Water magic

Water magic is the magical sphere of healing, ice, and protection. Emerging in the latter half of the War of Fire, it is among the oldest spheres in mortal practice and one of the most explicitly theological in drive and character. It has restored individuals and civilizations, and exists today everywhere as a practice inseperable from its Jolinnite roots.

For information about the damage type, see Resistance. For information about the classes, see the pages for water scholar and water templar.

Origins

Water magic arrived in the latter half of the War of Fire. A joint expedition, humans and aelin sent at Aeoleri's direction and joined by others along the way, sought out the slumbering Overgod Jolinn and roused him. Jolinn's response was to grant water magic to the world's defenders, transmitted through the blessed waters of the Chalice of Jolinn. This origin has never been forgotten, and water magic continues to carry connotations of salvation as the sphere that countered fire and healed what the war destroyed. The Arrakie river had been destroyed during the conflict, leaving the region in drought and famine. The Chalice of Jolinn helped produced an everlasting font of pure water in the heart of the desert that still flows as a river to the sea, jointly maintained through earth and water arcanima.

Water magic's relationship to its originating deity is unlike that of any other sphere. Jolinn does not hold dominion over water in the abstract sense that other gods are associated with specific elemental spheres. Water scholars who use their powers in ways Jolinn deems inappropriate, most notably in service of evil, have had their access to it revoked, the knowledge erased from their minds.

Applications

Water magic is the broadest combat sphere in the world after void. In war it produces ice storms, inflicts frostbite and cold damage, and can blind or disorient with unnatural snow and freezing fog. It floods terrain. It is the direct counter to fire magic, capable of removing fire-based debilitations and protecting against fire damage in ways no other sphere matches. Its defensive applications are equally formidable: general damage reduction, active shielding, and both active and passive healing give water scholars a survivability profile unmatched by practitioners of any other sphere.

Outside of combat, water magic enables travel through bodies of water and scrying. It can conjure pure water directly, which has had agricultural and infrastructural consequences wherever it has been practiced. The Arrakie river is the largest and most sustained example of water magic used as civil infrastructure, but it is not the only one.

Refrigeration is among the sphere's most consequential civilian applications. Cold preservation of food, medicine, and materials via water magic predates any alternative method by a significant margin; the shuddeni, categorically excluded from the sphere, only developed a functional equivalent much later using fire magic.

Healing is where the sphere's reputation is highest and its limits most visible. Water healing at its pinnacle is capable of restoring a body near death to full health instantly and painlessly, an effect no other healing method, magical or otherwise, approaches. However, such miraculous examples demand a proportionate amount of mana and training few practitioners possess. Most physicians healing most kinds of injuries rely on slower and more precisely applied regenerative healing, using less mana more precisely and over longer periods of time. Balancing these demands mean a water healer's skills represent a convergence of magical aptitude and medical knowledge, and while water healing is still the dominant form of magical medicine in every culture that has access to it, it remains relatively scarce.

Culture

Water is greatly weakened when wielded by red-aligned practitioners, and the shuddeni cannot wield it at all.

Humanity identifies with water magic more deeply than any other lineage. The father of humanity woke when they called, and water magic arrived as his gift to them in their moment of greatest need. Jolinnite and water magic practices thus have a great deal of overlap; the greatest center of water magic study, the Tower of Salyra in Earendam, is explicitly a religious institution.

The aelin hold an equally strong water tradition from the same founding moment, but colored by Aeoleri rather than Jolinn. Jolinn is not a widely venerated deity in Daphoa; aelin water practice carries the Rose King's imprint instead, water magic in service of the social and institutional structures Aeoleri values. The sphere arrived to the aelin through the same war, through the same expedition, but what they made of it reflected their own theological priorities rather than humanity's.

The srryn have a Jolinnite water tradition, but their syncretism arrives at a distinctly different place. Where Fenthira is demanding and harsh, the srryn conception of Jolinn is indulgent: Mother of Mothers, a figure of shelter and abundance rather than law and duty. Their practices of water magic reflect this perception, and it is regarded as a softer tradition, with more zealous Sythraki refusing water-based forms of healing altogether.

The ethron developed separate but serious water traditions through Lielqan. Ethron water practice carries Lielqan's character: pragmatic, unflinching about hard truths, concerned with boundaries as much as healing. They also pioneered the magical creation of undines, a type of water elemental.

The caladaran come to water through Jalassa, goddess of discipline and reason. Caladaran water magic practice tends to be focused on ice magic in specific, and is characteristically disciplined and theoretical, regarded as a subject of mastery and meditation.

The chaja came to water magic late. Underground and largely isolated, they missed the War of Fire and the founding transmission entirely. It was only upon re-establishing contact with the surface in the period leading up to the War of Night that the chaja encountered the sphere, learning it from humanity under considerably less dramatic circumstances than the original gift.

The nefortu came later still, and for reasons that were not accidental. In the aftermath of the War of Fire, which the Bayyali had substantially caused, the nefortu were regarded as outcasts by much of the world and that social exclusion extended to the sphere whose gift had been given to humanity in the war Bayyal's followers had helped ignite. They were not formally barred, but access requires teachers; the nefortu eventually acquired water magic through the Sotuen srryn, whose Fenthiran pragmatism made them more willing to transmit the sphere than most, though generations had passed since its introduction.