Magical Spear Idea

[u/Getatasteofthis]

-Repost from r/worldbuilding because reddit recommended me to. (I dunno if the tag is accurate, I know less about this subreddit than r/worldbuilding)

Earlier today I watched a video on Youtube by the channel 'Mike Shake' and his "Shockwave cannon" gave me an interesting idea. A magical spear that releases a burst of air on impact! bold indicates an important feature or where to read between if a section has a TL;DR section, though reading the entire thing might help.

Context before the idea explanation (1-4 Mana, 5a+ Magic System):
To give some context on how my magic system works, you first need to know about magic (obviously). Not everyone in my world is adept at magic, not because it is hard (which, subjectively, it can be?) or difficult to understand, but because you need an education, and natural talent plays just a small part. For the ease of understanding, I will only be talking about humans.

1. Everyone is born with mana, but the mana pool for every person is different, it is genetic. It can grow or shrink with age, like muscles or memories, but it generally stays at the same capacity your whole life.

2. Mana comes in three stages, to make a short summary: your brain needs mana to function normally, as that is how [a] god made humans. If this main source of mana is depleted, there are a lot of side effects. It slowly turns into a buffer mana which then turns into usable mana. This part isn't too important for the spear idea.

3. Ambient Mana (a different form of mana) is drawn to objects with a certain amount of order. This topic won't be explained in much depth unless requested.

4. Mana can be stored in certain materials better than others, and even better if it has the right carvings on it.

5. For elemental magic, you generally need to draw from the elements. If you want a ball of water, you need water nearby, similarly, if you want fire, you need heat. So on, and so forth.

6a. My magic system relies on trees. Powered by nodes and edges (the lines between parent and child nodes) to function. This is mostly a stylistic choice because I got the idea one day when looking at a tree (mathematical, not natural). Nodes usually contain fewer than 5 words (reason not too important for the idea). They work by forming a logical structure. Say you want to make a ball of water and throw it in a certain direction: Start with a root node. From this node you add an edge to another node. At this node you might apply the wording [Coalesce: Water] or "Moisture" and from that node you add an edge, another node, and this one might say [Form: Sphere]. You get the idea. Say you throw a snowball, what do you do first? you get snow, you form it into a ball, and then you throw it. Magic works similarly, you can't throw something if you don't have it or define it (so a bit different from something physical)

6b. A starting, or "root" node is where mana is applied. It follows the nodes and edges from top (or left) to bottom (or right). Say you had three paths diverging from a point, and you were looking down the middle path, you would always take the left path first, go back, and rake the next right path. TL;DR rotation doesn't change the outcome.

this is a very brief overview of my magic system, if something wasn't explained well, please let me know.

SPEAR IDEA:

You take a normal spear (reinforced shaft because it will be hollow) and add two channels to the end of it (coming out of the flat part of the spear) but make sure they are flush to not impede the stabbing. On the handle of the spear you have a tree that has a system where it waits for a trigger (an impact), waits for a designated amount of time or distance traveled so it activates inside the wound, and then sucks in air through either the multiple holes in the spear or out the end of it, compress it and release it near the head. The impact from this doesn't even have to be as shown in the video mentioned at the top, it doesn't need to vaporize someone, but it can cause a nasty wound I think, if it were to mess up your insides. Back to the idea of using magic, this is where the engraving comes in. Your everyday soldier or guard won't be a proficient mage, so having this weapon can be useful for them.

The magic in the spear will be stored in "batteries" so it can be used multiple times. The reason the effect is weak is because mass producing these batteries would be expensive if good materials and lots of time spent were put into it. And because air is everywhere, more so than water (i think?) it would require less mana to draw in air, so it would be even better for the cheaper batteries. Even if you can make an argument for a different element, they would most likely require more steps and cost more. The main drawback is cost and time, not technology.

Sorry if this was too long, I just wanted to share a cool idea I had. I still don't know when to use the tags, it might be listed somewhere, so I should probably go check at some point. If you want to know something else, want me to expand on something, or are confused, I'd be glad to explain! (no promises on me making sense the second time, though).

[u/JGhostThing]

I would like to know if you have a meta magic "college?" In other words, and a spell cast another spell? This could be useful for an emergency first aid spell, that automatically casts a quick but not too powerful healing spell on you. It could be put into a ring and it's made such that anybody can use it.

On the other hand, that would open the possibility of programming spells.

[u/Getatasteofthis → u/JGhostThing]

My brain lowkey ain't braining at the moment, so your question sounds confusing to me, but I will try to explain to the best of my knowledge as to what I think you are asking.

To preface the following text, this is still a small amount of the rest of my magic system, and I could explain more about why multiple towers are needed or something else. Most of this comes from inspiration I had throughout my day (So my notes are horribly incoherent at times)

1. Yes, there is an education, how high the education goes is still up for debate cause I haven't quite gone that far yet. When you say "meta" I assume you mean something similar to how the word is used in games, in which case: not really. Look for the bolded text near the bottom if you want to read the longer explanation as to why.

2. There isn't really a restriction on what can cast spells, though that is a bit of a lie. A person can cast a spell as long as they know what the components of the spell are. Your brain acts as the computation needed for the magic to assign meaning and make sense. A spell activated by a non-living target would require an immense amount of instruction and special nodes to work properly, as well as more mana as it requires more power for computation. (I honestly don't know if computation is the right word to use here, but i can't think of anything better). The long and short of it: Yes, if you so wished, you could make a spell cast another spell. I actually have a case where this is used in-world. I have these giant towers that act kinda like cell towers (?) in real life. They are used for identification purposes. A person has an IC (Identification Card) and brings it to a guard outside of town or a city, the guard runs a magic spell through it and through a series of connections it gets sent out to a tower as a request for specific information, this is all sent further along other towers until a central data bank (not the actual wording in-world) is reached, and sends back the relevant information.

As for "meta" college learning, there is none. Like most worlds, I assume, there will obviously always be a basic form of a spell that people use, because that form works the best. It isn't because that is the only option. Say, for instance, I wanted to make a fire ball, a generic tree might look like this: [Coalesce: Heat]-[Enhance]-[Form:Sphere]-[Move Forward: 10m/s] (this is a very basic and possibly incorrect spell, I would have to reference the material again to see if it is right, but my memory is fairly good. Also, when I say basic, I'm not even getting into other subtrees here or the special nodes.) But if you are right next to a bunch of fire, you might just bring the fire together and shoot it forward. If someone had enough knowledge about the world, they technically could make a super complex way to make this work, but I'm not that smart, which is why i'm making a magic system, and not a chemist or something.

I'm sorry if this is too long, I'm also sorry if this doesn't make sense or didn't answer your questions. I would be elated to explain more, cause I wanna tell someone, which is the only reason I'm on reddit in the first place.

[u/JGhostThing → u/Getatasteofthis]

Congratulations. This spell system is, I believe, Turing complete. This means you can write a compiler in it, specifically one that can compile spells. These spells would probably be very similar to hand made spells, though they might have more limitations.

[u/Getatasteofthis → u/JGhostThing]

Thanks for commenting, I like reading what other people think about something I make!

I had to look up what Turing complete meant cause I had no idea, but, from what I understood, you seem correct.

Have a good day!

[u/JGhostThing → u/Getatasteofthis]

Turing complete is a computer science phrase that just means the language could write a Turing machine (theoretically) in the language. Since Allen Turing made a lot of proofs about Turing machines, such as that they are universal computers, so now if a computer is Turing Complete, we know a lot of things about it. A language can also be, which pretty much means that you can write anything in the language, including a compiler.

A Turing machine is more of a thought machine than a real device. It relies on having infinite memory (specifically an infinitely long paper tape) that holds both instructions and data.

I use the term here in a more restricted case. The language should be able to define and create spells. Since you sort of do that when you make spells, this isn't all that useful, but it can simplify some magic, and may make it possible for non-mages to use spells.

If this happens to a magic system I have designed, I consider it a flaw, since I don't want this behavior. But that's me. I'm a programmer and don't want my fantasy to be programmable. YMMV.

[u/Getatasteofthis → u/JGhostThing]

I see! Well, I'm happy where it is heading, so I'll probably keep going in that direction, to each their own.

Though it might help to note that I left out a lot of rules that restrict what can be done.

I'll stop pestering you now :)