Soma
Soma is the world's matter. Everything is made of it: ground, sea, flame, wind, tools, bodies. Soma is not alive; pneuma is what animates it. Pneuma is energy and soma is matter. A creature's pneuma is its power and its soma is its health.
Soma is a physical quantity. It is gathered, split, recombined, traded and spent.
Elements
Soma comes in four elements: fire, air, water and earth. "Fire soma" is soma of the fire element. Everything in the world is soma of one element or a blend of several. Soma of each element is a thing that can be held, stacked and traded.
The four elements stand in fixed relation:
- Allies: two elements that share a quality (adjacent on the square). Every element has two allies.
- Enemies: two elements that share no quality (diagonal). Every element has one enemy.
These relations are properties of the soma. Pneuma bound in soma does not change them.
The Two Laws
Law I — Persistence. Soma is never destroyed, only rearranged. Every craft takes soma in one arrangement and leaves it in another. Compare Attrition on the Pneuma page: pneuma is lost to every shaping; soma is not.
Law II — Vessel. A vessel is an arrangement of soma that can carry circulating pneuma. A vessel with pneuma circulating in it is alive (Vitality). The arrangement decides what the vessel can do; the pneuma is the same in every vessel.
Alchemy
Alchemy is the craft of soma: splitting a thing into the soma it is made of, and recombining soma into new things. Any thing can be split, and the yield is the blend the thing was made of. Most soma is obtained by splitting.
What two elements do when recombined depends on their relation:
| Elements combining | Relation | Reaction | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Share a quality | Allies | Synergy | Hold together as a hybrid |
| Share none | Enemies | Dissonance | Separate and release the pneuma bound in both |
Hybrids are what allied elements make together. The hybrid is determined by the shared quality and by the ratio of the two elements: different ratios of the same pair give different hybrids.
| Allies | Shared quality | Hybrids |
|---|---|---|
| Fire + Air | Hot | Lightning |
| Fire + Earth | Dry | Magma |
| Water + Air | Wet | Mist, ice |
| Water + Earth | Cold | Mud |
Dissonance: the two elements separate, and both persist (Law I). All pneuma bound in either is released. Released pneuma enters the nearest vessel if one is in reach; otherwise it goes dull (see Land on the Pneuma page). What counts as in reach is open.
Sources
- Elemental sites. Wherever an element is concentrated — a river, a fire, a mountain — soma of that element can be gathered. The same sites hold bound pneuma (see Sources on the Pneuma page).
- Creatures. A slain creature's body is soma in its blend (see Composition). Splitting it yields that blend.
Casting
An elemental spell has a body of soma. The caster supplies the soma and the cast consumes it. The soma becomes part of the effect and is not destroyed (Law I): a fireball is fire soma moved by pneuma. Pure spells and abilities consume no soma (see Casting on the Pneuma page).
The body
Composition
Every body is a blend of the four elements, fixed by creature type and unchanged over its life. Damage of an element does less to a body with much of that element in it and more to a body with little. This is resistance.
Health
A body has a volume, set by its size, and a density: how much soma its volume can hold. Maximum health is volume times density. Current health is the soma the body holds above what its structure needs to carry a current. Damage removes soma from the body. When health reaches zero, the vessel breaks.
A giant has a larger volume than a person, so a higher maximum. A veteran and a novice have the same volume; the veteran has the higher density.
Tempering
Density rises with damage taken and recovered from. Density is independent of every value on the Pneuma page: baseline does not raise it, and casting does not lower it.
Healing
Healing puts soma back into the body, up to its maximum. Food is soma, and eating is the ordinary way to heal. A healing consumable restores soma; a phial restores pneuma.
Death
Death is the vessel breaking: the body no longer holds an arrangement of soma that can carry a current. Its soma persists (Law I). Its pneuma leaves it as described under Death on the Pneuma page. A creature at zero pneuma is exhausted, not dead.
Open questions
- Origin. Where the world's soma came from.
- Numbers. Blend proportions, resistance strength, the density curve and the soma cost of a working.
- Ratio hybrids. Which ratios of each allied pair give which hybrids.
- Reach. How near a vessel must be to catch the pneuma a dissonant reaction releases.
- Spent soma. Whether the soma a cast consumes can be recovered from where it lands.
- Affinity and soma. Whether affinity lowers the soma cost of a working (see Open questions on the Pneuma page).