Magic

Magic is the ability of individuals to manipulate the universe around them through sheer force of will. Not all people are able to do so as it is a gift of being able to connect to the otherworldly energies that permeate the universe.

Metaphysics
The energies of magic that permeate the universe are often equated by scholars to a patchwork cloth - it blankets the world but the frabric is not the same in all places. In some places it is thicker; in other areas it is thinner or perhaps even non-existent.

The ability of individuals to manipulat the fabric, usually called Aria, is equated with a wind an individual can create to push against the fabric in the place they are at. In the places where the fabric is thick, the effects are stronger; in places where they are thin, more "wind" gets through - reducing the individual's power. In places where the fabric is missing the mage in question may have no power at all.

while the area the mage is in affects their ability to perform magic it is just as important, if not more so, for their Aria to be strong. It is just as a stronger gust of wind would move the fabric more regardless of thickness, though dead zones are still dead zones.

because of the fact that magic is the ability to will things to happen, a high Conviction can allow a mage to push harder against the fabric more forcefully than through just their Aria alone. This can allow even the least powerful mage the ability to force things to happen if the will it hard enough. However, doing so can often lead the mage to be mentally drained, and thus care should be taken to any mage who does so.

However, magical abilities are still unpredictable in their reliability to all but the most powerful mages. Such individuals are rare and almost as if gods for the fact that they no longer try to make things happen - they just do.

Characters Using Magic
Magic in the game is handled like any other skill. There is a difficulty to cast a spell that must be beaten by a roll of a d20 plus a modifier of the relevant magic skill plus the character's Aria. If a player wants to increase their modifier to have a higher chance of success, they may drain a character's Conviction score into their Aria for purposes of that spell.

Certain magic Abilities allow the player to boost their Aria prior to use at the expense of taking time to cast. This may actually be required for casting certain spells at all.

Foci
Certain objects in the world bear power similar to magical effects. These itmes can be used to aid in a character's attempt to cast a specific spell by modifying their skill by a single point. What form these items take is subject to the GM, but are generally common-sense (torches assit in casting spells with temperature increasing affects for example).

Circles of Magic
All of the skills used to cast magic fall in to one of seven circles that deal with the different elements of magic. Each circle is different from the others quite fundamentally in their effects that they can produce. A character may choose to take skill ranks in as many of the circles as they wish but specializing tends to increase the likelihood of success when casting spells.

The circles are as follows:
 * Prime
 * Energy
 * Element
 * Mind
 * Planar
 * Dimension
 * Life

Power Levels
All magical and some natural effects in the game have power levels. These power levels are an abstracted number to represent how powerful an effect is taking place.

The different forms of power are as follows: Whenever attempting to increase or decrease the power of a certain effect on an area it is always relative to the ambient power level. For example, trying to raise Heat to power level two is easier if the ambient heat is level one than to raise it from level zero, and vice-versa.
 * Electric
 * Gravity
 * Heat
 * Kinetic
 * Light
 * Sound
 * Weave

Skill Difficulties & Cost
When attempting to cast a magic spell, the difficulty to beat with your on a d20 roll is first based off of the range you wish to use the power at: After this base difficulty, the spell effects chosen to be cast then add on to that based off of how powerful the desired effects are - also called the "magnitude". How difficult the magnitudes are per iteration is in the description of the spell effects in the independant entries for the different magic circles mentioned above.
 * Melee - 10 Difficulty
 * Ranged - 15 Difficulty to a range of 6" (30'). +1 is added to this per 1"(5') range beyond the original 6"(30').

The EXP cost to increase magic skills is 4 times that of normal skills (rank 1 & 2 both cost 4 XP each to buy for example).

Magic Abilities & Traits
Main article: Magic Abilities & Traits 

There are Abilities & Traits specific to magic use. These are limited only to characters that are actually capable of using magic (as they are obviously of no use to a character who cannot use magic).