Magic

Chant a little Chant for Me...

On Legend we have over 150 spells. But you use them in a way rather unlike most muds. Instead of learning each spell individually, you learn magical words of power that are scattered around the mud. The combinations of words are what make up spells. Words include things like Fire, Create, Time, and Energy.

Magic falls into three schools based on the basic verbs that a mage learns. Every mage must learn the school of divination, with its verbs Know and Conceal. After that they must choose between either conjuration (Create and Destroy) and sorcery (Cause and Remove).

Within the various schools there are also several disciplines, such as the many spells devoted to creating illusions of various types (Ephemera, Illusion, Doppelganger, Summon Butterflies, Sword of Light, and many others).

The words that represent the words of power are taken from ancient languages like Sanskrit.

A mage might chant 'create light' to get a temporary orb of glowing light, and 'create light man' to get an illusory man made of light--a doppelganger. 'Destroy the movement of light' would disturb any of the patterns of light that characterize illusions and make them all go away. 'Create the movement of light' poetically results in a swarm of butterflies...

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One of the showcase skill sets on Legend is that of herbalism. Based on careful research into the historical and legendary uses of plants from around the word, herbalism combines a database of historical and medical information with a set of skills useful to the character.

Herbalism starts with plants: there are plants growing everywhere around Legend, both trees and small herbs such as thyme and hellebore. An herbalist begins by learning the herblore skill, which permits them to learn information about the herbs. A typical herblore entry might be:

Name: Uva-Ursi

History: Marco Polo and Kublai Khan both brought this herb back from the Far East, and by the 13th century it was used in Europe as an antiseptic in poultices. Also used by Amerinds for the same purpose.

Uses: POULTICE creates a cure light poultice

Safety: non-toxic (no food value)

Herbalism then builds upon this basis with skills to brew herbs into a variety of remedies, poisons, and potions, make poultices and amulets from them, cultivate them (even into entangling thickets), make stout staves from the wood of trees, and other abilities, including learning how to draw sustenance from the earth in the manner as do plants themselves with the root skill.