"Magic returned to the world because ___"

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu May 28, 2015 4:16 am

In RIFTS magic returns to the world after massive amounts of people die at the same time during nuclear armageddon, releasing their spiritual energy at the same time to re-activate dormant ley-lines that kills more people and brings back more magic.

In Shadowrun/Earthdawn the earth goes through... phases right? It just comes back or goes away every once in a while.

With (new?) World of Darkness there's a group of wizards who are replacing 'traditional' magic with technology-magic right?

What other series out there have magic coming back to 'our world', or changing?

JesterZero · Post by **JesterZero** » Thu May 28, 2015 4:33 am

It's a mix of "our" world and "other" worlds, but...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... cComesBack

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Thu May 28, 2015 4:33 am

I'm reading the Quantum Gravity novels right now, which have an experimental supercollidor asploding and doing screwy things to physics, involving opening doors to five other magical worlds (elf, fey, demon, elemental, undead) - each of which has their own (learnable, works in all realms) tradition of spellcasting and their own history strentching back thousands of years - and some of those histories involve contact with our world during times we were quite sure we had no such contact.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Thu May 28, 2015 4:43 am

In Stormlight Archives most overt magic in the world went away because humans betrayed the spirits that would bond with them to grant the magic, and are now returning because of some imminent world threatening catastrophe. It's not taking place in our world, but the concept could be ported over if you're just looking for inspiration.

Shady314 · Post by **Shady314** » Thu May 28, 2015 4:56 am

I should check those out. I did a one shot years ago with a sort of similar setup in that they were employees at CERN and magical phenomena started to occur during an experiment.

Oh and to be on topic http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... cComesBack

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu May 28, 2015 5:12 am

There's one urban fantasy series where magic and science have a yin-yang, tidal-effect happening.

When magic is dominant, stuff like electric lights and internal combustion engines don't work. But telephones still, do, mostly. Theoretically, this is because telephones are less understood by the ordinary person, whereas more people know how cars work because of doing maintenance.

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Thu May 28, 2015 5:21 am

Seerow wrote:In Stormlight Archives most overt magic in the world went away because humans betrayed the spirits that would bond with them to grant the magic, and are now returning because of some imminent world threatening catastrophe. It's not taking place in our world, but the concept could be ported over if you're just looking for inspiration.

That's really nifty.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu May 28, 2015 6:02 am

rasmuswagner wrote:
Seerow wrote:In Stormlight Archives most overt magic in the world went away because humans betrayed the spirits that would bond with them to grant the magic, and are now returning because of some imminent world threatening catastrophe. It's not taking place in our world, but the concept could be ported over if you're just looking for inspiration.
That's really nifty.

I'm currently on a Braden Sandersen binge entirely because of someone loaning me Way of Kings, first book of the Stormlight Archives.

Read them. Just...read Warbreaker after you read Way of Kings.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu May 28, 2015 8:55 am

OgreBattle wrote:With (new?) World of Darkness there's a group of wizards who are replacing 'traditional' magic with technology-magic right?

No. In oWoD everything is magic, including science, and the modern world is the result of science-wizards pushing their worldview over the hermetics-wizards and christian-wizards and everyone else. Magic never went away.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu May 28, 2015 12:50 pm

Could go with the marvel approach, if you want to see mutants as magic users.
Children of the Atom.
Or natural Evolution into a Race of Psykers maybe?
Or are you interested in a specific kind of magical magic?
So Fantasy-Tropes?

angelfromanotherpin · Thu May 28, 2015 12:59 pm

Age of Unreason has an 18th-Century magical revolution based on Isaac Newton's alchemical forays paying off.

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Thu May 28, 2015 1:44 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_Swords#The_Change
RIFTS stole their world war -> magic conceit from those novels, by the by.

But, generally speaking, the rise of magic isn't explained:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dying_Earth#Setting

Wikipedia has an entire category on moody, futuristic sci-fi/fantasy cross-overs, and that's the general pattern. I actually like it better - I've never seen an explanation for magic coming back that I found satisfactory; Shadowrun (natural cycles of the world), Saberhagen (somehow a consequence of superscience), and Rifts (massive human sacrifice! METAL!) are all a bit hokey.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Thu May 28, 2015 1:58 pm

There's always the possibility that the magic never died, but the art of using it did. Pogroms, purges, etc, could have eliminated all the most skilled users, leaving charlatans as the last vestiges of the lost art. In this case, the magic doesn't come back so much as is 'rediscovered'. That doesn't help with the magical races, but can cover the spells pretty easily.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu May 28, 2015 5:18 pm

Longes wrote:
OgreBattle wrote:With (new?) World of Darkness there's a group of wizards who are replacing 'traditional' magic with technology-magic right?
No. In oWoD everything is magic, including science, and the modern world is the result of science-wizards pushing their worldview over the hermetics-wizards and christian-wizards and everyone else. Magic never went away.

Yeah the less you get into Mage the better.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu May 28, 2015 7:42 pm

Stahlseele wrote:Could go with the marvel approach, if you want to see mutants as magic users.
Children of the Atom.
Or natural Evolution into a Race of Psykers maybe?
Or are you interested in a specific kind of magical magic?
So Fantasy-Tropes?

It's all good and welcome. Though with X-Men do they ever explain why so many mutants are popping up all of a sudden when most of recorded history didn't have guys optic blasting about?

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu May 28, 2015 8:46 pm

OgreBattle wrote:Though with X-Men do they ever explain why so many mutants are popping up all of a sudden when most of recorded history didn't have guys optic blasting about?

Back in the '60s the explanation was 'increased radiation exposure due to the recent development of nuclear technology.' Due to the way comics timelines works, that stopped being a thing. I think they moved on to 'direct genetic meddling by Apocalypse/Mr. Sinister,' but if it's changed again since then, I wouldn't know.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu May 28, 2015 8:51 pm

I've frequently heard it described as the manifest destiny of human evolution. Same reason you have this....

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Thu May 28, 2015 9:40 pm

In the Laundry series, 'magic' is going to come back because the solar system will be entering a region of space where reality is more flexible than it's been for the past few eons.

This, combined with the amount of human neural tissue reaching a critical threshold, will attract the Great Old Ones to come and devour us.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri May 29, 2015 2:01 pm

Occluded Sun wrote: This, combined with the amount of human neural tissue reaching a critical threshold, will attract the Great Old Ones to come and devour us.

Do the Great Old Ones only dwell in flexible reality areas?

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Fri May 29, 2015 8:07 pm

Other way around: the reality around a Great Old One becomes flexible.

schpeelah · Post by **schpeelah** » Fri May 29, 2015 8:50 pm

In this particular context, these particular Great Old Ones are extradimensional and summoned by advanced mathematics with some ritual flavoring. In flexible reality areas the required calculations are less advanced, up to "could be done accidentally". Also there's infovores.

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