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.

Each element is a pair of qualities, one temperature and one moisture:

Element	Temperature	Moisture
Fire	Hot	Dry
Air	Hot	Wet
Water	Cold	Wet
Earth	Cold	Dry

The four elements by quality. Adjacent elements share a quality (allies); diagonal elements share none (enemies).

• 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 attuned to it. Attunement grows only by spending that element (casting or exertion), never by holding, hoarding, or buying it. The higher the attunement, the less each cast loses to Attrition.

Key terms

• Shaping — moving pneuma between pure and elemental, either direction. Always costs (Law II).
• Attunement — 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. Attunement to an element is the sum of mastery across its spells.
• Carrying / storing — holding or moving pneuma without changing its form. Free.

Opposition

An element and its diagonal enemy oppose each other in three ways at once:

• Annihilation (crafting). Two opposed typed items pressed together at an alchemist's bench cancel to pure, always less than went in. Needs no attunement — the reaction is between the items, not the crafter. One of the few sources of pure.
• Counters (combat). Each element answers its diagonal opposite and is answered by it: water quenches fire, earth grounds air. Countering is an action, not a damage multiplier. See Combat.
• Attunement suppression (progression). Deepening one element makes its diagonal opposite weaker 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 has no diagonal. It neither suppresses nor is suppressed, and feels only the general drag on total attunement (see Progression).

Learn the diagonal and you have learned all three: 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.

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

• Absorbing. Drawing typed pneuma from the world into your pool renders it to pure. Your attunement to 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.
• Attunement to 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 attunement (crossing the boundary either way) and grow together — but only casting builds attunement (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. Attunement to an element is the sum of mastery across its spells.

Consequences:

• Spending is advancement. Only pneuma spent through a cast or exertion builds attunement. Pneuma merely absorbed does nothing on its own; hoarding gains nothing.
• Alignment emerges from play. Attunement follows what you actually cast — never chosen outright.
• Specialization is the path of least resistance. Attunement comes fast at first and slows as it grows; deepening one element suppresses its opposite; and total attunement carries a gentle drag on all further gains. Committing to an element and its allies is easy; straddling an opposed pair or mastering everything is a long grind, not a barred door.
• Attunement 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 attunement 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.

Mastery of all elements is the game's long aspiration — not a normal endgame state but a lifetime achievement. Opposition 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 attunement 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 power to spend it well belongs to attuned hands.

Open questions

• Concrete numbers. Absorption and casting efficiency at each attunement level, regeneration rate, annihilation loss, condensation costs, suppression strength, and the total-attunement drag curve. The suppression/efficiency curve is the master dial: it sets how far the game leans toward specialization versus mastery of all.
• Hybrids in play. Are hybrid spells a distinct track, or gated by both parent attunements? (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 as a Law III violation (destruction with no pure residue), undead as failed Law I self-generation. Deferred.
• Ambient dynamics. Should weather and time shift local pneuma abundance (storms surging air)?