Add definitions block (forms, elements table, reactions, terms) before the laws so every term is in scope before use (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. Everything alive holds it; anything holding it is alive. It is both a resource you gather and spend and the basis of character progression.
== Pneuma, and how it's handled ==
== Forms ==
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 '''pure''' form and four '''elemental''' forms.
'''The four elements'''
* '''Pure''' — plain life-force, no element. Life-magic and all physical power run on pure.
* '''Elemental''' — pure pneuma bound to one of the four elements: fire, air, water, or earth.
{| class="wikitable"
[[File:Aristotle's Elemental Square.gif|thumb|The four elements on a square. Each edge joins two elements that share a quality — a temperature (hot or cold) or a moisture (wet or dry); the diagonals share none.]]
! Element !! Temperature !! Moisture !! Allies !! Enemy
|-
Each elemental form also has:
| Fire || Hot || Dry || Air, Earth || Water
|-
* '''Allies''' — two elements that share a quality (adjacent on the square). Every element has two allies.
| Air || Hot || Wet || Fire, Water || Earth
* '''Enemies''' — the two elements that share no quality (diagonal). Every element has exactly one enemy.
|-
| Water || Cold || Wet || Air, Earth || Fire
|-
| Earth || Cold || Dry || Fire, Water || Air
|}
Elements sharing a quality are allies; elements sharing none are enemies. Every element has exactly two allies and one enemy.
== Reactions ==
'''When two elements meet'''
When two elements are combined, a reaction occurs. What reaction occurs depends on the relationship between the two elements.
{| class="wikitable"
{| class="wikitable"
! Relation !! Elements !! Reaction !! Result
! Elements combining !! Relation !! Reaction !! Result
|-
|-
| Allies || Share a quality || Synergy || Combine into a hybrid
| Share a quality || Allies || '''Synergy''' || Combine into a hybrid
|-
|-
| Enemies || Share no quality || Dissonance || Cancel into pure, less than went in
| Share none || Enemies || '''Dissonance''' || Cancel into pure (less than went in)
|}
|}
'''Terms'''
'''Hybrids''' are created when two allied elements are combined. The type of combination depends on the shared quality of both elements:
* '''Shaping''' moves pneuma between pure and elemental: give pure breath an element, or unmake an element back into pure.
{| class="wikitable"
* '''Affinity''' is how strongly a living thing is aligned to one element, measured separately for each. It belongs to the breather, not the element.
! Allies !! Shared quality !! Hybrid
* '''Carrying and storing''' moves or holds pneuma without shaping it, keeping its form. This handling alone comes free.
== The Three Laws of Pneuma ==
Long before scholars gave it a name, every breath-worker's first teaching held the same three truths, and no apprentice has yet found cause to doubt them.
<blockquote>
'''I. Vitality.''' Pneuma is the force that underlies all life. To breathe is to live, to live is to breathe — they are one and the same.
'''II. Attrition.''' No shaping of pneuma is without loss. Pneuma may be imbued with an element, and imbued pneuma unmade back into pure, but nothing crosses that threshold whole — the deeper one's affinity, the less it leaves behind, but never nothing.
'''III. Affinity.''' Every element embraces its neighbor and attacks its opposite: what is close may be joined, what stands in opposition, forced together, unmakes both, leaving nothing but breath beneath them. So too an element draws close only to the one who breathes it, and remains a stranger to the one who merely holds it.
</blockquote>
=== I. Vitality ===
It is why a mountain spring runs cold with both water and earth at once, never one alone; why a slain salamander gives up fire enough to warm a hand, though it lived its whole life on nothing grander than insects and shade; why even the stillest hermit, who has never lifted a blade nor spoken a spell, wakes each morning a little fuller than the night before.
=== II. Attrition ===
An alchemist who forces fire against flood in a crucible is left with pure pneuma, always less of it than the two elements held between them — the loss is not a debt owed to anyone, only the price of the crossing itself. It is the same toll paid when pneuma is drawn from a vent into a body, or unmade from pure into a spell: some part is always spent on the shaping and never seen again. No teaching, however deep, closes that gap to nothing.
=== III. Affinity ===
A flame held near a gust becomes a storm's lightning; held near stone, a forge's magma. But hold flame against flood, or wind against mountain, and neither survives the meeting — only breath remains, and less of it than either side began with.
So it is between a breath-worker and the elements they touch. One well-versed in fire draws deep from a vent that leaves a stranger with almost nothing for the same reach; and to call that breath back out again, shaped as fire or frost or storm, costs less and carries further the closer that bond runs. The bond itself is built only one way — by spending, never by holding. This is why the deepest fire-sworn in the world still kneels at a vent before battle, and why no buyer of pneuma, however rich, has ever purchased their way into closeness with an element: coin buys the breath, never the affinity to shape it.
The same attack the elements wage upon their opposites in the world plays out, more quietly, within a single breath-worker. As one grows close to fire, water grows cold and distant to them — its breath answers slower and thinner in a hand already sworn to flame — and the water-sworn find fire recede from them just the same. Neighbors bear one another no such grudge; only true opposites contend for the same soul. None of this shuts a door: a breath-worker may still come to know all four, and even both halves of an opposed pair, but the road across an opposition is the longest one, walked only by those willing to spend the effort it demands.
== Forms ==
Pneuma exists in a single '''pure''' form and, when steeped in the world, in any of four '''elemental''' ones:
# Water
# Fire
# Earth
# Air
Pure pneuma is the animating spirit itself, holding no element. Healing, growth, and other "life magic" draw on pure pneuma rather than on any fifth element, since to mend a living thing is to handle pure spirit directly. Earth covers stone, soil, and mountain alike.
By Law 2, whatever crosses into a body is unmade back to pure as it enters, so a practitioner carries only pure pneuma within, never elemental. An element's identity persists instead out in the world — in sites, creatures, and condensed crystals — and in a practitioner's mastery of it, never in the body's own reserve.
The elements follow the classical (Aristotelian) square of qualities (Law 3): fire is hot and dry, air hot and wet, water cold and wet, and earth cold and dry. Opposites share no quality — fire stands against water, air against earth — while neighbors share exactly one, and only neighbors may combine:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
! Element !! Qualities !! Opposite (annihilates to pure) !! Combines with → hybrid
|-
|-
| '''Fire''' || Hot + Dry || Water || Air → lightning / storm-fire; Earth → magma / forge-heat
| Fire + Air || Hot || Lightning
|-
|-
| '''Air''' || Hot + Wet || Earth || Fire → lightning / storm-fire; Water → mist / ice / tempest
| Fire + Earth || Dry || Magma
|-
|-
| '''Water''' || Cold + Wet || Fire || Air → mist / ice / tempest; Earth → mire / clay / the deep places
| Water + Air || Wet || Mist, ice
|-
|-
| '''Earth''' || Cold + Dry || Air || Fire → magma / forge-heat; Water → mire / clay / the deep places
| Water + Earth || Cold || Mud
|}
|}
Laid out as a diagram, neighbors sit adjacent while opposites sit across from one another:
== The Three Laws ==
<pre>
FIRE
(Hot + Dry)
/ \
EARTH AIR
(Cold + Dry) (Hot + Wet)
\ /
WATER
(Cold + Wet)
</pre>
Hybrids remain physical. Water and earth together make mud and clay; verdant life magic belongs to pure pneuma, not to any pairing of elements.
There are three simple laws which describe the rules of how pneuma works.
A hybrid spell consumes pneuma of both its parent elements, and its mastery feeds both attunements. A caster of hybrids is therefore a specialist in a neighboring pair, and the storm-caller and the frost-caller share no common ground.
'''Law I — Vitality.''' Pneuma is life. Anything holding pneuma is alive; anything alive holds pneuma. Fill a lifeless thing with pneuma and it wakes; drain it and it goes still.
=== Opposition ===
'''Law II — Attrition.''' Shaping has a cost. Any time pneuma is converted between pure and elemental, or two enemies annihilate one other, part of it is spent. Only carrying and storing it are free.
Opposition plays out most plainly in the world, yet it is felt within the practitioner as well:
'''Law III — Affinity.''' Elements favor those with an affinity for it. Affinity grows by spending that element (casting or exertion). The higher the affinity, the less each conversion loses to Attrition.
* '''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.
== Key terms ==
* '''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.
* '''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 ==
* '''Shaping''': converting pneuma between pure and elemental, either direction. Always costs (Law II).
** '''Absorption''': the act of siphoning energy from physical elemental pneuma present in consumables or in the world, to fill one's pneuma reserves.
** '''Condensation''': the act of transferring one's pneuma reserves into physical elemental pneuma for later consumption.
* '''Affinity''': how strongly a living thing is aligned to one element. Tracked per element, per practitioner. Sets casting cost and power. Grows by spending that element (Law III).
* '''Mastery''': a single spell's accumulated experience. Affinity for an element is the sum of mastery across its spells.
* '''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.
== Sources ==
* '''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 ==
* '''Elemental sites.''' Throughout the world, wherever elements are present - a river, a burning fire, a rocky mountain.
* '''Creatures.''' Everything alive gives up its pneuma when slain. An elemental creature yields its element; a common beast yields pure.
* '''Consumables.''' Pneuma can be condensed into physical form, which can be consumed to yield its power. Both pure and elemental pneuma can be condensed.
* '''The self.''' Every body slowly regenerates their pure pneuma (Law I). Exercise or meditation speeds this, but far slower than gathering from the world or market.
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:
== The pool ==
* '''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.
Each living creature has an unbounded reserve of '''pure''' pneuma.
* '''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.
* Filling: absorbing elements from the world, pneuma from other creatures, or by consuming physical pneuma.
* Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing pneuma into physical form.
== 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).
Pneuma is the primary resource used to cast spells. Each spell draws a specific kind of pneuma: pure or elemental. Since creatures only have a pool of pure pneuma, to cast elemental spells, they must convert it. This conversion is more or less efficient based on one's affinity with that element (Law III), and is never lossless (Law II). Each spell has an associated mastery which governs how powerful that spell's effect is.
== Progression: the ledger ==
Progression is bound to resources rather than to time. The governing rule:
<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:
Pneuma is the primary resource used to power physical abilities. Each ability uses pure pneuma, and one's pure affinity determines how much the ability costs. Warriors, rangers, rogues, and other non-magical combatants all primarily use abilities.
* '''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).
== Affinity ==
* '''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.
Casting a spell grants affinity to its user corresponding to the type of pneuma needed, pure or elemental.
=== The warrior ===
Affinity governs how cheap it is to convert back and forth between pure pneuma and elemental (to cast it, or condense it).
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.
Just like living creatures have affinity, elements have affinities too: allies and enemies. An element's ally can be combined to create powerful hybrid spells, and growing one's affinity in an element does not hinder one's ability to grow their affinity in an allied element. This effect is called '''synergy'''. An element's opposite destroys or negates it, and growing one's affinity in an opposing element is more difficult. This effect is called '''dissonance'''.
== Trade ==
Due to how affinity works, a spellcaster is naturally inclined to pick a particular element and stick to it. Due to how synergy and dissonance work, a spellcaster who wishes to grow their affinity in multiple elements will likely pick an ally of their first chosen element. Since each element has an enemy, and each ally is an enemy of each other (e.g. fire has allies air and earth, which are both opposites), players will typically pick an element pairing according to a shared quality (hot/cold/wet/dry), and hybridize. As one grows their mastery, it is eventually possible to become a master of all four elements, despite how dissonance works.
* '''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.
== Physical form ==
* '''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 ==
Physical pneuma comes in two forms:
* 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.
* '''Typed pneuma''': dropped by elemental creatures, siphoned from elemental sources, or condensed by spellcasters. This is the primary market good that gets traded.
* 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.
* '''Pure pneuma''': dropped in very small amounts from slain elementless creatures, or created by annihilating elemental pneuma of opposite types. This is a luxury resource which is much harder to come by in large quantities.
* 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.
* Ambient dynamics: should weather and time shift local pneuma abundance (storms surging air)?
* 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.
* 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.
Latest revision as of 09:05, 20 July 2026
Pneuma is the world's life-force. Everything alive holds it; anything holding it is alive. It is both a resource you gather and spend and the basis of character progression.
Pneuma has one pure form and four elemental forms.
Pure — plain life-force, no element. Life-magic and all physical power run on pure.
Elemental — pure pneuma bound to one of the four elements: fire, air, water, or earth.
The four elements on a square. Each edge joins two elements that share a quality — a temperature (hot or cold) or a moisture (wet or dry); the diagonals share none.
Each elemental form also has:
Allies — two elements that share a quality (adjacent on the square). Every element has two allies.
Enemies — the two elements that share no quality (diagonal). Every element has exactly one enemy.
Reactions
When two elements are combined, a reaction occurs. What reaction occurs depends on the relationship between the two elements.
Elements combining
Relation
Reaction
Result
Share a quality
Allies
Synergy
Combine into a hybrid
Share none
Enemies
Dissonance
Cancel into pure (less than went in)
Hybrids are created when two allied elements are combined. The type of combination depends on the shared quality of both elements:
Allies
Shared quality
Hybrid
Fire + Air
Hot
Lightning
Fire + Earth
Dry
Magma
Water + Air
Wet
Mist, ice
Water + Earth
Cold
Mud
The Three Laws
There are three simple laws which describe the rules of how pneuma works.
Law I — Vitality. Pneuma is life. Anything holding pneuma is alive; anything alive holds pneuma. Fill a lifeless thing with pneuma and it wakes; drain it and it goes still.
Law II — Attrition. Shaping has a cost. Any time pneuma is converted between pure and elemental, or two enemies annihilate one other, part of it is spent. Only carrying and storing it are free.
Law III — Affinity. Elements favor those with an affinity for it. Affinity grows by spending that element (casting or exertion). The higher the affinity, the less each conversion loses to Attrition.
Key terms
Shaping: converting pneuma between pure and elemental, either direction. Always costs (Law II).
Absorption: the act of siphoning energy from physical elemental pneuma present in consumables or in the world, to fill one's pneuma reserves.
Condensation: the act of transferring one's pneuma reserves into physical elemental pneuma for later consumption.
Affinity: how strongly a living thing is aligned to one element. Tracked per element, per practitioner. Sets casting cost and power. Grows by spending that element (Law III).
Mastery: a single spell's accumulated experience. Affinity for an element is the sum of mastery across its spells.
Sources
Elemental sites. Throughout the world, wherever elements are present - a river, a burning fire, a rocky mountain.
Creatures. Everything alive gives up its pneuma when slain. An elemental creature yields its element; a common beast yields pure.
Consumables. Pneuma can be condensed into physical form, which can be consumed to yield its power. Both pure and elemental pneuma can be condensed.
The self. Every body slowly regenerates their pure pneuma (Law I). Exercise or meditation speeds this, but far slower than gathering from the world or market.
The pool
Each living creature has an unbounded reserve of pure pneuma.
Filling: absorbing elements from the world, pneuma from other creatures, or by consuming physical pneuma.
Draining: casting spells, using abilities, condensing pneuma into physical form.
Casting
Pneuma is the primary resource used to cast spells. Each spell draws a specific kind of pneuma: pure or elemental. Since creatures only have a pool of pure pneuma, to cast elemental spells, they must convert it. This conversion is more or less efficient based on one's affinity with that element (Law III), and is never lossless (Law II). Each spell has an associated mastery which governs how powerful that spell's effect is.
Abilities
Pneuma is the primary resource used to power physical abilities. Each ability uses pure pneuma, and one's pure affinity determines how much the ability costs. Warriors, rangers, rogues, and other non-magical combatants all primarily use abilities.
Affinity
Casting a spell grants affinity to its user corresponding to the type of pneuma needed, pure or elemental.
Affinity governs how cheap it is to convert back and forth between pure pneuma and elemental (to cast it, or condense it).
Just like living creatures have affinity, elements have affinities too: allies and enemies. An element's ally can be combined to create powerful hybrid spells, and growing one's affinity in an element does not hinder one's ability to grow their affinity in an allied element. This effect is called synergy. An element's opposite destroys or negates it, and growing one's affinity in an opposing element is more difficult. This effect is called dissonance.
Due to how affinity works, a spellcaster is naturally inclined to pick a particular element and stick to it. Due to how synergy and dissonance work, a spellcaster who wishes to grow their affinity in multiple elements will likely pick an ally of their first chosen element. Since each element has an enemy, and each ally is an enemy of each other (e.g. fire has allies air and earth, which are both opposites), players will typically pick an element pairing according to a shared quality (hot/cold/wet/dry), and hybridize. As one grows their mastery, it is eventually possible to become a master of all four elements, despite how dissonance works.
Physical form
Physical pneuma comes in two forms:
Typed pneuma: dropped by elemental creatures, siphoned from elemental sources, or condensed by spellcasters. This is the primary market good that gets traded.
Pure pneuma: dropped in very small amounts from slain elementless creatures, or created by annihilating elemental pneuma of opposite types. This is a luxury resource which is much harder to come by in large quantities.
