reproduction of a magical species

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dooooooooc
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reproduction of a magical species

Post by dooooooooc »

I need some help with figuring out how some species of mine come into the world, and was hoping some of you could give me some ideas?

With how my conbio works, there must be a magical element, because magical species actually have their entire biology based on magic. Like, humans get a physical body first and then magic, but magic species get magic first and then physical bodies. So with humans I have a very easy explanation of how they acquired magic with how magic already operates: magic just sticks to them during development, essentially. But for my elves and fae it gets more complicated, because you can't just have a physical form "stick" to magic, it doesn't work like that. I don't want them to be artificially created, either, and spontaneous generation won't work. Reproduction /does/ need to be sexual, for the genes and things, but fae and elves have very little (if any, I haven't decided) sexual dimorphism.

Before, I had been using a form of spontaneous generation, but decided it wasn't sustainable for the large population I'm imagining. Then I went with something more human-like, but I don't want my magic people to be just like regular people with pointy ears, so I scrapped that, too. oh, and btw, there's no crossbreeding--a half-elf, half-human couldn't exist, for example.
Last edited by dooooooooc on 30 May 2015 06:25, edited 1 time in total.
cntrational
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Re: Help with reproduction of a magical species

Post by cntrational »

One old idea I had for a fantasy conworld was that magic is just another type of physics, and is thus used by everything. So, for example, human nerves ran on magical energy, rather than electricity, and magic was done by manipulating that energy via those nerves.
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Micamo
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Re: Help with reproduction of a magical species

Post by Micamo »

How does magic in your setting work, anyway? Without knowing that, there's not much we can do for the mechanics behind a species "made of magic."

One idea I had you could maybe do something with though is to say that physical bodies aren't used in reproduction: To mate, the two members of the species fall into a deep sleep together, and leave their bodies and interact only in their ethereal, pure-magic forms. A pure-magic baby results, and a physical body for it to inhabit has to be artificially created.
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dooooooooc
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Re: Help with reproduction of a magical species

Post by dooooooooc »

Micamo wrote:How does magic in your setting work, anyway?
well, to expand on what's relevant (?):
magic exists separate, in most ways, from the physical world. It acts kind of like a free energy? It's just kind of there, in the air, it does it's own thing most of the time but it can be manipulated to one's whim. so, they're not really "made of magic"--they used to be, but they aren't now. The primary reason behind elves being "magic species" (as opposed to humans, which are classed as a "physical" species in-world) is that elves can't live without magic--but could, theoretically, live without a physical form. (Phoenixes are a good non-humanoid example: when they die, their magic just rebuilds their body, essentially) However, over time, their magic and physical body have become so entwined that it would be very difficult to keep a no-body elf alive for very long. Humans, on the other hand, can live without magic, but not without a body. same thing applies to them, though: magic and body have become so intertwined that it'd be hard for a human to actually survive having their magic 'killed.'

In a practical sense, magic is very simple. it will naturally do some stuff, but to make it do stuff you want it to do you pretty much just need to influence it really hard. (magic learns, as well. Magic you're born with is "yours" because it's born with you, it knows you, so it's very malleable. At the same time, it's resistant to other people's influence because its highly unused to being manipulated by anyone other than you.)
Micamo wrote:One idea I had you could maybe do something with though is to say that physical bodies aren't used in reproduction: To mate, the two members of the species fall into a deep sleep together, and leave their bodies and interact only in their ethereal, pure-magic forms. A pure-magic baby results, and a physical body for it to inhabit has to be artificially created.
Very romantic. I like it.
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Lambuzhao
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Re: reproduction of a magical species

Post by Lambuzhao »

Though you work in magical circles, and this is more sci-fi than fantasy, sounds like the meditative dance of the Traags from Fantastic Planet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHXx6K6tXus

A conworlder's classic.

[:)]
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Re: reproduction of a magical species

Post by Tanni »

dooooooooc wrote:oh, and btw, there's no crossbreeding--a half-elf, half-human couldn't exist, for example.
Thanks for saving us from Rawlings-like mixed up creatures, where mixing up seems very unlikely even in fantasy.

In a SF series I'm used to read, there were three entities who wanted to create a ''child''. The entities were essentially the souls of the dead of a certain people on a certain planet other than earth. If souls build up a mental block, they can act as a single entity and stay alive even if their bodies die. Souls are supposed to exist in a so-called hyperspace. When they made the child, that meant that each of the entities contributed souls to the child, and when the child became aware of himself, things went wrong. For a very short period of time, the ''child'' was what we usually consider a child for a few moments while he got aware of his powers, causing tremendous harm to the nature of the planet, reunitet with the most powerful one of his three parents and took over, gripped many of the souls of the other people who were invited to widness the incident and departed.

The way you describe your magical energy (that it can learn) is similar to the way some kind of hyperenergy is described in that series: vital energy. If aggregated, it can interact with other people, fulfill their wishes and even develop some kind of pseudo-intelligence.

I would recommend you to introduce some ''magical space'', where magical energy -- which may be multidimensional -- is situated. From here, it can interact with normal space beings, selecting an recently sired normal space being and interact with it while it grows. Actually, both of them would grow and develop together. You can make it somewhat more complicated -- to explain that there are non-magical beings -- that certain conditions must be met to allow the magical energy stick to an unborn child. Then you can go several ways: The normal being mother gives birth to a child how is of the same species, just with magical powers. Or the newborn child is of a different species, an elf or a fae, on base of the genetic information of the normal mother and father which was altered by the magic energy. A third possibility would be that the unborn baby leaves the womb of the mother in an unusual way (e.g. by teleportation) long before birth, so that the mother may never get aware that she once was pregnant with a magical infected baby. Or let the magical energy transform the unborn into the magical space having an intertwined development which ends up into a magical being that can be part of magical space or part of normal space just as it likes. Or maybe, in the course of the magical development, there will be a point where the new being must decide which path he or she will take: staying into magical space or becoming an elf or a fae, which is doomed to live in normal world, but has some magical left over powers.
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Re: reproduction of a magical species

Post by dooooooooc »

Tanni wrote: I would recommend you to introduce some ''magical space'', where magical energy -- which may be multidimensional -- is situated.
I've got it (pretty much...) figured out in my head now, and I decided to go with something like this-- it already fits in so well with a lot of the other rules I've got well-established, so it made sense. thank you to everyone for your suggestions! (and sorry I took so long to respond to it/sorry for the bump >_>;;)
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draug
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Re: reproduction of a magical species

Post by draug »

Well I don't really know how it realy works but, what if the elves put something similar to a egg, in wich magic, provenient from the parents will be encapsulated, and that magic will began to attract matter to give itself a body, so a elf nest would look like a zerg nest or something similar.

Image

And when the elf born, the magic inside him absorvs all the remanents of the embrionary state. Its nasty I know, but come on any birth process its pretty.

The interesting part on this one its that the parents get weak each time it engender a son, because they give to their child the magic nesesary to live
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Re: reproduction of a magical species

Post by Curlyjimsam »

Maybe this is too late now, but one possibility might be that the magical species are immortal (as they often are in these settings), so don't actually need to reproduce at all, and hence don't.

Or maybe they could make bodies for themselves, or (if you want to go a bit darker) steal them from humans?
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