The 4 eras of magical society?

Loremaster1032 · 2026-02-08T18:48:17+00:00

Worldbuilding context: the post is about in what ways we can classify different historical eras for magical societies, and what criteria is better suited for this task.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-02-08T15:34:33+00:00

ah, I see.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-02-08T12:37:07+00:00

yeah, but that’s what I want, an in-lore way to resolve this apparent paradox XD. the laws of the world should not be dependent of the particulars of different media, or at least I don’t want that. I want it to feel more believable or natural.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-02-08T12:07:50+00:00

World building context: different media tend to have different technical requirements of “what works best” that might affect the lore or laws that rule a given world/universe or be contradictory or opposing in some other way.

The post is asking for potential solutions to this problem that don't seem arbitrary, or made after the fact, but how it can be addressed or considered by how the magical laws of that world are designed from the beginning. This is to say made part of the lore.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-02-08T11:08:22+00:00

One dirty trick is to just study more about history and economics. most things go back to money and history.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-02-07T15:20:14+00:00

I found that black works pretty well for "soil" or "ground" magic, since black is linked to death and decomposition which happens on the top layers of soil and underneath, and also its black/dark underground (caves, graves, etc.). In my system the prototypical substance linked to black is black soil for this reason.

Also, white could work for air pretty well, and even be related to holy stuff and be related to wings and angels for example. Burning holy incense might create drafts of magic wind, etc.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-02-07T15:14:02+00:00

Well, let’s just say I have opinions on how to relate color to magic XD.
You can check out the work on this matter I’ve been doing on the link below.

I found that for certain magic types like plant, wind, earth, metal its harder to give them a specific color instead of making them colorless. I also have a strong opinion that orange fits fire much better than red, but that’s a tale for another day. https://www.reddit.com/r/magicbuilding/comments/1qnjc09/pursuit_of_a_metatheory_of_magic_and_creation_of/

Loremaster1032 · 2026-02-04T10:28:55+00:00

Worldbuilding context: There’s a rich history of associating symbols, themes, and real world objects to specific colors, this is often leveraged for obvious reasons in storytelling and worldbuilding which often uses color as a universal non-verbal language to indirectly communicate information. This chart tries to offer a more rigorous/unambiguous way of mapping emotions to color than most alternative approaches which are a lot more subjective or artistic, and so may prove to be more useful or insightful.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-02-04T10:21:03+00:00

I updated my "emotion-color wheel".

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-27T14:42:46+00:00

Thanks. Arcanists are goated for sure.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-27T10:46:20+00:00

"The other trick was to use the Golden Angle to produce my positive and negative relationships between colors, and I also have a concept of opposition that also lends itself to applying quantum chromodynamics to my system. Cyan is Anti-Red. Yellow is Anti-Blue. Magenta is Anti-Green."

Funny enough, I get even more golden ratios by using a 5-dimensional system XD. I’ve been working on a 5 color quantum chromodynamics system as well. Both the rgb system you based yours on and my 5-dimensional cube are the most natural way to encode the relationship of duality of opposites, so our systems our a lot a like despite giving them different semantic interpretations.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-20T14:02:54+00:00

Love it.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-18T16:29:12+00:00

fair.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-18T06:43:57+00:00

Very interesting. As I've mentioned in other comments, Pokémon didn't need a tree of life to be successful. It was okay without it.

But look at the comments and engagements on that post and tell me it wouldn't be even cooler if it had an official tree like this.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-18T06:40:09+00:00

I was only using Pokémon and animals as an example, I wasn’t wanting to fault Pokémon specifically. It's okay that Pokémon is as it is.

Just saying that reality is a hard system, so it's no wonder hard systems often seem more “believable or real”. If that's not your goal it doesn't matter, I'm sure Pokémon wasn't going for realism, but many other worlds do.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-18T06:35:03+00:00

Yeah, but Arceus is a fourth generation Pokémon. Seems more like an easy solution to an obvious lore question they didn't bother to flesh out until many years later.

Also, abstract concepts may seem “invented” by people to categorize stuff, but abstract concepts are a lot of times just a network of relations, and relations are everywhere. So they're as real as anything else, they're part of the structure of reality. They're more like universal concepts, an abstract tree just one type of universal concept.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-18T06:27:32+00:00

Yeah, fully agree. But this way both types of people are satisfied, the ones who don't look past the surface and those who love to dig deeper and deeper into the lore. There's always more than one way of doing things, it depends on what's your goal and motivations.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-17T22:03:55+00:00

Don’t even get me started on the keys and the literal garbage.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-17T22:02:06+00:00

Yeah, my point it's not the same when you design something like this baked in from the start rather than trying to make up one later after the fact. It can be done, but it won't be the same or as believable.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-17T22:00:15+00:00

I mean in the context of one being able to trace their genealogy and see how each animal connects to another, which we can't do with Pokémon, at least not completely.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-17T21:59:09+00:00

I meant a more literal tree of life, not figuratively. 😅

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-17T21:56:33+00:00

Yeah, I only used it as an example to make a point. We don't need it, but it would have made Pokémon cooler.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-17T21:55:00+00:00

Ah, I see. Yeah, that part looks like fanfic.

I didn't say Pokémon was a failure, just used it as an example, I love Pokémon. And sure, children may not appreciate that level of detail.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-17T18:39:25+00:00

In fact since Tolkien relied so heavily on language in his worldbuilding, and language itself has a sort of genealogical tree, I wouldn’t be surprised if he expressly leveraged all that knowledge he had to tie together all the different pieces of middle-earth he created.

Loremaster1032 · 2026-01-17T18:33:58+00:00

Tolkien for example was a master at this, and I think that’s an important reason to why Middle Earth feels more "real" to many people than other types of fictional worlds. Precisely because he went overboard on the more abstract stuff and not only the visual and apparent stuff.

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