Part one in a series of articles about the magic system in Golden Land. Up first, The History of Magic.


Big clap to Sergey Buravtsov and Dmitry Glaznev for taking the time to write this!

Magic​

by Sergey Buravtsov, Project Leader, and Dmitry Glaznev, the Script Writer, Golden Land

The Secret Knowledge of the universe laws and ability to use them in everyday life is what Magic consists of. The ancient tribe sorcerers were the first who studied and knew the hidden secrets of nature. They tried to help their tribe to survive - and came to the knowledge of Gods' existence. The time passed, and then appeared some people, who called themselves mediators between people and Gods - priests. And even at that time they used Secret Knowledge not only to solve some everyday problems of their tribes, but to show their power - and the power of their Gods.

When money appeared in the society, there came new, civilized epoch, called "Before-Dawn" in chronicles of Golden Land. Its beginning is connected with dividing those people of the tribe, who were equal before, into professional and social castes. With the beginning of "goods and money" relations the appearance of riches and ambitions became possible. Wish to become rich and gain authority over other people became the reason of the first intertribal clashes - and then, with giving up the tribal way of life and appearance of the first kingdoms and principalities, even bigger conflicts.

Unlike sorcerers who usually were neutral physicians and advisers, priests were not be able to stay out from the battles. Since that time, new magic appeared in the world - combat magic. Its appearance, of course, affected the number of deaths, and after some time some of the priests tried to appeal to Lucid Gods, to stop the violence and conflicts with their help. That's how, the legend says, Golden Land's priest, At'Ragobor with the hardest and painstaking work contacted Belobog and asked him for defense and protection of Golden Land. Belobog was amazed by the power of the human magicians and agreed to help. Since those times Lucid Gods were helping the minds and actions of the Golden Land's people, but, of course, it was impossible to fully do the evil away.

Soon those magicians, who used the combat aspect of the Knowledge, separated themselves fully from the priests (though most priests were magicians too) and started to develop the Secret Knowledge by themselves.

That's how the four main ways of development of the magic Skill appeared, known till the days of Before-dawn. Those were: Magic of Body, Magic of Artifacts, Magic of Defense and Magic of Combat.

Magic of Body is the oldest, everyday magic, which used the hidden resources of the body. With such skills people were able both to cure and to strengthen their unusual, supernatural powers. The Magic of Artifacts appeared with the development of the skills. It used the hidden scopes of the materials and the power of master's love to those things he created.

Using the Magic of Artifacts, the sorcerer smith could give the mortal characteristics to the armor or to the weapons, which, besides their physical damage, did the same to the mind.

Two last ways included defense and attack spells, used mainly in the battle.

In particular, the humanity had this number of using natural forces, when the dark forces of Drakh-Shoo came to Golden Land, With the help of magic, he created a whole army of the corpses and vaigaks, and only two Great Heroes, Velemir and Velena, defeated him.

Victory over Drakh-Shoo became the critical point to the civilization of Golden Land not only in everyday life, but in the sphere of magic, too. Survived in terror of Dark Invasion, many people started to learn magic - not to became defenseless in case of new threat. That's when the Great Magician, Grodval, and his five apprentices appeared.

It is considered that Grodval was the son of the village fisherman, who lived in one of the small villages of Golden Land. From his early age Grodval displayed clear, searching mind and wis-dom which astonished and frightened the villagers. At the age of 13 the irresistible thirst for knowledge forced young Grodval to leave his village and become an apprentice for Ozoy, the legendary magician, who fought against Drakh-shoo. After several years he surpassed the teacher and made the greatest break in the Secret Knowledge. And this break is named the Pact.

Grodval thought that Gods and Humans are opposite by their nature, and their unity is only that they have an inner spiritual resource, which is the basic for magic. But the magic power of god and human is also different - as one pole of the magnet differs from another. So, thought Grod-val, the great increase of the power can be achieved with the cooperation of the god and human. To test his conclusion, Grodval built the altar which helped to appeal to the Gods' world by the method of At'Ragobor. With help of this altar he spoke to six celestials six times, and it resulted in appearance of new, unknown before possibilities of human magic - the Pact. Nobody knows what Grodval told to six Gods, but since that time people can use Gods' powers. Because of this power of the spells and field of their application had increased. It's still unknown what advan-tages the Pact gives to Gods, but they never refused to help the magicians. Grodval had left his five best apprentices in the world as Witnesses, and Gods immortalized them. He, himself, had disappeared, and the legends say that he went to serve Veles in the Unreal World, Nav'. That was the price which Great Grodval paid for their help to people.

The magic powers of every God create a whole group of the alike spells. So, each of six Gods is concerned with one of the Schools. The School of Nature is protected by the Makosh, the God-dess of Earth, the Master of Light is Belobog, and he fulfills the followers of the School of Light with power. Nobody knows why Grodval, while creating the Pact for improving the people's forces, asked Chernobog for help - but, Chernobog always was protecting the School of Dark. The school of Elements' protector is Stribog, and School of the Shadows is protected by the Yascher. One of the most powerful schools is the School of Gods. It is protected by the Father of Gods, Svarog.

We will continue the series of articles about Golden Land's features. In one of the next articles you can read in detail about each of those schools.

Spell Screenshots​

Thanks for the interesting info, Sergey Buravtsov and Dmitry Glaznev!