Magic

The disciplines

Astral Theurgy is the magic of astronomy: runes and equations carved into bone or amber and read against the stars. Pulmeron Cultivation is grail cultivation, a road of ranks that runs from Knight Paramount through Knight Perilous to Wu Wei. Elegeian Hymnals are the magic of song: seven elegies, the battle-choirs, and the Siran Gates. Void Summoning calls on the Dremnae, and it is forbidden everywhere that has laws, with one standing exception: on the Dead Continent in the far west none of it is hidden, necromancy carries no shame, and the High Throne of the Lich stands in the open.

The enchantment law

"In order to enchant an item, it must be a living or once living material. Astral mages carve astral runes and equations into bone or amber to channel their spells. On casting, the material is destroyed: bone will shatter, amber will craze." Hence the idiom of the trade, "astronomers worth their amber."

Since the stars went out the colleges have kept a story that one material will still hold an enchantment: a dried Alverian, whole, taken before the film sets. Nobody has ever produced one. The story is old enough that it may have been put there.

Providence, Doom and the void

The settled world sorts magic by what it answers to. Providence magic answers to the Caelatari, the stars. Doom and necromantic magic answers to the dark. Song, bone and ancestral magic, veldt and elemental magic sit between. Void magic is the one discipline no one is permitted outside the far west, and the corruption it leaves behind can be measured in a person.

The cost is structural. Every casting punches through the Caelyrean, the filter Hyton laid over the world, and the puncture does not close cleanly; it weeps. A caster far gone with void miasma becomes a soft place in that filter, and things looking for a way in find him easier than most. A strong summoner with souls enough tears a wide fissure in it and pulls a mass of a Void Prince through, which is where a Remoulded comes from.