Day magic
Overview
The magic of day is insightful, cerebral, rational and calm. It grants crystalline clarity, and unquestionable certainty. It is the magic of the conscious mind, of logic and reason; of knowledge and understanding. It lives in the eternal quest for mastery of the self and the world; it whispers that what can be understood can ultimately be controlled. It is the unblinking light that, should a mortal stare into it for too long, brings blindness.
The most obvious use for the magic of Day is in divination. Rituals of the magic of Day are effective at scrying the present, but they might also be used to uncover details about past events and to prognosticate about the future. It is impossible to divine precisely who will survive on a battlefield, for example, because there is so much randomness and chaos; but it is possible to extrapolate the likely outcomes of actions based on past experience. Day magic excels at uncovering details - numbers of troops, for example, or the precise magnitude of an enchantment. It does not guess - it reveals or divines the truth with relentless precision.
It is a realm of cool intellect, and can be used to clear the mind or suppress unwanted passions, even to the point of cutting one off from one's emotions. Not all revelations are benign - the mortal mind and senses can be overwhelmed with information or blinding light. It is also a magic that purifies – it can be used to destroy poisons and corruptions of various sorts, and restore things to pristine, unsullied forms – although in doing so it can destroy qualities such as experience or taste. Food that is purified with the magic of Day tends to end up tasting quite bland, and alcohol is purified to the point where it is just water.
Magicians who make extensive use of Day magic often describe it as being filled with energy and clarity - to an almost painful degree. Without the precise will of the magician directing it, the magical power simply continues to build and build until the ritual magician can bear no more and the powerful sensation becomes almost painful. When performing a ritual magicians are often intensely aware of the way the magic flows through them, under the control of their will - almost as if they were living lenses focusing the unformed power of Day to achieve their goals.
It is the most powerful realm because it reveals the truth - with limitless understanding comes a limitless power to control the world.
Critics of Day magic often claim that the realm is possessed of a seductive hunger for precision and control, that it whispers to those who attempt such rituals, seducing the unwary as they attempt to master it. Most of the eternals of the realm are unified by a strong philosophy of determinism and some magicians versed in the Realm come to share this view.
Resonance
Divination
Both the Day and the Night Realm resonate with divination magics, but each realm takes a radically different approach. While the Night Realm concerns itself with instincts, feelings, and qualities, the Day Realm is only resonant with measurable commodities and with rational quantifiable facts. Numbers, distances, quantities, all fall within the realm of Day and rituals that divine these pieces of information or which apply the knowledge in some way (for example, to find deposits of valuable minerals or avoid dangers during trade) are far more powerful here than with any other realm.
Although the Day Realm is pre-eminent in the divination of quantifiable information, even this realm has limits and many responses will come as estimates. However the realm despises pure conjecture and though eternals from the realm can be convinced to provide an opinion, divinations performed using Day magic never provide anything more than the facts that can be verified.
Examples: Bright Lantern of Ophis, Revelation of the Jewel's Sparkling Heart, Skein of Years, Clear Lens of the Eternal River, Sular's Promise, Eyes of the Sun and Moon, The Eye of the High Places, Gralka's Gift to the Lost Seeker, Bright Eyes Gleam in the Depths, and the detect magic spell.
Revelation
The light of the Day realm dispels illusions, reveals secrets and shatters deceptions. It is the light of revelation that seeks the essential truth of all things. Revelation can be dangerous though; too much information can overwhelm a mortal mind. Likewise, too much light can damage mortal sight.
Examples: Piercing Light of Revelation, Swim Leviathan's Depth, All the World in a Grain of Sand, Revelatory Light of the Empyrean Spheres
Mastery
The Day Realm offers the gift of lucidity to those who can appreciate it. The realm resonates with any magics that help the subject be calm, rational, and clear headed. Skilled magicians have used the power of the realm to create rituals that help provide self-control of the mind and the body, focusing the attention and meditating to unlock memories and internal strength. The Day Realm encourages all these things in search of the ultimate goal, allowing the magician mastery of the world around them.
Examples: Solace of Chimes, Crystal Clarity of the Rational Soul, Illuminate the Higher Mind, Ascendance of the Highest Mind, Transcendent Mastery, and Clarity of the Master Strategist.
Perfection
The Day Realm abhors impurity and weakness and seeks to remove it wherever it can. It longs for perfect, unchanging order. Crystals in particular are the favoured materials of the realm and many Day magicians make use of them in their rituals. This resonance empowers many Day rituals making them effective at removing contaminants and poisons, or otherwise restoring things to their essential nature, as well as rituals that seek to perfect the self.
Examples: Ascetic Star of Atun, and Distillation of Diverse Parts.
Focus
Day magic offers more than just information. The skilled magician can use the power of the Realm to focus their efforts, allowing them to act in the optimum way at the essential moment. Such control can allow magicians to reach beyond their normal means or use their existing abilities in superhuman ways.
Examples: Horizon's Razor Edge, Sign of Aesh, Standing at the Threshold, Crystaline Focus of Aesh, and Alignment of Mind and Blade
Force
The Day Realm's association with light is well known, but the true resonance goes deeper than this. In the Day Realm light exists as an outpouring of energy, that drives all things before it. This tendency of the realm - to move things under the control of the wielder allows skilled magicians to use the energy of the Day Realm to repel their enemies.
Examples: Kimus' Glaring Eye, and the repel spell.
Dissonance
Deception
The Day Realm does not deceive, conceal or dissemble. While it tends to be direct rather than subtle, the Realm exists to bring the truth into the light and it cannot be used to hide information or obfuscate the facts.
Intuition
The Day Realm has no time for gut instincts, hunches or guesses, it deals only in quantities and facts. Some of the eternals of the realm can be cajoled into providing their view of something, based on the information they have, but this quality sets them apart from the Realm itself which provides no such conjecture.
This purity of approach can be a limitation. Divination rituals that use the Day Realm are always rigidly specific about what information they return, they are neither flexible nor adaptable.
Physicality
The Day Realm deals with concepts rather than materials - it divines information about them, but it doesn't manipulate physical objects. Day magic might be able to tell you why something was broken, but it cannot fix it. The realm is ethereal, and rituals that work directly on bodies and objects are often highly dissonant.
Passion
The Day Realm is the epitome of calm, methodical, rational thought. It might create powerful roleplaying effects, but they tend to be focused inward rather than outwards. It is much more likely to mute roleplaying effects than strengthen them and rituals that encourage passion and emotion are almost impossible to perform using Day magic.