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Moon
Mage New Player Guide
What is a Moon Mage?
Moon
Mages are an esoteric collective of magicians, scholars
and soothsayers from several different sects. Known for the
versatile
and powerful magic that flows from their fingertips and
their ability to foretell the future, Moon Mages are among
the
most potent spell casters on Elanthia.
Their abilities are tied closely to the rising and setting
of the
three moons Xibar, Yavash and Katamba, as well as
the motions of other heavenly bodies. Thus when the skies
smile down upon a Moon Mage, his powers are strong; yet
when
all the moons have set, he is considerably weaker. Moon Mages
are quite often at the mercy of the moons when it comes
to using their magic and skills. This is especially
true for beginning low level Moon Mages. Moon Mages
are seen as different things by different people. We are
known as scholars, fortunetellers, mysterious occultists,
tenacious survivalists, astronomers, and magicians. This
varied perception of us allows for a great deal of freedom
in developing a persona for a Moon Mage character. Moon
Mages also wield powerful magic. In fact, they are one of
three
Guilds who have the Magic skill set as their primary
skill set.
Lunar Magic
Unlike the other forms of mana, Lunar mana is constant in
all locations at once. At any given moment, the amount of
Lunar mana available all over Elanthia depends on the phase
of the moons, and whether or not they are in the sky. As
they wax and wane, rise and set, the amount of mana changes.
Eventually you will be able to sense additional lunar
mana from the planets. This additional mana helps to supplement
the
available mana from the moons, that way if all the moons
are below the horizon and far away in their orbital cycle
(a scenario that would cripple a low level Moon Mage), you
will still have a decent amount of lunar mana to draw upon.
Magical Attunement - Moon Mages have an
"attunement" to lunar magic, and that when they lose that
attunement
they can no longer cast magical spells. Attunement can be
thought
of as a kind of magical fatigue. When your attunement is
low, you won’t be able to cast spells that require
a lot of energy. The more mana you put into a spell when
casting it, the more magical fatigue it will create, sapping
your attunement. A characters attunement slowly recovers
over time, but it is a fairly slow process. In game, typing
INFO will show attunement under "Harness" and
HARN or HARNESS will show it as "Current
Harn," but its correct term is attunement.
Skill Sets
Depending on what Guild you are in, you will learn skills
in a particular skill set faster than skills in other skill
sets. This is because of your Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary
arrangement. Skills in your Guild's Primary skill set are
quickly and easily learned, with Secondary skills being next
in line. Any skill set that isn't Primary or Secondary for
your Guild is Tertiary. Tertiary skills move the slowest.
This arrangement of Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary learning
rates is to reflect your Guild's natural aptitude for certain
skills.
Magic
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Lore · Survival
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Weapons · Armor
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Knowing this you can expect your Magic skills to increase
more rapidly than any of your other skills. Your Lore and
Survival skills will increase at a slightly slower pace,
with Weapons and Armor being the slowest/hardest skills to
increase.
As you can see this means most Moon Mages will be very skilled
in Magic, Lore, and Survival. This goes a long way in explaining
most of the perceptions of what Moon Mages are.
Magic Skills
The Magic skill set has the fewest skills of all the skills
sets at only 5 skills, they are
Primary Magic, Harness Ability, Power Perceive, Magical Devices, and Targeted
Magic.
Primary Magic - This skill allows you to
cast spells, cast spells at higher mana
levels, use mana more effectively when casting, prevent wasted
mana, determines how powerful the effect
of your spell is,
and how soon you can attempt to
cast a spell before it is fully prepared. As you can imagine,
it is one of the most important skills to a Moon Mage.
To start casting
a spell PREPARE, or PREP for short (PREPARE
/HELP for more information). You must follow the prepare
verb with the spell name, and the amount of mana you want
to prepare the spell at. For
example: PREP CLEAR VISION 5. Almost every
spell has a minimum mana requirement in order for the spell to
be successfully prepared. If you don't use a high enough
number, a igher, suitable number will be substituted automatically.
In our example the minimum mana needed to prepare Clear
Vision is actually 4 mana. You can experiment in
game to determine
what a spells minimum needed mana is.
The command to cast a spell is CAST,
or often CAST <TARGET>.
Once the spell is successfully cast you will lose some attunement.
If your Primary Magic skill isn't high enough to cast a spell at a the
amount of mana you prepared it at, or if you try to cast the spell too soon,
your spell may backfire. This has the potential
of damaging your
nervous system. You will
know you damaged your nerves if you backfire and you feel a tingling sensation.
Harness Ability - This skill is used passively
when you cast spells, but it can be used actively. The passive
use of this skill determines how effectively you
use available mana when you cast a spell, or charge a
cambrinth item with energy. The active use of this spell
makes use of the HARNESS command. In this case,
your Harness skill determines how well you
harness and hold mana. The higher your skill, the less attunement
you will lose. Type HARNESS HELP in game to find
out more.
If you want to cast a spell at 20 mana, you can
do it several ways. You could
prepare the spell at 20 mana, like so: prepare CLEAR VISION 20.
However, this method will
drastically drop your character's attunement.
An alternate method is to prepare the spell at it's minimum required amount
of mana, and then use the HARNESS command to gather and hold energy
into your body that will be added with the amount you are preparing the spell
at. For
example you might prepare the Clear Vision spell at 4 mana (the minimum needed),
and then harness 4 mana four times like so: PREP CV 4, HARN
4, HARN 4,
HARN 4, HARN 4, CAST.
This system will not cause you to lose as much attunement,
but you will have to spend some extra time harnessing, and
holding energy in your body can damage your nerves if you
hold too much.
Having a lot of skill in Harness lets you hold more energy in your
body without damaging your nerves, and lets you hold that energy longer before
it slips away.
Power Perceive - This skill determines how well you can
sense the available mana, thus determining how much effective
mana you have to work with. Moon Mages are renown for their
Power Perception skills.
Moon Mages can PERCEIVE the following things:
- Moonbeams
- To sense who created them.
- Self - To sense any spells on your character and how
long they will last.
- Area - To sense any spells in effect in the area.
- Planets - To sense if there are any planets in your
range of perception.
- Transduction Book - To sense the available mana for
spells from the Transduction Book.
- Perception Book - To sense the available mana for
spells from the Perception Book.
- Psychic Projection Book - To sense the available
mana for spells from the Psychic Projection
Book.
- Moonlight Manipulation Book - To sense the
available mana for spells from the Moonlight
Manipulation
Book.
- Stellar Book - To sense the available mana
for spells from the Stellar Book, a
special book
of spells for high level Moon Mages.
- Xibar - To sense how much mana Xibar is
contributing, and what it's current
position is in the
sky.
- Yavash - To sense how much mana Yavash
is contributing and what it's current
position is in the sky.
- Katamba - To sense how much mana Katamba
is contributing and what it's
current position is in the sky.
- All - Acts as a combination of Perceive
Self and Perceive Area.
- A general perceive - Accomplished
just by typing POWER or PERCEIVE.
Magical Devices - As implied by the name,
this skill determines how well your character can interact
with magical devices.
As a beginning character you probably won't have too much
interaction with magical devices. Instead, you will
probably need to learn this skill by listening to someone
else teaching the skill to you. Common commands to activate
simple magical devices are FOCUS, RUB, WAVE, and CHARGE.
The FOCUS command is by far the most commonly
used command. It lets your character do several things with
magical devices,
the most important being determining
what a magical device is, and what it does. For example, FOCUS <ITEM>.
You can also focus on cambrinth items to form a special link with them.
Cambrinth is a special mineral that can stores magicalenergy. If
you CHARGE a cambrinth item with energy, and then FOCUS on
it before casting a
spell, it will contribute that energy to your spell, just as if you had
prepared the spell with more mana.
On some magical items, like runes for
instance, you can focus an amount command to attempt
to adjust how much energy is flowing
through the magical device. For example: FOCUS <RUNE> 30.
Think of this like adjusting a dimmer on a light in your house. Whenever
you RUB the rune (to prepare the spell), the spell will be prepared
at higher amount (30) than if it been focused at 10 mana.
Targeted Magic - This skill is determines
how accurate and damaging your targeted magical attack spells
are. Telekinetic Throw is a targeted attack spell. The command
TARGET is used to focus on a target or a specific
part of a target, for example: TARGET GOBLIN, TARGET
GOBLIN ABDOMEN.
Elanthia's Solar
System
Elanthia -
Elanthia is the name of the planet our characters live on.
More specifically, our characters live on a continent called
Kermoria. In game lore tells us that a huge dragon known
as the World Dragon slumbers deep in the center of Elanthia.
Moons - Three moons orbit Elanthia:
Xibar, Yavash, and Katamba. They are blue, red, and black
respectively,
though in
game history
tells us Katamba was once gold. In game history also
tells us there was once a fourth moon, a pearly-white
moon called
Grazhir. However, the World Dragon hatched from Grazhir,
thus destroying it. In the process, the dragon's fiery
breath scorched Katamba black.
The moons are very important to Moon
Mages, as should be apparent. They affect many of our spells
and some
spells
can't even be cast if certain moons aren't in the sky.
Also, until your character is skilled enough to sense
planets,
the moons are the main source of lunar mana for your
spells. This means you are at their mercy. When moons
are below
the horizon, they contribute less lunar mana. This
is also true
for when they are further away in their orbit, and
for when they are in any phase besides full, although
to
varying degrees
depending on how much of the moon is visible. The moons
are the simplest celestial bodies to observe for
predicting the
future, and as soon as you join the Moon Mage Guild
you will be able to observe any of the three moons.
Planets - Besides Elanthia, there are
12 other planets in the in game solar system. By name,
in order
of
proximity to
the sun,
they are: Verena, Estrilda, Durgaulda, Yoakena, Penhetia,
Szeldia, Merewalda, Ismenia, Morleena, Amlothi, Dawgolesh,
and Er'qutra.
High level Moon Mage characters can observe planets
in order to predict the future, as well as draw off of
them as an
additional source of lunar mana.
Constellations - Although
there are most likely thousands of stars in the night skies
of Elanthia,
there are currently only 47 named
constellations in DragonRealms. This is important because
only named constellations can be interacted with via our
skills and magic. Other stars simply don't exist for our
purposes.
Constellations, like planets and moons, can be observed by
a Moon Mage in order to predict the future. In the case of
constellations though, some are easier than others. As you
progress through the Guild you will be taught how to observe
more and more constellations.
Moon Mage Special Skills and Abilities
Predicting the Future
There are 2 types of predictions that
a Moon Mage can do. The first, and simplest, is for you
to simply PREDICT
WEATHER.
This will give you a brief listing of upcoming weather
conditions. Each one of these represents the most likely
possibility for the weather over the next 10-11 minutes.
That is the time interval that weather has the possibility
of changing on. A Moon Mage may predict the weather at
any
time they are outside, and as often as they like. You can
learn a small amount of Astrology doing predicting the
weather, though there is a maximum amount of experience
given in a
certain period of time.
Secondly, and by far more complicated, is for you to predict
the future. Predicting the future actually alters your 'effective'
ranks in a skill, like Evasion or Primary Magic for example.
This alteration can be positive, or negative. It can also
range from a couple of ranks, to dozens of ranks.
To predict the future you have to observe a celestial body
like the sun or one of the three moons for example. The command
to do this is: OBSERVE <OBJECT>.
Once you make your observation you may sometimes learn something
of the future. If you don't, just keep trying.
Using the
Clear Vision spell can help, as well.
Once you do learn something of the future, you are ready
to try a prediction.
A Moon Mage may attempt to predict the future at any time,
but the prediction will fail if you have not made a successful
observation of a celestial body at some point, and stored
a skill set in your observation pool.
The syntax to make a prediction is: PREDICT FUTURE <NAME> <SKILL
SET>. For example: predict
future Joe offense.
Type PREDICT USAGE in game to view all of your prediction
options.
Time sense
Due to a Moon Mage's strong tie to the rise and fall of
the sun and moons, they have the ability to roughly gauge
what
time it is while they somewhere you can't see the sky,
like underground, or indoors without a window. To see
if you are ready to learn this skill, ASK <GUILDLEADER>
ABOUT SKILLS.
Backtrace
Backtrace is the ability to determine who has located
you, or someone else in your area. Locate is
a Moon Mage spell
that tells its caster where someone is located.
When you feel like you
are being watched, type POWER or PERCEIVE to
attempt the backtrace.
Depending on your skill you might be able to sense who
performed the locate, where they are, and eventually
gain
the passive ability to sense if someone backtraces your
locate spell. To see
if you are ready to learn this skill, ASK <GUILDLEADER> ABOUT
SKILLS.
Enchanting
Enchanting is the process of creating a magical item and
is a higher level ability. Once your character
reaches
around 30th circle you might want
to journey to Throne
City and find the Enchanter's
Shop there. You can speak to Xathvier, the owner of the
shop,
and he will see if you are ready to start down the path
to becoming an enchanter.
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