Pneuma

Pneuma is the world's life-force. Everything alive holds it; anything holding it is alive. It is both the resource you gather and spend and the basis of character progression.

Forms

Pneuma has one pure form and four elemental forms.

• Pure — plain life-force, no element. Life-magic and all martial (warrior) 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.

• 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

Elements meeting	Relation	Reaction	Result
Share a quality	Allies	Synergy	Combine into a hybrid
Share none	Enemies	Dissonance	Cancel into pure (less than went in)

Hybrids — an allied pair combines around the quality they share:

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 + earth makes mud and clay). Life-magic is pure pneuma, not a pairing.

The Three Laws

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 costs. Any time pneuma crosses between pure and elemental — or two enemies cancel to pure — part of it is spent. Only carrying and storing are free.

Law III — Affinity. An element only answers someone with an affinity for it. Affinity grows only by spending that element (casting or exertion), never by holding, hoarding, or buying it. The higher the affinity, the less each cast loses to Attrition.

Key terms

• Shaping — moving pneuma between pure and elemental, either direction. Always costs (Law II).
• Affinity — how strongly a living thing is aligned to one element. Tracked per element, per practitioner. Sets casting cost and power. Grows only 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.
• Carrying / storing — holding or moving pneuma without changing its form. Free.

Synergy and dissonance

The ally and enemy relations reach beyond the substance reactions above.

Synergy (allied elements, sharing a quality) — two faces:

• Substance (hybrids). An allied pair combines around its shared quality (see Reactions).
• Progression. Deepening an element eases and strengthens its two allies — building one element makes its neighbors come easier.

Dissonance (diagonal enemies, sharing nothing) — one relationship, three faces:

• Crafting (annihilation). Two opposed typed items pressed together at an alchemist's bench cancel to pure, always less than went in. Needs no affinity — the reaction is between the items, not the crafter. One of the few sources of pure.
• Combat (counters). Each element answers its opposite: water quenches fire, earth grounds air. Countering is an action, not a damage multiplier. See Combat.
• Progression (suppression). Deepening an element suppresses its opposite — weaker to wield and slower to raise. A rising cost, not a wall: both halves of a pair can be mastered, but it is a long road.

Pure sits outside the square: no allies, no opposite. It neither synergizes nor suppresses, and feels only the general drag on total affinity (see Progression).

Learn one diagonal and you have learned the enemy side everywhere: fire ↔ water, air ↔ earth.

Where pneuma comes from

• Elemental sites. Springs, vents, groves, currents. Abundance shifts by degree, not by border — everywhere holds a little of everything, and a site only tilts the local mix.
• Creatures. Everything alive gives up its pneuma when slain. An elemental creature yields its element; a common beast yields pure.
• The self. Every body slowly regenerates pure pneuma (Law I). Exercise or meditation speeds this, but far slower than gathering from the world or market.

The pool

Your reserve is a single, unbounded pool of pure pneuma.

• No per-element compartments — the pool holds only pure.
• No capacity to raise, and it never fills. Progression makes pneuma go further, not the pool bigger.
• Spending drains it; gathering refills it.

Affinity governs how efficiently pneuma crosses your body's boundary:

• Absorbing. Drawing typed pneuma from the world into your pool renders it to pure. Your affinity for that element sets how much pure you get — a fire adept drains a vent that leaves a novice a trickle.
• Condensing. Pneuma stored outside a body — typed pneuma in crystals or vials, or pure refined by annihilation — sits inert and trades freely. This is the only form pneuma keeps outside a living thing.

Casting

A spell spends pure pneuma, shaped into its element as it leaves you (Law III).

• Every caster draws from the same pure pool.
• Affinity for the element sets the price. Mastered: cheap and strong. Neglected: still fires, but costs far more and hits far weaker.
• Casting and absorbing use the same affinity (crossing the boundary either way) and grow together — but only casting builds affinity (see Progression).

Progression

Progression is bound to what you spend, not to time.

Core rule: pneuma channeled through a cast becomes that spell's mastery. Affinity for an element is the sum of mastery across its spells.

Consequences:

• Spending is advancement. Only pneuma spent through a cast or exertion builds affinity. Pneuma merely absorbed does nothing on its own; hoarding gains nothing.
• Alignment emerges from play. Affinity follows what you actually cast — never chosen outright.
• Specialization is the path of least resistance. Affinity comes fast at first and slows as it grows. Deepening an element eases its allies (synergy) and suppresses its opposite (dissonance), so committing to an element and its neighbors is the easy road; a gentle drag on all gains as total affinity rises makes straddling an opposed pair — or mastering everything — a long grind, not a barred door.
• Affinity can't be bought. Wealth carries you past the gathering, never past the casting. Cast times and cooldowns ultimately pace growth.
• Idle practice counts. A cast need not hit anything to leave its residue; its pneuma cost keeps practice from ever being free.

What affinity grants: spells in that element are stronger and cheaper, plus passive benefits. It does not unlock new spells — those are learned from masters, drops, and quests, then deepened by use.

Mastering all four elements is the game's long aspiration — not a normal endgame state but a lifetime achievement. Dissonance is what gives it weight: a master has fought the suppression headwind the whole way and ends with no weak element and no bad matchup. See Combat for what that means in a fight.

The warrior

A non-caster is the same system, inverted. A warrior works in pure pneuma alone — regenerated by their own breath and released from everything they slay — and invests it through physical exertion into weapon mastery. That gathers into pure affinity by the same ledger (a cast and an exertion count alike, Law III), with only the direction of flow reversed.

Trade

• Typed pneuma (sites, drops, crystals) is the market's main good — freely gathered and traded, the raw stock for both absorbing and annihilation.
• Pure pneuma comes from three places: slain elementless creatures, a body's own regeneration, and annihilation of an opposed typed pair. No site yields pure from the ground. Pure trades freely — the market sells fuel; the affinity to spend it well is not for sale.

Open questions

• Concrete numbers. Absorption and casting efficiency at each affinity level, regeneration rate, annihilation loss, condensation costs, synergy and suppression strength, and the total-affinity drag curve. These curves are the master dial: they set how far the game leans toward specialization versus mastery of all, and how strongly allies reinforce and opposites suppress one another.
• Hybrids in play. Are hybrid spells a distinct track, or gated by both parent affinities? (Proposed: gated by the weaker parent, learned as spells like any other.)
• Imbued gear. Should non-casters reach elemental effects through weapons and armor? Proposed, deferred until the base system settles.
• A death/corrupting force. Largely rejected as a new substance — death framed instead as annihilation that leaves no pure residue at all, and undead as bodies whose Law I self-generation has failed. Deferred.
• Ambient dynamics. Should weather and time shift local pneuma abundance (storms surging air)?