Hello again! Spring has slowly steered towards summer in the past two months and it’s getting warm enough to actually go for an outing. This time I thought I’d open a bit more on the role of magic in the world.

There are two types of magic, I’ll start with the less interesting one. The ‘path of the enlightened’, or ‘Myôdô’ (明道), which is a type of magic used by the exorcists, sorcerers, and diviners of the ‘kannari no michi‘, called ‘Myôdôsha’ (明道者). Instead of using the raw magical power residing in the world directly, they consult the kami in the land to help them, or alternatively use magical talismans and seals to affect the world, and spirits around them. In doing so, they lessen the strain on their own bodies. The myôdôsha can thus consult local lesser kami, and land deities to help them in their quest, as well as seal malign spirits. You could think of them as a combination of modern-day detectives, wandering priests, and exorcists.

In contrast to the myôdôsha, the land has its own darker flavor of magic users: ‘Gedô Majya / Majya’ (外道魔者 / 魔者), heretic mages who have strayed from the path of the enlightened. Formerly powerful court mages who were expunged from the society due to corruption, and an attempt at a coup in order to combine the seat of power with the mage nobility, cementing the matrimony of religion and ruling power, which lead to a hundred-year long hunt for heretics called ‘Majyagari’ (魔者狩) 368 years prior to the present. Their ranks among the nobility abolished, the majya retreated into their cloistered fortresses, and ruins in the abandoned parts of the realm. Some say they are still around, living in the shadows of the modern society, plotting their rise back to power.

The majya use their power to bind the raw elemental powers to do their bidding without the help of spirits. In fact, the more powerful mages are capable of even chaining lesser kami, and spirits of the underworld as their familiars. Sadly, the vessel that is the human body is not meant to be used to conduct these raw powers, and excessive use of the magic starts eroding the essence of self. Thus majya who originally had a noble goal in mind might lose their sight of what the means to the goal were, and in the end, the means become the goal.

As for the spirits and kami, due to their magical origin, they aren’t affected as such by the magic themselves, but are mostly limited to the element they are affiliated with. Meanwhile artifacts imbued with magic, are known to create personalities unto themselves over time. These artifacts range from lesser items such as smoking pipes which summon a lesser kami, to artifacts that have outlived their original creators by far, and are unpredictable and dangerous. The more powerful an artifact is, the more likely it has been sealed away in a temple under lock and key, and as such are coveted by many majya, withal other evildoers.

That’s all for now, thank you for reading this far!

With regards to the topic at hand, have a lesser disease spirit, keukegen.