The Wikki details various hearth magics for each nation I am wondering if they happen every time somebody does things. I am as you can probably tell if you’ve met me that I am so anti magic it borders on obsession. Is it like something you have to believe in for it to work.
The reason I ask is that I am performing a knighting ceremony which obviously involves girding from dawnish hearth magic and I dont want anything magical happening as a result.
[quote=“Seren”]The Wikki details various hearth magics for each nation I am wondering if they happen every time somebody does things. I am as you can probably tell if you’ve met me that I am so anti magic it borders on obsession. Is it like something you have to believe in for it to work.
The reason I ask is that I am performing a knighting ceremony which obviously involves girding from dawnish hearth magic and I dont want anything magical happening as a result.[/quote]
Hearth magic isn’t Realm magic: it’s more like superstition with teeth. And unlike superstition, it believes in you.
In Dawn specifically, girding makes you better. If you are not properly girded for what you are doing, you are not as good at it. This is a small, mostly psychological but very real effect. Similarly, in Dawn, love is magic: Dawnish can love with a strength and a power that others struggle to match, and (for example) a favour from your love can drive out foul influences by the Power Of Love alone, so much so that my mage character looks at Dawnish giving favours and winces like he just saw someone pick up a live asp by the tail. Oaths throughout the Empire are hearth magic: giving your word means something, breaking an oath feels wrong. Similarly the bonds of nation are more than shared blood and shared culture: a Dawnish noble deliberately taking off the colours of their House and putting on, say, a King’s Stoke livery coat from the Marches should feel soiled by doing it, be that coat never so clean and the reputation of King’s Stoke never so great. These are more like laws of physics than handwavey chanty magic.
AIUI you can feel free to have a metaphysical tin ear - claim to be unaffected, etc - but it’s there.
This.
My impression of the gameworld is that the various phenomena of hearth-magic are just an everyday part of how the world works. They are in the same category as a lot of game-world effects that happen in our world as well, for example:
If you stroke a needle with a lodestone then it becomes a compass-needle that points north.
A magnifying glass can start fires when you focus sunlight to a point.
Sparks appear when you strike flint on steel.
When you add salt to ice it gets colder.
Egg-white goes from runny and transparent to solid and opaque when heated.
I think an aversion to the magic that magicians do is maybe roughtly parallel to an aversion in the real world to the use of electrical devices (really quite weird, but at least it’s a clearly defined class of stuff). Hearth-magic is more fundamental and widespread, bound up with everything.
One of my favourite lines about hearth magic, is that it’s superstition on the same level as the superstition that loadstone’s point north.
Any magical effect created would be focused around the persona of a knight of house seren, (and possibly speeding up the national mind control mode switch.) So if there was any roleplaying effect created it would be just reinforcing the feelings you would expect to find from someone being knighted (Possibly with a side order of distrust for magic*.)
So you have three options:
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Hearth magic might have the word magic in it, but there is a huge distinction between it and actual magic. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to not care about it. Your own potions can create more obviously magical effects, and create roleplaying effects as a side product. Magic is acts you have to be a magician to do, is a reasonable defination.
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I’m guessing the house isn’t a huge repository of magical knowledge, hearth magic is subtle and something we are conditioned to expect from our heros. When the power of love allows you to overcome a fear aura to save the knight that has your heart I doubt you are thinking this is a magical effect, similarly that you feel slightly more confident after your armour is put on again not overly magical. It’s possible that the house doesn’t seek it out, but unknowingly benefits from it from time to time.
(A lot of Dawnish ritual magic I’ve seen in play is heavily based around girding, so it’s possible they even know the elements are used in magic, with out understanding the house traditions might count.) -
There are ways to mitigate the power of it, basically self sabotage the ceremony in order to reduce the potency of the hearth magic. It’s based on the significance of the objects and the affection of the girder, if the house produces a fresh set of spurs every time and gets someone with no real connection to the knight to gird them, there won’t be any magic worth mentioning.
Another thing to note is I’m pretty sure any girding effect, ceases to be as soon as you remove the items of clothing.
*It amuses me that the house aversion to magic, could be reinforced by hearth magic.
The house has been compared to the Amish on several occasions, and called batshit crazy by several people (including the current earl).
Not using magic or enchanted items is Amish enough. Eschewing hearth magic is additionally honourless (no oaths), irreligious (no religion) and unpatriotic (no fealty to your Egregore or your Empress) - and poorly dressed to boot (can you put on your trousers without accidentally girding your loins?). In fact, it would be a legal question whether you were citizens, due to being philosophically opposed to the oath of citizenship: I’d advise against this option.
It would be like if the Amish decided that they eschewed all technology to the point of living in trees (not treehouses, just, y’know, trees) and eating raw meat.
Is there a particular reason why your group has this opinion? In a high fantasy world like Empire someone so blatantly opposed to all magic seems, odd…
Not to mention never using any magical equipment, potions or enchantments puts you at a disadvantage in battle. Assuming you go to battle of course, which as that involves a giant magical portal you probably don’t. And presumably your family never uses the Trods to travel as that’s powered by Spring magic so it must take you ages to get to and from Anvil. All though I suppose technically speaking you don’t really have much in the way of a family, as that would usually be made in the form of a band, which uses hearth magic to bind people together, and you need a mage to add someone to it.
Sorry if I am going on a bit, it’s just I’m struggling to see how someone who refuses all magic would even live in this society…
I would suggest that discussion is best explored on the field, please.
House Seren have been playing their beliefs since event 1 of the game, and can almost certainly talk about them IC, which seems rather more interesting for everyone than trying to argue OC about whether those are legitimate.
[quote=“Iulian”]
In Dawn specifically, girding makes you better. If you are not properly girded for what you are doing, you are not as good at it. This is a small, mostly psychological but very real effect. Similarly, in Dawn, love is magic: Dawnish can love with a strength and a power that others struggle to match, and (for example) a favour from your love can drive out foul influences by the Power Of Love alone, so much so that my mage character looks at Dawnish giving favours and winces like he just saw someone pick up a live asp by the tail. Oaths throughout the Empire are hearth magic: giving your word means something, breaking an oath feels wrong. Similarly the bonds of nation are more than shared blood and shared culture: a Dawnish noble deliberately taking off the colours of their House and putting on, say, a King’s Stoke livery coat from the Marches should feel soiled by doing it, be that coat never so clean and the reputation of King’s Stoke never so great. These are more like laws of physics than handwavey chanty magic.[/quote]
Great, now I’ve got Huey Lewis stuck in my head, and will do any time I walk through Dawn.