of fire pneuma does more in deeper-attuned hands, so the caster is the catalyst, not the consumable.
+Baseline is a function of lifetime pneuma spent. The function is sublinear; the exact curve is open. Baseline only ever rises.
-* '''Pure pneuma is not freely tradeable or node-harvestable.''' It is mostly ''made'' — refined from typed pneuma at a loss (a crafting chain), or generated by one's own effort. This keeps pure from collapsing into a universal wildcard and keeps the warrior's progression unbuyable.
+=== Surplus and condensation ===
+Condensation uses surplus only. Spending below baseline is allowed.
+=== Death ===
+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 ==
+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#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).
+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|Key terms]]). It lowers the Attrition loss of shaping through that soma (Law III).
+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]]).
+== 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#Sources|Soma]]).
 == Open questions ==
-* What does deep '''pure attunement''' concretely grant the warrior? The cosmology is settled; the payoff is not.
+* The effect of the elemental square on affinity: whether and how synergy and dissonance affect affinity growth or shaping cost.
-* Do elements '''interact''' — opposition, combination, counters?
+* Whether affinity also lowers the soma cost of an elemental working.
-* Ambient dynamics: should weather and time shift local pneuma abundance (storms surging air)?
+* The victor's share of a slain creature's surplus.
-* Exact refinement chain for distilling typed pneuma into pure.
+* 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

Pneuma: Difference between revisions

Tyg13 (talk | contribs)

Latest revision as of 04:54, 7 September 2026

Contents

Form

The Three Laws

Key terms

Sources

Land

The pool

The vessel grows

Surplus and condensation

Death

Casting

Abilities

Affinity

Physical form

Open questions

Navigation menu

Pneuma: Difference between revisions

Tyg13 (talk | contribs)

Latest revision as of 04:54, 7 September 2026

Form

The Three Laws

Key terms

Sources

Land

The pool

The vessel grows

Surplus and condensation

Death

Casting

Abilities

Affinity

Physical form

Open questions

Navigation menu

Search