Origins

Long ago, during that time of trouble known as the Demon Wars, Humanity needed a way to fight against the powerful spiritual powers of L’ruhk and his fallen minions, and called out unto Trigu for aid. What they recieved was something that changed the face of history itself: the knowledge and ability to use Kren. Kren are, when all is said and done, small focused packets of Dol energy anchored* by being bound into the shape of a card**.

The usefulness of Kren over regular magics of the time was that instead of setting up a ritual and spending massive amounts of time to perform a spell, once could instead use a Kren to perform a needed effect. This was especially useful in combat, where healing and battle magics are needed on an instantaneous basis, and where rituals are neither easy to perform or timely. This was where the practice of using cards as the anchor came up, because what soldier didn’t have space for a deck of cards in his pack? Portability is something an army always thinks about, and card-Kren fit the bill perfectly.

As with any war, however, by the time it was finished much knowledge had been lost, including that of normal ritual magics. Instead of trying to redevelop the old ways, the people attached themselves to Kren, that form of quick-fix magic that allowed them to handle problems instantly, and within four or five generations ritual magic was less than a legend, something mentioned only in the oldest of myths, which themselves were told only on the rarest of occasions. By the current age, all knowledge of ritual magic is gone from the minds of humanity.

Dol is composed of the five elements, and by extension, so are Kren. These Houses, as they are called, are as follows.

Vol (Fire)
Cas (Water)
Sil (Earth)
Ort (Air)
Zun (Void)

To add an interesting twist, Dol energy can be concentrated in varying amounts, which has resulted in the formation of 7 Tiers of Power; in ascending order, they are: Do, Re, Ka, Si, Tu, Mu, and Cen. Kren from the Do Tier are minor, almost cantrip-like in their power. A flame to light a candle, a gust of wind, etc. Re Tier Kren are not much better, though they are capable of more, perhaps healing someone with a flu or such. Onward and upwards we go, to the Si level of Kren. Si Kren are the ones most used in battle, for with it one can summon lightning, throw waves of fire, and restore lost limbs.

Mu Kren are a rarity amongst even the Order of Kren, who hold an (almost) exclusive monopoly on all Kren production. When you hear of great feats of magic, chances are the magician in question was using a Mu Kren. With these, the blind can see, the lame can walk, entire platoons of soldiers disappear in a flash of light. Players should see perhaps one of these used in a single campaign, else it will lose some of the awe and might that it otherwise has.

And the last. Cen Kren are legendary. An epic saga of world-shaking proportions will see one of these used in the final climactic scene, when the main villian is a(n) {insert high level, omigoshthisthingwillblowuptheworldifwedon’tstopit monster here}. All that magical energy used in rituals to open the gates to the Nether Realms, to summon Cthulhu, to do all that other nasty stuff, all packed in an itty-bitty card, ready for instant casting. Cen cards are the highest level of power you can get short of divine interference.

Kren are named by the House, with a prefix denoting the Tier. So a Fire Kren of the 3rd Tier is a Ka-Vol. A Void Kren of the 5th Tier is a Tu-Zun. Naming is very, very simple.

To keep things from being too restricting, I have outlined a basic system to be considered when using Kren. Chances are that I will be using some variation of this system, though it will doubtless be changed in more than one way.

Magic in Tyren requires a will to focus Dol energy into a task. However, any one person can only support so much Dol energy being channeled through their soul before it burns out, much like a candle. Each character will therefore have something roughly like an “MP” gauge that, depending on the Tier of Kren used, will slowly be drained. This gauge is fairly permanent in how much Kren can be used in a time period, though certain special feats and/or skills will be available to increase it. In game events will also increase this limit somewhat, but otherwise the players are going to have a static limit on how much Kren their soul can support.

   That said, there will always be exceptions to the rule. Characters will have the option of using their Life Force to support a magical operation if they have no more “soul energy” to do so. This will, of course, be a last-resort that shouldn’t be done lightly. Unlike the traditional “Health Points”, Life Force is a different, separate factor in a character. Think of it as the potential age that a character can have, if nothing else goes wrong. Each year, a point is subtracted from their Life Force, and when it reaches zero, they drop over dead. So, when a person uses their Life Force to power magical operations, they effectively reduce their lifespan. *smirks* Unless, of course, they happen to be of the persuasion to steal the Life Force of other people. This is the reasoning behind a sacrifice for powerful rituals, but that’s a whole other can of beans.

Multi-casting
It must be mentioned that higher-level adepts who use Kren will have the option to multi-cast, in that they can use more than one Kren to power a spell. For example, you could throw molten lava at an opponent using a Si-Vol mixed with a Si-Sil.*** While it allows one to be much more diverse in how one uses magic, it also comes at a price, because supporting two Kren at once is much harder on the soul than supporting those same two Kren at different times. It is, for the most part, an exponential increase in difficulty, as splitting your concentration more than one way gets extremely hard after once or twice. No pain no gain.

*The Dol energy is anchored because otherwise it would diffuse into the surrounding environment, and wouldn’t be the instantaneous magic that makes Kren so useful.

**Dol energy is not limited to being bound into cards, as will be shown in at least one campaign I plan to run. It is, however, a useful myth that the Order of Kren propagates to keep their stranglehold upon Kren (and thusly, magic).

***When multicasting, the two (or more) Kren to be used together must be of the same Tier. If not, interesting things can happen as differing levels of Dol energy try to merge and do so imperfectly. I leave the specifics up to the GM in question, but it should be at least decently painful for the caster to do so.

Overview and the Three Rules

Magic in Tyren was in the past mostly ritual, until the Demon Wars began. Then there was a shift in magic usage, so that magic could be used in a fraction of the time it would take to perform a ritual: in essence, Kren were originally used as battle magic. True magic is ritual in nature, and follows a few basic rules.

1) All magic is invoked by focusing Dol energy into doing a certain task, such as creating a fireball, or opening the Gates to the Outside to let Cthulhu in, and requires a will to support the spell, to keep it coherent and together until finished.

2) Unlike Kren, Rituals take time to focus the magic, because they must gather Dol energy together during the ritual (as compared to Kren, which already have the required energy gathered and held in a single place). This is part of the reason why a will is needed to support each spell.

3) As with Kren, any one soul can only support so much energy before it burns out like a candle, so ritual magic is similarly limited in scope.

Of course, one can always bend the rules or tilt them in your favor, and that’s all of what ritual magic is about. If one didn’t do anything, just focused their will into trying to do something, one would drop over dead long before enough energy to do anything had been gathered. That is why you will find that rituals tend to have candles, pentagrams, etc. These things help to add more focus to the ritual, gathering energy faster and holding it in the area to be used later. The net effect of this is that you can actually cast a spell before you drop dead from lack of eating, for you must have pure uninterrupted concentration to properly focus and support a spell.

In direct relation to the adding of ritual items, there is a certain way to go about it. Yes,  a rock might allow you to gather energy faster for a Vol (Fire) spell, but that rock is predominantly Sil (Earth) energy, and would be better suited for a spell affecting Earth, such as an earthquake. Therefore, choosing the proper items for a ritual is important. In the above example, a proper item to use would be burning candles, or any other item predominantly associated with fire.*

Of course, while one might gather a few rocks around to help aid in gathering energy (for those rocks are suffused with it, and thus will act as a conduit for Earth Dol), once again the proper item would be better. In this case, a larger rock would be better for gathering more energy and holding it in place for use (yes, larger IS better for rituals). Even better than that is an item, once more a rock, that has been used in previous rituals. Such a rock has already been used for the task at hand (gathering energy), and so will make the job easier/quicker.**/***

The observant person is now wondering, “Well, what items will help in focusing Zun (Void) energy for a spell? After all, there is no real object or location for Void as an element.” Simple, I reply. There is really only one way to gather energy for a Zun spell.

Blood.

More specifically, energy. Pure energy doesn’t manifest in anything naturally except in living creatures (to understand why, go look back at my descriptions of the elements, found in the overview. Blood has long been associated with power, which makes sense, because in Tyren your blood is what holds your soul inside your body.

So, if you want to gather Zun energy you need something that’s predominantly Zun. Blood fits the bill perfectly, and that is why sacrifices to do purely kinetic things (such as opening the Gates of the Outside to let Cthulhu in) require blood, and lots of it. Of course, if you wished to and had one to spare, a magical/enchanted item will do just as well, because in order to hold an enchantment to an item it must be bound with Zun, otherwise that ambient energy will dissipate rather quickly.

Blood, as the soul-anchor, is also useful in working/gathering large amounts of Dol energy. This circumvents the normal limitations of a single person being able to do just so much without burning out. See the mechanics section of Kren to get a rough thought about using the Life Force (blood) of yourself and others.

*Because Kren are at their essence concentrated Dol energy, using Kren (whether one or more) in a ritual would be very useful as a source of power. This, however, is only truly applicable to times when a ritual is absolutely required (once again, like opening those Gates to the Outside to let Cthulhu in).

**Location is just as important, if not more so, than ritual items. Stonehenge would be perhaps the best place for someone in our world to cast an earth spell, due to it’s massive stone pillars and it’s connection (whether real or fake) with magic. Another example would be the Temple of the Earth God. Ect, etc.

***In the time before the Demon Wars, when ritual magic was still common, magicians would have carried around certain objects that had been used in other rituals, so if they needed assistance in a spell, they could have an aid right on hand.